A Preliminary Study Applying the Theory of Genius Loci on Tourism: A Case Study of Shiding Village,...

中原大學

室內設計學系

碩士學位論文

場所理論於觀光產業應用初探

─以台灣石碇為例

A Preliminary Study Applying the Theory of Genius Loci on Tourism: A Case Study of

Shiding Village, New Taipei City, Taiwan

指導教授陳其澎

研究生陳禹竹

中華民國 103 年 7 月

i

場所理論於觀光產業應用初探─以台灣石碇為例

中文摘要

許多在台灣各處的小鎮，在全球化的浪潮之下遭到淘汰而趨於寂靜，台北市近郊

的石碇也身在其中。雖然在六零年代礦業沒落之後，人口外流，但是石碇特有的風土

建築與氣氛仍吸引絡繹不絕的遊客。本研究希望藉由蒐集史料、訪談當地居民及藝術

家、以人本地理學(包含場所理論與地方理論)為本分析石碇的地方特色，歸納出石碇

的場所精神。筆者根據諾伯舒茲(Christian Norberg-Schulz)在〈場所精神—邁向建

築現象學〉一書中分析三個城市的架構做了對石碇里場所精神的詮釋，也在訪談內容

中確認了研究範圍中場所精神的存在。

研究發現的確可能在環境、歷史以及不同時代人們的生活經驗中歸納出場所精神，

並且也強烈建議當地居民採用文中所使用的分析理論於觀光的規劃及設計，以期更能

增進大眾對於石碇之美的感知與體會，進而讓石碇在朝向觀光發展邁進之際，避開以

慣行對待歷史街區的操作手法，成為僅供遊客消費的觀光景點。

關鍵字：全球化、場所精神、所在、觀光客、石碇

ii

A Preliminary Study Applying the Theory of Genius

Loci on Tourism: A Case Study of Shiding Village,

New Taipei City, Taiwan

Yu-Chu, Chen

Abstract

In the process of globalization, many small traditional towns have changed drastically.

Shiding, a suburb of Taipei, is among them. Although Shiding has undergone drastic

changes since the 1960s, the unique style of the vernacular architecture and the atmosphere

still attract tourists to cherish its charm. This thesis aims to find out the genius loci of

Shiding by collecting historical materials, interviewing local people and artists, and

analyzing the features of the village utilizing a humanistic geography approach (i.e., the

theories of genius loci and place). An interpretation of the genius loci of Shiding Village

was made and more proves from the interviews confirmed the existence of the genius loci.

The results showed that it is possible to find the genius loci from the environment, the

history and the stories of local people from different eras. We strongly suggest that the

villagers consider incorporating the theories used in this thesis into future design and

planning principles in touristic measures. By doing this, we hope to make the public gain

better perception of the beauty of Shiding and to protect it from serving only the purpose of

satisfying the tourist’s gaze.

Keywords: globalization, genius loci, place, tourist, Shiding

iii

謝誌

首先想感謝指導教授陳其澎老師的指導以及對此論文題目的信心。

還要感謝我的家人們─尤其是爸爸、哥哥跟小阿姨─在雖然不是很清楚我在做什

麼的情況下所給予的信心和支持。

特別謝謝幫我校稿的前英文老師兼朋友，康琳小姐，在英文方面給我極大的幫助，

也在寫論文過程中不甚順利之時給我鼓勵及信心。

還要謝謝乙組的一群好同學，在寫論文以及之前求學過程中的互相幫忙及打氣。

謝謝沈煥翔先生以及鄒靖先生在釐清題目以及發展方向上的幫助。

特別謝謝石碇的村民，尤其是好幾位願意受訪、向我揭露人生某個段落的受訪者：

遠光打鐵舖的葉先生及葉太太、林前村長、紀鈺華小姐、陳美玉小姐、住在西街 30

號的李先生、林忠信代表、鍾明盛校長、方錫淋先生、王銘勇村長以及集順廟廟公李

先生，還有曾經聊過、內容卻未收錄至文中的村民。

謝謝外審委員李謁政老師以及梁銘剛老師所給予的寶貴意見。

也再次感謝鍾明盛校長以及陳其澎教授願意讓我使用他們的照片，不論在訪問或

在文中，讓文字有了圖像而豐富，也勾起村民的回憶，指認出早年生活的點滴。

最後，我想謝謝所有對此篇論文有興趣而詢問、討論以及在過程中給予幫助的朋

友們。

iv

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Chie-peng, Chen, for his guidance and

the faith in the topic of the thesis.

I would like to thank my father, brother and aunt Chris. Even if they didn’t understand

what I was doing, they still showed their support and understanding during this time.

Special thanks to my former English teacher, Lynn Conant, for offering to proofread

my draft and helping me to express my thoughts clearly. Her encouragement and belief in

me provided great comfort when I felt defeated by the development of thesis and language.

I would like to thank my classmates for their support, much needed excursions, and the

valuable camaraderie we shared together in the three years of study.

I am also indebted to Mr. Huan-hsiang, Shen and Mr. Jing, Tsou for their valuable

advices on the direction of the thesis.

Special thanks to Shiding Villagers who were willing to share a piece of their life

experience with a stranger and treat me like a friend afterwards.

I would like to thank Professors Ye-zheng, Li and Ming-kang, Liang for valuable

comments and suggestions.

I would also like to thank Mr. Ming-sheng, Jung and Professor Chie-peng, Chen, for

permission to use their photographs in interviews and in the thesis.

Finally, I would like to thank all the people who showed support and interest in my

thesis.

v

Table of Contents

中文摘要 .................................................................................................................................................. i

Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... ii

謝誌 ........................................................................................................................................................ iii

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................ iv

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................... v

List of Figures ...................................................................................................................................... viii

List of Tables ........................................................................................................................................... x

Chapter 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ - 1 -

1.1 Motivation and Purpose of the Study ............................................................... - 1 -

1.2 Past Research on Shiding Village ...................................................................... - 4 -

1.3 General information about Shiding Village ..................................................... - 5 -

1.4 Geography ........................................................................................................... - 5 -

1.5 History ................................................................................................................. - 6 -

1.5.1 Qing dynasty. ............................................................................................................ - 6 -

1.5.2 Japanese colonial period. ....................................................................................... - 11 -

1.5.3 Republic of China .................................................................................................. - 15 -

1.6 Architecture ........................................................................................................... - 15 -

1.7 Social Aspects .................................................................................................... - 23 -

1.8 Thesis Structure ................................................................................................ - 26 -

Chapter 2 An Epistemological Discourse of Place ........................................................................... - 27 -

2.1 The Structure of Places .................................................................................... - 28 -

2.1.1 Natural places. ........................................................................................................ - 29 -

2.1.2 Man-made places. .................................................................................................. - 34 -

2.2 Genius Loci and Place ....................................................................................... - 37 -

2.2.1 The essence of place. .............................................................................................. - 37 -

2.2.2 The identity of places.............................................................................................. - 41 -

vi

2.2.3 Authentic place-making and placelessness. ..........................................................- 42 -

2.2.4 Inauthentic place-making and post-modern tourism. ...........................................- 43 -

2.2.5 Modern viewpoints on the theory of genius loci. ...................................................- 51 -

2.3 The Relation between Human and Place from Experiences .........................- 54 -

2.3.1 Senses. .....................................................................................................................- 54 -

2.3.2 People as places. .....................................................................................................- 58 -

2.3.3 Architectural space and awareness. .......................................................................- 60 -

2.3.4 Time and place. .......................................................................................................- 60 -

Chapter 3 The Genius Loci of Shiding Village .................................................................................- 63 -

3.1 Image ..................................................................................................................- 63 -

3.2 Space ...................................................................................................................- 65 -

3.3 Character ...........................................................................................................- 68 -

3.3.1 Scale. .......................................................................................................................- 68 -

3.3.2 Rhythm. ...................................................................................................................- 69 -

3.3.3 Color, material and style. .......................................................................................- 71 -

Chapter 4 Interviews ................................................................................................................- 75 -

4.1 Memories of the Village ....................................................................................- 80 -

4.1.1 The rising of East Street and later housing reconstruction on both streets. ........- 80 -

4.1.2 The influence of bridge reconstructions and the building of Freeway No.5. ......- 82 -

4.1.2.1 Wan-shou Bridge. .......................................................................... - 82 -

4.1.2.2 Shiu-shan Bridge. .......................................................................... - 82 -

4.1.2.3 Freeway No.5. ............................................................................... - 83 -

4.1.3 Playing in the water. ...............................................................................................- 84 -

4.1.4 West Street. .............................................................................................................- 89 -

4.1.4.1 Tiong-poo and Kue-á-bué ............................................................. - 90 -

4.1.4.2 Children’s activities in nature. ...................................................... - 92 -

4.1.5 Coal miners. ............................................................................................................- 94 -

4.1.6 Collective activities. ................................................................................................- 98 -

4.1.7 Others......................................................................................................... - 100 -

4.1.7.1 Slide by the shore. ....................................................................... - 100 -

vii

4.1.7.2 The intimacy between people and their houses. ......................... - 101 -

4.1.7.3 Proximity to home. ...................................................................... - 103 -

4.2 Summary .............................................................................................. - 103 -

Chapter 5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ - 106 -

References ......................................................................................................................... - 109 -

Appendixes ........................................................................................................................ - 112 -

Appendix 1 Maps of Shiding Village in 1960~80 and 2014 ........................... - 112 -

Appendix 2 Glossary ....................................................................................... - 119 -

Appendix 3 Interview Schedule ...................................................................... - 121 -

viii

List of Figures

Figure 1-1 Arched Bridge. (2012) ...................................................................................................................... - 2 -

Figure 1-2 Time-travel tunnel and dark slate-piling wall. (2012) ....................................................................... - 2 -

Figure 1-3 Map of Shiding Village. (Lan, 2010, p. 57) ...................................................................................... - 6 -

Figure 1-4 Shiding Village in Chiuan-Shan Bau. (Tsou, 2009, p. 15) ................................................................ - 7 -

Figure 1-5 Place names on Dan-lan Ancient Trail between Feng-tz-lin and Shiding Village. (Chen, 2000, p. 49)

............................................................................................................................................................................ - 9 -

Figure 1-6 Tea Market on the plaza of Ji-shuen Temple in 1918. (Chen, 2007, p. 93) ..................................... - 10 -

Figure 1-7 Old ladies sorting tea. (Jung, 1982) ................................................................................................ - 10 -

Figure 1-8 Shiding Village in the Japanese Colonial Period. (Survey, 1942) ................................................... - 12 -

Figure 1-9 Route of light railway near Shiding Village. (Survey, 1942) .......................................................... - 12 -

Figure 1-10 Map of Occupations and Households in Shiding. (Hisataka, 1940, p. 33).................................... - 14 -

Figure 1-11 Stone houses at the entrance of Shiding West Street. (Chen, 1985) .............................................. - 16 -

Figure 1-12 (From middle to right) No.5 and 7 of the Shiu Family, and Ji-shuen Temple by the plaza. (Chen,

1985) ................................................................................................................................................................. - 17 -

Figure 1-13 No.5, 7 and Ji-shuen Temple. (2014) ............................................................................................ - 17 -

Figure 1-14 Floor plan and sectional plan of No.5 and 7, Shiding West Street (Jang, 2000) ........................... - 17 -

Figure 1-15 The old facades of No.5 and 7, Shiding West Street (Jang, 2000) ................................................ - 18 -

Figure 1-16 Floor plans of 4 floors in modern townhouse of No.12, Shiding West Street (Jang, 2000) .......... - 18 -

Figure 1-17 Floor plans of apartment, No.31 of Shiding West Street (Jang, 2000) .......................................... - 18 -

Figure 1-18 Photos of Shiding West Street. (2014) .......................................................................................... - 19 -

Figure 1-19 Shiding West Street. (Chen, 1985) ................................................................................................ - 19 -

Figure 1-20 Remnant of a stone house on Shiding West Street. (2012) ........................................................... - 19 -

Figure 1-21 Inside of Shiding East Street (1). (Chen, 1995) ............................................................................ - 21 -

Figure 1-22 Inside of Shiding East Street (2). (Chen, 1995) ............................................................................ - 21 -

Figure 1-23 Sectional plans of townhouses on Shiding East Street. (Jang, 2000) ............................................ - 22 -

Figure 1-24 Sectional plan of an apartment on Shiding East Street. (Jang, 2000) ........................................... - 22 -

Figure 1-25 Woman washing clothes in the river. (Tsou, 2009, p. 19) ............................................................. - 23 -

Figure 1-26 Shiding East Street. (2012, 2014) ................................................................................................. - 23 -

Figure 1-27 Bamboo water pipes hanging above the gully. (Hisataka, 1940, p. 33) ........................................ - 25 -

Figure 3-1 Jingmei River. (2013) ..................................................................................................................... - 64 -

Figure 3-2 A bird’s-eye view of Shiding Village in the 1930s. (Hideo, 1935, p. 109) ...................................... - 70 -

Figure 3-3 Shiding Village. (Hisataka, 1940, p. 33) ......................................................................................... - 70 -

Figure 3-4 Shiding. (Yuan, 1976) ..................................................................................................................... - 70 -

Figure 3-5 Shiding. (2014) ............................................................................................................................... - 71 -

Figure 4-1 Map of Local Terms of Different Areas in Shiding Village. ........................................................... - 76 -

Figure 4-2 Scratch marks on the house of interviewee 7. (Chung) .................................................................. - 83 -

ix

Figure 4-3 The map of children’s play areas in the memories of interviewees. ............................................... - 85 -

Figure 4-4 Old banyan trees. (Chen, 1995) ...................................................................................................... - 87 -

Figure 4-5 Old banyan trees. (2012) ................................................................................................................ - 88 -

Figure 4-6 Trees on the plaza of Ji-shuen Temple. ........................................................................................... - 91 -

Figure 4-7 The noodle shop run by interviewee one’s mother-in-law. ............................................................. - 97 -

Figure 4-8 The grocery shop and noodle shop in the memories of interviewee four and three. ...................... - 98 -

Figure 4-9 Staircase slide by the bank of the stream. (Chen, 1985) ............................................................... - 101 -

Figure 4-10 Sketch of the plan of the house. .................................................................................................. - 102 -

Figure 4-11 The bathroom above the water. (2014) ....................................................................................... - 102 -

x

List of Tables

Table 2-1 Qualities of Different Landscapes…………………………………............................. - 33 -

Table 2-2 Qualities of Different Man-made Settlements………………………………………….- 36 -

Table 4-1 Local Terms of Different Areas in Shiding Village…………………………………….-76-

- 1 -

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Motivation and Purpose of the Study

Shiding Village is a hidden gem in the suburbs of Taipei City. It has a rich past of being

a trading center for Taipei City and Yilan County, a gathering place for tea-selling

businesses and a place for excavating coal. As the coal mine industry ceased, the population

moved out for jobs, leaving the mountain village with children and the elders living on

small incomes. At the same time, some artists also went to Shiding Village for its quietness

and easy atmosphere. In the past 30 years, some people started to move back to Shiding

Village, living in their newly-renovated townhouses1. The local residents started small

businesses, attracting people from a relatively more famous nearby tourist

attraction—Shenkeng— and people who love residing in the quietness of nature. In order to

increase job opportunities and enliven the economy, Shiding District Office and Shiding

villagers put emphasis on making Shiding Village a tourist attraction. Footpaths along

riverbanks were constructed to encourage locals and tourists to feed fish, watch birds or

simply walk on; an arched bridge was built to connect both sides of the river and became a

focal point for tourists’ eyes to rest upon (Figure1-1); a very modern time-travel tunnel as

well as a dark slate-piling wall simulating a waterfall, suggesting the history of coalmining

were built (and criticized after construction for not fitting the quaint atmosphere of the small

town)2 (Figure1-2); some mountain trails for hikers were reconstructed, in particular the

Huang-di-dian (皇帝殿) and Dan-lan Ancient Trails (淡蘭古道), the latter bearing an

important history of Shiding, being the main entrance to Shiding Village from Taipei before

the Japanese Colonial Period. Activities are held year-round, for example religious festivals

1 The world “townhouse” here refers to “fan-cuo” (販厝) or “tou-tian cuo” (透天厝) in Taiwan. They are

common all over Taiwan, found in remote countryside areas, city centers, in groups or singly. They are usually

made of steel and concrete, covered with various-colored tiles measuring 5.5cm x11cm or 5.5cm x23cm in

single colors or in mosaic patterns. 2 The Central News Agency. (2011). Transform Shiding old street, coordinate opinions of residents. Retrieved

from http://goo.gl/6rzPXs

- 2 -

and processions, tea-promoting and hiking events, art exhibitions, and farmers’ markets.

Some ancient stone houses and red-brick bridge piers have been preserved and outdoor

artworks have been added which suit the environment, making Shiding Village a potential

place for cultural tourism. Back in 1973, Shiding Village was included in the Urban

Planning Act, resulting in the situation that all the houses were not restricted to the Code of

Management of Buildings in Hillside Areas and Water Protection Act. Owing to lack of

space, people used the money earned from working in the coal mine to add more floors to

the houses, from three stories to a whopping five stories. (Tsou, 2009, p. 20) Reinforcement

of cement to the pillars holding the ever heavier houses was executed, and the townscape

started to change from unanimity to incoherence, for there wasn’t a code to prevent people

from adding to the buildings arbitrarily. There is order within the landscape, but there are

also some disturbing eyesores emerging, making Shiding Village seem featureless and

without a clear concept for its development.

Figure 1-1 Arched Bridge. (2012)

Figure 1-2 Time-travel tunnel and dark slate-piling wall. (2012)

- 3 -

Through research, the author found there are good stories to tell about Shiding Village

that haven’t been told enough by the people who promoted it. People, who had been to

Shiding Village for a quick stop-by, unaware of the stories behind the mediocre facelift,

were surprised and intrigued after they heard its stories. That there was a certain spirit to

Shiding was agreed after interviews with professionals from the artistic domain.

In Western-style buildings built during the Japanese Colonial Period in Taiwan, it has

been a very common approach to refurbish the façades of those buildings within a

concentrated area, like a district or a street, to attract tourists. In most of the buildings, the

ground level is usually transformed into shops or eateries, sometimes art galleries. The

shops sell artefacts made natively or nonnatively, kitschy souvenirs, and clogs reminiscent

of the Japanese past and some merchandise that could sell anywhere; eateries are most

popular, filled with people and identical menus. Sometimes it gives a feeling that the

location doesn’t matter, an old district is just another night market packaged in the name of

culture. For some, the best time to go to an old district is when it is less crowded, and that is

the time when you can really stroll among the beautifully-crafted old houses and savor the

construction details to get a full experience of that place. Shiding Village doesn’t have to be

the next boring and identical old district in Taiwan.

In light of this, the theory of place and the concept of genius loci are applied to initiate

semi-structured individual interviews with local people in an attempt to integrate the

communal and individual senses of place—a step needed to develop Shiding Village for

tourism.

Gordon Cullen (1961) pointed out that the townscape is buildings put together for

people to walk in, and the city itself is like “a dramatic event in the environment.” (1961,

p.10) If the drama isn’t performed right, it is like “A fire being laid out but no one has put a

match to it.” (Ibid., p.1)

This study is conducted to arouse the awareness of the importance of developing

cultural tourism through the group identity of that place. The overall direction for the

- 4 -

development of a place should dig deeper into the group memory, the history, the past

experiences shared by local residents.

1.2 Past Research on Shiding Village

Now a sinologist and professor at London School of Economics and Political Science,

Stephen Feuchtwang (1974) investigated the history, class system, and rituals in what he

called Mountainstreet3 (now Shiding Village), providing background knowledge for the

religious changes.

In the 1990s, a student and friend of Feuchtwang, Ming-Ming Wang, published The

Memory of Mountainstreet: the Belief and Life of a Taiwanese Community (1997). Bearing

Feuchtwang’s work in mind, he went to Shiding Village, and on the one hand, saw what his

teacher had recorded 30 years ago, but on the other hand, observed the status quo of religion

and social system, proposing different opinions from Feuchtwang’s.

Bai-Shing Hsiao, a professor in the Department of Architecture in nearby Huafan

University, is a long-term observer of Shiding Village. In the course entitled “Planning and

Designing of Spatial Activities” taught by Hsiao in 2001, students participated in field

surveys, observed the context of the environment through techniques taught in the class,

interviewed a foreman, and were asked to design a screenplay to present what they had

gathered and concluded at the end of the semester. In addition, as supplements to the course,

there were several extra activities that encouraged the locals and tourists to interact with the

environment, such as hiking on the ancient trails and inviting artists to perform on a

temporary deck erected above the river bed. (Hsiao, 2001) In the series of studies, Hsiao

tried to look at Shiding Village in a phenomenological approach and participated in several

public construction projects, recorded in one of the students’ theses.

3 Feuchtwang referred to Shiding Village as Mountainstreet in his doctoral dissertation. But this thesis will

use the administrative division of “里” (village or ward) to refer to the subject of this thesis as “Shiding

Village”.

- 5 -

1.3 General information about Shiding Village

Shiding Village belongs to Shiding District4 in New Taipei City

5. The population in

March, 2014 was only 4746, but its population density ranks first in Shiding District and is

probably the most important village in Shiding District because it has always been the

administrative center.

The whole Shiding district is a recreational area, especially for hikers and gourmet

seekers. For hikers, the fame of its nature resources and hiking trails dates back as early as

the Japanese Colonial Period. Also, like the nearby tourist hotspot Shenkeng, Shiding is

famous for tofu dishes. But other tourist farms in the district also have their own signature

dishes with home products added, such as Osmanthus Fragrans7, black pork, Spicebush

8—a

spice that is often seen in Taiwanese aboriginal dishes and even Lingzhi mushroom. In

addition, the trend for tasting the locally-grown Pouchong and Oriental Beauty teas is

gradually growing. People can also wander at the beauty of stone houses or worship at

numerous temples, some of which are quite famous. But tourists don’t need to drive around

the whole district to satisfy all their needs, they can get close to nature and eat authentic

local dishes in Shiding Village. Because of its proximity to Taipei City, Shiding Village is a

favorable place for Taipei citizens to spend a whole day, hiking in the morning, having

lunch, drinking tea in stilt houses by the stream, and taking a walk on the footpaths along

the streams in the relaxing setting of Shiding Village.

