Taiwan Today

A striking museum in Taipei offers valuable insights into the lives and histories of Taiwan's indigenous tribes—an achievement all the more remarkable for being the vision of one inspired and very generous man.

June 1994 saw the inauguration of the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, the first museum devoted exclusively to Taiwan's aboriginal culture, and as such a momentous event in the history of the island's indigenous peoples.

The museum is located in northern Taipei, just across the street from the National Palace Museum. Designed by a well-known Taiwanese architect, it has an extraordinarily impressive exterior, which was influenced by the longhouses typi­cally found in tropical rain forest areas, such as Indonesia and the Pacific archi­pelagoes, regions that are home to many of the world's extant aboriginal tribes. The building is shaped like a capital “A” bisected vertically by a single pillar. It is completely white, except for the footings—those are paved with iron-colored slate, a material much used by Taiwan's Paiwan tribe. The thin, gray­ striped pattern of the steeply sloping roof again evokes materials that would typi­cally be used in the construction of a longhouse, such as bamboo or lumber. The façade, entirely composed of glass, reflects a distant, green mountain range.

The single, central pillar that serves as a visual link between the roof-gable and the front steps is a marvelous artistic crea­tion. Carved by sculptor Kuo Ching-chih (郭清治), the pillar is over thirteen meters high and more than a meter in diameter. The simple white granite and the human­-figure motifs of this symbolic totem pole fairly resonate with the fortitude and sim­ple dignity of Taiwan's indigenous people.

On entering the museum, visitors first encounter a concave area housing a display which explains the demographic distribution of Taiwan's indigenous tribes. Their origin is unclear, but the most probable theory is that the original ten tribes mi­grated to the island from the South Pacific, via New Guinea and the Philippines, roughly five thousand years ago. Except for the Pingpu tribe, who are scattered all over the island, and the Yami, who live on Orchid Island off the southeastern coast of Taiwan, the remaining tribes (the Atayal, Ami, Bunun, Paiwan, Puyuma, Rukai, Saisiyat, and Tsou) all inhabit either the Central Mountain Range or the narrow land corridor along Taiwan's east coast. Today the indigenous population amounts to approximately 340,000, less than 2 percent of the island's total. Linguistically, all these indigenous peoples belong to the Austronesian family of languages.

In accordance with Paiwan custom, a stone stele on which an ancestor's portrait or some other family emblem has been carved is usually erected beside the chief’s dwelling. A fine example of such a stele can be found to the left of the entrance area, behind the tribal distribution display. It was carved by a Paiwan sculptor called Sakuliu, and depicts a witch practicing a divination ritual in preparation for a hunt­ing expedition. Immediately to the right of the stele is a handmade Yami canoe that seizes the viewer's attention with its elegant curves and exquisite decoration of black, white, and red patterns.

A hugely eloquent display of photo­graphs of tribal people can be found on the right wall at the back of the entrance area. So many silently gazing faces, tattooed, weather-beaten, young, old—each tells the story of a human being who has been marginalized by society for a long time.

The second floor exhibits consist of various artifacts: tools and receptacles, along with some musical instruments. Nine large urns dominate the center of the room. On either side of the entrance stand models of a Yami shack, and a pavilion used by Tsou males for their assemblies. There is also a miscellaneous collection comprising a Bunun barn, an Ami furnace, a Paiwan stone house, Ami and Yami pot­tery, musical instruments from theAtayal, Bunun, and Paiwan tribes, rattan recepta­cles, hunting weapons, spinning and weav­ing instruments, and two Yami wooden posts symbolizing support for the “soul” of a family dwelling.

The pottery collection includes not only receptacles used for storing water, wine, and salted meat, but also some ancient urns from the Paiwan and Rukai tribes. These are used as wedding gifts, often handed down from generation to generation. Their patterns dis­tinguish them as masculine or feminine. Sometimes the urns provide testimony to the vicissitudes of a family, or describe the in­spiration of a legend. Nearby, the museum screens a number of videos that explain the processes of carving, sculpting, pottery­ making, and spinning and weaving.

The costumes and adornments dis­played on the third floor undoubtedly com­prise the museum's most visually striking collection. The clothing, which mostly consists of splendid ceremonial garments, is exquisite. Flamboyant colors and pat­terns reveal the unique aesthetic values of each tribe. The accessories, such as glass­bead necklaces, are as colorful as the cos­tumes. This collection is rounded off with photographs demonstrating many rich styles of embellishment, including a wide variety of tattoos.

The basement houses a vast mural of text and pictures illustrating prehistoric Tai­wan cultures and aboriginal excavation sites. There are also ritual instruments, in­cluding pot shards used for divination pur­poses, which reflect the early animistic beliefs of the indigenous peoples. The exam­ples of Yami armor, helmets, and weaponry are of particular interest. The cone-shaped helmets, made of pounded silver, are de­signed to cover the heads of Yami males down as far as the shoulders, with a single rectangular slit permitting the wearer to see. The suits of armor, made from coconut shell, wood, and rattan, have enormous aesthetic value, although they were certainly used. The daggers and swords, which look like deadly weapons, are actually instruments for protecting the Yami from evil spirits.

