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On 21 September 1999, an earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale rocked
the central part of Taiwan, killing approximately 2,400 people and severely
damaging infrastructure. To locals, the event is known as the 921 Earthquake.

In 2003, following rehabilitation of much of the area, an international competition,
for a built-operate-transfer (BOT) project to commemorate the dead, was instigated.
It attracted 182 entries from 34 countries. That submitted by Tsai-Ho Cheng, a
23-year-old Amsterdam-trained, Taiwanese woman architect, who was allegedly
inspired by the bamboo forests in Ang Lee’s acclaimed movie Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon (2000), was selected. Cheng’s monument and bamboo forest were
realized and the memorial was much celebrated in architectural circles.

However, local residents reacted against the scheme, lamenting it as a disjuncture,
bizarre and surrealistic. They predicted that the bamboo forest would not grow
on the site chosen for the memorial. Consistent with their predictions, after one
year, the leaves on the trees in Cheng’s bamboo forest started turning yellow.
The agricultural department diagnosed a mysterious disease in the trees and,
within two years of the installation, almost all the bamboo had died. After a series
of appraisals, the local government decided to demolish the entire forest; it was
removed from its site in 2007.

Chiu-Ping Yang, senior local correspondent for the China Times, summarized the
events thus:

I saw an incredibly brilliant idea mesmerizing global and local architects,
who, subsequently, led everyone marching into a dead valley, as
predicted by the local residents (Pers. comm. Chiu-Ping Yang to the
author, 2007).

The emotional dissatisfaction of locals was never mobilized into an open protest;
anger was eventually calmed and after the clearance of the bamboo forest, residents
gradually came back during their leisure time and reclaimed the public space.
On a sunny day, people run and play Frisbee on the newly “renovated” lawn,
teasing each other about the enormous expense of this piece of lawn. “It is a new
start,” a local resident commented as he was walking with bare feet on the lawn.

The glamorous, but doomed,
bamboo forest:
The Western de /construction of local memory of
the 921 Earthquake in Taiwan

Hong-Chi Shiau

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This paper explores the multiple, dialectic, global processes through which the
local memory of the 921 Earthquake collides with the internationally endorsed
memorial landscape BOT project. The paper considers juxtaposition and collusion
between the global and the local, attempting to illuminate how the political,
economic and aesthetic agents wove multiple institutional processes into a
doomed contemporary memorial landscape project. The paper relies on historical
testimonials and documents as well as interviews with local residents, community
leaders and local reporters in Nantou. Efforts to interview several key
informants were unsuccessful: the local architects who had endorsed the project
allegedly wanted to “keep it in low tone” and “let go of it”. As a result, it was not
possible to include their reflections on the project or its failure.

The 921 Earthquake and the Bamboo Forest Memorial Park

The 921 Earthquake was Taiwan’s first national experience of this kind of natural
disaster. In the aftermath of the quake, to facilitate a rapid return to normalcy,
immediate efforts, both public and private, focused on sheltering the displaced
residents and restoring local economic activity. Two main parties were involved
in the initial reconstruction: central government and NGO-affiliated voluntary
agencies. However, the two have been involved in a longstanding struggle: the
centralized public sector programmes are resourceful but inefficient; while the

In contrast to the design, the leaves
of bamboo forest withered, turning

yellow. While Cheng found her
project poorly executed, the contrac-
tor attributed the failure to an inap-
propriate planting methodology and
a poor choice of species. Photograph

by Chiu-Ping Yang.

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NGO-affiliated sector reacts more efficiently to local needs but is poorly funded
(Shieh & Chang, 2005). The 921 Earthquake Recovery Foundation (ERF) was
established to develop a coherent approach to addressing the gap between the
two sectors. The 921 ERF was proactive in planning for post-disaster recovery
management to establish critical priorities and objectives, traceable milestones,
essential leadership and community commitment for recovery (Shieh & Chang, 2005).

By 2003, most of the reconstruction work had been accomplished and the 921 ERF
agreed on a plan to construct a memorial landscape installation. To terminate,
symbolically, the entire recovery project, it began soliciting project proposals from
across the world.1 It is clear that the central government intended to address the
meaning of trauma through the installation of a large-scale, internationally
recognized and memorable contemporary landscape.

Farrar (2004) has examined sites that commemorate famines, wars, genocides
and terrorist attacks, arguing that these sites have often appropriated traumatic
experiences to reproduce sovereign power. However, he also believes that these
sites are potentially subversive, empowering people to contest nationalism and
rethink their relationship to the state. In the same vein, Jordan (2005) analyzed
officially designated memorial sites, discovering not only changes and continuities
in the forms and contents of public representations, but also the changing
relationship among a state, its people and a collection of officially approved objects
in urban landscapes (Farrar, 2004; Lennon & Foley, 1999; Gough, 2000).

The bamboo planting expert
examining the withered leaves,
before concluding that the trees
were suffering from a mysterious
disease. Photograph by
Chiu-Ping Yang.

1. The international BOT project
solicited applications on the
Internet and thus encouraged
architects, landscape architects
and designers from across the
world to participate. Some of the
official event-related documen-
tation remains accessible on the
Internet.

