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Help needed to save history of military villages

People advocating preservation of the culture of military villages called on the government yesterday to appropriate funds to record the living memories of these communities, which are due to be demolished by 2009.

Military villages, better known as juan cun (眷村), are residential compounds set up to house soldiers and family members brought to Taiwan with dictator Chiang Kai-shek's (蔣介石) Nationalist army in 1949.

To save the juan cun, the group has long pushed for passage of an amendment to the Statute Governing Reconstruction of Old Military Dependents' Villages (國軍老舊眷村改建條例) to preserve about 15, or one-tenth, of the remaining villages as historical sites.

At one time, there were as many as 880 military residential compounds housing more than 100,000 families. More than 80 percent of these have been either demolished or replaced with modern housing since the government passed the statute in 1996.

The amendment suggests the government use an existing fund earmarked for rebuilding veteran villages to help pay for the conservation of 15 sites, which have yet to be selected.

But what worries the group the most is that even the preservation of these communities will not "preserve" what a juan cun used to be like if no action is taken to collect the stories of the people who lived in these villages over the past 60 years, Wang Chih-hsin (王繼新), a veteran village chairman of Sanchung's Air Force First Village (空軍三重一村), said at a press conference yesterday.

"Juan cun are a precious part of Taiwan's modern history. It would be tragic and a great loss to the country if we lose these memories," he said.

Former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Lee Wen-chung (李文忠) and DPP Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) joined the group in urging the government to provide funding before the amendment is passed by the legislature.

"Even if the amendment clears the legislature by this year, the budget for preservation won't be available until next year. However, the culture in the communities is already in danger of fading away," said Huang Luo-fei (黃洛斐), chief executive of the Association of Mainlander Taiwanese.

Tasks that need to be done include collecting items used by juan cun residents and training researchers and filmmakers to record the residents' stories, he said.
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