In a nearby room visitors can view five short videos about the aborigines' geographical distribution and respective features, choosing a Mandarin, Japanese, or English-language soundtrack. There are also two touch-screen computer displays, although at present the information is somewhat limited, providing merely a brief description of costumes and artifacts.

Astonishingly, all of this was inspired by just one person: businessman Safe C.F. Lin (林清官), president of the Shung Ye Group. The museum cost US$685,000 to build, with Lin person­ally donating the land, the construction costs, and his own collection of tribal ar­tifacts, which comprise the bulk of the collections.

Why did this entrepreneur become a philanthropist, and why is he so interested in aboriginal arts? As well as being a mu­nificent benefactor, Lin is also an intensely private individual who gracefully declines to be interviewed. But Eric Yu(游浩乙), who has been Lin's secretary for many years and is now secretary-general of the N. W.Lin Foundation for Culture and Edu­cation, is happy to explain the thinking behind the enterprise. “Our president [Safe Lin] can give something back through this museum,” he says. “Taiwan is where he built up his business. He feels it's only fair that he should return some of the profits he's made here to the public."

Lin has been collecting early native paintings and folk artifacts for more than twenty years. “He was particularly drawn to the vigor and naivete of aboriginal artifacts,” Yu says. Lin originally intended to build a museum to stock two of his personal collec­tions—aboriginal artifacts, and late 19th and 20th century works by Taiwan artists. These two categories did not really complement each other, however, so he changed the project into a museum for aboriginal cul­ture. The N. W. Lin Foundation, named for Safe Lin's father, was set up in 1985 in order to handle the administrative side.

But this museum is not just the acci­dental product of an art collector's subjec­tive preferences. Nor is it merely a means of churning entrepreneurial profits back into society. The planning and building of the museum coincided with a native move­ment that has been flourishing over the past decade, and some people see a con­nection. “In the 1960s no one studied Tai­wan cultural issues,” says Sun Ta-chuan (孫大川), a member of the Puyuma tribe who teaches philosophy at Soochow Uni­versity. “Interest in native culture only be­gan to flower in the 1970s. I think that the emergence of a museum dedicated to abo­riginal culture can be seen as one logical, ultimate goal of this native movement.”

Sun's words highlight the ambitious nature of the project. And, as with all am­bitious projects, it has attracted its fair share of criticism. There is consensus about the building's refined architecture, particularly its splendid window design and advanced maintenance system. “The museum's building and facilities are very good,” says Pu Chung-cheng(浦忠成), a member of the Tsou tribe and an associate professor in Chinese Literature at National Hualien Teachers College, “but I was astonished to discover that there isn't a single Tsou artifact in the place. The col­lections mostly cover the southern Taiwan tribes, such as the Rukai and Paiwan. I agree that those tribes produce the most refined artifacts, but shouldn't the collec­tions be more comprehensive?”

Soochow university's Sun Ta-chuan also has criticisms. “Shung Ye Museum is like most other museums in Taiwan,” he says. “It just labels the artifacts without providing dates or other relevant back­ground information. In that respect, their research people have a long way to go.” He thinks that the information provided on most exhibits is simplistic, while the com­puter and video resources are insufficient and not up-to-date. “Shung Ye Museum is different from traditional local museums, since it's the only museum where the ex­hibits entirely concentrate on aboriginal cultures,” Sun says. “But it's still just pas­sively waiting for visitors to walk through the door.”

Some of these criticisms are countered by the director of the museum's research facility, Perng-juh Shyong. “Because Safe Lin originally collected aboriginal artifacts based on personal aesthetic standards,” says, “our collection isn't as complete as that of an ethno­graphic museum. On the other hand, our visitors enjoy facilities that let them appre­ciate these gorgeous artifacts as the works of art they truly are.” He points out that Lin purchased most of the artifacts from Japa­nese brokers who were unable or unwill­ing to provide complete information. To remedy the deficiency, some items are being sent to National Taiwan Universi­ty's anthropology department, where they will be checked and verified by reference to the university's own collection.

The museum staff are also making spirited efforts to shake off their “passive” reputation. One important initiative was to invite indigenous people to organize their own informational activities. “We're well aware that we're dealing with real flesh­-and-blood people here,” Shyong says. “The aborigines’ image has been smeared and distorted for long enough, and we're trying to give them back the power of self­ interpretation. But we're also striving to facilitate interaction between the tribes and the museum itself.”

This interaction came to life last year, with the presentation of two major activ­ity programs: “Pilgrimage to Puyuma Cul­ture,” and “The Life of the Tsou.” These were exceptional in two respects. First and most important, they broke the monopoly previously enjoyed by ethnic Chinese over interpretation of aboriginal culture. Sec­ondly, each program focused exclusively on a specific tribe—previous ones had been designed to give a general introduc­tion to all the island's indigenous peoples. Individual activities ranged from exhibi­tions of traditional hunting and sacrificial ceremonies, to religious rites and their related artifacts, lectures, performances, and even parties where traditional food was prepared and served. The “Life of the Tsou” also featured some modern dance repertoires choreographed by the tribe's younger generation. Many of these activi­ties took place on the large open space alongside the museum, also donated by Safe Lin.