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The 921 project was intended as a tribute to local residents, whose resilience and
endurance had helped them through the traumatic experience of the quake. It
exemplifies how the construction of a memorial can function as a site of negotiation
entangled with the ongoing creation of historical narratives, official visions, local
memories and cultural productions. With this event, the state intended to look for
global players in shaping the meanings of an earthquake, resonating seamlessly
with its political rhetoric. As an “internationally plugged and diplomatically
isolated and unrecognized” state (Gross, 2006), the Taiwanese government
initiated such a project to reinvent iself as a global economic and technological
agent. In political rhetoric, the important agenda for the independence-inclined
government, led by the Democraic Progressive Party (DPP), was to assure
local and overseas commentators of the substantial legitimacy of the statehood.
Over the past decades, the promotion of international economic
integration has enhanced economic, technological and social interconnected-
ness with global players, including foreign states and multinational corpora-
tions. The imperative role that the state has played is to democratize, privatize
and liberalize Taiwan’s market, in order to attract global capital and become
better connected internationally. These practices have been intended not only
to sustain economic growth, but also to override the hurdles resulting from
diplomatic isolation.

Under this political economic circumstance, the government and other semi-
official agents involved in large-scale public construction projects were
encouraged to pursue high profile international competitions. The 921
Earthquake Memorial Park was one project well-suited to an international
competition. According to the Prime Minister, Hsih-Kuen Yo, “the global
participation in creating the memorial park will definitely increase its global
visibility and also ease the pains of the victims” (Architect’s Forum, 2004). In
order to present the competition as global, the bidding committee was chaired
by Peter Walker, an internationally acclaimed architect, who also chaired the 911
World Trade Center Restoration plan. The jury had local as well as international
representation.

Celebrating Bamboo: Global Associations

Tsai-Ho Cheng’s competition winning project comprised a monument
surrounded by a bamboo forest, complete with small walkways interconnected
to enable visitors to walk through it. It was unanimously applauded by the
committee (Ding & Yang, 2004). The global celebration was further endorsed by
three well-regarded Taiwanese architects, who compared the proposal to the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC, designed by Maya Lin, another
woman architect of Chinese descent. For example, acclaimed Taiwanese architect
and member of the BOT bidding committee Prof. Ming-Herng Wang commented:
“I see Cheng as an uprising superstar in the field of city planning and design….
She will emerge like the second Maya Lin” (Ding and Yang, 2004). There are
similarities between the two monuments: when approaching both, the ground
slopes gently downward and the low walls appear to grow out of the earth
(Brook, 2006).

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The use of bamboo may have seemed like a logical choice to Cheng. In many
tropical countries, entire villages, country houses, barns, and other structures
share a common natural resource: bamboo. Bamboo is not only a strong and
flexible material, it is also aesthetically appealing. In regions vulnerable to
earthquakes, bamboo is highly resistant to collapse. The material is easy to obtain
and is easily replaced when aged or damaged by weather. In this respect, bamboo
is always fresh and affordable (Kakabadse, 2006).

Bamboo also has cultural associations: for example, from the perspective of
Chinese elites and intellectuals, the iconography of bamboo is very positive; it is
often associated with the integrity of intellectuals; it is both elastic and tough. Along
with pine trees and plum trees, bamboo is thought to uphold moral standards
in adverse conditions. In addition, the Western imagination often associates
bamboo with East Asia or, in this event, with China in particular. This perception
is perpetuated by the fact that panda bears live in bamboo trees. This latter
association was also understood by Cheng and her fellow architects, who thought
of bamboo as charming, lovely and oriental/Asian.

Cheng commented that she wanted her project to capture the mesmerizing charm
of the bamboo forests featured in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In her imagination,
the greenness, the breeze and the shivering bamboo leaves would constitute a
soothing and comforting landscape to create, symbolically, a sense of resilience
and peace. According to one jury member, a particular strength of the project
was that it did not passively emphasize the easing of the pain; instead, it ren-
dered hope and encouraged people to look for things to be positive about.2 A local
agricultural officer who supervised the construction of the bamboo forest recalled
Cheng saying that: “Bamboo has strong local presence and the residents should be
able to relate well”. Further, “the greenness and wind and mist should be loved by
the residents” (Pers. comm. the agricultural officer to the author, 2007).3

For Cheng, bamboo also symbolized the central part of Taiwan. She had never
visited this part of the island, but she had seen a wide range of landscape
photographs of it. She understood the central part of Taiwan to be mountainous
and cool.

Mourning Forests: Local Responses

The local dismay towards the bamboo forest emerged long before its demolition,
even before its creation. The earliest animosity resulted from the clearance of the
locally grown trees that had survived the earthquake:

We lived with the trees, we saw most of them surviving the quake like
our friends on September 21, 1999, and we burst into tears. I don’t want
to... No one has the right to claim their lives brutally, no matter how
brilliant the plan is (Pers. comm. local resident to the author).

There were many other reasons why the bamboo forest was not appreciated
locally. Firstly, there was a sharp discrepancy between the meanings that elites,
intellectuals and Westerners associated with bamboo, and which were shared
by the architects and the bidding committee, and those that were understood by

2. The juror, an acclaimed archi-
tect, is reported to have said this
in an interview with a local report-
er from the China Times.

