Since the 1980s, rapid tech-nological transformations

occurring in countries around theworld have not only initiated theinformation age (Castells 1996,1997, and 1998), but also havefueled a transnational bi-gration(two-way immigration) phenomenonnot seen in previous eras (Changforthcoming; Levitt 2001; Lima2001; Smith 1998). These transfor-mations affect the nature of 21st-cen-tury communication and travel andinclude phenomena such as afford-able air transportation, widely acces-sible World Wide Web connections,instant messaging, and IP and wire-less phone service. They have pro-foundly impacted how we perceiveour native and foreign cultures, andaccelerate the intermixed relation ofdifferent cultures. PhilosopherWolfgang Welsch argues that we live

in a transcultural context. He statesthat, “Lifestyles no longer end at theborders of national cultures, but gobeyond these. . . . There is no longeranything absolutely foreign. . . .Today, in a culture’s internal rela-tions—among its different ways oflife—there exists as much foreign-ness as in its external relations withother cultures” (1999, 197–198).Cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuanadds to the recognition of an emerg-ing transcultural world: “the life-path of a human being movesnaturally from ‘home’ to ‘world,’from ‘hearth’ to ‘cosmos.’” (1996, 2)

Transculturality in Landscape DesignThe concept of “transcultural-

ity” articulates more clearly the newphenomenon of cultural intermix-ing that we are seeing in today’sinterconnected world (Welsch

1999). The concept assumes perme-able cultural boundaries as opposedto thinking of cultures as isolatedislands or enclosed spheres. Theterm “transcultural lens” is derivedfrom the emerging concept oftransculturality, which makes a breakfrom previous concepts of multicul-turalism. Welsch points out thatthose traditional concepts of cul-tures—including classic single cul-ture, interculturalism, andmulticulturalism—assume that“every culture can be distinguishedand remain separated from otherfolks’ cultures” (1999, 195).However, he argues transculturality“sketches a different picture of therelation between cultures, not oneof isolation and conflict, but one ofentanglement, intermixing, andcommonness” (205). The concept oftransculturality is different from that

Seeing Landscape Through Cross-Cultural Eyes:Embracing a Transcultural Lens Toward MultilingualDesign Approaches in the Landscape StudioShenglin Chang

Shenglin Chang is currentlyAssistant Professor at the Universityof Maryland’s LandscapeArchitecture Program, and receivedthe CELA Award of Recognition in2004. Professor Chang was awardeda PhD in Environmental Planningfrom University of California,Berkeley, an MLA from CornellUniversity, an MS in CivilEngineering and a BS inHorticulture from National TaiwanUniversity. Her research focuses onhigh-tech (Silicon Valley) landscapesin the Pacific Rim and the transfor-mations of immigrant home identi-ties in the DC-Maryland region. Herbook, The Global Silicon Valley Home:Lives and Landscapes within TaiwaneseAmerican Trans-Pacific Culture, isforthcoming from StanfordUniversity Press.

Abstract: This article reflects on the value of cultivating transcultural awareness indesign education. The term “transcultural lens” is derived from the emerging critical con-cept of transculturality, or the intermingling of one’s domestic culture with many otherforeign cultures. This concept relates to the melding and mixing of cultural elementsexpressed by a group of American students in the University of Maryland’s LandscapeArchitecture Program who worked on the Taiwanese Chi Chi Earthquake Memorial ParkCompetition design. When these students examined their own American lens in designinga Taiwanese memorial park, the transformation of this lens allowed them to manipulatedesign patterns and languages of their native culture (American) and the newly encoun-tered culture (Taiwanese) in an innovative yet sensitive way. This generated a newdesign approach that I am calling American-yet-Taiwanese; that not only distinguishedthe unique quality and practices of different cultures, but also blended these culturestogether in an evolutionary way.

Landscape Journal 24:2–05 ISSN 0277-2426140 Landscape Journal 24:2-05 © 2005 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

of globalization, in that the formerdoes not assume that going globalwill increase uniformity and dimin-ish diversity of place, society, andindividuals. On the contrary, trans-culturality reveals a process wheregreater variety and diversity occur asdifferent cultures come into contactwith each other.

This article reflects on thevalue of cultivating transculturalawareness in design education.Scholars and researchers addressingissues of cultural diversity withindesign education and practice(Anthony 2001, 2002; Boyer andMitgang 1996; Groat andAherentzen 1997; Ray 2001) haverevealed the limitations that resultfrom a monocultural focus ondesign: a disproportion of male andfemale student and faculty bodies,and uneven representation of peo-ple of color in the profession. Theyhave addressed the unequal powerrelations among gender, racial, andethnic groups that occur withinclassroom, studio, and office envi-ronments. They have suggested thatproviding open and caring learningenvironments could engage design-ers with diverse cultural back-grounds, and benefit the designprofession by encouraging the devel-opment of innovative design lan-guages that resonate moreappropriately with emerging clientsand users embodying hybrid or for-eign cultural backgrounds.

Domestically and internation-ally, clients with hybrid or foreigncultural backgrounds are challeng-ing the client-oriented landscapearchitecture profession that has tra-ditionally been dominated by theAnglo-American culture. Looking atMaryland as an example, the greaterWashington, D.C. region hasbecome an emerging gateway forimmigrants in the United States(Singer 2004). In the past twenty-fiveyears, Maryland’s immigrant popula-tion has tripled and many of thenewcomers are from Asian coun-tries.1 These newcomers have con-centrated in Montgomery andPrince George’s County (Singer2003) which is the home base of theUniversity of Maryland’s CollegePark campus. In order to provide

these Asian-American clients withdesign services sensitive to uniquecultural needs and preferences, theUniversity of Maryland’s LandscapeArchitecture Program recognizes theopportunity to train its youngdesigners with a transcultural lensand with bilingual or multilingualdesign vocabularies.

When I refer to multilingualdesign, I am talking about languageas a metaphor. Designers shoulddevelop a multilingual design vocab-ulary that allows different culturalheritages to weave together a trans-formative approach to spatial devel-opment. For example, if we design apark in Montgomery County, MD,where ten percent of residents origi-nate from Chinese heritage, design-ers should understand bothAmerican park activities (for exam-ple, jogging, running, and dog walk-ing), and Chinese park activities (forexample, Chi Kong, Tai Chi, folkdancing, and karaoke). By doing so,an “American-yet-Chinese” park caninnovatively adapt both Americanand Chinese ways of using space.

Embracing multilingual designapproaches is even more criticalwhen American designers work onforeign projects, like projects inChina or South Asia. The economictransformations of the Asian Pacificduring the past decade have pro-foundly impacted the Americanlandscape architecture profession.While many leading American land-scape architecture firms are engagedin important development projectsin various Chinese cities likeShenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing,recent presentations that highlightsome of this professional work inChina reveal that American patternsof urban design and suburban devel-opment are being replicated acrossthe Chinese landscape. While thesenewly installed western landscapeshave confirmed that China is becom-ing the “New Frontier” for the 21st

century, these new designs usuallyfail to address the daily needs oflocal residents in respect to how theyuse public space. This situation isparticularly worrisome after the2004 South Asian tsunami left thou-sands of communities damaged andhundreds of hotels and resort sites

destroyed. When American land-scape architects become involved inthe tsunami recovery efforts, willthey adopt a culturally sensitiveprocess in the restoration of localcommunities or in the redesign ofrecreational projects?

