The spatial organisation of the villages of the P'eng-hu Archipelago, Taiwan, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

• Main Author: Lin, Hui-ch'eng
• Published: University of Edinburgh 1993
• Subjects: 950
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.653918

This study is a comprehensive investigation of the 81 villages of the P'eng-hu Archipelago, where the original type of Han (the main tribe of Taiwan) settlements have been well preserved. The analysis uses a wide range of material obtained from local archives, personal investigations and field surveys, atlases, and relevant research papers to expose the complex of socio-cultural values within these traditional settlements, and to show that there is a spatial system concretely attached to physical form and all of its elements which has meaning for local people. The aim has been to establish a method which contains all information relevant to the spatial formation of the villages. The study demonstrates the general construction of the space of the villages, and shows how their spatial organisation was formed by the combination of many independent systems. It also shows how the factors which influenced the space of the villages derived from historical and natural contexts and location of the villages, as well as from socio-cultural conditions and the limited resources of the local people. The different spatial elements of the villages were dominated by different factors. These factors were respected only on certain occasions and in places, and their importance varied in accordance with the changing needs of the villagers. The spaces were constructed by the villagers themselves under the influence of local intellectuals, masters of <i>feng-shui</i>, fortune tellers, craftsmen, '<i>t'ung-chi</i> (a kind of Taiwanese shamanic priest), and <i>hei-t'ou shih-kung</i> (a kind of Taoist priest). In order to embody their ideas in their architecture, local people used two kinds of spatial model, a single craftsmen's rule defining lengths, and three different methods of checking the auspiciousness of the buildings.