Eating the Mountain, Protecting the Mountain: Datong Ecotourism - Hanxi Tribe Atayal Story Table
" In the slightly cool autumn and winter, under the guidance of the Council of Indigenous Peoples' Datong Township Lanyang River Ecotourism Industry Cluster Support Program, Teacher Ma Aiyun from the 'Taiwan Ecological Chef Program' was invited to Hanxi Tribe, where she gathered together with tribal members from the five Atayal tribes of Yingshi, Leshui, Hanxi, Songluo, and Lunpi within Datong Township for a learning-course dialogue blending mountain forest settings, natural ingredients, and Atayal food culture. "
That day, tribal members arrived at dawn to gather natural ingredients and floral materials around the tribe, then headed to the camping area of Hanxi Tribe with pots, pans, and bags of all sizes. This tribal table was specially extended outdoors, beneath the streamside mountain forest that is damp year-round and shrouded in mist. Teacher Ma Aiyun used local materials and chose a large flat rock as the table, set against the dry branches and green ferns in the background and the carpet-like yellow fallen leaves under the Taiwan crape-myrtle grove, grandly unfolding the banquet so that the cuisine and the natural setting could converse with each other.
The people of Hanxi Tribe named this table "Yata's Tribal Kitchen." In the Atayal language, "Yata" refers to women of the middle generation. In the past, when men went out hunting, the mothers of several families would cook together just like this. Among these ten dishes, besides commonly seen stir-fried fiddlehead greens, grilled stream fish, and home-cured wild boar, several dishes especially innovated on traditional Atayal dietary life with great ingenuity.
The main ingredient of the dish "Love in Hanxi" is snail, and coincidentally the Atayal pronunciation for snail sounds close to "lian lian," so the homophone was used as the dish name. The people of Hanxi thoroughly wash the sticky body fluids of the African giant snail, pair it with pickled ginger, sliced garlic, and carrot, then wrap it in lettuce; it tastes fresh, crisp, and refreshing. "Atayal Daily" transforms the glutinous rice and cured raw meat that Atayal people often eat into the form of nigiri sushi, and mixes the originally stickier glutinous rice with millet, black rice, and white rice to make the rice texture more balanced, then tops it with a slice of flame-seared cured raw meat. A Hanxi mother laughed and said: "Many Han friends are not used to the taste of Tmmyan (cured raw meat in the Atayal language), so to keep everyone from being afraid, we came up with this beginner's version."
In addition, gathering, hunting, and setting traps are also part of daily Atayal life and diet. That day's soup was made by simmering ribs with gathered rattan shoots. It is said that after rattan shoots are collected somewhere in the mountain forest, it takes ten years of regrowth before they can be harvested again. In addition, the thorny vines of yellow rattan make the gathering process extremely arduous, so this soup is also called "Atayal Warrior Soup." The roasted bamboo partridge on the table was natural game caught in traps made by the tribe. When talking about wild animals, tribal members from different tribes on site discussed enthusiastically one after another: "The movement paths of bamboo partridges are very simple. If you set a trap in the same place, you can catch them again and again. On the other hand, for a cleverer animal like the wild boar, if it is injured by a trap and escapes back, it will become a boss when it returns! Because it knows how to share the experience with other individuals in the group!"
The heart of the tree fern, also gathered, has a culinary origin closely tied to architecture. In earlier years, tribes were accustomed to cutting the trunks of tree ferns as building pillars, and the remaining tender hearts would be eaten in dishes. Now that the demand for natural building materials has decreased, only the fern hearts are taken for use. The outer golden hairs are shaved off, and the hearts are quickly chilled to prevent oxidation and discoloration, then stir-fried with seasonal vegetables to keep them crisp.
The Atayal, who place great importance on gathering ethics, will take only one fern heart if a tree fern has three, deliberately preserving the other two hearts to continue growing, so as to achieve sustainability and balance in the mountain forest. Teacher Ma Aiyun, who has long studied ecological cuisine, observed from the side: "The indigenous concept of gathering is - I survived, and at the same time I let the other survive too. When the Atayal use a mountain, they are in fact also protecting a mountain, making natural resources flourish more and more through use!"
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Hanxi Atayal Yata Table
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