Taiwan Today

An award-winning ethnobotanical series reveals the subtle relationship between plants and Taiwan’s indigenous communities.

The Kuroshio (Black Tide) moves from the equator northward. When it approaches Taiwan, it splits into several strands due to configurations of islands. After passing Orchid and Green islands [to the southeast of Taiwan], the current is directed to the east coast of Taiwan because of the abrupt drop of the continental shelf.

—from the introduction to Pangcah Miaraw

Pangcah Miaraw: The Ethnobotany of Amis in Eastern Formosa starts with a description of the Kuroshio, a Pacific Ocean current that flows northward past Taiwan’s mountainous east coast. The movement of the Kuroshio reflects the migration pattern that brought the Amis people, who are of Austronesian origin, across the sea to Taiwan. At around 181,000 members, the Amis are the most populous of the 14 indigenous groups that are officially recognized by the Republic of China government. Printed in Chinese and English interspersed with Romanized Amis words, the 255 pages of Pangcah Miaraw are divided into two parts, with the first depicting daily and ritual practices involving plants at several Amis villages, while the second lists local plants and the different functions the Amis use them for, including hunting, building, eating, healing and making tools.

Pangcah Miaraw is the third and most recent volume of a series of ethnobotanical books co-published by the Forestry Bureau under the Cabinet-level Council of Agriculture (COA) and the Taipei-based Taiwan Environmental Information Association. All three books have won government publication awards. Green Klesan, the first title in the series, was released in 2005 and won an Outstanding Government Publication Award in 2006. The government awards were reorganized in 2009 by the Cabinet-level Research, Development and Evaluation Commission as the National Publication Awards. Wander Lamuan, the second book in the series, was released in 2008 and won recognition as one of the best publications of 2008 at the National Publication Awards in 2009, while Pangcah Miaraw claimed the top prize in 2010.

According to Kuan Li-hao, director of the Forestry Bureau’s Conservation Division, the publication of the ethnobotanical series reflects recent global trends in conservation. One example of such trends is the Convention on Biological Diversity, which came into being in December 1993 and recognizes indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge as a major component of the conservation and sustainable use of biological resources. Taiwan follows convention guidelines. Among other things, the convention calls on each state to respect, maintain and promote the wider application of the knowledge and practices of indigenous communities that maintain traditional lifestyles. “Indigenous traditions often hold that some places are holy and shouldn’t be disturbed by human activities like hunting,” Kuan says. “More often than not, those places have become important conservation areas.”

Scientist Tung Gene-sheng has authored or coauthored all three books in the series. Tung holds a doctorate in entomology from National Taiwan University and works as a researcher at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute under the COA. He is also a former director and a current member of the board of the Taiwan Environmental Information Association, which was established in 2000 for the primary purpose of disseminating local and global ecological news.

Tung is of Han Chinese ethnicity, and has therefore sometimes been asked to justify his work in the area of indigenous culture. He acknowledges that there are some inevitable Han perspectives in his work, but also believes that indigenous traditions belong to the global community and should be preserved and promoted for the public interest, regardless of who carries out the work.

Some senior residents of the indigenous communities he has worked in have said they were happy to answer his questions, Tung notes, as younger generations seem less interested in their aboriginal identity these days. “Some people do not have much identification with their own native culture,” he says. “We try to work with those who do have that sense to help carry on a precious tradition.” He feels a sense of urgency about documenting disappearing ethnobotanical traditions, as some elderly interviewees have passed away since he started the series.

Tung points out that ethnobotanical work represents the combination of two somewhat divergent disciplines. “Ethnologists usually don’t know very much about plants,” he says, “and botanical science doesn’t always account for ethnological meaning.”

Aits Butal, a researcher of Amis botanical traditions, designed and took photos for all three books, but his role expanded with Wander Lamuan and Pangcah Miaraw, as in the process of attending meetings, designing and helping to edit Green Klesan, he found himself gradually taking on the role of a coauthor. This position was formalized in the latter two books of the series, for which he shares equal billing with Tung.

Butal is proud of the books, but believes the task is not yet finished. “I feel awed by so many things yet to be done,” he says. “It would be wonderful if I could freeze time so that I could keep wandering around and around in the plant world of the Pangcah,” a reference to the name some Amis use for their tribe.

Butal and Tung believe that, traditional as their source materials may appear to be, they should be arranged in a fresh, sophisticated way to attract readers. As lead designer for the series, Butal played a large role in actualizing that vision. The series’ mixture of ethnographic writing, plant illustrations, photos and modern design elements has resulted in works that are akin to illustrated handbooks that neatly present botanical and sociological information about indigenous communities.

