The Roving Reporter

Calm after the storm...

Posted by: Amy Reiter

Thursday, March 29, 2007 7:56 PM

After two weeks of meetings and interviews, our group has had a fairly relaxing two days. During an afternoon off, I bicycled out to the rocky Pacific coastline of east Taiwan, where fishermen sat quietly waiting for a catch and people on mopeds zoomed the upper beach not as quietly.

We also went to a hot springs buried deep in a valley, surrounded by green mountains so full of vegetation they appeared to be soft.

I interviewed a geneticist recommended to me by an N-G reader in Savoy, who told me he's been trying to trace the roots of Taiwan's aboriginal tribes from bone marrow and teeth from bodies discovered after centuries. The reason for his work -- aside from getting a doctorate at Stanford University -- is that he and many other people are curious as to the origin and travels of early aboriginals.

There's linguistic and anthropological evidence -- like 7,000-year-old pottery -- to support the idea that aboriginal tribes started in Taiwan and moved south and eastward as far as Australia. He's trying to see if there's scientific support for this.

In the meantime, aboriginal tribes continue to live in Taiwan -- seven of them in Taitung, the area we're staying in. We went to a performance of the Bunum aboriginal tribe, who sang songs of peace and wishing people would come home. We also hung out with Lily, who introduced us to her tribe's chief, both of with whom we drank a special tea that kind of tasted like chives.

Despite the fun days, I'm really looking forward to coming home. For the first few weeks I felt like we'd just gotten here. Now I feel like it has been forever since we left.

Amy

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