Tu Yao-shun (杜耀順), 53, is full of mixed emotions. He doesn’t want to appear ungrateful to the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation (慈濟基金會), the charity that has provided him and his family with a new home after they lost theirs to Typhoon Morakot.
The storm struck one year ago today, causing catastrophic floods and landslides across southern Taiwan that killed more than 700 people.
Tu and everyone in his family escaped unhurt. But their loss remains bitter.
“It’s not such a happy feeling,” says Tu, sitting in the living room of his new 32 ping (105m2) house in Kaohsiung County, which he now shares with an extended family of 15 persons — his wife, a son, six daughters, three sons-in-law and four grandchildren, with another on the way.
The Tus, who are Bunun Aboriginals (布農族), are accustomed to having more space. Before Morakot, they ran a
200 ping (661m2) guesthouse and tourist farm located on a scenic 10-hectare riverside property in Fuxing Village (復興村), Taoyuan Township (桃源鄉), in the mountains of Kaohsiung County.
Tu’s 27-year-old daughter, Tu Hsiao-huan (杜曉嬛), pulled out a stack of photographs showing what they had lost: land that had been in the family for four generations on which sat a charming guesthouse with intricate rock patterns surrounding the doors and windows, and a garden shaded by tall, leafy trees. The Tus had spent 15 years planning their business, which along with a cold drinks stand saw them earning more than NT$100,000 a month after they opened in 2004, and had built the house themselves.
Now it’s all gone. All of their possessions, save for the clothes on their backs, were washed away by Morakot’s rains, which flooded their house and much of their farmland, turning all of it into a rocky riverbed. The photographs were given to the Tus by friends and
past guests.
Tu Yao-shun says it wasn’t an easy decision to move to Tzu Chi’s housing project in Shanlin Township (杉林鄉), dubbed the “Kaohsiung Shanlin Tzu Chi Great Love Village” (高雄杉林慈濟大愛園區), where his family is allowed to stay permanently. Until they moved there in June, they had been living in Kaohsiung City, working at a night market, but found it difficult to keep up with the rent.
“We want to rely on ourselves,” he said. “But we had to be practical, we had to take refuge here.”
The Tus are among the 10,000 people moving into permanent housing built by NGOs and charity groups on land provided by the central government. Free housing is being offered to Typhoon Morakot victims who lost their homes, as well as residents living in mountain areas that the government considers to be at risk of landslides or other natural disasters.
Two of the biggest projects are now underway. World Vision Taiwan is building around 500 homes at Majia Farms (瑪家農場) in Pingtung County, which will house about 2,500 people and are slated for completion this November.
The Shanlin Great Love Village, where the Tus live, is the largest housing area for the storm victims. Most of its 750 residences have already been filled and it will house around 3,200 people in total, with room for expansion in the future.
GREAT LOVE VILLAGE
To the thousands of storm survivors moving in from mountain areas, Shanlin Great Love Village is a significant change of environment.
The community, which spans 59 hectares, is located on flatland and looks like a modern suburban development.
The houses all sport the same ash-gray exterior, which seems to suit Tzu Chi’s Buddhist aesthetic, and are arranged in long, orderly rows. The streets are spacious and free of traffic — it looks safe for kids. Within the grounds, there are two churches and an auditorium.
Even though most of the houses are occupied, the neighborhood felt empty, almost like a ghost town, when I visited on a hot afternoon last month.
Trees had been freshly planted, and children’s bicycles were scattered about. Several families had already done up
their gardens.
Chiu Shih-yi (邱師義), a 53-year-old Bunun musician, decided to move there in February after government inspectors declared his mountain home in Taoyuan Township (桃源鄉) a high-risk area prone to landslides.
He said it took a month to adjust to Shanlin Great Love Village, with its lack of tall trees and a different view of the mountains. But he says the living conditions are worth it.
“To tell the truth, our homes on the mountain were not this nice,” he said.
Tzu Chi spent between NT$2 million and NT$3 million on each of the houses, which are made of lightweight steel structures and designed to withstand high winds and earthquakes.
“We adopted the same approach that they use for skyscrapers to build these houses,” said Tzu Chi representative Chung Yi-jui (鍾易叡).
But for all of the attention to detail and despite its reputation as a highly organized and efficient aid organization, Tzu Chi has recently been the subject of criticism from Aboriginal groups and scholars.
