Editors’ words: This editorial initiative, Plantationocene, began with the aim of investigating how, under settler colonialism, ecosystems and human perceptions of the environment were reshaped by imperial powers, particularly through industrial infrastructures broadly funded by governments, corporations, or user groups as common resources engaging diverse actors. During the preparation of the editorial project, we organized Southern Universe: An Exposition Proposal, a research-based participatory boardgame held last April at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. The workshop invited players to revisit the 1935 Taiwan Exposition under Japanese rule, where the players took on the role of local gentry pitching a reclamation project on so-called terra nullius, accumulating natural resources for exhibition. As the boardgame touches on settler colonialism and Japanese rule within the context of museum displays, we invited one of the participants, Chun-Yun Wu, who has a background in museum studies, to discuss historiography in practice, focusing on the politics of display and guided tours. From here, this article also examines how museums and maps, as infrastructures, represent the relationship between exhibited subjects and minority groups in history.

 

Boardgames and Museums

 

Wu Chi-Yu: In Southern Universe: An Exposition Proposal, players collect “experience” cards as they navigate the reclamation process, eventually crafting a proposal for an exposition based on the cards they’ve gathered. The challenge, though, is that this stage depends a lot on the host’s cues or a well-thought-out game design. Without clear direction, it’s easy for important issues, like the representation of marginalized groups, to be overlooked. For example, a player might receive a camphor matchbox, but that alone doesn’t tell the story of the lives lost behind it. After playing, how did you feel about how these complexities were handled?

 

Chun-Yun Wu: The biggest question for me is, what are the game designers really trying to convey? I couldn’t shake this uncertainty while playing. For example, at the start, when choosing a character or family to play, the character is essentially a blank slate—no name, no backstory, no historical context. This emptiness feels odd, especially when you’re meant to connect it to rich historical details within the game.

 

Now, imagine if one character came from the Banqiao Lin Family and another from the Wufeng Lin Family, two of the five major gentry families in northern and central Taiwan, respectively, with perhaps another family representing southern Taiwan. Or suppose there were characters from different ethnic groups, like an Atayal representative. It wouldn’t need to perfectly align with historical accuracy, but having prototype characters loosely based on history would add depth. Without that foundation, it becomes much harder to connect the characters to the historical richness of the game.

 

Of course, the boardgame itself is quite fun—if you’re simply trying to figure out how to play and win, there are clear rules to follow, so it’s certainly playable. But what exactly does the designer want players to take away from the experience? This is something worth considering. Additionally, the final design of the exposition feels disconnected from the original theme it was meant to explore. The exposition, which should have been a formal event involving a large-scale mobilization of resources—a display of national strength—ends up lacking cohesion with the emptied business content. Figuring out how to bridge this gap is another issue. If there were a compelling detail that tied everything together, it could make the entire concept more engaging.

 

Southern Universe: An Exposition Proposal. April 27, 2024, at Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

 

Rikey Tenn: The boardgame can be explained from several angles. The concept of the game, along with its props and details, draws inspiration from Chu Tien-jen’s (1903-1949) novella Autumn Letter (1936), set in colonial Taiwan. The story centers on an old-style intellectual who resists Japanese colonial rule, though this doesn’t imply a wholesale rejection of modernity. Instead, he references the general education program under the colonial authority and enjoyed modern means of transportation by taking a train to visit the exposition. However, his experience of modernity is portrayed with more negative emotions, as it is often forcibly imposed, creating a mnemonic rupture from the Qing Dynasty era. The novella concludes with a mention of the Botanical Garden (formerly the Taihoku Nursery), which echoes our theme of plantation and settlement.

 

Additionally, in 1935, the Taiwan Development Corporation was established—the Japanese equivalent of the Dutch East India Company, with “development” literally meaning “reclaim and colonize”—alongside other forces reclaiming Taiwan’s mountain regions. Under Japan’s Southern Advance Policy, the Empire sought to replicate Taiwan’s development model in Southeast Asia, attempting to export capital as part of its expansion efforts. Scholar Chiu Ya-Fang, in her book Empire’s Pipe Dream: The Imaginary South of Japanese Writers During the Japanese Colonial Period, helped shape our understanding of these transformations in the concept and imagery of the South.

 

Finally, although the Southern Pavilion in the 1935 Taiwan Exposition was not part of the official program, it was established due to the success of previous venues. This success, driven by mainland Japanese attendance, inspired Taiwanese citizens in present-day Dadaocheng to create their own pavilion at Taihe Public School. While we may not have explained this thoroughly, this case clearly illustrates that local Taiwanese citizens played an active role in planning the exposition.

