A 2019 account describes Huang Yung-fu beginning to paint when the village where he lived faced redevelopment. It reported him as 86 at that stage of the story. That historical age and the circumstances of the housing belong to the period described, rather than an undated present-day account.
Huang, now known as “Rainbow Grandpa,” was born in China. After he fought in the Sino-Japanese War and World War II, he also fought for the Nationalist Party over Mao Zedong’s Communist government. When the Nationalists lost, he and two million others fled to Taiwan. It was here where he was housed in a makeshift village put together hastily for incoming members of the military and their families. What was meant just to be a temporary solution eventually became home.
So, it came as a shock when, forty years later, it looked like his home was going to be obliterated. “When I came here, the village had 1,200 households and we’d all sit and talk like one big family,” said Huang. “But then everyone moved away or passed away and I became lonely.” With nowhere to go, he turned to art to ease his suffering.
He first painted a small bird on his bungalow. He continued with cats, birds, and people that began flowing across the vacant buildings in the village. In 2010, a local university student stumbled upon the village and after he heard Huang’s story, vowed to help. He snapped some photographs of the village and began a fundraising campaign and petition in order to save it from destruction.
The paintings and the campaign around them drew wider attention to the place that became known as Rainbow Village. The 2019 report’s visitor figure and preservation outcome describe that stage of its history; they are not current visitor information.
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A personal act becomes a public reason to pay attention
The account begins with a resident facing the loss of his home and turning to an activity he could undertake himself. The painted buildings then became something other people could notice, photograph and discuss. In that sense the project worked at two scales: it changed Huang's immediate surroundings and gave supporters a visible reason to ask questions about the village's future. The student's petition and fundraising efforts are part of that sequence. The paintings did not circulate on their own; people helped turn attention into a preservation campaign.
A destination is also somebody’s history
The name Rainbow Village makes the place easy to remember, but the story includes displacement, military housing and the changes that left one resident alone. Those details should remain beside the colorful photographs. They help explain why keeping the home mattered beyond its appeal as a tourist backdrop. The age and visitor figures in the 2019 account belong to that reporting period and are not a present-day visitor guide. A fuller reading asks what was preserved, whose memories the site carries and how a personal creative practice became a public symbol without losing the person at its center.
Paint that became a preservation case
The painted surfaces connect separate buildings into one recognizable environment. Repeated figures and colour can make a route through the village feel continuous, while each wall remains part of an existing home or structure. That relationship distinguishes the project from decoration applied to an anonymous backdrop. The story concerns a place people lived in, with the artwork helping others notice what redevelopment might erase.
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