I have no intention of suggest-ing that there may be only theChinese or the Indonesian way toredesign a place in China orIndonesia. Our lifestyles and culturesare always evolving, developing, andtransforming. Rather, I argue thatdesign professionals should experi-ment with different approaches thatallow native cultures to tango withforeign ideas. The concept of tran-sculturality as an entangled, inter-mixed relationship between culturesis a useful starting point for analyz-ing my experience teachingAmerican landscape architecture stu-dents working on a Taiwanesememorial park project. Welsch’sobservation that the experience ofliving a transcultural lifestyle has ledto the intermingling of domestic cul-ture with many other foreign cul-tures, coincides with the meldingand mixing of cultural elements thatI observed in a studio class I teachwithin the University of Maryland’sLandscape Architecture Program.

In the Design Fundamentalsclass that I taught in fall 2003, Iassigned my students the TaiwaneseChi-Chi Earthquake Memorial ParkCompetition as a design studio proj-ect. When the students in the coursearticulated their American lens intheir design approach to thisTaiwanese memorial park, an exami-nation of this lens allowed them tomanipulate design patterns and lan-guages of their native culture whileadopting elements of the newlyencountered Taiwanese culture, thusgenerating a transformed languagethat I am calling American-yet-Taiwanese. This innovative, yet sensi-tive design approach not onlydistinguishes the unique quality andpractices of different cultures, butalso blends them together, andmoves them toward evolving culturalgrounds that are constantly chang-ing and transforming.

The first part of this articleanalyzes the commemorative

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rituals and spaces within theTaiwanese/Chinese tradition, andthe daily use of memorial parks inTaiwan. It provides a better under-standing of the differences and simi-larities between Taiwanese andAmerican cultures with respect tobehavioral use of commemorativespaces based on people’s culturalvalues, beliefs, and social norms.This new awareness of Taiwanese useof commemorative spaces is crucialfor understanding the shift in thetranscultural lens that occurred asstudents adopted an American-yet-Taiwanese approach to the design ofthe memorial park that will be dis-cussed in the second part of this arti-cle. In that part, I explain thebackground of the Chi ChiEarthquake Memorial ParkCompetition and then analyze theAmerican and Taiwanese culturalchallenges that occurred within thedesign studio process. These chal-lenges lead to various transculturaldesign solutions from the Americanstudents’ projects that illustrate howthey transcended their culturalboundaries in designing the Chi ChiMemorial Park. They created a mul-tilingual design approach that inter-twined both American and Taiwaneselandscape vocabularies. The articleconcludes with a discussion of howthe transcultural lens that myAmerican students have cultivatedinspires me to propose a conceptionof multilingual design approaches inan era of globalization.

Memorial Parks: Places for RemembranceA memorial is a place to

remember. And, “memory is nevershaped in a vacuum” (Young 1993,2). When we visit a memorial, wereawaken the memories of our lovedones, the memories of the incidentor ideas being commemorated, aswell as our own personal experi-ences of remembering. Memorialsare symbolic forms that interpretindividual and collective memoriesof a particular incident (Seif andNyberg 1988; Sheine 1988). Thelandscape setting and specific designelements that give form and detailto the memorial act as the “linkingobject” and rekindle our memoriesof a particular individual or event

that carried unique meaning in ourlife (Ochsner 1997). Memorialsoften evoke stories of significantincidents that influenced our societyand country as a whole.

We contemplate, individuallyand collectively, our loved ones andour beloved country simultaneously,not only through the forms andimages of the memorials, but alsothrough commemorative rituals thatwe undertake there. When theVietnam Veterans’ Memorial wasfirst built, people sang “God BlessAmerica” in the dedication cere-mony. Visitors honor the memory oftheir loved ones by leaving belong-ings in front of the wall such as flow-ers, boots, handwritten notes, lettersand photos, and by seeing, touching,and rubbing the names on the wall.“They wanted to feel the namesagainst their skin. Fingers strained tocaress the crisply-edged lettersengraved in the black polished gran-ite. The release of nearly twodecades of suppressed pain andanger began to spill forth. Thatdate, a nation began to heal.”(Murphy 1992, ix)

While memorials function asplaces that evoke special memories,the effectiveness of this catalystinvolves cultural assumptions that areembedded in the users’ mind. In thecase of the Vietnam Veterans’Memorial, although Maya Lin’s “land-scape solution”2 had stirred up strongdissent and stimulated intense con-troversy (Campbell 1983; Clay 1982;Hess 1983; Mock 1995; Moreno1988), the physical design elementsand the landscape spaces created byLin provided Americans a contempla-tive place that fit the commemorativebehavioral needs of visitors while pro-viding opportunities to comfort theirsorrow. At the Tenth AnniversaryCommemoration Ceremony Linremarked, “The Wall is designed foryou, for everyone to come and bringtheir thoughts and emotions to theWall” (Meyer 1993, 49).

Lin’s design speaks to threecrucial American values and prac-tices: individualism, personal partici-pation as part of a practice ofdemocracy, and public displays ofreligious worship. As a society cele-brating individualism, the individ-

ual’s name symbolizes one’s uniqueidentity. In the case of the VietnamMemorial, names are the irreplace-able bridge that connects the livingand the dead. Survivors of the warvisit the memorial every day of theweek. Some come in their wheel-chairs, gathering in the company oftheir buddies’ names; children andwidows rub the names of theirfathers and husbands; parents walkslowly as they strive to locate theirsons’ name. These names, represent-ing each individual victim’s identity,have been touched, kissed, andwashed by tears, day in and day out.In relation to the personal practiceof democracy, Lin’s wall allows every-one an opportunity to participateand engage his or her emotions.Visitors see their own faces reflectedon their loved ones’ names and theyleave personal objects adjacent tothe wall. All this allows families,friends, and visitors to develop theirown healing process and reflections(Blum 1984, 128). Addressing thespiritual aspect, Blum also points outthat Lin’s wall “performs a liturgicalpurpose: the slab with the belovedname becomes the altar beforewhich an offering is made” (128).The ritual of offering and the powerof prayers comfort the eternal painthat the survivors endure.

Commemorative Tradition inTranscultural Taiwan. The VietnamVeterans’ Memorial offers itsAmerican users physical space tocommemorate their loved ones, andthe activities that are accommodatedwithin the spaces support individual-ism, participation, and religiousaspects that are essential toAmerican users. When a publicmemorial is designed in Taiwan, thecommemorative places and ritualsthat fit within a Taiwanese culturalcontext often intermingle withChinese culture, Japanese culture,aboriginal tribal culture, as well asthe modern western culture.

