Roots of Culture

2009 Hwacheon Jjoke-Bae Festival International Symposium 2009화천쪽배축제 국제학술대회
Hwa Chun, Gangwon Do: A Conference on the Cultural Geography of Rivers
Presentation by William Cannon Hunter, Ph.D.,
College of Hotel and Tourism, Kyung Hee University,
Seoul, Korea (email: primalamerica@yahoo.com)

Roots of Culture: Taipei’s Tamsui River(淡水河)
(Historical Transformation of Commerce into a Leisure Tourism Network)

Introduction
Every city has its river. Whether for transportation, trade or defense, the river has always been the most important determination of a city’s physical and cultural geography. And so, whether from an academic or from a planning and policy perspective, the understanding of a city’s environmental, social or economic stability can begin from an evaluation of its river. And in these days of globalization, a greater comparative understanding of the relationship between a city and its river can grow by appraising other cases – the similarities and differences – of relative success and failure in the management of cities’ principal resource, the river. In this sense the river Tamsui, Taipei’s major river, is introduced in this paper in terms of its cultural history and current uses.

On a deeper theoretical level, the river is a key feature in the city’s imagined landscape, reflecting its identity as it evolves over time. Local governments are constantly at work altering the river’s functions and features to cohere seamlessly with the real and perceived needs of the community. It can be said that the city’s river evolves roughly in three stages: 1) the preindustrial stage, 2) the industrial stage, and 3) the postindustrial.
In the first stage, a river provides critical support for a population’s needs. Prior to the railroad and its industrial infrastructure, rivers were the only economical means of mass transportation of goods. The civilization of cities grew in relationship to the river, with major trade centers located in proximity to ports along the rivers or manmade canals. The river as the key site of transportation, trade and defense (the marking of social perimeters), not to mention it’s the fact that its currents bring water (the source of life) and wash away waste (the inevitable side effects of a concentrated human population).

With industrialization, the second stage, the river falls into neglect as the need for crude manufacturing quickly produces more pollution than the river can wash away or dilute. Traditional ports and the economic and cultural exchange that goes on around them are abandoned as goods can now delivered by rail or road. Water is consumed from the end of a faucet and waste is disposed of in a drain or a toilet and the reality of the river becomes a notion taken for granted as an abstract notion by the general population.
Finally, with the growing sophistication of a post-industrial society, the city learns from its mistakes, refines its production and reduces its pollution. Attempts are made to re-plant trees, rehabilitate indigenous wildlife and the quality of the river itself. A new interest in environmental sustainability and replacement economies such as leisure and tourism emerge with the decline of industrial-based urban economies.

This 3-stage conception of the river as a creating and created space that changes and evolves with the needs of the city guides this introduction to Taipei’s Tamsui River. In the following sections, the roles of climate change, tourism and sustainability are discussed as catalysts to changes that have happened to rivers in general and to the Tamsui in particular. These roles are the form that the city’s imagination has taken in response to its real and perceived needs as they have arisen in the past two decades or so and some theory to that effect is offered. Finally, some particular facts concerning the Tamsui and its evolution are discussed from a walking tour/visual methods approach.

Climate Change, Tourism and Sustainability
In these post-industrial times, a bundle of concerns – in academics and in governance and policy – have consistently arisen, namely that of climate change, tourism and sustainability. Although these concerns have been around for many decades, it has only been in the last two that they have grown more and more inseparable. The fact of climate change makes sustainability a major concern for researchers and policy makers in every field. But the issue of sustainability has been a hallmark of tourism research in terms of culture and the environment. With increasing reliance on the tertiary economic sectors, namely leisure and tourism, city planners must manage for the river’s health – not only for its own sake but for the sake of tourism’s economic base as well.
Local efforts to re-vitalize rivers into greenways and sustainable natural resources have been, since the early 1990’s aided by international non-governmental organizations and other groups affiliated with the United Nations. One particular group, ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability) has been especially active at the local level, connecting local governments and providing environmental initiatives since 1990. It is responsible for the ratification of Agenda 21 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on June 14, 1992 when 176 governments voted to adopt the program. With a mission is “to build and serve a worldwide movement of local governments to achieve tangible improvements in global sustainability with special focus on environmental conditions through cumulative local actions.” Important campaigns include: CCP, Water Campaign, Biodiversity, ecoBudget, ecoMobility, Energy efficiency and Renewable Energy Campaign. Currently there are 814 cities, towns, and counties that are full members and they represent 68 countries. Another 20 countries have associate members, including 39 organizations and individuals. The ICLEI Korea Office is located in Jeju City, and ICLEI members in Korea include the City of Seoul, City of Suwon and the City of Incheon.

