Lee Tseng-chang (李增昌), a 95-year-old photographer and chronicler of the history of Hsinchu County’s Jhudong Township (竹東), is soon to publish the country’s first photography book in the Hailu (海陸) dialect of the Hakka language.
The book titled Child Laborer, Hsinchu Glass Co., Jhudong, and Lee Tseng-chang (少年工．新玻．竹東．李增昌), consists of 400 images taken by Lee, as well as essays on the history of the township’s Hakka community, Lee’s coauthor, Ku Shao-chi (古少騏), said on Friday.
The book received funding under the Ministry of Culture’s program to promote books written in local languages spoken in Taiwan that are not Mandarin.
Photo: Liao Hsueh-ju, Taipei Times
Lee’s photography captures the history of Jhudong and the daily life of its residents, and some of his work has seen print thanks to the Hakka Affairs Council and the Hsinchu County Cultural Affairs Bureau, Ku said.
The book covers Lee’s life, which is entwined with local history, including when he worked in a tea factory as a child laborer in Japanese-ruled Taiwan and was conscripted to work at a fighter aircraft factory in Japan during World War II, Ku said.
Lee returned to Taiwan after the end of the war and was unemployed during the post-war slump until he was recruited to work in Hsinchu at the first-ever pane glass manufacturing facility in Taiwan, she said.
The book contains Lee’s recollections and photographs of the glass factory — including clashes between management and the workers that occurred during the Martial Law period — the ravages of Typhoon Gloria, Hsinchu’s variance of the Hakka Lion Dance and the Taiwan Hakka Mountain Song Contest, she said.
Born in 1927, Lee took up photography as a hobby in the 1950s, in addition to collecting and restoring antique cameras, Ku said, adding that he has worked on more than 1,000 cameras in his life.
Ku said that she met Lee at a function that presented historical images held by the ministry in 2014, and she was impressed by the richness and thoroughness of his photographic documentation of Jhudong.
To ensure the accuracy of the text, Ku cross-referenced Lee’s photographs and verbal accounts with historical documents and interviews with living witnesses, she said.
A challenge during the book’s writing was that she did not know many of the Hailu words Lee used in his account, and they cannot be found in Hakka dictionaries, Ku said, urging the Hakka Affairs Council to create an official dictionary of the Hakka language.
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