Colonial Ghost 

2019

2012年起我開始拍攝金門島上的洋樓，這些建築的形式和風格是移民南洋、殖民和文化混種的產物。金門經歷過戰亂和戒嚴時期，使得這些洋樓如今成為廢墟。近期我追溯當時金門人移民的出洋路線，前往其僑居地之一：馬來西亞的檳城，尋找金門洋樓的原型。

檳城曾為英國的殖民地，是英國最早在遠東殖民的貿易自由港，從當地洋樓可見英國的建築形式，如何在這個截然不同的土地跟氣候下產生變異，作為英國文化在殖民時期影響、改變並融入馬來西亞文化的縮影。移民至南洋的金門人再次移植並混合這樣的建築形式，成為金門特有的洋樓風格。然而這兩者皆無法避免遺忘和衰敗的共同命運。而如今這些洋樓看起來更像是被熱帶憂鬱所籠罩的幽靈。

I started photographing the Western-style buildings on the island of Kinmen in 2012. This architectural style is a product of Southeast Asian immigration, colonization and cultural hybridization. After the chaos of war and the martial law period, these Western-style buildings are now deserted. Recently, I followed the immigration route of past Kinmen residents and visited one of the immigration destinations—Penang in Malaysia, to look for the prototype of Kinmen’s Western-style buildings.

Penang used to be a British colony and the empire’s earliest colonized harbor of free trade in the Far East. From the local Western-style buildings, one can observe how the British architectural elements have changed with the utterly different land and climate, epitomizing the colonial influences of the British culture that shaped, altered and integrated with the Malaysian culture. The immigrants from Kinmen that settled in the Southeast Asia later brought back and mixed the architectural styles to create the unique Western-style buildings in Kinmen. However, whether in Kinmen or in Penang, these Western-style buildings could not avoid a shared fate of falling into oblivion and dilapidation; today, these Western-style buildings have a ghostly presence in tropical melancholy.