History from a personal perspective

Eighty years ago, Chang Keng-kun (張庚崑) was recruited to join the construction team building Taiwan's first highway to Hualian.

One day during work, he took a photo of the construction site.

He never imagined that, after so many years, he would be able to take his yellowed old photo and stand in front of television cameras to talk about a history that few remember.

Half a century ago, Yang Liang-kui (楊良貴) was a member of a squad spraying DDT in a Tainan village. Extinguishing the malaria mosquitoes in that village remains the proudest thing in his life.

These precious images of living history will all be broadcast as a documentary with the English title Scanning Taiwan on Public TV Service starting today.

Made by veteran photographer and documentarian Chang Chao-tang (張照堂), the series will recollect Taiwanese society over eight episodes. "We want to present a living history of the common people ... a visual ethnography. Common people's life stories are usually very interesting," said Chang. "We preferred to take such an approach in outlining Taiwan's history of the past century."

The Chinese title for the series is Recollecting the Flavor of the Taiwan Century, (台灣世紀回味) which may better explain the program's intent.

An episode titled "Taiwan's Daughters," tells the story of a midwife, an occupation popular in the 1940s that has since all but disappeared. The episode will explore Taiwan's first school of midwifery and reveal many images of midwife clinics that have never been seen before.

It will also reintroduce a name forgotten long ago, the Golden Horse Ladies (金馬小姐) of the 1960s.

Having nothing to do with the film festival of the same name, these girls were rather ticket clerks and tour guides on the Golden Horse buses, which shuttled the highways throughout Taiwan.

It's one of Chang's favorite episodes.

"You can really see the strength in these women," Chang said. "Midwives, women laborers and the Golden Horse ladies; their jobs may not have been glamorous, but they expressed a quality which showed they could bear difficulties and work hard."

An episode entitled "Taiwan Magic Pill" is a rather sad story recounting society's relationship with disease, dating back some 60 years.

Lin was a kitchen assistant in a Japanese restaurant with the dream of becoming a chef. His life was changed one day after finding a small red spot on his face. Although the ravages of leprosy were tamed long ago, Lin remains hospitalized in a leper house in Taipei County.

In presenting Taiwan's history from a more personal perspective, Chang intentionally avoided inserting the recollections and opinions of scholars, as widely seen in more journalistic documentaries, even when giving background information for a particular story.

"This became difficult for us. So instead we used large amounts of archive film from the now defunct Taiwan Film Studio (台影製片廠)," said Chang, who has helmed several award-winning series such as King Boat and the Old House (古厝與王船) and Faces of the Century (世紀容顏).

A photographer himself, Chang also made use of his own experience while reviewing collections of old photos. The beginning of the series is, in fact, taken entirely from old photo albums.

"We collected those albums from local cultural administrations and then called people up to ask `are you the one in the picture?'" Chang said.