Special experience in Mei-Nong

     Hello, everyone, my name is Tina. I came from Tainan and now I am studying in Tunghai university. Most of my relatives speak Taiwanese. I have rare chances to learn other culture because my home town is a strong culture. Tainan can be seen as an independent, powerful and large culture. Visiting Mei-Nong is an accident because I took a course that students had to do a research about one Hakka. I would like to introduce this beautiful town and what I found when I visited Mei-Nong.


     Mei-Nong is located in a mountain plain of Kaohsiung. Most inhabitants are Hakka people but more and more people like adults, teenagers and children flow away. Owing to work, education, money they leave their hometown. While I visited Mei-Nong, I only saw aged people or grandparents. I asked local people that why there are few young adults here. They said their children or grandchildren will come back just in the holidays or weekends, they don't live in here.

     First, I would like to introduce the buildings in Mei-Nong. I divide these buildings into two types. They are tranditional Hakka building and modern cement building. Traditional Hakka building's walls are made up by soil. And the roof is built by red tiles. But when the time is past, there are less and less traditional Hakka buildings in Mei-Nong. Few Hakka people live in traditional building nowadays. Most of the buildings are either collapsed or used to be like storeroom.  Most people in Mei-Nong live in the modern houses instead of the traditional houses. 

  Thus, when I visited Mei-Nong, I spent a bit long time looking for traditional Hakka houses. After trying so hard to look for and asking local people, I finally found some. In my point of view, I divided trditional Hakka houses into two parts, they are big houses with ponds and courtyard houses with two wings to both right and left sides.

  The par of Hakka culture which I most interested in is the umbrella-made of oiled paper and bamboo frame. Mei-Nong umbrella is famous not only internal but also external, people visit Mei-Nong for seeing the beautiful umbrella and making process.

In Chinese word, "umbrella" is pictograph. The word means that there are four little men under a big man, and there is a pole in the middle to support the big man. Furthermore, the umbrella is made in circle, and in Chinese "circle" is homonymic to "perfection" and "fate". In Hakka traditional custom, umbrella also represents "together" and "affinity".