However, ICLEI has not actively developed a plan for campaigns directly related to tourism. This is a concern considering how important sustainable resources are for a tourism destination, and in turn, how important tourism is, economically and socially, for a destination. With 842,000,000 arrivals in 2006 (http://www.world-tourism.org/), the growth of tourism seems unstoppable, despite contagious epidemics, natural disasters, war and terrorism.

It is in this sense that the issues of climate change, tourism and sustainability combine together to form the single most important narrative that determines a city’s imagination and finally, its post-industrial identity. And with every major city, that narrative materializes in changes made to its river. Consider the important place a river takes in every city as the population returns to its waters for leisure and recreation… and as the river returns to its people’s consciousness.

Children in elementary and middle school might be taught the capital cities of the world, but are they aware of each capital’s river? A list of a few of the more familiar major cities in the world, and their rivers are listed in the following table (Table 1), largely adapted from a website for kids:

Table 1: Major Cities in the World and their Rivers:

Major City and its River (Europe & Americas) Major City and its River (Africa and Asia)
London – Thames Cairo – Nile
Vienna & Belgrade & Budapest – Danube Varansi, Calcutta – Ganges
Amsterdam – Amstel Baghdad – Tigris
Paris – Seine Karachi – Indus
Moscow – Moskva Bankok – Chao Phraya
Rome –Tiber Ho Chi Minh City – Saigon
New Orleans – Mississippi Hong Kong – Pearl
Montreal – St Lawrence Shanghai – Huangpu
Sao Paulo – Tiete Tokyo – Sumida
Buenos Aires – Rio de la Plata Seoul – Han
Source: http://mistupid.com/geography/riversworld.htm

The Imagining City
Before moving on to a discussion of Taipei’s Tamsui River, a brief theoretical consideration of the effects of the imagination on the river is offered. In the previous section, it is argued that concerns regarding climate change, tourism and sustainability fill the post-industrial imagination of city planners and policy makers as well as academic researchers. But in this section, what that imagination is – its workings and the results of its workings – is considered. When Benedict Anderson’s (1983) was published, it became an instant classic. It offered a vision (at the end of the Cold War) of nationalism as an ideology as much – or more than – a set of physical, socioeconomic and military boundaries. In a similar sense, the city (and inseparably, its river) is imagined. It provides an identity for its citizens. A New Yorker or a Seoulite is a very different citizen than his or her rural or other-city countrymen. But Benedict’s Imagined Communities follows late on the heels of another classic, Nash’s (1967) Wilderness and the American Mind. In a different but related sense, Nash illustrates how New World beliefs (perceiving the land as wild, romantic, scenic, waiting for exploitation and finally ‘in need of preservation’) evolved over time. The land, like nationalism are sensibilities, imagined entities that change over time almost imperceptibly or radically and suddenly. And what is to be feared is that this collective imagination has real effects on the world, preserving or destroying with perfectly justified intentions.

An example that perfectly illustrates the city’s imagination in relationship with its river is that of Seoul and its Cheonggye Stream. Cheonggye Stream mirrors Seoul’s 3-stage evolution from pre-industrial, to industrial and to post-industrial, and its effects. And the present condition of the stream is the result of the city’s imagination, filled with concerns related to climate change, tourism and sustainability. Consider the example of Cheonggye Stream in Seoul...

