Eighty years ago, Chang Keng-kun (
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.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF PUBLIC TV
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 (
The Chinese title for the series is Recollecting the Flavor of the Taiwan Century, (
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 (
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 (
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.
"It's been quite an experience for us to roam through the past 100 years," he said.
Scanning Taiwan begins today on Public TV Service at 8pm.
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