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After I took the camera into Caotun, my grandparents’ hometown, I became curies about the tabacco planting, which I felt close but actually unfamiliar with. Though my grandparents were retired tabacco farmers, I knew nothing about it. I started to observe the planting process, research the development context, do oral history of my grandpa, and find the trace of tabacco in Taiwan. Then I Know the falls and downs of the tabacco industry, the rheology of drying room, and the culture of it. At the same time, after the purchase of 2016, Taiwan’s tabacco planting comes to an end. Canceling the monopoly the opening to free market make the almost 100-year-old industry from Japanese colonial period stop. My record is the last image of tabacco planting in Central Taiwan, and the graduate speech of the tabacco farmer. In the process, I get familiar with the tabacco industry and my grandparents as well.
Tabacco Riches means the people who earn a lot by planting tabacco. Prince House means the place where for drying in the past. They witnessed the best time of Taiwan tabacco industry. Compared to dying tabacco farmers, and collapsed structures now, and most of all, my grandparents’ weakness, the horror makes me not only know the industry in reason, but observed form a grand-daughter’s eyesight.
The essay starts form my childhood memory. I explain the history of Taiwan’ tabacco planting, and then the research methods. In the fourth chapter, the relationship between my grandparents and me. In the fifth and sixth chapters, I present the observation of the last year of tabacco planting, as well as the effect of taking documentary as a way to research. The seventh chapter shows the conclusion. Addenda are records of oral history and shooting plan.
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