‘Taiwan was stifling’, recalls Magnum photographer as he traces his journey from rural Taichung to racist Austria
Chien-Chi Chang talks about the slow process of joining the elite agency and how he came to shoot a marriage market in Vietnam and immigrants in New York’s Chinatown and their families back in Fujian
Fear of the frogmen I was born in 1961 and grew up in a very rural area in Taichung, Taiwan. The first colour I think of is green because of all the rice paddies. My father was a mechanic and a farmer and my mother was a housewife. I had four sisters, all younger than me.
Looking back, it was quite a difficult life. I didn’t realise it then and only later my mother told me that there were times when we had very little food. The whole community was made up of seven or eight families, all from the same ancestor, and everyone was suffering from lack of food. I went to a local school and didn’t study Mandarin until elementary school. My parents wanted me to do well and carry the family name, and I went to Soochow University (in Taipei) and studied English.
Taiwan was stifling. Martial law was still in place and you never knew who was watching or listening. It became like a Panopticon – you don’t know if you are being watched, but you assume you are and act accordingly
In 1984, after university, I did two years of compulsory military service. I was stationed at an outpost close to Xiamen – we were so close we could see China. Back then the situation was tense. It was pitch black at night and we were very afraid of falling asleep. We were told a story that sometimes the frogmen from China would swim across the water in the middle of the night and cut one of your ears off.
Something just clicked Taiwan was stifling. Martial law was still in place and you never knew who was watching or listening. It became like a Panopticon – you don’t know if you are being watched, but you assume you are and act accordingly.
After my military service I worked as a teaching assistant at Soochow University for six months and then went to the United States, first to Ohio State University and then I transferred to Indiana University, where I took a master’s in education. I am forever grateful to my professor, who suggested I take a photography course. That’s when I realised it was something I could do.
The second year of the programme was very independent and I was shooting the whole year. I had three jobs at the university – working at the school newspaper, for the school yearbook and for the school photography lab. Everything I did was about photography.