Taiwan, also known as Formosa,is “a mere island-dot on the westernPacific Rim, lost against the vast back-drop of continental Asia” (Kerr 1965,1). The geographical location of this“island-dot” gives rise to a four-hun-dred-year transcultural history that

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includes influences from theMalaysian-Polynesian, Dutch, Chinese,and Japanese peoples. After ChiangKai-shek’s Nationalist Party (KMT)lost the civil war in Mainland China in1949, his party fled to Taiwan andestablished the modern Taiwanesesociety. Since then, western culture,and in particular American culture,has influenced Taiwanese societythrough the media, the entertain-ment industry, education, travel, andvarious forms of exchange.3

The diverse cultural influencesthat are part of Taiwanese historyinfluence the way people perceiveand use public memorials in thatcountry. If we recognize that publicmemorials are places that oftenremind the living of the dead, wemust also recognize that differentcultures develop different customs,rituals, and ceremonies to remem-ber their dead. Even today Chinesefuneral practices and Chinese ide-ologies, including the concept ofreincarnation, dominate Taiwanesebeliefs in regard to the afterlife(Waston and Rawski 1988). Christianworship and Christian ideals ofheaven and salvation are also popu-lar for some. More commonly, peo-ple blend traditional Chinesecustoms with modern Christian prac-tices, creating transcultural rites thatare practiced by the family.

While most Taiwanese familiespractice some form of Chinese cus-toms and rituals, there is no uniformstructure of rites that are followed byeveryone (Watson and Rawski 1988).The customs and practices of funer-als are most complicated. Watsonand Rawski outline the key aspectsof Chinese funeral rituals. The onesthat are foreign to western readersbut relevant to the spatial use ofTaiwanese public memorial designare listed below (Watson and Rawski1988, 12–15):

● The transfer of food, money,and goods from the living tothe dead. Spirit money andpaper models of items thatcan be used in the afterlife(for example, houses, furni-ture, servants, vehicles, etc.)are transmitted to the deadby burning them.

● The preparation and installa-tion of an offering table forthe dead.

● Percussion instruments beat-ing a solemn rhythm, orfuneral laments to accom-pany the corpse and settlethe spirit.

● The practice of Feng Shui inthe placement of a tomb orthe burial of the coffin in aspecific graveyard.

● Anniversary ceremonies forthe dead. Visits to tombs onTomb-Sweeping Day, or

Ching-ming, which occurs onApril 5th of every year.

The Taiwanese customs of ded-icating food, spirit money, andgoods to the dead also impact theform of graveyard design, becausethese customs always need a ritualspace for the series of offerings thattake place. Unlike the simple grave-stones that stand on American grave-yards, a typical Taiwanese graveyardincludes a built-in offering table withan incense holder in the center, anda semicircular paving area that func-tions as ceremonial space in front ofthe offering table (Figure 1). This

Figure 1. Diagrams of various forms of Taiwanese graveyards. Source: National TaiwanUniversity Building and Planning Foundation, 1992, A Plan for the I-lan CountyNorthern District Public Cemetery. P. 82.

area in front of the offering tablehas to be large enough for one ortwo people to kowtow, or kneel andbow, to show respect toward thedead.4 Sometimes a graveyard willalso contain an altar on one sideand an earth god shrine on theother. Family members and friendsburn the spirit money and otherpaper goods inside the altar, whilethe earth god serves to protect thegraveyard from homeless ghosts andother harassments.

However, it is important tokeep in mind that modernTaiwanese customs are variationsthat blend the traditional Chinesecustoms with the Christian styles. Forexample, on the Tomb-SweepingDay it would not be a surprise to seea gravestone decorated with aChristian cross while the family, orthe friends of the dead, who cometo worship are burning spirit money(including U.S. dollars), paper ser-vants, paper cars, or paper furnitureas part of the contemplative ritual.They light incense to communicatewith the dead. They believe thattheir loved one needs money andbelongings, even though alreadywith God in heaven.5 A very impor-tant Taiwanese (and Chinese) folkbelief is that after one dies, the fam-ily must have a funeral, bury thecorpse in a tomb, and dedicategrand scale offerings to thedeceased. Without these practices,the deceased would become a home-less ghost wandering around andrandomly bringing miserable acci-dents to other individuals. Taiwanesebelieve that ghosts can bring badenergies to the living and, thus, it isrisky to live adjacent to cemeteries.As a result, Taiwanese cemeteries aresited far from the center of high-density urban neighborhoods, whilethe funeral houses are usuallylocated at the margins of urbanneighborhoods. It is unlikely to seecemeteries surrounded by residen-tial homes and apartments, as theyare in the United States.

In addition, any forms, colors,and images that are associated withgraveyards and cemeteries mightbring misfortune to one’s daily life.For example, similar to theAmerican practice, people dress in

black color at funerals, and thus,black becomes the color associatedwith death. Taiwanese lay peopleconsider it an unlucky color. Thesame association applies to themound forms seen in graveyards andobelisk forms found on gravestones.Local people would likely complainif mounds or obelisks were incorpo-rated within the park, plaza, ormemorial. They believe these formsinterrupt good energy and damagetheir local Feng Shui. In otherwords, Taiwanese do not welcomeanything related to the dead ordeath.

Is it a Memorial? Is it a Park? Amemorial is a place to rememberthe dead. Yet in Taiwan, landscapesrelated to death are generally per-ceived as spaces that are unlucky,disquieting, and unaesthetic. Moreimportant, the concept of having amemorial park is a relatively newone in Taiwan because the tradi-tional memorials or monuments, theso-called Pai-fun, are in the form of agate, not a park.

In 1993, the 2/28 MassacreMemorial was the first public memo-rial design competition in Taiwan.The 0.44-acre memorial site islocated within the oldest publicpark, Taipei New Park, in the core ofTaipei City. This 17-acre park wasoriginally built in the Japanese colo-nial period and is located adjacentto the Taiwanese Presidential Hall,surrounded by prestigious centralgovernment buildings, internationalbanks, historical buildings, andfamous hotels. The park contained alarge children’s playground, aChinese garden-style water lily pond,pavilions, a western-style outdoorconcert area, the Greek-temple-styled Taiwan Provincial Museum,and the oldest Taiwanese railwayengine exhibition.

Visitors of the Taipei New Parkcome from local Taipei, as well asisland-wide. The park is a place fordaily exercise, weekend familyrecreation, and public education.After installing the winning pieceof the 2/28 Massacre MemorialCompetition, the Taiwanese govern-ment renamed it the 2/28 MassacreMemorial Park in 1993. The recently

installed 2/28 Massacre Memorialattracts a new group of park userswho come to commemorate the2/28 massacre victims at an annualceremony held on February 28th.Outside this special date, the every-day use of the site is the same asother areas in Taipei New Park.

Everyday Uses of TaiwaneseMemorial Parks. How people use the2/28 Massacre Memorial Park maynot demonstrate the everyday use ofmemorials in Taiwan becauseTaiwanese users have known it as theTaipei New Park much longer thanits new role as a memorial park. TheSun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and Parkillustrates a much clearer picture ofresidents’ daily use of memorialparks in Taipei because it was builtas the commemorative place toremember Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s contri-bution that transformed the empireof China into a modern and demo-cratic country in 1912.

