hsiuyiLu

Author: Hsiu-Yi Lu Department of Anthropology, University of Washington

"COMMUNITY” IN CONTEXT

Scholars in community studies have acknowledged that it is impossible (and even inappropriate) to summarize a uniform definition of community.” Moreover, some of them criticize the suppressive essence of community,” with which the boundaries are reified to contain a homogenous and immutable identity . While the criticism is valid, however, it doesn't necessarily lead to the complete abandonment of the term itself in theoretical practice. As Gillian Rose proposes, community” is a contested idea;” struggles over its meaning reveal much about the social, political, economic and cultural power relations of specific times and places .” If we interpret community” as a process instead of an end-product, then instead of asking whether a bounded community exists the real question becomes what the community-making process reveals to us the specific socio-historical context.

* This paper is drawn from Chapter 5 “Community in Context” of my in-progress dissertation entitled The Politics of Locality in Taiwan, which explores how the notion of locality came into play in Taiwan’s post-Marshal Law era. I use three locales, each at different administrative level, to support my arguments. In addition to the chapter on Baimi, Chapter 3 “Localizing the National Past” focuses on the historical revival movement in Tamshui Township of Taipei County and Chapter 4 “Creating a Better Future” on the placemaking politics of Ilan County government. The fieldwork was done between Sept. 1997 to Sept. 1998.

* See, for example, Hall 1990, Massey 1994, Young, 1990.
* Rose 1990, p. 425.

In this paper I describe the conflicting facets of the community building process in Baimi , a stone-mining neighborhood of Suao Township of Ilan County. Since the state advanced its integrated community building policy” (Shequ Zongti Yingzao, hereafter SZY) in 1995, Baimi has often been praised as the most active community in Ilan County . In describing the outcomes, the contentions, and the aspirations involved in Baimi's community building process, this paper intends to show how different forces from the national, the county, and the local levels intersect in a specific locale. Through those witted or unwitted collective efforts,” a community named Baimi” was thus contrived in Taiwan's cultural landscape in the late 1990s.

* Baimi literally means “white rice.”

The Fabricated "Local Culture"

It was the afternoon of August 8, 1998; from every aspect it seemed like another ordinary summer day in Baimi. The road was dusty as usual; heavy trucks frequently passed by, loaded with limestone or oil. Once in a while the regular rhythm of the grinding machines in the stone-powder factory across from the community association building would be interrupted by the whistles of the cargo trains from about one mile away. One elderly resident stepped in the air-conditioned office to xerox his personal documents, and to enjoy the precious cool and calming space in this steaming area. On the couch inside the office however, four community activists and an anthropologist were discussing about an urgent request to this small volunteer organization: They just received phone calls from the Construction Bureau of Taipei City government, Luodong Rotary Club , and a team of enthusiastic business students led by their professor. All of them had heard of the fame of "Baimi Mujicun (Baimi wooden-sandal village)" and planned to visit and observe (canguan) the supposedly newly-revived traditional "Baimi muji chanye (wooden-sandal enterprise)" the day after. The bureaucrats of Taipei City government were especially eager to learn the experience of "managing community affairs (shequ jingying)" from these Baimi pioneers.

* Although translated into “community,” Shequ and “community” are not completely equivalent. In some context, shequ (or shak-ku in Hokkien pronunciation) refers to the shequ fazhan xiehui (community development association) of a specific community. This mixture has caused a lot of confusion when SZY first descended to the local level in Ilan because many people thought that community development associations would be the primary sites for SZY.

* Luodong is the biggest town of Ilan County, ten miles north to Baimi.

Despite the high regards held by those prospective visitors, there was virtually nothing to see at the moment. The stocked wooden sandals made during the previous fervent activities were mostly sold out. The community-based co-op of muji enterprise (muji chanye hezuoshe) has not started operating. The muji handicraft studio opened two years ago was deserted after Mr. Chiu, a local artist and the director of the studio, got married and pursued a real career.” As Mr. Sun, the chair of the board committee of Baimi Community Development Association (hereafter BCDA), properly put it: "we really appreciate the public attention put on our community; yet we have endured a lot of pressure being in the spotlight. Somehow I feel that our community is xupang (deceptively expanded). I feel ashamed every time I entertain the visitors from Taipei ." After two hours of aimless discussion, finally it was decided that they would call up Mr. Chen, Mr. Li and Mr. Chiu, the three major craftsmen, and asked them to rush in to produce several pairs of wooden sandals that night .

