Bao Tao 1st villiage, or a hamlet named Prosperiity Island was actually one of many settlements, more strictly, shelters, sprawled all over Taiwan for the defeated KMT troops and their dependants fleeing from "Liberation War" in 1949 or later.  Many a settler had been bereft of kith and kin, properties, everything.  The only thing they got was the hope, though a forlorn one, that they would return to their homes someday in the future.  They lived together, speaking same dialects, maintaining same way of life, and the villiage itself became the only nostalgic connection to the places somewhere across the Strait.

As time went by, their youth faded, elan dissipated, and finally they settled down, refurbished their shacks, and had homes and children of their own. Enclosed with tangible or intangible fences like an enclave; however, the villiagers isolated themselves from outside world, and community solidarity had made them reluctant to be assimilated into other societies. People there were less diversified, so they were playing mahjong as their favorite pastime, talking gossip as their sources of information. Worse still, such an environrment, lacking achievable goals, would have inclined kids toward juvenile delinquency.  My father used to say to me and my brothers, with a friendly persuasion, that we "should think twice before marrying a girl from the villiages."

Time had changed. The fences tumbled down, and the villiages
disappeared. The villiagers eventually fulfilled their lifelong dreams of returning to the Mainland, albeit no homes for them any more. The history of the villiages has been a miniature of that of modern Taiwan’s, both are growing in sync.  Generation evolves after generation. Will ours or our children’s be better off? I dare not say it. It could be if there is a lasting peace between the Strait. The only thing I am sure of is "Whatever will be, will be.", Doris Day’s famous song played as one of the background music of the opera.

p.s. The performance were just terrific. Sometime it induced the audience to burst into laughters(I didn’t laugh, though), the other time it reduced the audience to tears(I did shed some).