The Ping­tung countryside, remote and sparsely populated, is where you will find the Fan Yi Art Books House. Far from the city, there is no mass transit system here, there are no taxis, and buses are few and far between. If you want to visit Fan Yi, it’s best to set your internal thinking process on “slow.” If you only make a whirlwind visit then it’s unlikely you will be able to fully absorb its true importance and meaning.

The Fan Yi Art Books House, located in Pingtung County, is the first independent bookstore by, about, and for indigenous people. It was founded by the husband-and-wife team of Lin Ming-te (left) and Li An (right).

Co-opting a taboo word for good

Lin Ming-te, age 57, is the man who founded the Fan Yi bookstore. A graduate of Taiwan Provincial Ping­tung Junior Teachers College, he worked for many years as a teacher. He is an Aborigine himself, the son of a Paiwan father and an Amis mother. He joined the indigenous peoples’ movement very early on, helping to found publications like the Aboriginal Post and Austronesian News going back as far as 1989, and has long been a voice for Aboriginal peoples in their efforts to maintain their identity and culture while getting a fairer break in society.

A few years ago he joined the Pingtung County Government as a secretary to the mayor. After leaving his post in 2012, he reorganized all the books and cultural–historical materials that he had collected and read during his time as a journalist, rented a house with an enormous backyard located in ­Sanho Village in Ping­tung’s Ma­jia Township, and opened the Fan Yi Art Books House.

The character fan, which means “uncivilized barbarian” and is the term Han Chinese once used for Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, is rather provocative. It certainly conveys that the bookstore is intimately bound up with indigenous identity and issues, but why choose a derogatory term? Lin says he deliberately opted for this word because he wants Aboriginal peoples to have the courage to confront the abuse and insults that they have had to bear in history, and from there to develop a genuinely autonomous capacity for positive change, so that in the society of the future they will not have to rely on others.

In concrete, immediate terms, Lin hopes the bookstore will bring a culture of reading to rural and mountainous Ping­tung, home to so many indigenous communities. At the same time he hopes it will reinforce and build more “narrative” for the area, helping to attract visitors from all over to travel here for in-depth exploring.

The “Bird’s Nest Book House” in the Dongyuan indigenous community in Pingtung’s Mudan Township will host a special display of donated Chinese-language copies of Le Petit Prince.

A private library of historical materials

The “interior decor” that makes up the Fan Yi bookstore is simple and casual, as if the items were set out without any particular plan. Most of the space is given over to bookshelves and tables. Compared to other independent bookstores, this one lacks that hipster “intellectual youth” vibe. On the other hand, it does have something of the ambience of “angry youth”: Lin has quite a collection of posters and first-hand reports of the early days of the Aboriginal movement, and these yellowed documents seem to bring the history of the indigenous peoples’ struggles back to life.

The bookstore also houses rare historical materials related to Aboriginal peoples. The jewel of the collection is a Chinese-language edition of the book The Pictorial Life of the Taiwan Aborigines During the Japanese Period, by Ushi­no­suke Mori, a Japanese anthropologist who pioneered the study of Taiwan’s Austronesian peoples. It’s not for sale.

For scholars of Aboriginal studies, the Fan Yi bookstore can also operate like a library, and Lin Ming-te and his wife Li An are like reference librarians. Graduate students often call asking about certain works, and, says Li, “All they have to do is name the book, and my husband immediately knows which shelf it’s on.” If the student doesn’t want to buy the volume in question, the couple will lend it out. “If it’s a rare book that’s not for sale or loan, we will photocopy the parts they need for them.”

Besides scholars, the shop also gets visits from the local community. Lin says that they have had chiefs of Aboriginal communities coming here to research genealogical data, and it’s common to see school-age children get together with their friends after school and come to the shop to leaf through children’s books.

You can also come here just for the ambience. When you open the back door of the shop, you feel like you have stepped onto a forest path. In the backyard Lin and his wife have set up a swing set and seats in the shade of big trees, creating a relaxed and leisurely space that feels like you are reading in a woody copse. This has become the most popular corner for visitors to Fan Yi, despite the mosquitoes that often congregate there.

Taking advantage of good weather, Lin and Li put some humidity-damaged books out into the sun to dry.

Nesting behavior to incubate reading

With the goal of promoting reading about and among indigenous peoples, the Fan Yi Art Books House is only the start for the husband-and-wife team of Lin and Li. Last year, they set up a “Bird’s Nest Book House,” with lower and upper levels, beneath a big tree in the Dong­yuan Aboriginal Community in Ping­tung’s Mu­dan Township, to promote reading among local Aboriginal children.

The Bird’s Nest Book House project has gotten support from a large number of people. The Hong Kong travel writer Cai Dao even came here as a volunteer to help with construction. Work was completed in April, after which donated children’s books began to arrive from all over. To mark the 115th anniversary of the birth of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of Le Petit Prince, Lin especially sought gifts of secondhand copies of this classic in various Chinese editions, which he has put on display in the Nest.

Already there are signs of success, as several parents from the Dong­yuan Community have recently been bringing their children to the Nest to read on weekends and after dinner.

Lin plans to construct similar book houses in other indigenous communities in Ping­tung and Tai­tung counties. He says that these can play the role of small-scale cultural centers in these areas, promoting not only general reading but also specifically spreading knowledge about traditional tribal culture.

Lin hopes that the book houses will also prove to be tourist attractions, serving especially to draw people looking for an “in-depth” experience or “knowledge tourism.”

Taking advantage of good weather, Lin and Li put some humidity-damaged books out into the sun to dry.

Imagination unbound

Lin says that he by no means disapproves of the development of the ordinary tourism industry in indigenous communities, but for him the ideal format is to have people come for “homestay” visits. He explains that this not only entails having people live in the homes of residents, but also requires thinking about how the hosts will treat their guests so that they will feel when their visit is over that they have had a deeply enriching experience, not a shallow one.

Lin refers to homestays as “the economics of making friends,” and sees the homestay model as one path for the local Aboriginal economy in the future. “Indigenous people have one enormous competitive advantage in this respect,” says Lin: Each tribe is chock full of narrative, rich in myths and ritual.

Lin envisions that independent bookstores will be one element adding to the attractiveness of each community. Letting his imagination run free, he says, “The Bird’s Nest Book Houses could even be performance spaces.”

Every indigenous community has many stories to tell, and the stories can be spoken or performed. To this end, Lin has already started asking members of the Dong­yuan Community to begin writing down tribal myths, tales of deities, and stories related to special flora and fauna, and to transform these into dramatic form. When homestay visitors come, the tribes­people can put on performances in the book houses or in outdoor spaces.

Lin’s hopes and expectations for indigenous book houses can be summarized in the phrase “lighting a beacon of change for the community.” In his mind, the most important purpose of these book houses is not to sell books, but to provide “backdrop” to indigenous peoples’ reading culture while also pioneering new economic opportunities. This “barbarian” is boldly staking out a claim for the value of his civilization.