The city’s imagination is so powerful that in Seoul, the Cheonggye Stream, was literally killed and buried… and then exhumed and restored – brought to life even though it had already ceased to be. It is now on constant life support, 40,000 tonnes worth a day. But it is necessary, because it serves as a representation of sustainability, a representation of a successful tourism attraction. And because this is what the city needs to imagine, it must come to be. In the post-industrial (or post-modern?) context, the stream’s use-value (swimming, the washing of clothes), long obliterated, has been replaced with a simulacrum good only for its sign value. It represents attractiveness, or wellbeing, or whatever, without actually being such. There has been, in the imagination of the city, a change to where an automatic tendency has emerged to essentialize (mythologize) itself by making its rivers and monuments (through repair, reconstruction or transplantation) into representations of certain experiences by obliterating experience itself. At the Cheonggye, we cannot swim, wash, or drink the water. We have come to expect the representational reification totally devoid of experience. The stream complies with expectations that it must conform to sense of universal order (this is a ‘proper’ or ‘ideal’ urban stream) while being ‘different’ in a coherent manner (this is Cheonggye Stream). Representations are inevitably placed between two distinct and irresolvable realities that are, nevertheless, in total collaboration. They run together out of necessity, but never completely overcome a creeping sense of contrivance (Debord, 1995).

The identity of a city (the cumulative effects of its imaginations) is not necessarily the image individuals perceive, or a mental map, or a sense of place… or attempts at place branding and other marketing campaigns! It is, rather, the meanings projected by a landscape in the cultural context of its inhabitants. In this sense, identity is iconic – a building, cityscape, a river (Pritchard & Morgan, 2001). And in the next section, the Tamsui, icon of Taipei explored, hopefully to reveal that city’s imagination.

Taipei and the Tamsui
The Tamsui River (淡水河) (above Taipei, known as Tahan (大漢溪) is located in northwest Taiwan and flows from south to north through the capital city of Taipei. The source of the river is in the 3529 meter high Pintian Mountain (品田山), located between Hsinchu County (新竹縣) and Taichung County(臺中縣). The river runs 159km from its origin in Pintian Mountain to the sea to the northwest of Taipei (http://wapedia.mobi/en/Pintien_Mountain) where it empties into the sea. Of course, who in Taipei imagines their river in terms of this lofty peak? Instead, today it is imagined as a disconnected and disembodied constellation of problems related to pollution on one hand, and development for tourism, on the other. The Tamsui is renowned for being a filthy river and other cities in Taiwan view it as a benchmark for what not to do. “One look at the putrid Tamsui River in Taipei… once (a) place of beauty, today it is little more than a sewer” (http://www.sinica.edu.tw/tit/scenery/0695_TungshanRiver.html). So Taipei’s Tamsui is an icon of filth first and foremost.





But efforts are being made to reverse that stereotype. By imagining the river in terms of a 3-stage historical evolution and by physically visiting the places of earliest settlement along its banks, another picture emerges, of a river rich in cultural heritage. The roots of Taipei’s culture and cultures more ancient than the city’s can be found that reveal landscapes, townscapes and experiences that speak to Tamsui’s diversity and even beauty. To appreciate the river (or any river) one should know some general facts about Taiwan’s history first, and the River’s, second.
Although today’s Taipei is the cultural and political center of this island country, it was not always so. Most Taiwanese refer to the socio-political history of Taiwan with the saying, “people settled first in Foo, then Lu, then Mongjiang” (一府, 二鹿, 三艋舺). Taiwan Foo, or Tainan was the first major fortified port-city established by the Dutch, although the Spanish built a fort on the Tamsui, where it meets the sea in 1629. Lugang, the second major port where foreign trade established itself was never sustainable for large populations because of geographic constraints. It was finally Taipei (Tainan’s port slowly filled with silt as the sea receded making it useless for larger ships to dock) where a port was established years later. The earlier historical development of Taipei followed the traditional logic of rivers – a source of fresh water for drinking and sanitation, a route for trade and transportation, and the establishment of boundaries for defense. Key early ports along the Tamsui included Tamsui Township (淡水鎮) at the mouth of the river, Dadaocheng Port (大稻呈港口) near Wanhua (Mongjiang), Yingge Township (鶯歌鎮), and Dashi (大溪鎮). It is at these key sites where the three stages of Tamsui’s cultural (and physical) evolution can be witnessed… or guessed at.

