Taiwan Today

Taiwan is justly proud of its many tourism resources: rugged mountain and seashore scenery, fascinating folk arts and customs, rich historical heritage, a vibrant lifestyle, and perhaps the world's best Chinese cuisine. But there is one vital tourism resource, unique to Taiwan, that remains greatly underdeveloped: native tribespeople, the original inhabitants who settled here long before any Chinese set foot on the island.

Until quite recently, the only manifestation of tribal culture in Taiwan's tourism industry was the dances staged for groups of tourists, mainly at the village of Wulai just outside of Taipei and at Hualien on the island's east coast. These shows were (and are) adapted to the perceived tastes of tourists, who are seen to be more interested in spectacle than tribal culture.

This is not to say that tourism is destroying the cultures of the indigenous tribes. Even when they perform strictly for themselves during celebrations at which no outsiders are present, tribespeople frequently dance to modern pop songs. Although the danger of tourism to native culture is undeniable, it is also true that tourism can do much to help preserve it and keep it alive.

In fact, much of the active preservation work that has taken place in recent years has been, either directly or indirectly, for the purpose of promoting tourism. But much of this preserves the tribal cultures in debased form – using native motifs to decorate modern concrete buildings, for example, and adulterating tribal dances and songs by combining features of different tribes together and adding modern (even Western and Japanese) songs to performance programs.

One observer reported an even more outrageous instance of cultural perversion. A videotape of a Taiwan "aboriginal cultural show" performed in Japan, he said, showed the female dancers wearing hardly any costume at all, and the rhythms of the songs had been changed to fit Japanese preferences. Obviously, the appeal of such performances is something other than their portrayal of Taiwan's unique native culture.

Many tribespeople in Taiwan express contempt for such misuse of their culture, a contempt that extends to the regularly scheduled performances offered at certain places in Taiwan. Such shows are not true expressions of their culture, they explain. But authentic song-and-dance shows, while perhaps not very interesting to many casual tourists, can serve as powerful evocations of the tribal cultures that are found nowhere else but Taiwan.

An example of how this can be done properly was provided during the World Travel Congress of the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), held in Taipei last September and October. For the Chinese Cultural Evening, the audience was greeted as it arrived outside the meeting hall by a circle of dancers from the small Tsou tribe, dressed in colorful native costume. Inside the hall, on stage, one of the performances was a simple circular dance performed by male members of the even smaller and more primitive Yami tribe, dressed only in traditional G-strings and accompanied only by the sounds of their own voices and stomping feet. These dances were done with a show of feeling that is sadly lacking from most such performances, and viewers were greatly impressed.

Among the commercialized, tourist-oriented tribal culture shows, the best-known venue is Wulai, touted as an Atayal settlement located in the low mountains near Taipei. The Atayal residents of this village, however, can go completely unnoticed among all the featureless concrete restaurants and curio shops that have nothing native about them except for a few decorations and cheap "aboriginal" clothing and other artifacts that are mass-produced in factories. At least, unlike most other places where the proprietors of such establishments are Han Chinese, the dance show here is operated by a genuine Atayal.

Dances are also performed for tourists by Ami tribespeople in the east-coast city of Hualien, where large numbers of local and foreign travelers go primarily to see the spectacular Taroko Gorge. The Ami and Atayal tribespeople here also take advantage of the tourist trade by posing with outsiders at the entrance to the gorge, and at certain sites inside it, for a small fee.

Performances of dancing and singing can also be seen at two aboriginal culture villages that offer tourists the best way to get a glimpse of how Taiwan's aborigines used to live. One of these is the Taiwan Aboriginal Culture Park at Machia in the southern county of Pingtung. This park, operated by the Taiwan Provincial Government, contains painstaking reconstructions of buildings from all nine (or perhaps ten or even eleven, depending on how they are divided) of the island's existing tribes. Each building has a plaque explaining its origin and use, and each of the nine tribal areas within the park is like a miniature village.

The buildings are well and authentically made, but they have no life to them. To see tribespeople in action, visitors go to a dance arena where viewers are invited to participate in the dances while native maidens work the audience trying to sell audio cassettes of their music. The musical accompaniment consists mainly of recordings done with modern Western instruments.

Another similar facility is located near Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan. This privately operated Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village is very much like the one at Machia, but is better maintained and more lively. In each of the nine separate tribal areas here, there are actual tribespeople weaving cloth, making baskets, carving model canoes, or working at other traditional crafts. There are also two show areas. The smaller of these offers a show of what seems to be admirably authentic music and dance, along with a performance by a female shaman. The larger, much more elaborate stage has shows obviously designed to appeal to devotees of TV variety shows of the kind popular in Taiwan, which consist largely of silly games and lots of falling into the water.

The operators of the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village apparently feel that native culture alone is not enough to attract visitors, for this "culture village" also offers a few Disneyland-type attractions as well as a European-style formal garden.

Not far away, on the shores of Sun Moon Lake, sits Tehua village, an actual Tsou settlement. A community of Tsou people do live there, but almost all of their culture has been wiped out, and the village remains an example of how sometimes even good intentions can come to naught. Eight years ago the Nantou county government, which has jurisdiction over this popular tourist area, formulated a land reorganization plan that aimed to bring order to the village's chaotic development. The plan remains just a plan; the money was never found to carry it out. The government, laments one disgusted resident of Tehua, "made the plan because the village was too disorderly. That was eight years ago, and today the village is more disorderly than ever."

The county government's plan would have put Tehua residents in modern-style buildings, while preserving tribal culture in a show village constructed just behind the living settlement. That village was actually built, then promptly allowed to fall into disrepair. Today it continues moldering away, and relatively few visitors walk its pathways any more.

