When activist and author Chung Tie-min (鍾鐵民) passed away last month at the age of 70, he left behind the legacy of a life spent championing the environment.
Chung is best known as the son of Hakka writer Chung Li-ho (鍾理和), my uncle, and as leader of a group of activists who opposed the building of the Meinong Reservoir (美濃水庫). He published eight books, including novels and collected essays, and was a founding member of the group that became the Chung Li-ho Literary Foundation (鍾理和文教基金會). In 1983, the foundation opened the Chung Li-ho Memorial Hall (鍾理和紀念館) in Meinong Township (美濃), Kaohsiung — the first civilian-founded memorial hall dedicated to literary writers in Taiwan.
The hall is two stories high, with a pagoda-style roof, and built on land provided by Chung Li-ho’s family. It holds manuscripts, belongings and pictures he left behind. It also stores the manuscripts of other Taiwanese writers, including Wu Cho-liu (吳濁流), author of The Orphan of Asia (亞細亞的孤兒), and Cheng Ching-wen (鄭清文). A garden near the building features statues of literary figures and stones inscribed with poetry.
Photo: Taipei Times
A service for Chung Tie-min will be held at 9am today at the memorial hall, and the second floor has been refitted for an exhibition covering his life.
Chung Tie-min was born in 1941 with tuberculous spondylitis, a kind of tuberculosis that affected the thoracic portion of his spine. The family did not have the funds to treat his condition until he was 29, a delay that left him with a hunched back.
Chung died from heart failure caused by excess fluids that accumulated in his pleura, the fluid-filled space that surrounds the lungs. Symptoms began in July when he experienced great pain, though at the time it was thought to be a complication from surgery to correct his hunched back at the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in May last year. He was hospitalized for a heart attack on Aug. 8, and he passed away on Aug. 22.
Photo courtesy of the Chung Li-ho Literary Foundation
CHUNG THE ACTIVIST
The Meinong Reservoir, which was originally planned by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration in 1992 to provide a water supply for the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部工業科學園區) and to better manage water resources in the area, was opposed by some Meinong residents on the grounds of safety and the belief that it would be detrimental to the environment.
The Meinong residents were afraid that if a natural disaster occurred, a resulting flood could wipe out the entire town of Meinong, and environmentalists protested that the building of the reservoir would have irreparably damaged the Yellow Butterfly Valley (黃蝶翠谷), home to Catopsilia butterflies and several species of endangered animals.
In 1993, Chung Tie-min presented the residents’ objections to the dam outside the Legislative Yuan, drawing national attention to the issue. The government eventually abandoned the project amid public outcry.
Tseng Kuei-hi (曾貴海), Chung Tie-min’s personal physician as well as friend, told the Taipei Times last month that he should be remembered for his contribution to literature and the maintenance of the memorial hall, rather than for his role in opposing the reservoir.
Because Chung Tie-min lived next to the hall and was the direct descendant of Chung Li-ho, he was an ideal director for the facility, managing day-to-day business and taking it upon himself to meet writers or other figures of renown when they visited.
“This is a great loss, both to the running of the memorial hall and to the literary circle,” Tseng said. “It will be difficult to find and train anyone who will be able to do the job as well as Chung Tie-min did.”
Author Lee Chiao (李喬), renowned for his play Winter Night (寒夜) and a friend of Chung Tie-min, told the Taipei Times that the activist’s role as leader in opposing the Meinong Reservoir was not prompted by political ambition.
“His motivation resulted from him inheriting his father’s literary spirit,” Lee said. “That spirit, while pastoral in genre, was not the same as pastoral writing from the West.”
Lee said that while Western pastoral literature was influenced by socialism and often dealt with class struggle, the majority of Chung Li-ho’s writings were simply a reflection of his fight with poverty and natural disasters. The elder Chung had been a farmer until pulmonary tuberculosis forced him to stay in bed.
Lee said that Chung Li-ho’s writing reflected the gentleness of farmers, and brought out “a Taiwan-centric ideology” (台灣意識), as he was one of the first writers to focus on Taiwan during a time when most others explored subject matter from a China-based point of view.
According to Lee, Chung Tie-min inherited both his father’s gentleness and his pride in Taiwan, capturing the changes of the country’s rural areas since the early 1970s.
Passing away in his home in Meinong’s Jian Shan (尖山), Chung Tie-min left behind something that is not political or simply literary, but exceeds both. Lee described it as “a passion for the land itself,” something that will always remain despite his death.
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