A private lock collection finds a public home (Culture.tw)

Yan Hong-sen (顏鴻森) has a high-profile day job, and a hobby that has made him the subject of several newspaper and magazine articles. Yan is a university chair professor in mechanical engineering and executive vice president of National Cheng Kung University in Tainan City. Outside academic circles, he is best known for building up a remarkable collection of household objects that few people pay much attention to: Locks, specifically ancient Chinese padlocks.

Yan, who was born in 1951, was in the news again recently when he decided to donate the bulk of his collection to the National Science and Technology Museum in Kaohsiung City. On November 8, the museum will inaugurate a special exhibition of Yan’s locks. These items will then be displayed in other cities before taking up a permanent place in the Power and Machines Exhibition Hall on the NSTM’s second floor.

In September, some of Yan’s locks were displayed at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur - the first time any of them were exhibited overseas. Yan had to politely refuse previous requests to send locks to museums and other places outside the ROC; as an individual without the backing of a major institution, he lacked the time and administrative resources to handle shipping, insurance and other issues.

Between 1986 and 2007, Yan acquired more than 700 locks; media reports describing his collection as numbering more than 900 are simply inaccurate, he says. Although it is not a huge number, the collection is rich in different types and shapes. Some are the only ones of their kind remaining in the world. The oldest is around 2,000 years old, but the majority dates from the Qing dynasty or early 20th century. Not all are being consigned to the museum this year. The 150 currently exhibited in NCKU Museum will stay where they are until November 2014, then head south to Kaohsiung. Yan says he is keeping another 20 at home so he has something to show friends and visitors. However, those will also eventually go to the NSTM.

Yan is confident the NSTM will have one of the world’s great public collections of locks, such as the Locks and Fastenings Gallery of Science Museum in London and Germany’s Deutsches Schloss und Beschlagemuseum at Velbert. Yan has visited both, naturally.

Yan’s desire to collect came long before he knew what kind of thing he would concentrate on. He first pondered the possibility of building a collection in 1977, while studying at the University of Kentucky. His supervisor, Dr. D. C. Tao (陶德昌), had an interest in antique European furniture and let Yan to take a close look at the collection he had built. But such items were way beyond Yan's modest means, so he did nothing to turn his dream into reality.

A couple of years later, Yan’s interest in building a collection was rekindled when his doctoral supervisor at Purdue University, the late Professor Allen S. Hall Jr., showed him the 100-plus weighing scales he had accumulated. It was then that Yan realized: “To be a collector, it isn't necessary to be a millionaire. You just have to identify a good topic.”

By May 1980, Yan had decided that his future collection would have to be mechanical in nature, to fit in with his engineering background, and related to Chinese culture. Moreover, the items should be neither too large, too expensive, nor commonly collected. But years were to pass before Yan's “Eureka!” moment. One day in November 1986, killing time at a vendor’s stall near Taipei Main Railway Station at the end of a business trip, he found a traditional Chinese lock at least 50 years old. Immediately grasping that padlocks met all of his criteria, he purchased the piece.

By mid-1996, Yan had around 350 locks. Few collectors let their children play with the items they so painstakingly located and acquired, but the NCKU executive vice-president says: “For a kid, playing with a lock is like doing a puzzle. I'm not sure what my children learned by playing with the locks, but they did treat them as unusual toys which other kids didn't have.”

After being appointed the founding director of NCKU Museum in November 2007, Yan stopped collecting so as to avoid any possible conflict of interest. No one has ever sought to buy his collection; this, Yan says, is because he has always made it clear that he had no interest in selling his locks, and would donate them when the time and offer were right.

Yan, who feels his main achievement is preserving locks so they can be better understood by future researchers, says: “The real value of a collector isn’t just acquiring, but also researching, finding something new and sharing it.”

For some years, Yan planned to establish his own lock museum. A dozen years ago, he bought a plot of land in what was then Tainan County (now merged with Tainan City) for that purpose. But eventually he concluded a major museum would make a better home for his locks, and began letting it be known that he was willing to give away his entire collection if an institution could meet these conditions: That the locks be researched; and that they be on public display. Yan likens the hunt for a permanent home for his locks to, “making sure your daughter finds a good husband.”

Yan and the NSTM have a long relationship; he served as the museum’s director-general from 2002 to 2004. However, several years elapsed between Yan announcing that he wished to donate his locks to a museum, and agreement being reached with the NSTM. It was in January 2011 that Chen Shiunn-shyang (陳訓祥) - formerly Yan’s deputy at the NSTM and now incumbent director-general - told Yan that one of the museum’s curator positions was about to fall vacant, and that he was willing to appoint a lock specialist to the post if Yan were to commit his collection to the NSTM. Yan readily agreed, and comments: “To have one curator specializing almost full-time in one field is rare in Taiwan’s museums. Most curators have to cover several areas.”