1.4 Geography

Shiding District is situated on the south-east rim of the Taipei Basin. The whole district

is covered in mountains, and most of the settlements have been built on the narrow

riverbanks. 92% of Fei-tsui (翡翠, literally “emerald”) Reservoir, which provides drinking

4 Used to be Shiding Township, name changed after Dec. 25, 2010 because of reorganization of the district.

5 Used to be Taipei County, name changed after Dec. 25, 2010 because of reorganization of the district.

6 New Taipei City Population Census. (2014) Retrieved from

http://www.ca.ntpc.gov.tw/230;DATA_Population/ListInArea?area_id=21 7 桂花。

8 The binomial name is Litsea cubeba, often called 山胡椒 or 馬告 in Chinese.

- 6 -

water to people in Taipei City and its vicinity is in Shiding District, making a large part of

Shiding District a water source protection area.

Shiding Village is in the north-west of Shiding District, upstream of Jingmei River. It is

at the confluence of two streams—Ben-shan Stream and Wu-tu Stream. So bridges,

including Wan-shou Bridge (crossing Wu-tu Stream), Hsiu-shan Bridge and Heart of

Shiding Bridge (both crossing Ben-shan Stream) play an important role for the villagers

(Figure 1-3).

Shiding Village has four main roads, Shiding East Street, Shiding West Street, Ding-ge

Road, Shr-kang Road, with the latter two connecting to other villages. It is on the road from

Taipei to Yilan, so is easy for tourists to miss if they drive on without slowing down.

1.5 History

1.5.1 Qing dynasty.

The Taiwanese Ketagalan (凱達格蘭族) and Tayan (泰雅族) aboriginal tribes used to

be active in Shiding District. A tribe called Wara Dorp (挖仔社, aka 秀朗社), belonging to

Figure 1-3 Map of Shiding Village. (Lan, 2010, p. 57)

- 7 -

the Ketagalan tribe, was first recorded in the seventeenth century. They did basic farming

and deer-hunting for a living, and Shiding District was in the hunting fields of both Wara

Dorp and the Tayan people in Wu-lai. The first batch of immigrants from China came to

Shiding District between 1736 and 1820, mostly from An-chi County in Fujian Province,

China. (Shiding Township Office, 2001, pp.60, 62)

Shiding was part of Chiuan-shan Bau (拳山堡, literally “fist mountain fort”) (Figure

1-4). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Chinese people started to fight battles with

Taiwanese aboriginals along the river and among themselves. Up until the mid-nineteenth

century, the flow of immigrants steadily grew because ancient trails had been built for

military purposes. Huang Chung-shu (黃重殊), from An-chi County, took his family and

travelled along Jingmei River, starting from Shenkeng, eventually settling by Shiding River.

In 1828, Lin Shian-chuan (林先傳) recruited a large group of settlers who all moved to

Shiding Village, building four houses and the main religious center—Ji-shuen Temple (集順

廟)—which still exists now. Starting then, the village began to grow, businesses came into

shape, and irrigation ditches were constructed for rice paddies in both Feng-tz-lin Village

(楓子林) and Shiding Village. (Shiding Township Office, 2001, p.64)

In the Qing Dynasty, Shiding relied heavily on the river for transportation. In the 1840s,

Figure 1-4 Shiding Village in Chiuan-Shan Bau. (Tsou, 2009, p. 15)

- 8 -

the riverbed of the Jingmei River was still deep enough for sampans to go upstream to

Shiding Village, but after 1860, sampans could only go up to Feng-tz-lin Port. Feng-tz-lin

thus became the last port for shipping commodities from Taipei City to Yilan County and

the commercial center for nearby mountain areas. All the goods from Taipei were unloaded

and carried by laborers on the Dan-lan Ancient Trail along the Jingmei River to Shiding

Village. (Shiding Township Office, 2001, p.66) The biggest commercial products were tea,

camphor and dyestuff, and businesspeople and porters alike took the ancient trail to Shiding

Village. So intimate relationships to the trail were developed, and parts of it were named

according to their distinctive features (Figure 1-5). Leng-fan Keng (冷飯坑, literally

“cold-lunchbox pit”) is a place on the trail with natural shade and drinking water, so

travellers would rest and eat their lunchboxes there. But because it was too far, by the time

they arrived, the hot lunchbox had gone cold. Peng-peng Ling (碰碰嶺, peng peng is an

onomatopoeia of footsteps) got its sound-imitating name because there was a huge rock on

the trail, and the heavy loading on the porters transformed into heavy sounds of footsteps

like “peng-peng” when making a detour to avoid the rock. In farming societies in the past,

water buffaloes helped with the farm work. When they were crossing a makeshift bridge on

the trail, the buffaloes had to walk in the pool underneath, so that place got its name of

“Niou-du Tan” (牛渡潭, literally “buffalo-passing pool”). (Chen, 2000, p. 48) The original

Dan-lan Ancient Trail was damaged because of the construction of the elevated Freeway

No.5 in the early years of 2000. To take its place, a new well-paved trail was built for

tourists, and fortunately, it does not deviate too much from the original trail. But because of

the changes in the environment, whether because of changes in village infrastructure or the

changing river waterline, the locations of these distinct places which used to have specific

names are hard to pinpoint exactly now.

- 9 -

As mentioned earlier, the biggest industries of Shiding Village were tea cultivation,

camphor processing and dyestuff. According to The General History of Taiwan by Lian

heng, the first large scale tea cultivation in Taiwan took place between 1796 and 1820

around Shiding Bau (石碇堡) and Chiuan-shan Bau (拳山堡). (Chen, 2007, p.22) That is

where Shenkeng, Shiding and Pinglin are today. The terrain, altitude and humidity were

ideal for tea to grow. Pouchong Tea, transplanted from Fuzhou, China, was already being

sold back to Amoy shortly before 1858. John Dodd of Dodd and Company in Meng-chia

bought slips of tea from An-chi County and encouraged growing around 1865. After 1869

when the five harbors of Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Amoy, Ningpo and Shanghai started to

function, the export of tea from the south-eastern part of Taipei went as far as New York and

London in the name of “Formosa Tea”. Between 1865 and 1885, the quantity of tea export

increased 100 times. (Shiding Township Office, 2001, p.255) In Shiding Village, the raw tea

would be carried to the plaza of Ji-shuen Temple by tea farmers. Tea traders would come

and buy it and ship it downstream to Taipei for processing, and sell it to companies in

Figure 1-5 Place names on Dan-lan Ancient Trail between Feng-tz-lin and Shiding Village. (Chen, 2000, p. 49)

- 10 -

Meng-chia (Figure 1-6). It was also a common scene for elders to hand-pick and classify tea

under the arcades of the stone houses (Figure 1-7).

Tea was not the only main industry contributing to the thriving of Shiding Village. The

environment was also suitable for manyflower glorybower (大菁), the raw material for

indigo. It was extensively grown in the shade of the woods. The scene of dye containers

lined up in front of the dye houses on Shiding West Street was certainly not foreign to locals

(Shiding Township Office, 2001, p.253). But the land was farmed out and the thriving of the

tea industry put the dye industry to a halt around 1875. Because of the population brought in

by commerce, more living space was badly needed, and that was when Shiding East Street

came into formation. In 1828, all sorts of daily supplies could be found in Shiding East

Street and people came there from nearby hamlets to shop. Over thirty porters lived on the

Figure 1-6 Tea Market on the plaza of Ji-shuen Temple in 1918. (Chen, 2007, p. 93)

Figure 1-7 Old ladies sorting tea. (Jung, 1982)

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street. (Shr, 2000, p. 41) This is the time Shiding East Street got its nickname of “Little

Di-hua Street” (小迪化街)9, and its arcade started to appear.

1.5.2 Japanese colonial period.

After the shifting of political power to Japan in 1895, the transportation and industry

of Shiding faced a clear divide. The focus on river transportation shifted to land transport,

and the focus of industry to coal mining.

The Japanese Government built on the base of the Dan-lan Ancient Trail by Fujian

province governor Liu Ming-chuan (1836-1896), making it broader and setting up a light

railway. The original dirt roads were covered with train tracks. The railway can be seen

clearly on the map drawn in 1905 stretching from Shenkeng and further out 0.5~1 km,

passing Shiding Village (Figure 1-8, 1-9). Before the 1920s, the river transportation was

frequently used by nearby mountain inhabitants. According to the Taipei Chronicle of 1919,

in the 14 kilometers from Gong-guan Street to Feng-tz-Lin, the Jingmei River could contain

the total weight of boats to 10 dan10

, which is about 310 kg now. In 1924, roads were made

wider again, this time with asphalt and smoother curves. In 1935 the boats frequenting

Jingmei Port downstream of Feng-tz-lin were reduced to scarcely five or six, and the same

year, buses started to run from Jingmei to Shiding. The downfall of river transportation also

resulted in the shutdown of the 170-year-old sampan business of the Lin Family of

Feng-tz-lin in the 1910s (Shiding Township Office, 2001, p.68).

9 The commercial center of Northern Taiwan was Meng-chia throughout the nineteenth century. Herbs, dried

foods and fabrics were sold. 10

A unit of weight, 1 dan=31kg.

- 12 -

Figure 1-8 Shiding Village in the Japanese Colonial Period. (Survey, 1942)

Figure 1-9 Route of light railway near Shiding Village. (Survey, 1942)

- 13 -

The rising of railway transportation went hand-in-hand with the development of the coal

mine business. The Yan brothers11

started the coal mining business in Pingxi in 1919. At

about the same time, the outcrop of coal mines scattered in Shiding District were discovered

but without permission, the digging couldn’t start until 1941. After that, people flooded in

and the growth peaked in 1966 with an estimated 13,342 people (Shiding Township Office,

2001, p.274). A new elementary school was built to meet the demand for the sudden boom

in population. Not long afterwards, the coal mines gradually ran out of coal, and the fall of

international coal price and the emerging alternative source of gas all added up to the

cessation of coal-digging in Shiding.

During the Qing Dynasty, Shiding West Street was more prominent than East Street,

although houses and commercial activities appeared in small scale on East Street. In the

Japanese Colonial Period, the coal was all carried on the light railway. Back then, the only

bridge connecting the north and south banks of Shiding River was Shiding Bridge (now

Heart of Shiding Bridge). So the train track went past Shiding East Road, turning southward,

and made Shiding East Street very popular during the years of coal-mining (Shiding

Township Office, 2001, p.70). According to a survey12

there were 120~130 households in

Shiding Village around 1940, in which there were eight grocery stores, five blacksmiths,

five snack stores, four Chinese medicine stores, four Taiwanese eateries, three tofu shops,

three butchers, three barber shops, three tailor stores, three jute specialty stores, and a

number of tobacco and liquor stores, ceramics stores, clog stores, and billiard shops.

Bathhouses and an opium distribution unit were also amid other shops to meet the demands

of coal miners (Figure 1-10).

11

When the Japanese Government moved into Taiwan, all the coal mines went national but were opened for

lease to Taiwanese people. The Yan Family had a good relationship with the Japanese Government and started

Jilong Coal Mining Company (基隆炭礦株式會社), partnering with a Japanese merchant in coal and gold

mining businesses in Ruifang and Pingxi. The Yan Family later became one of the largest five Taiwanese

families. 12

Shoji Hisataka. (1940). "Shiding, a village by the river: an example of geographical field survey." Science

of Taiwan 8(1).

- 14 -

Figure 1-10 Map of Occupations and Households in Shiding. (Hisataka, 1940, p. 33)

- 15 -

1.5.3 Republic of China

After the completion of Bei-Yi Highway in 1946, from Xindian District, New Taipei

City, to Toucheng Township, Yilan, travellers didn’t need to go to Yilan through Shiding.

Besides, the coal mines were closed one by one in the 70’s. This small village started to lose

its population. Until 1995, an exit of Freeway No.3 shortened the distance between Shenkeng,

Shiding and the city dwellers. (Shiding Township Office, 2001, p.71) People of the two

tourist spots saw opportunities of reviving, attracting tourists with food. And it did make tofu

a famous cuisine for the two places, especially Shenkeng, helping it gain massive media

exposure. People were willing to stand the inconveniences of finding parking spots and bad

traffic, just to complete their mission—eating tofu—there. Shenkeng became overly crowded.

So quietness seekers dispersed to nearby villages, one of them being Shiding Village. There

tourists can also have tofu dishes, but in a less-crowded environment, and have more time to

savor the surroundings.

1.6 Architecture

It is not easy to define what vernacular architecture is due to the range it contains. But

a working definition of vernacular architecture is offered for the present undertaking:

Vernacular architecture comprises the dwellings and all other buildings of the people.

Related to their environmental contexts and available resources, they are customarily owner-

or community-built, utilizing traditional technologies. All forms of vernacular architecture

are built to meet specific needs, accommodating the values, economies and ways of living of

the cultures that produce them. (Oliver, 1997, p. xxiii)

Shiding Village is situated at the bottom of a valley. A cluster of linear villages was

built organically according to the contours of the nearby riverbanks. The landscape also

determines the main economic activities of the village. As described in Encyclopedia of

Vernacular Architecture of the World, “The valleys’ transport activities for the movement of

goods, produce and surpluses have given livelihood both as a main occupation and

secondarily by collecting taxes, accommodating travellers, and—lately—by tourism.” (Oliver,

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1997, p. 152) Shiding Village carries out the role that the geographical features want the

village to play— a commercial center. With the climatic and topographic factors, the

landscape of valley can “decide the physical features of the settlements – their location, group

formation, orientation and often house forms.” (Ibid.)

Sandstone was the most accessible material for building houses in Shiding, so most

traditional houses were built with ashlar blocks. Red bricks and wood were also used to make

walls and beams. (Jang, 2000, p. 34) After renovations and additional construction over the

years, most of the buildings have been transformed into modern townhouses, leaving scarce

numbers of traditional houses. In architectural investigation reports of Shiding Village

conducted by Taipei County Government in 2000, there were some small differences in

building types on Shiding East Street and Shiding West Street. In West Street, there are row

houses, modern townhouses, and apartments. The row house is a common type of building in

Taiwan, often serving as a store and a residence at the same time. To walk from the front of

the house to the far back, one usually needs to walk through a long hallway, passing several

rooms and a courtyard in the middle of the house. The best examples of typical row houses in

West Street are No.5 and 7, both belonging to the Shiu Family. (Fig. 1-11~12, Fig. 1-14~15)

But the adjacent houses of No. 5 and 7 were renovated respectively in 1989 and 1997. (Lan,

2010, p. 60) The original look of the stone houses was apparently lost (Fig. 1-13). Most

houses on West Street now are modern townhouses (Fig. 1-16) and apartments (Fig.

1-17~18).

Figure 1-11 Stone houses at the entrance of Shiding West Street. (Chen, 1985)

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Figure 1-12 (From middle to right) No.5 and 7 of the Shiu Family, and Ji-shuen Temple by the plaza. (Chen, 1985)

Figure 1-13 No.5, 7 and Ji-shuen Temple. (2014)

Figure 1-14 Floor plan and sectional plan of No.5 and 7, Shiding West Street (Jang, 2000)

- 18 -

Figure 1-15 The old facades of No.5 and 7, Shiding West Street (Jang, 2000)

Figure 1-16 Floor plans of 4 floors in modern townhouse of No.12, Shiding West Street (Jang, 2000)

Figure 1-17 Floor plans of apartment, No.31 of Shiding West Street (Jang, 2000)

- 19 -

In West Street, although pretty much all the stone houses were torn down, and the

buildings are much taller than when they were under three stories, the size of the road hasn’t

changed much, and the meandering of the road still yields an intimate atmosphere of

walking in the past (Figure 1-19~20).

Figure 1-18 Photos of Shiding West Street. (2014)

Figure 1-19 Shiding West Street. (Chen, 1985)

Figure 1-20 Remnant of a stone house on Shiding West Street. (2012)

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Walking on East Street is a much different experience. The houses on East Street were

built along Ben-shan Stream. Because of the narrowness of the flat area, when the demand

for housing increased, people extended their houses into the stream with pillars underneath

for support. Gradually, the second floor of almost all houses on both sides of the street were

ingeniously connected, making the first floor of Shiding East Street into an arcade of indoor

shops (Fig. 1-21~22). The locals refer to East Street as 暗街仔 (àm-kue-á13

), literally “a

street not exposed under the sky”. There is a story that says even the Governor of Taiwan in

the Japanese Colonial Period had to get off his horse in order to walk through the arcade of

East Street. (Fang, 2009, p. 7) Like West Street, most of the houses on East Street were also

transformed into modern townhouses (Fig. 1-23) and apartments (Fig. 1-24). Living above

water enables East Street residents to build stairs from the house that go straight down to the

river. In the thesis entitled A Practice Experience on Building of Shih-Ting Village, the

researcher describes the close relationship people built with the water: women washed

clothes under the bridges (Fig. 1-25), children went swimming, caught fish, shrimp and

crabs in the stream, and played on the natural waterslides, and coal miners washed

themselves in the cool water. (Tsou, 2009, p. 19) According to locals, even free coal from

the coal mine upstream could be acquired by sifting in Ben-shan Stream. Now there are few

shops still open on East Street, and most houses are either transformed into warehouses or

pure residences. The atmosphere is much quieter than back in the coal-mining days.

(Fig.1-26)

13

In the whole thesis, phrases that are underlined mean they are Taiwanese.

- 21 -

Figure 1-21 Inside of Shiding East Street (1). (Chen, 1995)

Figure 1-22 Inside of Shiding East Street (2). (Chen, 1995)

- 22 -

Figure 1-23 Sectional plans of townhouses on Shiding East Street. (Jang, 2000)

Figure 1-24 Sectional plan of an apartment on Shiding East Street. (Jang, 2000)

- 23 -

1.7 Social Aspects

Several sources describe the atmosphere of Shiding Village in first-person narrative.

They include poems and travel journals written during the Japanese Colonial Period.

Another is Stephan Feuchtwang’s impressions, written in his anthropological doctoral

dissertation in 1974.

The Second Poem of a Trip to the Countryside by Inoguti Houan published in Taiwan

Daily News Chinese in 1905 (translated into English from Chinese by the author):

South of Shiding Fort’s railroad, the streams and mountains are profound; the

trees are verdant and the water white. The mist in the morning and the purple

dusk make this place comparable to a fairyland. After traveling there for a few

days, I feel refreshed.

Figure 1-25 Woman washing clothes in the river. (Tsou, 2009, p. 19)

Figure 1-26 Shiding East Street. (2012, 2014)

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Shiding, a village by the river: an example of geographical field survey by Shoji

Hisataka (1940) in Science of Taiwan (translated from Japanese to Chinese by Bridge

Translation Service, and then translated from Chinese to English by the author):

The most eye-catching features were the multiple bamboo water pipes hanging

down from the valley on the gully. [(Figure 1-27)] These pipes were made by

joining several bamboos, and hung with iron wire. The angles were joined by

rubber pipes. The Da-Hsin Bus Terminal is on the concrete bridge in the middle

of the village….The villagers drink the water that comes from the pipes. Though

there are wells, it is interesting to see that people drink the mountain water across

the village, probably because of the terrain, quality of water and desire to

prevention of contagious diseases. There are also things like water tanks for

storing water in the house. I wonder when they started using these water pipes.

What a spectacle!

The residences stood next to each other along the foothills of the mountains.

Those that face directly to the riverbed look like they are standing above the

water, and more closely tied together compared to houses on both sides. The

street light is dim, reminding me of the streets in Lukang in the past. The

cold-looking stone-paved road extends outside of the village. People carve out

figures on the stone pillars, stone walls and on the stone underneath roofs,

probably for ornamentation or for religion. Stone can be seen everywhere, it

really stands out compared to the houses made of bricks and mud in Taiwan’s

farm villages.

- 25 -

An excerpt from “The Social Bases of Religion and Religious Change in a Market

Town of the Mountainous Rim of the Taipei City Basin, Northern Taiwan“, Stephan

Feuchtwang’s doctoral dissertation (1974):

Let me try to convey some impressions of the town on a working day such as the

day on which I first saw it in November 1966. It was set in an atmosphere of

humid heat, with an occasional breeze, and surrounded by mountain slopes of an

astonishing variety of greens; puddles of mud and coal-dust underfoot. A group of

men talked sitting on a bench outside the main barber shop at the end of the

bridge over one of the streams; another bench group talked nearby at the entrance

to a druggist just inside some covered arcades. These arcades form the upper

stories of the first part of a terrace of houses on the narrow ledge above one of the

streams leading towards the town coal mine. The red brick walls of the terrace are

an extension of the rock walls of the gully; women slap washing on the rocks

down in the stream bed; there is the noise of a winch and the roar of the cable

rail-cart pulling miners out of the shaft. They hang up the batteries of their lamps

to be refilled, and go home or to the bath-house. Women and their young children

sit in groups around piles of tea outside storage rooms, hired to sort twig and

dross from leaves; in contrast to young women and school-girls who giggle

Figure 1-27 Bamboo water pipes hanging above the gully. (Hisataka, 1940, p. 33)

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behind their hands, older women smoke and confidently crack ribald jokes.

Chickens, ducks, and turkey gobble on the streets, on the roofs and are shooed out

of shops and rooms; young children play marbles in the ruts on the street or in the

temple yard; mass exercises to music are conducted in the school yard; a farmer

is kept waiting and looking out of place at the counter in the main hall of the new

government office building to the sound of stamps and the chink of lids being

replaced on tea glasses. (Feuchtwang, 1974, pp. 73-74)

It is easy to see that even in the peak of population in 1966, the village still has a rustic

easiness left in itself.

1.8 Thesis Structure

The first chapter is about the motivation and purpose for writing the thesis, and

relevant background information including the geography, history, architecture and social

aspects of Shiding Village. This chapter ends with the scope of each chapter.

The second chapter is the academic background to the author’s research in Shiding

Village. It is a discussion of the concepts of place theory and genius loci, as well as

postmodern tourism. The sources are four books: Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology

of Architecture by Christian Norberg-Schulz (1980), Place and Placelessness by Edward

Relph (1976), Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience by Yi-Fu Tuan (1977), and

The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies by John Urry (1990). The

modern usage and discussion of the theory of genius loci are also in the chapter.