* Here we may interpret “Taipei” of double-folded connotation. Taipei certainly refers to Taipei municipal, a geographical location outside of Baimi; but it also implies a place with higher position in the political hierarchy. Therefore, the “Taipei people” are those from influential institutions such as central government, national media, or prestigious universities.

* As a matter of fact we, the craftsmen, community workers and the anthropologist, worked until 3 o’clock in the morning. The craftsmen polished and painted the wood whereas the others nailed the leather pads onto the sandals.

This kind of awkwardness was far from incidental. During the two months of my field research in Baimi, BCDA regularly entertained visitors from different places. From the Discovery-Channel-like” TV shows, the travel sections of major newspapers, and In-depth” tour guides, people on this island learned that in the valley of Suao a small village called Baimi” is specialized in traditional muji manufacture. This handicraft was once lost to the mass-production of plastic shoes along the modernization process; as Taiwan enters a nativist era, Baimi inhabitants are making efforts to revive their local specialty. Consequently, the increasing demand of cultural authenticity by Taiwan's consumerism compels this little neighborhood to produce enough artifacts to meet the public expectation.

Geographical Sketch of Baimi

Located in the southeastern valley of Suao , the town 26 km south to Ilan City and about 100 km from Taipei, Baimi has been a settlement since the late Qing period. In the postwar administrative system, this area is divided into four li (neighborhood) under Suao Township . Those four li, Yongguang, Changan, Yongchun, and Yongle all have their own lizhang (neighborhood executive), however, in everyday conversion Baimi is more often used than any of the li names when referring to the place.

* While Nanao Xiang covers the southernmost region of Ilan County, it is mostly in the mountains. Therefore Suao marks the southern border of plain region, and the “frontier line” between Han settlement and Aboriginal region (fanjie) under Japanese rule.

* Bosco (1994, fn.4) draws a chart summarizing Taiwan’s administrative levels. I use his translations of administrative terms in this paper.

Without the feature attraction of traditional artifacts, dust and noise would mark the appearance of Baimi for an outsider. The abundant limestone contained in the mountains surrounding Baimi Valley made this area one of the primal sites for Taiwan's cement production. At the most prosperous period, there were about seventy cement factories active in this area. Taiwan's biggest cement factory, Taiwan Cement Company, has been located here since the Japanese occupation. The mines up the mountainsides are connected to the factories, most of them on the entrance of the valley, by trucks through Yongchun Road. I was told by a factory owner that Yongchun Road, the main street through Baimi and the only exist of the whole valley, accommodates about 400 truck rides every day. This number does not entail the other major pollution source on the road -- the petroleum carriers running between Suao Port and the storage plant of Chinese Petroleum Company, which was built in the valley in the early 1980s. According to the statistics made by the Environmental Protection Commission, Baimi has always been the dustiest area in Taiwan.

The environmental harshness combining the declining of mining resource resulted in Baimi's continuing out-migration. The number of factories decreased to seventeen in 1998. The population shrank to 2,795 in 1994 as compared to 3,089 of 1990. Except for few, most of the houses have not been renovated since the 1970s. Our Baimi is shrinking,” lamented by the owner of the only store by Yongchun Road. Not many prosperous people would stay with this polluted land” she said. She herself has two sons; both of them moved out after high school -- a typical experience for young residents of Baimi.

The establishment of Baimi Community Development Association

In 1992 under the prevalent pressure of Taiwan's emerging environmentalism, Taiwan Cement Company signed a contract with Ilan county government; they were committed to pay six million NT each year as the "environmental protection compensation” to the polluted area. Initially, however, the money did not go directly to Baimi. It was monopolized by the Township Office of Suao. The local leaders and activists were then outraged at the way that money was mobilized. We have been victimized for many years; we have the right to fully control the monetary compensation,” so said Baimi residents. To this end, local leaders began to organize Baimi Community Development Association. Ideally it would have combined the four li of Baimi area. Yet after a series of formal and informal meetings, only three li, Changan, Yongle and Yongchun, were successfully integrated. Yongguang decided to formulate its own community association.

Why did Yongguang refuse to join the team? The reason resides in the history of Taiwan's community development.” In the 1970s, Taiwan started its first community-development program. This project, mainly supported by the United Nations, was to "modernize" rural or low-income neighborhoods by improving their public facilities, such as sewers, road systems, career training programs, etc. Under this agenda, many neighborhoods formed their own community committees (shequ lishihui) to obtain the funding. Those committees were mostly controlled by local politicians, such as lizhang or township councilmen, and the membership did not open to the ordinary people .

