Taiwan's Forest Stories (A Family Coming Down from the Clouds + Carrying Mountains on Their Headbands)

The Family Coming Down from the Clouds

In this mountainous region, hemmed in by state and legal regulations, the lives and culture of the tribesmen are like mountains shrouded in mist, sometimes clear, sometimes hazy. These people, living in the clouds, have gradually transformed from hunters and nomadic farmers to soldiers of the nation, and their homeland has gradually become a place they cannot return to.

This book explores the history of Indigenous peoples' migration, settlement, loss, and search for their roots in the mountains and forests. It explores how, with the aid of modern technology, we can reconstruct the historical map of our communities and preserve precious cultural heritage for future generations. We begin to understand the importance of the mountains and forests in the lives of our peoples: they are not simply wilderness, but rather a place that carries many stories...

The author also draws on records left by explorers during the Japanese colonial period, his own family's household census books, and his own experiences in the mountains, combining ethnographic fieldwork with historical narrative reportage. He meticulously documents his family's migration from their original homeland in Nantou to eastern Taiwan, crossing the Xiugu Mountain and Mabolas Mountains, and establishing a new settlement in the Lakulaku River basin. This gradually unfolds the process of their migration across the Central Mountain Range and their return to their ancestral homeland.

Through extensive research and analysis of documentary materials, coupled with on-site visual investigations, the author journeys into Nana Tok and explores the deeper depths of history, allowing readers to experience a journey of discovery spanning generations. The author not only recounts the history of their ancestors but also reveals the real challenges facing modern Bunun people regarding cultural heritage, historical memory, and land rights. Finding a balance between contemporary forest policy and culture will be a challenge we all must confront in the future.

Carrying Mountains on Your Back with a Headband

Looking at the path our ancestors walked, they used backpacks and cross-body bags to live out their lives in this space.

Carrying history, heritage, and dreams on her headband... she returns home and tells her own story.

In 2000, when the author was first taken to his ancestral home in the mountains, the term "ancestral home" was still a vague concept to him. He didn't recognize the name of the mountain, didn't know which tribes were located there, and it was the first time he heard the terms "forest ranger" and "mountain guide." After more than twenty years of intermittent collaboration in the mountains, he gradually discovered that there was a group of people in the mountains who forged their own paths with their feet, carried their life experiences on their backs, and shared the history and stories of their ancestors. His participation in these communities gave his life a different perspective. He began to understand the significance of the mountains to him: not just a space, but also the history of his people.

While the titles of the tribesmen working in the mountains vary, as mountain guides, porters, and rangers, they all share a common commitment to working in their ancestral homeland. What are the actual working conditions like for the tribesmen? What do people imagine these jobs to be like? These questions arose during a conversation with a group of travelers during a 2013 trip to their ancestral homeland, Masisang. Is working in the mountains truly so romantic? This inspired him to write about the real working environment of the tribesmen in the mountains, their traditional territory.

This group of singing, hunting-clad people, with their long-term experience in the mountains, are the great contributors to ecological conservation and research, and the driving force behind many mountaineering friends' mountaineering dreams and their fulfillment.

The author hopes to be able to, like Bunun writer Tian Ya'ge, "use pen instead of hunting rifle" to speak for his people and record their unique culture. By writing about the diverse people, events, and things in Taiwan, he hopes to allow more people to see the stories of mountaineering professionals, mountain guides, and rangers, and understand that there is a group of people who work hard and live hard in the mountains.

Features of this book

★ "The Family Coming Down from the Clouds" won the Hualien Cultural Affairs Bureau's 2023 Hualien Literary Creation Grant Program.
★ Focus on issues concerning indigenous peoples, using ethnographic field research and historical narratives to record ethnic culture and ancestral history.
★ Records the cultural history of the Bunun people - the Lakulaku River Basin.
★ "Carrying Mountains on a Headband" was shortlisted for the 2020 Taiwan Literature Award Gold Classic Award.
★ Through the newly added postscript, we rethink the balance and inheritance of forest policies, state-owned lands, protected areas, and traditional areas.

Award-winning record

Carrying Mountains on Your Back with a Headband
★Nominated for the 2020 Taiwan Literature Award Gold Award.

Celebrity recommendations

The Family Coming Down from the Clouds
Recommended by Gan Yaoming, Zhu Hezhi, Ma Yihang, Xueyang Mountain Writer, Guo Yanren (Guo Xiong), Black Bear Researcher, and Yang Shitai & Dai Yiting of TaiTai LIVE WILD

Carrying Mountains on Your Back with a Headband
Full-time associate professor at the Institute of Taiwanese Language and Literature at Sundachuan National Chengchi University, CEO of the Lee Gen-zheng Earth Citizen Foundation, writer Wallis Nogan, and Nie Kou. Sokruman writer sincerely recommends

It turns out that this "Tears" Road is no longer a lament for the fate of past generations, but rather a meticulous reconstruction of the past, stone by stone, of the work of porters, road construction, the frontiers of the brave, the garrisons, the battles, the group's relocation, the monuments, the abandoned ruins, and the memories. This is the true establishment of historical subjectivity, and the most difficult task we must devote all our energy to in the future. --Sun Dachuan

2024-12-01

健行

512

9786267207918