Growing Old Together: Transformation and Community Building in Taiwan’s Yunnan-Burmese Villages

© 2026 by the Author. Licensee Whioce Publishing, Singapore. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

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Abstract

In 1961, a group of migrants from Yunnan, Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos were resettled in China’s Taiwan region. This paper investigates the Yunnan-Burmese communities located in Kaohsiung City and Pingtung County, presenting their transformation over the past sixty years. It further explains how villagers have utilized community building and leveraged their existing demographic structure to revitalize declining and aging villages through active participation, thereby demonstrating the inherent vitality of these communities.

Keywords

Yunnan-Burmese Immigrants

Longitudinal Transformation

Rural Revitalization

Community Agency

Funding

This work is a phased outcome of the research project, "Innovation in Traditional Animal Husbandry and Rural Revitalization Mechanisms among Guizhou Ethnic Minorities from the Perspective of Species and Cultural Diversity, " funded by the Guizhou Provincial Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 23GZYB50).

References

[1] Lee MH, 2005, A Study of Communities of Veterans of the Guolei Maneuvers in Burma. Kaohsiung: Shu-Te University, 2-45.

[2] Sung KY, n.d., Cingjing and Jiyang: A Survey Report on the Settlements of Loyalists from the Yunnan-Burmese Border Regions to Taiwan. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology Academia Sinica, 53(4): 791.

[3] Lin YC, 2011, "Rurality, Multifunctionality, and the Planning and Reshaping of Taiwan’s Rural Cultural Landscapes." In Triadic Reflections on Social Research in Southern Taiwan: Regional Studies, Social Issues, and Civil Society, edited by Wu Gen-ming and Tseng Kuang-cheng, 145–148. Pingtung: National Pingtung University of Education, 145-148.

[4] Lee MH, 2005, A Study of Communities of Veterans of the Guolei Maneuvers in Burma. Kaohsiung: Shu-Te University, 2-22.

[5]Data Source: Ligang Township Household Registration Office (as of March 7, 2019) and Meinong District Household Registration Office (as of August 12, 2019). Note: As one male resident from Xinguo Village and one from Dingyuan Village passed away in April and July respectively, two individuals have been deducted from the original data provided by the registration offices.

[6] Okamura Y, 2016, Presentation at a Side Event to the High Level Political Forum “Mainstreaming Gender and Aging in the SDGs”, 13 July 2016, The Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations. visited on January 20, 2026, https://www.un.emb-japan.go.jp/statements/okamura071316.html

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