The third chapter is an interpretation of the genius loci of Shiding Village, applying

Norberg-Schulz’s structure of explaining the genius loci of three cities in his book.

The fourth chapter includes excerpts from the author’s interviews with Shiding

residents, deducing the identities and direction the villagers have in the village.

The fifth chapter is the conclusion of the thesis, including a review of connections

between each chapter, the limitation of the thesis, and suggestions to what can be done in

further study.

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Chapter 2 An Epistemological Discourse of Place

This chapter is divided into three parts: structure of place, genius loci and place—in

this section inauthentic place-making and its relationship to post-modern tourism are also

discussed, and finally how the idea of place grows in people, based on the work of Yi-Fu

Tuan. The discussion of these concepts is largely based on the following four books: Genius

Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture by Christian Norberg-Schulz (1980), Place

and Placelessness by Edward Relph (1976), Space and Place: The Perspective of

Experience by Yi-Fu Tuan (1977), and The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in

Contemporary Societies by John Urry (1990).

The first part of this chapter concerned with Norberg-Schulz’s theories of general,

natural and manmade structures of place. The second part moved into explaining genius loci

and several aspects surrounding the idea of a place. Both the books of Norberg-Schulz and

Relph deal with the constitution of the essence of place and the identity of place, so these

two notions are discussed using both materials. This part continues with a discussion of the

notion of authenticity of place, in particular, looking at Relph's position, which is: “An

inauthentic attitude to place is essentially no sense of place, for it involves no awareness of

the deep and symbolic signification of places and no appreciation of their identities.” (Relph,

1976, p. 82) Inauthentic place-making as described by Relph followed, also the careless

attitude transmitted toward tourism, resulting in the phenomena seen in modern and

post-modern tourism. At the end of the section, modern interpretation and usage of the

theory of Genius Loci, as well as the three criteria of evaluating cultural heritage are

brought up. The last part of this chapter focuses on the relationships between people and

places, as formed by the experiences of living within places. Tuan's relatively personal and

empathetic approach is compared with the more prevalent objective deliberations on the

idea of place. His ideas give us perspective on how places and people have mutual

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influences on each other.

2.1 The Structure of Places

Figure-ground theory, boundaries, characteristics, and the three approaches humans have

towards settling into a new environment, as proposed by Norberg-Schulz, are discussed

in this section.

Landscapes are a series of extension, whereas man-made settlements are enclosed.

That creates a figure-ground relationship, articulated by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter in

their book Collage City (1976). The spatial qualities and relationships between man-made

settlements and landscapes fit into holistic patterns and configurations of Gestalt theory:

the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This theory also applies to Lynch’s (1960)

notion of “imageability”. “It is that shape, color or arrangement which facilitates the

making of vividly identified, powerfully structured, highly useful mental images of the

environment.” (Lynch, 1960, p. 9) If a place shows strong imageability, it evokes a strong

image in any given observer.

Enclosure is defined by its boundary. Boundaries are not the end of things, but like

the Greeks said, “the boundary is that, from which something begins its presencing.”

(Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 15) Boundary openings are important because they are the

gateways connecting the inside and the outside. The forms of the opening thus give

entities character, deciding extension, direction and rhythm, as windows, doors and

thresholds do to a building.

The character of a place designates its general comprehensive atmosphere, and is the

concrete form and substance of the space-defining elements. “Any real presence is

intimately linked with a character.” (Ibid., p.14) Character is also a function of time,

determined by the season, the course of the day and other factors relating to light. Besides

time, the character of a place also comes from the materials and methods of construction.

The questions to ask are: What does the ground look like? How does it feel to feet which

touch it? How bright is the sunlight? What’s the general quality of the sky? How do

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buildings rest on the ground and extend into the air?

Norberg-Schulz presented three ways that humans react to a new environment. (Ibid.,

p.17) When a person is first brought into the world, he/she first visualizes the world, and

expresses what he/she has seen. “Where nature suggests a delimited space he builds an

enclosure; where nature appears ‘centralized’, he erects a Mal [a monument]; where

nature indicates a direction, he builds a path.” (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 17) Secondly,

the person notices something missing, so he/she complements it. Lastly, the person

understands nature in its symbolic meaning, and thus symbolizes and tranforms this

meaning onto other objects, such as buildings or things. The objects “explain” the

environment and make it manifest, and in return that makes the objects become

meaningful. Humans gather and create their own microcosmos by visualizing,

complementing and symbolizing.

To explain the idea, Norberg-Schulz uses Martin Heidegger’s (1975) example of a

bridge linking the two sides of river. In the beginning, there was no bridge, only a river

and riverbanks just as they normally would be. But one day, a bridge was added, probably

for practical reasons. But the construction of that bridge brought out the meaning of the

landscape! Without the bridge, the riverbanks are just banks that stretch along the river.

Once there is a bridge, it links the landscape lying behind to the river, and brings all that’s

there into the surrounding neighborhoods. The meaning of the landscape was hidden

before, but is now brought to life by the bridge, and hence the environment becomes a

place. The purpose of architecture is like the bridge, to connect people and nature, reveal

the hidden meanings in the environment and add meaning to human life. (Heidegger,

1975, p. 152)

2.1.1 Natural places.

According to Norberg-Schulz, to be able to dwell between the earth and sky, and to feel

at home, humans must understand the earth and sky and how they interact with each other.

There are five things that humans need to be able to do to understand nature

- 30 -

(Norberg-Schulz, 1980, pp. 23-32) :

1. Relate natural forces to actual things. Stone is hard, permanent, and imperishable.

Mountains rise from the earth toward the sky, being the meeting places for the two

elements to come together. Trees, similar to mountains, are the result of the marriage of

earth and sky, but possess the power of growth. Water is a dynamic chthonic force.

2. Abstract a systemic cosmic order from the flux of occurrences. The order is based on

the Sun, the cardinal points and geography, implying that “the world is understood as a

structured space, and the main directions represent different qualities or meanings.”

(Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 28) For example, in ancient Egypt, the east represents rebirth,

and the west represents death.

3. Compare natural phenomena to human characteristics. The abstraction of human

character types was the achievement of the Greeks. In Greece, the sunlight is intense, and

the air is clear. They combine to give the natural environment distinctive characteristics,

and clearly delimited easily imaginable personalities. It was easy for the Greeks to relate

their landscapes to the personalities of Greek gods. Any place with pronounced properties

became a manifestation of a particular god. For example, places experienced as an

ordered whole were dedicated to Zeus, and groves close to water or swamps were

dedicated to Artemis.

4. Attend to the quality of light. Ancient people focused on the sun as a thing, instead

of a source of illumination. In Greek civilization, light was a symbol of knowledge, art

and intellect. In Christianity, light became a symbol of conjunction and unity, connected

with the concept of love. But in nature, light changes throughout the day, according to

rhythmic patterns.

5. Be aware of the temporal rhythms of nature. Seasons and different phases in life are

part of the rhythms of nature. Seasons change the looks of a place and in many cases

contribute decisively to local characteristics that are reflected in myths and fairy tales. In

landscape painting, the local importance of temporal rhythms and light conditions were

- 31 -

studied from the eighteenth century on, culminating in Impressionism.

To sum up, the five elements are things, order, characteristics, light, and time.

Things and order are of spatial quality, characteristics and light contribute to the

atmosphere, and time makes all of them a living reality. At any moment, all together, they

form a particular place.

The structure of natural place. Norberg-Schulz provides a definition of place in

relation to natural phenomenon such as water, earth and sky. (pp. 32-40) Extension and

surface relief determine the particular character and spatial property of a place,

accentuated by secondary elements such as texture, color and vegetation. Water is a

comparatively unstable element, but also has a dematerializing effect in forms of lakes

and ponds. A phenomenology of natural places ought to contain a systemic survey of the

concrete totalities consisting of extension, surface relief, vegetation and water.

First we talk about the earth. Plains are the basic form of extension; basins are

enclosed and static; valleys are directional and forbidding, cut into the ground and

intensified by water; islands are excellent places, where the boundaries are clearly

defined.

Next we move on to the sky. The quality of sky plays a crucial role to the

atmosphere. But we rarely notice it until we are away from home. The quality is

determined by two things. One is the constitution of the sky, as in the color, light and

presence of clouds; the other is its relation to the ground. If seen from an open plain, the

sky is a complete hemisphere. If seen through pronounced surface relief, the sky can only

be seen in a sector, reduced to the background of the contour of land. Climate and latitude

are also factors that determine the quality of sky. In desert areas of North Africa and the

Middle East, the cloudless blue sky gives prominence to the infinite extension of land,

experienced as a whole embodying an eternal order, centering on ourselves. However, on

the plains of Northern Europe, the sky is low and flat, so you can only feel the extension

from the ground instead of being hugged by the vault of sky. Near the coast, the

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atmospheric conditions vary, and the light changes, becoming lively and giving a strongly

poetic quality to the sky. In the south of Europe, the light is strong and warm, bringing

out the plastic qualities1 of natural forms and things. (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, pp. 32-40)

The spirit of natural place. Norberg-Schulz says that in some places the atmosphere

is determined more by the sky, other places are dominated by the earth, and still other

places are equally affected, realized as a particularly happy “marriage” where harmony is

felt, allowing for relatively easy and complete identification. (Norberg-Schulz, 1980,

p.42)

Following is a table of various qualities in romantic landscapes, cosmic landscapes,

classical landscapes and complex landscapes.

1 “Plastic qualities” here is the exact wording used by Norberg-Schulz. The author interprets this phrase to be

having sculptural quality with emphasis on the form. But the real definition is unknown.

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Table 2-1 Qualities of Different Landscapes (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, pp. 42-48)

Romantic landscapes Cosmic landscapes Classical landscapes Complex landscapes

Examples the Nordic forest, certain parts of Central

Europe

desert South(Greek and Rome) and North of Europe

A combination of all the things

in left columns, and is the most

common type of landscape.

Sky between the contours of trees and rocks,

modified by clouds

embracing vault, cloudless high and embracing

Earth

rarely continuous, creating a rich

“microstructure”

infinite extension, monotonous barren ground - continuous and varied

- microstructure is lacking, all dimensions

are “human” and constitute a total,

harmonious equilibrium

Sun low, creating a varied play of spots of light

and shadow

burning strong and evenly distributed

Water dynamic, from running streams to quiet ponds

Air constantly changing dry, warm transparent

Character

- mutable, incomprehensible; instability by

the contrast of season and frequent

changes of weather

- Man encounters a host of natural “forces”,

whereas a general unifying order is

lacking. Original forces are strongly felt.

- It brings man back to a distant “past”,

which is experienced emotionally rather

than understood as allegory or history.

- Land dominates.

- absolute, eternal order, no ambiguities

- Earth does not offer man a sufficient

existential foothold. It forms a continuous

neutral ground.

- intelligible composition of distinct

characters

- receives light without losing concrete

presence

- meaningful order of distinct, individual

places

Dwelling

Nordic man approaches nature with empathy

and lives intimately within. Direct

participation is crucial yet not social,

implying that each individual finds his own

“hiding-place” in nature.

Oasis, an intimate place within the cosmic

macroworld.

Greeks relate natural characters to human

character, thus they find themselves. One’s

identity therefore is preserved, neither

absorbed in abstraction or having the need to

find its own hiding-place. A true gathering

thus becomes possible, which fulfills the most

basic aspects of dwelling. Human places

himself in front of nature which he became

partner with.

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Dwelling in nature isn’t just about living in a shelter, but also connotes an

understanding of the given environment’s insides. Rilke summed it up well: “Earth, is not

this what you want: invisibly to arise in us?” (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 48)

2.1.2 Man-made places.

The places where humans live are not just functional or a combination of arbitrary

happenings; rather, they have structure and embody meanings. These structures and

meanings reflect an understanding of nature, so the relationship with the environment

should be taken as a point of departure. One way of doing this is to concretize the forces of

nature. People from northern Europe were inspired by nature, and expressed it with lines

and ornaments; people from the Mediterranean used local stones, and valued the qualities of

solidity and permanence found in them. This preference also transferred to massive walls

and through a process of abstraction, to the system of horizontals and verticals culminated

in the orthogonal structures of Egyptian architecture. (Ibid., p.51)

Vernacular architectures tend to possess unique spirit of the place through the process

of visualization, complementation and symbolization, whereas the genius loci in cities are

relatively comprehensive. Natural influences are weakened in cities, and gathering means to

bring forms which have their roots in other places. “Some of these contents (meanings) are

so general that they apply to all places.” (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 58)

The structure of man-made places. The distinct quality of man-made places is

enclosure. Enclosure distinguishes a special area from its surroundings, and there are three

types: centralization, longitudinal and cluster, as in the German Rundling (circular village),

Reihendorf (row village) and Haufendorf (enclosed village). The distinct enclosures bring

people different orientations. (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 61)

The character of a building is revealed in how open it is, and how it stands and rises.

The opening is where the inside meets the outside, determining and concretizing the

inside-outside relationship. The solidity or transparency of the boundary can decide whether

the space is isolated or belongs to a comprehensive totality. Holes in massive walls

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accentuate the sense of enclosure and interiority. Holes also transmit sunlight and set the

general atmosphere in buildings. Windows and doors in big scales often become decorative

motifs with local characteristics. (Ibid., p.63)

In the past, houses with articulation and lucidity in structure gave humans a sense of

security. From the point of view of etymology, the names of parts in the structure sometimes

possess symbolic meanings, binding meanings and the process of creation tightly together.

For example, a ridge beam is the central beam on a gable roof, supporting the high ends of

rafters to resist forces from applied roof loads. But at the same time, the word ridge means

the crest of a series of mountains. In another example, “gable” is where the vertical and

horizontal parts are jointed. The German word “giebel” in the Middle Ages meant the poles

of the sky. (Ibid., p.65)

The character of a building is revealed by two things: the kind of

construction—skeletal, transparent, massive or open; the method of construction, such as

binding, joining, erecting, etc. These processes make the work become a “thing”. As Mies

van der Rohe said, “Architecture starts when you put two bricks carefully upon each other.”

(Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 66)

The spirit of man-made place. There are man-made places with strong and mystical

natural forces, places that have a sense of cosmic general order, and lastly but not least

important, places where forces and order have found their equilibrium.

Following is a table of different man-made settlements revealed in several aspects.

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Table 2-2 Qualities of Different Man-made Settlements (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, pp. 69-78)

Romantic architecture Cosmic architecture Classical architecture Complex architecture

Examples

- Mediaeval towns, particularly in

Central Europe

- Northern Germany and Denmark,

varied according to natural

environments

- Islamic architecture

- grid-iron plans of American cities

Greek architecture

A combination of all the

things in left columns,

and is the most usual

type of architecture.

Characters

- multiplicity and variety

- strong “atmosphere”

- live and dynamic character, aiming

at expression

- outside- inside relationship is

complex

- uniformity, absolute order

- rational and abstract, transcending individual

concrete situation

- lack of atmosphere

- static, the revelation of hidden order, rather than

concrete composition

- imageability and articulate order

- Its organization can be understood in logical terms,

whereas its “substance” asks for empathy.

- neither static nor dynamic, but pregnant with

“organic life”

Presentation

- Forms seem to be results of growth,

not organization.

- formal complexity and

contradiction, transparent and

skeletal structures.

- Line is a symbol of force and

dynamism, as in Art Nouveau.

- geometrical

- grid/orthogonal

- labyrinthine space that can be inversed, without

direction, beginning and end

- shuns sculptural presence, dematerialize volumes

and surfaces by means of “carpet-like”

decoration (mosaic, glazed tiles etc.) or intricate

geometrical webs

- horizontals and verticals don’t have forces, only

for manifestation of general order

- All the parts have their own identities.

- Each character forms part of a “family” of

characters, which are deliberately related to human

qualities.

Urban level

- dense and indeterminate cluster, free

and varied row

- irregular enclosure

open

public buildings based on orthogonal grid, and

residential quarters are labyrinthine

- unify topological and geometrical traits. The

individual building may possess a strict

geometrical order, which forms the basis for its

identity, whereas the organization of several

building is topological, creating a democratic

freedom.

- additive grouping of individual places

Light

- emphasize variety and atmosphere,

having a strong local quality,

stressed through the application of

particular colors

give emphasis to the plastic presence of buildings,

through light and shadow giving them forms.

the condition in

which spirit of

architecture

reveals

strong atmosphere, may appear

phantastic and mysterious or intimate

and idyllic

- demand a clear visualization of the system

- In general, a distinct genius loci is hardly

allowed in cosmic architecture.

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2.2 Genius Loci and Place

The phrase genius loci is Latin, “spirit of a place”, the presiding deity or spirit,

according to The Oxford English Dictionary (1989). Also in Encyclopedia Britannica

(1990), Genius, in Latin, means “begetter”, an attendant spirit of a person or place. The

Romans believed that every independent being has its genius, its guardian spirit. This spirit

not only gives life to places and people, but also gives them character, helping them to

identify who and what they are. (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 18) This notion of spirits living

with humans is particularly prevalent in ancient cities in south-east Europe and the

Mediterranean Basin. When life seems uncertain, gods not only protect life, but are also

guarantors of order in nature and in society. (Tuan, 1977, p. 150) Genius loci is also defined

as “the pervading atmosphere in a place”. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) People in ancient

times saw it as a concrete reality, and sought to come to terms with it throughout their

lifetime. In the past, survival depended on a good relationship with place in both physical

and mental senses. In a place with genius loci, humans belong to the environment, and

develop senses of orientation and identification in it. In other words, the place is meaningful

to humans, so they can “dwell” in it (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 18).

2.2.1 The essence of place.

Any place that is called “place” often emits an atmosphere, with different

characteristics made up of concrete things, such as shape, texture, color, etc. These

qualitative elements must be viewed as a total phenomenon, without separation.

(Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 8)

In a place with a particular atmosphere, even functional activities like eating, drinking,

and sleeping can be different according to where they take place. The activities demand

places with different properties, cultural backgrounds and environmental conditions, and

possess different formalities and meanings. (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 8) In the poem

Winter Evening by George Trakl, the setting is both “experienced as a set of particular

qualities” and also “a background for acts and occurrences.” (Ibid., p.8) All the things in the

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poem have symbolic meanings: falling snow creates a quiet atmosphere, bread and wine are

the fruits of earth and sky, brought forth and back into the house by human labor, the

worn-out threshold not only separates the world outside from the inside, but also becomes a

symbol and mark of all that humans have suffered, and the desk in the house is where

everything gathers. Through Norberg-Schulz’s explanation, the meanings behind the poem

surfaced. “The character of the inside is hardly told, but anyhow present. “ (Ibid., p.9)

However, a place isn’t necessarily a set location, as can be proved from the lives of

sailors and nomadic tribes; nor is it necessarily temporary man-made settlements built out

of the visible expression of feelings or atmosphere, called ‘illusion’, by Susanne Langer

(1953). (Relph, 1976, p. 30) This kind of place formed by houses disappears when

destroyed. But the landscapes remain. Although the physical appearance of a place is the

easiest to observe, it is not as superficial as it seems. Lawrence Durrell (1969) argued that,

“…human beings are expressions of their landscape and…their cultural productions

always bear the unmistakable signature of place.” (Relph, 1976, p. 30) He gave an

amusing example of the ferocious Tartars and French:

I believe you could exterminate the French at one blow and resettle the country

with Tartars, and within two generations discover to your astonishment that the

national characteristics were back at norm—the restless metaphysical curiosity,

the tenderness for good living and the passionate individualism: even though their

noses were flat. This is the invisible constant in a place. (Durrell, 1969, p. 157)

The islanders of Tikopia see the peak of the highest point on the island as a symbol of

home:

This peak is a landmark of singular importance to the seafaring islanders for at

least three reasons. First, it enables the ocean rover to estimate how far he is from

land and whether he is on course; this is the practical reason. Second, it is an

object of sentiment: the wanderer, when he departs, loses sight of the peak below

the ocean waves in sorrow, and, when he returns, greets its first appearance above

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the waves with joy. Third, it is a sacred place: “it is there the gods first stand

when they come down.” (Tuan, 1977, p. 158)

In Norberg-Schulz’s opinion, to feel one belongs to a place, orientation and

identification are equally important. Generally speaking, having orientation means knowing

where you are. It doesn’t strictly mean knowing the cardinal direction or where you are on

the map. It is the ability of not getting lost in a place. (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p. 20)

According to Kevin Lynch (1960), the consistent use and organization of definite sensory

cues from the external environment form a generalized mental picture that not only gathers

immediate sensation but also memories of the past. This image plays a crucial role for the

individual, providing practical and emotional importance. Firstly, it provides a common

background for symbols and collective memories in group communication. Secondly, it

provides emotional security. It is the proof of a harmonious relationship between individuals

and the world outside. “…the sweet sense of home is strongest when home is not only

familiar but distinctive as well.” (Lynch, 1960, p. 5) Furthermore, a distinctive and legible

environment heightens the potential depth and intensity of human experience. Daily

activities carry strong expressive meanings in a setting that is visually well set forth.

Identification is to know your relationship with the environment and to become

friends with it. The feeling of belonging requires orientation and identification at the

same time. In modern societies, the sense of direction is valued, but the sense of

identification is often neglected, replaced by a sense of alienation. (Norberg-Schulz, 1980,

p. 20) In primitive societies however, “even the smallest environmental details are known

and meaningful, and they make up complex spatial structures.” (Ibid.)

The formation of places in people’s minds also relies on collective psychology.

According to Relph, some places die because rituals and traditions which established them

are central to the continual and stable relationship with people, and as they gradually

become of little significance, places are prone to change. But changes also occur to places

that haven’t died, as long as the remaining character of the place reinforces a sense of

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association and attachment to the place that will endure and persist as a distinctive entity

amidst changes. (Relph, 1976, p. 32)

People in the same place generate senses of identification and commitment. This is

partly because there are certain similarities among individuals, but more importantly, the

efforts they make to maintain their community make them feel that they are facing the same

fate. Also, all the things that appear in the community, such as buildings, roads, parades, and

community sports teams, which have strong local flavor, visual characteristics and clear

boundaries, unite the community, creating “a collectively conditioned place consciousness”,

as described by Structuralism-promoting architect Aldo van Eyck (1969). This gives the

people from that place essentially the identity the community bears. That’s why we can tell

a lot about a person from knowing where she or he comes from.

