Wu Xian Hui is a military village member. To this day, he lives in the
reconstructed military village area in a five-story condominium of 80 apartments with no elevator. Mr. Wu’s village was the first in the city to be reconstructed. Many of his neighbors remain the same as those he grew up with in the village.
Mr. Wu’s father joined the Republic of China (the formal title for Taiwan)
air force in Minguo 35 (the Republic of China calendar, equivalent to 1946 AD).
His father brought his wife back from China during a work trip, amidst the chaos of the time. This would later become Mr. Wu’s mother. He had one older sister and one younger brother. For recreation, the children would often go fishing in nearby rivers, make toy guns with bamboo sticks and berries, light up dried bamboo bunches as torches, or hide beneath bridges as they listened to the
trains passing by above. Adults like Mr. Wu’s father who worked at the airport
would sometimes bring home broken life vests and seal the broken spots with
rubber, repurposing them as life vests for the children to use in the river.
Air Force Village No. 2 is the name of the military village Mr. Wu grew up
in. Below are pictures of a few families that lived in Mr. Wu’s village. There were eight households in the village, with thin walls serving as divisions. He recalls hearing the neighbors’ mothers crying at night when news arrived from the airport of plane accidents. The village was located next to the Air Force Academy of which Mr. Wu attended. Alongside Air Force Village No. 1 and 3, the three villages are called “xiao qian,” meaning “in front of the school.” The school housed members of the military village when a typhoon destroyed roofs of villagers’ homes sometime between Minguo 40-50 (1951-61 AD).
Mr. Wu was the 16 th graduating class of the air force academy. He recalls
having the strictest teacher from the 5 th to 6 th grade. These are also the years
when night school began, a mandatory program to help students prepare for the
government issued exam before middle school. (Both the night program and
government issued exams remain parts of Taiwanese society.) Mr. Wu would go
home for dinner and return to school for his night classes. He recalls that
commuting students did not need to participate because there was no more
running transportation by the end of night school. On the day of the exam, a bus
took the students to the testing venue. This was the first time for many students
who lived nearby the school to take public transportation.
His classes were divided by sex, so Mr. Wu knew very few schoolmates of
the opposite sex. After his year, classes were no longer divided this way.