TiT Museums:The New Era Sculpture Park An Innocent Genius in the Heart of Taiwan

New Era Sculpture Park

By Christopher Logan and Teresa Hsu Photos by Sung Chih-hsiung

The star of the New Era Sculpture Park, the late Lin Yuan, at work. His neighbors called Lin Yuan (ªL²W) crazy when, at 69 years of age, he began carving stones. Lin, who never finished elementary school, had farmed all his life. He single-handedly raised his eight children after their mother died. By the time he retired he had built a lovely farm, furnished by his own hands, near the town of Puli, in Nantou county in central Taiwan. His neighbors knew

him as a successful farmer and family man, not as an artist. Yet Lin's work is displayed alongside that of some of Taiwan's internationally known sculptors in a sculpture park in Puli.

Lin's new career as a sculptor began when a passing truck dropped a rock from its load. Like many retirees, Lin could not bear the life of leisure expected of a senior citizen. He lugged the rock home and began carving it. The joy brought by this first attempt at sculpting, developed into an obsession. Lin brought home more and more stones to fashion into a variety of humorous images.

Lin's home gradually filled with bizarre carvings, each inspired by a story. One of his first works is named "Shih Hsien Ku" (¥Û¥P©h), meaning "Stone Saint,” and represents the head of his late wife. He flattened the top so he could sit on it and then hollowed out the neck to use as a vase or planter. Before long, weird stone heads and fantastic animals began to line the road by his house, leading Lin's neighbors to speculate about his mental health.

The park with its beautiful garden is a great place to relax, breathe fresh air and leave city cares behind. Huang Ping-sung (¶À¬±ªQ), a local county councilor and publisher of a local newspaper, saw the genius in Lin's sculptures and bought all of them. "You thought I was crazy for carving them,” Lin joked with his neighbors, "but this man is really crazy. He paid money for them!" Huang sent pictures of the unique sculptures to French artist Jean Dubuffet, who recommended Lin's work

to the Museum of Primitive Art in Lausanne, Switzerland. Lin Yuan, once the crazy man of the neighborhood, became a town hero when the Swiss museum asked to buy some of his carvings. Famous Taiwan artists, including sculptor Chu Ming (¦¶»Ê) and his mentor Yu Yu Yang (·¨^·), whose work in polished steel is displayed all over the world, began to visit his workshop.

The famous "Stone Saint" sculpture, which represents the head of Lin Yuan's late wife. The Birth of a Sculpture Park
The friendship which gradually blossomed between Lin, Chu and Yang inspired county councilor Huang to collect works by all three and, in 1986, to establish a sculpture park in Puli, which he named the New Era Sculpture Park (¤û¦ÕÃÀ³N ¤½¶é). Huang has recently added other exhibits to his fantastic outdoor museum. The star of the park, however, remains Lin Yuan, who died in 1991 at the age of 79. Hundreds of his enigmatic stone heads, auspicious animals, and Chinese

gods and heroes are displayed around the 16-acre park. A large exhibition building contains many of his paintings, and even some dramatic embroidery stitched in his strong, humorous style. You can also see the small barber's chair he built long before taking up the chisel. It spins unevenly and once brought laughter from his dizzied children.

The New Era Sculpture Park is much more than just rock and metal sculptures. It features an outstanding garden with plant species almost all native to Taiwan, bee hives, and a camphor-making display. Flowering trees, grassy lawns, and a lotus pond are beautifully maintained without seeming artificial. At the spiritual center of the park are three trees of different varieties, which have grown together. In their gnarled mass of trunk has been placed an earth god carved by Lin Yuan.

The New Era Sculpture also contains metal sculpture by internationally-acclaimed Taiwanese sculptor Yu Yu Yang. "We wanted to make a quiet and beautiful park in the real Taiwan style," says Chen Yi-chun (³¯©y§g), daughter of Lin's patron, park owner Huang Ping-sung. "It's easy to make money with a theme park if you make it look like Disneyland, but that's not what we wanted. Other countries have parks that represent their national character, and New Era is a place where foreigners can see Taiwan's real beauty." R.O.C. President Lee Teng-hui has brought foreign dignitaries to the park for this purpose.

Behind the lotus pond are several hives of docile bees. Samples of honey and bee pollen are offered by the staff, who are happy to answer questions about the bees. Unlike commercial honey farms, the methods used here to obtain the honey, which has a particularly rich taste, harm neither bees nor their larvae. Visitors can also see the method of extracting camphor oil, which is used mainly as a natural insect repellent.

Other types of art are also displayed at the New Era Sculpture Park. There is a new ceramics gallery, for example, including a pottery workshop with a throwing wheel at one end where demonstrations and lessons are given. A number of potters live and work in Puli, and this is a place where they can make pottery, teach, and display their talent. The light-hearted paintings of artist Wang Hao (¤ýø¯) fill a second gallery. Wang paints joyful reminiscences of the country life of his childhood.

The Attractions of Puli
Most of the visitors to New Era Sculpture Park are urban Taiwanese, who visit on weekends. The snow-capped peaks of Mt. Hohuan preside over the remote valley, where Puli's population of 80,000 people live. Located right at the heart of Taiwan and protected by the Central Mountain Range, Puli missed out on the industrialization of the island's "economic miracle." Train tracks

never reached Puli, and there's no airport. The main factory in town, which is open to tourists, produces Shao-hsing wine, which is said to be the most delicious in Taiwan due to the area's fresh, unpolluted water. Puli is also famous for its vegetables, flowers, and fruit.

These huge totemic sculptures hewn out of rock are also the work of self-trained sculptor Lin Yuan. In the past, many tourists merely changed buses in Puli on their way to the better-known tourist resort of Sun Moon Lake. But following the success of the New Era Sculpture Park, residents and town planners decided to create more reasons for visitors to stop there, and planned tours of the town's traditional workshops. Visitors can now see a working hand-made paper factory and a lacquerware workshop. Tours of local farms and fruit orchards are also available.

Plans are under way to build a small inn at the New Era Sculpture Park, says Chen Yi-chun, "The sunrise and sunset are really special here, but at the moment visitors don't get to see them." Meanwhile, the park's staff can help visitors find accommodation and good restaurants in Puli, and can be reached by phone at (049) 912248 or by fax at (049) 914341. The park is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Admission costs NT$180.

Puli is just three hours by bus from Taipei's north station. The town has a lot to offer if you have a couple days to relax and take in its rustic pleasures, and the New Era Sculpture Park should not be missed on a journey through central Taiwan. Educational as well as beautiful, the park also offers visitors new energy and inspiration--for the laughing genius of Lin Yuan reminds us that it's never too late to release the artist within.