 

Wu Chi-Yu: You mentioned that at the start, players’ identities were left blank without any predefined references. This was intentional, allowing for various possibilities to remain open until participants reflected on their experience after completing a round. The concern was that once a player assumes a specific identity, they might adopt a predetermined perspective. For instance, as you mentioned, the perspective of a Han Taiwanese family might differ from that of an Atayal one. My question is: when playing a historically adapted boardgame, does “political correctness” need to be practiced by the players? Or while political correctness might convey certain messages, when should this awareness of correctness come into play? It might not need to be emphasized throughout the game. While settler colonialism is the key theme, we didn’t address it explicitly. If a player assumes an identity, how should they engage in the game? Does political correctness need to be expressed in a boardgame, and if so, how?

 

Chun-Yun Wu: If a boardgame emphasizes political correctness from the beginning, it may hinder engagement, but there are ways to draw players in. One option is to assign roles immediately: for example, you are from the Banqiao Lin family, or you are from the Wufeng Lin family. You would step into their shoes, go back to their historical circumstances, and try to understand why they collaborated with the Japanese. This approach assigns a direct role. Another approach is to give players survival conditions without assigning them a specific identity. As they progress through the game, they’d eventually realize whose path they had followed and understand why those historical figures made the choices they did.

 

Some museums design their exhibits in a way that visitors receive an identity at the start—such as a passport, photo, or personal details of a historical figure. At each exhibit, there are stories tied to that identity, and each visit presents a different identity with changing stories in every section. This method aims to provoke thought by placing visitors in various life circumstances, but it requires very meticulous research.

 

For example, about ten years ago, I had the chance to visit the Tenement Museum in New York’s Lower East Side for my master’s thesis. It was a run-down apartment—just walking up the stairs felt like they could collapse at any moment. These apartments housed various immigrant groups, and a single apartment might have accommodated dozens of them. I still remember during the tour when we entered a shabby room, and the guide casually picked up an iron, saying, this belonged to a particular woman who lived here during these years and then proceeded to tell her story. The depth of research allowed them to weave the entire narrative together. Otherwise, it could have just been presented as an old, rundown apartment where dozens of people lived, and the story would have ended there.

 

From the perspective of museum exhibition-making, this was a powerful display because the narrative was driven by objects. This could also be an interesting design path for a game. Since expositions are closely tied to material culture, telling the story through objects rather than human figures could offer a unique approach. [...]

 

Guided Tours and Maps

 

Daxi Bridge. Photo by Chun-Yun Wu. Courtesy of Chun-Yun Wu.

 

Wu Chi-Yu: Reflecting on the workshop, during your final presentation for the boardgame, you proposed using guided tours to introduce the history of local communities, which aligns with your expertise. However, conducting an on-site guided tour, which offers a real-world, immersive experience, is quite different from exploring history through a boardgame, which presents a more complete overview. How do you view these two methods of engaging participants? What sets them apart, and how do they represent history in different ways?

 

Chun-Yun Wu: I’m not sure I can fully answer that, but I think maps are, of course, useful in research. However, maps can be misleading. They might give the impression that a place is “simple” or that you know everything about it. But once you actually walk through and experience a place, you realize things are never as straightforward as they appear on a map.

 

Wu Chi-Yu: Could this reflect two different models in the politics of display? Traditional museum exhibits often offer an overarching view, much like maps do. But latest approaches, like the ones you’ve discussed, focus on firsthand experiences—exploring a place by walking through it beyond relying on historical documents. This isn’t just important for researchers but also provides general audiences with a new way to understand their environment. This isn’t just important for researchers but also provides general audiences with a new way to understand their environment. This makes me think of the concept of a “People’s Museum,” one that’s designed for, by, and about the people. Is this connected to the eco-museum practice you mentioned earlier?

 

Lee Teng-fan Ancient Residence in Yue-Mei, Daxi District, Taoyuan, part of the Daxi Wood Art Eco-Museum. Photo by Chun-Yun Wu.

 

Chun-Yun Wu: They are indeed connected. Earlier, I mentioned the Daxi Wood Art Eco-Museum, which is likely one of the most established eco-museums in Taiwan. However, it’s not entirely accurate to call it that because, by definition, an eco-museum shouldn’t be run by the government. Yilan’s eco-museum initiative started earlier, with a private museum alliance that includes the North Coast Crab Museum and the Baimi Wooden Clog Museum, among others. When eco-museums came to Taiwan, the idea evolved into something supported by the government, which deviates from the original concept of communities telling their own stories. We can execute these projects well because we have funding and strategies, but it’s different from grassroots efforts.

