Kaohsiung Meinong Yellow Butterfly Festival: An Eco-Cultural Celebration in Yellow Butterfly Valley
Text / Ren Xuanli (General Convener of the 21st Yellow Butterfly Festival Volunteer Training Camp)
In the early 1990s, the energy of social movements returning to Meinong gathered and fermented. While opposing the government's hardline reservoir construction plan, in 1995 the Yellow Butterfly Festival was born, centered on respecting nature and being friendly to the environment, as a symbol of opposition to rough development and construction. But as the resistance achieved phased success and the reservoir issue cooled, how to sustain and transform this energy is the challenge the Yellow Butterfly Festival faces today.
If the Yellow Butterfly Festival and other themed events are a large outward-facing landmark billboard that draws attention and opens up breadth, then the training camp is an inward call, in the hope that friends willing to participate over the long term and in depth in understanding Meinong's local value can join in making it happen.
Since 2004, each year's Yellow Butterfly Festival has been opened by the training camp, led by senior volunteers. After several days of training and bonding, community partners are brought into the team to jointly prepare that year's Yellow Butterfly Festival. From a more macro perspective, the training camp is not only the prologue to each year's Yellow Butterfly Festival, but also the transmission and empowerment between generations, extending the spirit of caring for the land and the community through the passing on of knowledge and on-the-ground field interviews.
With the 2016 transformation of the Yellow Butterfly Festival (Note 1), the grand ceremonies and carnival temporarily left the stage, shifting instead to concentrating energy on empowerment and field research, opening up another appearance for the training camp; in this 2017 year, with summer approaching, as the Yellow Butterfly Festival returns, how should the training camp define its own role?
Conclusion
The heat of Meinong grows ever more intense, yellow butterflies begin to dance all over the fields, and the Yellow Butterfly Festival, raised on the nourishment of rural land, has also entered its twenty-second year. Being able to reach today is ultimately because of people, the people who stay on this land. They labor, live, resist, and create; along the way they search and correct course, but also keep moving forward, writing their own chapter.
There is wisdom in the flowing water, life in the soil, stories in the mountain forests, and extraordinary people in the fields. This summer, we bend down and learn from the countryside.
Note 1: Since 2016, the Yellow Butterfly Festival has transformed into a biennial format, in which one year is the internally held "Little Yellow Butterfly," focusing on empowering younger generations and field research, and the following year is the externally held traditional Yellow Butterfly Festival with large-scale ceremonies and a carnival.
Note 2: The 2017 Yellow Butterfly Festival training camp is held on July 8-9, and feeds into subsequent volunteer actions and field research. For complete information, please visit the Meinong Yellow Butterfly Festival Facebook page, or register at https://goo.gl/cGRXiv (until 6/25).
Note 3: For the detailed 2017 Yellow Butterfly Festival event schedule, please check the official website of the Meinong Love Township Association: https://goo.gl/QoM387.