Taitung and Kaohsiung

The first place to be blessed by our presence, today, was the Pei-nan Cultural Park located in Taitung. The spacious park contains a number of attractions including a visitor center, live on-going dig sites, and recreations of aboriginal tree huts. The visitor center includes exhibits on the Peinan archaeological site dating from around 5000-2000 BC, an education room, an audio-visual multimedia area, a cafeteria, and most importantly, air conditioning. The exhibits serve to educate visitors in the Peinan Culture’s lifestyle. The Peinan people were apparently a Stone Age society with unique customs. Archeological digs, preserved in the center, show that they buried their dead in slate coffins. Other exhibits display various stone/jade jewelry in configurations in which they were found in graves as well as dagger blades. There are also exhibits illustrating how clothing was fabricated, village buildings appeared, and an initiation ritual for young men in which the lateral incisors were removed. Unfortunately, all the signs are in Chinese, so I cannot provide any more details.

Before leaving the park, we were taught an A-Mei aboriginal dance by Roxy. The dance is reminiscent of a country line-dance wherein all the participants are joined in a single line such that an individual does not hold hands with their immediate neighbor. The arms are held down such that joined hands fall over the immediate neighbors’ lower abdomens. There were three sub-steps involved but I will spare the reader the details. Suffice it to say that the steps are simple to perform. And to add extra complexity to the process, the dance was performed to “We Are All in One Family” (a rough translation).

Arriving in Kaohsiung, we were taken to consume shaved-ice and fruit from a single, large, communal bowl. This is apparently a tradition for the incoming class of the local university or high school, I cannot remember which, and partaking in the consumption of said frosty dessert initiated one into the family. I suppose it is a good way of improving immune systems.

Our final stop of the day was at Sun Yat-Sen University, or near to it. There we visited the old British Consulate building beneath a setting sun. There is a tradition here of taking romantic pictures in the belief that such ties would be strengthened. Needless to say, in mockery of this absurd notion, virtual every member of our group posed for photographs in feigned, romantic bliss.