Forty sloping rooflines form neatly patterned rows, the gardens and driveways of each home and the forested environs of the community reminding one of a Euro-American suburb. This is the new village of Feishu.

After passing through the somewhat disorderly array of Aboriginal settlements along the banks of the Tachia River, one's eyes light up upon reaching this place, which rather resembles a resort community. At dusk, vegetable vendors drive through the neighborhoods with their wares. When the music from their trucks begins to sound, residents emerge from their houses to make their purchases, circling the three-and-a-half ton trucks with the intermingled tongues of Atayal, Mandarin, Taiwanese, as well as the occasional mainlander's accents or Hakka.

This particular settlement was originally known in Atayal as Yabis, which means "flying squirrel" (feishu in Chinese). Amidst the current spate of village relocation projects throughout Taiwan's mountainous central region, it turns out that this community has accomplished that relocation in record time.

The two faces of Sunghe Village. While the relocated village has been completed, the old village still labors to rebuild its homes and surroundings. No one knows when this hostel, which had previously done quite well for itself, will be restored to its former state.

No more drifting?

The story of how this community moved from Sunghe to Feishu is a story of collective determination and pride in turning the impossible into the possible. From another perspective, however, it is also a story of desolation and seemingly endless drifting.

Sunghe's original name was "Timburan," which means "mighty waters." Most of the Atayal from Sunghe have felt a sense of having been treated unfairly when they have returned to their ancestral lands on Mt. Tangmatan, asking, "Why did the Japanese move us here to this flood-prone area? It's as if they intended for all of this to happen to us! After all, our ancestral land was much more secure than the unstable land at Sunghe!"

In the summer of 2004, more than 70 years after being settled in Sunghe, the village's 400 families, numbering 2,000 people in all, came to experience firsthand the awe-inspiring power of those "mighty waters." The village was cleft in two by the July 2 and August 24 floods of that year. While residents were able to flee with their lives, many would never be able to go home again.

A prodigious amount of mud mixed with boulders consumed homes, schools, bridges, and farms. In the thick of the crisis, even rescue helicopters could not get near to the village. As scenes from the disaster aired over and over again on television, "the people of Taiwan opened their hearts and donated over NT$50 million within a week," recalls Liang Wen-jui of the Red Cross Society of the ROC. "All of those donations were specifically made out to the people of Sunghe."

In view of the degree of devastation in Sunghe, the Construction and Planning Administration of the Ministry of the Interior responded with the decision to relocate the entire community away from the flood-prone area. However, says the Red Cross's Liang, "Because the government did not at the time have enough funds for this project, they came to us. At that point we decided to invest the donations we had received into the relocation efforts. Additional funds from United Way and the Earthquake Disaster Relief Foundation meant that our financial problems were taken care of."

School's out, and the students at Po-ai Elementary School are lined up in the hallway. After consecutive years of natural disasters, many parents elected to move their children to other schools. This school, which is the highest institution of learning in Sunghe, thus seems even smaller than before.

Rescue efforts first

With the needed funds in hand, the cooperating organizations worked on a feasible timeline. The Council of Indigenous Peoples quickly set aside nearly a hectare of land ten kilometers away from Sunghe for the relocation. Says Walis Pelin, the council's chairman, "It was quite a stroke of genius to provide for an area close to, but not quite, one hectare." He explains, "Had the land exceeded one hectare, the project would have had to undergo an environmental impact assessment, but since it did not, we were able to save quite a bit of time."

While the infrastructure was being built up, the process of determining just who would qualify for relocation was also accelerated. In August 2005, one year after the floods, 20 Aboriginal families and 20 Han Chinese families were registered as residents of Feishu. The speed with which the project had been completed was unprecedented.

The main reason for the speed was the ample funding. "All we had to pay was a little more than NT$10,000 for the building license," says a Mrs. Hsieh, "In other villages, just the loan application process has been extremely troublesome."

After dinner, Mrs. Hsieh, a devout Presbyterian, invites her fellow parishioners over for a prayer. "The church didn't move here with us," she explains, adding jokingly, "So this way we're less lonely!"

Feishu has no churches, shops, or schools, much less clinics and entertainment venues. Nonetheless, residents seem overjoyed.

"If I need to buy something or go to the doctor's, my children will take me," says 70-year-old Mrs. Huang, who lives three doors away from Mrs. Hsieh. "However, I don't want to trouble them to take me to see my old friends." Without a car and with no bus lines running, and with no streetlights on the steep mountain roads, Mrs. Huang is not the only one facing transportation issues.

While nothing was as urgent as taking care of immediate rescue operations, and the village's relocation was completed swiftly, all to the lasting gratitude of its residents, it remains a fact that a community was split in two. Slowly, the inconveniences of life in the new village are beginning to surface.

The situation of those who held on to their homes and stayed behind is not much better. Only 46 students are left in Po-ai Elementary School, formerly home to nearly 100 students. Half of the school's playing fields are now submerged under the Tachia River that flows past the school. Near the school, residents have long since removed the base to the earth god's shrine, moving the earth god into a nearby shed of corrugated tin. Further ahead, despite more than a year of cleanup operations, the riverbed, houses and roads remain strewn with huge boulders.

