Coming Home: Tu Chien-fang's Dream House in Luyeh

"Building a Taiwanese-style house was a childhood dream of mine," says Tu, who laments that traditional architecture and its skills have been lost from modern life.

Tu, who was born and raised in Taipei, thinks urban living conditions are rather poor. In all his years toiling in Taipei, Tu's greatest goal was to make enough money so that he could one day leave the city behind.

In those days, Tu's jewelry business took him all over Europe and the Americas. He had a chance to become a citizen of Belgium, but felt that moving to another country would mean moving to a place that "was not my own home." He says, "Even though I'd been all over the world, my wish was still to settle in Taiwan!"

To find a suitable environment in which to live, Tu traveled throughout Taiwan for two or three years. Up north, he visited places such as Shihting, Nankang, Hsichih, and Chungyi. In some places, the land was too expensive. In other places, the mountains were too steep and there was not enough land to build on. In the end, Tu had to give up on the idea of finding a place in northern Taiwan. He traveled down south to continue his search, and was finally rewarded for his efforts when he found an ideal site in Luyeh, Taitung.

The beauty of having a dream

"When I left Taipei at the age of 38, I gave up the idea of being a rich man," says Tu. That year, Tu took along his wife and his two sons, aged eight and seven, and came to Luyeh to build his own homestead.

Before them was the Central Mountain Range, while behind them was the East Coastal Range. The Peinan River flowed by the front edge of Tu's land. The eight hectares of land that Tu bought were at first completely desolate, so much so that people in the neighboring area were a little wary of even approaching the place. More seriously, although the scenery was beautiful, the property was what locals considered "exposed to the wind and at river's end," the worst way a piece of land could be situated, since it would experience erosion every time a typhoon or flood struck.

Tu bought a bulldozer, hired a dump truck, and transported load after load of huge stones onto his land. In this way, the process of filling in and leveling the ground began. Tu muses, "Before, I wore a suit and played with little rocks [referring to the gems he handled in his jewelry business]. Who would have thought that after moving here I'd be playing with these large rocks?" It took six or seven years and enormous expense to level the ground and secure a stable foundation for construction. During the process, Tu himself experienced moments of doubt, asking himself, "Just how long will I have to continue filling up this bottomless pit?"

The locals were astounded at seeing someone from Taipei coming to engage in this hard labor. Tu's seeming eccentricities were also cause for criticism. While others were cutting down trees to maximize the area of arable land, he was planting six or seven thousand trees. When Tu followed this by putting down sod for grass, one of the locals was unable to bear it any longer and came over to tell him, "Young man, in these parts there's more grass than we have time to cut. Here you are planting more?!"

A new man

Nowadays, building a traditional Taiwanese-style house is no easy task. Not only are the materials difficult to come by, the craftsmanship involved is a lost art. Because of this, Tu and his wife had to undertake the design of the house as well as find the suitable materials themselves. Likewise, when it came to the actual building of the house, the couple learned what they needed by consulting all manner of people, and then passed on what they had learned to the workers.

One can imagine the labor and the toil that went into making this dream come true. Lin Han-chang, a family friend, tells the story of how Tu once came up north to visit him while construction was getting underway. When Lin first saw Tu, he almost failed to recognize his friend, for the Taitung sun and the hard work had transformed Tu into "a new man." Tu was now dark and wiry, looking for all the world like one of the "country folk."

Fortunately, in terms of the materials and decorative pieces needed to build his house, Tu had long ago been making preparations. While he was still in his twenties, and with his keen interest in traditional Taiwanese architecture and culture, Tu began acquiring and storing away traditional building supplies and furniture. Window frames, doors, courtyard doors, tables, and chairs: all these items could be found in his collection. Tu had been keeping them all in the yards and gardens of his friends and family. Now that he had fulfilled his dream of building his house, Tu brought together all of these elements, each in its proper place, giving them new life and new uses.

As the building proceeded steadily, Tu continued to learn and gain more experience. Upon finishing the main living quarters, he turned to the construction of a wooden building to be used as a classroom for nanguan music [traditional southern Chinese and Taiwanese narrative singing]. The name he has given to this music hall is "Shu-chang," or "Ordinary," by which Tu means a place for "ordinary folk's music." One is reminded of the lines of a poem, "The green hedge encircles my abode, high up in the mountains. Songbirds, unbidden, come to dwell on the columns and beams of my house."

In an elegant, newly completed brick building, built in a traditional Taiwanese style, Tu has housed a library of artifacts relating to Taiwanese language and culture. These include historical materials such as the scores and librettos of Taiwanese operas.

When one mentions collecting, Tu's eyes light up. At a time when NT$1.2 million would have paid for a house, Tu was willing to pay NT$300,000 for a single Fukienese dialect dictionary. One can see from this just how much he has put in and how much importance he has attached to his collection.