* In 1990, the Ministry of Interior Affairs changed its community-related laws. According to the new bill, a community association must be a volunteer organization, initiated by " registered residents" of a community, instead of being controlled by the local gentry. Every citizen residing within the community has the right to register for membership, and to campaign for board members.

Along this line, both Yongguang and Yongchun had their community committees prior to 1992, whereas Changan and Yongle had not established any community organizations. Therefore, the leaders of Yongguang simply did not like to be incorporated” into a new neighborhood organization and decided to stay out.

Soon after its establishment, BCDA requested the county government to grant them the right to mobilize the compensation. They also proposed to formulate an environmental supervision committee, composed by scholars, local leaders, and factory representatives, to effectively censor the pollution level produced by the factories. To attract public attention, they even challenged the authority of Ilan County Government by calling out the rejecting Election (juxuan)” movement in 1993's county election. This act was quite significant and controversial at that time because the then county magistrate Yu Hsi-kun was highly respected by many county residents, and had been famous for his environmentalist policy. The move was very effective though. In 1994, the county government granted the four li the full control over the monetary compensation. Each li li would get 1.5 millions every year, which became the major financial source for BCDA.

After the effective rejecting Election” movement and the success in obtaining financial support, BCDA became the most famous community development association of Ilan. The fame then brought crisis however. Some members of BCDA told me that the effectiveness and efficiency of their association threatened the Suao township government. In 1995 the township government ordered BCDA to split into three different associations. According to the official note, it was "recommended” that every li forms their own community development association . Then in the annual residential meetings (limin dahui) in that year, the residents of Changan li and Yongle li achieved the agreements separately to initiate their own community development associations. The reason they held was that most of the resource and power of BCDA was controlled by the Yongchun leaders. The other two neighborhoods did not even have their own community center. Therefore they wanted to be independent to obtain more funding for their own communities. After a futile protest, BCDA's range shrank to Yongchun li. Yet its membership did not decrease. Many old members, despite their residency, still stayed. As of 1998, it has 182 members .

* The distinction between a community and a li is very ambiguous, to say the least. According to the official definition, a community association is a voluntary organization formulated by the registered residents within one or several li; while li is the most basic unit in the local administration system. Each li, however, can only have at most one community association. The overlapping aspects between Li and community association, such as membership, geographic boundary and leadership, often cause confusion and on occasions becomes the battle ground for different factions.

* According to the charter written by the Ministry of Interior Affair, each household can only have one registered member. Therefore the membership of 182 actually entails 182 households, which covers a significant portion of Yongchun’s population as the household number of Yongchun in 1994 was 258.

The Intervention of the State and County Government

From the above we have seen the initial struggles of a new community organization against its upstream administrators. We also saw the cooperation and division among different parties at the local level, which, like Taiwan's typical local politics, were momentary and opportunistic, and not according to any rigid ideology. What we have not seen, however, is the role of traditional folklore,” a.k.a. muji manufacture, in this context.

As a matter of fact, Baimi had not been associated with any folk tradition” until 1995, after the state made a dramatic shift in its community policy. Two main forces intervened in the community building process and transformed Baimi into a folklore village” from the previous progressive organization: One is Ilan county government's place-making policy, especially during the term of Yu Hsi-kun . The other is the Council for Cultural Affair (CCA), after its famous community making policy proposed in 1994.

* Yu’s term last eight years, from 1991-1998. I have a more detailed account on Ilan’s place-making politics in chapter 4.

1. Brief background of the CCA's integrated community-making policy”

In 1994, President Lee consistently advocated the new agenda of community development on various occasions. In order to construct a grand Taiwan Nation, we have to start from small communities at the local level” soon became an often-quoted slogan. To execute Lee's advocation, the then-chair of the CCA, Shen Hsueh-yung, proposed a number of unprecedented policies under the umbrella of Shequ Zongti Yingzao (integrated community building, hereafter SZY)” to the Legistrative Yuan on October 3, 1994. The goal of this policy was to implement an integrated program for local communities to consolidate and strengthen their community sentiments. Providing various funding opportunities, the CCA wished to renovate Taiwan's local communities and elicit community sentiment among the residents. The ultimate goal, as Shen emphasized, is to "enlivening Taiwan's shequ into a vivid corporate body (gongtongti) .”