While the 2/28 MassacreMemorial Park is the best-knownmemorial park in Taipei, the SunYat-sen Memorial Hall and Park isone of the earliest memorial parksin the city. Designed by architect Da-hong Wang, and completed on May16, 1972, this 28.5-acre park is thehome of Dr. Sun Yat-sen MemorialHall (Figure 2).6 A 19-foot-highseated statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen isplaced on a 10-foot-high pedestal inthe lobby of the Memorial Hall. Theheight of the statute and pedestalmeasures the same as that ofPresident Lincoln’s on the Mall inWashington, D.C. The parallels toLincoln are deliberate; selectedspeeches elaborating Lincoln’s ideasof freedom and equality areinscribed on the chamber walls ofDr. Sun’s Memorial. The centralinscription imprinted on Dr. Sun’spedestal quotes Confucius’ conversa-tion on Tian-Xia-Wei-Gong, or “theworld belongs to the public,” fromthe Li Ji (The Classic of Rites). Dr.Sun’s words: “Freedom,” “Equality,”and “Love” also appear in the hall.7Similar to the educational memorialfunction that the Lincoln Memorialserves in the United States, Dr. Sun’sMemorial Hall and Park offers visi-tors—both domestic and interna-

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tional—access to unique historicaldocuments and records of Dr. Sunand the National Party that illustratethe historical revolution from theend of the 19th century to the begin-ning of the 20th century.

However, can you imagine see-ing senior groups with their musictapes practicing Tai Chi and Chi Kongin front of the Lincoln Memorialeveryday, housewife clubs singingtheir favorite karaoke songs, or folkdancing teams practicing their newmovements while tourists come tovisit and contemplate PresidentLincoln’s philosophical beliefs andhis historical contribution toAmerica?

In fact, singing, dancing andTai Chi are commonplace activitiesthat occur at Dr. Sun’s MemorialPark (Figure 3). As one of the fewlarge urban greens for residents liv-ing in high-density urban neighbor-hoods, Dr. Sun Yat-sen MemorialPark is the place residents go fortheir daily workout.

Since the 1950s, mostTaiwanese have lived high-densityurban lifestyles and reside in high-rise apartment buildings. By the endof 2003, 82 percent of households inTaiwan lived in urbanized areas.8Currently, more than 63 percent ofTaiwanese households are situatedin urban densities that are higher

than five people per acre, whilemore than 33 percent of householdsare located in seven major cities thathave an average density of 26.5 peo-ple per acre (MOI 2004).9 InDecember 2004, the average densityof Taipei City was 39 people per acre(MOI 2004) or more than 23,000per square kilometer.10 Taipei resi-dents have a substantial need forurban parks and green open spaces.Due to the lack of individual privateyards, the norm for the majority ofurbanized Taiwanese is to shareneighborhood open spaces.

Many activities that Americansundertake predominantly indoors,like dancing, exercise, and singing,are performed outdoors by theTaiwanese. With this in mind, localresidents use the Dr. Sun Yat-sen’sMemorial Park extensively all hoursof the day and night. When resi-dents are walking their dogs in earlymorning, seniors’ Tai Chi and ChiKong practices have already started.Different groups and individualshave developed their own territoriesand schedules. Virtually the entirepark is occupied by some group oranother. The series of images fromFigure 4 to Figure 15 illustrate thebusy morning schedules at the park.In addition to seniors, one can seeVietnamese assistants pushing theelderly in wheelchairs, housewives

singing karaoke, couples practicingballroom dancing, or yoga groups intheir daily workout inside the park.When housewives rush to preparetheir lunch around 10 a.m., schoolchildren’s picnics or outdoor activi-ties take over. In late afternoon, dogowners walk their canine friendsbefore the first evening park activi-ties commence. There are variousgroups who prefer to practice TaiChi, Chi Kong, yoga, ballroom danc-ing, and karaoke after dusk. Finally,around midnight, the park becomesthe best dating place for young cou-ples. All of the activities that takeplace in the Dr. Sun Yat-sen’sMemorial Park are similar to thedaily uses of other ordinary publicparks in Taiwan or China.

American-yet-Taiwanese DesignLanguages.

After describing Taiwanesecommemorative behavior and thedaily uses of memorial parks, let usfocus on the multilingual, American-yet-Taiwanese design approach forthe Taiwanese Chi Chi earthquakememorial project in my DesignFundamentals studio. As mentionedearlier, developing a sensitiveresponse to Asian cultures is animportant goal for the LandscapeArchitecture Program at theUniversity of Maryland. Thus, taking

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Figure 2. Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.All photographs by author.

Figure 3. Seniors practice Tai Chi outside the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.

on a Taiwanese project in a begin-ning design studio is part of theeffort to support an Asian focus inthe curriculum.11 In this section,I provide historical background forthe Chi Chi earthquake and thememorial park competition, andintroduce the design studio process.Finally, I analyze American students’design challenges in general andtheir design solutions, while focus-ing on four students’ projects in par-ticular. My analysis emphasizes thesestudents’ concepts and the physicalpatterns, vocabularies, and lan-guages that were utilized to supporttheir concepts.

The Chi Chi EarthquakeMemorial Design. Similar to the 2004tsunami that traumatized Asia, theChi Chi earthquake was one of themost unbearable collective memo-ries for the 23 million residents ofthe Island of Taiwan. On the morn-ing of September 21, 1999, at1:47 a.m., everyone on the islandwas awakened by a massive earth-quake that measured 7.3 on theRichter scale. At the quake’s epicen-ter, and Taiwan’s geographical cen-ter, the city of Chi Chi was mostdramatically impacted (Chi ChiReconnaissance Team 2000; Hsia2001). The quake and its island-

wide aftershocks resulted in2,400 deaths, 11,000 injuries,and 5,000 rescued survivors. Theground bellowed, buildings quiv-ered, roads folded, bridges cracked,mountains moved, the land slid,and people’s hearts were broken(Figures 16 and 17).

Four years later, many of theaffected families still remainedhomeless or lived in their damagedhouses (Robbins 2001; The 921Earthquake Post-Disaster RecoveryCommission—Executive Yuan2001). In September 2003, theTaiwanese government announcedthe Chi Chi Earthquake Memorial

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Figure 7. Chi Kong group.

Figure 4. Women’s dance group. Figure 5. Soldiers’ morning march passing by Chi Kong group.

Figure 6. Tai Chi group.

