Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, the descendants of maritime people who settled far and wide, developed methods here in Taiwan for using plants for many purposes, including food, medicine, household utensils, and construction. For them, the mountain forests were like an enormous pantry where they could go for resources at any time, on condition that they took only what they needed, leaving the rest for future generations.
The ancestral wisdom of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples in the use of foodstuffs can be seen as a forerunner of “food and agriculture education” (FAE), which has been around for many years across the globe. The aim of FAE is to provide classes and hands-on activities to help people understand the cultural background, industrial development, and dietary health aspects of food, and from there to learn to better appreciate the foods on their tables.
In 2018, the Ethnobotany, Food and Farming Education Center (EFFEC) of the Experimental Forest of National Taiwan University (NTU), the first institution of its kind in Taiwan, was established in Xinyi Township, Nantou County. Its permanent exhibition displays 36 plants frequently used by Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. Moreover, its first special exhibition focused on millet, an important grain for the local Bunun indigenous people, to give visitors a better understanding of this critical element in Bunun culture.
The Bunun millet calendar
Xinyi Township has Taiwan’s largest population of Bunun people. It is also one of the townships surrounding Yushan, Taiwan’s highest peak. Because their homeland is in the mountains, the Bunun are also called “the people above the clouds.”
When cultivating their crops, the Bunun would tend them and hold rituals based on the lunar calendar. To record the cultivation process, they even developed a set of primitive symbols which they inscribed on wooden boards to make a day-to-day record of important events and farming activities. The Bunun are the only indigenous people in Taiwan with this tradition. During the era of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan, Hirosuke Yokoo, a Japanese police officer, discovered a calendar board in Xinyi Township, and later three more such boards were found. The “millet calendar” currently on display at the EFFEC is a reproduction.
The EFFEC permanent exhibition “Original Mountain Feast” introduces 36 plant species commonly used by indigenous peoples in Taiwan.
Forest feast
In the EFFEC’s permanent exhibition, entitled “Original Mountain Feast,” the first of the plants commonly used by indigenous peoples that visitors learn about is the Formosan nato tree (Palaquium formosanum). It was frequently used by the Tao people of Orchid Island to build their fishing boats, and from this we know that in the past Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were skilled in boat building and navigation. However, at present none of Taiwan’s other indigenous peoples apart from the Tao take boats out onto the ocean; instead they have become mountain forest dwellers.
Before the appearance in Taiwan of spring onions, ginger, and garlic, indigenous peoples were already using native spices in their cuisine. For example, mountain pepper (Litsea cubeba) could be used to marinate meat, to make soup, or to remove unpleasant odors from foods. Taiwan cinnamon (Cinnamomum insularimontanum) was mostly used to add flavor to foods, but was also a natural preservative. Meanwhile, the Thao people used ailanthus prickly ash (Zanthoxylum ailanthoides) to marinate meat or to make chicken soup. Other common dietary ingredients included cassava (Manihot esculenta), which could be cooked and eaten directly or crushed into a powder to be shaped into dumplings, as well as pigeon peas (Cajanus cajan), which are rich in protein. Although the pigeon pea was only introduced under Japanese rule, it became naturalized as a common crop in indigenous communities.
In each indigenous community there were curative recipes to treat illnesses and injuries, which were passed down by oral tradition. During the Japanese era, Kinji Yamada did field research and collected specimens, to produce the first-ever monograph on the medicinal plants of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. The book recorded the plants’ scientific names and how they were used, arranged according to the parts of the body and illnesses that they treated.
Some plants used to ward off evil do in fact have therapeutic effects. For example, the Bunun make necklaces for children using the rhizome of grassy-leaved sweet flag (Acorus gramineus) together with beads made from Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi), to symbolize their wishes for the children’s wellbeing, and indeed grassy-leaved sweet flag does have the effect of relieving stress and calming the mind. Meanwhile, the chameleon plant (Houttuynia cordata), used by the Bunun for medicinal purposes, is an ingredient in a traditional Chinese medicine formulation, NRICM 101, that is said to reduce the severity of Covid-19.
In order to preserve indigenous peoples’ abundant knowledge of medicinal plants, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has produced a book called Compendium of Medicinal Plants Used by the Indigenous People of Taiwan. They even put out an English-language edition so that more people can learn about indigenous peoples’ medical wisdom.
