Hanxi Tribe Atayal Story Dining Table: Eat a Mountain, Protect a Mountain: Datong Ecotourism 02

General News Jan 1, 1970 0 views

Datong Ecotourism 02"Eat a Mountain, and Protect a Mountain: The Atayal Story Dining Table of Hanxi Tribe

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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 Course" was invited to Hanxi Tribe to gather with tribal members from five Atayal tribes in Datong Township - Yingshi, Leshui, Hanxi, Songluo and Lunpi - for a course that blends mountain forest settings, natural ingredients and Atayal food culture.

That day, the tribal members came to the area around the tribe at dawn to gather natural ingredients and flowers, then headed to the camping area of Hanxi Tribe with pots, pans and bags large and small. This tribal dining table was specially extended outdoors. Beneath the streamside mountain forest, humid all year round and filled with misty vapor, teacher Ma Aiyun used local materials and chose a flat large stone as the table, set against the dry branches and green ferns in the background and the yellow fallen leaves spread like a carpet under the Lagerstroemia subcostata forest, grandly unfolding the feast and letting the cuisine and the natural setting converse with each other.

The people of Hanxi Tribe named this dining table "Yata's Tribal Kitchen." "Yata" in the Atayal language means women of the middle generation. In the past, when men went out hunting, the mothers of several families cooked together just like today. Among these ten dishes, besides commonly seen fiddlehead greens, grilled stream fish and home-pickled wild boar, several dishes specially innovated on traditional Atayal food life with great ingenuity.

The main ingredient of the dish "Love in Hanxi" is snail. It happens that the pronunciation of snail in the Atayal language is close to "lianlian," so the homophone was used as the dish name. The people of Hanxi thoroughly wash the sticky body fluid 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 Life" transforms the glutinous rice and pickled raw meat that Atayal people often eat every day into the form of nigiri sushi, and mixes the originally stickier glutinous rice with millet, black rice and white rice, making the rice texture more moderate, then tops it with a slice of flame-seared pickled raw meat. A Hanxi mother laughed and said: "Many Han Chinese friends are not used to the taste of Tmmyan (pickled 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 food. The soup that day was made by simmering ribs with gathered rattan hearts. It is said that after rattan hearts are collected somewhere in the mountain forest, it takes ten years of regrowth before they can be harvested again. Add to that the thorn-covered vines of the yellow rattan, and the gathering process is extremely arduous, so this soup dish is also called "Atayal Warrior Soup." The roasted bamboo partridge on the table was natural wild game caught in traps made by the tribe. Talking about wild animals, tribal members from different tribes at the scene 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. By contrast, for a craftier animal like a wild boar, if it gets 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, the tribe was accustomed to cutting the trunks of tree ferns as support pillars for building materials, and the remaining tender hearts would then be eaten in dishes. Nowadays the demand for natural building materials has decreased, so only the fern hearts are taken and used. The outer golden hairs are shaved off, then the hearts are quickly chilled to avoid oxidation and discoloration, and then stir-fried with seasonal vegetables to keep their crispness.

The Atayal, who place great importance on gathering ethics, would take only one fern heart if a tree fern has three, deliberately preserving the other two hearts to continue growing, so as to achieve the sustainability and balance of the mountain forest. Teacher Ma Aiyun, who has long studied ecological cuisine, observed from the side: "The Indigenous concept of gathering is - I survive, 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 more and more flourishing the more they are eaten!"