Park Competition to the interna-tional design community. Thememorial site, approximately fiveacres, is located at Chung HsingNew Village, the Taiwanese provin-cial government center, locatedabout 11 miles north of the Chi Chiquake center in Nantou County.The site is currently a green openfield. It was formerly the TaiwanProvincial Governmental Office site,but its buildings were destroyed dur-ing the earthquake. The mission ofthe memorial was clearly stated,“(to) provide innovative solutionsfor the Chi Chi earthquake memo-rial . . . the memorial space may be

spoken, transferable, breathable oreven alterable . . . beside its memo-rial value, proposals should respondto social, political, and cultural issues, which originated as a resultof the disaster.” (Earthquake Post-Disaster Recovery Commission2003)

The Chi Chi EarthquakeMemorial Park design was the firstproject in which my beginningdesign students were confrontedwith their own cultural identity andassumptions.12 I observed how theytransformed their American way ofthinking and designing into a trans-cultural approach that blended

modern American memorial designpatterns with Taiwanese local cus-toms. Instead of reproducing onlyuniversally shared patterns, they alsodeveloped multilingual design lan-guages to communicate with localpeople from different cultures andsocieties. The students’ struggles indefining the Taiwanese Chi Chiearthquake memorial helpedreshape their identity as designersand generated new ways of thinkingabout the design process.

In the beginning, Americanstudents were concerned that it wastoo challenging for them to designan earthquake memorial for a

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Figure 8. Chi Kong group. Figure 9. Children at play.

Figure 10. Individual residents’ workout. Figure 11. Individual residents’ workout.

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Figure 13. Yoga

Taiwanese society whose culturalpractices were so foreign and so faraway. More important, they felt dis-comfort about designing forTaiwanese people because they ques-tioned the imposition of their designvalues on a foreign culture. In otherwords, in the context of theTaiwanese Chi Chi memorial, theysuddenly realized their cultural iden-tity as Americans was very differentfrom the Taiwanese islanders whoexperienced the major earthquakein 1999 and were still invested in theprocess of healing themselves.

The turning point in this dis-comfort came after severalTaiwanese students, currently pursu-ing degrees at the University ofMaryland, were invited to visit thestudio and share their personalexperiences of the earthquake withthe American students.13 During thevisiting sessions, students realized

that their Taiwanese peers sharedmany common cultural experiencesas part of today’s global youth cul-ture, yet they recognized that theTaiwanese students still had aunique way of doing things that wasbeyond the Americans’ imagination.The Taiwanese students alsoexpressed their visions for the ChiChi Earthquake Memorial Park:their preference was for a memorialwith a park-like open space that sup-ported multiple functions. They pre-ferred a park that could be used as amemorial for contemplation andreflection, but that would also func-tion as a public site for residents’daily use.

In the end, the students’ open-minded responses to the post-studioevaluations disclosed their attitudetoward their newly emerging identi-ties that embodied a transculturallens.14 This transcultural lens led to

new opportunities for developingmultilingual design languages thatintegrated American, Taiwanese,and other cultures into hybriddesign patterns. On the one hand,students struggled with the foreignculture and customs in Taiwanesesociety. On the other hand, 15 outof 17 students said that the cross-cultural project resulted in theirrethinking a set of assumptions thatthey had held about themselves andtheir own culture, and how thoseassumptions do not necessarily applyto others. “I have learned that youmust consider what is customary toone’s self is not typical of others, soyou must understand how culturereacts to situations before makingfinal design decisions,” one studentwrote on the final evaluation.Another wrote, “I learned how tobegin to look at ideas from morethan one perspective. Now I realize

Figure 12. Health path walk

that certain ideas are very westernand are not all that important topeople of other cultures. It isimportant to be aware of this whendesigning.” One of only two stu-dents who did not think that theChi Chi project impacted her cul-tural lens stated, “Not really,because I feel I understand this cul-

ture already, however, it inspires meto look at other cultures and seehow they interact with their land-scapes.” The other studentexplained, “because my parents areforeign I look at cross-cultural land-scapes daily.”

Facing Cultural Challenges.Although the process of developingdesign vocabularies for the Chi Chimemorial was a challenge forAmerican students, it opened upunique opportunities to experimentwith American-yet-Taiwanese designapproaches that blend Americanand Taiwanese ways of using publicmemorials. The group of beginningdesign students learned that manystandardized memorial vocabulariesthat work perfectly in an Americancontext make little sense within theTaiwanese context. One example ofthis came when students attemptedto integrate victims’ names into thememorial site as is typical ofAmerican memorial designs afterMaya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans’Memorial. Of course, American stu-dents assumed that the name listwould be based on an alphabeticalordering system. During desk crits,I explained to them that Chinesenames are not alphabeticallyordered. The sequences within theChinese dictionary are based on thenumbers of strokes of a word, notthe alphabetical order. Also, in theChi Chi earthquake, all the victimswere buried within exactly the samemoment, so there was no way todevelop a chronological sequence ofthe dead as Lin did in the VietnamMemorial. More important, in line

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Figure 14. Elderly exercise Figure 15. Housewives’ grocery shopping

Figure 16. Buildings destroyed in the Chi Chi Earthquake in the city of Pouli. 2001.

with Chinese custom, family mem-bers prefer to be buried in the samegraveyard as other family members.If the victims’ names were placedbased on the numbers of strokes oftheir last names, husbands and wiveswith different last names mightbecome separated. Therefore, moststudents changed their designapproach. A few decided to placevictims’ names based on communitylocations or the Chinese horoscope.

In addition to the order ofnames, there are certain forms andcolors that remind people of deathand these are taboo for public spacedesign in Chinese society. As pointedout previously, Chinese perceivememorial services, death rituals, andcemeteries as unlucky symbolswithin their daily life. Certain colors,especially black, are associated withdeath and perceived as bad omensthat promote depression and a senseof hopelessness (Rossbach and Lin1994, 47). Although many Americanmemorials are constructed with ele-gant black marble, the localTaiwanese residents living close tothe Chi Chi Memorial Park might

not welcome any black structuresbeing dropped into their backyards.

Also significant, the wayTaiwanese people express their emo-tion toward their loved ones in apublic space is very different fromthe American experience. TheNational Vietnam Memorial, again,serves as a good example. When vic-tims’ family and friends visit theVietnam Memorial, they explicitlyexpress their sorrow irrespective ofwhether or not other people arewithin the public space. In Taiwaneseculture, commemorating the loss ofloved ones is an event that takesplace only in a private domain, attheir loved ones’ tombs or grave-yards. Most people visit their lovedones’ graveyards more than onceannually. At the graveyards, they per-form a commemorative ritual byburning spirit paper money (imita-tion currency), dedicating incenseand displaying flowers as well asfood. In Chinese culture, these tombrituals are called “sweeping tombs,”because members of the deceased lit-erally sweep their loved one’s grave-yard, burn spirit money, and kowtow.

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Figure 17. Two years after the Chi Chi Earthquake, residents still lived and worked intheir homes destroyed by the earthquake. This photo shows an owner of a barber shopruns his business from a shop without a facade. 2001.

However, the ritual is considered aprivate family-based ceremony andonly takes place at private graveyards.For designers to transform the pri-vate practices into a public memorialspace like the Chi Chi EarthquakeMemorial Park would be difficult,requiring the development of inno-vative incentives.