* Central Times 10/04/94. The original quote: “jiang Taiwan jiceng shequ jianli wei i ge you shengming de gongtongti”

SZY was probably the most popular governmental policy in postwar Taiwan. It fit well the collective sentiments of Taiwan's folk society in the 1990s. A statistics made in 1994 showed that the population of Taipei City had been decreasing since 1989, emigration being the main factor . In the same article, the journalist suggested that the major reason for the increasing urban-to-rural or back-to-land migration was the "prevailing dissatisfaction about the deteriorating quality of urban life.” Disappointed at their experience in the cities, those returning migrants go back to their homeland and began to examine their birthplace with new perspectives. This somehow explained the widespread applaud of the folks to the CCA's then-innovative policy. Right after SZY was advocated, shequ became a pervasive term in Taiwan's public discourse. Many community-based organizations have proliferated since 1994. Many conferences concerning the community-minded issues were hold. "Taiwan has entered the era of 'community,' as a widely-circulated journal claimed .

* China Times 04/05/95. The data came from the Statistical Office of Administrative Yuan.

* Global View.

Claimed to be the most "nativist” county of Taiwan, Ilan county government was most enthusiastic in advancing SZY. County Magistrate Yu Hsi-kun announced on May 8, 1995 that SZY would become the major policy and the integrating direction for the following year . On October 24, Yu invited Ilan's twelve township executives for breakfast, and encouraged each town to nominate one community to participate in the Happy Ilan New Year” festival of 1996. This act then led to the formulation of seed community” project. Fourteen communities were chosen by the end of 1995 to be the seeds” for SZY, each granted 1.8 million NT and designated to one regional planning group or counselor by the county government . The outcome of seed community project was displayed in the community Renaissance Fair” in 1997, which was also the climax of Ilan's SZY process. After the fair, however, the county-wise enthusiasm started fading. Those seed communities gradually withdrew from SZY. In April of 1998 when I participated in a workshop reviewing the experience of SZY hold by Ilan Cultural Center, only two community-based organizations attended the meeting; one of them was not even involved in the seed community project .

* China Times 05/09/95.

* Baimi was the exception in this case. It did not accept any professional counselor or regional planner. According to BCDA, they would rather to do the planning on their own. Also, due to the previous disappointing collaboration experience with a regional planning company, they had become suspicious about the function of any “outside” professional.

* The two communities were Erjie and Baimi. Both of their community organizations had existed before 1994.

2. The Emerging Baimi Muji Village”

Due to its fame in Suao Township, Baimi got involved in the seed community project in 1995 . At the same time the idea of developing or revitalizing traditional handicraft industry was first proposed by Chen Chi-nan, the then-vice president of the CAC. Attending to the conference hold in Yutian, the then "exemplar community” of Ilan county, Chen proposed that the community-making movement should start with revitalizing the local specialty (tese) of the community. Digging out the vanished traditional crafts and use it as the attraction to center the attention of community people, and as the symbol for the community sentiment . Chen's idea was soon disseminated to the local people. Ilan government also took this idea and applied it in the designs of the New Year Festival in 1996. At the "Happy Ilan New Year” festival, fourteen communities participated, each displaying their "cultural specialty (tese).” This was the first time Baimi presented itself as "Muji Village.” They sold hundreds of wooden sandals during the festival period.

* It should be noted that Baimi was not the first choice made by the Suao Township Office; instead, Nanfangao, the most populated neighborhood of Suao Township was assigned at the first place. The BCDA did not give up the funding opportunity though. It persisted to get involved and submitted their own proposal to Ilan Cultural Center. Finally Nanfangao and Baimi were both chosen into the seed community project.

* Chen, "Wen-hua Chan-yeh" conference. Oct., 1995.

Initially, however, there were several options for BCDA to develop their local specialty.” They could have focused on the stone-mining industries, which is the primary natural resource for this area. They could also have chosen to pave a deserted trail, which history can be traced to Qing Dynasty, and make it a tourist spot. Yet, after all the association decided to use muji as their symbolic enterprise. They then appointed Mr. Chiu, a local artist to teach children to paint the wooden sandals, and advertised "Baimi muji” as folk crafts instead of practical objects.

Why was muji manufacture chosen as the community industry? Several journalists reported that the Baimi area was famous for making muji in 1950s, blessed by the abundant woods from the nearby mountains. In reality, however, Baimi had only one muji factory in the 1950s. The craftsman, Mr. Chen, was born in Luodong and trained there. He moved into Baimi in 1955 to start his own business. The factory was closed in 1961, defeated by the mass production of plastic sandals. Mr. Chen then worked in Luodong to manage a logging company.

