Print

Mail

wiki links

Hope springs eternal

By Yu Sen-lun
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Mar 17, 2002, Page 17

A tangle of pipes stretches the length of Rainbow Stream in Tungpu village, Nantou County, evidence of the over development of the area's hot springs. Daho, top left, points to a few smaller pipes that run not to hotels, but to Bunun Aborigines' homes. PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIMES

It was a quiet evening in the mountainous Tungpu village. Young couples from the Bunun tribe of Aborigines were singing by a fire. They were rehearsing songs on their newly recorded CD. The acoustic guitar, their beautiful voices and traditional Bunun-style harmony were resonant in the valley.

"I married into this village because you told me that there were hot springs. But I've given birth to two kids and have never taken a hot spring bath afterward," complained one singer, Umav (金花), to her companions during a break in the singing. She is a Bunun woman from another village and her comment jolted everyone to laughter.

No small amount of irony confronts these young people. Growing up near the famous Tungpu hot springs, the Bunun in Tungpu have themselves scarcely enjoyed the hot springs in the past 20 years.

Their two albums of music, Songs from the Forest Workers (林班之歌) and Hunters in the Clouds and Mist (雲霧獵人), are part of the Tungpu Bunun tribe's fund-rasing campaign to get their hot springs back.

PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIMES

Tungpu, a Nantou County village 1120m above sea level, for years has been synonymous with hot springs. Its water is 50C on average and is categorized as a carbon-acid hot spring, pure, clear and odor-free, which is considered a very high-quality hot spring. Driving from the foothills, passing into Jade Mountain National Park (玉山國家公園), one enters the Tungpu tourist area. On the right-hand side the springhead is called Lah-lah Valley (樂樂谷), a name originating from the Bunun language meaning "hot water." On the other side is Rainbow Stream, another spring source.

All along the main road stands a number of hotels, with various signs advertising spas, hot springs and water-therapy. Some high-rise buildings, such as the Ti-lun Hotel and Sheng-hua Hotel are quite upscale and carry Taiwan's five-star rating.

The sign at the front entrance of the Ti Lun Hotel, top, beckons visitors to its five-star comforts. Above, the sign for the Tungpu Tourism Center. PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIMES

Most of the hotels are owned by non-Aborigines. Only two small Bunun-owned hostels, located at the end of the main road, see very few customers.

"We have never benefitted from the hot-spring tourism boom, What's more, we've even had trouble enjoying the hot springs. Most of the water-heads were taken by Han people, for their hotels," said, Alang Islituan, a minister from Tung-kuang Presbyterian Church (東光教會).

Alang, who shares the same surname with each of his villagers, is in his 60s. He has watched as the natural treasure of his ancestral land has been slowly taken away over the past 20 years.

Daho, an Bunun Aborigine, shows the overdevelopment of Rainbow Stream's hotsprings. Hunters in the Clouds and Mist, below, is a CD of traditional Bunun music sold to raise money for the tribe's campaign to retrieve rights to their ancient hot springs. PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIMES

"I grew up in the hot springs," Alang said, recalling that the Rainbow Stream was his childhood playground. "We would go along the stream looking for hot springs, and once we found one we'd immediately take off our clothes and jump in."

During the Japanese colonial period, Alang said, there was only one man-made public hot spring bath. The Bunun, as well as some mountain-dwelling Han people, would all go to the bath house for recreation. "My elders, parents and we children all soaked in that big bath. It's a fine memory," said Alang.

But things changed after the 1970s, when the then KMT government selected Tungpu as one of the townships to develop tourism. The hotels entered, and the battle for water rights began.

"Some of the lands [with springheads] were sold at a very cheap price, others were rented with unfavorable contracts. There were some hotels which started using the land without any notification," said Alang. The poverty and lack of legal knowledge made many Bunun give up their water rights very easily, even selling reservation lands which, according to law, cannot be sold.

Bunun people are usually calm and reserved, but we never shy away from fighting. It will still be a long battle, before we truly retrieve our living rights, our lands and our culture.