Bilingual Design Vocabularies.From a designer’s point of view, thecritical challenge of the Chi Chimemorial design was how to trans-form a public memorial into a com-fortable space where users couldmake private connections with theirdeparted loved ones, while othersstill had daily use of the park. Abouthalf of my 22 student projects con-tained the multiple functions thatfulfill both contemplative activitiesand daily neighborhood use. In thefollowing section, I have selectedfour projects that analyze how indi-vidual students developed theirAmerican-yet-Taiwanese bilingualdesigns.15

Tom’s “healing the nation, healingthe community, healing the individual.”When Tom first started the project,he was designing through anAmerican lens that defined thememorial as a space that wouldallow every individual visitor to per-sonally link to his or her belovedand to express their sorrow publicly.After hearing Taiwanese students’views about memorial space, Tombegan to rethink his view and toldme that he wanted the link betweenvisitors and the memorial to providean opportunity for expressing emo-tions in more subtle and implicitways. Making the shift from theexplicit to the implicit expression ofemotion within memorial space wasa struggle for Tom. Eventually hecame to realize that Taiwanese peo-ple do not feel comfortable express-ing their emotion in front of publicvisitors, and so they needed a simplebut symbolic process to link themwith the Chi Chi earthquake.

Tom saw his design as provid-ing the opportunity for a nation toheal. His design concept, “Healingthe Nation, Healing the Community,Healing the Individual,” successfullyachieved his aim, providing a spacefor expressing emotion subtly, with

an innovative solution (Figure 18).In his design, the memorial wascomposed of a rising plateau sur-rounded by a forest in lieu of theocean. The rising plateau, represent-ing the Taiwan plateau, was in theshape of Taiwan Island with a 3-to-6foot-tall collection of colorful peb-bles symbolizing the Zhong-yuongMountains on the east side ofTaiwan, and a 1-to-2 foot-wide man-made crack symbolizing theChelungpu Fault that caused theearthquake stretching out to thenorth-south from the center of theisland. The manmade crack(Chelungpu Fault) connected to theearthquake museum inside theTaiwan plateau with a large, wall-liketransparent container. The forestarea bordering the Taiwan plateaunot only represented the PacificOcean surrounding the TaiwanIsland, but also provided the park

space for local daily use. Because theTaiwan plateau rose above thecanopies of the forest, the canopiesbuffered the memorial activities tak-ing place there from the daily useoccurring underneath the forest“ocean.”

Visitors entered the site fromvarious entry points and began anascent into the memorial. The entrywalk circumnavigated the plateauand visitors arrived at either thenorthern or the southern top cor-ner where they encountered thelarge trough of colored pebbles,symbolizing the Zhang-youngMountains. Upon their arrival, eachindividual would take a pebble anddrop it into the manmade cracksymbolizing the Chelungpu Fault,thus enacting a symbolic gesture ofembarking on the healing process.This individual ritual process—pickup a pebble, turn around, kneel

down, and drop the pebble—trans-formed the public memorial spaceinto a private ritual space during amoment of meditation that coin-cided with the dropping of the peb-ble. The American-yet-Taiwaneselens that Tom had acquired wasexemplified in his creation of aspace allowing for a gesture ofkneeling that transformed the tradi-tional kowtow ritual into an everydaybody language Taiwanese visitorswould not find embarrassing in apublic setting. In addition, drop-ping the colorful pebbles (not blackpebbles) transformed Taiwanesepaper-burning offerings into thewestern custom of making wisheswhile dropping coins into a foun-tain.

More important, the pebblesfell below into the museum area thatallowed visitors to see the pebblesaccumulate behind a large glass wall.

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Figure 18. Tom’s memorial allowed the American-yet-Taiwanese healing process to be realized by dropping colorful pebbles into aman-made crack. 2003.

This type of physical quantitativeaccumulation engages viewers toexperience the power of healing in acollective manner: the pebbles ulti-mately fill the fault line that hascaused so much sorrow in their lives.“Together the nation will heal asone,” Tom stated during his presen-tation. He went on to say:

When the public space is trans-formed into a private space by thoseindividuals that visit, the experiencebecomes much stronger and theconnection between place andhuman spirit is created. The spacebecomes not only a memorial, opento all, but can be a spiritual retreatfor those that feel the need for anytype of healing.

Mel’s “acoustic in the soul.”Mel initiated her design from a tra-ditional Chinese garden layout, sothat her memorial places werestructured as a series of small areasthat surrounded a large central

space. The small areas consisted ofa memorial garden, a teahouse, twolayers of corridors with differentstories and levels, and other smallfloral gardens. All spaces servedmultiple functions for daily use.Those trained in modern, westernmemorial vocabularies that empha-sized the importance of simplicitymight criticize her complex, move-ment-oriented approach. A westernlens might suggest that she removesome of the small garden areas andfocus, instead, on the central space.However, from the perspective ofChinese garden tradition, I waspretty amazed that Mel, a begin-ning student who had never visiteda Chinese garden, could createsuch rich and imaginative bodilyexperience that would resonatewithin the Taiwanese local popula-tion.

But Mel’s design was notentirely Chinese. Instead of a largelake or pond as the center voidspace, as is traditionally found in

Chinese gardens, she proposed amusical tree that would create tonesas the wind moved through it(Figure 19). She proposed a collec-tion of 2,405 small leaves—each leafrepresenting an individual victim.The American-yet-Taiwanese atti-tude that Mel had cultivatedrevealed itself in her musical tree.The tree would create a wind-chimemelody, filling the space withserene music, as opposed to the sor-rowful music typically found in atraditional Taiwanese funeral ritual.The paving patterns underneaththis musical tree were also con-structed in the form of leaves.While this musical tree broke therule of traditional Chinese gardenlayout, Mel poetically introducedinto her design an old Chineseadage, “all leaves fall back to theroot.” Without knowing it was aChinese proverb, she intuitivelyused the metaphor of leaves falling

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Figure 19. Mel approached the Chi Chi Memorial with a Chinese garden layout. Instead of having a lake in the center, she designed aninstrumental tree with 2405 wind-chime leaves on the tree. The leaf patterns on the paving also echoed the old Chinese saying: “allleaves fall back to the root.” 2003.

back to their mother-nature groundtransforming each individual vic-tim’s relationship to the earth byevoking the healing power ofnature.

She said: “Leaf after leaf . . .every leaf would touch the wetground . . . Mother nature wouldaccept each one of them. . . . Thetree will intertwine with the wind inhis loneliness. . . . The hope wouldkeep him alive. New leaves willappear and absorb raindrop afterraindrop, tear after tear. . . . ”

Paul’s “regrowth after the destruction.” Paul decided to drawreferences for his memorial fromthe history of the site itself, ratherthan the death of the earthquakevictims, because he acknowledgedthe Taiwanese cultural preferenceof avoiding death references andthe urgent need of moving forwardfrom the losses related to the earth-quake. He claimed, “The design isnot meant so much to mourn thepast, but celebrate the future andthe strength of the Taiwanesepeople.”