Individually, people have the need to know a place and be known by people from that

place, to feel a sense of belonging to somewhere of mine, yours and ours. (Relph, 1976, p.

38) It is a secure point from where humans know themselves and start to explore the world.

We care about a place because we have connections to it, and there are experiences that

bring out emotions and responses inside us there. We hold responsibility, respect and a

sense of commitment to the place. This is what Heidegger called “sparing” (Ibid. p.38):

Sparing is letting things, or in this context places, be the way they are; it is a

tolerance for them in their own essence; it is taking care of them through building

or cultivating without trying to subordinate them to human will. Sparing is a

willingness to leave places alone and not to change them casually or arbitrarily,

and not to exploit them.

Taken from a different point of view, being attached to a place also means to be

imprisoned and confined to the established scenes, symbols and routines at the same time.

The drudgery is the profound commitment to a place which enables humans to stay with a

desire to escape in daily life. (Ibid. p.42)

The essence of place can be simply put as a concentration of intentions, attitudes,

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purposes and experiences. It is a largely unselfconscious intentionality that makes place a

center of human existence. A French philosopher, Gabriel Marcel (cited in Matoré, 1966,

p.6) summarized, “An individual is not distinct from his place; he is that place.” (Relph,

1976, p. 43)

2.2.2 The identity of places.

Being inside a place means to belong to and be a part of it. The more you engage in a

place, the stronger your identity with that place is. When you are inside a place, you know

where you are. (Ibid., p.49)

Identity not only means a persistent sameness but also a persistent sharing of

characteristics with others. It is in the experience, eye, mind and intention of the beholder

as well as the objective features of a city or landscape. These identities combine to form a

common identity. (Ibid., p.45)

A consensus identity of a place is the lowest common denominator among groups

with different ideas of a place’s identity. It is the fundamental common ground that they

share together, divided into two forms: the public identity and the mass identity. The two

identities both hold pervasive forms of sociality and superficial understandings toward a

place, but the difference lies in who determines the identities. The public identity is

determined by free opinions of individuals and groups, whereas the mass identity is

determined by “opinion-makers”, who provide ready-made identities for people,

disseminated by the media and advertising. The mass identity offers no scope for

empathetic insideness, creating arbitrary or even synthetic stereotypes. (Relph, 1976, p.

58)

Tuan offers an explanation that might explain why opinion-makers want to create

ready-made identities that easily make great impressions on people, whether factual or

not. Cities that do not have much history or culture need to emphasize abstract and

geometrical excellences such as “the tallest”, “the most central”, “the biggest”, and “the

fastest”. This is called boosterism, intending to create an impressive image among others.

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(Tuan, 1977, p. 175)

Physical setting, activities and meaning are the three components that make up the

identity of a place. (Relph, 1976, p. 47) Places can be described by their geography, their

buildings and streets, and what people do there, i.e. their physical setting and activities.

However, why people are doing what they are doing can only be explained by the

observer who lives in the place. The last component of a place’s identity, meaning, is the

hardest to grasp, because it starts from intentionality involving the individual and cultural

variations which reflect each person’s interests, experiences and viewpoints. (Ibid.)

Place identity is a progressive process of balancing observation with expectation,

assimilation and accommodation until reaching a stable image. All the identities of a

place, whether authentic or not, develop over time and start to gain certain degrees of

plausibility as long as the symbols and significances retain their meanings. But mass

identity eventually fades away because it contrasts with the true identity developed

through profound individual and social experiences containing symbols proved to be

enduring and recognizable. (Ibid., p.59)

2.2.3 Authentic place-making and placelessness.

A famous quote of Louis Kahn about bricks says:

You say to Brick, “What do you want, Brick?” And Brick says to you, “I like an

Arch.” And you say to Brick, “Look, arches are expensive and I can use a

concrete lintel.” And then you say: “What do you think of that, Brick?” Brick

says: “I like an Arch.” (Voyatzis, 2013)

This is a good example of a brick showing its authenticity because it is aware of and

accepts its responsibility. A sense of place makes people closer to the reality of living, an

awareness of “a profound association with places as cornerstones of human existence and

individual identity.” (Relph, 1976, p. 5) If a place is inauthentic, it is not a “place” at all.

(Ibid., p.82)

According to Heidegger, “authenticity” refers to a mode of being, Dasein, which

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recognizes humans’ freedom and responsibilities for their own existences. (Heidegger, 1962)

A person is directly presented to the world, and he/she has to understand the responsibility

for existential reasons, making genuine decisions to change or not change his/her situation.

The design process of an authentic place consists of “…direct and unselfconscious

translation into physical form of a culture, its needs and values—as well as the desires,

dreams and passions of the people”. (Rapoport, 1969, pp. 2,5) Place-making is also a

continuous process, and only through being lived-in, used and experienced will a place gain

a sense of authenticity.

Relph observes a situation opposite to place-making, which he called “placelessness.”

Placelessness means the creation of the sameness of places that yields to a monotonous,

mediocre and highly congeneric landscape. It stems from the inauthentic attitude that people

hold towards a place, neither experiencing nor creating more than a superficial and casual

involvement. However, he doesn’t mean this quality as a crime, instead he holds a rather

neutral standpoint by saying “…behind these lies a deep-seated attitude that attends to the

common and average characteristics of man and of place.” (Relph, 1976, p. 79) As for

visitors, some places might look understandably depressing, “but to the insider, these are

small worlds, each as homogenous as a village.” (Hoggart, 1959, p. 52) The mental picture

of such a place has gained identity and organization through long familiarity, just like

someone finding objects easily on his desk which otherwise seems chaotic to others. For

people who live in such places, even the most trivial and unrelentingly uniform landscapes

contain some authenticity in them. (Relph, 1976, p. 80)

2.2.4 Inauthentic place-making and post-modern tourism.

As Relph points out, Heidegger sees inauthenticity equally valid to authenticity as

modes of being and existence. “…inauthenticity is of no lower order than authenticity—

it’s simply a different order.” (Relph, 1976, p. 80) Relph states that inauthenticity is not

only necessary, but viable in human existence, and it is the accepted way of behavior that

characterizes everyday life. He then categorizes inauthenticity in life into two kinds—one

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is to experience life without a subjective “me” involved in it, an act of levelling down

one’s being and covering up genuine responses. Anything that’s new, divergent or

exceptional is discounted as familiar. Objects are manipulated for the public interest and

decisions are made according to public wills. The other is to satisfy needs in a functional

mentality for efficiency. Relph uses the French philosopher Jacques Ellul’s “technique”

(1967) to explain the second inauthenticity, its ethos being “what you do is somehow less

important than how you do it.” (Relph, 1976, p. 81) This force is so prevalent in modern

life that it can only be countered by voluntary individual rejections. Relph continues that

these two forms of inauthenticity also seep through the heedless attitudes of humans to

places, one becoming an uncritical acceptance of mass values, without awareness of the

deep and symbolic significances of places, and no appreciation of their identities, and the

other being adoption of objectivist techniques in Ellul’s sense of the word, aimed at

achieving efficiency. Both make the experiences of places superficial, casual and partial.

(Relph, 1976, pp. 80-82)

Relph uses the word “kitsch” to develop further arguments for inauthenticity.

“Kitsch” echoes with the first kind of inauthenticity by referring to “the mediocre,

styleless, sweetly sentimental, meretricious objects that are sold as souvenirs and gifts,

and to their related forms in household goods, music, architecture and literature. “ (Ibid.

p.82) They are part of everyday life, trivial, showy and ersatz, revealing the

consumer-centered relationship between humans and objects so often seen in mass public.

He gives some examples, including garden gnomes, steak houses with artificial cacti,

overindulgence of Baroque decorations, and roadside fantasylands. (Ibid., pp. 82-83)

Relph adds, in kitsch places, “the trivial is made significant and the significant is made

trivial, the fantastic is made real, the authentic debased and value is measured almost

entirely in terms of the superficial qualities of cost, color and shape.” (Relph, 1976, p. 83)

Relph proposes another inauthentic attitude toward places that is even more apparent

in tourism, in which individual and genuine comments are muted by those of experts or

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socially accepted opinions. He declares that sometimes the act and means of tourism are

more important than the place itself by using these examples: tourists are busy checking

off the star-listed sites in their guide books; tourism becomes a status symbol and a

collection of places and souvenirs. It is a phenomenon of social tourism, traveling for

social ends rather than experiences. (Relph, 1976, pp. 83-85) John Urry (1990) echoes,

“To be a tourist is one of the characteristics of the ‘modern’ experience. Not to ‘go away’

is like not possessing a car or a nice house. It is a marker of status in modern societies

and is also thought to be necessary to health.” (Urry, 1990, p. 4) This kind of

inauthenticity in tourism alienates people from the places they visit, just as Cardinal

Newman says in The Idea of A University (1947), “Everything stands by itself, and comes

and goes in its turn, like the shifting scenes of a show, which leaves the spectator where

he was.” Tuan describes how unaware tourists are to the true quality of Crater Lake in

Oregon:

At the lake we stop and mingle affably with the small crowd of tourists holding

cameras and children yelling, “Don’t go too close!” and see cars and campers

with all different license plates, and see the Crater Lake with a feeling of “Well,

there it is,” just as the pictures show. I watch the other tourists, all of whom

seem to have out-of-place looks too. I have no resentment at all this, just a

feeling that it is all unreal and that the quality of the lake is smothered by the

fact that it is so pointed to. You point to something as having Quality and the

Quality tends to go away. Quality is what you see out of the corner of your eye,

and so I look at the lake below but feel the peculiar quality from the chill,

almost frigid sunlight behind me, and the almost motionless wind. (Tuan, 1977,

pp. 146-147)

Perhaps in modern day travels, few people are willing to surrender the undemanding act

of being an ignorant tourist to make an effort at really perceiving their immediate

surroundings.

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According to Relph, yet another form of inauthenticity toward places is planning

efficiently, with the presuppositions that space is uniform, and objects and activities can

be manipulatively located inside. Thus, places are reduced to locations with the greatest

interest being their potential for development. “The narrowness of such an approach, the

emphasis on the abstract, economic, public interest, rather than on individual or

community life and values, is profoundly inauthentic.” (Relph, 1976, p. 87)

Relph blames the inauthenticity of places—placelessness—on several different

factors, which he calls media: mass communications, mass culture, big business,

powerful central authority and the economic system which embraces all these. (Ibid., p.90)

According to J. Todd Snow (1967), “the old road” goes between places. It has to be

travelled slowly, thus encouraging social contacts and direct experiences with the

landscape. The New Road, on the contrary, “starts anywhere and leads nowhere”. It

includes railways, highways, airports that cut across or impose on landscapes rather than

develop with them, making it possible for people to bring their fashions, habits and their

own way of life no matter where they go. (Relph, 1976, p. 90) “We go abroad but we

travel no longer.” (Relph, 1976, p. 90) Relph explains that all the convenient ways to

communicate between people—newspapers, journals, radio, television—contribute to

less and less face-to-face contact. Without geographical constraints, the significance of

places is thus reduced. The convenience of communication transmits general and

standardized tastes and fashions, decreasing diversity of places and increasing uniformity

of landscapes. (Ibid., p.92)

Relph continues that mass culture is a process of homogenization, formulated by

manufacturers, governments, and professional designers, communicated through mass

media. (Ibid., p.92) He uses three phenomena as examples of what mass culture can do to

the development of places:”disneyfication”, “museumisation”, and “futurisation”. In

tourism and subtopias, the “other-directed” places are created from these three

phenomena. Only the first two are discussed in this thesis. (Relph, 1976, pp. 93-105)

- 47 -

According to Relph, tourism today destroys the local and regional landscapes that

first initiated the tourism, and replaces it with conventional tourist architecture, synthetic

landscapes and pseudo-places. (Relph, 1976, p. 93) This “other-directed architecture”

(1970, pp.64-65), as defined by John Brinckerhoff Jackson, founder of the journal

Landscape and lecturer of history of American landscape at Harvard University and the

University of California, Berkeley, is “architecture which is deliberately directed towards

outsiders, spectators, passers-by, and above all consumers.” (Relph, 1976, p. 93) It

suggests nothing of the people living and working in it, making the place “Vacationland”

or “Consumerland” through exotic ornamentations, gaudy colors, and borrowing styles

and names from the most popular places of the world. (Ibid.) In 1849 John Ruskin wrote

of London in The Seven Lamp of Architecture (Relph, 1976, p. 93):

…how is it that the tradesmen cannot understand that custom is to be had only

by selling good tea and cheese and cloth, and that people come to them for

their honesty, and their readiness, and their right wares, and not because they

have Greek cornices over their windows, or their names in huge gilt letters on

their house front?... How much better for them it would be—how much happier,

how much wiser, to put their trust upon their own truth and industry, and not on

the idiocy of the consumer.

Relph believes that the product of disneyfication is a surrealistic combination of

history, myth, reality and fantasy where everything is under control, everyone is nice and

smiling. He further points out that the mask of reality takes people away from the drab

and inefficient reality, providing guaranteed excitement, amusement and interest. Finally,

Relph states that the mentality that lies underneath is a belief in the objective mastery of

nature and of change to bring monsters, history and wild animals under control. (Ibid.,

pp.97-99)

On the other hand, museumisation stands for the preservation, reconstruction and

idealization of history. These places are made tidy and bowdlerised to suit the dream

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image of the past, according to Whitehill, cited in Lowenthal (1968). Here Relph is not

discussing the restoration of heritages to retain their original looks or preservation of their

authenticity, but focuses more on the issue that museumised landscapes, whether genuine

relics or complete fakes, are made only for modern people to have a taste of the contrived

romantic image of the past but nothing else. (Ibid., pp.101-103)

Describing the everyday landscape of suburbia and urban fringe areas, Ian Rairn

(1965) coined the word “subtopia”, defining it as “the mindless mixing up of all

man-made objects without any pattern or purpose or relationship”. (Relph, 1976, p. 105)

According to Relph, subtopias are either inorganic and arbitrary assortments of colors,

signs, parking lots, or identical landscapes that give humans no sense of direction. He

concludes that each of the areas serves only one purpose and is isolated from its

surroundings, woven together by random “new roads” in Snow’s sense of the phrase, that

also have no relation to places they pass through at a junction of more other-directed

buildings. (Relph, 1976, pp. 105-109)

John Urry (1990) describes what tourists in the 1980s-1990s wanted and provides

sociological analyses. He pinpoints some of the traits of postmodern tourists using

several theories. The tastes of postmodern tourists have evolved beyond enjoying a

kitschy and superficial sugar-coat of reality; now they are looking for the realities in

others’ lives, (Urry, p.8) seeking personal and spiritual contact with the objects they gaze

at, (Ibid., p.45) knowing clearly that that there is no such thing called authenticity in the

whole travel experience. (Ibid., p.11)

According to Urry, when we are on vacation, we leave part of ourselves behind. We

don’t go through our familiar daily round of activities which, although it involves all our

senses, is as unobtrusive as breathing. Traveling gives one the chance to break out of the

routines of everyday life and to allow one’s senses to be exposed to a set of stimuli in

contrasted to the mundane. (Ibid., p.3) Urry proposes nine points describing the

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characteristics of tourism as a baseline for discussion. Here are the ones most relevant to

this study (Urry, 1990, p. 3):

1.[Originally 6] Places are chosen to be gazed upon because there is an

anticipation, especially through daydreaming and fantasy, of intense pleasures,

either on a different scale or involving different senses from those customarily

encountered. Such anticipation is constructed and sustained through a variety

of non-tourist practices, such as film, TV, literature, magazines, records and

videos, which construct and reinforce that gaze.

2. [Originally 7] The tourist gaze is directed to features of landscape and

townscape which separate them off from everyday experience. […] The

viewing of such tourist sights often involves different forms of social

patterning, with a much greater sensitivity to visual elements of landscape or

townscape than is normally found in everyday life. People linger over such a

gaze which is then normally visually objectified or captured through

photographs, postcards, films, models and so on. These enable the gaze to be

endlessly reproduced and recaptured.

3. [Originally 8] The gaze is constructed through signs, and tourism involves

the collection of signs…As Culler argues: “the tourist is interested in

everything as a sign of itself….All over the world the unsung armies of

semioticians, the tourists, are fanning out in search of the signs of Frenchness,

typical Italian behaviour, exemplary Oriental scenes, typical American

thruways, traditional English pubs” (1981: 127).

4. [Originally 9] An array of tourist professionals develop who attempt to

reproduce ever-new objects of the tourist gaze. These objects are located in a

complex and changing hierarchy. This depends upon the interplay between, on

the one hand, competition between interests involved in the provision of such

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objects and, on the other hand, changing class, gender, generational distinctions

of taste within the potential population of visitors.

Colin Campbell (1987) stresses the importance of covert day dreaming and

anticipation to modern consumerism. The pleasure of touring today isn’t just about going

somewhere and experiencing something, but rather, to fulfil the long-anticipated image

developed before the trip. However, the reality can never perfectly fulfil the pleasures

encountered in daydreams: “…each purchase leads to disillusionment and to longing for

ever-new products.”(Urry, 1990, p. 13) Urry believes this “imaginative hedonism” is

related to advertising and particular modes of social emulation. (Ibid.)

Urry also makes a comparison between mass consumption and post-Fordist

consumption. He says it is clear that the former is producer-oriented, with fewer choices

of commodities and less variety of market segments, and the latter is consumer-oriented,

catering to different market segments and non-mass forms of production. (Urry, 1990, pp.

13-14) Tourism seems to bear a resemblance to the situation in mass consumption. Urry

mentions one of the key characteristics of postmodernism is people’s refusal to be treated

as part of an undifferentiated mass. (Ibid., p.87) The individuated characteristic of

post-Fordist consumption seems to have something to do with the emergence of the

romantic tourist gaze, with exclusive connotations, emphasizing solitary and undisturbed

travel, having personal and spiritual relationships with the objects being gazed at. (Ibid.

p.45)

Urry's discussion of “inauthenticity” from a modern standpoint is very different

from Relph's. Urry uses Dean MacCannell’s theory (1976) to talk about inauthenticity in

modern tourism. (Urry, 1990, pp.8-9) In his book The Tourist: A New Theory of the

Leisure Class, MacCannell compares the modern quest of tourists for authenticity to

pilgrimage. Modern tourists look for authenticity in “other” places and “other” time (any

time and place not in their own lives), especially in “real lives” of others which possess a

reality hard to find in one’s own. Yet the real lives are usually in the backstage—it would

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be an intrusion if they were observed by tourists. To avoid this situation, a contrived and

artificial backstage MacCannell calls “staged authenticity” is constructed. (MacCannell,

1973) Postmodernism is the breaking-down of boundaries, “not only between high and

low cultures, but also between different cultural forms, such as tourism, art, education,

photography, television, music, sport, shopping and architecture.” (Urry, 1990, p. 82) It is

becoming difficult to define when we are touring, or are we touring all the time? Does

every look on things become a tourist gaze? For “post-tourists,” (Feifer, 1985) they know

there is no authentic tourist experience, only a series of games or texts that can be played.

(Ibid. p.100)

2.2.5 Modern viewpoints on the theory of genius loci.

The theory of genius loci seemed timeless when it was first brought out, but through

time when put into practical use in design and planning, various viewpoints, even

controversies, have arisen about its nature and meaning. (Jivén and Larkham, 2003, p.71)

When the theory is applied to “constrain, and usually to minimize, physical change” (Ibid.,

p.74) in the preservation of heritage sites, it is criticized as not being dynamic enough to

adapt to social changes, and “is aimed at establishing a static Past When Things Were Nicer.”

(Ibid., p.75) Tim Cresswell (2009) also expresses doubts about Heidegger’s model of

building and dwelling, which casts much influence on the development of Norberg-Schulz’s

theory of genius loci. Cresswell considers such a model to be dislocated from modern life,

which is hyperconnected. “As a model it seems a little regressive and romantic.” (Cresswell,

2009, p.3) In Doing Cultural Geography (2002), Relph’s interpretation of “place and

placelessness” and Tuan’s individual experiences with spaces are deemed as being

subjective, connoting a power play between social hierarchies, as in who decides which

place is good or bad. Their theories seem to suggest that the only genuine essence of place

should and can only be found in trained cultural geographers’ perceptions and preferences.

Though the doubtful scholars root for the emphasis on personal experiences in humanistic

geography, they are keenly aware of the differences in perceptions of places of people with

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subtle differences, (Shurmer-Smith, 2002, pp. 24-26) let alone from people who hold

different backgrounds of economics, politics, gender, etc.

The author agrees that the definition of genius loci provided by Norberg-Schulz is

clear and exclusive, lacking adaptability to social changes in the modern world. But he

also left room for possible changes of places and interpretations of places in the future.

He expresses euphemistically that because the future of genius loci is unpredictable, it

might persist, change or get lost. (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p.18)

Doreen Massey’s “progressive sense of place” (1994) provides an outlet for the

introverted and defensive definition of places. She argues that even if a place has its own

character, it doesn’t mean that there is only a single sense of place shared by all. More

identities are expected, providing either richness or conflicts to a place. (Massey, 1994, p.6)

In her new interpretation of place, she states that “…what gives a place its specificity is not

some long internalized history but the face that it is constructed out of a particular

constellation of social relations, meeting and weaving together at a particular locus.” (Ibid.,

p.7) M.R.G. Conzen’s interpretation of genius loci shares the same inclusive quality of the

changes on cultural landscapes in time. “When form after form is added to the surface of the

earth, the whole cultural landscape should be seen as an ‘objectivation of the spirit’ of a

society, and as the genius loci (Conzen, 1966)…The urban landscape is thus a palimpsest, a

layering where subsequent layers do not erase all traces of their predecessors.” (Jivén and

Larkham, 2003, p.72)

Both Massey’s and Conzen’s views on the formation of spirit of place show respect to

its growth dedicated by different people in different periods of time. This respect reminds

the author of the “sparing” in Heidegger’s sense on p.40 of this thesis. Once a person feels

belonged to a place and gains emotional security in it, he or she is likely to start caring for

that place. This care calls for a responsibility, respect and commitment in that person’s

attitude toward the place. (Relph, 1976, p.38)

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Eventually the theories are to be applied to practical usages. Genius loci has been used

in plan documents throughout much of the second half of the 20th

century. (Jivén and

Larkham, 2003, p.71) The theory of genius loci was also considered in both the preservation

of historic places and newly created places around the globe, including India, Korea, Japan,

England, Norway, (ibid., pp.71, 73) China, (Qian, 2012) Canada, (Lawrence, 1998) Egypt,

(Ouf, 2001) Bosnia and Herzegovina (Cvijic and Guzijan, 2013), and Taiwan. (Shen, 2004)

Jivén and Larkham note three values used in Sweden to evaluate cultural heritage (2003,

p.81):

‘document value’: value of the artefact, whether it be expressed in

socio-economic, architectural or other terms. This allows discussion over

exactly which aspects of any particular heritage artefact are most important

(e.g. building facades or interiors);

‘experiential value’: people’s experience of this ‘document value’,

including the debate about whether ‘experiential value’ can persist without

the actual ‘document value’, i.e. if a building is demolished;

‘strengthening factors’ such as age, patina and authenticity. Again these

are viewed on a case-by-case basis.