3. The local agricultural officer was
responsible for communication
between the architect, the govern-
ment and the contractor. Although
reluctant to speak on behalf of the
government, the officer said that
the methodology of plantation had
been modified several times to
adjust to the local weather, land
and temperature. During the proc-
ess, every party was unhappy.

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local residents. For locals, bamboo signifies “cheapness and low-maintenance”
(author’s interviews with locals, 2007). The local appreciation for bamboo is func-
tional and instrumental: they like to eat and drink bamboo shoot, they want to
buy bamboo furniture, but they do not in any way enjoy its presence in a large
scale park. The local reaction to the bamboo forest was summarized thus:

What we need is a space where people would walk in, but the bamboo
forest looks Ying4 (chilly). My feeling about a bamboo forest since my
childhood has been ghost haunting. A few bamboo trees in my gar-
den are romantic, but a bamboo forest is too intimidating. We dare not
approach, not to mention our children” (Pers. comm. local resident to
the author).

Another challenge that confronted locals was the transplantation, rather than
plantation, of bamboo trees. The plan the local bamboo growers were required
to follow was beyond the terrain with which they were familiar. Local wisdom,
not requiring an expert on bamboo, states that, generally, bamboo should not
be transplanted. Bamboo is allegedly tough, but it usually takes time to grow
shoots. However, in Cheng’s proposal, the concept of a “forest” was essential;
to achieve an immediate forest-like installation required transplantation. From
the perspective of professional local bamboo growers, transplantation was
vulnerable and virtually unattainable in the typhoon season.

The difficulty of transplantation was exacerbated by the heterogeneous
geography of the central part of Taiwan: “The site for the bamboo forest planting
is dry and hot, whereas the site imagined by Cheng, and probably by the
internationally acclaimed judges, was high up in the mountains, constantly
saturated with fog and a cool breeze” (author’s interviews with locals, 2007).
Conflict was exacerbated when a typhoon swept across the region and a gardening
contractor went bankrupt due, in part, to the high maintenance work required
during the typhoon season. He lamented that the bamboo forest seen in Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon was impossible to grow in the area. As another resident said:

I see it as an expansion of the graveyard constructed in my neighbour-
hood. Somewhat creepy. … we used to take a walk in the field, but
now the entire field is abandoned. Idiots know bamboo can’t grow
in the way they prescribe. You can just randomly ask a resident here
(Pers. comm. local resident to the author).

It transpired that Cheng’s decision to use bamboo might have been more realistic
if the forest had been planted at a higher altitude.

The discrepancy between the global and local is further apparent in local folklore:
a bamboo forest is frequently depicted as a place where ghosts and snakes
mischievously hide in preparation for an attack on the innocent. It is a common
belief that those who die of a natural disaster will not accept their fate, but haunt
a forest, reluctant to leave. The ghosts harboured in the forest suffer immense
anguish and sorrow, and will continue to wander around it as long as their wishes
remain unfulfilled: “If each bamboo tree commemorates a death, the atrocity
occurs when you kill the dead again. Ironically, it happens here and has reshaped
our memories” (Pers. comm. local resident to the author).

4. Ying literally means chilly and
ghost haunting. Local residents
feel that too many trees would
negatively affect their Fung-Shui.
In this particular case, a bamboo
forest is intimidating because it
can link to the dead, whose ghosts
are unwilling to leave due to the
unaccomplished mission.

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Conclusions

This paper, focused on one specific event, has revealed differences between the
intellectual and well-meaning agencies that worked to reshape public memories of
a natural disaster, and their ill-considered local effects. The bamboo forest’s failure
demonstrates a lack of vision among the project’s decision makers, primarily
those in government who promoted global participation and ignored local
wisdom, and in doing so compromised this high-profile international
installation project.

The project provides grounds on which to reflect more generally on the interplay
between the local and the global, a negotiated relationship that underscores a
wide range of contemporary issues. It also sheds light upon attitudes towards,
and the potential for, the use of renewable material resources in contemporary
developments. In the global age, it is foreseeable that global agents will continue
to influence the construction of landscapes and public representations, even
when these projects are culturally bounded. Despite some good deeds, the BOT is
neither a poison nor a panacea. The point is that members of a community must be
given the chance to comment, based on past successes, on what constitutes a good
solution. It is imperative, in these forms of memorial construction, to capitalize
on opportunities to create and strengthen the social network of a community. As
advocated by many architects across the world (e.g. Kakabadse, 2006), local wisdom
is central to sustainable development. However, at the other end of the spectrum,
it is also politically dangerous to depend solely upon local wisdom, which can
be clouded by patronage and favouritism scandals. It is communication that is
essential: between proponents and opponents; between initiators and converts;
between experts and locals; between designers and makers. In the case of the 921
memorial park, such communication may have prevented the failure and subse-
quent clearance of the internationally acclaimed competition winning design.

The bamboos being removed from the
site. The controversy ends with sorrow.
Photograph by Chiu-Ping Yang.

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