Taiwan’s Community Colleges Foster Grassroots Activism

More than 100,000 students in Taiwan’s 83 community colleges have been sowing varied seeds of activism: monitoring rivers, conducting historical and cultural fieldwork, pursuing ecological conservation. They are thus creating a form of “local studies” that very much belongs to the individual locale. As Ping­tung studies, Nan­ying studies, Yi­lan studies, Bei­tou studies and others have risen one after another, they have reshaped local values.

“Know your locale and get involved!” That’s the guiding ethos behind the local studies programs at various community colleges throughout Taiwan.

With this wave of local studies programs, people in places throughout Taiwan have been revising their mental impressions of their hometowns and regions. Wen­shan Community College, Taiwan’s first, was established in 1998, and it gave rise to “Wen­shan studies” after intellectuals and local residents pushed to publish a translation of The People of Mu­shan: Life in a Taiwanese Village.

WCC president ­Cheng Hsiu-chuan­ explains that the book was written by Howard Rusk Long, a professor of journalism at the University of Missouri, who was a visiting professor at National Cheng­chi University in 1957. Long took numerous photographs of daily life in Mu­zha for the book, which he published in the United States. In the 1990s, locals who traveled to the US brought the book back with them, and it became a model for the people of Mu­zha to do their own investigations and write their own historical studies on Mu­zha.

Copies of the book were passed from reader to reader until 2001, when historians and cultural workers urged WCC to translate the book. At the same time, students of photography at the college revisited the sites captured in the old photographs to create “before” and “after” images. It gave current residents of Mu­zha a greater sense of connection to the past. Via the platform of the college, ­Cheng explains, local studies grew beyond an arcane realm accessible to only a few and became instead a means for promoting the value of local history and culture to the many.

To give people a better understanding of life in 1950s Muzha, Wenshan Community College translated The People of Mushan: Life in a Taiwanese Village, by the American professor Howard Rusk Long.

As local studies programs have reintroduced people to their hometowns, they have also fostered a local consciousness and a yearning to reclaim a sense of local identity.

In 1999, Kee­lung Community University lecturer Li Zheng­ren forcefully promoted a Kee­lung studies curriculum, encouraging residents to gain a better understanding of the culture and history of the city, as well as a feel for its industrial pulse. He notes that during the Qing Dynasty Taiwan’s first railway and modern port were built here. Back then Kee­lung was one of Taiwan’s leading cities. Yet in the decades that followed, construction of the Tai­pei–Yi­lan Highway, competition from the port of Tai­pei, and a massive out-migration of population caused the city to lose its luster.

In order to revive a sense of civic pride, Li has led students to search for plants that are native only to the Kee­lung River basin or taken them on field trips to the West Third Wharf and Depot, which has more than eight decades of history. After 15 years of such efforts and explorations, locals have recovered a sense of confidence in their hometown.

Located in far southern Taiwan, North Ping­tung Community College was established in 2000 when the area was facing a crisis of local identity. It therefore promoted “Ping­tung Studies” in the hope of convincing locals to show more concern for their home county.

Since 2000 NPCC has held a “Ping­tung Studies Forum” once a year. NPCC president Chou Fen-tzu notes that not only are many students and colleges now participating but the focus has been expanded to include leisure and tourism and the revitalization of agriculture.

Chou explains that they’ve spent eight years preparing a revised edition of the Ping­tung County Record, which includes a compilation of materials documenting the 15-year development of Ping­tung studies, and through the joint efforts of NPCC, local NGOs, historians, and residents, records nearly 20 years of accomplishments in community building, public health and environmental protection. “It’s aimed at getting local people to tell their stories and demonstrate their social power,” says Chou.

Local studies can also provide a vision and administrative blueprint for future local development.

“Local studies must create a vision for the future,” says ­Zhang ­Jinyu, president of the First Community College of Kao­hsiung. In light of the special industrial character of the city, the college in 2000 designated the environment and ecology as important components of Kao­hsiung studies. For instance, the college’s nature, ecology and conservation club, which has ties to the environmental organization Citizen of the Earth, successfully pushed to preserve the ­Zhouzi Wetlands in the Zuo­ying area of the city, thus helping to create Kao­hsiung’s first wetlands city park. In recent years, in addition to closely monitoring pollution in the Er­ren and Hou­jing Rivers, the club has brought together students, volunteers and environmental groups to clean up the Qian­zhen River.

“Local studies is no longer just about passing along knowledge,” says Zhang. “Instead, from a foundation built on love, it aims to go beyond a study of the past to improve the present and move toward a future of our own imagining.”