To gain a deeper understanding of what is really going on at Cingjing (清境), a mountain area in Nantou County, I visited the area on a recent weekend. I listened to the views of the people doing business there and inquired about the development of bed-and-breakfast establishments in the area, with the aim of finding a pragmatic way to solve the problems at Cingjing and in the hope of educating the public about proper, legal ways to carry out hillside development.

Aerial photographs from 1979 show that back then, all that was in the area was Cingjing Farm (清境農場), which belonged to the Veterans Affairs Council, and three major villages for Nationalist-led guerrilla troops evacuated from Burma in the late 1940s during the Chinese Civil War.

Aerial photographs from 1991 show that both sides of Provincial Road 14A were used for farming; photographs taken in 2002 also show no bed-and-breakfasts there. It is only in aerial photographs from the past three years that show how bed-and-breakfasts have started to spring up along both sides of Provincial Road 14A.

These photographs show that the development of the Cingjing area is linked with changes in the nation’s socioeconomic situation and laws. During the 1970s, Taiwan was still under martial law and all development was controlled and limited. As a result, the Cingjing area only had a few villages for military families. When the economy boomed in the 1980s and 1990s, the government opened up hillsides to farming, and cabbage farms mushroomed in Cingjing,