According to Chen, although being short-lived, his muji manufacture was quite popular during those several years. He was able to make one hundred or so pairs of muji every day. The profit was very good by the living standard at that time. Because of his high demand of woods, quite a few neighbors made their livings on his muji factory as well. They logged in the surrounding forests and sold the trunks to Mr. Chen. Because logging was illegal for ordinary people, they had to play hide-and-seek with the forestry bureau. This experience became a local legend in their collective memories.

Once proposed, BCDA managed to make muji their cultural symbol. In 1997 at the Community Renaissance Fair,” Baimi and other nine communities from Ilan County displayed their accomplishment and experience in SZY. The association staged a musical on Baimi's local history, including the origin of the name "Baimi" and the glorious past” of muji manufacture. Their show appealed to a lot of audience. Several hundreds of painted muji were sold, which was a big financial success for this budget-tight association.

Encouraged by the success at the Fair, the association persisted in this new direction. In July 1997 with the assistance of Yangshan Cultural Foundation, the Ministry of Economics granted Baimi two million NT to promote muji manufacture. Blessed by the funding, one room in the community center was remodeled into "Baimi Mujiguan (Muji Exhibit Hall)” to display the history and different styles of muji. "Baimi Muji Gongzuoshi (Muji Handicraft Studio)” was settled in an then-emptied house, where the craftsmen, Mr. Chen and Mr. Li, both community residents, offered the course about muji-making skill. Mr. Chiu, the local artist, was appointed by BCDA as the director of the studio. Then in June, 1998, BCDA renovated six then-abandoned townhouses into Muji Jiefang (Muji Shopping Mall),” where Muji Hezuoshe (Community-based Co-op of Muji Enterprise)” was planned and then formed in November of 1998.

As the process went on, Baimi Muji began to obtain its national popularity. TTV, one of the major three national channels, released a documentary about the community-making process of Baimi in December of 1997 . In July 1998, the Ministry of Economic renewed the funding for the community-based co-op . In September, "Baimi Shequ Zongti Yingzao Weiyuanhui (The Committee of Baimi's Community Making)" was founded. Its members includes board members of the association, as well as county bureaucrats and scholars from Taipei. When I was in the field in 1998, I was often told that Baimi was one of the few communities that still persisted in the idea of SZY . A journalist once jokingly commented: "No one except for Baimi is still playing puppet show (budaixi) for the publics nowadays.”

* The documentary was one of the series "Crafting Our New Homeland" which incorporated ten different communities.

* Out of the thirteen communities being funded that year, Baimi was the only one without any direct involvement of outside professionals.

* The other famous community of Ilan County, Erjie, was not involved in the "seed communities" project in 1996.

Spectacle Consumerism

The brief remark above actually characterized one essential feature of Taiwan's recent community building movement, which may be described as "spectacle consumerism.” This term refers to the fetishization and commodification of spectacle. It also implies the hasty process of production and consumption of something visible. This phenomenon certainly occurs in the frenzies of Taiwan's rapidly expanding mass media. Perhaps more interestingly, however, is that it has also been perpetuated by the bureaucratic circle .

* In the workshop of SZY experience hold by the Ilan Cultural Office, the participants, regardless of their positions, unanimously criticized the restrains set by the bureaucracy on community-building process. They pointed out that community-building is a long-term process. They use their Japanese counterparts to illustrate the differences of official attitudes between the two countries. "In Japan, it often take ten to twenty years to properly make a community. Yet here in Taiwan, the governmental sections often ask for visible outcome in one year." One local bureaucrat explained that, despite her aversion to the rule, the governmental section can not ask for hasty outcome, as the annual budget report requires every section to submit assessment report every June. Therefore they need something visible to obtain further funding.

On June 7, 1998, the opening ceremony of Baimi Muji Shopping Mall” was held. Remodeled from six abandoned townhouses, it was divided into a studio, an exhibition room, and a retail store for Baimi muji co-op to sell their products. Moreover, the Shopping Mall was built to prepare things for the visitors to see.” Out of the visitors the most important one was perhaps the official from the Ministry of Economy, the institute in charge of the funding for Baimi's muji enterprise.

In the opening remark, several speakers expressed their gratitude about the progress of Baimi. They said that they were originally concerned with Baimi's poverty, which might have led to the failure of the community building movement failure” in this context means "nothing produced for the spectatorship of the outside visitors.” Yet, the speakers were all comforted by the openings of the Muji Shopping Mall. From now on, every visitor, regardless their nationality -- Taiwan, Japan or the US -- will have something to see when they come to Baimi .” The Suao Township Executive commented that Baimi's accomplishment is so visible that it will eventually become the model for its nearby neighborhoods.

