Jingliao: Modern church, ancient homes

For the average tourist more interested in heritage than horticulture, Houbi has some interesting attractions. The town’s train station – a very picturesque wooden structure – dates from the final decade of the Japanese colonial era (1895-1945). If you’ve seen the station and like this kind of thing, drive northwest along County Road 82 (南82) to the village of Jingliao (菁寮).

Jingliao is best known for the Saint Cross Church, a Roman Catholic place of worship designed in the 1950s by Gottfried Boehm, who was born in Germany in 1920.

At that time Boehm was not especially famous. However, his career took off soon afterward, and in 1986 he won the Pritzker Prize, one of the world’s premier architecture awards.

The church is impossible to miss. The spire is an alloy-covered pyramid that’s higher than – and in terms of color quite different to – anything else in the village, which itself is surrounded by flat agricultural land.

Many Catholic churches in Taiwan resemble Taoist temples, externally at least. The design of the Saint Cross Church, however, makes no concessions to traditional Chinese religious architecture.

We were fortunate: Just at the very moment we parked our motorcycles outside the church, one of the janitors cycled past. He stopped, unlocked the gates and showed us around.

He told us that around 30 of the 2,000 or so people who live in the area attended the church regularly. This isn’t as many as before, and he attributed the decline to people moving away for work or to attend college. To my surprise, he said the congregation is entirely Taiwanese. In many of Taiwan’s Catholic churches, Filipinos and Vietnamese are sizable minorities.

In one of the side rooms, a small museum traces the history of the church from its founding in 1955. There are photos of the first, temporary building – a grass-roofed, open-sided structure.

The museum has profiles of the 14 priests who’ve ministered to this parish since then. According to the janitor, only one of them was born in Taiwan. Two were originally from mainland China, while the others were French, Dutch or German. The incumbent, who has been based in Jingliao since 2002, is a Frenchman.

Inside the chapel we saw one of the bibles he uses – a Taiwanese-language tome printed in romanized script, with handwritten addenda in French. There was also an auxiliary shrine complete with burning joss sticks; it didn’t look so very different to the ancestor shrines I’ve seen in many Taiwanese homes.

We also got to see the interior of the spire, the frame of which is cypress from Taiwan’s high mountains, before crossing the road to Jingliao Elementary School.

The classrooms are in modern concrete buildings, but the campus has two Japanese-era wooden buildings. The larger serves as an auditorium, while the latter is the school’s library. Both are in splendid condition.

To get the most out of a visit to Jingliao, wander at random through its quiet streets. There are so many beautiful traditional homes that I wasn’t surprised to see a group of amateur photography enthusiasts searching for the best angles and shooting away.

If you do a search on the Internet, you’ll find some English-language pages about the village, and plenty of Chinese-language blog entries. Some of the latter have excellent photos. Despite this coverage, the village is still mostly untouched by tourism – I didn’t see a single coffee shop or souvenir vendor. For now at least, it’s the genuine article.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email