Recovering from Disaster: Kaohsiung’s Jiaxian Community

Driving to Jia­xian from Kao­hsiung City means taking Freeway 10 to Qishan, passing Mt. Yue­guang, and following the Na­zi­xian River (a tributary of the Gao­ping River) up into the mountains for half an hour. When the taro-colored Jia­xian Bridge swings into view, you know you’ve arrived.

When the Southern Cross-Island Highway opened in 1972, Jia­xian became a waystation on the drive between Kao­hsiung and Tai­tung. Travelers used to stop here for a breather and supplies before making the crossing, and brought prosperity to the community for more than 30 years.

But the torrential deluge Typhoon Mo­ra­kot unleashed on 8 August 2009 washed out bridges and roads, destroying the basis of the community’s economy. In fact, the Southern Cross-Island Highway has yet to be reopened to traffic.

The taro-colored Jiaxian Bridge is emblematic of a local attitude: residents want to step out of the community, while also bringing tourists in.

Five years have passed, but the disaster still hangs before the eyes of many residents as if it were yesterday. “Everyone seems fine on the surface,” says ­Zhang Qi, president of the Da­tian Community Development Association (DCDA), “but tears begin to flow the moment you mention the past.”

There’s often only a fine line between fortitude and frailty, and the more severe the blow, the more young and old alike pretend to be unfazed. In the wake of the disaster, the DCDA added psychological counseling to its after-school curriculum to provide the community’s children with a place to express their feelings. “I used to sit outside the classroom during these sessions, and often saw kids bolt out, howling and sobbing.” It made ­Zhang understand that many children who seemed OK on the surface were actually repressing powerful emotions. She says that once they’d dried their eyes, they’d see the worried look on her face and attempt to reassure her: “I’m fine. I don’t know what made me burst into tears like that.”

The typhoon effectively wiped out tourism on the Southern Cross-Island Highway, and with it most of Jia­xian’s economy. Residents were forced to earn their livings elsewhere, severely limiting their time with their children. Local schools responded by organizing extracurricular activities aimed at keeping an adult eye on kids once classes were done for the day.

Bao­long Elementary School, located ten minutes by car from the heart of Jia­xian, talked the situation over with parents, then began providing evening childcare, digital studymates, and remedial instruction. It also arranged school activities Monday through Thursday evenings just to ensure that its students were accompanied by adults.

The school’s digital studymate program is particularly interesting. Bao­long worked with I-Shou University to have college students help the children with their homework and chat via the Internet. The school now views each 1.5-hour session as an opportunity to expand the children’s horizons.

“We want to expose our students to university life so they can envision more possibilities for their own.” Su Keni, Bao­long’s principal, says that most of the community’s better-off families moved away after the typhoon. The remaining kids, largely the children of farmers and people who do odd jobs, don’t have many options open to them.

The hour’s drive to the nearest high school represents a hefty burden to parents both in time and money. Many local children therefore abandon their educations and go to work as soon as they’ve completed middle school. “If we can’t find some way to overcome the problem, it will become­ a vicious cycle that prevents Jia­xian from ever turning itself around.” Su says that in addition to encouraging students to attend vocational schools that offer work experience with employers as a means to offset the cost of education, her school has also sought to work with parents on ways to enable even kids from poor families to pursue their dreams.

Jiaxian Elementary School’s tug-of-war team has stirred residents’ fighting spirit, helping them turn steps backward into forward progress.

The typhoon took away many things, but also brought new opportunities. The accelerated decline in enrollment at Bao­long since the storm is a case in point. Since the school now has only 20-some students, only one of whom is a first grader, Su has used the free space to create a “digital opportunities center.” This center offers classes to community residents on subjects ranging from web-browser basics to navigating social media and creating blogs, using the Internet to broaden residents’ horizons.

Books are another way to connect residents to the world outside of Jia­xian. In 2011, President Chain Store (which operates 7-Eleven in Taiwan) worked with Jia­xian, Bao­long, and Xiao­lin Elementary Schools, along with Jia­xian Junior High School, to create a “reading for breakfast” promotion. Students who completed five books and submitted an essay about them to their teacher were treated to a free breakfast at one of the company’s convenience stores. Over the course of the following year, the 400-some students enrolled at the schools borrowed and read 6,000 books from the library, a five-fold increase over the previous year.

