From every point in Hsin Tien one feels the magnetic attraction of the Hsin Tien River. It is its heart, and indeed the key to its history and development.
Emerald Lake (Bi Tan), is a man-made ponded area in the river. Countless poems exist in Chinese celebrating the beauty and tranquility of such watery havens as Emerald Lake. Its loveliness, as well as its close proximity to Taipei, have made it one of Taiwan’s most favored daytime playgrounds. On any day of the year, but especially on Sundays and holidays, Emerald Lake’s deep, lustrous, jade-green water is dotted with little row boats bearing courting couples, noisy students, and family groups. Along the neatly kept shores, picnicking groups loll in the quiet, away from crowded roads and the pounding of industry. Most numerous of those venturesome enough to swim in the river are the local youngsters from the Hsin Tien area. Here and there, in more sheltered areas along its shores, lone fishermen meld their thoughts with the contemplative atmosphere of their surroundings.
Alone, I love the dark grasses
growing beside the brook;
Above, a blue kingfisher
flashes in the thick of the bamboo;
The spring waters, swollen with rain,
come rushing over rocks.
No one at the ferry—just the boat
that swings to and fro.
Watching Old Lee, one of the punt operators who ply their wooden boats from shore to shore along the river, one feels nostalgic for a more simple, tranquil age, and happy that here, so close to so many engineering marvels of the 20th Century-superhighways, dams, and multi-lane bridges—some are still living in the age-old way.
Commuters line up for a pleasant ride to Hsin Tien on a punt, then pass over waters live with the changing light
However, the gentle nostalgia of the scene is only half the story. Chinese poets do not like to celebrate the occasional terrifying rampages of rivers, but the Hsin Tien River has a history of death and destruction with which native Hsin Tien residents are only too awed. In fact, it was out of the most devastating flood, 70 years ago, that Hsin Tien was reborn.
Old Lee was just a baby at the time, but grew up with the community memory of that terrible night when his ancestors’ and neighbors’ families, their houses, animals, fields, and possessions were swept away. Although somewhat used to their river’s occasional outbursts of bad temper, this was a disaster which exceeded anything in the area’s history. In those days, unchecked by dams upstream and the high walls which were built in more recent years to pond Emerald Lake, the river was more turbulent -a rather muddy god of unpredictable humor. After this ravaging flood, survivors had to start again to rebuild homes, businesses, fields, and families. In an effort to wipe out the previous bad luck, they consulted the local shaman, whose divination produced a new name for their community-Hsin Tien, or New Shop, as it would be said in English.
And the name appears to have been propitious, as the area’s successful development has never since been held back. “New shops” seem almost to be a hallmark of Hsin Tien. Hardly a day passes that there is not a covey of lucky floral wheels from well-wishers and a round of firecrackers exploding to herald the opening of some new enterprise.
Most of Hsin Tien is now very modern in style. New North Road is the long main roadway which runs from Taipei, through the center of Hsin Tien, and thence down to its junction at the river. Once little more than a bicycle track-the preferred modes of transport between Hsin Tien and Taipei were initially by boat and later by train—this major artery is lined from beginning to end with a bewildering variety of shops, all very modern. In the hills, overlooking the river in the distance, very stylish houses are springing up and being bought by oldtime Hsin Tien residents who have made good, as well as wealthy Taipei people who prefer the quiet and relatively countrified atmosphere of the smaller city. Downstream from Emerald Lake, a number of factories have been attracted to the area by the river facility and the eager pool of local labor. However, Hsin Tien authorities are now eager to maintain a balance between industrial and tourism development, and so “dirty” factories are not welcome. Certainly, the fresher air and quieter atmosphere of Hsin Tien are among its greatest attractions to people from the big, rumbling metropolis of Taipei, next door.
The lush river valley still shelters quaint, but productive, old farms.
However, although its newness dominates, Hsin Tien still retains its pride in its roots. Its patina is preserved for posterity in that area of the city where lies its beginning-by the river. Hsin Tien Road, the original main road of the district, is a charming track on which to wander back through time.
On alighting at the Hsin Tien bus terminal, there is now little in view to remind people that this place was once a sleepy river jetty with regular boat services down river to Taipei, and less frequently by sea to Tam-shui. Nevertheless, the routes are parallel, though nowadays there are big purring public transport busses rather than punts and promitive motor boats.
Hsin Tien Road is inaccessible to most motor traffic because of its narrowness. It runs parallel with the river, and is constantly bustling with a myriad of people activities. In the early morning, a steady flow of schoolchildren converge here from a warren of new apartments and old style family homes that have access to the street. Many enter Hsin Tien Road at its top end, where it meets the river, having made the crossing via the timeless bobbing of a punt. Still others march into the center of Hsin Tien Road over a beautifully designed suspension bridge swinging high and elegantly over Emerald Lake. Many of the children stop for breakfast, or just a snack, at a favorite food vendor’s stall-one chosen from the many who sell a variety of foods, usually local style, prepared fresh and delicious on the spot.
A wary camera eye catches a lone resident at a pensive moment
Most of the children attend the nearby Hsin Tien Elementary School or Wen Shan Middle School, both so idyllically situated that the children never lose sight of their beloved water. Wen Shan has one of the loveliest situations of any school in Taiwan. Tucked halfway up a verdant hillside, it has a brilliant panorama of soaring mountains in the distance and the lovely river winding its way through the lush valley below.
