Sat, Jul 14, 2001 page11

• Trying to keep the wheels spinning in Yingge

  Despite the good intentions of planners, the construction of a special tourist street and a museum dedicated to the town's specialty ceramics industry has proved a mixed blessing for Yingge

  • By Gavin Phipps / STAFF REPORTER
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  Ten years ago the pottery-based economy of the town of Yingge (鶯歌) hit rock bottom. Many of the town's original wood and red brick dwellings, where ceramics craftsmen had plied their trade for generations were in disrepair and the traffic congestion and exhaust-filled air of the town had dragged tourism to an all-time low.

  The central government was then called upon to devise ways to prevent the nation's leading ceramics-manufacturing town from receding unnoticed into history. The Tourism Bureau declared the town a national cultural site and set about promoting Yingge as a must-see for local and foreign tourists alike. At the same time, the Yingge township and Taipei County governments began looking into ways to develop the town as a tourist attraction while preserving its unique character.

  

  Few stores label which wares are locally manufactured and which are imported.

  PHOTO: GAVIN PHIPPS, TAIPEI TIMES

  Located at the southernmost tip of Taipei County, Yingge put itself on the map in 1805 when huge clay deposits were discovered in the surrounding hillsides. The town's economy gradually shifted from agriculture to clay mining and ceramics over the next 100 years. By the 1940s, Yingge had become the center of the island's ceramics manufacturing industry, with its goods being exported around the world.

  

  For shops on Old Pottery Street, the redesign of the tourist zone has been a boon for business.

  PHOTO: GAVIN PHIPPS, TAIPEI TIMES

  A new chapter in Yingge's development opened with the completion of a pedestrians-only zone called Old Pottery Street (陶瓷老街) in April, 1999, and with the opening of the town's showpiece Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum (陶瓷博物館) seven months later. It looked as if Yingge had turned a corner and good times were ahead. But contrary to the lofty predictions of planners, a whole new set of problems emerged.

  Incomplete planning

  

  Lu Rong-ho struggles to sell his wares now that visitors pass his store on their way to Yingge's tourist area.

  PHOTO: GAVIN PHIPPS, TAIPEI TIMES

  Completion of the tourist infrastructure projects and its attendant increase in visitors to the town hasn't pleased all of Yingge's ceramics makers, particularly those who weren't on the map of the redrawn pedestrian's-only zone.

  

  Yingge is a good place to pick up reproductions of common folk figures.

  PHOTO: GAVIN PHIPPS, TAIPEI TIMES

  Craftsman Lu Rong-ho (呂榮和) owns a store on Yingge's Chungshan Road, one of the town's busiest and most congested thoroughfares. According to him, customers avoid his shop because of the increase in the number of visitors and the traffic congestion.

  The artist, who moved to Yingge five years ago, used to make over NT$50,000 on an average day. More recently, however, his business has sunk to about NT$20,000 on a good day.

  

  Many stores in Yingge are stocked with cheap imported ceramic works.

  PHOTO: GAVIN PHIPPS, TAIPEI TIMES

  "Look outside my store on weekends and there'll be cars double- and even triple-parked. Visitors don't come to my store. They head straight for the nice traffic-free environment of the pottery street."

  Lu does not begrudge people's choice to visit the pottery street, but resents what he perceives as a lack of a thorough plan to include businesses not in the pedestrians-only zone and in particular the lack of parking facilities.

  "It's incredible. The [pedestrians-only] street and museum were meant to improve business at the ceramics stores in Yingge, but the way nobody appears to have remembered to build car parks to deal with the predicted influx of visitors is hard to believe."

  At present there are only three car parks in Yingge, none capable of holding more than 100 automobiles.

  Tony Hsu (許元和), mayor of Yingge, is aware of the storeowners' grievances. By year's end the local government plans to raise the number of car parks in Yingge to 11. But Hsu concedes that even the new car parks won't be enough to accommodate the growing number of visitors, who increasingly arrive by car. The town's council also has plans to mount a seemingly quixotic campaign to persuade visitors to use public transportation when traveling to Yingge.

  "At present I'd say about 60 percent of the visitors to Yingge come by train. We'd like to see this percentage increase. We'll be opening a new train station at the end of the lunar year and new car parking facilities are being looked into," Hsu said. "We understand that some storeowners are losing business because of the state of the town, but it's going to cost a lot of money and take a lot of time to do what needs to be done before everyone is satisfied."

  According to Hsu, there are plans to extend Taipei's Mass Rapid Transit system as far as Yingge by 2010. But members of the local pottery community hope to see major changes in Yingge's horrible traffic situation long before then.

  Winners and losers

  On Old Pottery Street, up the road from Lu's store, the reaction to the changes is drastically different.

  "Since the street was completed my business has boomed. A few years ago I'd get maybe 50 customers on a good day. Now I get over 100 on any given day," explained Shen Tien-si (沈天賜), a potter and storeowner whose family has plied the same trade in Yingge for over 100 years.

  "With business as it is, I certainly have no complaints."

  Shen says the grievances of people like Lu are misplaced, and that any drop in sales is more likely due to the products on offer.

  "The traffic has always been awful in the town, so to blame their economic woes on these conditions is stupid. It's more a question of economics rather than anything else. If they lowered their prices and sold the type of goods that are fashionable, then they'd probably sell more wares and attract more visitors," Shen said.

  But following the market's whim has sparked bitter debate over the intrusion of crass commercial ceramics squeezing out local crafts. According to several local ceramics makers, traditional Yingge pottery is being pushed off shelves to make room for cheaper imported ceramics. Such products, they say, ensure an easy profit, but do nothing for Yingge's tradition in ceramics.

  "It's a travesty," said Lin Teng-an (林登安), a potter and owner of a store adjacent to the town's behemoth ceramics museum. "The [pedestrians-only] street was built to keep Yingge's ceramics alive, and not to support mass-market products. The frightening thing is that these products sell. They're cheaper than locally produced ones."

  Ceramics from China with Mickey Mouse or Pooh Bear designs now occupy the same shelf space as finely crafted local pieces in many of Old Pottery Street's stores. In others, imported goods outnumber locally produced ones, and more often than not, there are no labels to inform customers as to a work's origin.

  "Over the past few years the number of stores has increased but the number of factories and craftsmen has decreased. To fill the void, storeowners have taken to importing cheap ceramics and passing them off as locally produced works," Lin said. "It is going to destroy the credibility of local craftsmen and storeowners."

  Many of the storeowners, whose shelves are stocked with Chinese-manufactured gaudy ceramic reproductions of historical idols and cartoon characters declined to comment on the tensions that have arisen in the town. One elderly storekeeper, however, was happy to shed some light on why he now feels the need to stock imported ceramics and why he feels those opposed to such products lack economic sense.

  "I'd say that about 80 percent of the stuff in my store is locally produced and the other 20 percent is imported from China," said T. K. Chuang (莊定國). "Of course I'd like to stock more local goods, but they just don't sell. Even though my store is located on the tourist street it doesn't guarantee sales. I'd say that roughly 75 percent of the people who come in here buy something. But when they do, it's usually just a cheap item and an imported one at that."

  According to Chuang, his sales have increased since the opening of the pedestrian thoroughfare. Unfortunately, however, a large majority of these sales are of ceramics manufactured in a Chinese factory and not by the hands of Yinnge potters.
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