* This remark was made by Chen Chi-nan.

The antidote above illustrates the shallow expectation or understanding of officialdom in assessing the outcomes of a community making movement. Making something for display” is the basic requirement to obtain and renew governmental funding. This assessment, however, often ignores or even suppresses the structural problems that a community faces. Therefore in Baimi what we see is a contested political history disguised under the harmonious appearance of a happy folklore village.

The Divisions within the Community

Despite its national fame, however, the community itself was not all unified. Not everyone agreed with the current direction, that is, to invest most of the community resource in muji enterprise. The potential crisis of division within the community association was observable on various occasions, such as the conflicts occurred in committee meetings, the declining participation rate of community residents in wooden-shoes related activities, or just in some informal gatherings.

Local factionalism is not uncommon at the community level. The regular elections, be it neighborhood election or national-leveled election, were the major reason for a community to split. As one elderly man told me, whenever there is an election, there is tension. It usually takes several months after the election for the different campaigns to feel comfortable talking with each other again. Meanwhile, those harmful rumors hardly disappear, and often come back to haunt the people in the next election .

* Bosco 1994.

Baimi community is no exception. Similar to most other communities in Taiwan, the most severe divisions resulted from lizhang campaigns. The community association was first composed under the efforts of several local leaders. Among them Sun and Yu were perhaps the most influential figures. Yu was the neighborhood executive at that time. Working in the Taiwan Cement Company and as a promising bright young man, he was only thirty when he defeated Chuang, another important leader of the community and the precinct leader between 1986-1990. Interestingly, Sun also ran the lizhang campaign once in 1986, yet lose the battle to Chuang. Therefore it was probably not unreasonable that when Sun and Yu collaborated in recruiting members for Baimi community association, Chuang, as a significant leader, has not been involved from the very beginning .

* He has never joined the membership either.

Soon after the association established, the second division occurred. Sun was elected as the chairperson of the board committee, which is the power center of the association . Politically Sun and his buddies were inclined to the opposition party, and were influenced by the then-prevailing environmentalist movements in Taiwan. Between 1993 to 1995, most of the decisions made by the board were related to the pollution caused by the Taiwan Cement Company and other small factories. Some active members constantly complained about the noise, the dusts, and the water pollution that those factories have caused in the past forty years, and demanded those enterprises to make significant improvement right away. Being employed by the major "enemy" of the community, Yu was not comfortable with the "radical" attitude that other board members held. Therefore he gradually resigned from the association meeting, and finally withdrew his membership in 1996.

* According to the regulation of community association, a board committee is elected by all the registered members. Those board members then vote for the five members for the "constant committee" which is the power center of an association. In many cases community-related affairs are designed and decided by the board. When Baimi association first established, three li were included. Thus, the constant committee was composed by the three executives of the neighborhood, plus two persons -- Sun and Huang -- who were not in any political positions. Sun and Huang are both residents of Yongchun. Sun was then voted as the chairperson. According to him, he was elected exactly because he was not in any political position at that time, which made him more neutral among the board members.

The third division occurred in 1994 when Yongle and Changan li proposed to organize their own community association, which I have decribed in the previous section. association.

After the decision of promoting muji enterprise was made, the fourth division emerged. Those who were against the association at the first place, such as Chuang and Yu's crowds, started to question the legitimacy of this decision. They certainly had their reason: the old muji factory was only short-lived, and involved only few people. It has never been the basis for Baimi's local economy. On the other hand, Baimi's major problem, the environmental pollution, has not been solved. They questioned whether it would benefit the majority of community people to develop a dead-end handicraft business.

Gradually, even some hard-core members started to lose their faith in the new direction too. During the several meetings I have participated, and some informal conversation, some major leaders questioned the profitability of muji enterprise, and the feasibility of organizing a community-based co-op devoted to muji manufacture. As one member once said in a board meeting:

                It appeared to me that we are doing it the opposite way. In the usual case, people organize the
                community-based corporation only when the community has prosperous handicraft industries.
                Corporation would not be profitable if there is no individual store invested in the business.
                Look at us, where and who in the community is living on making wooden shoes? How can we
                organize a corporation under this situation?