One group of Aboriginal rights activists in Taipei accused Tzu Chi of engaging in inappropriate self-promotion by hosting visitors’ tours at the Shanlin Great Love Village, according to reports in Chinese-language media earlier this week. Tzu Chi responded by saying the residents welcomed visitors.
The most nagging criticism comes from a group representing Kaohsiung County’s Siaolin Village (小林村), which suffered the worst damage from Typhoon Morakot — 500 residents died after massive mudslides triggered by the storm’s heavy rains buried most of the village.
Tzu Chi is accused of ignoring the villagers’ wishes.
The 300 or so surviving villagers have relocated to two places. Some moved to Wulipu Village (五里埔村), near their old home, where permanent housing is being built by the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China.
Others are moving to Shanlin Township, where they were offered homes in Tzu Chi’s Shanlin Great Love Village. Around 30 families accepted the offer, and about 100 villagers want to live in Shanlin Township, but not at the Great Love Village.
“From the beginning, we never wanted to live in the kind of places that Tzu Chi was building,” said 37-year-old Hsu Pao-yin (徐報寅) of the Siaolin Village Reconstruction Group (小林村重建會).
The problem with Tzu Chi, Hsu said, is that it did not offer incoming residents a say in the design of their new housing
and community.
“There was no room for discussion. None at all. They completely did not consider the [Morakot] victims’ own ideas and their local culture,” Hsu said.
Siaolin residents moving to Wulipu, on the other hand, were satisfied with their consultations with the Red Cross, he said.
Hsu says that Siaolin villagers’ biggest wish is to recreate a community that resembles their old home. For example, the villagers want to use concrete instead of the “high-tech” building materials used by Tzu Chi. “[Using concrete] gives us more of a sense of safety and more of a feeling of home,” he said.
Kaohsiung County government has “promised” to resolve the matter by helping Siaolin Villagers in Shanlin find another location to rebuild, but no definite timetable has been set, says Hsu.
But a larger problem that needs to be addressed is the “mentality” of the central government and NGOs, said Lin Wan-i
(林萬億) a sociology professor at
National Taiwan University, who studies
community organizations and worked
with survivors of 1999’s 921 Earthquake
in Taipei County.
Lin says the reconstruction effort has largely been carried out from a “Han Chinese point of view,” and ignores the diverse needs of Taiwan’s Aboriginal tribes. The Siaolin villagers, who are Pingpu Aboriginals, a group not officially recognized by the government as a tribe, are a case in point, Lin said.
“When you build a house, you have to talk with [the people that are going to live there], and ask them, ‘What kind of place do you need?’” Lin said. “Why didn’t they discuss with the Aboriginals what kind of place they wanted? They have to be able to participate. They have to be able to communicate their expectations.”
NGOS AND GOVERNMENT
In response to Lin and the Siaolin villagers’ criticisms, Chung Yi-jui, the Tzu Chi representative, says that all prospective residents were invited to preliminary meetings with the government and NGOs to discuss their needs prior to construction last year.
But Lin says the problems boil down to a flawed model whereby the government “dominates the reconstruction process” by mandating that the work be carried out by NGOs.
In turn, he says, NGOs like World Vision and Tzu Chi, which are accountable to their donors, are under pressure “to show results.”
“So, in building houses — the government and the big NGOs — they used their own ideas to make decisions. They didn’t necessarily consider what locals were really thinking,” Lin said.
The government defends its practice of working with NGOs and aid groups, saying that it wanted to move quickly on building permanent housing.
This is one reason why the design of the housing was mainly left up to NGOs, according to Chang Cheng-wen (章正文), an official at the Morakot Post-Disaster Reconstruction Council (行政院莫拉克颱風災後重建推動委員會), the officially appointed body tasked with overseeing the recovery effort. He acknowledged that the process might have been “too fast.”
“At the time, we were unsure of who the future [residents of the permanent housing] were, whether they were Aboriginal or Han Chinese,” he told the Taipei Times.
Chang says the government also wanted to avoid problems similar to the reconstruction process after the 921 Earthquake, when several Aboriginal tribes had trouble obtaining loans to rebuild their homes.
The government intends to “change its methods” with ongoing housing projects, said Chang, including one in Taitung County where it “hopes to better accommodate Aboriginal needs.”
In Taitung and Pingtung Counties, World Vision has largely avoided controversy with its housing projects.