Soochow University's Sun Ta-chuan and Pu Chung-cheng of National Hualien Teachers College helped organize and host both programs. Their budget was very tight. Some tribal people either worked for nothing, or accepted just the minimum transportation allowance. “It's embarrassing to have to ask my people to support ac­tivities with so little prospect of reward,” says Pu, who gave his own time for free. The entire budget for the “The Life of the Tsou” project, which lasted over three months, was a mere US$11,100 of which only a tiny part was allocated to the tribal people who actually spent months plan­ning, studying for, and rehearsing the programs.

Despite these strenuous efforts, attendance figures have been a somewhat disappointing. The management committee of the N. W. Lin foundation decided to reject commercial advertising as a means of raising the museum's visibility, instead preferring to draw visitors through a vari­ety of activities and other initiatives. Museum staff first sought the cooperation of government officials and travel agen­cies. When that met with a less than enthu­siastic response, they focused on a new target—schools. Shung Ye employees were mobilized to carry out surveys of local educational institutions and highlight certain schools with the help of the data they gathered. Armed with this informa­tion, museum staff embarked on a program of school visits.

To date, staffers have promoted their museum in more than a thousand schools. Their efforts have borne much fruit. Tai­pei's American School and the Japanese School have both incorporated a visit to the museum into their outreach programs. Pri­mary schools have started to organize tours. Research director Perng-juh Shyong fondly recalls how once a big primary school in the south of Taiwan sent up no fewer than twenty tour buses of pupils without notifying the museum in advance. “There we were, with some eight hundred pupils arriving any moment!” he says with a smile. “We were thrilled, yes, but what on earth were we going to do with them!” In the end the pupils were split into four groups. While one group visited the Mu­seum of Formosan Aborigines, another toured the National Palace Museum and a third watched the museum's video cas­settes in their tour buses. Meanwhile, the last group learned aboriginal dances on the square beside the museum.

The success of this schools program notwithstanding, the level of visits seems to have reached a plateau. Museum staff have various theories to account for this. According to them, some indigenous peo­ple cannot understand why they should have to pay to see their own cultural legacy, whereas certain Chinese people still view indigenous culture with disdain. “Most people in this society only care about making money; they don't give a damn about the imminent disappearance of aboriginal culture,” says Lee Jen-kuei (李壬癸), a researcher at the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica, who has devised a romanization system for Taiwan's aboriginal lan­guages. And even some anthropological scholars are reluctant to go to the mu­seum. They take the view that the only way to study real aboriginal life is by visiting the tribal regions, and maintain that the artifacts should be preserved by the tribes themselves.

Sun Ta-chuan, however, thinks that this issue should be approached in a more sophisticated way. “The tribal areas are too remote to be accessible to the public,” he says. “What's more, the skills needed to maintain a museum, and to preserve arti­facts in Taiwan's humid weather conditions, are beyond the tribes' own abilities, financial or otherwise. A museum in a big city can attract the public and draw foreign visitors.”

Even before the museum building was finished, its administrators were offering generous grants to promote research related to Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. They gave US$37,000 to Academia Sinica to ad­vance a five-year project involving the translation into Chinese of earlier Japa­nese research on aboriginal mores. They have also made donations to writers and filmmakers concerned with aboriginal culture. In addition, four Taiwan univer­sities have each received US$111,000 to sponsor aboriginal students majoring in liberal arts or social sciences.

Foreign universities have also ben­efited from the museum's generosity. In March 1993 the museum donated US$300,000 to the University of Califor­nia, Berkeley, to promote research, semi­nars, publications, and exhibitions. In the following year, the museum signed an agreement with the University of Tokyo under which it would donate US$380,000 to support various studies by Japanese scholars.

Some academics question the wisdom of these munificent grants to foreign uni­versities, particularly in light of the muse­um's limited expenditure on activities designed to promote it locally. “For a mu­seum that is still in its infancy, such a big outflow looks suspiciously like ‘strength­ening the branches and twigs, but weaken­ing the trunk,’” Sun Ta-chuan says, quoting a popular Chinese saying. “The first priority should be to augment the col­lections.” But the museum's administra­tors do not agree. “Our president [Safe Lin] is trying to focus international attention on Taiwan aboriginal studies,” Eric Yu says. “He also hopes that these overseas dona­tions will eventually attract both talent and financial support.”

Despite these controversies, no one can cast aspersions on the good intentions of the museum's founder. “Although I'm not entirely satisfied with the administra­tion, I still admire the Shung Ye Group,” Pu Chung-cheng says. “After all, very few businesspeople care about culture at all, let alone minority cultures.”

The museum becomes even more significant if scholars are right in pre­dicting that the aboriginal languages will become extinct sometime within the next half century. “I don't think we can prevent Formosan aboriginal cul­ture from dying out,” says Shigeru Tsuchida, the museum's director. “But what we can do here is record it, describe it ,and try to make the public understand what aboriginal culture is. And the task is urgent.”