Shiding Village

Abstract

Between July and October 1995, I undertook a social anthropological investigation in Shiding¹ township (xiang) in Taibei county, Taiwan, a restudy of work done by the British anthropologist Stephan Feuchtwang. Shiding township is situated in the mountains on the border of the basin to the southeast of Taibei. Two centuries ago, this township was still an untouched forest, sparsely inhabited by only a few Taiwanese aborigines (gaoshan zu). In the Xianfeng period (1851-61) of the Qing dynasty, Minnan-speaking people, who had originally migrated from southern Fujian, moved from Taibei city to this area and reclaimed the land, subsequently planting sweet potatoes, rice, tea leaves, and other crops. Later, the Japanese colonial authorities continued to use the popular name for the place, calling it "Shiding township," which was further subdivided into the three subtownships (qu) of Shiding, Getou, and Fenglin. In 1920, in the course of local administrative reform, the three subtownships were combined into one administrative village (zhuang), under Wenshan prefecture oun) of Taibei; the village was divided into fifteen watches (bao), and a watchhead (baozheng), charged with basic-level administrative responsibility, was appointed for each.