Before Yan began writing papers about his hobby, almost nothing had been published on the subject of ancient Chinese locks. A second edition of his bilingual book The Beauty of Ancient Chinese Locks was published in 2003 by the Ancient Chinese Machinery Cultural Foundation, an organization Yan established with others who share his passion. In one of the book’s many fascinating sections, Yan explains that the keyhole of a lock is often an indication of the original owner's social status: “The shape of the Chinese character 一 [yī] was used by civilians, 士 [shì] was used by the intellectual class, and 吉 [jí] was used by nobles and high-rank officials.”

For some of the locks Yan acquired, simply having the right key does not guarantee quick access. The keyhole may be disguised, or the key and hole so oddly shaped as to create a 3D puzzle.

Yan found locks made of iron, bronze, copper, cupronickel and brass, and even silver. Locks of humble origin are usually wooden rectangles, while those crafted for nobles after Tang dynasty often bear fine engravings and are shaped like musical instruments or animals. Fish-shaped locks were especially popular, Yan explains, because fish sleep with their eyes open, and so were traditionally regarded as symbols of vigilance. Traditional Chinese combination locks do not use numerals like the combination mechanisms on modern suitcases, but rather Chinese characters.

The locks Yan spent years finding will no longer be in his possession, but he expects they will continue to play a major role in his life. He has no intention of ceasing to research, write and lecture about locks, saying emphatically: “This will always be my hobby!”

This article was written for Culture.Tw, a government-sponsored website. I was paid for it very soon after sending it in, but the website wasn't updated for some months and the piece didn't appear until late December. To see the online version, go here. The photos were taken by Sam Li and provided by Yan Hong-sen.

Banana Kingdom (Travel in Taiwan)

More often bypassed than visited, Qishan (旗山, sometimes spelled 'Cishan') is used to being neglected by tourists who rush through en route to the Hakka district of Meinong or the religious center of Foguangshan. However, this bustling-yet-bucolic town - now officially part of the Greater Kaohsiung Municipality - is not only charming, but can also rightfully claim to have played an important role in Taiwan's economic and agricultural history.

Qishan is synonymous with one crop - the banana. Amid the cornucopia of delicious fruits grown in Taiwan, these yellow-skinned delights are quite humble. They're commonplace and inexpensive. When people want to make a gift of fruit, few opt for bananas. They're more likely to buy perfect peaches, gorgeous grapes or prestigious pitayas.

Half a century ago, Japanese consumers couldn't get enough of Qishan's bananas. Nienty percent of the bananas eaten in Japan were from Taiwan, and exports of the fruit generated a third of Taiwan's foreign currency earnings. An entire section of the Port of Kaohsiung was dedicated to the fruit. The warehouses where they were kept cool before shipping, now known as Banana Pier, have been revamped into a shopping-and-banqueting complex.

At the height of the boom, each banana tree generated as much income per year as a teacher earned in a month, and it's said that for every six bananas a farmer sold to Japan, he could buy a quality suit. Not that banana farmers made a habit of wearing fine garments - it's also said that even in their free time, while shopping or drinking with friends in Qishan's downtown, bachelor farmers liked to wear their sap-stained work clothes. This wasn't due to any sense of thrift; they did so because everyone knew banana growing was lucrative, and advertising one's occupation was a surefire way to attract a wife...

This is the second of my two articles in the most recent Travel in Taiwan magazine. The other is here. The photo, which I took, shows an 87-year-old banana farmer checking on his crop.

Stars Above Canvas: Camping in Central Taiwan (Compass)

Traveling within Taiwan has a lot going for it. The people are very friendly. Public transportation is reliable and inexpensive, and the road network allows motorists to get from A to B quickly. Food is available almost everywhere almost any time of day or night. There are lots of museums, many of which don't charge admission. One gripe, however, is the cost of accommodation. On weekends or during holiday periods, your hotel or B&B may well account for over half your daily expenditure.

One solution is to pack a tent in your car, motorcycle or backpack. For as little as NT$100 per person you can stay in a campground with toilets and hot showers. Many have additional facilities－possibly even a karaoke machine. "Guerrilla camping" is fairly common in certain places and costs absolutely nothing. Guerrilla campers typically find a good spot during the afternoon, loiter nearby until dusk, then pitch their tent on an empty patch of land without the knowledge or permission of the owner. Usually they're gone before breakfast.

On many weekends, guerrilla campers can be spotted in parking lots beside the highest sections of the Rt. 21 New Central Cross-Island Highway (新中橫), a spectacular mountain road that runs between Shuili in Nantou county (南投縣水里) Tataka in Yushan National Park (玉山國家公園). In and around Hehuanshan (合歡山), brave campers have found prime sites where they're tolerated by the authorities－so long as they pick up their garbage and refrain from making camp fires.