But for all that reading has made the kids aware of some of the possibilities out in the wider world, it’s the tug-of-war team that has really turned Jia­xian around. Lin Hua-chu, principal of Jia­xian Elementary, recalls how the community’s streets were deserted in the weeks after the typhoon. “Even the kids became withdrawn. They took no interest in anything.” He says that the school responded by signing up for all kinds of competitions. Basketball, track and field, badminton, table tennis... they were looking for anything that would excite their students, and finally found it in tug-of-war.

At the time, Jia­xian Elementary was holding classes in an open-air market because the school itself was severely damaged. When the kids had time, they’d tie a rope around a tree and tug on it to practice for their tug-of-war competitions. The more they pulled, the more excited they got. Yang Li­zhou, who was in town to direct a documentary on the “reading for breakfast” program, happened see the kids in action. Inspired by the unusual scene, he began filming the team’s story.

The film eventually became Bridge over Troubled Water and was nominated for the Golden Horse Award for best documentary in 2013.

The documentary Bridge over Troubled Water led to the opening of Good Days, a coffee shop and guesthouse that actively promotes local products.

When the team won the Greater Kao­hsiung tug-of-war championship in 2011, it earned the right to represent the area in the national competition, where it finished second.

You win at tug-of-war by backing up, and these children could be said to have won twice over. Their determined “pullbacks” succeeded in spurring the community’s adults to get back on their feet. A line from the movie sums up the feelings of locals pretty well: “If backing up takes so much effort, why not use that energy to move forward instead?”

Bridge over Troubled Water doesn’t only look at the tug-of-war competitions: it also examines the push and pull within peoples’ lives. Zeng Jun­yuan, president of the Jia­xian Commercial District, says that seeing how the children united encouraged adults in the community who had been resentful and at odds with one another to abandon cutthroat commercial practices and begin supporting­ one another when the need arose. “Our competitors aren’t the people here in town, they’re the other tourist attractions all over Taiwan.” Zeng says that things have changed since the Southern Cross-Island Highway closed. Jia­xian can no longer count on a steady stream of drivers passing through, and must instead use and manage its charms as a community if it is to attract visitors.

Nowadays, Jia­xian’s most important industry is agriculture, especially taro, guava and plums. The redevelopment association therefore chose three themes when it applied to the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau’s Rural Rejuvenation Program: encouraging the community’s young people to move back, promoting factory tours, and marketing organic produce. The themes, which had been developed with input from the community, brought smiles to the faces of local farmers.

“Our guava are grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. They’re even popular with wild boar, which sneak into the orchards to steal them.” ­Zhang Qi says that the community is rolling out a sales platform that will enable people to buy the community’s produce online. They are also branding each farmer’s produce with the family’s surname to encourage them to focus even more intently on quality control.

Other ventures are afoot in Jia­xian this year. Having decided to expand into the community after seeing Bridge over Troubled Water, Tiffany Lin, co-founder of Lavender Cottage, opened a combination coffee shop and guesthouse called Good Days in hope of sparking a revival in travel to the community. She has also been recruiting exclusively local workers and familiarizing herself with the local produce. “We’re not just a coffee shop,” explains Lin. “We want to market Jia­xian as a whole.”

The return of some of Jia­xian’s young people and the opening of an established brand have infused the community with a new vigor. But what’s interesting is that the most active and engaged people in the community are the immigrants who make up a quarter of its population.

“Sharing hardships brings you together.” ­Zhang Qi explains that people supported each other after the typhoon. “The only thing we had left was each other.” She says that differences in language and ethnicity don’t matter much when you’re all in the same boat. Instead, you become a single, tightly connected community.

Jia­xian’s immigrants are a case in point, becoming very active in the wake of the disaster. Meanwhile, misunderstandings with and discrimination against them by locals declined. This improvement in relations and the community’s organization of international days resulted in the two groups interacting more. “Food exchanges have been especially helpful in bringing us together.” Seeking to provide new immigrants with more opportunities, Chen Jing­zhong, president of the Jia­xian District Association, has gone so far as to convert his home into a restaurant serving immigrant dishes exclusively.

In spite of the homes destroyed and lives lost, the typhoon has enabled Jia­xian to find a new source of strength: the power of unity. At one point in Bridge over Troubled Water, a resident observes: “The children had gotten on their feet again, so how could the community not?” Jia­xian has not only gotten back on its feet, but is also showing the world its brand new attitude towards life.