Taiwan's Military Dependents Villages
30-second overview: Taiwan's first military dependents village wasn't built for regular Nationalist troops, but for the "Lost Army" that wandered Burma's jungles for 5 years before reaching Taiwan. Led by General Li Mi, these Yunnan anti-communist forces endured a more tortuous exile than other mainlanders. From 1954 onwards, over 300 such villages were built across Taiwan, housing 1.2 million refugees and becoming a crucial gene in Taiwan's multicultural DNA.
Autumn 1954, at the border between Pingzhen and Zhongli in Taoyuan, 530 simple houses were hastily completed. Built with bamboo fences, yellow mud, and tin roofing, averaging less than 10 ping each, these modest dwellings housed a unique group of residents—not military families who came directly to Taiwan with the Nationalist government, but dependents of the "Lost Army" who had journeyed from mainland China through Burma to Taiwan.
Zhongzhen New Village, Taiwan's first military dependents village, was destined to embody the complex character of military village culture: not merely a dialogue between mainlanders and native Taiwanese, but a dialectic of exile and settlement, temporary and permanent, homeland and foreign land.
The Complex Spectrum of Mass Migration
1.2 Million People, Multiple Pathways
"1.2 million military personnel and civilians came to Taiwan with the government" is the textbook standard, but reality was far more complex. According to historical research, this figure encompasses multiple waves of migration from 1945-1953:
- 1945-1949: About 600,000 military personnel directly to Taiwan, plus around 500,000 civil servants and civilians
- 1950: 70,000 troops evacuated from Zhoushan Islands, plus approximately 120,000 accompanying civilians
- 1953: 26,028 people from Huang Jie's forces in Vietnam's Phu Quoc Island
- 1954: About 14,000 Chinese POWs from the Korean War, plus 3,000 remnants of Li Mi's Burma forces
This wasn't a single retreat, but an 8-year series of discontinuous exiles. Behind each wave lay different desperation and hope. Direct arrivals still had government assistance, but the Lost Army dependents experienced double exile—first losing their homeland, then surviving on the frontier.
The Lost Army's Unique Fate
General Li Mi's Yunnan Anti-Communist National Salvation Army 193rd Division experienced the most tortuous journey among all Taiwan migrants. After the Nationalist defeat in Yunnan in 1949, this force didn't retreat directly to Taiwan but withdrew into northern Burma's jungles, conducting 5 years of guerrilla warfare along the China-Burma border.
📝 Curator's Note
The "lost" in Lost Army wasn't just geographical isolation, but political awkwardness. They were recognized neither by Burma's government nor the international community, with even their "friendly force" status remaining ambiguous.
In early 1954, under international pressure, Li Mi's Lost Army was finally permitted to evacuate to Taiwan. But when this mixed group of men, women, and children arrived at Taipei's Songshan Airport, they weren't greeted as heroes but scattered to Taiwan Sugar warehouses in Chiayi. Their material deprivation was so severe it "exceeded even their guerrilla days in northern Burma," prompting the government's emergency decision to build Zhongzhen New Village in Taoyuan.
Taiwan's first military dependents village was built for the last group to arrive. This temporal irony presaged the multicultural character of military village culture.
Establishing the Bamboo Fence Republic
Military Branch Geography
Military villages' spatial distribution reflected military politics. Each village housed residents from the same military branch, often the same unit:
- Kaohsiung Zuoying: Navy villages, mainly Shandong people (the Navy had important bases in Shandong's Weihai)
- Taichung Qingquangang: Air Force villages
- Taoyuan Zhongzhen New Village: Burma guerrillas, rich Yunnan Bai culture
- Tainan Erkong: Air Force, mainly Sichuan and Hunan people
💡 Did you know
According to statistics on military personnel origins, Shandong Province provided the most (72,600 people), followed by Guangdong (66,600) and Jiangsu (54,900). These numbers directly determined the "dialect map" of military villages.
This military-branch clustering served both government administrative needs and natural extension of military culture. Comradeship meant life-and-death bonds on battlefields, becoming neighborhood dependence in Taiwan. Military villages weren't just residential areas—they were civilian extensions of military culture.