In fact, Tu's collection was one of the reasons that he moved to Taitung. As he points out, Taipei is very humid and has inadequate fire safety facilities. This makes it difficult to properly preserve antiques. By contrast, Taitung is dry and spacious, and there is not much likelihood of a serious fire here.

Tu has collected thousands of Taiwanese opera scores, the earliest dating back to 1827. Many of the scores in his collection are sole surviving copies. In addition, he has also amassed a fairly comprehensive collection of textual and historical materials relating to the Taiwanese language.

His library has been named "Cheng-jen," which means "Becoming an Adult." Tu himself wrote the couplet that adorns the doorposts: "Ten years have I worked to open up this land, and have finally brought things to completion with the laying down of the roof-ridge. Half a lifetime have I spent in passing on this culture to the next generation. In the garden, reflections of flowers shimmer on the water." On the lintel Tu has written, "First the bow, then the arrow." These words completely capture the spirit of the master of this house.

Holding on to their roots

Aside from his insistence on building a traditional Taiwanese-style house, Tu and his family also lead thoroughly "Taiwanese" lives. Members of the Tu family communicate with each other in proper Taiwanese, with not a single word of Mandarin mixed in. So steeped in Taiwanese were the children that, upon attending school for the first time, they were shocked to hear the other children speaking an incomprehensible "Beijing dialect."

"Language is the basis of culture," says Tu. From the time that his children were small, he educated them himself, teaching them the "three-character classic" and the Chinese language. It was not until the children were in their teens that he sent them to school for their formal education. All this was so that they would be able to hold on to their roots.

Aside from using Taiwanese in their daily conversations, the Tu family has also studied nanguan. "Nanguan is Taiwan's classical music," says Tu. Aside from teaching his own children, Tu also teaches nanguan to twenty-some students in the area, free of charge. Tu says he does this in order to give back to society: "Others taught me, and so I have a responsibility to pass down the tradition!"

As an old Chinese saying goes, when the husband sings, the wife accompanies him. It's been this way for the Tus as well, whether in their decision to move, in educating their children, or in their daily life. "Wherever my husband goes, I go!" says Yueh-ying.

After moving to Luyeh, Yueh-ying, as mistress of the house, found things more difficult because they had to do everything themselves. However, she did not mind this for, as she explains, becoming more independent is the only way to fully develop one's potential. "Before, when we lived in the city, everything could be accomplished with a simple phone call. Nowadays we have to do everything ourselves. I feel like we're improving ourselves every day."

Of course, this kind of education has not been without its accompanying "tuition fee."

With such a large plot of land, the Tu family of course had to learn how to farm. They learned how to plant sugarcane, papayas, and corn. The harvests were quite good but they "never quite found a market" for their crops, in the end having to resort to shipping their produce to friends in Taipei. They not only failed to bring in any income from their harvests, but had to spend money to cover shipping costs. Having learned their lesson, the Tu family now prefer to lease their land for others to farm.

Furthermore, Tu has on occasion been forced to fight to protect this hard-won paradise and the family compound that was built with so much toil. Three years ago, the Peinan River out in front of their property was the site of a proposed gravel pit. Tu and his neighbors banded together and started a petition, going to the Luyeh town hall to protest. After several rounds of negotiations, plans for the gravel pit were scrapped, and all its machinery and equipment was hauled away.

First things first

"If you hold back, you won't be able to accomplish anything." In the blink of an eye, ten years have passed. It took all of his family's life savings (NT$70-80 million) for Tu to fulfill his dream of building a family compound. Some might think that with all the time and money spent, he could have acquired several houses in Taipei. But Tu has no regrets. As he says, "You can't buy this kind of environment in Taipei!"

From Luyeh, one can reach Taitung City by car in 50 minutes. Tu finds this very convenient. While many people emigrate to other countries hoping to find a better living environment, Tu feels that if peace and quiet and lots of space were what one wanted, then one would do just fine by "immigrating" to Taitung.

Aside from tending to his flowers, plants, and fruit trees, Tu's daily routine is made up of studying nanguan in the morning, working on his linguistic research in the afternoon and, in the evening, putting in order the materials he has collected. The first thing to be done is to compile a catalog to allow convenient access for those who might need to make use of the collection.

"I need a whole lifetime to do this research," says Tu, who has no recognized academic credentials or means of applying for research grants. His research into the Taiwanese language springs entirely from his own sense of mission. Tu exclaims, "Many people say that what I am doing is what our country and our government should be doing!"

As far as Tu is concerned, now that he has found a place to settle down, his life and his work can truly begin.

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Many people dream of finding pleasant surroundings and building a house that completely fulfill their ideals. It took Tu Chien-fang ten years, and all his life savings, to finally realize his dream in Luyeh, Taitung.

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Dwelling in a traditional Taiwanese house, performing traditional Taiwanese music-nanguan music-the Tu family roots itself in and passes on Taiwanese culture, here on the homestead that they dreamt of, and then built with their own hands.

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After ten years spent building his dream home, Tu Chin-fang can finally start working on cultural materials he has been collecting for decades.