Green Klesan originated when Tung grew curious about a record from the era of Japanese colonial rule (1895−1945) concerning the Atayal people’s use of Formosan alder. The Atayal prepared new farmland by burning existing vegetation, planting the shrub-like Formosan alder to fertilize the soil, then cutting down the alder and growing crops. Modern research supports this centuries-old practice, showing that Formosan alder roots improve soil by hosting nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

The book focuses on Nanau Township in Yilan County, northeastern Taiwan, a traditional dwelling place for the Atayal people, who mostly live in the northern mountainous regions of the island. The use of the English word “green” in the book’s title is a reference to the natural environment, while the Atayal name for the Nanau area is Klesan, which also means climbing in the Atayal language, implying that the beautiful and fertile area rises from the Pacific Ocean to the grand mountains to the west.

Ecotourism Guidebook

In a nod to the emerging trend of ecotourism, Green Klesan is arranged like a guidebook for visitors to Nanau, introducing the major natural and cultural attractions of the township’s seven villages through text, local maps, illustrations and photos.

While Green Klesan focuses on the Atayal people, Wander Lamuan concentrates on the ecological, social and development issues of Bunun communities in the Central Mountain Range in central Taiwan. The English word “wander” is used in the book’s title to impart a sense of taking a walk, while the Bunun term lamuan refers to something that is timeless, holy and inviolable.

Among other crops, tea, vegetables and varieties of fruit with high economic value have been introduced in Bunun areas and have become the focus of agricultural production. Tung believes that trend is an inevitable modern development, but notes that it is “a further move away from the indigenous tradition of gathering food.” According to the “Trading with the Lowlanders” chapter of Wander Lamuan, when modern agricultural techniques are introduced with the assistance of outsiders to replace gathering in the forests and fields, tribespersons tend to lose control over local agricultural development. Another problem is that indigenous people on the whole usually do not profit when the new agricultural models are introduced, except in a small number of successful cases, the book says.

Some Bunun communities have also been criticized for growing crops on slopeland, which has resulted in frequent mudslides in recent years. The “Trading with the Lowlanders” chapter points out, however, that the expansion of agriculture to steeper areas actually represents a collective effort to meet society’s demands for agricultural products. The Bunun people should not be held solely responsible for overdevelopment of slopeland, as they are “under the sway of market forces,” Tung says.

The title of Pangcah Miaraw, the newest book in the series, gives a good indication of its focus. Some members of the Amis call their people the Pangcah, while miaraw means to go to the field. According to the book’s epilogue, the various plant species that the Amis brought with them when they migrated to Taiwan or discovered after their arrival have not only provided everyday necessities such as food and medicine, but also have taken on layers of deep cultural meaning. In sum, the accumulated botanical knowledge the Amis have obtained over the centuries is an integral part of their way of life, the book concludes.

Pangcah Miaraw examines the ethnobotanical traditions the Amis follow over the course of a year such as sowing millet, gathering seaweed, collecting yellow rotang palm and tying bundles of silvergrass for use in a fishing ritual. Considerable space is also devoted to Amis traditional religious or shamanic practices, especially those at Lidaw Village in Hualien County, eastern Taiwan. Tung points out that in comparison with other indigenous societies in Taiwan, some of which have a high percentage of Christian converts, the Amis hold more tightly to their traditional beliefs in the ubiquitous kawas, or spirits.

Green Klesan was printed in Chinese, while Wander Lamuan was printed in Chinese with some translations in English and Romanized Bunun. The entire text of Pangcah Miaraw is printed in Chinese and English, however, while Romanized Amis words are provided for terms “that usually resist translation,” Tung says. Reliance on Romanization is becoming increasingly common among indigenous people such as for recording the names of family members under Taiwan’s household registration system. Amis words are Romanized in accordance with the decades-old system the local Presbyterian Church developed for translating the Bible. Lin Kuo-ching  was one of the judges for the 2010 National Publication Awards and president of the e-Society Research Group, which conducts public opinion surveys. Lin commends the multi-language model of Pangcah Miaraw for retaining original Amis voices while also seeking to spread those voices to various corners of the world through English translation.

Spiritual Dialogues

Lin also praises Pangcah Miaraw for its ethnography, saying that the book depicts the relationship between plants and human beings as well as “spiritual dialogues between humankind and the natural world.” In this aspect, Lin says the work represents a continuation of Chinese literary traditions seen in classical works including The Book of Odes and Songs of the South, which are thousands of years old.

Meanwhile, the scope of the three books in the ethnobotanical series, each of which focuses on one ethnic group living in a specific region, also represents a notable change, Tung Gene-sheng says, as most previous government publications on Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were comprehensive, encyclopedic works covering many peoples and large areas.

The importance of Pangcah Miaraw and the other books in the series is that they preserve a record of humanity’s links to and dependence upon the natural world. “Plants have a significant presence in all ethnic traditions,” Tung says. “Such time-honored wisdom needs to be rescued in Taiwan, where local cultures tend to decay faster than other Austronesian societies in Southeast Asia.” Through the fresh presentation of their three-book series, Tung Gene-sheng and Aits Butal are working to arrest that decay in a manner that has proven appealing to today’s readers.

Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com