    The inner division manifest itself in the lizhang election in June 1998. Chuang won 329 votes and defeated Huang, the lizhang at that time and father of the executive of BCDA. Rumor had it that Yu, who has moved out to Luodong, was helping Chuang during the campaign . No matter what the truth was, the defeat of Huang sure was the warning sign of the disapproval of association policy by the community people. Although the discontent has never been explicit, I was told by several residents in private that they were not happy with the fact that the association was controlled by only few people. One old resident said that the association should do more work to serve the people, such as paving the roads, improving the pollution, planting more trees and flowers for the community, and so on. "What is the use of wooden shoes? They are not edible anyway" he said.

* This accusation was strongly denied by Yu's father. (Personal conversation)

Furthermore, even some of the active members started feeling doubtful about the new direction. A core member told me that he was very unsure whether the association should invest most of the resource into the business. He contend that the association should focus on "basic stuff," such as holding regular activities for housewives, cleaning the community streets, taking care of the elderly and kids, and so on. Another member bluntly said that the association has been funded by various government sections, with millions dollars of budget. Yet, "did any of these money actually improve our lives? Do our people feel about anything of the outcomes of those projects?"

The failure of Lizhang election best illustrated the defeat of current direction for community development exerted by the association. Yet one can't help asking this question: Why, if the association was aware of the discontent prevailed by the residence, do they persist? Quite far from completely ignorance about people? reaction, the major leaders of the association knew only too well that their advancement was not that well received. They even admitted on several private occasions that the criticism from different factions was not unreasonable, and rather effective. Yet, the following two structural factors inserted from outside keep pushing them to work on muji manufacture:

Sun said that since there has been a lot of government funding involved, Baimi can not not continue on. Eith the abundant support from the central and county government, and from those kind scholars, we Baimi people really feel obliged to follow the line. We can not let our sponsors down!” Therefore, despite the criticism or doubts, the Baimi Muji Co-op was still formed in November 1998. Ironically the board member who has been doubtful from the very beginning, was voted as the director of the community co-op.

On behalf of the association executive director, moreover, it was not possible not to be tempted by the various funding opportunities offered by the government. Bosco (1994) and Jacobs (1980) both observed the patronage of Taiwan's local factionalism. The scale of support for a local political leader often correlates to the amount of wealth s/he is capable to bring into the region. From the financial records of BCDA, it is clear that the budget went sharply up in 1997, adding the two-million-dollar funding from the Ministry of Economics to sponsor the muji business. From then on, the association has gotten a few big projects, each with millions of funds, all related to muji manufacture or community art projects. The executive of the association told me that no other community development association has obtained so much funding. They were proud of the achievement, and will try their best to compete for any possible grant in the future. Yet, most of the money and prospective funding projects can only be utilized in muji-related or cultural-related construction. Most of the local people didn't realize that the money came from specific projects, and could only be use to that end. Their concept of community construction stayed with the old ideas, such as paving roads, building big community center, building parks and planting trees. Culture is too abstract a concept for most of the folks” so said the executive.

What is "Community?”

On another sunny day of early September, CTV, one of the three national TV broadcast companies in Taiwan, sent a troupe to Baimi to shoot an episode for the documentary series "community and children." They chose Baimi because of its national fame as a community with distinct local flavor. According to this logic, the children of Baimi would have different life styles from other children, namely the kids from big cities such as Taipei.

The request for assistance by a famous TV station again caused some sort of hassle for the association. It was to be shot on Sunday morning; most of the elementary school kids would rather sleep late in their air-conditioned homes than doing the unpaid job with a TV troupe under the hot sun for the whole morning. At last, two members kindly "offered" their children to be the volunteer actors for the troupe.

I didn't follow the whole shooting process that day. I was in a volunteer training session offered by the association. We had ten students, all of them in middle-school age. The topics for that day was a slide show about Dutch clogs, and a practical lesson of muji painting. When the documentary crew came by the studio, they were glad to find some "real kids” who were actually doing muji-related tasks. They stop, taking a long shot of those students painting shoes, and asking their child actors to pose beside the painters and pretend to watch closely. To heighten the credibility of the episode, they also called Mr. Li to do a muji-polishing show, and asked the kids to circle around the muji master, performing some interested facial expression.

Finally the kids' uncomfortable feelings burst out. They refused to reiterate any historical story about muji, although they had been so properly taught in previous community training programs. Then one kid brilliantly complained: "all the TV shows are deceptive."

Ironically, the Baimi people have been very aware of the manipulative essence of "community” throughout the whole process, just like the TV crew consciously distort and edit the scenes to make a realistic documentary. In a talk given to the community youth training program, Sun told the "origin myth" of Baimi . He said that "you might find the story dubious; yet if we all reiterate the same story again and again, eventually it will become the truth." No where in the theories about historical writings have I found such concise account about the constructive essence of historical narrative! Through the process of reiteration, a "mythical community" is thus formed for the outsiders. Yet, the community itself actually only exists at the performance level .

