Forging a New Blue-Collar Culture—Ludi Community University
Liu Yingfeng / tr. by Geof Aberhart
May 2014
The districts of Luzhou and Sanchong in New Taipei City, on the outskirts of the Greater Taipei conurbation, are industrial areas that are home to large numbers of blue-collar workers. It was to these areas that residents of the rural south made their way during the country’s economic rise in the 1970s, bringing with them their particular outlooks and lifestyles.
Established in 1999, Ludi Community University has worked to evolve that particular blue-collar culture through community participation and education. Thanks to the school, less-educated laborers are being given the chance to achieve what they once thought unachievable: a college education.
In just its second year, Ludi’s 70 courses, accounting for over 1,000 places, were completely full. Today the school has helped the neighboring communities to become not only a base for aspiring entrepreneurs, but also a hub for transformation, turning laborers into scientists, dance instructors, and more.
As the sun sets, Lujiang Elementary School undergoes a metamorphosis. Red paper lanterns are hung, giving the campus an air of industrious festivity, while a new set of students rush to make their classes at Ludi Community University, which calls this same campus home. The students, many of whom have just got off work or finished preparing dinner for their families, inject new life into the schoolyard as all kinds of classes commence in every corner of the campus.
Down the hallway, the tai chi students exercise their energies with shadow strikes and mellifluous motions; in one classroom, office workers sing and strum guitars, while elsewhere desks and chairs are set out in the corridor as half a dozen students in the English conversation class hold their textbooks and read along with the teacher: “How are you?” Meanwhile the song and dance troupe sings traditional songs, accompanied by erhu, yueqin, and bamboo flutes, preparing to perform in the nearby night market.
A new blue-collar culture is on the rise in Sanchong and Luzhou, districts built on migration and industrialization.
Sanchong has long had ready access by bridge to neighboring Taipei City, just across the Danshui River. Back in the 1970s, encouraged by a government policy that promoted “a workshop in the living room” (meaning home-based businesses doing simple processing work), various kinds of metalworking factories sprang up in Sanchong, attracting migration into the area by those looking for work and also giving birth to a distinctively blue-collar culture.
When Ludi Community University was set up here, some 70% of the students had at most a senior-high education. “Some of the students are housewives, others are laborers in local factories, but all of them are from the working class,” remarks school chief secretary Sheng Yuan.
The community college has reignited a passion for learning which, for most of the students, had long been snuffed out by circumstance. When the school was about to hold 70 courses one semester, word spread like wildfire around the community, and the 1,000-plus available places were quickly snapped up. “For most of our students, education isn’t about getting a degree or certificate; more of them are just interested in pursuing a passion for knowledge.”
These unassuming local women have taken up the pen to report on local events as the founders of the Sanchong–Luzhou Community Post.
Wu Qiuli, also known as “Aunty Douhua,” is a classic example of what Ludi Community University has brought to the area. The 68-year-old Wu has spent three decades selling douhua, a traditional tofu pudding, in Sanchong. In 2004, she decided she wanted to learn English to be able to talk with her American-raised grandchildren, so she enrolled at Ludi and picked up her English studies again for the first time in decades.
Every Tuesday night, after closing up shop, Wu rushes to her classes, never missing a session in ten years. A model student, she uses downtime at work to review her lessons, and even practices her English with her customers. After having started out virtually from scratch, Wu now speaks English on a par with local 12th-graders.
Wu’s is far from the only such story. In 2004, before documentaries were in vogue in Taiwan, Ludi Community University organized their own “audiovisual skills project,” using the theme “shooting our own stories.” Under the instruction of guest teacher Yan Lanquan, one of the directors of the documentary Let It Be, the students were encouraged to film their neighborhoods and explore the power of the ordinary people.
“Filming can be an empowering process,” says Sheng Yuan. In the past, she continues, only the successful or influential were considered worthy of documentaries, while ordinary people and their lives were overlooked. Today, though, through the documentary making process, both filmer and filmee can be presented with new ways of looking at their lives and heritages, as well as gaining confidence and a sense of being recognized.
To date, the project has resulted in ten completed short films. Last year, student Wang Xinyi filmed Aunty Douhua’s story. Another student, Li Liqing, filmed the tale of Zhan Meihui, who went from machinist to teacher of making soap by hand. Li also toured with the film, interacting directly with its audiences.
For the students at Ludi Community University, whether they are learning the drums or tai chi, passion and enthusiasm mean much more than age.
In 2011 a group of security guards, insurance brokers, and stay-at-home moms and grandmothers joined together to start the Sanchong–Luzhou Community Post, a newspaper reporting on affairs around the community.
Despite the jokes that “the pen is heavier than the hoe,” these inexperienced rookies nonetheless gave the hard job their all to ensure the professional quality of their work.
Li Liqing, 58, has only an elementary-school education and has spent much of her life as a housewife. Since becoming a reporter for the community paper, though, she has worked on developing her writing through short 50-character pieces, and two years on she has now become a senior reporter for the paper.
Du Jinbao, a vocational high school graduate, often spends seven or eight hours at the computer carefully crafting his articles; 61-year-old Zheng Liangsheng, meanwhile, is no good at computers, but still gets his articles out by writing everything by hand and having someone else type it up for him.
They may have started the paper on a lark, but over time the students have gotten more and more serious about their work. Not only have they honed their writing skills, they’ve also published in-depth articles like their “Faces of Labor” and “Sanchong in Transition” series, the first an introduction to local metal- and woodworking masters and the second an exploration of Sanchong’s immigrant communities.
Li moved from Yilan to Sanchong in her youth. In interviewing people from the seaside of Yunlin or the mountains of Hualien about their memories and their struggles in Sanchong, she was reminded of her own past, as well as being prompted to reevaluate Sanchong and being awakened to a sense of identity.
Jiang Wenyi, a 29-year-old social worker, explains that she was always curious about her father’s work as an industrial draftsman, but never had the opportunity to learn about it. Through “Faces of Labor” she not only had the chance to visit local companies involved in metalworking, but also to listen to her interviewees talk about their pasts, vicariously traveling back to the days when her father labored away in another county.
Sheng Yuan explains that unlike the journalism classes in other community colleges, the dozen or so reporters that work for the Post not only make the paper, but also serve as its paperboys, delivering it around the community every two months. This has the added effect of promoting interaction with the community. They also hold meet-and-greets with their readers, getting the kind of reception normally expected for major authors.
For the students at Ludi Community University, whether they are learning the drums or tai chi, passion and enthusiasm mean much more than age.
With life as it is in Sanchong and Luzhou, most residents have traditionally been too busy to get involved with community affairs. However, when Ludi Community University faced relocation in 2008, this served as an unexpected awakening for the area.
The school had by then been located at Sanchong Senior High School for nine years, and had been responsible for the school’s once-abandoned gym undergoing a fabulous transformation.
When Ludi’s lease ran out in 2008, more and more local entrepreneurs were fighting for a piece of the space, and the community-oriented college was unable to put in a bid competitive with the likes of gymnasium owners. As a result, they lost their longtime home, and ultimately had to relocate to their current site, the campus of Lujiang Elementary School. The questions over whether the school can continue this kind of “couchsurfing” existence remain, though.
Before this relocation, the students had seen the community college as just a place to learn. Afterward, they began to think about the relationship between the school and the community, and to look into the laws and regulations around leasing school facilities and the pros and cons of such commercialization. “The way this event directly touched them turned out to inspire them to get engaged in community affairs,” says Sheng.
For Ludi Community University, “people first” is more than just a slogan; it’s a mission. In just 15 years, the school has breathed new life into this industrial community, while also awakening the area’s cultural memory.