He used “a seedling growingout of the ashes of a forest fire” as

the metaphor to elaborate his ideaof regrowth that provided Taiwanesevisitors with the promise of renewal.There were two design elements thatsupported Paul’s concept ofregrowth. First, he proposed to planttrees to mark the footprint of theoriginal building on the site.Second, the memorial space waslocated within a ring of large boul-ders, ceremonially marking thespace that invites people to cometogether (Figure 20). In the center,a smaller ring of boulders with flow-ers symbolized the power ofregrowth emerging from the com-munity. The large outer circle, sur-rounding all the ruins and newlyplanted trees, reflected a symbol ofharmony and unity shared by manycultures (including Han Chinese,aboriginal Taiwanese, and NativeAmericans). Paul pointed out thatthe idea of the flowers and treesgrowing out of the boulders wereinspired by American landscapeartist Andy Goldsworthy, who usednatural materials in installations forhis Holocaust Memorial.

During the presentation of hisdesign, Paul revealed both a

Taiwanese and American attitudetoward memorials. Although his con-cept of regrowth responded to theTaiwanese customs of avoidingdeath, his philosophy regarding therelationship between humans andnature was fairly western. In the east-ern tradition humans are perceivedas a part of nature, while in the west-ern tradition, with its strong, heroic,individualistic expressions of theself, humans demonstrate theirstrength by overcoming and con-quering nature. In his presentation,Paul revealed his western attitude:“Nature is a destructive and deadlyforce. It is important, however, torealize that we, as people, can andwill bounce back from even theworst of disasters, and continue to,time after time.” With this strongstatement, his design for the Chi Chiearthquake memorial offered theunique opportunity for visitors tosimultaneously connect with thememory of the disaster and theexperience of regrowth. He con-cluded, “The idea of people comingtogether is a really important aspectof a tragedy. It is in [the] time afterthat spirits are lifted by one anotherand the regrowth can start.”

Jeff’s “renewal of the spirit overtime.” Learning about the easternconcepts of reincarnation and theunderworld, Jeff was interested incapturing the concept of “a time ofrebirth and renewal” in his memo-rial. His design was arranged in away that revisited the past, but alsolooked toward the future.

He applied both modern west-ern and traditional Chinese designlanguages in his project. A westerndouble-helix memorial dominatedthe site, while the landscape sur-rounding the helix consisted ofChinese garden-style hills, a pavilion,and a large fishpond (Figure 21).The path traversing the helix tookvisitors through time: pre-earthquake, earthquake, and post-earthquake. The base of the“underworld” helix physically repre-sented the actual event. Jeff usedunderworld as the metaphor to leadvisitors down the slope and into thehelix. The walls of the helixincluded built-in incense holdersthat allowed visitors to dedicate

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Figure 20. Paul’s design, “Re-growth after the Destruction” resonates with the western,heroic, individualistic voice that humanity can overcome the destructiveness of nature.The model shows trees growing from the footprint of the original building on the site.The ring of huge boulders bring people together to emphasize the idea that re-growthcomes from community. 2003.

burning incense to their loved ones.At the bottom of the southern sideof the double-helix memorial, visi-tors encountered a white-pebbledconcrete slit that represented theChelungpu Fault, which occupiedthe central area of the helix. Visitorsthen continued across the plaza tothe northern side of the helix andback up toward “heaven.”

While journeying down to theunderworld and then back up onthe heavenly return, visitors passedunder a land bridge. At thatmoment, visitors saw the opennessof a large-scale pond with a bamboo-structured pavilion in the center oftheir view and a Chinese-paintingstyle landscape on either side. Thechange from light to shadow to lightreinforced the change of seasonsand the passage of time. The pathout of the helix led to the post-earthquake area of the park and rep-resented the renewal of the humanspirit.

During the design process, aswell as in the final critique, reviewerssuggested that Jeff either embracethe western double-helix form, or

put more emphasis on the easternlandscape experiences. Jeff arguedthat both western and eastern land-scape styles were critical to hisdesign concept because the com-plexity and tension created by theChinese traditional garden formsand the modern helix plazaembodied the multi-centeredhistory that Taiwanese people hadexperienced.

ConclusionsIn summary, the Taiwanese-yet-

American schemes of my beginningdesign students opened up a newtranscultural window for me—a win-dow that revealed the evolution oftheir design languages when theyencountered an unfamiliar culture. Inaddition to the four cases shared inthis article, every student in the classinvented his or her own approach tointermixing the western memorialvocabularies with the local Taiwanesecustoms and activities. During thisproject, I observed common themesacross the students’ design processesand in their final products.

First, American students seri-ously respected the Taiwanese gueststudents’ personal earthquake expe-riences and their suggestions of apark-like memorial for daily use.Most American students stated thattheir design concepts were informedby the conversations they had withtheir Taiwanese peers. Second, theaccessibility of Internet informationnotably facilitated American stu-dents’ understanding of the Chi Chiearthquake event and Taiwanese cul-ture, in general. In addition,American students searched forimages of Taiwanese recreational useof neighborhood parks and foundsuitable plant materials native to theChi Chi area for design application.Third, in terms of design forms,American students tended to lookfor precedents from: (1) the geom-etry of Taiwan, (2) the patterns ofthe Chelungpu Fault, (3) classicalpatterns of Chinese gardens,and (4) Chi Chi local bamboo structures developed after theearthquake.

The Taiwanese Chi Chi memo-rial design might serve as a practicalmodel that can be repeated in otherstudio environments. Due to the lim-ited time and resources, we wereunable to partner with any land-scape architecture programs inTaiwan to develop this projecttogether. Doing so would haveadded another layer of richness tothe experience.

In retrospect, this group ofAmerican students’ intelligent, gen-uine responses and their open-minded attitude refreshed myapproach to teaching landscapedesign studio in our current era ofglobalization. I realized that withinthe six-week period of working on theTaiwanese Chi Chi memorial project,my American students had developeda transcultural lens through whichthey could investigate their ownAmerican culture as well as the newculture they were encountering. Ibegan to understand that if theycould find a sensitive way to keeptheir transcultural lens translucent, itcould become an instrument in theirprofessional life that might offer lim-itless possibilities. My hope is thatembracing a transcultural lens would

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Figure 21. Jeff’s design consisted of a sunken plaza in the shape of a western double-helix surrounded by a Chinese-painting-style landscape. Jeff argued that both westernand eastern landscape styles were critical to his design, because these forms embodiedthe multi-centered history and society that Taiwanese people experience. 2003.

allow them to incorporate multilin-gual design languages in their futuredesign practice.

As a non-American instructor,I do not fully understand how thestudents developed the lens on theirown because I do not entirely under-stand American culture. However,when I tried my best to explain myTaiwanese culture to them, the for-eignness of Taiwanese culture per-ceived from their American eyestransformed into a mirror thathelped them see who they werethrough a transcultural experience.Metaphorically, I would say the proj-ect inspired them to see the land-scape, perhaps for the first time,through a pair of transcultural eyes.I do hope that having created thislens for themselves, they will viewthe world in a new light as they con-tinue on their design journeys.

Editor’s NoteAll photographs by author unless otherwisenoted.