* The story begins long long ago, when a famine spread to the valley of Baimi. It is told that there was a divine figure who carried a big bowl of white rice and disseminated it to the starving villagers. The place was thus named baimiwong, meaning "barrel of white rice."

* Interestingly enough, Chen Chi-nan, the former vice president of the Council of Cultural Affair and the primal advocator of the nation-wide wave of community-building, was also the first person who remarked on the performative nature of Baimi community. He said in an interview that "Baimi is a place with 'nothing.' By "nothing" he means that the place has neither natural resource nor cultural specialty. Yet, he continued, the local residents there had put a lot of effort to make their community blossom from the impoverished soil. That is the "most invaluable and honorable spirit" in the whole process of Baimi's community movement, he commented.

So now comes back to my ultimate concern: what is community? Nancy (1991) lays out several characteristics of "inoperative community." It is performative, "something which occurs only as it is said or done ." It defies the "will to essence," and "constitutes a resistance to all the forms and all the violence of subjectivity .." "It is a space the dimensions of which cannot completely be described, defined, discoursed ." Under the name of "community" created by the state program and national intellectuals, what we have actually seen is a "multi-dimensional matrix of mobile, fusing axes of identity" within which individuals take diverse, contingent, or even contradictory positions. This form of community, situated in the space of uncertainty and fluidity, is inoperative at the discursive level and always creates the possibility to question any existing definition of community.

* Cf. Rose (1997b): 188.

* Nancy (1991): 35

* Ibid.

Conclusion

1.     Baimi's experience indicates that SZY did offer an opportunity for the ambitious locals to construct their agency within
        the structural limitation of Taiwan's political realm. As we have seen from the struggling process of BCDA, community
        association itself has very little power in confronting its upstream bureaucrats and industrial corporations. It was also
        hard for a community association to obtain financial support if they had remained in the environmentalist direction.
        Therefore it was not surprising at all when CCA first proposed its SZY policy, Baimi association soon embraced
        it in such an enthusiastic way. Yet, the policy did not meet its original ideal, that is, to integrate the local factions and to
        transcend the traditional power structure of local politics. Quite the contrary, the policy actually accelerated the gaps
        among different factions because, first, the funding and the manpower from outside was mainly channeled to one specific
        party. And second, SZY favors only one direction of community building -- the very abstract concept of "culture,” which
        is often out of the context of everyday lives.

2.     De-politicization: In providing detailed accounts of the contradictory effects of the state-directed community- making
        policy, I wish to show that SZY manifests state's attempt to interpolate the heretofore-discrete "local” voices into a
        national project -- to build Taiwan as a nation with regional variety and cultural diversity. This project, however, often
        fails in articulating with the complexity of local politics. In the example of Baimi, the association have been involved in a
        lot of political issues. Yet the process of cultural construction sanitized the contested politics and directed most of the
        resource to an a-political issue. Moreover, the contested pasts of Baimi's local politics and the conflicting voices beneath
        the smoggy sky have also been sanitized by the "dream-boosters” engaged in the community-making process.

        Rutheiser (1996) mentions in his book Imagineering Atlanta about the dreamwork of city boosters and urban planners,
        which has created a "saccharine account" of the city Atlanta and eliminate the conflicts and contradictions buried in the
        city's past. In another article he also criticizes that Atlanta's placemaking actions fail to address the political, economic,
        and cultural” issues of the inner city and lose only a superficial fix to deep-rooted structural problems . Similarly, in
        fabricating the folk culture of Baimi, or any other "community” of Taiwan, the bureaucrats, the local activists, and the
        media all contributed in sanitizing or trivializing the structural problems that this community is facing. In a sense, the
        "culture” being used in this context is like a void signifier, or a symbol without material basis.

* Rutheiser 1997, P. 9.

3.     Last, the notion of "local community" does not exist by itself. Its locality can only be comprehended in the context of
        knowledge production by the state and mass media. Here I apply Jean-Luc Nancy's notion about the differentiation
        between myth of community” and "inoperative community.” By inserting the community-making program, the state and
        elite contributed to the construction of "myth of community," which served to stabilized the marginals, the unnamable, in a
        fixed and assigned position. Therefore Baimi, the place with a controversial and contested pasts, was assigned the
        position as the representative of muji handicraft.