These three values help to verify what should be preserved in communities.

2.3 The Relation between Human and Place from Experiences

This section will focus on how humans sense environments and find anchor points

to recognize a place, and on the topophilia humans develop towards places through time.

2.3.1 Senses.

We cannot talk about experiences without starting from sensory feelings. To Tuan,

among all the feelings, kinesthesia, sight and touch are the most important senses for

detecting spaces. We shift from places, thus the body has a sense of direction, and kick our

legs to see how free we can be in a new environment. Sight gives humans a

three-dimensional view about the space, and touching gives the hand a world of objects

with constancy of shape and size. (Tuan, 1977, p. 12) Gordon Cullen (1961) also makes it

clear that when we enter a space, we sense the movement that we are entering it, in the

middle of it, or leaving it. A city provides a sequence of relationships. All the things put into

a city are woven together in order to create a dramatic feeling. (Cullen, 1961, pp. 9-10)

“…if at the end of it all the city appears dull, uninteresting and soulless, then it is not

fulfilling itself. It has failed. The fire has been laid but nobody has put a match to it.” (Ibid.,

p.10) Cullen also points out that responsive emotions can be aroused both by vision and

sense of position. Emotions even become palpable in extreme conditions, such as walking

on the edge of a cliff. (Ibid., pp.11-12) That is an intuitive explanation of how humans react

to environments. To Tuan, the tactile sense is so vital that without it humans might not

survive:

We are always in ”touch”. For instance, at this moment we may be feeling the

pressure of the chair against our posterior and the pressure of the pencil in our

hand. Touch is…the direct experience of the world as a system of resistances

and pressures that persuade us of the existence of a reality independent of our

imaginings. (Tuan, 1974, p. 8)

Taste, smell, skin sensitivity and hearing all contribute to the awareness of space in

their own ways, enriching our comprehension of the world with more spatial and

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geometrical characteristics. An example from Tuan is that carnivores track down their

prey through odors, so their noses articulate a different spatially structured world. The

human nose may not be as keen as an animal’s, but we can differentiate direction and

distance through smells. Smell can also take us back to the past instantaneously. (Tuan,

1974, pp. 9-10) Sounds are known for conveying size of a space and distance to an object.

Blind people use them and get reverberations to evaluate the spatial characteristics of a

space. People also alter their voices in social contexts according to the perceived physical

and social distances with others. (Tuan, 1977, pp. 14-15) Tuan also talks about the

relation between hearing and emotions. We are often touched by what we hear instead of

by what we see, such as “the sound of the rain pelting against leaves, the whistling of

wind in tall grass, and the anguished cry, which excites us to a degree that visual imagery

can seldom match.” (Tuan, 1974, p. 8) Tuan gives readers more examples of how sounds

closely connect to human emotions. Music induces stronger emotional experiences than

looking at scenery or pictures. He suggests that we feel vulnerable to sound possibly

because: (1) hearing has more of a connotation of passivity than seeing does (we can’t

close our ears); (2) as infants, we listen to the heartbeat of our mother and learn to

differentiate the pleasant from the unpleasant through hearing long before our vision

develops to the point when we can visually discriminate any subtlety. Tuan even proposes

that sudden loss of hearing is as debilitating as, if not more than, the sudden loss of sight.

“With deafness, life seems frozen and time lacks progression.” (Tuan, 1974, p. 9) The

world is without dynamism, and a sense of detachment yet with peace is brought in. At

first it could be pleasant “when the sounds of the city are muffled by light rain or a

blanket of snow” (Tuan, 1974, p. 9), but in time, the silence and severe loss of

information could possibly bring about anxiety, dissociation and withdrawal. (Ibid., p.9)

Tuan uses Warner Brown’s experiment to show us how humans recognize space

through identifying landmarks in a maze, integrating a succession of tactual kinesthetic

patterns in the process and finding their way without visual aids. (Tuan, 1977, pp. 70-72)

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The subjects were asked to cover their eyes, but they were still able to perceive light and

noises from outside. In the first attempt, the subject stands at the entrance, knows there is an

exit to go to and moves about in a certain manner. In the second or the third trial, the subject

learns the approximate location of the exit and gradually learns that there are certain

landmarks that can be identified, such as “a rough spot”, “a tilting board”, or “a double turn.”

Past errors also serve to recognize a locality. When the maze becomes a single locality to

the subject, he or she has no problem walking out of it. As soon as the blindfold was taken

off, the subject was asked to walk the same pattern on the floor, while the researcher noted

their footsteps. Most of the subjects failed to apprehend that the plan was rectangular. Few

subjects recalled where to turn right or left. One subject in particular gave up on directions

and said, “I don’t know what comes next. I have to be there before I can tell you.” (Ibid., p.

72) This experiment proves that we don’t need a precise mental image of space to get from

point A to point B. All we need to know is the general direction and what to do on each

segment of the journey. “When space feels thoroughly familiar to us, it has become place.”

(Ibid. p.73)

Tuan shows us how the mind extrapolates abstract concepts through sensory cues.

For instance, blind people know the meaning of a distant horizon “from their experience

of auditory space and freedom in movement to envisage in their minds’ eyes panoramic

views and boundless space. A blind man told William James that ‘he thought few seeing

people could enjoy the view from a mountain top more than he.’” (Tuan, 1977, p. 16)

Tuan also developed a theory of space-defining places and objects. A new-born

infant or a man who gains sight after a lifetime of blindness can’t recognize geometric

shapes at first glance. Take a triangle for example. It is a blurred and confusing image at

the beginning but identification of corners, or significant localities (in the circumstance of

familiarizing ourselves in a new neighborhood) make the image come to realization.

Objects and places are centers of value, under the prerequisite of us acknowledging their

reality and value. Tuan states, ”Place is a pause in movement.” (Tuan, 1977, p. 138)

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Animals pause at a location that satisfies biological needs. Patients, before they get better,

are weak and passive and in need of staying at a specific locale, like “the shade of a tree”,

“a lean-to shelter” or “a four-poster bed”. (Ibid., p.138) Tuan concludes that the reason

why we want to stay at home or any place that feels like home is because it reminds us of

intimate and nurturing experiences in our childhood. (Ibid., p.138)

To Tuan, a place doesn’t necessarily mean an actual location, but can also be things or

humans. Furthermore, the idea of place comes in different scales in every person’s mind.

“Place exists at different scales. At one extreme a favorite armchair is a place, at the other

extreme the whole earth.” (Tuan, 1977, p. 149) Tuan also sees a connection between

creating a place in different scales and creating a sense of homeliness. People only feel at

home in contexts created by themselves. This idea is similar to Amos Rapoport’s theory

(1982) about how humans make quick and personal adjustments to semifixed-feature

elements, such as furniture, advertising signs, window displays in shops, garden layouts and

lawn decorations to create a meaningful environment for themselves. (Rapoport, 1982, p.

89)

Tuan points out that adults and children perceive time in very different ways. In fact,

children experience the environment in the way that adults have long forgotten. It is a

“gentle, unselfconscious involvement with the physical world that prevailed in the past

when the tempo of life was slower….” (Tuan, 1974, p. 96) According to Tuan, a child

doesn’t find importance in enjoying the fleeting aesthetics in scenery, but feels the little

things that happen at the moment, with openness of mind, carelessness of person, and

lack of interest of accepted canons of beauty. “Happiness is to put on a new mackintosh

and stand in the rain.” (Ibid.) Tuan suggests what an adult should do to enjoy nature:

An adult must learn to be yielding and careless like a child if he were to enjoy

nature polymorphously. He needs to slip into old clothes so that he could feel

free to stretch out on the hay beside the brook and bathe in a meld of physical

sensations: the smell of hay and of horse dung; the warmth of the ground, its

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hard and soft contours; the warmth of the sun tempered by breeze; the tickling

of an ant making its way up the calf of his leg; the play of shifting leaf shadows

on his face; the sound of water over the pebbles and boulders, the sound of

cicadas and distant traffic. (Tuan, 1974, p. 96)

This picture might break the formal rules of euphony and aesthetics but it is wholly

satisfying. Tuan gives another example of the deep connection between people and the

land they rely on. People working on the land share sentiments not solely with the sheer

beauty of the land, but also with the work and suffering that comes from the physical

labor required to earn a living from the land. “The farmer’s topophilia is compounded of

this physical intimacy, of material dependence and the fact that the land is a repository of

memory and sustains hope. Aesthetic appreciation is present but seldom articulated.”

(Tuan, 1974, p. 97)

2.3.2 People as places.

As mentioned previously, Tuan thinks that a person can be a place too. Caring parents

are children’s primary places, for they provide nourishment and havens of stability. In

Tennessee Williams’ play The Night of the Iguana, a character clearly states how humans

can “nest” in another person:

…I don’t regard a home as a …well, as a place, a building… a house…of

wood, bricks, stone. I think of home as being a thing that two people have

between them in which each can…well, nest-rest-live in, emotionally

speaking….I am a human being and when a member of that fantastic species

builds a nest in the heart of another, the question of permanence isn’t the first

or even the last thing that’s considered…necessarily?...always? (Tuan, 1977, p.

139)

Nesting in another person doesn’t necessarily require a long-term relationship or to

know the details of the other’s life. The true intimacy between people happens in elusive

and personal moments and on occasions that can’t be deliberately designed. (Tuan, 1977,

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p. 141) There is a beautiful example in a novel by Christopher Isherwood (1964) in which

George, a college lecturer, bumps into two of his favorite students, Kenny Potter and Lois

Yamaguchi:

They are sitting on the grass under one of the newly planted trees. Their tree is

even smaller than the others. It has barely a dozen leaves on it. To sit under it at

all seems ridiculous; perhaps this is just why Kenny chose it. He and Lois look

as though they were children playing at being stranded on a South Pacific atoll.

Thinking this, George smiles at them. They smile back…George passes quite

close by their atoll as a steamship might, without stopping. Lois seems to know

what he is, for she waves gaily to him exactly as one waves to a steamship,

with an enchantingly delicate gesture of her tiny wrist and hand. Kenny waves

also, but it is doubtful if he knows; he is only following Lois’s example.

Anyhow, their waving charms George’s heart. He waves back to them. The old

steamship and the young castaways have exchanged signals—but not signals

for help…. Again, as by the tennis players, George feels that his day has been

brightened. (Tuan, 1977, p. 141)

Tuan concludes that trees, infrastructures, and buildings are created by planning, but

the true human encounters reveal their real values by accident or happy chance. The dusty

dip under the swing, the bare earth smoothed and packed firm by human feet, the broken

fence of a playground becoming a subsidiary gateway, scattered pebbles after someone

playing, all are the seeds of lasting sentiments when we are not noticing. And we don’t

say ”this is it” like running into certified beauty. We can only know the worth upon

reflection. (Ibid., p.143) “In smaller, more familiar things, memory weaves her strongest

enchantments, holding us at her mercy with some trifle, some echo, a tone of voice, a

scent of tar and seaweed on the quay…. This surely is the meaning of home—a place

where every day is multiplied by all the days before it.” (Tuan, 1977, p. 144)

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2.3.3 Architectural space and awareness.

Tuan also discusses the issue of how much humans connect to their places of living.

For people who don’t hand their building tasks to experts, building activities require

awareness and multiple decisions to make—choices of material, types of construction and

where to build. A person is most aware when he/she has to pause and decide. Most

ethnographic surveys focus on the types of architecture instead of on the process of decision

making, communication and learning. But nomads make decisions constantly about where

to stop for the night and establish their camps. Shifting agriculturalists decide where to

make a clearing and build a village. It is natural for home builders to realize that nature

changes, and so humans think, adjust and innovate. (Tuan, 1977, pp. 102-103) Tuan

observes that in nonliterate and peasant societies, active participation is a key to maintain

awareness of the building, and construction and repair are constant activities whereas

nowadays, the job is done by architects. Rites and ceremonies were once used to mark

construction as a creation of a world. But they have been greatly reduced to merely

consisting of public faces laying the foundation stone after construction. (Ibid., p.116) “The

house is no longer a text decoding the rules of behavior and even a whole world view that

can be transmitted down the generations.” (Tuan, 1977, p. 116) That is why Tuan thinks that

modern society is full of splintered beliefs and conflicting ideologies that separate people.

2.3.4 Time and place.

How long does it take to know a place? The point is not the duration of time, but the

intensity and quality of experiences, and whether there’s a presence of attachment. (Tuan,

1977, p. 198)

Tuan makes it clear that abstract knowledge about a place can be acquired in short

order if one is diligent. The visual quality of an environment is quickly tallied if one has

an artist's eye. But the "feel" of a place takes longer to acquire. It is made up of

experiences, mostly fleeting and undramatic, repeated day after day and over the span of

years. It is a unique blend of sights, sounds, and smells, a unique harmony of natural and

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artificial rhythms such as times of sunrise and sunset, of work and play. (Ibid., p.183)

Tuan then uses two examples to show how the feel of a place is registered in one's

muscles and bones. A sailor has a recognizable style of walking because his posture is

adapted to the plunging deck of a boat in high sea. Likewise, though less visibly, a

peasant who lives in a mountain village may develop a different set of muscles and

perhaps a slightly different manner of walking from a plainsman who has never climbed.

(Tuan, 1977, p. 183) Tuan continues that the history of one’s life reveals itself through the

progression of time. The place that has been lived in becomes comfortable and

unobtrusive like an old pair of slippers to whoever lives in it, demanding less attention in

our consciousness. The depth of knowing a place also lies in the direct interaction with it.

So you come to know what the place is like in different backgrounds, day or night. (Ibid.,

p.185) The Nobel Prize winning West Indian writer, Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (V. S.

Naipaul), describes an attachment to a guava tree among emigrants in The Mimic Men

(1967):

They went. But they came back. You know, you are born in a place and you

grow up here. You get to know the trees and plants. You will never know any

other trees and plants like that. You grow up watching a guava tree, say. You

know that browny-green bark peeling like old paint. You try to climb that tree.

You know after you climb it a few times the bark gets smooth-smooth and so

slippery you can’t get a grip on it. You get that ticklish feeling in your foot.

Nobody has to teach you what the guava is. (Tuan, 1977, p. 185)

Tuan brings out another aspect of how children differ from adults in experiencing

time. Children don’t think that time flows, as least not as quickly as adults perceive it,

because children experience the world more sensuously than adults do. “This is one

reason why the adult cannot go home again.” (Tuan, 1977, p. 185) A playwright Eugene

Ionesco (1990) recalls his childhood in Fragments of a Journal:

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At the age of eight or nine, everything for him was joy and presentness. …The

seasons did not mark the passage of the year; rather they spread out in space.

As a young child he stood at the corner of a world that was a decorative

background, with its colors, now dark, now bright, with its flowers and grass

appearing, then disappearing, moving toward him, moving away from him,

unfolding before his eyes while he himself stayed in the same place, outside

time, watching time pass. (Tuan, 1977, p. 186)

According to Tuan, the sense of time affects the sense of place, so the world of children is

totally different from that of adults’. An adult immigrant can’t feel a place in the same

way a person native o that place feels it, even if she or he has lived in that place for a long

time. (Ibid., p.186)

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Chapter 3 The Genius Loci of Shiding Village

On proceeding into this chapter, there are a few things that need to be addressed. The

author is not a resident of Shiding Village, and has only been there several times, each time

staying 4 to 5 hours. From the previous chapter we can see that both collective and personal

feels of place can only be obtained by constant interactions with the place. It takes a certain

amount of time to live in a place for the body to get a feel of the place. But philosopher

James K. Feibleman noted that the feelings toward an event depends on the intensity rather

than the amount of time spent. (Tuan, 1977, p. 184) John A. Jackle (1987) emphasizes that

the visual experience of a place for a tourist, compared to locals, “involves the deliberate

searching out of place experience” compared to locals. (Jakle, 1987, p. 8) So this chapter is

the author’s observations and interpretations of the image, space, character and genius loci

of Shiding Village.

3.1 Image

The main image that the general public holds of Shiding Village is usually

Huang-di-dian Hiking Trail; tofu cuisines come in second place. Huang-di-dian Hiking Trail

has been a famous destination for one-day excursions since as early as the Japanese

Colonial Period. It is especially popular among high school and university students,

probably because it requires some climbing techniques to get up onto the huge rocks, and

some courage to walk on the rocky ridge of the mountain top. Though it is very safe to hike

now because fixtures like railings and ladders were set up, it is still a good spot to enjoy a

distant view of Taipei City and the lush nearby mountain area.

From Taipei, Shiding Village is within a 20-minute drive beyond Shenkeng. County

Road 106 travels along Jingmei River from the downstream area of Muzha, and it is the

same road that has been used since about 120 years ago. But back then there was no

65.5-meter-high (at its highest point) Freeway No.5 perched above the river soaring across

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the county road for people to see. Shiding-Bau (石碇堡) Tunnel is not only a landmark at

the fork to Shiding and Pingxi, but is also the starting point of the new Dan-lan Ancient

Trail—Shiding Section. With this symbolic meaning, the tunnel is like the threshold of

entering Shiding Village. County Road 106 winds through numerous curves, and the typical

middle elevation forests are right by the road on one side, with the river on the other side.

This part of Jingmei River is scattered with huge rocks, clean water running between them.

(Figure 3-1)

People can also see huge rocks again in Shiding Village. The atmosphere on the other

side of Jingmei River is much more artificial. The new Dan-lan Ancient Trail was rebuilt

after the construction of Freeway No.5. Some parts of the trail are paved with brand new

paving stones, but as the trail leads into the woods, the pavement changes to grained stone

and wooden decks. On weekdays, only a couple of tourists come and visit, but on holidays

and weekends, hiking clubs and nature-loving families fill the trail all the way back to

Shiding Village. This trail is especially good for elders and children because there aren’t

many steep slopes and it only takes about 30-40 minutes to walk to Shiding Village. There

is plenty of shade in the woods, and the ginger lilies and fish-watching add some extra fun

to the experience of walking on this trail. The Shiding Section of Dan-lan Ancient Trail is a

pleasant and stress-free walk.

Figure 3-1 Jingmei River. (2013)

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Traveling on County Road 106 certainly shows travellers how narrow the hinterlands

of Jingmei River are. It is especially apparent when, after the last turn to the Village, a

9-story apartment building suddenly appears. As with most houses in Shiding Village, the

back of the building is right up against the river. The sectional plan of architecture here is

almost always in the sequence of mountain, house, road, house and river. There is not much

space for people to gather, so it is easy to see that the plaza of Ji-shuen Temple and the

playing field of Shiding Elementary School are popular places for public activities. Where

there is a house, there is probably a river or a mountain behind; when there is no house,

there is a bridge or a road. Every inch of land is used to its utmost according to its shape. It

is easy to tell that the architecture here has a very strong relation to the landscape. The

9-story apartment building at the turn into the Village strikes visitors as a giant, creating

tension, with the strong contrast between the narrowness of the street and the height of the

building. The limitations and distinct characteristics of buildings in Shiding Village can be

perceived both instantaneously and simultaneously upon entering it.

The main roads and the alignment of houses are parallel to the river. Tourists can easily

miss the village or have an impression of knowing it enough by driving through, just as

many people pass through a one-road mountain hamlet. This means that although Shiding

Village may not seem like the most interesting tourist spot, the tourists that do go are there

searching for something that they find worth stopping for. The journey in Shiding Village

only starts after the vehicles are parked.

3.2 Space

Shiding District is a mountainous area. Two out of three of the most popular climbing

spots in Northern Taiwan are in this area1. The mountains are steep, with rocky ridges along

the tops. Their names reflect their features, for example, 筆架連峰 (Bi-jia-lian-feng,

literally “a mountain range in the shape of zigzag pen rack”), 鳥嘴尖 (Niau-tzuei-jian,

literally “a beak spike”), and 石霸尖 (Shr-ba-jian, literally “a huge rock spike”). The rocky

1 Tony’s natural and humanistic journal http://www.tonyhuang39.com/tony0441/tony0441.html

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landscape makes massive developmental plans difficult to be realized, except for

coal-mining back in the 1940s, ‘50s and ’60s. Most of the settlements have been built

without changing too much of the landscape. Shiding Village is hugged by the mountains

around it, with an implication of protection. Trees are abundant and the rocks look like they

have been inadvertently spread in the woods. The signs of natural forces are clearly

demonstrated through the stream cutting into the gully, and the extension of mountain peaks

elongating to the sky. Norberg-Schulz cited M. Eliade (1963), who was both a historian of

religion and a prolific writer, saying that the primary “things” including rocks, vegetation

and water together make a place meaningful and sacred. This kind of place can only be

found, not created, by humans, and it functions as a center, an object of identification and

orientation of true human lives.(Norberg-Schulz, 1980, pp. 27-28) So according to Eliade,

Shiding Village can be considered as a set of meaningful places. The sky is mostly in a mild

quality but the sun can be blazing at noon if the weather is good. And the sky is no doubt

the background of the mountains, for only a small proportion of it can be observed from the

ground, making the mountains become “serrate and wild” (Ibid., p.40), silhouetted against

the sky. In the author’s opinion, the natural structure of Shiding Village can be categorized

as a romantic landscape, because:

The ground is rarely continuous, but it is subdivided and has a varied relief;…

create a rich ‘microstructure.’ The sky is hardly experienced as a total hemisphere,

but is narrowed in between the contours of trees and rocks…. Water is ever

present as a dynamic element, both as running streams and quiet, reflecting ponds.