"After the floods we went up into the mountains to examine the river's source. Only then did we discover that the region has not in fact seen the last of the mudslides," says Huang Mei-ying, a lecturer at National Chi Nan University. "The two branches of the river that run through Sunghe come rushing down from a height of 1,000 meters. All that loose soil up there was actually caused by the 921 Earthquake."

"Because the mudslides and rockslides that accompanied the floods of July 2 and August 24 filled up the Tachia River, the Directorate-General of Highways decided to raise the level of the Cross-Island Highway, situated across from Sunghe, by three meters. When flooding next occurs, the mud and rocks will be even more likely to be funneled into Sunghe," says Huang, who, like many who have been there all through the reconstruction of Sunghe following the 921 earthquake, feels a deep sense of loss upon seeing the recent destruction.

Sunghe Village was hard hit by floods in July 2004. Long before this year's typhoon season, neighborhood warden Peng Yu-chiao distributes rescue packs to her neighbors. "It's never too soon to get prepared," she says.

Hoping for a new home

Along with the looming sense of crisis comes a sense of anxiety for the residents of the old village. Says Hsieh Chih-cheng, who heads up the 921 Earthquake Relief Foundation, "People are asking, 'Why are some and not others allowed to move?' In a situation where not everyone's needs could be met, out of 115 houses deemed 'unfit for human habitation,' 90 households expressed a willingness to relocate, and 40 actually ended up moving. It's inevitable that those who did not succeed in making the move might feel that the situation is unfair. This experience has taught me that if there are any shortcomings in the way that resources are distributed, people will be left with a bad feeling."

In the aftermath of the two floods, more than 100 families were allotted new homes. However, because the land area in Feishu was limited, in the end the local authorities had to decide on who could make the move by the "degree of need." Because the policy was not implemented in a transparent enough fashion, those who did not get to relocate were vocal in their complaints, but in the end they could not but return to their old homes in Sunghe.

Moreover, since the new village occupied land that was part of an Aboriginal reservation, "According to the regulations, residents needed to have an ethnic heritage that was at least one-half Aboriginal. There was no way around those regulations, even though the majority of Sunghe residents were Han Chinese," says Liang.

Liang continues, "Even if Han Chinese had made the move, why is it that while Aborigines would be entitled to the use of the land in perpetuity, the Han Chinese would only be entitled to 20 years of use, and would not able to pass on the land to their children?" Sunghe had originally been a mixed community of Aborigines and Han Chinese, groups that passed through many crises together in harmony. Now, simmerings of discontent can often be detected.

Originally, Aborigines made up 40% of the population of Sunghe, with the three Han Chinese ethnic groups making up 20% each. Indeed, the positioning of the ethnic groups within the village reveals the order in which these groups came onto the scene. The Aboriginal residents live at a higher elevation, where the Catholic and Protestant churches are also to be found. Buildings at this height were able to escape the floodwaters. It was the Han Chinese living on the riverbanks whose residences suffered the most damage. The shrine of the earth god that they had worshipped had to be rescued from the floods to preserve the deity.

Because of these factors, among the 90 families who expressed an interest in relocating, the ratio of Han Chinese to Aboriginal families was four to one. As the ratio of residences allocated in Feishu to Han Chinese and Aboriginal households was one to one, many Han Chinese were thus unable to relocate. One resident who was denied relocation complains, "There were cases where some Aborigines, with established residency here but living elsewhere, moved in, and there were even some elected representatives who came in and took up some of the available spaces!"

Even though the Red Cross in Taiwan has not had experience in relocation, Liang says, "In other parts of the world, the Red Cross has actually taken part in quite a few relocation projects, and this is why we were originally invited by the local authorities to participate in this process." Factors taken into account in the decision-making process included whether or not an applicant was a single parent, lived alone, was experiencing financial hardship or listed as indigent, disabled or disadvantaged in some way. Apart from the requirements set forth on paper, however, various factors relating to local power relationships and behind-the-scenes brokering were beyond the scope of the Red Cross as an NGO to investigate and resolve.

"Determining the extent to which an applicant is disadvantaged is a responsibility of the government that should not have been given to the NGOs," says Liang, who feels a sense of helplessness mingled with empathy when hearing of the feelings of injustice on the part of some residents following the relocation.

"The government's cooperation with the NGOs made good use of their dynamism and flexibility, which obviated a lot of unnecessary bureaucratic procedures," says Walis Pelin. "However, the government should have persevered in playing its needed roles rather than retreating from them just because the NGOs were there."

Now that outside aid is slowly being withdrawn, the residents of Sunghe must face their problems on their own. On a day in late January just before the lunar near year, when business at her convenience store is light, neighborhood warden Peng Yu-chiao gets on her motorcycle and goes out to distribute rescue kits donated by Chi Nan University. "I know it's still winter, but it'll be too late if I wait till summer," she says. Half of her three-story house lies buried in rubble, and every time she passes by, "My heart aches when I think of decades of hard work reduced to ruins," she says. "However, at least the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau has been slowly working to remove the rubble. Maybe after a while I'll be able to move out of the place I'm renting and come back home."

"To live in Sunghe is to strive with nature," says Peng. This is something that holds true for all residents, whether Aboriginal or Han Chinese, whether living in the old village or the new village. At a time when the people of Sunghe's troubles are not yet completely over, these words seem to express the destiny of this place.