By 8:00 a.m. every morning, except for the day each month of the darkest moon and that of the fullest, Hsin Tien Road’s market place is a hive of bargaining, buying, and selling. For many generations farmers from the Hsin Tien River valley have come here to sell their produce. Local housekeepers and many others from outlying areas upstream, as well as from the large housing estates in the mountains beyond Hsin Tien, and even as far -away as the native aboriginal area of Wu Lai a further 15 kilometers up the road, all come here to do their shopping. Vegetables and fruit, brilliantly colored and gleaming with freshness, freshly killed pork, chickens, ducks, geese, all grown in the rich local river valley and hills, all sell very cheaply. Several varieties of fish and freshwater shrimp are brought in by Hsin Tien River fishermen. “Ah,” laments Mr. Liao, whose family have been vending fish in this market for three generations, “in my grandfather’s time we sold salmon.” “Yes, it’s true,” recalls another oldtimer, “before the dams were put in, the Hsin Tien River was famous for its salmon.”
The river is bountiful, and the market place is testimony to this. But, the Hsin Tien River harbors an evil spirit, and the people of Hsin Tien know this too. In the covered section of the market place is a small shrine which is attended to very seriously by devout people who have worked here for generations. The shrine gods are not only requested to make business good, but to keep the local people and those who visit safe and happy in the vicinity of the water, which flows just over the wall beside the shrine. Although Hsin Tien is now quite protected from the havoc of floodwaters, Emerald Lake and the river up and downstream claim more than 100 lives every year in drowning accidents.
An old grandmother selling vegetables in one of the market stalls is pointed out. Just one month ago, her grandson was drowned after falling from a boat. Many other families in Hsin Tien have suffered such tragic loss over the years. As a result, once a year, a group of Buddhist monks and nuns, and Taoist shamans, are called in to offer prayer and make sacrifices to appease the malign spirits of the water.
Dragon Boat Festival is also celebrated by Hsin Tien residents with a shade more seriousness than at other places around Taiwan. The festival commemorates Chu Yuan, who drowned himself to bring the attention of the king to his complaints. Chu Yuan was so mourned by the people, that they fed the fish in the river with dumplings-rice wrapped in bamboo leaves-so that they would not eat Chu Yuan’s body. However, everything in the Chinese view of the world has a darker and brighter side, and so it is with the Dragon Boat Festival. For weeks before the big day, beautifully carved and brightly painted dragon boats manned by enthusiastic local teams practice up and down Emerald Lake for the famous rowing competition held down river at Tam-shui. Hsin Tien has its own dragon boat regatta at mid-Autumn festival, a romantic harvest festival that attracts thousands of young lovers to moonlit waterways such as the Hsin Tien River.
Hsin Tien Road also has a number of fortune tellers. In their tiny booths along a covered walkway running off the old road, the diviners are obviously kept very busy and taken very seriously by Hsin Tien’s local residents and people from the surrounding countryside. On a romantic night like Mid-Autumn Festival, business is positively booming.
At the top end of Hsin Tien Road, one leaves the noisy clamor of the modern Hsin Tien behind and enters an older, quieter, and more elegant world. A row of houses here have withstood flood ravages and testify to the prosperity that some families have enjoyed from the area’s earliest times. A very old teashop is filled with customers, all leisurely enjoying the largesse of the owner—an old fashioned emphasis on sampling rather than buying. A few doors up, there is a pretty herbal medicine shop, its shelves lined with antique bottles and pungent with smells that have settled into the woodwork over decades. Across the road, an ancient owner of an even more ancient coffin shop sincerely consoles a family group whose relatives and neighbors he has known all his life.
The area of Hsin Tien has today expanded so far beyond this original stretch of the river bank that it can support three other major market places. The largest of all the Hsin Tien markets, and indeed bigger than most in Taipei, is the Chichang market. Stretching over about a square kilometer, the streets are clogged on Saturday and Sunday mornings with street salesmen standing almost shoulder to shoulder amid their customers, who are jostling each other to get at a good bargain.
Beyond Chi-chang, again towards the river, lie hectares of paddy fields and vegetable plots. Small farmhouses still manage to hold their ground against the steady advance of the industrial complexes which line the river bank. Even on the river banks, downstream here from Emerald Lake where the waterflow is quieter, more controllable, enterprising residents manage to get in a crop of vegetables or raise a flock of ducks before the rainy season raises the water level.
Hsin Tien residents are a very mixed population —farmers, shopkeepers, fishermen, commuters, factory workers, and market vendors. However, though their lifestyles may be as different as is Old Lee’s, the puntman, from Dr. Kao’s, a resident physician at Keng Hsin, the largest of Hsin Tien’s district hospitals, Hsin Tien residents are assuredly in agreement that their city has an identity all its own. Certainly, the natural beauty and controlled development of the area has resulted in the attraction of more and more new residents. As Mrs. Peng, a newcomer with her husband and two children, put it as she gazed proudly at the view across the fields and down to the river from her fourth-story apartment: “In Hsin Tien we can have the best of the old and new world. We want to live here forever.”