The villages that were purposely built to attract tourists might actually serve to divert attention from the attractions of genuine settlements. Santimen, for example, is a well-known Paiwan village that lies just across a river from the Taiwan Aboriginal Culture Park. Tang Hsin-ju, a Santimen villager who is anxious to preserve Paiwan culture and restore Santimen as a tourist attraction, complains that tourists who would once have gone to Santimen now go to Machia instead – and that many people have even forgotten what Santimen really is. "Now, visitors just go and play in the riverbed below our village – and they think they've been to Santimen," he says.

Santimen has lost most of its Paiwan flavor, although much is still there for those who take the time to seek it out. There are carved doors and slate roofs, and old women can sometimes be seen making traditional clothing for their own use, although this clothing is worn only on ceremonial occasions. The slate houses of old Santimen are almost all gone since tribespeople now opt for modern concrete architecture. The reason, explains Tang: "They're afraid people will laugh at them if they build as late house, and will say that they can't afford anything better."

In fact there is one new traditionally designed slate house in Santimen, finished only last year by an old man who had to move his original abode because of a road-widening project. Another older slate house is uninhabited, but is open to visitors on Sundays for a small fee.

Into the mountains from Santimen is the famous village of Wutai and, still farther up the road, the smaller but more authentic village of Ali. There Rukai villages are far richer in tribal culture than is Santimen; unfortunately, they are in a controlled area that cannot be entered except with a special mountain pass issued by the police.

Another Rukai area, a bit farther to the north in Kaohsiung county, can be visited more easily. This is Maolin, which is being developed by the Taiwan Tourism Administration both for tourism and for the preservation of tribal culture. Tona, a village situated far up the valley that defines the Maolin area, still boasts a large number of slate houses and a relatively well-preserved Rukai culture.

But the best-preserved tribal culture in all of the Taiwan area is found on Lanyu, or Orchid Island, which is located off the southeast coast of the main island. This is the home of the Yami, Taiwan's most primitive tribe, where occasionally a warrior can still be seen walking down the road carrying a spear and dressed in a G-string and a rattan vest and helmet. Tribesmen here continue to build their intricately decorated canoes in the traditional way with no electrified tools, no nails, and no glue.

The Yami have resisted modernization, despite a determined effort by the government many years ago to make the men wear Bermuda shorts (the thinking was that the G-strings were "inelegant") and to build square concrete houses. The concrete buildings were designed to replace the traditional stone dwellings that were constructed mostly underground to provide comfortable temperatures and avoid the ravages of frequent typhoons. Only two of the original five villages have been preserved in their more or less original state. Concrete houses were built for the residents of one of these villages, but the original houses were not destroyed; today, the villagers generally continue living in their underground houses while using the concrete ones for storage.

Not all of the Yamis welcome gawking tourists. Aim a camera at a tribesman, his house, or his goat, and he is likely to demand money. (This situation is not unique to Orchid Island, but it is more pronounced here than elsewhere.) One resident of a house facing the highway in one of the preserved villages apparently had enough and wrote on his wall, in large Chinese characters, "What are you looking at? Get out of here!"

Another village, Hsiangtienhu in Miaoli county in north-central Taiwan, also had enough of the crush of revelers who came pouring in every time the village held its biennial "Sacrifice to the Short People." For the most recent of these celebrations, this Saisiyat village barred outsiders.

Intelligent preservation of tribal culture, and the development of tourism related to it, has been sadly lacking. Now, however, one attempt is taking place on the east coast that, if carried out successfully, could become a model for other areas of Taiwan. This is a project of the East Coast National Scenic Area Administration of the ROC Tourism Bureau, which is planning and developing the entire coastline between Hualien in the central part of the coast and Taitung in the south. This is the homeland of Taiwan's largest indigenous group, the Ami tribe, which totals about 123,000 members. Fewer than 40,000, however, continue to live in the east coast area.

"We hope to preserve the traditional culture of the Amis," says C. T. Su, director of the East Coast National Scenic Area Administration. "First, we want them to continue holding their harvest festivals in July and August, and we'll subsidize those festivals. Second, we're organizing workshops to teach traditional handicrafts: cloth and bamboo weaving, pottery, and clothes-making. Third, we're commissioning Academia Sinica [the ROC's highest academic research body] to study and plan a means of cltural expression that will allow visitors to see living Ami culture."

An Ami cultural consulting committee has been organized to meet every three months. This allows the scenic area administration to explain its development projects to the local residents, and to discuss the directions of future development with their representatives. This should help avoid infringement upon local sensibilities.

Willi Boehi, a long-term resident of Taiwan who works as a correspondent for a Swiss newspaper, has had extensive contact with the island's tribespeople, especially the Amis (he has led tour groups among them). Boehi says that many tribespeople do not like the idea of large numbers of tourists descending on their villages. "If tourism-centered activities aren't incorporated into village life," he says, "they'll become like the dances in Hualien; they won't be representative of tribal culture, and the tribespeople will despise them."

The best way to handle tourism, he adds, is for the tourists to go to the Ami villages in groups small enough not to be intimidating. Four or five people in a group would allow the tribespeople to exercise their customary hospitality, which requires that visitors be invited into homes and be asked to share meals and drinks. With large groups, of course, this is impossible. Moreover, he suggests that the tribespeople should be provided with funding and be allowed to develop tourist activities themselves, since they know best how to meld such activities into their village life.

Boehi also suggests that it is important for tourists to show an interest in tribal culture. The tribespeople, he says, "always have time for a chat. They'll talk to you, no problem; and then, after they get to know you, they'll let you take pictures of their houses. Once the tribals open up, they're wonderful people. They'll give you an experience you'll never get in a hotel or an airport – and it's an experience that a tourist will never forget." – Earl Wieman is an editor and travel writer based in Taipei.