BulauBulau
Mysterious Utopia Hidden in the Remote Mountains of Yilan
If you honor and treat the land with tenderness, it will return the love back.
Just over an hour drive from Taipei, BulauBulau is an aboriginal village, or as we would like to call it, a mysterious utopia hidden in the remote mountains of Yilan. There, the Atayal people work tirelessly to conserve, revitalize and share the cultural heritage and food traditions passed onto them by their ancestors.
Lo Kah Su!
Just before we entered the village, a warm greeting interrupted tribe elder Kwali’s introduction. “Repeat after me Lo Kah Su! You’re not allowed to enter the village if they can’t heard you!” joked Kwali. 19 years ago, the Atayal elders established BulauBulau. Each elder had a different skill – some were good at farming, some hunting and some architecture. All tribal houses were designed by tribal elders with backgrounds in landscape or architectural design, silvergrass and bamboo huts were built using local materials. However, due to policy changes, more recent houses were built as a combination of modern architecture and traditional wisdom passed down from the elders.
Lunch at the tribe’s silvergrass hut
Treat the land in respect of the laws of nature
All the food we had that day was grown with natural farming methods, which is focused on quality over quantity. The Atayal people respect the cycle of nature, and truly implement the concept of Farm to Table, providing each dish warmth and life. We were welcomed with millet marinated salt-cured pork and millet wine. Then, Kwali brought a basket full of freshly harvested shiitake mushrooms, which the more it rains, the better and the more they grow. On the day of our trip, it had been raining for a whole month in Taipei. As expected, the mushrooms had the most delightful aroma, and after being roasted, they were as juicy as they were flavorful, any extra seasoning would be excessive.
Things that money can't buy
The most surprising thing at BulauBulau was their millet wine, from planting the millet to making the wine. The tribe even has a winery dedicated to making millet wine and a seed-storing warehouse for all the cultivation. Kwali shared that in recent years, most ‘millet wines’ on the market are made with glutinous rice instead of millet, and the reason behind this difficulty of making ‘traditional and real millet wine’ is because of the issue with ‘seeds conservation’. Seeds used to be passed down from generation to generation, but as younger members left the tribes for work, people stopped growing and harvesting millet, and its seeds were gradually lost along the way. To search for the seed, Kwali travelled all throughout Taiwan, and finally found an elderly lady who was only willing to pass it down to her daughter.
“Maybe I’ll have to marry off the whole village for the seed!” Joked Kwali. At that moment, Kwali realized some things are more valuable than money, and can be lost forever — making the glass of millet wine in our hands that much more precious. There are three ways of enjoying millet wine — firstly, it can be enjoyed in mixture with sparkling water, perfect to stimulate one’s appetite; secondly, just the top clarified portion of the millet wine, smooth and rich, similar to sake; lastly, shaking the bottle to mix the clarified portion and bottom precipitation, the true millet wine that is worth climbing the highest mountain for.
Bringing life back to the valley
Having revitalized fundamental the aspects of living at BulauBulau, education is another major challenge in keeping the younger generation close to tribe.
Kwali founded a school called “Yuangen Vocational School”, where he invites teachers from all over Taiwan to teach at the school. “We offer accommodation, food and endless millet wine! Whatever you’re willing to teach us, we’re willing to learn. In this way, we hope the youth are able to learn all types of skills.” While they learn about weaving, wine making or carpentry with the elders, they can also learn about subjects such as English, Math, etc., Kwali hopes that while acquiring different skills, the youth are able to earn academic degrees in the meantime. If you want to learn other expertise like painting or pottery, the tribe is also willing to support your dream by looking for experts from different fields to set up classes and workshops.