(Ibid., p.42)

During the time the village was developing, the housing structures in Shiding Village

were similar, in conformity with the geographical limitations. The houses were built

according to the contours of the foothills and the rivers, and pillars were added to create

more living spaces. When the homes of the whole village were built according to the same

idea, almost like a belief, a perfect environment was provided for the birth of a village with

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high imageability and genius loci. A strong spirit could be sensed and it left a clear image in

any observer’s mind. The combination of houses and landscapes fit into a clear figure and

ground pattern, and was a perfect example of humans visualizing, symbolizing and

complementing a place to make it possible for them to dwell.

When a town pleases us because of its distinct character, it is usually because a

majority of its buildings are related to the earth and the sky in the same way; they

seem to express a common form of life, a common way of being on the earth.

Thus they constitute a genius loci which allows for human identification.

(Norberg-Schulz, 1980, pp. 63-65)

It is not easy to get lost in Shiding Village because the orientation is very clear; even if

a person gets lost, he/she can easily see the relation of him/herself to the village by standing

by the river. The village is clearly defined by the natural direction of the water. As the

renowned Taiwanese photographer Ruan Yi-jung (阮義忠) described it, “The two streams

are like natural moats, splitting the village like two castles standing on the water against

each other.” (Ruan, 1978, p. 48) But the boundaries of each house depend on where the

house is located. Row houses that are next to the mountain are usually quite dark inside

because there is only one side allowing openings, either windows or doors, in the wall. If

those houses happen to be in the arcade of East Street, it is almost certain that there is no

sunlight penetration, and they are no doubt very damp due to being so close to the mountain

behind. But in the row houses by the river, there can be rows of windows, and the lighting

condition must be much better. Those houses should also feel less secluded than the houses

by the mountainside.

In the author’s opinion, from looking at the photos taken in the Japanese Colonial

Period, the houses of Shiding Village are romantic architecture. There is a strong

atmosphere surrounding the traditional houses in the past. They seemed to grow organically,

and although each building was slightly different, they all shared certain formative

principles. (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, pp. 69-74) The settlements “grow in a way that is

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analogous to that of biological organisms, in which the general growth pattern is embedded

in the genetic code for the organism, and in which the details are dependent on the specifics

of site and environment. Such settlements grow and change over time, with such change and

growth occurring on a continuous basis with respect to the overall settlement pattern as well

as with respect to the individual buildings within it.“ (Oliver, 1997, p. 178)

3.3 Character

The framework of this section is adopted from the fourth chapter of The Visual

Elements of Landscape by John A. Jakle (1987), entitled Character in Landscape. Several

topics are covered: scale, style, rhythm, face, color and detail.

3.3.1 Scale.

The townscape of Shiding Village follows a clear hierarchy. According to Jakle, there

are at least four scales for most people to view a city: the scale of the entire city, the scale of

the street, the scale of the individual building, and the scale of specific architectural

elements. (Jakle, 1987, p. 79) Shiding Village is relatively densely populated compared to

other villages in this area. Deep along the the countryside roads, there are small hamlets still

preserving the old names that tell the story of each area. Mountains, streams and the

elevated freeway all contribute to serve as the background of Shiding Village. The roads

that connect outside of the village are big enough for two-way traffic, and vehicles usually

move at a high-speed, rushing to other places. But in the village, as the roads disappear in

between the buildings, the speed of vehicles gets slower, and scooters and pedestrians can

be spotted. The streets are parked with cars and scooters, mostly the local people’s, but on

weekends, vehicles from outside are lined up on the main road to the far edge of the village.

Local people walk casually on their quiet streets, just to get out or to fetch things from a

neighbour. The elders gather, by themselves or with caretakers pushing them in wheelchairs,

settling onto worn-out furniture in front of their houses or in the pavilion situated at the

junction of the main road, East Street and West Street, the best place for people-watching.

When it is about time for the elementary school students to go home, the students noisily

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gather close to the main gate inside campus, making them hard to ignore in the quiet

neighbourhood. The student traffic squad members take their spots, and parents walk

towards the school or wait near it in cars or on scooters. Random tourists loosely fit into the

picture, in casual outfits climbing out of fancy cars, with cameras in their hands, walking to

famous must-see stores and reading the historical marker signs. On weekends, the quiet

streets are taken over by excited tourists. The streets inside Shiding Village are ideal for

people to walk on, for they are not wide enough for too much traffic, so people can wander

at their own speed.

3.3.2 Rhythm.

Most of the buildings on both East and West Streets have been changed into a modern

look very different from what they used to look like. They were once mostly made of stone,

red bricks and wood, covered in clay roof tiles, with wooden-framed windows and wooden

doors. The heights of all the buildings were about the same, with some taller by

approximately one story. Because of similarities in materials and structure, a view of the

rooftops from above the village resembled the waves on the sea—slightly different in height,

yet with uniformity. (Figure 3-2) Before the completion of Shiu-shan Bridge, there was a

panoramic view of repeated rhythms from West Street, through the old Wan-shou Bridge, to

East Street. The look of Shiding Village was like a scroll painting that could be read in a

horizontal direction in progression with the rhythmic vertical outline of the pillars and piers.

(Figure 3-3~3-5) Although the addition of Shiu-shan Bridge was a great improvement for

the convenience of transportation, the scroll painting was cut in two, right in the middle.

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Figure 3-2 A bird’s-eye view of Shiding Village in the 1930s. (Hideo, 1935, p. 109)

Figure 3-3 Shiding Village. (Hisataka, 1940, p. 33)

Figure 3-4 Shiding. (Yuan, 1976)

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3.3.3 Color, material and style.

Although it is difficult to tell the colors dominating the palette of Shiding Village in the

past from black and white photos, it is still possible to guess from the materials recognizable

in photos. The stone houses found in color shots are also helpful to make out the color

palette. Stones were yellow with a dash of gray; roof tiles were dark brown, almost black;

walls and pillars were in brick red; window frames and doors were sometimes painted in

sky blue or pastel turquoise. So the overall color tone was mainly earthy colors, along with

brick red and adornments of occasional blue. (Figure 1-9, 1-12)

When the buildings were renovated into a modern look, both their heights and roof

styles varied: sometimes with flat roofs, other times additional iron-sheet houses are built on

the terrace with gable roofs. In order to withhold the extra weight from the addition of

stories, the pillars underneath were reinforced, made wider and stronger, with different

buildings using different surface materials. Some were imbedded in the concrete that had

been poured over the riverbank, making the buildings seem as if they were growing straight

out of the river onto a solid platform. This fundamental change of building structure greatly

affects the outlook of the row houses, weakening the rhythm which had been created by

Figure 3-5 Shiding. (2014)

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repeated vertical lines. The differences of heights and rooftops forms give an impression of

chaos. Adding to this impression, the wall coverings are also now quite varied. The most

common are tiles, in different colors and shapes. There are also bare concrete walls, fake

stone walls, and faux wood iron-sheets. Respecting tradition, the most prevalent colors are

warm ones, such as red, pink, brown and ochre. White is also popular, and the gray of bare

concrete wall is also often seen. In addition, there are many pastel blues and greens,

probably because they are the basic colors of iron-sheet houses. The pastel green also seems

to echo the wooden frames of the traditional windows. It is not uncommon to see different

color combinations on different stories of the same building. For example, the first three

floors from the bottom may be in natural concrete color or white, but the top floor may be

pastel green or brick red. What’s more

People in Shiding Village have lived alongside nature since the earliest time. They

have a way with nature in their blood and are in awe of it. The terrain affects every aspect of

their lives, for example the transportation, industry, and architecture. They used to live so

close to nature, growing things from the mountain, digging coal, washing in the river,

shipping stocks downstream, walking on trails by the river. But as people realized that it

was not possible to make a living by working in the mountains, they had to go out of the

village for a living. At the same time, a new lifestyle had been brought in. Quicker roads

were built and people travelled fast in cars, children stopped playing in the river, and

washing clothes in the streams was deemed out-dated and meant one was underprivileged

when washing machines became a symbol of modernization and progress. People’s

connection to the environment weakened. But the truth that they live in houses that are so

confined to the limitations of geography is apparent and affects people every day. When

people go out, they walk by the river or in the arcade. When they go back to their houses,

the darkness and damp air remind them of living beside a huge rock mountain. When they

need to go to the other side of the river, the bridge reminds them that they live at the

confluence of two streams. The fact that they live so close to nature grows in their bones,

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but the reasons and motivations to actively be in nature are lost. In some way, people in

Shiding Village are alienated from the environment they live in every day. The filthiness of

the riverside footpath and the dark corners under the two bridges show the fact that the

streams have been deserted by the locals. The streams now only serve the functions of large

sewage pipes and as a background for pictures; only at certain spots do tourists take the

stairs to get to the riverside and feed fish. The trace of stairs that once existed but is now

buried in concrete banks is also a reminder for people of something forgotten.

According to Norberg-Schulz, although the structures of a place changes, it doesn’t

mean the genius loci changes or disappears. “To protect and conserve the genius loci in fact

means to concretize its essence in ever new historical contexts.” (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p.

18) And in principle, the purpose of architecture is to uncover the meanings embedded in

the environment and be the “bridge” that connects humans and nature. But what is the

essence of Shiding Village? And what are the meanings hidden in the environment? What is

the identity of the village itself? From a tourist’s eye, the village does not speak for itself. It

has got what it takes to have a strong imageability, but have the local people noticed it? The

pleasure of touring relies heavily on visual observation. (Jakle, 1987, p. 8) It is difficult to

be satisfied when one likes a part of something, but hates and intentionally ignore its other

parts.

Shiding Village has always been a favorite spot for painters. Almost forty paintings of

Shiding Village can be found on-line, including some famous artists’, let alone the paintings

that don’t get put on-line. The scenario of a painter painting the vista of Shiding East Street

was even written in the script of a TV drama broadcast on the Taiwan Public Television

Service channel. An essay published in 1999 in the Liberty Times newspaper by a

Taiwanese painter Yang Shing-sheng (楊興生) expressed the pity of the scenery changes in

Shiding Village. In 1959, he was in his early twenties, going to Shiding for a festival held

once every five years in worship of Mazu. (媽祖) He was stunned by the view when he first

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laid eyes on the old Wan-shou Bridge2 ,and since then has painted the bridge many times.

According to his words, many painters went all the way to paint Wan-shou Bridge and the

traditional houses along its side. After the bridge was torn down, and more modern

buildings built, the original taste of Shiding for him was gone. And he noticed that painters

stopped going to Shiding. When he went back to Shiding in 1998, he couldn’t find an angle

that he wanted to draw, for the scenery had changed so much. Another well-known painter

had a similar experience in an occasional visit to Huang-di-dian Hiking Trail, as told in an

interview with the author. When the painter got off the bus, he was immediately taken with

what he saw and decided right away that he would come back for another visit with his

painting tools. Figure 3-4 was what he came up with.

2 In 1896 during the Japanese Colonial Period, Wan-shou Bridge was rebuilt by a Japanese engineer. The style

was in replication of Tokyo Showa Bridge; the piers were designed in a shape of a boat, connected in four

arches across Wu-tu Stream. But around 1980, the bridge was torn down and replaced with the concrete bridge

that we see today. (Office, 2001, p. 411)

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Chapter 4 Interviews

As previously mentioned, in Norberg-Schulz’s theory, orientation and identification are

two crucial elements for people to feel that they belong to a place. (Norberg-Schulz, 1980, p.

20) In this chapter, the author aims to find both orientation and identification among

Shiding Villagers through summarizing several interviews. The results might not be precise

and can only be referential, because they are derived from nine interviews that are all based

on the interviewees’ personal experiences. Another weakness is that the results might not

reflect the experiences of those that were not interviewed. However, there are some

common life experiences and similarities of spatial usages among people who live close to

each other that are worth noticing in the different people’s interviews.

Relph points out the three components that make up the identity of a place: physical

setting, activities and meaning. (Relph, 1976, p. 74) In Chapter 1, we have introduced the

geography, the industries and the architecture of Shiding Village, so in this chapter, the main

focuses are on activities and their meanings to the local people.

The interviewees’ ages are between 51 and 75 years old, with two people in their

seventies, two in their sixties, and five in their fifties. Brief introductions of the interviewees

are presented below, so readers can know the relationships between the interviewees and the

village. The interviewees’ ranges of age, where they live in the village, how long they have

stayed in the village, and where they usually go in the village are offered.

But before we move on to the interviewees’ introductions, there are some terms the

locals use for different parts of the village that readers need to know. (Table 4-1, Figure 4-1)

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Terms Used by

Locals (in

Taiwanese)

Meaning Exact Location

1 kue-á-thâu 街仔頭 the head of street the part of Shiding East Street closest to

the East

2 lāi-gu t-á 內月仔 ,

內挖仔3

a geographical curve The area close to Shiding Bridge. This

area also had another name used by

outsiders when the commercial activities

were most prosperous. It was

“Shiau-Nan-Jie ( 小南街 )”, literally

“Little South Street”, describing its

resemblance to the then biggest

commercial street of Northern Taiwan–

Di Hua Street.4

3 lāi-poo/ kuè-khe-á

內埔/過溪仔

the flat area inside of the

village/across the stream

This is where Ding-ge Road is now. For

villagers living on West Street, Ding-ge

Road is across the stream.

4 tiong-poo 中埔 the flat area in the middle

of the village

The part of West Street around Ji-shuen

Temple

5 kue-á-bué街仔尾 the end of the street The rest of Shiding West Street

6 guā-poo 外埔 the flat area outside of the

village

Outside of the village towards Taipei,

about 5 min’s drive.

Table 4-1 Local Terms of Different Areas in Shiding Village

3 Told by interviewee 6. The pronunciations of these two names sound very much the same in Taiwanese, but

the meanings of the Chinese characters are different. 4 Told by interviewee 6.

Figure 4-1 Map of Local Terms of Different Areas in Shiding Village.

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Interviewee 1: female, born in the 1950s, married into Shiding Village thirty-seven years

ago from a nearby village, also in Shiding District. Her husband migrated from Da-xi5 to

Shiding Village with his family when he was eighteen years old, working as a blacksmith,

still his current job. They live at kue-á-thâu, close to a coal mine across the river, on the east

end of East Street. She usually stays on East Street and goes to the head of West Street in

her daily life, for working, picking up keys to her work place from a household on West

Street, picking up her grandson from elementary school, buying vegetables or groceries

from different shops in the village. She likes to take a walk on the trail along Wu-tu Stream.

She only goes to West Street when necessary and seldom walks on Dan-lan Ancient Trail.

Interviewee 2: Male, born in the 1950s, runs a family-owned grocery store at lāi-gu t-á on

East Street. He used to be a political figure of Shiding Township and likes to help around

the whole district. He left Shiding in his twenties for a job in Taipei, and came back

twenty-five years ago. When he came back, he worked in the grocery store, sometimes

taking responsibility for purchasing stock from Taipei. He still works for a city councilor, so

he often goes out around the district on public matters. But when he comes back, he enjoys

drinking tea with friends in a tea shop on East Street. He sometimes takes a walk on the trail

along Wu-tu Stream, and rarely goes to West Street.

Interviewee 3: male, born in the 1940s, a retiree but operating small business now, selling

local products to tourists at a stand in front of his house. His family was in the coal mine

business, so after he completed military service, he worked as a coal miner consecutively

for twenty-three years. When he retired from coal mining, he worked as a security guard in

an elementary school in Shiding District for more than a decade. He was born in Shiding

Village, and has never left. He lives in the middle part of East Street close to a tourist

attraction—Stone House. He also enjoys walking on the trail along Wu-tu Stream.

5 大溪。A Township in Taoyuan County.

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Interviewee 4: female, born in the 1960s. Her family moved to Shiding Village when she

was two or three years old. Her father worked as a coal miner, and stopped around 1984

when a series of big coal mine disasters happened in Taiwan. Her mother took care of

children, and also washed clothes for other households to earn some money. The

interviewee married into Shenkeng (a 20-min drive from Shiding Village) in her twenties,

but came back occasionally. She moved back to reside in Shiding Village eight years ago.

She now works for the cleaning squad of Shiding District, and she takes a 5-min bus ride to

work every day. She is required to check her working spot twice a day, so she chooses to

stay up there until three or four o’clock in the afternoon, when she then takes a bus to come

back. When she comes back to the village, she stays on the streets, chatting with people, and

doing some grocery shopping. She lives at West Street’s kue-á-bué.

Interviewee 5: female, born in the 1960s, also lives at kue-á-bué of West Street. She was

born in Shiding Village. She worked in Taipei in her twenties but commuted back to Shiding

every day. She has been back living in Shiding Village for almost twenty years now. She

takes great interest in the arts of tea-drinking and flower-arranging, and wishes to promote

the uniqueness of the tea in Shiding as a tourism feature in her current post as a district

officer.

Interviewee 6: male, born in the 1950s. He lives in guā-poo, outside of Shiding Village in

the direction towards Taipei. He was inspired when he met Dr. Feuchwang and Dr. Wang for

during their studies of Shiding Village. He felt that local stories should be discovered,

studied, and told by local people, not just by people from outside. That was when he

decided to become a cultural worker and a tour guide for tourists coming to visit Shiding.

He left Shiding Village at the age of seventeen, working at different jobs, and came back to

reside two decades ago. Now he goes to the Village mostly to bring tour groups there and

get updated on statistics in the district office for the accuracy of his tour guide speech. He

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also works for the security squad situated on Shr-kang Road, close to Shiding Village. He

goes there almost every night to hang out with friends on the squad.

Interviewee 7: male, born in the 1960s. He was born at lāi-gu t-á on East Street. His family

started off selling tailored clothes but later changed to running a grocery shop. His father

started a truck company and had several truck drivers (they owned their own trucks),

transporting timber and coal out of the village, and in with daily supplies that the village

needed. To keep records of truck accidents, his father got a camera that was rare at that time.

He sometimes borrowed the camera and the flame of his passion for photography was

ignited. He moved to Taipei after elementary school and returned seventeen years ago to

reside in Shiding Village. But now he still commutes every day now to work as an

elementary school principal in New Taipei City.

Interviewee 8: male, born in the 1950s. He was born at kue-á-bué on West Street and still

lives there now. He left Shiding Villge to become an apprentice, learning electrical and

plumbing skills after graduating from junior high school. He returned after completing

military service at twenty-one years old, and has not left since.

Interviewee 9: male, born in the 1930s in Shiding Village, now lives at tiong-poo on West

Street. He has worked as the manager of Ji-shuen Temple for three years. He started

working in the coal mine after graduating from elementary school. When he reached fifteen

years old, he went out to be an apprentice making leather shoes, and returned after doing

military service. He then worked in coal mines, not only in Shiding, also in Shihlin (士林).

Though he was sometimes out working, he often returned to the village. Now when he is

not in the temple, he takes walks to East Street or goes hiking. He likes to sit under the old

trees along Wu-tu Stream to watch the stream and enjoy cool breezes with friends.

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4.1 Memories of the Village

These are the topics discussed in this section:

(1) The rising of East Street and the later housing reconstruction on both East and West

streets.

(2) The effect of bridge reconstructions and the building of Freeway No.5.

(3) Playing in the water.

(4) West Street.

(5) Coal miners.

(6) Communal activities.

(7) Others.

These topics are concluded from results of interviews, using the interview schedule (see

Appendix 2) in which the questions were designed according to the main concerns of this

thesis: collective and personal experiences in the village and the villagers’ reactions to

changes in physical settings. Collective memories are recounted here to remind readers of

the villagers’ social backgrounds; personal memories were added to provide details from

different perspectives of the village and all the things happened here. Personal memories

might also be the source of attachment. The villagers shared the same memories, such as

religious processions, the coal-mining era, tea-related activities, their close relationship to

the water, etc. These activities filled their time in childhood and/or as grown-ups, giving

them imprints of what local Shiding Villagers should possess that make these people

become what they are today —authentic Shiding Villagers.

4.1.1 The rising of East Street and later housing reconstruction on both streets.

On East Street, the houses close to the stream were called guā-king (外間), literally

the room on the outside. Some families built this house for storage, sometimes as pig pens.

But when the demand for housing rose, these spaces were transformed into places for

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people to live.6 But not all the rooms outside were built first—sometimes the second floors

of houses by the mountain extended over East Street, and then the outside rooms were built,

making the street tunnel-like.7 Interviewee 8 told us that the land by the stream didn’t

belong to anyone. So when the miners had no place to live, they simply built houses

stretching over the stream with timber cut down in the mountains or from recycled wood.

With other people’s help, the houses by the stream were quickly made suitable for living.

The spirit of constructing and maintaining the housing was in the daily lives of the forebears.

This is what Tuan meant by architectural awareness. (Tuan, 1977, p. 104) There was a

process of on-going decision-making, communication and learning. It was also a time to

commit one’s being to the creation of an ideal world through building. As Tuan points out, if

architecture is viewed as a language, it helps “to define and refine sensibility. It can sharpen

and enlarge consciousness.” (Tuan, 1977, p.107) The ways the Shiding Villagers built their

own houses revealed their views of the environment.

Most of the villagers felt that it was a pity to renovate or even reconstruct the

traditional houses on East Street and West Street. But the reasons for doing so were

apparent:

Most roofs were tile roofs. The tiles were only put on one another from head to tail

without any gluing substance. So after a typhoon came, people needed to fix the roofs.

(Husband of interview 1)

Reconstructing houses was because there were water leakages on the tile roofs. And it

was too costly to fix every time something broke. The easiest way was to build a new house.

(Interviewee 8)

Houses were reconstructed mainly in the 1970s and the 1980s, because the mud used

for joining the roof was falling off, and the wooden structures were too rotten to be used.

(Interviewee 5)

6 Told by Interviewee 7.

7 Told by the husband of interviewee 1.

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So it was inevitable that people pursued cheap and economical ways to sort out their

housing problems. But would it have been better if there had been some architectural codes

to restrict the height, colors, and form of the buildings at that time?

