A community in Alishan township in central Taiwan is pressing the government to protect a thousand-year-old red cedar, known to the Aboriginal tribe nearby as the "tree of the ghosts," discovered there recently.
The millennium-old red cedar, also known as the "autumn maple," is the second oldest tree of its kind to be discovered in Taiwan. The oldest is the 1,229-year-old "Red Cedar King" next to the Hsingnan Temple in Puli.
The circumference of the trunk of the newly-found red cedar, discovered in Leyeh (
Amazed over the find, a community activist group of Leyeh Village called for government agencies to list the tree as protected and, if possible, to establish special facilities to make it into a tourist attraction.
According to Chen Chung-ming (陳忠明), a member of the Leyeh Community Development Association and education administrator of Leyeh Primary School, the red cedar has probably survived intact and avoided being harmed by vandals, or so-called "mountain mice," because of the beliefs of the Aboriginal people in the nearby region, he pointed out.
Most of the Tsou Aboriginal people, who live near Sun Moon Lake and in Alishan, believe that red cedars are "the trees of the ghosts," and therefore stay away from, Chen said.
He said that according to a story known among the Tsou people in the region, two Han Chinese people apparently had tried to fell a "sacred red cedar" tree in the area in the early 1900s, only to be scared off after reportedly being threatened by "the unknown" in the mountains.
That was the last time that people in the region heard anything about "sacred trees," he added.
According to Tsou legend, the Tsou people are the offspring of the lawuja, or the maple tree -- the leaves of which become human beings after falling to the ground. As a result, the Tsou people are fond of and have respect for maple trees.
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