In 1966, the establishment of the Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone 60 kilometers southwest of Meinung drew 11,156 young members of the labor force from Meinung (Chung, 1995). They either non-tobacco planting family members looking for stable job opportunities or surplus tobacco-planting family laborers seeking to maximize labor value. The need and the conditions for concluding marital ties within the Meinung locality ebbed in face of new socio-economic situation. Since then, as elsewhere in rural Taiwan, better economic opportunities in urban cities and declining agricultural opportunities combine to draw a huge portion of the younger generation out of Meinung. Not only did the local density of marital ties in Meinung begin to loosen, but also the labor force that remained in agricultural production became aged with the serious lack of members of younger generation.

On January 1987, the future of tobacco economics was further dimmed by the opening of the domestic cigarette market to U.S corporations and the decrease in its price-guaranteed buying quota. Because of its dominating position in Taiwan's tobacco production, Meinung was hit the worst. A survey in 1991 revealed an omnipresent recognition among tobacco farmers that they would be, and have chosen to be the last agricultural generation at least in the history of their own families.

Such economic transformation cast tremendous impact upon Meinung's Hakka society and culture. First, because of the intensifying socio-economic transformation after the mid-1980s, the social fields in which Meinung younger generations were socialized also regressed to their own families and schools. While modern education in schools paves the way to urban living, their parents also look forward to their future out of Meinung and out of agriculture, hence decreasing the need felt to immerse their next generations in Hakka culture. In the recent decade, the ability and willingness to use the Hakka dialect has been waning among younger generations in Meinung. Consequently, their confidence and identity in traditional Hakka building declined.

To be worse, in the early 1990s the Taiwanese government planned to build a 147-meter high dam at the Yellow Butterfly Valley in order to meet the highly expanding water demands of the petrochemical and steel plants of southern Taiwan. The Yellow Butterfly Valley, known to the Meinung people as Twin Creeks, has strong cultural connections and connotations to Meinung society since its first settlement in 1763. Originating in the valley, with Twin Creeks as its upstream, the Meinung River runs through the major settlements. In their cosmology, Meinung people view the Twin Creeks and valley as the origin of their cultural and economic being. Ancestors are buried there; compound houses were built with their axes pointing right toward the valley. People believe that good cosmology would bring about fortune. Every spring, several weeks before the monsoon season, to complete the whole cycle of cultural reproduction, elder generations lead their descendants to the valley where they clean and worship the ancestral tombs.

For the broader Taiwan society, the Yellow Butterfly Valley has long been famous as a natural habitat for yellow butterflies such as Catopsilia Crocale and Catopsilia Pomona. This valley is ecologically unique in that the butterflies spend their entire life cycle there, while other butterfly valleys keep butterflies only in the winter. Twice a year, in June and October, the butterfly ecology reaches its crescendo. At these crucial moments, some fifty million yellow butterflies dance around in euphony of color.

The dam site is to be exactly on the mouth of the valley that is, only 1,900 meters from the nearest village and about 4,000 meters to downtown. It is to be 147 meters in height and 800 meters in length. Once the dam was completed, the whole valley would be flooded. Good or bad, the dam project will surely influence Meinung's progress.
(The Map of Meinung In Taiwan)
(Map of Meinung Dam)