Each week, hundreds of hikers tackle the 2,000m peaks around Chianshi township (
Chianshi's pristine beauty has been well-documented over the years by several writers hailing from different parts of Taiwan. Some of their works are now being displayed along a 200m stretch at the start of a trail that winds its way around the Naluo Leisure Orchard (
The trail was the brainchild of Yun Tian-bao (
PHOTO: VICO LEE, TAIPEI TIMES
Although Yun ended up as a politician, he never lost the desire to tell the outside world about the beauty of his hometown. There should be, Yun decided, a literary aspect to developing tourism in Chianshi. Drawing in part from his knowledge of the literature about Chianshi, Yun earlier this year put together the writings of six authors through whose words the life and natural environment in Chianshi had become known. Under his aegis, passages from these works were inscribed in red on stones placed at the edge of the cliff along Nalu creek.
"These writings went a long way toward raising the profile of the place and of the Atayal tribe. As Chianshi became more `visible,' the government began to pay more attention to the town. It became easier for us to get a larger budget and other forms of assistance from them. So, I wanted to dedicate the stones to the writers who cared about Chianshi," Yun said.
"But most of all, the trail will hopefully influence future generations," Yun said. "The place may seem like a literary desert to most people, as few connect Aborigines with literary achievement. But that will change in the future. Chianshi will have its own literati too."
At the far end of the trail, two slabs have been left uninscribed. It is Yun's hope that, in the near future, townspeople can inscribe them with writings by local Atayals.
At another point along the trail, next to Women's Lake, a huge cliff has been earmarked for inscription with the writings of two village scholars who will write the legends of the Atayal tribe in three languages -- Atayal, Mandarin and English. This is for visitors to learn about the Chianshi as Atayals see it.
The first Han Chinese to write about Chianshi was Chen Ming-fan (
Fresh out of school thirty years ago, Chen was assigned to teach at Chienping Elementary School and then Yufeng Elementary School in the mountains in Chianshi. His two-year stint there marked a watershed for the young man from downtown Hsinchu.
"Hsinchu City might be my hometown, but it was in Chianshi that I found the homeland of my life," Chen said. Regularly visiting Chianshi throughout the decades, Chen has witnessed significant changes in the area's natural environment, most of them for the worse.
In his Cherry Blossoms Falling in Naluo, Chen wrote: "It's not in the least exaggerating to call this mountain `cherry blossom mountain.' ... You have only to sit quietly on the stone steps guarding the elementary school and look at the sky, dyed flame red by the mountains loaded with cherry blossoms ... and you will be intoxicated by the spring."
Indeed, the cherry trees described in this passage were so beautiful that most of them have since been uprooted and sold for outrageous sums to people in the cities. The trees had all but vanished from Chianshi a few years ago when the residents finally woke up to the damage they had done to their environment.
The town has since been trying to re-plant cherry trees with seeds bought, ironically, from other parts of Taiwan. However the project has yet to have any tangible results, and visitors are left to imagine for themselves the beauty of the cherry blossoms Chen described.
Fortunately, another attraction Chen wrote about -- the customs and ways of the Atayals -- has not changed much. Unlike other Atayal communities such as Datong (
The pace of life is still slow and the townsfolk are still frank and outgoing.
"Living in Taipei, one notices that people are always on the defensive and rarely speak their minds. It's so different with Aborigines in the mountains. They're always straightforward with you, and their friendliness is infectious," Chen said.
Chen wrote about his life there in his novel Tribe, Skayada, which inspired director Wu Nian-chen, a novelist in the 1970s, to pen the script for the movie Teacher, Skayada, about the friendship that developed between a Han Chinese teacher and his Atayal student. The film inspired a wave of aspiring young teachers to volunteer to teach in Aboriginal communities.
In 1976, many of the comforts of modernity had reached the community, Gu Meng-ren (
The story drew the attention of the general public and the authorities alike. Electricity was installed in Chianshi the next year, and concrete roads leading up to the mountains were paved soon afterwards.
"One of the major problems the community faced was traffic. From the plain up to the mountain, there were only foot trails. The abundant agricultural produce, such as peaches, could not be transported to the markets outside. After the roads were paved, the economy of the Atayals improved a lot," Gu said.
A champion of the underprivileged, writing on the topic helped Gu as much as it did Chianshi. "By making the effort, I improved my writing and broadened my horizons," he said.
One of the more recent works to be immortalized on the rocks is by writer and TV host Lin Wen-yi (
Lin was angered by the way his station sought to stereotype the Atayals, and the condescending way in which it treated them. "Many Atayals are very resilient. Their long history of being underprivileged has conditioned them to take this exploitation for granted, but that's not the way it should be," said Lin, who has made many Atayal friends in Chianshi and got to see things from their perspective.
Lin fears the effects of Han Chinese cultural influence on the Atayal. "I don't feel like I deserve having my writings inscribed on a stone by the Atayals. Hopefully it won't intrude on the Aboriginal culture," Lin said.
Every now and then, whenever he feels depressed or stressed-out from work, Lin drives from his home in Taipei all the way to the town to "bathe in the primitive nature" of Chianshi. "I owe the nature and nice people in Chianshi a lot," Lin said.
Seeing an increasing number of tourists -- in the thousands -- attracted to the opening ceremony of the literary trail and the accompanying two-day tribal festival, Commissioner Yun was confident about the tourism prospects for Chianshi. "Hopefully the words about Chianshi's pristine beauty inscribed on the stones will always serve as a reminder to the Atayals of the natural treasure they have been given," Yun said.
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