Material Hardship, Spiritual Richness
Early military villages' material conditions were extremely crude. Zhongzhen New Village houses averaged "less than 10 ping, with only 4.5 ping actually providing shelter," combining living and bedroom space, with kitchens barely fitting a single stove. Bamboo fence walls, yellow mud filling, tin roofing—rain and thunder could cause electrocution.
But amid material scarcity, military village residents developed remarkable creativity:
- Empty oil drums as water wells
- Waste wood boards for room partitions
- Broken umbrellas as shade covers
- Flour sacks converted to bedsheets and clothing
"Making-do philosophy" wasn't choice—it was survival skill. But this shared hardship experience also fostered military villages' unique community cohesion.
Reconstructing Food Memories
Folk Fusion of Eight Great Cuisines
Military villages' most tangible cultural heritage is cuisine. Military village mothers from across China reconstructed the eight great Chinese cuisines in limited kitchens with scarce ingredients—but this reconstruction was actually innovation.
⚠️ Controversial perspective
Writer Jiao Tong once said: "Sichuan doesn't have Sichuan-style beef noodles, Mongolia doesn't have Mongolian barbecue, Fuzhou doesn't have Fuzhou noodles." Are military village dishes "homeland flavors" or "Taiwan flavors"? The answer might be both and neither.
Three characteristics of military village cuisine:
- Localized adaptation: Using Taiwan vegetables for hometown dishes, adjusting flavors for Taiwanese tastes
- Economic practicality: One-pot stews feeding entire families, transforming one piece of tofu ten different ways
- Cross-provincial technique exchange: Shandong mothers learning Sichuan spice, Jiangsu mothers using Cantonese stir-fry methods
Beef noodle soup exemplifies this perfectly. Sichuan-style beef noodles took root in Kaohsiung, northern Taiwan's Yongkang Street developed clear-broth varieties, and central-southern Taiwan used Chinese medicine herbs instead of doubanjiang. "Beef noodles" became Taiwan's signature dish, yet original Sichuan doesn't have this dish.
Markets as Cultural Intersection Points
Military village markets were frontlines of mainlander-native cultural exchange. Take Zhongzhen Market: initially, Xiaoli (native) vegetable farmers pushed carts into villages for street sales, with military village mothers becoming regular customers, gradually forming markets.
This seemingly simple commercial relationship was actually the first deep contact between two communities. Native people learned mainland flavors, mainlanders became familiar with Taiwan ingredients. Shaobing youtiao and braised pork rice, soy milk and traditional black tea began coexisting in the same markets.
Three Generations of Identity Transformation
First Generation: Eternal Nostalgia
The first generation of military village residents maintained perpetual longing for their homeland. Their "China" wasn't a political entity but remembered Shandong steamed buns, Sichuan red-braised pork, and Hunan preserved meat and sausages.
The government initially expected swift "retaking of the mainland," so military villages were designed temporarily. Simple housing and inadequate infrastructure reflected optimistic expectations of "returning home soon." But 3 years became 30 years, temporary became permanent, and military villages became reluctant "small homelands."
Language policy also reflected this mentality. Military villages vigorously promoted Mandarin education, but this "national language" carried not just communication function but cultural identity. Military village children could recite Yangtze River basin place names but couldn't name the stream next door.
Second Generation: Identity Tensions
The second generation faced unprecedented identity dilemmas. Raised in military villages with Chinese cultural education, they lived on Taiwan soil. After 1987's martial law lifting and cross-strait family visits opening, this division intensified.
An interesting contradiction: When first-generation veterans could finally visit their hometowns, many found themselves "maladapted." Forty years of separation made "hometown" foreign territory. Conversely, Taiwan—once "temporary residence"—had become true "home."
Second-generation political stances consequently diverged: some supporting unification, others independence, most supporting status quo. "I'm a military village child, I'm also Taiwanese"—this wasn't contradiction but reality.
Third Generation: Cultural Roots Seeking
Most third-generation residents never lived in military villages, knowing them mainly through parents' stories. Paradoxically, this generation began military village culture "rescue" movements.
Through field research, oral history, and digital preservation, the third generation rediscovered military villages. This "cultural roots seeking" reflects globalized era desires for cultural origins. They sought not political identity but cultural identity richness.
Demolition and Preservation Tensions
1996: The Double-Edged Renovation Act
The 1996 Military Dependents' Village Renovation Act marked the beginning of large-scale military village disappearance. Policy goals were practical: improve living conditions, release prime land, meet urban development needs.
