Foreword

Miaoli County is an agriculture county , and the rate of agriculture population is the majority . Look back to the past , people were living in “Clay Tiles House”, and cultivated all rely on manpower that made the life hard. However ,cultivation people are still to be content with the life ,to submit meekly toinsults ,industrious ,thrifty ,and enjoy it .At that moment ,the life of farming family’s children are also hard ,as they have to help housework mainly. Normally, they need to help farming after school immediately, and do the homework under the kerosene lamp at the night. For those “framing children”, his kind of life is not really hard when they get used to it. Reversely, they gained lots of fun in their life, and let them felt pleasant in the childhood.

Mr. Chi-chiung, Hsieh, 76 years old, who is a well-known photographer in Miaoli County and retired from public affairs in 1997. Most of the people who like to photograph know how good he is. He had been studied intensively of photograph in decades, and most of his works to be famous for local geography and history’s feelings. Also, he had earned many times of photograph award, occupied the chairman in Photographic Society of Miaoli from the first batch to third batch, FGPC of the Photographic Society of Taipei and Photographic Society of China. Moreover, he is the member of “Tough Photographic Group” that is an amateur photographic and owned high standard skills’ association in Miaoli area.

This photo album covers “paddy rice”, “green crops”, and “old farmer”, and these three chapters can be the essence of Mr. Hsieh’s geography and history photograph. Firstly, chapter of paddy rice. Rice is the main food of Taiwanese, and paddy rice has been cultivated in Taiwan for long time, which is always being the main stream in Taiwan’s agriculture production. Today, not only the control of output, but also improving the quality is more important. Therefore, a set of farming works, from seed selection, seed soaking in water, grow seedlings, plow field, cultivate field, replenish rice seedlings, weeds, manure, till cut standing grain, farming family appreciate Tu Di Gong, and some relax pictures about family deliver the snacks to field are all coming into the Mr. Hsieh’s camera lens. Finally, all of these photograph works that present the busy, relax, tense, and vivid life of rural village will show to the readers. There are 61 pictures in total.

Next chapter is green crops. Except the rice, Miaoli County’s food crops also include food grains. Basically, the types of food crops are quite lots, but mainly in peanut, sweet potato, watermelon, strawberry, tomato, tea leaf, and taro. Also, there are other food crops been cultivated fragmentary, but the area is small and less production. These green crops cultivating processes are hard as hard as paddy rice, and it still an event of cultivation people’s work. In this chapter, it collects 61 picture works as well, and aims to present another scenery of rural village.

The third chapter is called “old farmer”. Mr. Hsieh’s photographing material is Mr. Chi-Chung Li, the old farmer who lived in the opposite side of Mr. Hsieh’s hometown in Tongluo. Mr. Li has lived for 90 years and he spent his entire life in farming, he has 4/3 square meters of farmland right in front of Mr. Hsieh’s house. In 1991, Mr. Hsieh noticed that this old farmer works in the farmland no matter it’s a rainy or sunny day, weeding and harrowing the farm with his humpbacked body, and enjoying in his everyday work; years writs an impressive mark on his face. According to this kind of working attitude and working spirit is fading out from the countryside, Mr. Hsieh started to photograph Mr. Chi-Chung Li, who are called Mr.Xue’s hard working images.

Mr. Xue lives in FuXing village, Tongluo town in Miaoli County. When he was little, the elders gave him a nickname “kid Xue”; after he grows up, they call him “brother Xue”; when he gets to the age of 60,people call him ”Mr. Xue”, and no one knows that he is Chi-Chung Li. Mr.Xue hasn’t been to school for even one day, he felt so regretful about it, but he never complained, instead he tries his best to do well on everything. All his acquaintance knows that he is very conversational, and has his own thought about things, which is the way better than those so-called educated people; maybe this is what he learned from a century of life, time makes him extraordinary out of ordinary. While he was still alive, he told the others; he knew how to plow and harrow the farm at the age of 13, and looked after cows for other people at the age of 14; at the other times, he pushes sugar cane cart, burn wood coal and do part-time jobs to earn money, everyday he’s been working from darkness to darkness. Although he’s been working hard, but poverty still follows him at his first half of life, until he started working on “dragging pigs”, his life then became better. Mr.Xue called this job “breeding pigs”. As he said in his life, the reason why he started working on this job is because that the village head recommended him, and the earning really improved his life; at the early times, ”dragging pigs”, ”shaving head” and “accompaniment” are considered as low and degrading, their descendant are not allowed to participate in the politics. However, Mr. Xue doesn’t agree with that, he often talked about it in his lifetime; he thinks everything is good if it doesn’t violate his conscience, in order to earn his living, he couldn’t care about so much, and this is his philosophy. Here in this book we have 75 photos taking Mr. Xue as the theme, 60 of them had been exhibited in the zhongxing gallery in miaoli county cultural center in February 1998; these photos show the most natural side of an old man working in farmland, via these pictures we can see: an old man wearing shirt; harrowing farm corners, weeding and basking grains, or keeping birds away by the side of farmland, even the scenes of yawning, eating snacks and resting, and some other photos like carrying hoes home under sunset, having fun with family, really truthful and impressive, all of them are touching images.

Anyhow, this photography collection not only shows Mr. Hsieh’s skillful photographing techniques, but also shows how he love his hometown; therefore, I am glad to write this introduction.