Every year, from November to March, millions of purple crow butterflies from northeastern Taiwan overwinter in Mao­lin, which lies at the border of Kao­hsiung and Ping­tung. The majestic sight of those butterflies filling mountain valleys has caused the town to be known as “the homeland of purple crow butterflies.”

When you go farther up into the mountains of Mao­lin, you reach the Ru­kai settlement of Kunga­da­vane (or ­Duona as it is known in Chinese). The village is famous for its stone-slab houses and Black Rice Festival. In 2009, Typhoon Mora­kot wrought havoc here. The flooding moved large quantities of mud and rock, destroying Kunga­da­vane’s hot springs and temporarily interrupting the flow of tourist dollars to local homestays.

After the loss of the hot springs, a Ru­kai named Mege, 41, and her husband ­Isamu, who is Pai­wan, wondered: “What are elders hereabouts to do? And what can we do to help out the tribe?”

Coffee—a.k.a. “black gold”—provided the answer.

Every weekend a steady stream of tourists make their way to ­Kungdavane’s Yishanmu coffee shop to try the locally cultivated joe.

Mege works as a junior high school teacher and Isamu as a police officer in Ping­tung, where their children go to school, but on weekends they return to Kunga­da­vane to help out in the village. In the year before Mo­ra­kot struck, they had built a stone-slab house there with the dual goals of both preserving the legacy of stone-slab architecture and of creating a space for displaying examples of local Aboriginal handicrafts.

Because Mege’s family has 200 coffee trees, they also thought it made sense to sell some coffee there in their spare time. Mege’s father and husband share the Aboriginal name of Isamu, so the husband and wife decided to name this unique stone-slab coffee house with a similar-sounding Chinese name: Yi­shanmu.

After the devastation of Mo­ra­kot, they decided to push coffee as a Kunga­da­vane product and use Yi­shanmu as a “classroom” to teach people how to grow coffee.

“On my way to school as a kid, I passed a big forest of coffee trees,” says Mege, recalling how coffee trees used to be quite common in the village.

She says that the first coffee trees in Kunga­da­vane were planted decades ago. Now villagers can simply nurture seedlings by planting seeds in the soil. Within three years the young trees will bear fruit. Farmers can quickly see real economic benefits. That point proved to be very persuasive to the village elders.

What’s more, the high elevations of 500–1200 meters around the village are far more suited to growing coffee than the lowlands, and farmers can grow coffee on the high slopes without using pesticides. These characteristics make their beans highly attractive to consumers.

“Coffee is definitely a crop with which Aborigines enjoy advantages over lowland Han farmers,” says Mege unhesitatingly.

The Paiwan Isamu and his Rukai wife Mege return to Mege’s ­hometown of Kungdavane on weekends to run a coffee shop and to teach the elderly farmers there how to increase their incomes by ­growing coffee.

After Mo­ra­kot, Yi­shanmu shut down for two years, not reopening until the end of 2011. At that time, there were already more than a dozen families in the village that had joined the local coffee producers’ cooperative, which sells their coffee to Yishanmu.

From the cultivation of the coffee trees to the roasting of the beans to the brewing of the coffee, every detail can affect the flavor of the beverage. For that reason, Mege has developed a special curriculum to raise understanding of coffee among local farmers. All of them now recognize the importance of avoiding pesticides and herbicides and of using labor-intensive natural farming techniques.

Isamu and Mege have played different roles in the process that has turned Kunga­da­vane into a coffee town. Mege is extraverted and animated and has strong organizational skills. She is extremely good at conveying the gist of coffee growing techniques to the old farmers of the village. On the other hand, ­Isamu is a coffee connoisseur, well versed in the art of brewing and savoring a fine cup of joe.

It turns out that ­Isamu’s Pai­wan relatives in his hometown in Ping­tung are all coffee experts. His older brother in the Tu­ku­vule tribal settlement (known as De­wen in Chinese) and his cousin in Ma­ka­za­ya­zaya (Ma­jia in Chinese) have separately been operating coffee plantations (Ka­du­voo and La Tu­vu­tulj). They both produce brands of coffee with appellations that derive from their respective plantations, which have acquired a measure of renown.

As the son-in-law of a Rukai family, Isamu hasn’t allowed his elders to outdo him. He and his wife Mege have created their own brand of locally grown coffee, called Kunga­da­vane after the village. In addition, the cousins have launched a joint promotional campaign under the heading De­ma­duo, which combines the pronunciations of the first syllable in each of the Chinese names of their three villages. Together they have thus raised the profile of high-quality local beans that have been earning much praise within the industry.

Mege reveals that at a coffee competition held in Taiwan the year before last, coffee experts from Hawaii, a leading realm of organic coffee, were stunned by the high quality of three samples of organic coffee they tasted. One of these was De­ma­duo’s. After visiting production areas in Tu­ku­vule, Ma­ka­za­ya­zaya and Kunga­da­vane, they signed a 15-year supply agreement with the three growers. The deal offers proof positive that Taiwan coffee can meet the demands of Western coffee mavens.

When Mao­lin’s De­le­riga Bridge was completed in April of this year, it ended the transportation inconveniences that had plagued Mao­lin since Mo­ra­kot. Getting to Kunga­da­vane is much easier now. The veil has once again been removed from this mountain valley community. Now 40–50 tour buses are coming each weekend, and many travelers rush straight for the coffee as soon as they arrive.

But Kunga­da­vane’s coffee, however high in quality, is produced in such small quantities that travelers might not be able to get any even when they make the trip up there. When visitors say they want to drink the local brew but supplies are exhausted, their hostess Mege will tactfully suggest that they try coffee from Tu­ku­vule or Ma­ka­za­ya­zaya instead. The flavors of those coffees might differ slightly, but the beans have been cultivated with no less sincerity.

Customers visiting Yi­shanmu can pick beans that have been treated a variety of ways. For instance, those who like a strong flavor can pick “sun dried” beans. Mege explains that this method, wherein you allow the whole bean including its shell to dry in the hot sun of the southern mountains, best captures the local flavor.

After the beans have been selected, the man of the house steps forward to demonstrate the art of brewing coffee. Although ­Isamu is highly skilled at creating patterns in the foam of cappuccinos, he recommends that first-time visitors try Yi­shanmu’s highest-quality unblended coffee black. “The truest flavor,” he says, is best.

Thanks to coffee, and to the hard work of Mege and ­Isamu, Kunga­da­vane has moved out from under the dark legacy of Mo­ra­kot. In front of Yi­shanmu’s stone-slab building is a sign that reads: “Mu-da-a-na.” It’s Ru­kai for “welcome.”