 

Maps, too, can be interpreted differently. What were the earliest concepts of maps like? As Taiwanese, we were all familiar with the begonia shape for the map of Republic of China. Later, it narrows down to just the island of Taiwan. When historical materials were unearthed, we found maps of Taiwan that were incomplete, horizontally tilted, or showed three connected islands. The National Museum of Taiwan History even has an ancient map where Taiwan is placed at the center of a vast space. Discovering these maps changes how we perceive our sense of place. For example, take a map that only shows half of Taiwan. Why just half? It’s because, back then, observers only saw the western side of Taiwan [...] Horizontally-oriented maps are even more intriguing. In the Qianlong and Kangxi maps of Taiwan, Taiwan is depicted sideways, likely because colonizers viewed it from the sea, making the mountains seem far away. [...] Since Indigenous knowledge was passed down orally, they wouldn’t have used maps, but rather described their connections to rivers, peoples, and places where they settled. If Indigenous people had drawn maps, the sea would have been farthest, and the Han settlers might have seemed small, as you could see them from the mountains. My point is, maps already carry a perspective when they’re drawn, and how we interpret that perspective changes over time. Could you imagine, 30 years ago, if a map showing Taiwan at the center of the world had been discovered—would it have been displayed?

 

Rikey Tenn: The Taiwan Exposition organizers printed different types of maps for the event. One was a standard floor plan with a clear scale, while another fused traditional artistic techniques—similar to Yoshida Hatsusaburo’s panoramic illustrations. It wasn’t drawn with a standard perspective but used a blended style with magnified details, which was developed within the Japanese system.

 

 Yoshida Hatsusaburo, A Bird’s-Eye View of Shinchiku Prefecture for Taiwan Exposition, postcard version, 1937. Collection of the Library of National Taiwan University.

 

Chun-Yun Wu: Panoramic maps like Hatsusaburo’s A Bird’s-Eye View of Shinchiku Prefecture or Kaneko Tsunemitsu’s Panorama of Taihoku City are tied to tourism. These maps didn’t depict precise geography but highlighted local specialities and attractions, offering a tourist’s perspective. Scholar Shuo-bin Su discusses how these viewpoints were invented along with the concept of tourism routes during that time. While similar routes existed during the Qing dynasty, they weren’t systematized with railways like during the Japanese colonial period, especially during the Taiwan Exposition. Packaged tours were common back then. For example, in Daxi, visitors would marvel at the Iron Line Bridge, visit the cliffs, have lunch at the Guild Hall, and finally see Daxi Park. Daxi was just a stopover en route to another destination upstream.

 

Is There a Politically Correct Representation?

 

Wu Chi-Yu: During the final proposal on April 19, there was a debate about the Han Taiwanese settler colonial status starting from the Qing dynasty, as one player disagreed. This brings me back to my question: how much do audiences need to understand? Since we designed the game to incorporate the concept of settler colonialism and show that Han Taiwanese weren’t always the rightful landowners, how do we ensure that players grasp this? Or is it okay if they don’t fully understand it? For some, this too is a form of political correctness.

 

Chun-Yun Wu: The real question is, what do we mean by political correctness, and who has been treated unjustly? By political correctness, you are referring to instances where certain people were treated unfairly, while political incorrectness is when we deny or ignore that injustice. Colonization has existed as long as humans have, since prehistoric times. It was once a neutral term referring to the use of land. The issue arises when one group has lived on the land, and another group arrives and tries to take it. But who decides who originally owned the land? Conflicts emerge. The Han Taiwanese didn’t use the land for hunting; they cleaned it up and wanted to farm it. Another group might have used it for hunting. Different groups use land in different ways, which leads to tensions and survival pressures.

 

Ultimately, it comes down to how people use the natural environment. Once someone starts using land, they feel a need to claim ownership. But who gets to decide who owns what? For example, my matrilineal grandfather’s ancestral stela inscription records how my ancestors landed at Hukou and moved inland with a pioneering group. But who in the family can definitively say from whom they acquired the land, or whether permission was given? Is there any documentation proving how the land became ours? Yet, the fact that my ancestors settled and grew their family there is irretrievable. Some might argue for returning the land, but that’s another issue. This is why I suggested using historical characters for the game—it minimizes risks. Design the game based on known facts. Sometimes, reality is stranger than fiction. When you consider what happened during that time, even a scriptwriter couldn’t have imagined it. History often has more dramatic tension than fiction, in ways you wouldn’t expect.

 

This is a difficult topic. If you want to represent it in a boardgame, you have to take a stance. The process might not be perfectly “correct,” but after the game, players may reflect on their own choices. Or, as I mentioned earlier, you could conceal specific identities at the beginning, and only after the game ends do players realize which characters they were playing. If someone plays as a settler family one day, and as an Indigenous person the next, they will better understand why conflicts arose. It’s hard to say what was correct or incorrect. At that moment, the land was indeed taken, but many messy events followed. That’s history. We are all descendants of both oppressors and the oppressed, shaped by the circumstances of the past. It is precisely because we cannot view the past in black and white that it becomes so thought-provoking.

 

Wu Chi-Yu: What you mentioned is important—that we are all descendants of both oppressors and the oppressed. More crucially, as descendants, we should discuss these issues rather than neglect them.

 

Overview of Daikei District. Collection of Chun-Yun Wu. All rights reserved.

Translated by Zian Chen