4.1.2 The influence of bridge reconstructions and the building of Freeway No.5.

The villagers’ attitudes toward the changes of public facilities are practical. The

changes brought conveniences and also some side-effects that they had both expected or

didn’t expect. To most villagers, personal affection toward the landscapes and the aesthetics

of facilities are at the bottom of their list, only good as topics for small talk lamenting.

4.1.2.1 Wan-shou Bridge.

Wan-shou Bridge was designed to imitate the form of Tokyo’s Showa Bridge in the

Japanese Colonial Period. Before the bridge, people walked down to the shore and on the

timbers set in the stream for crossing. After the bridge was completed, its elegant shape

attracted artists to capture its look, and the bridge seemed to become an icon of Shiding

Village. But the width of the bridge was too small for later cars to get to Shiding West Street.

Bags of tea could only be hung on poles, carried to load onto trucks parked by the bridge.8`

Interviewee 5 told a personal story connected to the reconstruction of the bridge.

I remembered well the reconstruction of Wan-shou Bridge. It was in the sixty-ninth year

of the Republic Era9, my father died in that year. His coffin had to be carried from the

make-shift bridge close to the elementary school and through the school gate to get back

home.

Some other people felt that it was a pity to tear down the old bridge but they couldn’t

do anything about it then. Nevertheless, it was also important to make a road that cars could

be driven on. Fondness for the old Wan-shou Bridge and the need for practicality exist

simultaneously in the locals’ minds.

4.1.2.2 Shiu-shan Bridge.

8 Told by interviewee 9.

9 1980.

- 83 -

This bridge was built in 1978, providing a very convenient shortcut to get to Ding-ge

Road without making a detour to East Street. Two interviewees mentioned when driving on

the street at lāi-gu t-á, the truck drivers needed to have good command of their vehicles,

otherwise they had to move backwards and forwards a few times to cross the bridge. And

some damage to the building near Shiding Bridge was perceivable. Interviewee seven’s

house was the first house across Shiding Bridge. The outside of the second floor was often

scratched by truck drivers that were not so good at driving. (Figure 4-2)

Most of the local people enjoyed the convenience Shiu-shen Bridge brought.

Interviewee 3 even felt that the bridge had always been there, but actually it was built when

he was about thirty-seven years old.

4.1.2.3 Freeway No.5.

The locals protested the building of Freeway No.5 because they feared that tourists

would not come to Shiding once they find much quicker ways to get to Yilan. What they

expected indeed did come true. Several interviewees said that there are fewer tourists now.

Another negative of the freeway was unexpected mentioned by one interview:

I feel the air has become worse since the building of Freeway No. 5. Occasionally I go

hiking at four or five o’clock in the morning. The air used to be really fresh and sweet when

you inhaled. But now I don’t feel this anymore. (Interviewee 9)

However, one interviewee expressed that they benefit from the highway because it is easy to

Figure 4-2 Scratch marks on the house of interviewee 2. (Chung)

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travel everywhere nowadays.

4.1.3 Playing in the water.

When the interviewees were children, all of them enjoyed their time playing in the

water. They all had their own favorite spots of enjoying water. They not only enjoyed the

natural water slides and plunging and diving in the pools, but they also enjoyed the natural

resources they could get from the river and irrigation ditches — shrimp, crabs, fish, even

coal! Some interviewees talked about their experiences in the water quite animatedly, eyes

sparkling and hands waving. But one interviewee who wasn’t born in the village doesn’t

have memories of playing in water like the others do. This echoes with two of Tuan’s

theories: that children sense time in ways different from adults. (Tuan, 1977, p.185) ; and

that the experience of growing up in a place can never be copied by someone who is

non-native. Tuan also believes that sense of time affects the formation of sense of place. So

these people from somewhere else sense this place differently from the natives. The tourists’

senses of Shiding must be much more different. Tourists and native people have very

different perspectives, even when they are in the same place at the same time. Hence it is

safe to say that the memory of playing in the water is the proof of being a native Shiding

Villager. And if they want to go back to the Shiding Village that they knew in childhood,

this quality —having tight bonds with water— must be valued.

Below is a map of all the former popular water-playing spots and other important

recreation areas to the children in the village. (Figure 4-3) There was a clear geographical

correlation between where the children lived and where they went play, except for some

who went everywhere.

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There was still lots to catch only about a decade ago. You didn’t have to buy seafood.

There were groupers, Taiwanese shoveljaw carps, and swamp eel10

. When there were many

of them, you could catch seven or eight “jin”11

of seafood a night. But later the river was

closed for fish protection, so I didn’t go down there that often. I took my daughter to catch

shrimp with a net in the summer, shrimp only breed in summer. We went from the middle of

East Street all the way to where the convenience store is, and harvested two or three jins12

a night. There were LOTS of small crabs at that time. You could see hundreds and

thousands of them crawling on the rocks of this river (Ben-shan Stream). There were also

lots of creatures that you could catch from the irrigation ditch. (Interviewee 3, East Street)

There were a lot of shrimp to catch in the river. Shrimp would bite your legs. You just

put your hand under the stones, and you could catch some. (Interviewee 9, West Street)

I played at Wu-tu Stream, and also on East Street. You can slide from Kue-á-thâu

Bridge (see Figure 4-1) and stop at the middle of East Street. We also played here down the

10

石斑、苦花及鱸鰻。 11

“Jin” is a unit for weight in Taiwan, commonly used on foods. A jin is about 0.6kg, so seven or eight jins is

about 4.2~4.8 kg. 12

1.2~1.8 kg.

Figure 4-3 The map of children’s play areas in the memories of interviewees.

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river close to our house. But we all knew to avoid the river outside of the tunnel….there are

some drops in the river. (Interviewee 6, outside of the village)

The parents told the children not to go “take a bath”13

. We called playing in the water

taking a bath. We played for at least two or three hours, sometimes four or five. So when

you came back, the parents would try scraping children’s skin to check. If something white

came off, it meant they had been “taking a bath”. They didn’t want children to play too

much in the water for fear of drowning….The water used to be deep. Everybody could swim

so we didn’t care about the depth that much. There was a pool with a big spiky rock inside. I

heard that when a child was too naughty, the parents would take the child there to be the

nominal son of the God of Big Rock.14

…After typhoons, some of the coal in the coal mine

would run off downstream. You had to step on the dirt in the water to loosen it up. Then you

put the dirt onto a sieve to get cinder15

. After drying it, you could either burn the cinder or

put it away to sell during Chinese New Year. Every household needed to bake pastries so

they needed extra cinder. (Interviewee 8, West Street)

The other hotspot was at the end of West Street, close to the entrance of Dan-lan

Ancient Trail. There was shrimp, freshwater minnow16

, crabs, clams and swamp eels17

in

the river and irrigation ditch. The natural resources were abundant, and the catches

became dishes on our dinner table. We also caught snakes. They were good for skin

diseases. (Interviewee 4, West Street)

I played in the pool in front of Dan-lan Art gallery. The water slide on East Street

wasn’t that much fun. (Interviewee 2, East Street)

I went to the shallow area to play in Wu-tu Stream. (Shiding Village Manager, West

Street)

Out of all the activities in the village, I had the most fun playing in the streams.

13

「去洗澡」。 14

給大石公做囝。 15

煤渣。 16

溪哥。 17

鱸鰻。

- 87 -

(Interviewee 9, West Street)

In the descriptions above we can not only tell that there were plenty of resources in the

streams with unimaginable numbers of shrimp and crabs; we also see the relations people

developed with water: coining a new phrase to refer to “playing in the water”, the religious

belief and respect to big rocks in the river, the knowledge they had about the river and

avoiding danger, and making money out of the free resources in the river.

There was a much-loved hot spot for playing in the water along West Street—the big

banyan trees. The trees were so big that their branches reached out to the middle of the

water. There was a big pool at the end of the branches, so the children would jump off the

branches to enjoy plunging into the water. Unfortunately some of the trees have been

chopped down, and the remaining ones have been trimmed. So the scene of children playing

around those banyan trees has disappeared, and there has been a change of attitude toward

water in the children of later generations. (Figure 4-4, 4-5)

Figure 4-4 Old banyan trees. (Chen, 1995)

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There was a row of big banyan trees on this side (West Street), but there were no trees

on the other side, only terraced fields. The river banks were covered with ginger lilies. We

would swim in the river, but I didn’t dare jump off the trees. But boys did, like my younger

brother. We usually came off from rocks into the river. (Interviewee 5)

I stood on the branch of one of the big banyan trees and asked my friends to take

pictures of me. (Husband of interviewee 1)

Some of the old trees on West Street fell down or were chopped down. The biggest one

was in front of the temple of the local God of land. The dirt on the shore was washed away

when floods came, and that was why the tree fell down. Another tree was chopped down

because of the widening of the road. (Interviewee 5)

Over the years, the human-water relationship changed a lot. So the author tried to find

out the possible causes of it.

In the 1970s there were still lots of people playing in the water, but in the 1980s, the

numbers got smaller. I think it is because of the changes in education, and the growing

popularity of computers. So children don’t go out and play that much now….There are more

middle-sized stones in the river now because of Freeway No. 5. The stones were dug out

from construction work and weren’t shipped out. So they got washed off into the river.

Figure 4-5 Old banyan trees. (2012)

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(Interviewee 6)

The human-water relationship changed. We used to go out and play in the water. But

later the river was closed for fish protection. Some people released carps, which ate out

other fish in the river. And there was pollution, especially the household wastewater with

chemical particles that is directly drained into the river, and the garbage thrown into the

river by tourists. Those are reasons why people aren’t so close to the water right now.

(Interviewee 4)

The stream now is dirty and shallow….Shrimp have disappeared, I don’t know why…

(Interviewee 9)

We can see there are several reasons why people have stopped playing in the water.

First the natural environment of the streams changed. The streams became shallow and

rocky, and children don’t want to swim in shallow pools. They loved catching creatures.

There may be fewer creatures now, but even if there are still a lot, people are not allowed to

catch them under the fish protection law. In addition, the streams are polluted. They look

clear, and sometimes people go down and play in the water. But if you look closer, garbage

is stuck in small spaces between the stones. Not to mention the mark of drainage water and

the moss growing within the contour of the marks that tourists can see every few steps on

the footpaths along the streams. So the pulling power of attracting children to get into the

water no longer exists— the fun of diving, swimming and plunging, and food-catching.

Moreover, the pollution in the streams reduces people’s willingness to enjoy soaking in the

water.

4.1.4 West Street.

Compared to East Street, activities on West Street relate more to tea, probably because

of traditions passed down through generations. The author came across some locals

tea-sorting one day. It took place in a semi-outdoor garage, not under the arcade in front of

houses like it used to be. There was a fluorescent light hanging from the roof, and two

sieves with piles of tea leaves were placed under the light. Ladies grabbed plastic stools and

- 90 -

sat around the sieves, talking while their hands were busily working, children playing

alongside them.

The arcades of the stone houses on West Street played an important part in people’s

memories. From the interviews of people on West Street, the topics are categorized into two

themes:

(1) Tiong-poo and kue-á-bué

(2) Children’s activities in nature.

4.1.4.1 Tiong-poo and Kue-á-bué

Ting-poo and kue-á-bué are where houses are most dense on West Street. People

usually stayed in this area. So we can see a lot of activities going on in the street.

Lots of traditional houses on West Street had joint arcades, on both sides of the street.

The floor under the arcade was covered with wood, so children always made a loud noise

running in the arcade. There was a stone mill under the arcades of No.35, 37 and 39.

(Figure 3-6) It was the only one on West Street. When Chinese New Year came, people

formed a line in front of that house, bringing rice to grind for making pastries at home.

Children took the role of grinding while the adults added the mixture of rice and water.

(Interviewee 8)

We also helped sorting tea. After you sorted your proportion, the manager gave you a

small rectangular token to exchange money for. After I got the money, I went to the ice

factory to buy lollipops. I really loved eating those! (Interviewee 4)

The houses on the mountainside had elevated wooden floors. You could open the

wooden floor. I think it was for preventing tea leaves getting damp when we put them on the

floor….They used to bake tea in this house (pointing to a photo, it is a house at kue-á-bué) I

really miss the old times! I would jump rope in the arcade of this house. People also sat and

sorted tea under the arcade here and the arcade close to Ji-shuen Temple, and I was one of

them….There was a stone arch door at the entrance just near Ji-shuen Temple plaza, the

door was connected to the arcades on both sides (from West Street No.3 to No.6). The arch

- 91 -

door was very narrow. So we would jokingly say that you might not drive through the door

safely even if you had a driver’s license. (Interviewee 5)

There were four bell fruite trees on the plaza of Ji-shuen Temple and two toog trees18

(Figure 1-12, Figure 4-6) in front of the temple. The baby leaves of toog trees is a kind of

Chinese herb, so people coming to burn incense would climb up a ladder to get some if they

needed them….Pigs from nearby mountain areas were slaughtered here because this was

the only slaughter house in this area. An officer from district office would go to the

slaughter house to stamp on the pigs. You needed to register to kill pigs at that time. Pigs

were slaughtered in the very early morning. If times were busy, like in the New Year, the

slaughtering started at midnight. We got used to the sound. (Shiding Village Manager)

When the butcher killed pigs at the slaughter house, the pig oil would go off into the

gutter. My brothers collected some of it up to bring home, sometimes the butcher just gave it

to them before it was drained in the gutter. (Interviewee 4)

Every time there was a typhoon, there would be a flood on West Street. So people

would go and stay overnight in the district office or the elementary school classrooms.

Someone would order breakfast from East Street, and the kids were so happy! (Interviewee 4

and interviewee 9)

We can see from the descriptions above the daily scenes on West Street: sorting tea,

children running around, people grinding rice at New Year, slaughtering pigs, floods when

18

茄苳樹。

Figure 4-6 Trees on the plaza of Ji-shuen Temple.

- 92 -

typhoons came. Following are some activities which commonly happened at the end of

West Street or in the mountains.

4.1.4.2 Children’s activities in nature.

Already mentioned were the big old banyan trees at kue-á-bué and the pool at the

entrance of Dan-lan Ancient Trail as children’s hotspots for playing in the water. Next are

activities related to the bamboo forest, irrigation ditch and orchards in the mountains.

At the end of West Street there was a bamboo forest, and you could walk along the

irrigation ditch19

. The shade in the bamboo forest made walking in it a pleasant

experience… We didn’t go further onto Dan-lan Ancient Trail because there were lots of

snakes deep into the trail. (Interviewee 4)

The reason why we didn’t play anywhere close to Huang-chi-gung20

was that the

grown-ups told us not to get too close there, there were ghosts. People who maintained the

irrigation ditches would worship Huang-chi-gung on special occasions, but the villagers

didn’t worship him. Only travellers worshipped him, when Huang-chi-gung became a

guardian for the safety of commuters. (Interviewee 6)

The irrigation ditch started from where the slaughter house was. The water level

wasn’t high enough for the water to drain in the ditch. So there was a dam close to the shore

for trapping water until the water level was high enough to flow into the ditch in front of the

theater. We would walk on the ditch. At that time no one walked on Dan-lan Ancient Trail,

because after the Japanese Colonial Period, this road (County Road 106) was already good

for cars to travel on. So people stopped using the Ancient Trail…I only walked on the whole

Ancient Trail when I was in my first year of junior high.… Just outside of the village there is

a flat area on the curve of the road. There was a timber factory there. The boss was nice to

19

The locals called irrigation ditch “tsùn-kóo(圳股)”. According to locals, the irrigation ditch was

approximately 1 meter wide, and the footpath for people to walk on was only 40 or 50 cm. 20

黃耆公. It later became the name of a part of Dan-lan Ancient Trail. (Figure 1-5) According to one

interviewee, this man was an anonymous corpse floating on the river, and people helped and set up a small

alter on the Ancient Trail for travellers to worship. According to another interviewee, the man was a dealer,

trying to catch up with his schedule and took risk to travel at night. There were still bandits at that time. And

the bandits robbed him and killed him. Since nobody knew who he was, the villagers set up an altar for him on

the trail.

- 93 -

the children of our family, he would let us bring some wood back for cooking. So we kids

went in pairs and carried the long piece of wood on our shoulders, one end on the shoulder

of the person at the front, and the other end on the other person at the back. We crossed at

the turn of the river, and walked past the bamboo forest. The whistling of bamboo leaves

was scary. (Interviewee 5)

When we were kids, even if we cried for some allowance, our parents couldn’t give us

any because they were too poor. So we needed to figure out our own ways of making money.

We would go and pick manyflower glorybower21

to sell to buyers in the village. We went to

the ice factory to bring some ice to sell to people hiking Huang-di-dian. We went into the

mountains to find some small tree branches or dried bamboo for cooking…There was a

factory manufacturing wood fibers used in fruit baskets for protecting fruit. We took tree

bark and tree trunk piths they discarded and dried them on the street. Every household

needed to dry their tree bark and pith on the street…We knew where to pick guavas and bell

fruits by the river. And we stole oranges and tangerines from the orchards, older kids and

younger kids together. The farmer was standing there watching. When we were there, the

farmer let his dog loose to scare us off. Older kids knew how to cross the river, and when

the dog threatened to bite, they left the young ones that didn’t know how to cross crying at

the shore…When we stole the fruit, we didn’t just pick one or two, we picked a whole gunny

sack. We hid the sack in the tall grass by the river and took a few to school every day. Our

classmate asked, “Sell them to me, I’ll give you half a dollar for ten.” So I put the

tangerines in my satchel and took them to school. (Interviewee 8)

There were some guava trees near the theater. I ate them until I was almost sick. There

were a lot on both shores. (Interviewee 9)

In this section it is clear that the children in the past were basically living in nature.

They knew all the places they could go and were forbidden to go. They needed to find

resources for the family and knew very well where the hidden treasures were in which spots

21

大菁。A plant from which dye material is made.

- 94 -

in the mountains. They truly had such a good sense of orientation of the village that it would

not be surprising that they would be able to find their way home if someone blindfolded

their eyes and dumped them in the mountains. They knew this place like the back of their

hands. They knew every little change in this small kingdom of theirs, through touching,

seeing, and sensing. Small things that happened here, like “the trough of dust under the

swing and bare earth packed firm by human feet” (Tuan, 1977, p.143) as Tuan described,

must be imprinted on the hearts of children that were born and raised in the village. The full

gunny sack of oranges hidden in the grass (interviewee 9), playing jump rope in the arcade

(interviewee 5), the joy of eating lollipops exchanged for the labor of sorting tea

(interviewee 4), the sound of children running across the arcade, the anticipation of the

coming New Year floating in the exciting atmosphere around the people standing in line

with rice in their hands, the plunging into the water from the tall branches of old banyan

trees, all of these are intimate experiences strongly connected to the place and they most

certainly became “seeds of lasting sentiment for place.” (Ibid.)

4.1.5 Coal miners.

Coal-mining activities ceased around the mid-1980s because the cost of digging locally

was too high. Imported coal was cheaper than digging domestically.22

In addition, there

were a series of catastrophic coal mine disasters23

in Taiwan, so people were aware of the

safety issues of working in coal mines. At that time, many coal miners retired.24

All of our

interviewees went through the era when there were still coal miners walking up and down

the streets. The eldest two interviewees themselves worked in coal mines for at least two

decades. Some other interviewees had families working in coal mines. They all provided

22

Told by interviewee 3. 23

Three major coal mine disasters happened in Taiwan in 1984. On June 20th at Hai-Shan Coal Mine (海山煤

礦) in Tucheng (土城), a slipping light rail cart hit a high voltage power supply and filled the air with carbon

monoxide. The death toll of this incident was seventy-two. Twenty days later, another incident at Mei-Shan

Coal Mine (煤山煤礦) in Ruifang (瑞芳) caused one hundred and three people’s deaths. On December 5th

, the

death toll at Hai-Shan Coal Mine No.1 (海山一坑煤礦) in Sanxia (三峽) was ninety-three. This series of

disasters became the prelude of the end of the coal-mining era in Taiwan. 24

Told by interviewee 4, and confirmed with interviewee 3.

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their own perspectives of that era.

There were two or three shifts in one day for coal miners to work. Each shift was about

five to six hours—if the quantity was enough on that day, they could leave early. After work,

the miners then headed to noodle shops to eat and drink. After they were done eating, they

went to the theater on West Street. The salary per day was thirty dollars for a coal miner,

and it took five dollars just to get into the theater…Children without money sneaked in from

a hole, probably a drain, in the building. The theater was often full. At first they played

movies, and when the audience had enough of movies, the owner invited glove puppet shows.

When the audience couldn’t stand glove puppet shows anymore, the owner got strippers to

sing and dance. There were no whore houses on the street, people only watched strippers.

The movies lasted about two to three hours, so there was one session in the afternoon,

starting around two or three o’clock, and the other session started at seven o’clock and

ended at nine. (Interviewee 3)

My grandfather owned the theater. He would ask people to play movies or ask

theatrical troupes to perform. There were Chinese opera groups, glove puppet troupes and

singing and dancing groups. Yang Li-hua and Li Tian-lu25

were here too…I loved watching

movies best. I went to watch movies when I was very young. I went into the theater with my

grandfather for free, but the ticket collector would stare at me. I can still remember it

clearly… At the theater gate, there was a vendor selling sugar cane. And sweets and cookies

were sold inside the theater. My mom once took the job of selling sweets and cookies in the

theater. (Interviewee 5)

At four or five o’clock in the afternoon the poster from the theater was displayed on a

scooter with music playing, driven around the village. That was the hour when people got

off from work or from school so there were a lot of people on the street. (Interviewee 8)

We (miners) worked three or four hours a day, starting at seven in the morning, and

25

楊麗花 and 李天祿。Both are legendary figures in Taiwan in their own realms—Chinese opera and glove

puppetry.

- 96 -

finishing at one or two o’clock in the afternoon. We would gamble and drink at someone’s

home. Life at that time was boring so we gambled. (Interviewee 9)

You didn’t have to pay to bathe in bathhouses. Children went there too. There was a

heater by the street, when you saw the fire go out, you just grabbed some coal aside and

threw it in. It was OK if you weren’t a miner, you could still take a bath there. There was no

manager. Women probably went there late at night when there were no people. (Interviewee

4 said, no, we didn’t dare to go.) (Interviewee 8)

So, after work, miners went to the theater, ate out, drank, gambled, and bathed in the

bathhouses. Following are some personal memories related to the mining era.

