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Table 3. Heritage values from different points of views on Matsu Point of View

Heritage Value

Internal stakeholders External stakeholders

Tourism

Making profits

- How to increase profits?

- How to allocate profits?

- Where do funds come from?

Producing spectacles connected to the:

- Natural landscape

- Tangible cultural heritage - Intangible cultural heritage Identity

Discovering locality by

- Searching shared memories - Creating common

experiences

Emphasizing Matsu’s significance - In Taiwan as a nation-state - Globally for outstanding

universal value Reference: author’s observation and interviews

Although this model looks applicable anywhere in the world, very few places can simultaneously demonstrate all these contrasting but equally influential discourses, not to mention that Matsu only has around ten thousand residents. Moreover, the stratified view of heritage, from world heritage, national heritage to local heritage, which can be widely observed in other places, greatly overlaps in Matsu. Stakeholders, especially government agencies, are eager to expand the interpretation of Matsu’s heritage and place heritage values of different geographical scales to every heritage property on the islands. The complexity of government agencies’ heritage policies and measures of heritage management are the main factors resulting in this fragmented heritage management.

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Generally speaking, cultural heritage policies are still developing and immature in Taiwan.

Although more and more citizens begin to care about cultural heritage, the government is still finding its way in its response to people’s requests. It either imitates foreign measures or adopts measures used in other fields such as public infrastructure. In Matsu, there are only two officers specifically dealing with cultural heritage affairs in the local cultural authority. Therefore, what they mainly do is distribute funds from the government budget, select appropriate partners, and audit bidders’ outcomes. They rarely produce materials and discourses on their own. Instead, the cultural authority realizes its cultural heritage policies through the procedure of government financial procurement. This procedure typically functions in a competitive market where many similar service providers can compete with each other. However, this procedure becomes an obstacle for people who are willing to enter the field of cultural heritage because it makes their funding sources very unstable. On the other hand, when the authority builds a sustainable rapport with a specific partner, both stakeholders are suspected of collusion.

In Matsu, compared to visible restoration projects, community workshops and professional consultation of cultural heritage are not widely understood by most of the islanders. They trust academic groups more when it comes to these types of projects concerning community engagement and professional knowledge. However, for internal heritage activists, their experience with academic groups is not that satisfactory. The fact that these academic groups from Taiwan do not remain on the islands for long continues. Sadly, Matsu is the only county in Taiwan with no university. (Recently, a university branch from Taiwan dedicated to the marine sciences has been constructed on Matsu.) Therefore, there is a need to foster a stable organization, either national or local, to conduct heritage projects directed by the government.

So far, among all the agencies accepting the government’s commission, only a non-profit organization led by a local heritage activist is local. This organization, which represented the institutionalization of the local heritage community network, was first initiated in 2014

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(Cultural Diversity Studio 2014, 86). There is another agency company registered in Matsu but run by a Taiwanese who has long been interested in Matsu. The other groups comprise either companies or universities from Taiwan Island. For the cultural authority of Matsu, it is very uncertain how long its collaboration with those external groups will last.

As for other sectors of the government, the main problems lie in the distribution of resources and profits and the openness of communication channels with the local community. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the MNSAA usually adopts the operate-transfer model to commercialize restored heritage properties it funds. Economically, the whole scenario reveals that the MNSAA utilizes public expenditures to support private business owners.

However, public expenditures should be spent on public needs. This measure creates dissonance between the understanding of publicity and heritage value. In addition, almost every interviewee expressed their negative impressions concerning the MNSAA government agency.

Its representation on the islands is strongly questioned. It is obvious that there is little communication between the agency and the islanders. It acts more like a colonial institution serving Taiwanese tourists. Its missions and functions need to be discussed and modified if cultural heritage is to be considered important on the islands.

There are also structural factors obstructing government policies. First, although the local government has autonomy in cultural heritage affairs to a certain degree in Taiwan (Article 18;

19, Local Government Act [地方制度法], announced in 1999, last amended in 2016), most cultural heritage policies are proposed by the central government. So-called autonomy is limited to the inventorying of local cultural heritage properties and other administrative affairs.

In addition, most of the government budget is allocated through project-based initiatives drafted by the central government. Very few financial resources can be autonomously used by

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the local government. Considering most initiatives are developed based on the context and experience of Taiwan, some do not function well on Matsu. “What the central government is initiating is frequently changing, but anyway we find a solution to modify our continuing project to fit those initiatives,” the head of CAD said (Wu X-Y, pers. comm.).

For example, the practice of the initiative of community empowerment (or village empowerment), which has been promoted by the central government for more than two decades, also works very differently in Matsu compared to Taiwan. What islanders need is to have broader views in specific fields such as cultural heritage rather than holding random events to consolidate the village. A project manager shared her experience in this field:

“To be honest I do not know what to do to ‘assist’ islanders in this affair of community empowerment. Each village is already very consolidated.

Sometimes it is me who asks them to do me the favor of submitting applications to related programs lest it looks like I am not doing anything.” (Anonymous T, pers. comm.)

Reviewing the system of local government structure (country – county – township – village) and corresponding cultural heritage policies and strategies in Taiwan, it can be expected that different directives would greatly overlap as Matsu is so small. Distinguishing between nationwide, county, and village initiatives is not that meaningful in such a small-scale place.

From this point of view, something necessary in Taiwan might result in ambiguity, inefficiency, and waste in Matsu. Overall, it is common that a variety of inconsistent and rigid directives announced by the central government turn out not to be applicable on the local level because of particular historical contexts and geographical characteristics. Those directives are typically developed based on urban contexts, including community engagement, the operate-transfer model, profit-making heritage revitalization, etc. Very few strategies are formulated for rural areas and the diversity of cultural heritage categories such as cultural landscape and indigenous

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settlement. The role of the central government should be to support local government in making the cultural heritage decisions best suited for the place.

Another phenomenon which can be clearly observed is the departmentalism of different government agencies in Matsu, an issue also common in other areas of Taiwan. However, as cultural heritage in Matsu is particularly important in many aspects of place-making, more agencies have become interested in it compared to other counties in Taiwan. The disagreements between the Cultural Affairs Department (part of the county government) and the Matsu National Scenic Area Administration (directed by the central government) have been demonstrated repeatedly throughout this thesis. Even other related agencies rarely consider cultural heritage issues as a whole in their policies and directives, as if cultural heritage is the exclusive business of the Cultural Affairs Department. However, in the latest white paper for sustainable development on Matsu (following the United Nations 2030 Agenda) issued by the county government in 2018, cultural heritage was finally placed at the center of visions for the future (Lienching County Government 2019, 6-8). Generally speaking, the core of local politics agrees that cultural heritage is very important in Matsu, but very few stakeholder groups really explore the implication of cultural heritage in Matsu for islanders.

As a result, the Cultural Affairs Department remains the only entity responsible for broadening the field of cultural heritage on the islands and finding solutions for cultural heritage preservation. Nevertheless, cultural heritage in Matsu should be more than the concern of other government agencies. The role of the cultural authority should be in proposing integrated strategies to get other stakeholders involved. In addition, different governmental stakeholders should be aware of what other stakeholder groups are doing to avoid misunderstandings, disagreements, and repetitions. Ideally, it would be even better if all stakeholders could find common goals in order to achieve and split tasks appropriately. Even if there are still

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divergences in the way cultural heritage understood and how it can be preserved, stakeholders should at least have a forum where they can positively discuss these issues and where more stakeholders’ participation in decision making is included. Therefore, I will propose some concrete solutions to improve communications over the future of cultural heritage on Matsu in the following chapter.

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