During the Japanese Colonial Period and the later regime of Chiang Kai Shek in 1949, an industrial base was established with railway and road networks and the earlier river-based ports were largely abandoned. International shipping was moved to Keelung Harbor and linked by rail to the City. The Tamsui fell into neglect and became a polluted river susceptible to flooding (the original mangrove forests had been clear cut).

Not until democratization in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s did a new consciousness emerge regarding the Tamsui. As with many other cities in Asia, rapid industrialization brought with it many consequences including, perhaps, the most apparent, pollution. This new consciousness was concerned with improving the quality of life for Taipei’s inhabitants. This has led to, in the past two decades, a reduction in the work day and work week, better mass transportation systems, the construction of massive waste treatment facilities, implementation of stricter zoning and controls for the worst polluting factories, the construction of bicycle ways and greenways for local and visiting populations, and a new attention to buildings and natural areas with historical/heritage interest. In addition, improvements of parks and social services have all played a part in making today’s Taipei a better place to live.

Tamsui Township (淡水鎮): Located at the mouth of the Tamsui at the base of Da-tun Mountain, this area has been inhabited for 7,000 years. Evidence of those settlements is displayed at a museum of prehistory, the 13 Trades Museum (十三行博物館) located nearby. In 1641 the Dutch drove the Spanish out of Tamsui before they in turn were driven out by Cheng Cheng-Kung, a Ming loyalist, in 1661. After WWII, Tamsui was reduced to a small fishing port, and fell into obscurity until recently when it has been largely transformed (thanks to a new mass-transit system) into a very popular weekend holiday destination. Old buildings and markets have been revitalized and on a good weekend streets and shops are crowded. The river looks beautiful here, there is a ferry that can take tourists to the other side of the wide river to visit the museum, and the shores are crowded with ice cream shops, restaurants and other amusements. A huge, rambling and somewhat dis-jointed bicycle park (河邊公園) begins in Tamsui and follows the river all the way to Yingge City (鶯歌鎮) upriver.

Dadaocheng Port (大稻呈港口) : This port, although totally forgotten and overlooked by most people was once the center of commerce and culture for Taipei, then known as Mongjiang, and later Wanhua. The port itself disappeared long ago, and the thick mangrove forest that grew on the banks have been clear-cut. This led to massive flooding during rainy seasons which has been counteracted by a huge concrete floodwall that keeps the river totally out of sight from the city. Many historical buildings can still be found in Wanhua, including the Longsan Temple(龍山寺), one of the oldest and most prosperous temples in Taiwan and a must-visit attraction for tourists. Old markets, brothels and the famous snake alley are all within walking distance of the port. The port itself has been developed into the river-long bicycle park, and pleasure boats are anchored there but only sail intermittently due to certain regulations and the job of regularly dredging the silt-filled river bottom.

Yingge Township (鶯歌鎮): Further upriver and outside of Taipei City is Yingge Township. This is a traditional pottery supposedly settled in 1804 by one named Wu An. From 1853 locally available clay has been used to produce pottery including household items such as water vats and ceramic urns. Although pottery is still produced and sold, tourism has become a very important supporting industry, transforming the town into a cultural/heritage attraction. There is a very large pottery museum that showcases the area’s culture. There is nothing remaining of the port where boats that once carried ceramic products downriver to sell. A nearby reservoir (constructed for recreational purposes as well as for flood control) no longer exists. There is a huge waste treatment plant nearby, painted in colorful patterns as if to disguise the nature of its reality.

