Ninety-five-year-old blacksmith Lee Hou-yung (李後庸) and his 69-year-old son, Lee Wang-pin (李汪彬), quietly sit on opposite corners of the family smithy at Nanfangao Fishing Port (南方澳漁港) in Yilan County’s Suao Township (蘇澳), each holding a welder as they make ship anchors.
At their shop, Yi Yuan Metalworks (億元鐵工廠), sparks fly about, rising and falling, seeming to underscore the boom and bust of Nanfangao’s fishing trade that the father and son have witnessed over the past 55 years.
The shop, devoid of a sign, is about 15 ping (49.59m2), with anchors of all sizes and harpoons hanging from its walls, with a hydraulic press in a corner.
Photo: Tsai Yun-jung, Taipei Times
Since its opening in 1958, Lee Wang-pin has been a part of the family trade.
At its peak, the shop had a staff of seven additional workers, who mainly worked on custom orders placed by fishing ship captains.
They manufactured anchors from as small as 4kg to as large as 700kg and also installed them, Lee Hou-yung said.
Nanfangao Township is not big — about 2km2 — but in its heyday, the fishing port was home to nearly 30,000 people, he said.
“The streets were packed with people, and the town had three cinemas, as well as two rows of night market stalls that never seemed to end,” he said.
Commercial trade was thriving, with so many vessels filling the harbor that they could cross it by walking from ship to ship, he said.
Fishing was hard work, and the younger generation did not want to take up the profession, Lee Hou-yung said, adding that as the population shrank, the township’s economy waned.
He turned the shop over to his son more than 20 years ago, but could not bear the idleness of retirement and returned to help, Lee Hou-yung said.
The secret to staying healthy at his age was to keep working, he said, adding that he treated work as a form of exercise and would continue as long as he could.
The prevalence of lightweight fiberglass as a primary material in making ships meant that their shop had less business, Lee Wang-pin said.
Nanfangao’s glory days were in the past, and more than one-quarter of the shops in the port had since closed, he said.
Some smithies remain, but once all the shops shut, ships would have to turn to large companies to fulfill orders and Yi Yuan would be unable to buy customized equipment at affordable prices, he said.
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
Taiwan's first indigenous defense submarine, the SS-711 Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), departed for its 13th sea trial at 7am today, marking its seventh submerged test, with delivery to the navy scheduled for July. The outing also marked its first sea deployment since President William Lai (賴清德) boarded the submarine for an inspection on March 19, drawing a crowd of military enthusiasts who gathered to show support. The submarine this morning departed port accompanied by CSBC Corp’s Endeavor Manta (奮進魔鬼魚號) uncrewed surface vessel and a navy M109 assault boat. Amid public interest in key milestones such as torpedo-launching operations and overnight submerged trials,
RSS