When I saw for the first time a photo on the barracks suburb of Taichung
in Taiwan, I thought it was founded by the members of the native tribes
descending into the city from the mountains of central Taiwan, and they
filled the walls and streets of the neighborhood, resembling the
recently demolished Beijing hutong’s, with their traditional
tribal motifs. Although already at the first glance some of the patterns
showed signs of a peculiar acculturation.
Just later I learned that the village was built on the then outskirts of Taichung for the soldiers of the National Army saved from China over to the island in the late 1940s. In recent decades the city embraced it all around, and some years ago it was doomed to demolition by the city council. The protests of the local families were given a peculiar shape by one of the first inhabitants, the then eighty-six year old Huang Yunfu. With months-long work he painted with various figures all the walls, streets and every paintable surface of the village. The spectacle was promoted over the Chinese web already during the work by the students of the local university, and now the 彩虹村, Căihóng Cūn, Rainbow Village is already a kind of a local tourist attraction. And its demolition was taken off the agenda.