Dashi Township (大溪鎮): Traditionally this village was the last stop on the river. It was a prosperous town with thriving businesses, trading goods from the mountains inland, especially camphor oil, various herbal medicines and deer skins. Dashi is famous for its three prosperous families named Lee, Lin and Lan. Following a historical course similar to the other ports along the river, this village’s prosperity declined during the rapid industrialization period of post WWII up to the beginnings of democracy in the early 1990’s when the people of Taiwan found themselves imagining a people-friendly society and environment and began the work of restoring these historical villages, and taking a renewed pride in their build heritage. Today the stairs that porters walked, carrying goods up and down from the river’s port to Dashi are still in good repair. The old prosperity of this village (evidenced in the buildings’ elaborate facades) continues today as souvenirs and local snacks are sold to crowds of tourists. (Details of Dashi, and other key stops along the Tamsui, moving upstream from north to south as it changes from
Tamsui to Tahan, are illustrated in detail in the original paper.)

Roots of Culture
These sites of culture along the Tamsui – Tamsui, Wanhua, Yingge and Dashi – tell a story of a traditional river-based commerce that was extinguished by the rapid industrialization of the mid to late 20th century, and a later rehabilitation that occurred with the advent of democracy, beginning in the early 1990’s. It is a story that is, perhaps, common in Asia. Their respective developments are ‘similar’, yet ‘different’ – touting different experiences and different attractions while competing developers strive to disassociate their community from the others along the river. There has not been and probably never will be any efforts spent of developing a leisure tourism network that connects these sites, preferably by a means of transportation on the river itself (a small yacht or ferry or other form of water-taxi) – and that is regrettable. Rather than imagining the heritage of the past, the new post-industrial imagination manipulates representations – of heritage and the management of culture rather than management of the cultural experience. The new revitalizing power of tourism carries a two-edged sword, remaking decrepit and almost forgotten communities but coming dangerously close to sealing an even more terrible fate: imagining an identity of toured community.

Imagining Cities must become imaginative cities in order to begin to think and plan with a historical and holistic vision. Rivers connect communities and they are the most fundamental and reliable systems of transportation, and sources of life and energy. Taipei is stuck in a leisure tourism approach that stresses recreation, heritage and nature/eco-tourism attractions. By doing so, communities become isolated and visitors and even residents lose a consciousness of interconnectivity. Tamsui River is not being revitalized with a comprehensive logic of sustainability in mind that asks questions such as:
• Are we using the existing resources of the river in a publicly beneficial and sustainable way?
• Are we making the most of hydro-power and other sustainable exploitation of the river’s resources?
• Are we connecting communities by offering the public an alternative river-based transportation system?
• Are we providing the right kind of markers at destinations that speak to the interconnectedness of tourism attractions?

In Tamsui the roots of Taipei’s culture still sleep unseen by many, even the users of its natural and cultural resources. A better and more complete thinking is necessary to develop the river into a place that deserves recognition equal to its powerful historical effects on the birth and growth of the city that now surrounds it. Although researchers and organizations produce a constant and endless stream of recommendations regarding sustainable development, its implementation remains spotty as the difficulties of social reality raise many obstacles. Hopefully, the future holds a new imagination that perceives sustainability as a recipe for opportunity, not limitation.

References
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Debord, G. (1995). The society of the spectacle. D. Nicholson-Smith (Trans.). NY: Zone Books.
Nash, R.F. (1967). Wilderness and the American Mind. London: Yale University Press.
Pritchard, A. & Morgan N.J. (2001) Culture identity and tourism representation: Marketing Cymru or Wales? Annals of Tourism Research, 22(2), pp.167-179.