Set in Stone:Keeping Ali Aboriginal Community Alive

When it takes this much effort to get to a place, it had better be impressive! This one was worth the walk.

In order to get a good look at Ali, in early July this reporter asked the husband-and-wife team of Bao Taide and Gu Xiuhui-core figures in eco-tourism in Ali who at that time were down in the lowlands in a veterans' home in Pingtung for the duration of the typhoon season-to guide her up the mountains. We followed Provincial Highway 24 west, and after passing through Sandimen entered Wutai Township. Thereafter, it was a slow-motion roller-coaster ride all the way. After rattling and bouncing up and down steep grades for more than an hour and a half as we passed through Yila, Shenshan, and Wutai, we finally arrived at Jilu. There a landslide blocked the road going forward, still six kilometers from Ali, which took another 1.5-hour hike to reach.

Winding through the emerald mountains, as we walked along the totally deserted highway, there was a sense of taking a solitary stroll through the vastness of the world. Along the way we passed several places where there had been landslides, with rocks large and small still "suspended" on the steeply sloping mountain face; we hurried past these at a trot. There were also one or two places where the collapse has been so complete that there was nothing left to fall, and we walked past these with calm and even steps. Along the whole route Bao Taide, with all our provisions on his back, walked without saying a word, living up to the reputation of Rukai men as silent types who keep their thoughts to themselves. His wife Gu Xiuhui, a Hakka, strolled casually carrying only a camera, and she would kneel to capture any attractive flowers or insects with her lens.

The Ali Aboriginal community, located in the most remote part of Wutai Township in the southern part of the Central Mountain Range, is a tranquil place removed from the world.(right) Rukai culture and history are very important to Lavuras Abaliwsu, the sixth-generation chief of Ali, who is now a teacher. His is one of the 10 households who have chosen to stay in their mountain hometown.

It was nearly noon when we reached Ali, at an altitude of 1300 meters. What first struck my eyes was a tranquil, other-worldly little hamlet. The first structure was Bao's guesthouse, with an elegant garden that was truly dazzling. Single-handedly, the man of the house had built it leaning against the mountain, with walls made of thick and heavy stone slabs, giving the place an antique air. A deck for viewing the scenery, made of unstained wood, jutted out over a cliff, while layers of peaks and greenery were laid out before the eyes; it was just like a Heaven on Earth.

The houses of the "upper settlement" were built along a slope. Most were mundane multistory structures made of concrete and fronted with tile, but there were also a few lovely homes decorated with stone slabs. Arriving at the 300-year-old slab home of Lavuras Abaliwsu, whose family holds the tribal chieftainship, there is a large open area in front where traditional celebrations or rituals are held. The house is only a little taller than a person, with thickset walls made from piled-up stone slabs. On the wall are a relief carving of a scene from the Rukai story of the hundred-pace snake and the princess as well as the Rukai name of the residence. High up along the wall are depictions of faces with "butterfly knot" headgear, guardians watching over the village. "The hundred-pace snake is the ancestor of the Rukai, and the butterfly knot symbolizes interdependence of resources and tribal unity," explains Gu Xiuhui. "Only the chief is allowed to use these as decorations."

When you walk on the roads around Ali, the air is filled with a refreshing, peaceful feeling. Plum trees are planted along the slope that runs from the upper settlement down to the lower settlement, but because of a lack of understanding of marketing and packaging, in the past people just ate them themselves or let them go to rot. "It's only in the last couple of years that we have been making fermented plum drinks, which are good for the circulation and have been popular with visitors," says Gu Xiuhui. In the past, the main crops planted in Ali were staples like millet, taro, and corn, purely to supply local needs. Almost no Aborigines have made a real living from agriculture, and there are no other industries in the mountains that people can rely on for their livelihoods. That's why out of the more than 300 villagers that used to live here, 85% have left to work or study elsewhere, and the vast majority of those still in the mountains are elderly.

You can see creative ideas and artistic talent in many corners of Ali.

How did eco-tourism get started? Bao Taide returned to his hometown more than a decade ago after a life of doing odd jobs as an "urban nomad." At first he tried raising cash crops like vegetables, chili peppers, jelly figs, and peaches, but his efforts were either washed out by typhoons or proved to be money-losing ventures, and he failed time after time. About six years ago, the idea of "recreational industries" began to be bandied about in the mountain communities, and local people discovered that many travelers to the nearby Wutai Artists Village would "stumble into" Ali and be amazed at what they found. So Bao decided to turn to tourism.