Living off the land
These days when hikers go into the mountains they carry a lot of equipment with them, but Bunun hunters would normally only carry a machete, some salt and a cooking pot. According to the book Wander Lamuan: The Ethnobotany of Bunun in Formosan Central Ridge, when Bunun people go into the mountains they carry small chili peppers that their families have pickled and place them on their chests to ward off chills. They also observe the distribution of sun-loving and shade-loving plants to determine the terrain and environment. Sun-loving species like the Taiwan red pine (Pinus taiwanensis), Taiwan white pine (Pinus morrisonicola), and charcoal tree (Trema orientale) can be used as firewood, and when returning to their village Bunun people would burn some on a nearby hillside to tell their fellow villagers that they were on their way home. On the other hand, if you see shade-loving plants such as Japanese stinging nettle (Urtica thunbergiana) or fishbone fern (Nephrolepis cordifolia), this means there is a source of water nearby.
As noted in the EFFEC’s permanent exhibition, indigenous peoples used orange jasmine (Murraya exotica) to reduce swelling, while the Truku people applied Taiwan kudzu (Pueraria montana) to stanch bleeding. For the Rukai and Paiwan peoples, giant elephant’s ear (Alocasia odora) not only can be used to wrap foods, but also can be mashed into a medicinal poultice. In addition, indigenous peoples mostly employ shell ginger (Alpinia)—of which there are 18 species in Taiwan, 12 of them endemic—to make utensils and summer sleeping mats, but it is also an ingredient in the Japanese medicinal candy Jintan.
Some plants have tough, pliable fibers that can be used for weaving. Examples include ramie (Boehmeria nivea) and banana fiber, the latter being used by the Kavalan indigenous people. Not only are the techniques used for preparing and weaving these materials important components of indigenous culture, the practice also expresses the spirit of the “circular economy,” with all materials being put to good use.
Indigenous peoples are reclaiming their traditional culture by renewing the cultivation of millet. (photo by Jimmy Lin)
Plants in indigenous culture
Besides explaining the uses and effects of plants commonly used by indigenous peoples, the EFFEC also uses text and images to tell stories about plants and indigenous communities.
Roxburgh sumac (Rhus chinensis var. roxburghii) has a wide variety of uses: Its ripe fruit can be used as a substitute for salt, and ash from its wood can serve as an ingredient in gunpowder. However, for young Paiwan men who wanted to demonstrate their capacity for hard work to the parents of their loved one, cutting down and bringing back the relatively soft-wooded Roxburgh sumac did not pass muster; the harder subcostate crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia subcostata) was a more persuasive symbol of prowess.
Chung Ping-hung is the owner of Archicake Design, whose team designed the exhibition “Original Mountain Feast.” He hopes the exhibits will give visitors a deeper understanding of the relationship between plants and folk traditions. Therefore, he says, “We decided to display plants and works of art directly.” Items include bags woven from ramie, necklaces made with Job’s tears as beads, and hats woven from yellow rattan (Calamus quiquesetinervius). The EFFEC even invited the Paiwan nose flute master Pairang Pavavaljung to make a nose flute from blowpipe bamboo (Bambusa dolichomerithalla). The flute is inscribed with images of the hundred-pace snake (Deinagkistrodon acutus), which is a symbol of noble families, and with human figures.
Another item on display, which took six months to complete, is a Saisiyat hip bell (tabaa’sang). In fact, hip bells can normally only be acquired by inheritance, but the curatorial team from EFFEC and the NTU Experimental Forest management team communicated for a long time with Saisiyat weaver Yo’aew a Kalih Baba:i’ until she finally agreed to make a hip bell for the exhibition by the traditional method of stringing together beads made from Job’s tears inside bamboo tubes.
There are many Bunun indigenous communities and related scenery in the vicinity of the EFFEC. Staff at the NTU Experimental Forest hope that visitors going to Dongpu to soak in the hot springs or to the Bunun village of Kalibuan (Chinese name: Wangxiang) to view cherry blossoms will also take in a visit to the EFFEC, so as to better understand indigenous cultures and the spirit of the indigenous peoples through their commonly used plants. As a Bunun elder says in a video at the beginning of the exhibition: “Use what you need, and no more.” So when you enter the “giant pantry” of the mountain forest, remember that while its resources are abundant, you should leave enough for others and the next generation to enjoy.
For more pictures, please click 《Bounty of the Forests: The Plant Lore of Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples》
