A cultural approach to preserving squatter settlements: the case of Treasure Hill Village in Taipei

ABSTRACT

Based on historical research and on-site fieldwork, this paper probes the historic preservation of Treasure Hill Village, which takes place along with the reproduction of the space of Taipei city and the process of society-making in Taiwan. We argue that culture has been implemented as a contested approach through squatter settlements, which can be successfully preserved as a heritage site. On the one hand, the heritage politics of squatter settlements coincide with Taiwan’s turn to polarised politics, which adopts the preservation of a counterhegemonic community to validate the legitimacy of a transitional governance authority from below. On the other hand, Treasure Hill Village, as an artist village in the urban sphere, reveals that neoliberal capitalism has dominated the narrative of urban development for the sake of economic initiatives. Even if art and activism have together attempted to preserve the history of ignored people and reshape the ‘lived’ cultures under the threat of house dismantlement, we should be alert to the paradoxical rhetoric of culture, as it might damage the declining and marginalised residents’ access to heritage. The cultural struggle for the right to Taipei city indicates that the question of ‘whose heritage?’ remains an unfinished project.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage-making
• squatter settlements
• cultural approach
• the right to the city
• Taipei Treasure Hill Village

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Hui Yew-Foong for his comments throughout the writing process. We are also grateful to Prof. Laurajane Smith and the anonymous reviewers of IJHS for their valuable inputs to help improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Geolocation information

Taipei city, Taiwan, East Asia

Notes

1. Due to their failure in the Chinese civil war, hundreds of millions of KMT soldiers and loyalists of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime retreated from different Chinese provinces to Taiwan during the Great Migration of 1949. These mainland China immigrants are distinguished from the other three ethnic groups, specifically, the Hoklo, the Hakka, and the Taiwanese aborigines, which account for 13–14% of the population.

2. The land of park Nos. 14 and 15 is also known as Kang Le Community, which was mainly settled by KMT veterans who retreated from mainland China to Taiwan and by a few native Taiwanese people. The land’s categorisation as a ‘parkland’ in urban planning resulted in its demolition after 1956. When Chen Shui-bian served as mayor of Taipei City in 1997, this area was faced with compulsory demolition, and a veteran KMT soldier committed suicide. This incident was used to shape public opinion so that the media and the public turned to sympathise with the illegal residents. At this time, many social organisations formed an alliance and took social actions to put pressure on the government. Huang Sunchuan made the documentary titled ‘Our home is in Kang Le Community’ to oppose urban gentrification by using the ideology of a ‘greening bulldozer’.

3. The concept of ‘tribe park’ refers to a combination of a residential area and an artist village. This use here of ‘tribe’ is very different from the word ‘tribe’ in an Anglophone context.

4. The social-political changes in Taiwan in the late 1980s mainly included the De-Prohibition of Political Party Establishment in 1986, Rescinding the Emergency Law (Martial Measure) in 1987, and the De-Prohibition of Newspapers in 1988.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the National Social Science Fund of China under Grant No. The National Social Science Fund of China [19CH191].

Notes on contributors

Danzhou Li

Danzhou Li (PhD, Chinese University of Hong Kong) is an assistant professor at Institute of Aesthetics and Literary Criticism in Shenzhen University, China. Her theoretical interests revolve around urban culture and heritage studies. She has published book chapters with Palgrave Macmillan (2017), ISEAS (2017), etc. She has also published a monograph ‘New City, New Culture: The Cultural Route of Shenzhen in the Context of Urban Renewal’ with China Society Press (2019).

Shuting Zhong

Shuting Zhong is a postgraduate student at Institute of Cultural Industries in Shenzhen University, China. Her research interests focus on community-based art. Email: [email protected]. Mailing address: Room 208, Liuheyuan, 3688 Nanhai Avenue, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, 518060. Tel: [phone]. Fax No.: 86-075586110272.

Qing Wang

Qing Wang is a PhD candidate at Institute of Cultural Industries, Shenzhen University, China and School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry (MCASI), Curtin University, Australia (joint award). Her research interests include artistic practices and urbanisation of the Asia Pacific region.

Lifei Chen

Lifei Chen is a postgraduate student at Institute of Cultural Industries in Shenzhen University, China. Her research interests focus on culture studies.