“selections from the photographs taken by me during my eastern travels would prove useful, seeing that each photograph was taken to represent something peculiar to the lands and to the people I visited” (letters to Wellcome, Thomson, 1920). Today, the chief of a small bookstore represented this history in front of us…

“He” is the chief of a small bookstore in a rural district in Taiwan. It is a small town called Jiaxian, about which neither inspiring stories nor historical documentation can be found in any library. The forgotten local history of Jiaxian bothered the bookstore chef a lot. Despite the beautiful landscape and tourism, does this rural area worth any humanistic value – so he wondered. His concern started to work out in 1997 when he saw a photo published in Anciennes photographies de Taiwan collection de la bibliotheque nationale de France written by Yalun Wang. It is known that the photo was taken in Formosa (Taiwan) by the English photographer John Thomson during his travel in south Taiwan. Aside from the photo, there is a map by Thomson about his travel path, but that was all about the photo.

As a local resident and a lover of his hometown, the bookstore owner noted immediately that the waterfall in the photo could be in Jiaxian, but how could it be possible! If the photo was taken in the 1870s, the waterfall was an area hazardous to strangers due to the local head-hunters. However, if the photo was really from Jiaxian, everything will all be different! There will be evidence showing that the English missionary and photographers have visited this rural area already in the 1870s, which would prove the humanistic value of his town. The bookstore owner started his journey to re-discover the location of Thomson’s every photo.

Without any official financial support – but assistance from many friends, the chief of this small bookstore has investigated – personally on foot – 53 photos documented in Wellcome Library by visiting Thomson’s whole route starting from Takao Port (Port of Kaohsiung of today), passing through Tainan, and ended in Jiaxian, a journey over 100 kilometre and mostly on foot. His independent re-discovering survey lasted over 18 years and identified every landscape in each Thomson’s photos. In the chief’s journey, he found the offspring of the local family hosted Thomson and Maxwell’s stay, recognized the wearing culture of the women’s dress in Thomson’s photos. Based on his sensitivity of local culture, he has also named the different foods which Thomson and Maxwell were eating during their travel. To “verstehen” of a foreigner’s challenge to photograph in the rural area in 1870s, he even worked together with collodion photographers to find out the equipment Thomson must carry (which can not less than 178 kg) and, therefore, indicated and the image of the porters in one single photo – at a dark and unremarkable corner; And, of course, he finally proved that Thomson has really visited his hometown Jiaxian in 1871. 

The name of the bookstore chief is Mr You, Yong-Fu (游永福). About one hundred fifty years after Thomson’s visit to Taiwan, In 2019, Mr You finally published the result of – what he called – his “initial” research in his book Johan Thomson for Formosa (尋找湯姆生：1871臺灣文化遺產大發現). He is still walking on his journey, and his dream is to complete his project Lineal or Serial Cultural Heritages of Thomson’s Travel in Formosa. Today, we are delighted to have him visiting our class and give us an introduction about his long-term research as a start point for the students’ semester design project.

For those, who wants to support Mr You’s project, Mr You has his Facebook community as well as his web blog as following. Please check the following links. Of curse, his book Johan Thomson for Formosa (尋找湯姆生：1871臺灣文化遺產大發現 in Chinese) is an amazing work worth reading and re-reading.

• Facebook Society of Lineal or Serial Cultural Heritages of Thomson’s Travel in Formosa
• Blog of Mr You – 日照甲仙埔

by Wei-Chi Chien, 2021 in Tainan