Web celebrity “bikini hiker” Gigi Wu (吳季芸) was found dead in January on Nantou County’s Penjushan (盆駒山). As she entered a restricted mountain area without a permit, her death has caused much discussion on restrictions in the climbing world.
After collecting climbers’ opinions, the Cabinet has relaxed its longstanding mountain restrictions and “freed the mountains.” The national park permit system is to be replaced with a notification system from next month.
The restrictions date back to the Qing Dynasty, when Chinese rule went as far as the plains and foothills of Taiwan, but failed to reach into the mountains.
In the mid-18th century, the Chinese built the tuniu boundary (土牛界線, a line formed by oxen ditches) around the mountains, separating the Chinese living on the plains and foothills from the Aborigines in the mountains.
At the beginning of the Japanese occupation, Japan’s power did not reach into the mountains either, and it continued the Chinese segregation by establishing a “frontier guard defense line” to keep the Aborigines in the mountain areas. The Japanese did not claim the mountain areas until the 1920s, when they entered the area to systematically build so-called “garrison roads.”
Military victory emboldened the Japanese to carry out a “collective relocation” of Aborigines from the remote mountains to the foothills or plains, forcing them to leave their homes.
In 1949, the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government followed the Japanese policy by establishing restricted areas in the mountains to keep people from entering. It nationalized traditional Aboriginal territory and established national parks in some regions. The laws made it more difficult for Aborigines to get closer to their homelands.
The historical context for these restrictions was the colonial oppression of Aborigines. Now that the Cabinet is about to relax its policy by opening roads into remote mountain areas, it has failed to consider history and consult the Aborigines whose traditional territories fall within these areas.
For example, the section of the Batongguan Historic Trail (八通關) from Dashueiku (大水窟) to Walami Cabin (瓦拉米山屋) has been closed since Typhoon Morakot hit in 2009, and the climbing world has long hoped that the section would be reopened.
Built in 1921, the trail was originally a military road constructed by the Japanese to control the Bunun people, and in the end it pushed the Bunun from their traditional territory. Today, the path crossing through mountain areas with many Bunun historical remains has been transformed into a Yushan National Park hiking trail.
With the relaxation of the policy next month, climbers could freely use the trail. However, the Bunun cannot return to their traditional territories as administrators of their own land.
The true opening of restricted mountain areas needs to take transitional justice into account, and the government should address the issue of traditional Aboriginal territories by discussing it with the people who lived there earlier. Without a historical review, the upcoming relaxation of regulations might simply continue colonialist ideology.
Jeff Cheng is a doctoral candidate at Boston University’s archeology department.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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