Bao is the youngest uncle of the chief, Lavuras Abaliwsu, and they won the support of the village elders and received a government subsidy to beautify local homes and plots of farmland, in order to create a community that would "ring with birdcall and be fragrant with flora." Several families renovated their houses to make homestays. Meanwhile Gu Xiuhui began making and transcribing audio recordings of interviews with elders.

In 2008, the Pingtung County Government commissioned Chen Mei-hui, an associate professor in the Department of Forestry at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, to come to Ali to assist in the creation of eco-tourism with an emphasis on conserving the surrounding environment in the process. This gave the community even more confidence about future prospects.

"Ali has tremendous potential for eco-tourism," says Chen. In terms of natural resources, Ali is located at the entrance to a vital habitat area for wild animals around the "Two Ghost Lakes" (Big Ghost Lake and Little Ghost Lake). There is a rich variety of animals, including birds, insects, and mammals. Its cultural resources are even more rare and important, because of all the Western Rukai, only Ali and its neighbor village of Jilu avoided relocation by either the Japanese colonial regime or the Nationalist government.

After Typhoon Morakot, the land that provided the foundation for Jilu had become vulnerable to landslides, leaving the upper settlement of Ali as the last remaining inhabitable bastion of continuity with the Rukai past. The home of the tribal chief is a living history museum: Inside the stone-slab house one can still find the traditional "three treasures"-clay pottery, lazurite beads, and bronze knives; below the house is a burial pit for the last three generations of the chief's family (traditionally the Rukai have buried deceased family members in a kneeling position beneath the stone floor of the home); and there is an endless supply of clan stories. Moreover, local people live in close interdependence with nature. For instance, they use natural cultivating methods that employ no pesticides or chemical fertilizers; make tables, chairs, and floors out of stone slabs; and have built a pavilion entirely out of local materials. "Traditional knowledge" has been far better preserved by residents here than in most other Aboriginal communities.

On the road linking the "upper" and "lower" settlements of Ali, there is a sturdy stone wall with carvings from Rukai culture and legends, like the entrance to a time tunnel.

With these innate advantages, plus the fact that the people of the village strongly agreed with moving in the direction of eco-tourism and worked hard to bone up on relevant knowledge, it was not long before word got around and visitors began streaming in. However, just as eco-tourism was getting on track, Typhoon Morakot struck, and the beautiful community they had built up over many years was virtually obliterated. Not only was the experience terrifying in itself, villagers were also forced to face the question of accepting designation as an uninhabitable area ("restricted area" in the legal lingo) and move as a group to the Changzhi permanent housing settlement.

The Rukai have strong solidarity and emphasize collective action. Early this year many of the residents of the upper settlement decided to move together with all the residents of the lower settlement down to the lowlands. Only 10 households, still deeply attached to the land, decided to stay in their hometown.

The enthusiasm of their old customers was also a force encouraging them to stay in Ali. "The road was only opened two months after Morakot, and although there was no electricity, a lot of friends had already started asking when we would reopen for business. They told us they were willing to come up even if we only had an open fire and some candles!" says Gu Xiuhui.

"Although the environment has been transformed, looking at what nature really is and does is at the very heart of eco-tourism," says Chen Mei-hui. Morakot could in fact be the opportunity for both residents and visitors to ponder: How should people adapt to the changes in the environment? When should we try to control, how should we try to control, and when should we put down our tools and humbly return control to nature?

Based on thinking like this, Ali's remaining residents have decided not to open to the public during typhoon season (July to October), and to close their doors even in other seasons whenever the weather turns bad. As for the hard-to-maintain six-kilometer road from Jilu to Ali, they will just ask travelers to hike the route in the spirit of authentic low-development nature travel.

The Ali Aboriginal community, located in the most remote part of Wutai Township in the southern part of the Central Mountain Range, is a tranquil place removed from the world.(right) Rukai culture and history are very important to Lavuras Abaliwsu, the sixth-generation chief of Ali, who is now a teacher. His is one of the 10 households who have chosen to stay in their mountain hometown.

