A port in a storm
Thus this Happy Village nestled between mountain and sea really has come to feel something like home to many urban Amis.
But just how many Amis live here? Lengos says that there are about 21 households with actual street addresses, and another 30 or so without. Figuring an average of about three people to a household, there are about 150 people in the community.
According to the Ruifang Township Administration, five of those with actual addresses are located on slopeland owned by the national government. The Taipei County Indigenous People's Bureau is currently working with the National Property Bureau of the Ministry of Finance to explore the feasibility of offering legal leases on this land.
The IPB has refrained from mediating lease deals on the remainder of the homes, most of which are sited on private property with the tacit consent of the landowners. This being so, the homes are unlikely to face demolition in the near term.
Lengos says that Happy Village has been demolished three times: in 1994, 1996, and 2002. Though the last time completely leveled the village, the first two involved only "tidying up" small areas. Having seen what has happened elsewhere in Taipei County-to the Sanying Community on the Dahan River and the Xizhou Community on the Xindian River-the Amis here worry about the future of their homes. "Even places with street addresses, running water, and power were demolished!"
Tao Yuanming's "Peach Blossom Spring" depicts a group of people who left the chaos of the world behind and formed their own isolated community where "young and old alike were happy and content." Many of the Amis on Happy Mountain have likewise come seeking refuge, typically arriving from nearby Ruifang or Keelung after finding themselves unable to make their mortgage payments or seeing their former homes seized. Life is simpler on the mountain, where their only expense is NT$500-600 per month for their power bill.
Masaw, who goes by Chen Zhengxiong in Mandarin and is chairman of the Keelung City Indigenous Peoples' Commission, says that between the Gregorian New Year and the Lunar New Year, some 20 to 30 Keelung-area Aboriginal homes were subject to foreclosure and auction, roughly 10 in the Heping Island area alone. "Many of these families have come to Happy Village and built themselves new homes from corrugated steel," says Masaw.
Lengos says that five or six new homes have been built on Happy Mountain in the last six months. These victims of foreclosure simply had nowhere else to go.
"More and more Aborigines are finding themselves unable to pay their mortgages," says Lengos. "There have even been a couple of foreclosures in Amis Home and Golden Village in recent months, which are just a couple mountains over from Happy Village."
Happy Village's 30-odd "no-address" houses are more like "country homes" that Aborigines who still have the means to live in the city use for weekend getaways.
Five or six Aborigines in their 50s are sitting together on a small as-yet unpaved track in the village, close by a kitchen chimney from which cooking smoke rises. Chatting in the Amis language, they enjoy some daikon freshly pulled from a nearby field, then peeled and marinated.
"We grow vegetables here, and do it without pesticides and without cutting down trees. So don't blame the landslides on us," says an elderly matron, deriding urbanites who point fingers without knowing what they're talking about.
Village residents have built house after house from scrap wood, doors, and windows gathered from all over, and have furnished them with broken sofas, chairs, and other scrap furniture.
"Daytime work is getting harder and harder to find, and hanging around government housing is no fun, so people are coming up the mountain to find other tribespeople with whom to chat, drink a bit, and take in the scenery," says a male Amis seated nearby. "It makes you feel better."
(facing page) Everyone who comes to Happy Village is treated as a guest. When someone arrives, the Amis call out to their kids to come and help them kill a chicken and prepare a feast.