Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines

The Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines is a museum of ethnology. It collects, researches and displays items related to Taiwan's aboriginal peoples. It also engages in educational and promotional activities in order to enhance the process of retaining the unwritten histories of Taiwan's aboriginal peoples.

The museum's goal is to promote understanding and mutual respect between different ethnic groups living in Taiwan. It does this by featuring the vast diversity of Taiwan's native culture.

Austronesian people began to arrive in Taiwan around 6,000 years ago, giving rise to the indigenous culture that still exists in the Central Mountain Range and along the eastern coastal areas of the island. Among the 19 tribes remaining nowadays, nine have managed to preserve their distinct customs and languages relatively well. These nine tribes are the Saisiat, Atayal, Tsou, Bunun, Ami, Rukai, Puyuma, Paiwan, and Yami.

Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines houses a refined collection of 1,000 artifacts, mainly from these nine tribes. First of its kind in Taiwan, the museum captivates visitors with its exotic exterior -- a huge trapeziform glass wall that imparts to the four-story building a very modern appearance, a white totem pole that bisects the facade, shale pillars erected at the four corners that help to highlight the theme of the museum, and wooden tribal carvings selected from a previous museum-held competition that are now posted around the sides.

Once they step into the building, visitors notice immediately that the museum has been carefully planned. In the center of the ground-floor hall is a large model of Taiwan with its geographical features clearly shown. The model is studded with tiny electric lights which, when turned on, mark the locations of different indigenous settlements. Moreover, wall monitors are used to give visitors a comprehensive introduction to the origins of the tribes and the natural environment in which they live.

A four-meter Yami fishing boat and a Paiwan stone tablet are also displayed in the ground-floor hall. The Yami people, living on the outlying Lanyu (Orchid Island) in Taiwan's southeast, are skillful fishermen. It takes at least three years to build a Yami boat, which requires different kinds of wood for its different parts. Before beginning their job, Yami boat-builders make sacrifices and pray to their gods. The Paiwan stone tablet, featuring a "hundred-pacer" snake (considered a sacred creature), a sorceress, and hunters, depicts a scene of hunting divination.

The second floor of the museum is designed to introduce the daily life of the aborigines. Close to the entrance are two large showcases containing models of a Yami residence and a Tsou men's house, which was used for military training and social gathering. There are also a life-sized Ami hearth and a Paiwan house of slate slabs. The low entrances of the house, a protective feature, force visitors to bend when entering, leaving themselves vulnerable to attack. Slate buttresses, apart from supporting the roof and walls, make access to the roof possible.

Also on display on the second floor are pottery, wickers, weaving and hunting tools, weapons, and other objects, including musical instruments like the Paiwan nose flute and the four-note (re, mi, so, and la) Atayal xylophone which, in addition to making music, was used to send messages.

Nine Paiwan pots are placed opposite the entrance of the second floor. Divided into male (more precious) and female, these pots represent wealth and inheritance. A male pot is differentiated from a female one by the "hundred-pacer" snake decoration. Since pottery making has become a lost art among the Paiwan, these pots are among the museum's most valuable possessions.

The brightly lit third floor is for display of aboriginal costumes, textiles, embroideries, ornaments, and bead-works. Among the costumes exhibited are mourning clothes of the Paiwan and Rukai, most of which are in red, orange, yellow and green and sewed in elaborate patterns. Before wool thread was introduced by the Chinese, the aborigines in Taiwan used ramie in weaving. Beadwork, found only with the Paiwan, Rukai and Puyuma, is closely linked with the owner's social status and tribal system, and is rich in religious significance -- it is believed to be able to bring either blessings and protection or bad luck and punishment from the gods.

Also on display on the third floor are replicas of the tools used for tattooing. Most tribes -- except the Yami and Bunun -- have their own tattooing customs. For instance, only respected Atayal women could have tattoos on both cheeks, and their male counterparts on their lower foreheads and chests.

In the first basement level of the museum, a large area is devoted to explaining the aborigines' belief systems and exhibiting their sacrificial objects such as cups and ornately carved wooden boxes (which were used for divination). Also displayed here are daggers and spears used by the Yami people to exorcize evil spirits, and Paiwan knives made of bronze. Because bronze is an alloy not produced on the island in the old days, these Paiwan knives are of utmost value to both the museum and archeologists in their research.

In addition, the custom of head-hunting is explained here in the first basement level. It was connected with tribal honor and was used to prove the innocence of a wrongly accused person. A head that was taken had to be worshipped so that its divine power could join that of the hunter's ancestors in protecting their descendants.

There are also an auditorium and an exhibition center in the first basement level. Short films on weaving, pottery, and songs and dances are shown in the auditorium every day during opening hours. Special exhibitions are held twice a year, in spring and autumn. Currently showing are 200 photos on Taiwanese aborigines taken by a Japanese anthropologist from 1896 to 1900.

The museum grants scholarships and awards to aborigines and local scholars for the study of indigenous cultures in Taiwan. It also provides funding for research programs at overseas universities. Apart from all this, the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborgines also encourages Taiwan's aborigines to produce art works and continue breathing new life into their own culture.

The Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines is located in Taipei City's Chihshan Road, near the National Palace Museum. It opens daily from 10am to 6pm.