My Fulbright Year in Taiwan

This past weekend we saw a play that is very popular in Taiwan, called “The Village” 寶島一村. The play is about the military dependents’ villages 眷村 that sprung up in Taiwan after 1949, when the government fled to Taiwan. In some senses permanent refugee camps, in other senses government housing, the villages were an interesting mix of people from all over China. The play painted a portrait of life in the villages over 50 years, from 1950 to the present day.

There is a nice writeup in this article, if you want to know more about the story:

http://english.cri.cn/8706/2010/03/02/179s553539.htm

And here is a news report on the play (in Chinese):

The play was especially interesting to us personally because Stacy grew up in one such village. She saw some scenes that struck a familiar chord. For Ian, Evan and me, it was a little harder to understand some of the dialog, especially the dialects that the actors used as they played characters who came from other provinces of China.

The story was very engaging and interesting to me. These villages represent an important experience in Taiwan’s history, and is part of the history of the family that I married into. My father-in-law was uprooted from his home town and separated from his family for decades. This experience permanently changed his life in a way that I can’t imagine. The play that we saw gave us a new perspective on Chinese history, and on my wife’s history as well.