This space next to where the blacksmiths worked used to be a noodle shop run by my

mother-in-law. She also sold some traditional bread and pastries. At four or five o’clock in

the morning, the truck drivers who came to load coal onto their trucks would come and eat

noodles as their breakfast… The coal yard was right across the river. The coal was dropped

from the light rail train half way up the mountain across the river. (Note: there was a coal

mine close to kue-á-thâu) (Figure 4-7) (Interviewee 1)

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Among all the noodle shops, I liked the one next to Stone House the most. (Figure 4-8)

They used better and more solid ingredients than others. You can’t get that kind of food

nowadays. The old lady of that noodle shop also loaded steamed stuffed buns and a kind of

red and sticky pastry—mī-ku26

on a carrying pole and walked to three coal mines around

this area to sell to the miners. She didn’t sell any drinks, the miners drank water.

(Interviewee 3)

My father was really nice to me. When he worked as a coal miner, he earned more

money than people who worked in other professions. He would take me to the grocery store

(now East Street No. 59) (Figure 4-8) to get a box of candy that cost a little more than 10

dollars. That was a real luxury at that time. (Interviewee 4)

26

麵龜。

Figure 4-7 The noodle shop run by interviewee one’s mother-in-law.

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From these personal anecdotes, it is easy to picture life at that time: the noodle shop at

kue-á-thâu busy serving truck drivers their first meal of the day, an old lady carrying some

food, walking to different coal mines doing business with miners, and the love interviewee

four’s father showed through a box of candy, bought with the money he had earned as a coal

miner. These memories were made only in that period. These occupations do not exist now.

The noodle shop at kue-á-thâu became the blacksmith’s living room a long time ago. When

the coal-mining era ended, people couldn’t interact with each other using their old identities.

These moments of life may have seemed ordinary and mundane at that time, but once they

became memories, they are irreversible, unique, and irreplaceable. These stories took place

in the same village which is now trotted around by merry tourists ignorant of its history.

4.1.6 Collective activities.

People in the village gathered for different reasons. One was for the feasts after the

once-every-five-years procession of Mazu. There were occasionally weddings and funerals

that needed extra help for different jobs. The most common reason for gathering was

probably to help each other fix houses.

Yes, we had feasts for the procession of Mazu. Every household had a feast at home for

friends coming with the procession. There were some beggars when Mazu came in the

Figure 4-8 The grocery shop and noodle shop in the memories of interviewee four and three.

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village. They stood where we worshipped Mazu, wearing shabby clothes and blood-stained

bandages on their arms. They didn’t force you to give them a lot. They’d take anything, ten

dollars, twenty dollars, pork or some food. After you gave something to one, there was

another, as if they belonged to some scam group. They came early in the morning and took

what they’d gathered back home the same day. They didn’t sleep in the village. (Interviewee

8)

I actually saw beggars. They came along with religious processions from somewhere

else. They would go door to door, juggling with stones, asking people for money.

(Interviewee 4)

Everybody helped out in organizing weddings or funerals. The feasts after the rituals

were usually held in the house. If there wasn’t enough space, the tables were put on the

street. Three or four people who were good at cooking (one of them was from the old noodle

shop at lāi-guat-á on East Street) counted the number of people, then bought and cooked

the dishes. At funerals, villagers helped to carry the coffin and invited parade formation27

to

perform. (Interviewee 3)

Everybody helped out with funerals. You didn’t have to pay for someone else to do this

for you. To show gratitude to people who helped, all you needed to do was prepare a feast

for them. If your family had a strong man, and my family had one, too, they’d be assigned to

carry the coffin. We helped each other out! People even helped dig the hole for the

coffin…If someone wanted to build a house by the stream on East Street, they built the

house with timber by themselves. It was nothing to the people at that time. If something

needed to be done in your house, people would go and help in your house; if something

needed to be done in their house, again people would go and help in their house. The

wooden second floor of my house was built together with the neighbour next door…We also

helped each other fix tile roofs after typhoons. (Interviewee 8)

From the descriptions above we can see some activities that required the entire

27

陣頭。A festive performance of parade commonly seen in religious events.

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community to get involved. Those were the times the village identity was strengthened, and

the villagers developed commitment to it. They most certainly would have felt that they

belonged to the place and were known by the people around them. (Relph, 1976, p.38) At

some point, they became the place.

4.1.7 Others.

Some interesting descriptions and comments were made in interviews which do not

neatly fit into a particular category. Thus, this section provides some more details of the

village.

4.1.7.1 Slide by the shore.

In Chen’s study (2010), he mentioned the slide from the platform in the elementary

school to Wu-tu Stream. The first time he saw it, he was surprised to see a recreational

facility combining environment, work and play the way like this one did. In his picture, a

student carrying a bucket was standing with one foot on the slide and the other on the stairs

beside the slide. (Figure 4-9) He was obviously playing on the slide on his way to fulfil a

duty by the stream. “These repeated life experiences must be in the memories of the old

Shiding Villagers. Even an intruder as me, I can still remember that day when these naughty

children were playing on the slide and in the schoolyard, and the sounds of their energetic

playing.” (Chen, 2010 p. 116) After many years, the slide was knocked down, but the

staircase was still there when Chen visited. He was sorry that the combination of the stream,

the bank and the slide lost its meaning when the slide was taken away. When the slide didn’t

exist anymore, children didn’t have a reason to gather there at that spot. The meaning of the

environment couldn’t be carried out by the slide, and more importantly, the activities that

happened around the slide disappeared with the slide. The spirit of the small space was lost

when the slide was taken out of the context. Some of our interviewees remembered the slide.

All the boys in sixth grade were responsible for dumping feces in the stream. They all

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needed to use the staircase to get down to the stream.28

At first, children would slide on it,

but the terrazzo surface broke off and the surface got rough. If children still slid on it, their

trousers would be torn.29

For a while, a barrier was set up to prevent children from sliding

for safety reasons. So children had fewer chances to use it. When it was time to reinforce

the banks of the stream, the slide was permanently removed (but the staircase was still

there),30

as was the scene of children sliding towards the stream.

4.1.7.2 The intimacy between people and their houses.

As mentioned before, the villagers’ living conditions are greatly confined to the natural

landscapes. In both the houses by the river and by the mountain, bathrooms and kitchens are

at the rear of the house. (Figure 4-10) The reason for such an arrangement could not be

confirmed, but in the houses by the river, the arrangement has functional meaning.

Interviewee 8 told us that the water from the kitchen drain, bathroom and pig pen can easily

be washed down into the river. In addition, owning to the advantage of being close to the

river, these spaces in the houses by the river are often bright (Figure 4-11), probably with

better ventilation compared to the bathrooms and kitchens by the mountains where the

28

Interviewee 2. 29

interviewee 9. 30

From the interview of the government officer working in the construction department of Shiding District

Office at that time.

Figure 4-9 Staircase slide by the bank of the stream. (Chen, 1985)

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temperature is low and the space dark and damp. In the past, all the families raised their

own pigs and ducks in the house, close to the bathroom. So the air in the house was mixed

with the smell of pigs, but nobody minded because every house was like that.31

Being in the houses by the river, the feeling of being close to water is vividly felt.

When there is a sudden rain upstream, the waterline of Beng-shan Stream rises.

After I moved here, I was so scared as the first typhoon came, the ferocious water made

loud noises under our window. (Interviewee 1)

Interviewee one’s husband, who moved to where they live almost fifty years ago, says

that when he travels and stays in hotels, it is too quiet, and he can’t sleep well.

31

Told by interviewee 8.

Figure 4-10 Sketch of the plan of the house.

Figure 4-11 The bathroom above the water. (2014)

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Above are two examples of the experiences the villagers have with the space in their

houses. There surely are more of these kinds of stories that mark the intimate relationship

and personal experiences between people and their surroundings.

4.1.7.3 Proximity to home.

The preference for spaces is related to their proximity to home. This situation can be

observed in the childhoods and the present lives of the interviewees. Readers probably took

notice of some East Street villagers who seldom go to West Street. They take walks on the

trail of Wu-tu Stream instead of walking all the way to Dan-lan Ancient Trail. Interviewee 2,

living at lāi-gu t-á, only went to the pool in front of Dan-lan Art Gallery in his childhood to

play. The village manager, who lives just across Wan-shou Bridge on West Street went one

hundred meters upstream in Wu-tu Stream to play. Interviewee 5, living at kue-á-bué on

West Street, spoke about where she wouldn’t go when she was a child.

We wouldn’t go near kue-á-thâu by ourselves. We only went there with grown-ups. I felt

it was very far to walk up there, but I would go with my father. If I was by myself, I only

walked to where the vegetable shop is to do some shopping for the family. But usually I only

hung around near the noodle shop at the entrance of the arcade on East Street. Besides, it

was very dark inside the arcade, so children didn’t have the courage to walk inside it.

(Interviewee 5)

For West Street villagers, they have to go to East Street to buy groceries, but for East

Street villagers, there is almost no reason for them to go to West Street. So everyone has

their own map of living in Shiding Village in their mind that is almost like marking the

margin of their territories.

4.2 Summary

In this chapter we have introduced nine interviewees and their brief background

information. Eight of them were born in Shiding Village, and at some time in their lives, left

the village to study or work, and returned to live in the village. More than six topics were

discussed.

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The section entitled “The rising of East Street and later housing reconstruction”

describes the sequence of how the houses on East Street were built, and that the houses

were built by ordinary people, not by professionals. This is a good example of what Tuan

called “architectural awareness.” (Tuan, 1977, p.104) The builders made all the decisions of

building from scratch so they knew how to take care of the house by themselves afterwards.

We also learnt the situation the villagers faced when they had to reconstruct the traditional

houses.

The perspectives expressed in “The influence of bridge reconstructions and the

building of Freeway No.5”, show clear differences between the villagers and the outsiders.

Bridges are products of needs. Just as it should be torn down when it doesn’t fulfil the needs

today. From the perspective of outsider’s, the new Wan-shou and Shiding Bridges, the

Shiu-shan Bridge and the gigantic pillars of Freeway No.5 all take away the small town feel

of the village. They represent the need for speed and convenience. We understand the

convenience they bring to local people. Trucks traveling to Yilan don’t have to make a

detour, crossing the narrow Shiding Bridge. They can whizz past Shiu-shan Bridge without

stopping. The cars of villagers can be driven across the new Wan-shou Bridge to West Street.

The only thing that reminds them of the past is probably the size of the street, which is not

much bigger than a car, forcing them to drive slowly and carefully. The scale of the street

might remind them of the much more friendly interactions which happened on the street in

the past. The pillars of Freeway No.5 not only draw tourists’ attention from the village, but

imply the inferior situation of Shiding in the hierarchy of the country’s tourism resource

allocation plan.

Spending time in the water played an important role in the minds of the local children

born in the 1950s and 1960s. They didn’t just go and enjoy the water; they also brought

some food back home to alleviate the burdens of their hard-working parents. We can

imagine that West Street must have been very lively then: ladies, old and young, sitting in

the arcades, sorting tea, miners walking from East Street to the theater for movies, children

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plunging into the water from the old banyan trees in front of the theater or from big rocks,

swimming, catching fish, crabs or clams in the stream. Passing kue-á-bué, the fragrance of

ginger lilies floated in the air, water gurgled in the ditch, the bamboo gentle swayed, and

children carrying firewood toward home, picked guavas and played near the entrance of

Dan-lan Ancient Trail. Hearing the locals’ childhood stories, we can tell that they certainly

have the orientation needed to be true dwellers of Shiding Village. The thriving of the coal

mining era was short, only twenty to thirty years, but that era became one of the collective

memories of the locals above fifty years old who might have worked in the coal mines

themselves, or had family members who did. The coalmining era, like the communal

activities in the village, are all elements of forming the identity of the village. The social

situation that the locals have been through, the changing of the environment, the personal

experiences they had in the village, all became part of their lives, making them who they are

today. Those are the interactive influences between a place and the people living in it. Once

they feel they truly have the orientation and identification of the village, they dwell in this

place. That is when they truly know the place in its essence. That is how a place has its

genius loci.

The interviewees in this thesis were intentionally selected to have equal distributions in

gender (though this was not quite achieved, with the ratio of female to male being 3 to 6),

socio-economic status and where they live in the village. This arrangement was to prevent

bias in preferences of a specific group, interfering with the small-scale compilation of

senses of place of people in the village. But still there is a big flaw, which is all the

interviewees are above 50 years ago, so younger people’s senses of place are lost in the final

outcome. This creates a nostalgic inclination in the collective sense of place found in the

research. The existence of reminiscing in the collective sense of place does not represent the

whole village, but is only part of the sense of place of the villagers. Likewise, the

preferences revealed in the author’s interpretation of genius loci of the village should be

considered as part of all the opinions given about the village.

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Chapter 5 Conclusion

The purpose of this study is to provide possible directions that the tourism of Shiding

Village can take. It is out of the fear that the assets that speak for the beauty of the village

might be undervalued and wither without being given the recognition and the protection

they deserve. Being called “an old street” in the tourism of Taiwan makes the area easy to

stand out from other tourist spots. But this distinct feature is at the same time good and bad

for the development of that area. Being an old street area speaks for the substantiality, in

both quantity and quality, of the heritage. And this precious asset, without careful

consideration in its development, can easily be utilized to earn quick money, without proper

protection and restrictions to its using. Arbitrary deprivation of the asset might accelerate its

debilitation. At the same time, the act of negligence shows no respect to the history and the

people living in and around it. In light of this, theories of place are introduced to help find a

suitable plan for the touristic development of Shiding Village.

The thesis starts off with the background knowledge of the village, and pays extra

attention to the industries, architecture and social aspects of the past, which are the

important sources of the sense of place of the village. Then the theories of genius loci, place,

experiences in places, and modern tourism declare the stance this thesis takes. In chapter 3,

the exact framework that Norberg-Schulz used to explain the genius loci in three cities is

adopted to interpret the genius loci of Shiding Village. Chapter 4 is about the realization of

Relph’s and Tuan’s theories and the attempt to find the proof of genius loci’s existence in

the interviews. In conclusion of this chapter, some suggestions to the tourism of the village

are made.

This thesis began as a preliminary study to see the feasibility of applying the theories

of place to the tourism of the village. Results show that it is possible to gather the memories

of the people, read the village as a palimpsest, as Conzen calls it, and identify the villagers’

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individual images of the village in their minds. But without researching into the status quo

of the tourism of the village, the advantages and disadvantages the village has for

developing tourism, the analysis of tourists’ preferences, it makes the results of this study

seemingly useless and ideal.

Although more analytical information should be retrieved to know what type of

tourism is most suitable for Shiding Village, the author strongly suggests that the villagers

consider the theories used in this thesis, incorporating the core concepts into the design and

planning principles to protect both tangible and intangible valuable assets in the village.

Identities of the village, experiences and memories of the villagers are urged to be included

in drafting the principles of design. Mistakes were made in past conservation planning

policies and interventions when the physical fabric of buildings became the main focus,

instead of the people that are closely related with the form and history of place. (Jivén and

Larkham, 2003, p.74)

The international committee dedicated to the conservation of cultural heritage,

ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites), signed the “Québec Declaration:

on the preservation of the spirit of place” at its 16th

general assembly in 2008. This action

officially set the tone for its will to safeguard and promote the preservation of spirit of place

in heritage sites in the future. In the declaration, several topics are brought up: recognition

of what spirit of place consists of, the threats it faces (several, including mass tourism and

urban development) and how to protect it from them, as well as acknowledgement that the

local communities are in the best position to “be intimately associated in all endeavors to

preserve and transmit the spirit of place.” (“Québec Declaration”, 2008)

Considering community development, more and more Taiwanese communities are

shifting their attention back to their uniqueness. Local people take up the responsibilities in

deciding what they want their communities to look like and to function, instead of letting

outsiders to decide. For Shiding Villagers, community development and tourism planning

are almost inseparable. It is recommended that the locals should meet regularly to decide

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cultural affairs in the village.32

If more and more small gems in Taiwan, like Shiding

Village, are aware of their values in cultural landscapes and are willing to know how to

cherish themselves, it would be a bless for travellers who understand to appreciate places in

their own looks.

32

There used to be a cultural and historical studio formed by local people. But the group seemed to exist only temporarily to execute a public facility improvement plan.

- 109 -

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Appendixes

Appendix 1 Maps of Shiding Village in 1960~80 and 2014

The completion of the map is according to the childhood memories of the interviewees.

Concerning their ages, the shops on the map existed probably between 1960 to 1980. (This

map is reproduced from the e-map of the on-line open source by National Land Surveying

and Mapping Center.)

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Appendix 2 Glossary

In the English Column, the italicized and underlined words are Taiwanese, and others

are all Chinese. For Taiwanese words, I used the on-line Taiwanese common words

dictionary constructed by the Ministry of Education (Retrieved on August 22, 2014, from

http://twblg.dict.edu.tw/holodict_new/default.jsp). For Chinese words, I used mandarin

phonetic symbols II.

English Chinese

àm-kue-á 暗街仔

An-chi County 安溪縣

Ben-shan Stream 崩山溪

Bi-jia-lian-feng 筆架連峰

Chiuan-shan Bau 拳山堡

Da-Hsin Bus 大新巴士

Dan-lan Ancient Trail 淡蘭古道

Da-xi 大溪

Ding-ge Road 碇格路

Fei-tsui Reservoir 翡翠水庫

Feng-tz-lin 楓子林

Gong-guan Street 公館街

guā-king 外間

guā-poo 外埔

Heart of Shiding Bridge 石碇之心橋

Hsiu-shan Bridge 秀山橋

Huang Chung-shu 黃重殊

Huang-chi-gung 黃耆公

Huang-di-dian 皇帝殿

Jingmei River 景美溪

Ji-shuen Temple 集順廟

kue-á-bué 街仔尾

kue-á-thâu 街仔頭

kuè-khe-á 過溪仔

lāi-gu t-á 內月仔,內挖仔

lāi-poo 內埔

Leng-fan Keng 冷飯坑

Li Tian-lu 李天祿

Lian Heng 連橫

Lin Shian-chuan 林先傳

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Little Di-hua Street 小迪化街

Liu Ming-chuan 劉銘傳

Lukang 鹿港

Mazu 媽祖

Meng-chia 艋舺

mī-ku 麵龜

Muzha 木柵

Niau-tzuei-jian 鳥嘴尖

Niou-du Tan 牛渡潭

Peng-peng Ling 碰碰嶺

Shenkeng 深坑

Shiding 石碇

Shihlin 士林

Shr-ba-jian 石霸尖

Shr-kang Road 石崁路

tiong-poo 中埔

Wan-shou Bridge 萬壽橋

Wu-lai 烏來

Wu-tu Stream 烏塗溪

Yang Li-hua 楊麗花

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Appendix 3 Interview Schedule

Hi:

I am Yu-chu, Chen, currently studying in the third grade of the Graduate School of

Interior Design in Chung Yuan Christian University, supervised by Professor Chie-peng,

Chen.

The topic of my thesis that I wish to be finishing in July is: A Preliminary Study

Applying the Theory of Genius Loci on Tourism: A Case Study of Shiding Village, New

Taipei City, Taiwan.

The theories of genius loci and place are based on the deep understanding of natural

and man-made environments of a place, and completed by collective and personal

memories of the local people. For this reason, the author seeks interviewees who are willing

to talk about their collective and personal experiences with spaces in the village and also the

events and experiences that generate a sense of attachment to the place in their minds.

The focus of this interview will be on each individual’s understanding and emotions

with the place.

The interview will be recorded (only when the interviewee gives their consent) and is

estimated to last within one hour.

Types of Questions Questions

General Questions

1. How old are you?

2. Can you describe your relationship to the village? Were you born

here? How long have you lived here? Did you leave the village and

stay at some other places? If so, for how long?

3. What is your impression of the village? (If you are not born native,

did your impression change over time?)

4. Which places in the village are your favorite and least favorite?

Why?

People vs.

Activities

5. What kinds of activities are held in the village?

Examples:

Procession of gods and goddesses and the feast afterwards.

sports day of the school

election

feasts after weddings and funerals

air-raid drill

village assembly

What kind of activities do you usually participate? Where did it take

place? What were you doing?

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6. Where do you usually go in the village? What do you do in those

places?

Examples:

pick up children from the school

eat at an eatery

buy vegetables

go to the public health center

go to the riverside

walk on Dan-lan Ancient Trail

buy tofu at Wang’s Tofu

Activities vs.

Environment

7. In the spaces listed below, what kind of experiences/memories do

you have?

Plaza of Ji-shuen Temple

Wan-shou Bridge

Shiding West Street

Dan-lan Ancient Trail

Beng-shan Stream

Heart of Shiding Plaza (old Shiding Bridge)

Hsiu-shan Bridge

Ding-ge Road

Shiding East Street

Wu-tu Stream

police station

Dan-lan Art Gallery (old branch of a political party)

theater

slaughter house

church

coal mine close to East Street

old piers (in Beng-shan Stream and Wu-tu Stream)

coal yard and light rail track

the slide connecting school and Wu-tu Stream

8. Regarding to the previous question, how do you feel when the

spaces change?

Note:

1939 demolition of light rail track on Shr-kang Road and Shiding East

Road

1978 Hsiu-shan Bridge completed

1983 Reconstruction of Wan-shou Bridge

1989 Reconstruction of Ji-shuen Temple

2004 Freeway No.5 completed

- 123 -

9. Has the house you currently live in been renovated? If so, do you

like the old house or the new house?

10. How is it different in the living experiences in the current house

and the houses elsewhere?

11. Are you close to the nature? Do you go hiking or swimming? Why

or why not?

12. Do you feel that the streams account for an important part of the

village? Why or why not?

13. Do you feel changes in the relation between human and the water?

If yes, what do you think are the possible causes?

People vs.

Environment

14. Which space in the village means most to you?

15. What is the reason that you feel that Shiding Village is your home?

16. Do you like living in the village? Would you move out if you had

the chance?

A Preliminary Study Applying the Theory of Genius Loci on Tourism: A Case Study of Shiding Village,...

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