Shulin New Village

A small resettlement community in coastal Guanyin, where the second wave of 51 households displaced by the construction of Shimen Reservoir (石門水庫) was placed in the early 1960s. A smaller third wave was settled closer to the shoreline at Xiashulin. The village surrounds Shulin Elementary School (樹林國民小學), opened in 1960 as a branch of Caoluo Elementary School (草漯國民小學) to serve the relocated families and their children. When Guanyin Industrial Zone (觀音工業區) was demarcated in 1975 it absorbed roughly four-fifths of the school’s catchment, and the village’s farmland was expropriated outright in 1981. Air pollution from the new factories drove many residents to leave, with enrollment at the school dropping below a hundred. Several of the original red-brick resettlement houses still stand along the village lanes, interspersed with newer rebuilds.