Notes1. Survey by 1997 Census Bureau: Vietnamesepopulation increased by 89 percent, Koreanpopulation increased by 70 percent,Indian population increased by 136 percent,Philippine population increased by 66 percent, and Chinese population in-creased by 68 percent. Census Bureau Data up-date March, 2002 from www.fairus.org/html/042mdcbu.htm#fb (June 11, 2002). Accordingto FAIR (2005), these Asian immigrants con-centrate in Montgomery County (with 26.7percent share foreign born population)where one of every 10 residents embodyAsian cultural heritage.2. Grady (1982, 55) said “We appreciate thewinning design would not proclaim its quali-ties to everyone at first glance. It was, inessence, a ‘landscape solution’ consisting oftwo black granite walls, ten feet high at thecenter, each 200 feet long, intersecting at ashallow angle in a small open-sided valley,carved within the two-acre site at the westernend of Constitution Gardens. One wall pointstoward the Washington Monument, the otherto the nearby Lincoln Memorial. The namesof all those killed or missing in Vietnam areengraved thereon.”3. See “The Taiwan’s 400 Years of History,”www.taiwandc.org/history.htm. The Web siteprovides rich details and comprehensive links

to various Web sites of Taiwan history. Alsosee Kerr’s Formosa Betrayed for contemporaryTaiwanese history including the 2/28Massacre that occurred in 1947, when ChiangKai-shek’s troops first took over Taiwan.For Chinese readers, Shi Ming’s book, Four-Hundred-Year History of the Taiwanese, pro-vides an independent view of the Taiwanesehistory.4. Due to the lack of land resources inTaiwan, the graveyard property market hasgone sky-high and unaffordable since theearly 1990s. Lately, modern high-rise ash tow-ers are in popular demand. In a high-rise ashtower, people use large public alters to burntheir family paper offerings. They dedicatetheir food offerings and kowtow in a publicspirit hall where a temporary soul tablet ofthe dead is displayed.5. One lady who was sweeping her mother-in-law’s graveyard told me, “otherwise, how canmy mom go shopping in the heaven?”Although her mother-in-law was a Christian,she still believed that spirit money was a basicneed for her mom. If she did not burn spiritmoney, she thought she was not taking care ofher mother-in-law well. Meanwhile, graveyardvisitors also perform activities related to theirfaith. For Christian visitors, they bring onlyflowers to the dead who they visit, while visi-tors, with other religions or without particularreligions, perform the Taiwanese custom ofburning paper offerings.6. Wang’s design was the winning project of apublic architecture competition in 1966. AfterWang’s project won the competition,President Jiang (Kai-shek) requested him toemphasize Chinese architecture styles in hisotherwise modern-style building form. Wangparticularly modified the building’s straightmodern roofs into Chinese flying roofs thatare what we see today if we visit the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and Park.7. Confucius (551–479 BCE) is the singlemost important philosopher in Chinese his-tory. His idea, “the world belongs to the pub-lic,” profoundly influenced Dr. Sun’s theoryand belief of establishing modern China as asociety operating with the principles of free-dom, equality, and love.8. This number is converted from the MOI’s(Minister of Interior) December 2003Population Affairs. Based on the USA Census2000 definition, an urbanized area is: (UA)An area consisting of a central place(s) andadjacent territory with a general populationdensity of at least 1,000 people per squaremile of land area that together have a mini-mum residential population of at least 50,000people. The Census Bureau uses publishedcriteria to determine the qualification andboundaries of UAs. 1,000 people per squaremile can be converted to 386 people persquare kilometer (1 sq. mile = 2.59 sq. Km).Minister of Interior in Taiwan. 2003.Population Affairs. Web site: www.moi.gov.tw/W3/stat/home.asp (January 18, 2004).9. The seven cities include (from north tosouth): Keilong City, Taipei City, HsinchuCity, Taichung City, Jiayi City, Tianan City, andKoushoung City.10. According to the 2001 statistic data fromthe Taiwanese Ministry of Interior, on the

island of Taiwan, 78 percent of the popula-tion live on only 12 percent of the land.Inside the urban planning districts, there is apopulation density of 3,886 per square kilo-meter, or 10 times the minimum “urban area”density by American standards. When the spe-cial districts plan for extraordinary purposesis excluded in calculation, there are even asmany as 6,665 people crowding each squarekilometer. Department of Statistics, Ministryof the Interior, Taiwan. The Urban Planningin an Overview. http://www.moi.gov.tw/W3/stat/english/index.htm 2001 Update.(June 11, 2002) According to MillenniumCities Database 1995, Taipei City’s den-sity was 23,012 in every square kilometer(See Demographia 2004: Large InternationalUrbanized Areas: Population, Land Area &Density. www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf(December 20, 2004).11. Along with the sophomore year’s DesignFundamentals studio final project, theUniversity of Maryland’s LandscapeArchitecture Program also has a module inthe junior year that focuses on China’s land-scape transformation, and a two-week inten-sive exchange program with Japanesestudents that is offered biannually to sopho-mores and upper classmen.12. In fall 2003, I met my class of 22 studentswho would join me in this experiment withcross-cultural design learning. Most of thesestudents had grown up in Maryland suburbs,but there were certain degrees of culturaldiversity. In terms of ethnicity, 18 were white;three were Asian; one was black. Within thegroup of 18 White students, one was foreign-born and had just arrived in the United Statesfrom Romania that semester. The rest wereborn and raised in the DC and Marylandregion. Interestingly, the three Asian-American students were all from Asian immi-grant families. One student’s parents wereHong Kong natives. Another student’s familywas from Korea, and the other was from thePhilippines.13. They were volunteers that I recruitedfrom University of Maryland’s TaiwaneseStudents Association email list.14. The results of quantitative post-studioevaluations for LARC 141 focused on threequestions, rated on a 5-point scale, that theCollege of Agricultural and Natural Resourcesreviewed annually: (1) ranking compared tothe overall curriculum (4.42), (2) the clarityof the presentation (4.11), and (3) the mate-rials are useful and related to the profession(4.68). The score of these three questionsdemonstrated that the Taiwanese Chi ChiMemorial Park design, the final project of theLarc 141 studio, was generally well-perceivedby the majority of the students. A semesterlater (fall 2004), when UMD’s LandscapeArchitecture Program offered a new intensivecourse, East Asian Landscape and Community inTransformation, 7 out of 10 students enrollingin this new course were from the TaiwaneseChi Chi memorial group. It indicated thatalmost half of the American students fromthis group (total 16 in the junior year) car-ried on their professional interests in Asianlandscapes and cultural exchanges. Followingafter the new East Asian Landscape course,

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during the 2005 winter break, some studentshave “demanded” that the UMD’s LandscapePrograms offer study abroad to the countriesin Asia.15. Although there were three Asian-American students in my studio, I did not rec-ognize that their design solutions wereparticularly sensitive to the Taiwanese culturalpractices. Instead, a few Caucasian studentsturned out to be much more aware of theAmerican and Taiwanese cultural differencesthan the Asian-American students. I selectedfour non-Asian student projects to demon-strate the “American-yet-Taiwanese” designapproach.

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