A downpour outside, a drizzle in:
"Old houses don't meet the living needs of modern people," another resident reflects. "There are no screen windows, and the outside is lit only by dim paper lanterns. There are not even any street lights."
"The tourists all say it's so beautiful," says still another, "but you ought to try living here. Some people from Taipei come in without even knocking. If we don't let them in, they say that Lukang people aren't friendly. A tourist only comes here once, but we can have more than ten a day who want to come in. What should we do?"
During the four years when the old streets were being repaired, the residents would look at their ceilings and see the sky. Their rafters and beams were removed, and their everyday lives were disturbed. They even had complaints about the quality of the work. When they couldn't stand it any longer, they took their complaints to the county government.
While the people's criticisms may not have been without cause, the Changhua County government had its own difficulties. Nien Chen-yu, director of the department of customs and documents, points out that the "Cultural Resource Preservation Act" didn't go into effect until 1982 and work began restoring the old street in Lukang in 1986, making the project the first of its kind in Taiwan. "At first nobody knew what they were doing!"
There's nothing wrong with preservation in principle, but there are problems galore in practice.
The first steps to designate Lukang's old streets as a preservation district were taken way back in 1973. In order to repair Lukang's 200-year-old Lungshan Temple, its residents asked for help from Han Pao-te, then professor of architecture at Tunghai University, and they accepted the suggestion of preserving the old streets.
They did so both because architectural scholars forcefully expressed their support for the plan and because in the economic downturn of the early eighties prospects looked gloomy without the plan. The residents were willing to cooperate for the sake of better times ahead. Once the plan was finished, the Executive Yuan designated that the expenditures would be split between the central, provincial and county governments.
Eaten rotten by insects, the beams are further imperiled by the rains.