These locations－many have toilets but no showers－are breathtaking places to stay. Before retiring for the night, go for a stroll and enjoy views of stars you'd never get on the lowlands. When you step outside your tent the following morning, you'll likely catch sight of a dramatic "sea of clouds" filling the valleys below.

Parts of the New Central Cross-Island Highway are 2,000 meters or more above sea level, so city-dwellers must be prepared for temperatures much lower than those they're used to...

To read the rest of this article - cover story in the magazine's September issue - go here.

Fire and Art (Travel in Taiwan)

The single-story three-sided courtyard house is a timeless feature of Taiwan's countryside. These quaint abodes, known in Mandarin Chinese as sanheyuan (三合院), are recognizable by their tiled roofs and wings set at right angles to the main part of the house. Some sanheyuan are cramped; others have enough space for large extended families. The walls may be of pounded earth, wattle-and-daub, or round river stones cemented together, but if the owners could afford it, the material of choice was red brick.


Few sanheyuan have been built since the 1960s, and Taiwan's construction industry now prefers steel-reinforced concrete. Not surprisingly, many brick-makers have gone out of business. Of the 130-plus traditional brick-making kilns which used to operate in Kaohsiung City's Dashu District (大樹區), only three remain, and they all belong to San-He Tile Kiln (三和瓦窯, 94 Zhuliao Road; tel: (07) 652-1432; open: Monday to Friday 8am-5pm; Saturday & Sunday 8am-7pm; groups should book in advance). The company's Chinese-only website features gorgeous photos of the company's premises and products.

As recently as the 1950s, the area boasted 20 companies in the same line of business. All have fallen by the wayside, save for San-He, now managed by Lee Chun-hung (李俊宏), great-grandson of the entrepreneur who purchased the business in 1925...

The complete article appears in the September/October issue of Travel in Taiwan. The picture shows the side of one of the company's three traditional kilns. Two are still in regular use.

Kaohsiung: A book

A beautifully-designed book I edited recently for Kaohsiung City Government has been printed and distributed. Simply called "Kaohsiung," it introduces the special municipality created in late 2010 by the merger of Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County, and includes sections on Kaohsiung's culture, agriculture, fisheries, fruit, sports scene, architectural landmarks and plans for the future. 

English Emblem 2012

I've just began the latest round of judging visits for the Research, Development & Evaluation Commission's English Services Emblem Project. This year, the team I'm with is set to visit Hsinchu, Keelung and Kinmen. Were it not for the typhoon currently dumping rain on Taiwan, yesterday and today we would have been in Yilan; those inspections have been rescheduled for early September.

Dialogues for local government officials

Recently I completed the longest writing project (save for Taiwan: The Bradt Travel Guide, which weighed in at 166,000 words) of my career - a series of dialogues totaling 67,500 words designed to help local government officials introduce their cities and counties to visiting foreign dignitaries. I got to write about a lot of places I know well, and also learned some things about places I'm not so familiar with. The project covered nine areas, including Pingtung County, Hualien County, Taitung County and Hsinchu County. Here's an extract from Chiayi City section:

Foreign Visitor (FV): Is there a nice park near the downtown, somewhere where I can stretch my legs?

Taiwanese official (TO): Yes, there is. Officially it’s called Chiayi Park, but people often call it the Hundred-Year-Old Park because locals have been enjoying fresh air and greenery there for just over a century. Recently the park and the surroundings have been renovated, and you really should take a look around.

FV: What’s there to see? Anything apart from the usual trees, bushes, flowers and benches?

TO: Let talks about those trees and bushes first. Right next to the park is Chiayi Arboretum, which was founded by the Japanese colonial authorities in 1909. The range of trees here is quite wide, because the Japanese imported lots of different species from Southeast Asia, Australia and South America.

FV: Why did they bring in those foreign trees? You told me earlier than Taiwan has a lot of forest. 

TO: They wanted to research which species would do well in Taiwan’s climate. There are mahogany, blackboard and breadfruit trees. The Japanese also planted a lot of rubber trees - more than 1,000 are still there - because the Japanese Army needed lots of rubber during World War II. Apart from trees, there are some special buildings in the vicinity of the park. If the weather is clear, a trip to Chiayi Tower - also called the Sun-Shooting Tower - is a good idea. 

FV: Sun-Shooting Tower? That’s an intriguing name! 

TO: It comes from an aboriginal legend. Traditionally, the Bunun tribe believed that their culture began after they had shot down a second sun, which then became the moon. 

FV: Cute story. How tall is the tower?

TO: Twelve floors or 62m. You can take an elevator to the observation deck at the top and enjoy a cup of coffee while taking in the view...