Spending time in cemeteries is not something that the average foreigner tends to put on their Taiwan to-do list, but for Oliver Streiter, it is a must.
Since 2007, the German citizen has visited 45,000 tombs across more than 500 graveyards nationwide — including on Penghu and Kinmen — compiling a collection of 180,000 photographs of the sites along the way.
One could be forgiven for wondering if Streiter is just a big fan of morbid scenery, but his interest in cemeteries is much more academic than that: Streiter is an associate professor at the National University of Kaohsiung’s department of Western languages and literature who studies tombs, in particular their inscriptions, for clues on what information they hold about a place’s culture, history and people.
Using GPS-equipped cameras, Streiter photographs the cemeteries he visits so he can analyze the writing on the tombs, the offerings laid there, the family names and dates, as well as other details.
“A tomb inscription not only identifies the dead, but also indicates the person’s social identity, the language of the place, its customs and its craftsmanship,” said Streiter, who holds a doctorate in linguistics from Saarland University in Germany.
He documents not only the tombs in a graveyard, but also nearby structures such as temples, churches, columbaria and crematoriums.
Streiter, who has lived in Taiwan for 10 years, said his interest in grave markers was ignited many years ago when he became intrigued by the inscription on a tomb at a public cemetery in Anping, Greater Tainan.
“That’s when I started to study tombs in Taiwan and I’m still immensely interested in them,” he said. “They provide valuable information about how immigrants came to Taiwan and settled here.”
A close examination of the epitaphs on older tombstones around Taiwan yields information such as the cultural identity and origins of the deceased’s family, or the name of the emperor who was in power at the time, Streiter said.
For instance, during the period of Japanese colonization, tomb inscriptions would include the word “Taisho” if Emperor Taisho was reigning in Japan at the time of the person’s death, or “Showa” if Emperor Hirohito was the one in charge, Streiter said.
When the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) forces relocated from China to Taiwan, the Japanese emperors’ names appear to have been removed from many gravestones on the island, he added.
From then on, the Japanese-style column tombstone rapidly fell out of use, although it is still employed in Tainan and Penghu, Streiter said.
As time went by, the practice of expressing loyalty to the Japanese emperor in a tombstone epitaph was phased out and the deceased’s place of birth was included instead, he added.
Another interesting cultural marker is the type of offering placed at a grave, said Streiter, who has published several academic papers about tombs in Taiwan.
“If you see betel nuts and millet wine at the tomb of a veteran from China, this means he was married to an indigenous woman,” he said.
However, Streiter said he thinks that tombstones do not get enough recognition as a rich part of the nation’s cultural heritage. He said it is regrettable that so many cemeteries have been leveled by public authorities in recent years.
“Government authorities should treasure the tombs and handle them carefully, as they are a great cultural heritage,” he said.
As for ghosts, Streiter said he has nothing to fear from them because he always pays the utmost respect to the people whose graves he visits.
“Every time I visit and take pictures of a grave, I first solemnly greet the dead and ask for pardon for troubling him or her,” he said.
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