Eco-tourism hasn't yet taken root in Taiwan, but for the Atayal tribe of Hsinchu County's Smangus (司馬庫斯) the roots were put down some 2,500 years ago -- a grove of Formosan cypress trees that spent its first two millennia in utter isolation has become something of an economic boon for the remote Aboriginal village since being discovered in 1991.
The grove stands silently beside a stream high in the mountains near Tapachienshan, the mountain sacred to the Atayal as their place of origin, which graces the back of NT$500 notes. The trees are not only among the oldest on the island, they're among the biggest. According to a 1996 report by Taiwan's Forestry Bureau, the grove is home to the nation's second and third largest trees, respectively 20.5m and 19.7m in girth.
PHOTO: DAVID MOMPHARD, TAIPEI TIMES
No wonder then that these giants are known in Chinese as divine trees (
Knotted history
The irony is that the Atayal of Smangus have long benefited economically from hardwood trees, albeit in a less ecologically-friendly fashion. The Japanese relocated many Atayal tribes from their ancestral home in Nantou County in part to disband them into smaller groups that would not pose a threat to the colonizing forces and in part to conscript their help in felling the acres of hardwood that once crowned Taiwan's mountaintops.
Although hardwood trees traded at a premium, the Atayal, like many other Aboriginal groups, refused to cut down the oldest of the trees, believing each possessed a spirit that would haunt them if the trees were felled.
Their refusal to do so -- and the fact that this particular grove of majestic giants had purportedly never before been seen -- means that many remain standing today.
That's not to say that Atayal reverence for the trees is beyond reproach. Long after the Japanese left Taiwan and conservationists began demanding curbs on logging, the Atayal of Smangus continued felling the highly prized trees to earn a living, although they never touched the ancient giants.
"We had no option," said Masay (
Masay tells a story of KMT officials in Hsinchu County demanding that the residents of Smangus stop harvesting hardwood. "They would come up here and become very angry at us, yelling at us to stop cutting down trees," he said. "This was before there was a road to Smangus, only a [15km] trail. So we said: `you build a road and we'll stop cutting down trees.'" In 1994 they got their road, and with it the start of a burgeoning tourism industry.
But, as Masay tells it, the government's ultimate willingness to carve out a road on a mountainside and build bridges where there was previously only trail was not so much to see an end to logging as to see the ancient trees themselves. "After we found the trees, it didn't take long for interest in them to grow and for people to want to come see them. The government knew that without a road that would never happen."
Searching for the past
According to the story that has now become legend among the residents of Smangus, the discovery of the ancient grove and the subsequent development of their local economy was hardly happenstance, but the product of a visit to another Atayal tribe and ancestral intervention.
As the story goes, in 1991 a Smangus village elder traveled to see friends in an Atayal community in Bali, Taipei County. There he saw that the local economy prospered modestly from growing peaches and from an influx of tourists, who traveled from all parts of Taiwan to see that area's grove of ancient trees.
That same night the elder's ancestors came to him in a dream, saying that Smangus had it's own ancient giants located near red waters en route to Yuanyang Lake (鴛鴦湖). He returned to Smangus and immediately dispatched a team of young men to search for the divine trees. Nearly three months later they were found beside the stream whose bed is lined with brightly colored red rocks.
But the discovery of the trees was only part of the windfall. The residents of Smangus began planting peaches just as the Atayal in Pali had done. The peaches from the Lalashan area near Smangus are today widely considered the best in Taiwan.
And so fortunes have changed both for the Atayal of Smangus and the ancient cypress rooted in their land. "We owe a debt to the trees," Masay said, intoning that his tribe now has a vested interest in seeing that the trees remain standing. "We used to kill them for profit, now our livelihood is linked with theirs."
It's quite a haul into the hinterlands, but seeing Smangus and its ancient forest is well worth the effort. For more information on how to get there, you can contact the tribe at 0928-804-983 or visit their Web site at www.smangus.org.
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH “All of the sensible things that apply to bodily health apply to brain health,” says Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and the author of The Age of Diagnosis. “When you’re 20, you can get away with absolute
When the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese forces 50 years ago this week, it prompted a mass exodus of some 2 million people — hundreds of thousands fleeing perilously on small boats across open water to escape the communist regime. Many ultimately settled in Southern California’s Orange County in an area now known as “Little Saigon,” not far from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, where the first refugees were airlifted upon reaching the US. The diaspora now also has significant populations in Virginia, Texas and Washington state, as well as in countries including France and Australia.
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
RSS