📊 Data source
According to Ministry of National Defense statistics, before the 1996 renovation act, Taiwan had approximately 300 military villages. By the 2020s, about 90% were renovated, with only around 30 receiving cultural asset preservation.
Post-renovation villages became modern public housing, indeed solving living quality issues. But original settlement patterns disappeared along with neighborhood relationships. Military village residents moving into new apartments enjoyed modern conveniences but lost the old "one family barbecuing, ten thousand families smelling" community feeling.
Renovation wasn't smooth sailing. Distribution disputes, relocation compensation, and emotional loss sparked many protests. The deeper question: When military villages become public housing, can "military village culture" survive?
Preservation Awakening: From Illegal Structures to Cultural Assets
Treasure Hill represents a key military village preservation case. This Taipei hillside settlement near Gongguan was originally classified as "illegal construction" facing total demolition. But through local advocacy, it was designated "historical architecture" in 2004.
Rainbow Village offered another preservation model. When Taichung's Gancheng Sixth Village faced demolition, resident Huang Yongfu began wall painting, originally personal "protest behavior." After 2010 internet promotion went viral, it ultimately prompted government preservation as "Rainbow Art Park."
💡 Did you know
Grandpa Huang Yongfu was nearly 90 when he began painting in 2008, couldn't use internet, and relied on volunteers to set up websites and sell creative merchandise to maintain painting and building maintenance costs. An elderly man's paintbrush accidentally became a new model for military village preservation.
These cases illustrate multiple paths for military village preservation: academic discourse, community mobilization, internet promotion, policy shifts—all indispensable.
Contemporary Transformation of Military Village Spirit
From Space to Memory
Most physical military villages have vanished, but "military village spirit" found new carriers in the digital age:
- Facebook groups: "XX Military Village Alumni" rebuilding virtual communities
- Oral history projects: Using video records to preserve military village elders' stories
- 3D digital reconstruction: Vanished villages reborn in virtual spaces
- Cultural creative industries: Military village elements becoming popular nostalgic themes
Virtual military village communities somewhat recreated physical village community feelings. But whether these "memory villages" remain "true villages" depends on individual perspective.
Taiwan's Model of Plural Identity
Reviewing 70 years of military village history, the greatest insight might be: Cultural identity needn't be zero-sum. One person can simultaneously be a military village child, Taiwanese, Chinese, global citizen—these identities aren't mutually exclusive.
Military village experience also challenges single-culture imagination. Cultures from across China recombined in Taiwan, producing familiar yet strange new culture. Beef noodles, braised dishes, military village cuisine—none are pure reproductions of any single tradition but innovative "cultural mixed-blood" results.
In the globalized 21st century, military villages' multicultural experiment might be Taiwan's important contribution to the world.
What the Bamboo Fences Enclosed
✦ "A bamboo fence enclosed not just 1.2 million people's new homes, but the most complex and richest DNA segment in Taiwan's cultural gene pool."
Military villages may have vanished, but they left more than nostalgia—a capacity for facing change: rebuilding life in the most difficult conditions, planting culture on the most foreign soil, maintaining hope in the most uncertain futures.
Making-do and mutual aid, adaptation and persistence, exile and settlement—these seemingly contradictory qualities formed military village spirit's core. It reminds us that culture isn't static museum displays but vitality living in every cooking session, every dialect sentence, every transmitted story.
When we navigate Taiwan's multiculture today—eating lei cha in Hakka villages, hearing ancient melodies in indigenous communities, buying pepper biscuits at military village night markets—we're actually experiencing the experiment military villages began 70 years ago: how to make differences enriching, exile belonging, foreign lands homelands.
This is military villages' most precious legacy to Taiwan: optimism believing "culture can restart" and wisdom for "maintaining self amid change."
References
- The First Military Dependents Village Built After Government Retreat
- 1949 Drifting to Taiwan - ETtoday In-depth Report
- Military Village Cuisine: Nostalgia or Food?
- Military Dependents Villages - Wikipedia
- Rainbow Village - Wikipedia
- Treasure Hill Community Preservation and Regeneration
- Military Dependents Village Renovation Act
- Tourism Bureau - Rainbow Village