Tamsui Chai clan village

　The senior utopian community-Tamsui Chai clan village

                               （淡水蔡家村）By laichinwen 2017/5/25

 

                                                  Mr. Chai-Ying（蔡瀛）

 

This is a utopian legend that is really happening in a mountain village,where the villagers respond to one man’s call and take steps towards positive changes in the life of their seniors, and step by step they build a utopian community, where the aging people can lead a fulfilling life of co-dining , co-learning ,and co-farming.

located in Xia-Guei-Rou Mountain in Yi-San Li, Tamsui District of New Taipei City, Cai clan village has a reputation as the happiest senior citizens community in Taiwan and the Utopia of the aged in the north of Taiwan.

Each day the village elders go to Qifu Baosheng Temple Palace (Blessing Life Protection Temple Palace) at the village entrance,where they eat together, learn together, and furthermore they cultivate a farm not far from here together.

As far as the Villagers are concernd , the temple is not only their faith center, but is also a place used as Women's Studies Classroom, and as The learning Camp for the Senior.

The movement of co-farming, co-dining, and co-learning started in 2004 and has gained a great success since. And the credit goes to one man who is none other than the executive secretary of Qifu Baosheng Temple Palace, Mr. Chai-Ying, the major backstage planner behind the movement.

Mr. Chai-Ying used to be a jounalist. At one time years ago, when he came back home to see his mother, he witnessed a great exodus fom the mountain village as quite a few of young man went out to seek a better standard of living.

It was then that he noticed that some of the older residents  in the village were left alone unattended in the home, and day after day they spent their time doing nothing except fom nodding off while watching tv in the sittingroom.

 And also he found that these senior residents ate fairly meager foods, as was always the case with the frugal old people, they quite often ate breakfast leftover for their lunch and again ate lunch leftover for their supper.

 Seeing their sad situation , Chai-Ying was much distressed for he knew very well that the same was true with his aging parents. After much soul-searching , he decided to do something for them.

 In 2004 when Chai-Ying retired and came back to Chai clan village. he first went to the chief of the village, Mr.Gau-Mulin, for help. And next he persuaded the temple committee menbers to set up Co-dining Fundation.

At the begining he and the other five temple committee menbers donated a total of 600.000 dollars to pay for the free hot meals served to the local senior residents three times a day.

However , things did not go smoothly at the outset. The day when they began to serve meal to them ,none of the senior residents showed up.

Only after careful investigations of the facts did they realize that on the part of the aged residents, eating free meals seemed to them an undignified proceeding, because they were afraid that their neighbours might say that their sons and daughters were not doing their duty.

'‘When we knew what went wrong, we immediately readjusted the plan to fit the new situation.’’said Cai-Ying,’’ We went from door to door to visit each of the senior residents , and told them that we now adopted ’’user pay principle’’and eveyone takes meals in the dinning hall will be charged one thousand dollars per month. In this way we finally convinced them that coming here to dine together was the right option.’’

‘’In the begining we did’nt have any idea about cost value logic.so the 600,000 dollars donation was soon used up. And we once more sought funding from District office and from FuBang foundation. We learned from bitter experience and gradually mastered the psychology of old peope. Finally we found out the appropriate eating, education, and entertainment patterns for them. We too send meals to some disabled older villagers. What we did to them softened their hearts and made them shift from a feeling of resistance, to acceptance. Now they are accustomed to the way of life here and enjoy it very much.’’ Chai-Ying added.

Chai-Ying ‘s years of effort had finally borne fruit. In 2007 Tamsui Aging Life Care Association was founded by the sons of the Chai clan villagers .

Cai-Ying had always payed much attention to lifelong learning for the elderly, as he often remarked, together we live and lean. So in 2008 once again he joined hands with the village chief, Mr.Gau-Mulin to file an application to Department of Social Welfare of New Taipei City for establishing Women's Studies Classroom, and The learning Camp for the Senior.

In 2008 The Learning Camp for the Senior started to offer classes in languages, arts, music, weaving, baking and so on. Anyone who is over 58 years old is qualified to attend the classes and each class take 800 dollars a school year.

In 2009 Chai wen-kai,the chief executive ,and Chai-Yilun,the chief financial officer of Tamsui Aging Life Care Association, together thought out the co-farming plan. They called together the villagers to reclaim about a hectare of waste agricultural land for co-farming.

 Chai-yilun himself is a horticultural therapist, and have expertise in Vanilla plants cultivation. He instructs the elders to plant vanilla, for it has high economic value and is easy to grow. After the harvest they sell the vanilla crop to the Association,and then the Association reprocess the crop and sell it in the market.Beside this, they also grow many kinds of vegetables. In this way not only the elders get money and food , but also get a happy and healthy life.

One thing worthwhile to mention is that the village elders also take part in a historical war reenactment performance. In October every year  there are several engagements  in FuWei Fort Park . They play the roles of Manchu soldiers in the Battle of Tamsui that outbreaked during the period of Sino-French War in 1884. According to Chai-Ying, there are several of their ancestors who died in this battle, and It seems to him that this is the best way to memorize them – by directly taking part in the battle.