--Lin Mei-hsiu

"Tungpu can be seen as the aboriginal township that has had the severest conflict of interest between Han and Aborigines. The local politics are very intricate and the income gap between the two is huge," said Chang Ching-chung (張競中), director of the Tungpu Bunun Culture Association (東埔布農文化促進會).

Tracing Rainbow Stream to its source are dozens of water pipes tangled around each other. The long pipes are representative of how capitalism has crept in and now has a stranglehold on the area's Bunun. They are also representative of the local politics between Han and Bunun.

"These old, thick pipes are connected to the hotels, and here are a few new ones connected to Aborigines' households," said Daho, a Bunun man who is showing us the way to the pipes' source.

According to Daho, the springheads of Rainbow Stream have been so over-developed that they are almost dried up. "We now have a joke that Rainbow Stream has become `low-water stream,'" he said. The unemployment rate is still high among the Bunun villagers. Like many young men in the village, Daho takes temporary jobs digging ditches for the hotels' spring water. Earning only NT$1500 per day, Daho said it's sad that they have always dug hot springs for other people, not for themselves.

The over-development of the springheads led to a disaster in 1996. A typhoon's heavy rain, coupled with soil erosion from heavy ditching, created a massive mudslide in the village. Not only did the Bunun lose their houses, even their source for drinking water was blocked by mud and rocks. This even caused the villagers to organize a series of protests and demonstration against the Nantou County government. Through negotiations, 26 Bunun households near Rainbow Stream were recognized as having the rights to use the hot springs. It was the first victory in a 20-year dispute for the Bunun.

However, the rest of the Bunun are facing another obstacle to retrieving the land and water rights of their ancestors. On the other side of Tungpu village, next to Lah-lah Valley, live dozens of other Bunun. In 1985, this part of the mountain was categorized as part of Jade Mountain National Park, making any kind of development activity, such as farming, hunting or water use, strictly prohibited.

The Bunun are traditionally a hunting culture. Having lost their hunting lands, most Bunun have become plum farmers. And as the farm lands are limited and the price of plums has been low, many of them have taken temporary work at tea factories or digging ditches for hot springs. At the Lah-lah Valley side of the village, most Bunun houses are made of corrugated metal or plywood and stand in stark contrast to the high-rise hotels across the valley. This area has been without a water system for decades, and most families in the area cannot even afford their children's lunch fees at school.

"For the past 17 years, we have been fined by the headquarters of Jade Mountain National Park for piping water without authorization. But we need to use the water there," said Lin Mei-hsiu (林美秀), an Amis Aborigine who married a Bunun man in Tungpu.

According to Lin, the Bunun have lived peacefully with the environment of Jade Mountain for centuries. Bunun activities have been in harmony with the ecology of Jade Mountain, and not a threat. "If they want to restrict us from making a living here, then the national park might as well call itself a botanical garden or a zoo," said Lin.

The villagers' voices were finally heard by the government last year. Last February, hundreds of Bunun went to the Cabinet to protest against the national park's restrictions. Former premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) remarked in favor of the Aborigines. "The national park needs to take human ecology into consideration," Chang said to the protesters at the meeting.

One year has passed and Lin and her fellow villagers are worried that the government's promises to built water pipes for them were again nothing but lip service.

"We've decided to do it ourselves," Lin said, sitting by the camp fire with her fellow singers. "Hunters in the Clouds and Mist is a collection of traditional Bunun tunes and Songs from the Forest Workers are contemporary love songs about our lives as temporary workers in the woods," Lin said.

Lin and her Tungpu Bunun Culture Association hope to raise NT$700,000 from selling the CDs to build the water pipe system. The Bunun will do the labor for free, said Lin.

"Bunun people are usually calm and reserved, but we never shy away from fighting. It will still be a long battle, before we truly retrieve our living rights, our lands and our culture," said Lin.
This story has been viewed 2774 times.