One reason could be architect Hsieh Ying-chun (謝英俊), who was commissioned by World Vision to build permanent and temporary housing for storm victims.
Hsieh and his team, Atelier-3, specialize in housing for the poor, particularly in rural areas struck by natural disasters.
He is best known for his work in the aftermath of the 921 Earthquake, when he helped the Thao (邵族) tribe, Taiwan’s smallest Aboriginal group, rebuild its village at Sun Moon Lake. He has also worked in rural China, most notably with a Qiang tribal village in the aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake of 2008.
Hsieh originally set out to create housing that was low-cost, easy to assemble and safe. His houses for World Vision in Taitung and Pingtung cost between NT$750,000 and NT$1.5 million each and are designed to withstand earthquakes and adverse weather, and were built using local materials,
whenever possible.
But Hsieh’s projects also stress collaboration and local participation. He prefers to hire community residents to build their own houses and help each other with the construction work.
And to a certain extent, future residents choose what materials to use. For example, one Paiwan Aboriginal village is keeping to tradition by using stone slabs for the walls of their future homes at World Vision’s housing project at Majia Farms in Pingtung County.
Hsieh also has some loyal collaborators, among them Kao Chun-kuei (高春貴), a 42-year-old Thao villager from Sun Moon Lake who has worked with Hsieh since the architect helped him rebuild his home after the 921 Earthquake. Kao now oversees the on-site construction of the 500 homes at Majia Farms.
He is also a devotee of Hsieh’s work model, saying “if it’s possible, I’ll go wherever he goes.”
Hsieh’s houses have a simple, quaint appearance with their long slanted roofs, but they also vary in appearance from village to village. Most have wood paneling on the outside, with some painted in colors associated with Aboriginal tribes.
Ling Yu-chia (凌瑜妗) lives in a temporary housing project in Taitung County’s Jinfong Township (金峰鄉) built by Hsieh, and says her community is “very satisfied.” The 37-year-old is among some 100 families in the area waiting for permanent housing organized by World Vision.
Ling says her fellow residents are appreciative of World Vision’s willingness to listen to residents’ wishes regarding the construction of their future homes.
She says while she likes Hsieh’s design, some of her fellow villagers want to pursue other options for permanent housing. World Vision has been listening carefully to their opinions, Ling said.
And for Ling, whose guesthouse was destroyed by Typhoon Morakot, World Vision is already providing something that’s just as important as housing: job opportunities. She now works for the group’s community center for children and the elderly, and says that a program is underway to help farmers rebuild and switch to organic farming.
Jobs are something that Chung
Yi-jui, the Tzu Chi representative, feels that critics of the charity’s reconstruction effort and the media
are not giving due attention.
“I feel that there are some experts in Taipei who should come down and have contact with disaster victims,” he said.
“[The storm victims] are working hard every day for their livelihood, but the outside world is not reporting this.”
He points to the Tu family as an example. Typhoon Morakot spared a few hectares of their property, which they have salvaged to create an organic farm for jelly fig fruit, used to make the ubiquitous summer treat aiyu jelly (愛玉).
The Tus started selling aiyu jelly on their front porch at the Shanlin Great Love Village last month. Tu Hsiao-huan says business is not quite steady yet — so far they’ve been making around NT$5,000 a week.
Others in the neighborhood have also set up makeshift food and drink stands, and Tzu Chi volunteers and Shanlin Great Love Village’s community center have tried to help boost business by directing visitors to their houses.Tzu Chi has also opened up its activity centers in cities across Taiwan
to Great Love Village residents to promote their goods, such as specialty foods
and handicrafts.
Though the government and aid organizations have launched jobs programs, other potential problems loom on the horizon for Morakot survivors, including the issue of ownership rights.
Those that accept permanent housing own their new houses but not the land on which they sit, which still belongs to the government. And the “owners” cannot sell their houses; they are only allowed to pass them on within their families.
Then there’s the murky set of government regulations regarding the storm victims’ existing property. For example, if they accept permanent housing from the NGOs and the government, they give up their right to reside on their old land. However, they retain ownership rights and can farm the land.
For now, the Tus are relieved to have settled into a home and are anxious to see their organic jelly fig business grow.
“We can accept this,” Tu Yao-shun said of the Shanlin Great Love Village. “We’re a little more at ease now.”
From the front porch, next to his drink stand, he pointed to the freshly planted trees lining the street.
“Once these trees grow bigger, then it will feel like home,” he said.
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