An Atayal tribe-Cinsb

My department is holding a summer camp for high school students to participate. The purpose of holding a camp is to let high school student to know more about our department. As a member of designing courses during the camp, we invite professors in our department to give lectures. However, besides professors from our department, we also want to have a field trip to a Atayal indigenous tribe in Hsinchu county. We went to the tribe for a visit last weekend, we met up with pastor Ataw from the church, and he showed us around the tribe. The scenery up in the mountain is SO beautiful and the weather is perfect! Pastor Ataw also told us a lot of Atayal culture and traditions. One the place he took us to was the entrance to the cypress forest, the Atayal people set up a rule restricting people going in at night. Because some people went into the forest illegally to chop down the precious cypress trees. Atayal people were very angry about people illegally chop down the trees, they were not only hurting the environment but also breaking the laws. The tribe are calling for people's attention to respect the tribe and the environment we are living in. I learned a lot from the trip to Cinsb. We should learn from Taiwan's indigenous people, they have a great connection to the land and they love the land they live in. Taiwan is our home, and home to different ethnos in Taiwan, we should all love the land we live in.

Pastor Ataw demonstrating how to make fire using wood.

The beautiful Cinsb church.

     Pastor Ataw telling us about the restricting rules, and people that is chopping doen cypress trees illegally.

Visit grandpa in Keelung!

  My grandpa lives in Keelung. When we were little, we always went to visit him in the summer. However, after I came to Taipei for college, I'm too busy with school and even though I'm closer to him than when I was in my hometown, I haven't visit him very often.
  Last weekend, my brother came to Taipei for job interviews. My brother and my twin sister decided to go visit my grandpa. It was a provisional decision, but we agreed immediately. We took a train to Keelung and I enjoyed the scenery from tall buildings of Taipei city to the countryside. Looking outside train window, I can see less greyish building, but more green trees and mountain view. After arriving at the peaceful town where my granpa lives, we went to my grandpa's and saw him chatting with his friends. He looked happy and healthy, and never stops talking, as I always remembered. After my grandpa's friend left, he brought out some snacks for us...SHRIMPS! I love eating seafood and as Keelung is near the sea, I can always expect some really good seafood when I visit my grandpa. We chatted with my grandpa for a while, he is healthy and enjoying his retirement.  Then we took a bus to Keelung downtown for dinner and said goodbye to my grandpa at the train station.


                                     This was taken at the Si Jiao Ting station where my grandpa lives.

Sing our songs on our Land!

  After studying a year in the department of Ethnology, I feel like I have known more about different ethnos in Taiwan. There are aboriginal people, Holo people, Hakka people, and new immigrants from other countries that consisted Taiwan's culture today. We discussed a lot of issues about ethnos nowadays and how to define an ethno. The questions such as: What's the traditions that can represent Holo people or Hakka people? What's the importance of a genealogical tree of your family? What can truly decide your ethno, blood or self identity? I have never learned and thought about these kind of questions before. There are no definite answers to these questions, but they make me think lot about myself, my family and my culture.

  Aboriginal people in Taiwan have been under the influence of dominant culture(the Han culture?), and are slowly losing their own distinguish traditions. However, nowadays the awareness of aboriginal people's self identifications are rising and some aboriginal people are speaking up for their own.
  Last weekend, I went to a mini concert of one of the aboriginal band-台玖線(Tai Nine Line), and they sang some songs about their tribe and sang in their own language. I really enjoyed their music, and their performance was very inspiring too. They encouraged people to sing in our native languages(such as Taiwanese, aboriginal languages), which is the most genuine ways to convey our feelings! I had a very spiritually satisfied night! 

3 days excursion to Haulien! Part 1

  Last weekend, my club went on a 3 days excursion to Hualien. We were very excited about going to Hualien because we are longing to see the beautiful  scenery.

  

  The first night in Hualien, we went to Zhichiang night market to taste some local food. We tried for the BBQ that is famous, grilled corn, and boba milk tea. The fortunate thing is that the night market were not as crowded as we expected! Then next day, we had traditional breakfast with porridge. We headed to Taroko National park to see the introduction of the park. Then we went to Swallow Grotto (燕子口) to see the Taroko Gorge, the scenery is really amazing!! For lunch, we went to an aboriginal restaurant to taste some aboriginal cuisine. I really enjoyed the food, they are very delicious! Later in the day we went to Liyu lake to ride bike around the big and beautiful lake. The weather was cloudy, but wasn't raining. And it made it so comfortable to ride bikes! For the last stop for the day, we went to the coast to see the pacific ocean. It was very windy at the coast, and the waves were big. Even though the weather was getting worse, but we still had a lot of fun at the coast with the wind and the waves. For dinner, we went back to our hotel and had BBQ. After the BBQ, we had some card games and beer. It was a very relaxing and fun night!

My sister is going to be an exchange student!!

  My younger sister is going to be an exchange student this year. My family is busy helping her with all the paper work for applying. First, she had to complete a lot of paper forms of introducing herself, family, and her interests. After all the paper documents, she had to choose some photos of herself and our family to put online. Finally, her had to make an video introducing herself, and the city we live in.  It was a long process of completing all the work, but the work is very important for host families to choose their exchange students. What's more surprising is just after we finished editing the video and uploaded for two days,and email came and surprised my family! An email from a host family that want to have my sister as their exchange student! It was a very exciting news and we decided to skype in the weekend. However, I wasn't home for the scheduled skype time.
  I'm very excited for my sister, because she is going to be an exchange student in a future with a very nice host family. I believe she will have a very fun and special experience in the future.