Chen Mei-hui states that the conditions for eco-tourism are tougher in the wake of the disaster, and it would be hard to survive operating only six months a year. The residents will have to "multitask" in order to develop in a sustainable way. Therefore she won agreement from the Forestry Bureau for an experimental plan, that she began in April of 2010, to hire five of the residents as monitors for the nearby Two Ghost Lakes, with tasks to include monitoring plant and animal numbers and behaviors, plant recovery in landslide areas, and soil fissures and erosion, with a monthly salary of about NT$17,000.

"By doing this we not only give local people some basic income," says Chen, "it's really an enormously positive thing for forest conservation." Because local people are close to the scene and are very familiar with the local environment, they can monitor on a regular basis and compile lots of up-to-date data, which is a lot more efficient than funding some expensive outside "expert" to make the occasional foray into the mountains. With such "on-site training," residents will gain a deeper understanding of the close connection between nature conservation and sustainable development for the community, and will develop high sensitivity to changes in the environment, so that illegal loggers can't carry on with impunity in the mountains.

Chen avers: "To be willing to stay even with such a threatening environment, these people must really love the mountains." It would not necessarily be a good thing for the forests if all residents were to be pulled out, because that would create a kind of no-man's land that was only entered by people who wanted to rape the environment without restraint. If a people and community with this much love for the mountains could work in partnership with the government to protect the high-altitude forests, not only would this create job opportunities for people in their hometown, it would also train indigenous people to manage their own communities in the future, creating a situation in which the government, Aborigines, and Nature all come out ahead.

Bao Taide and Gu Xiulian, husband and wife, are deeply attached to the mountains, and have no regrets about all the effort they put into eco-tourism in Ali before the disaster set everyone back to square one. The owner of the cat in the picture hasn't returned in days, and its hungry look is heartrending.

But the question remains: What can be done to avoid another disaster when typhoon season comes ? Bao Taide says that there is a consensus among the remaining residents: If there is any threat, they will take it upon themselves to get to safety, and there will be no need to expend social resources to rescue them.

The only problem is that there has never been any agreement with the government on where they would live while away from the mountains, so that given current circumstances their only options for typhoon-season housing would be, if not military barracks, then shelters erected in the permanent housing area of Changzhi Baihe (where former residents of Ali who have permanently relocated to the lowlands live). But these would be publicly owned, and would not belong to any particular household. If this is how things work out, then every year the people of Ali would have to pack everything they own and move once down and once up the mountains, and that would be a real hassle. It would also mean dependence on the government for food and shelter.

Therefore the residents of Ali have decided to pool their funds and buy a roughly 500-square-meter plot of land near Changzhi Baihe, and, following the model established by the people of Namasia in Kaohsiung County, ask World Vision Taiwan to fund the construction of lowland shelters that Ali residents would then own. The township head has already agreed to this plan in principle, and is currently waiting for a response from the county government.

Ke Qingxiong, director of the Ali Reconstruction Association, who is just about to move into permanent housing in Changzhi Baihe, emphasizes: "The 10 households who stayed behind in Ali are not being stubborn or irrational, in fact they are field marshals in the defense of our people." Once most of the Rukai have been relocated into safe permanent housing in the lowlands, the next step will be to do something to maintain as much as possible of the old homeland in the mountains. Although the geology there is not yet stable enough for physical reconstruction, and must remain under observation for some time, there is no need to wait before going ahead with cultural reconstruction and promotion of special local products. And the key to keeping the culture and life of the original hometown together will be developing eco-tourism.

"When I have free time I will definitely go back and act as a guide," says Lavuras Abaliwsu, the sixth-generation chief of Ali, who teaches in Zhongzheng Junior High School in the lowlands of Pingtung. He often reminds the people of his community that the goal of eco-tourism is not to get rich, but just to make a living. What is more important is for Ali to be a community filled with good vibes and Rukai culture, so that the tribal spirit characterized by the sacred purity of the lily can be passed on into the future.

Although on the face of it Typhoon Morakot ripped the tangible village of Ali in two, the Rukai are as one in their hopes and plans for keeping the geographical heart of their culture and traditions alive. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, they know: "There's no place like home."

The grandmother above is using shell ginger strips to weave a sleeping mat. The people of Ali still retain a lot of traditional knowledge, but since the disaster many of those with this knowledge have relocated to the lowlands. Before Typhoon Morakot, you could also often see women busy in the fields, as pictured below. Will it ever be possible to see peaceful scenes like these again?