ABSTRACT
D ECEMBER 13, 1998-THE SECOND DAY OF THE DANSHUIXUE (TANSHUI-ology) conference held by the Department of History of Tamkang University. Nearly 100 people attended; sixteen
papers were presented in a luxurious conference room on the top floor of the highest building in Tanshui, where one got a panoramic view of the town's landscape. The papers were mostly antiquarian in focus, centering on the ancient settlements, local deities, the earliest missionary and colonial-era architecture in the Tanshui area, and old-time small-town images in literature and art. The last paper, however, pulled the nostalgia-saturated audience back to the present. Before delivering his paper, Professor Huang Ruimao, a frustrated-looking urban planning scholar and co-founder of Danshui shequ gongzuo shi (Tanshui Community Planning Team), pointed to the wide windows spread across the walls and said:
Look at the current landscape of Tanshui; look at the urban sprawl on the hills. It is no longer the old "small town Tanshui' celebrated by the previous presenters. . . . The original landscape full of natural beauty and culture has been destroyed by monstrous buildings. . . . Why? Why did a historical town end up like this? The reason resides far beyond the local range; it is closely tied to the postwar transformation in Taiwan's political economy.2
