My memories of summer vacations up through middle school are mainly of me lying in bed crying in pain. That’s because I would play at Ruibin Beach for a whole day, and despite the cool ocean breezes, the next day I would find that my back was sunburned from being in the sun all day long. But after I graduated from middle school and came to Taipei, I never again returned to that beach. With the building of the coastal highway, that stretch of beach that lives in my memories completely disappeared.
At the end of 2012, as I was deciding to take a break from shooting my photo series “Scooters in Taipei,” I happened to go on a trip to the Northeast Coast. The coastline seemed very strange to me, very distant from that of my childhood, so I photographed the wavebreakers that filled the coastline, and this marked the beginning of my “1139 KM” series. I began trying to find an answer to the question: Though we call ourselves an “island people,” how well do we really understand the 1100-plus-kilometer coastline of this small island?
I set off by motorcycle from Taipei, and followed the coastal highway south. Wherever I saw a side road, I would try to find a way down to the beach and have a look at the coastline. I rode all the way from Taipei to Yunlin County, where I visited Mailiao for the first time. Until then Mailiao had just been a name for me, but after riding my motorbike there and visiting it in person, it became unforgettable.
I have been asked by several senior photographers: “So many people have taken photographs of the coast. Why do you want to shoot this theme? Do you have a different angle?” At the beginning all I knew was that I had to go and take these photographs; there seemed to be something there, though I could not say what. After more than four years, I think I know, and my reason for starting out is to be found in these pictures.
