Hi, I’m Archie, and this is a story about a music festival I took my wife to when we first got married in 2019.
The music festival was: the Amis Music Festival.
This event was held once a year for two consecutive years, then stopped for two years.
Based on Amis introduction, this was the way to give back and to thank Mother Earth - by letting her rest and breath.
Honestly we had little understanding with Music and Aboriginal culture.
What had came to my mind with the Taiwanese Aboriginals were the Musha Incident, and their accents when speaking Mandarin.
Actually there was more: the local guide we met when we went high peak mountain trekking.
His warm and energetic spirit was unforgettable.
And the many professional baseball players in Taiwan too were from the tribe. That was all the little connection we had.
The host of this festival was Suming - an indie singer in Taiwan dedicate in restoring aboriginal culture.
We were at a musical event in Hsinchu, and were taken away by Suming’s work, so we decided to join the Amis Music Festival promoted by Suming.
We thought the trip would be difficult to make because it is on the South-East part of Taiwan where you either drive for 6 hours or take the train for 4 hours. But as excited as we were, everything seemed to be sugar coated.
We got up at 4am for 6am train. No seats available so we stood for 4 hours.
We rode a rental scooter for 20 kilometers, which is about 12.5 miles.
The ride would have been difficult if we were in the city like Taipei, but not Dulan, Tai-Dong.
The air was clean and sun-shined like there’s no tommorw, and on top of that, right next to us was the coastline next to the Pacific Ocean.
That was life - easy breezy.
Everything was wonderful there. From the bed & breakfast we stayed,
to the Amis Teams; to the air; and to the music. We wanted to stay there for good.
We knew little about music and culture, but our love food tipped the trip over the top.
We had the best millet wine and sticky rice wine. We spend around USD 70 on drinks, and got two bottles to take home.
We had wild boar sausage, stir fried wild boar, stir-fried snails, grilled fish: a fresh kind and a dried kind,
fried ghost-knife-fish, millet doughnut, millet mochi, and Ah-Bye - a riceball wrapped in leaves.
Every dish we tried was so good. And most people there was environmentally friendly, including us,
we brought our own cutleries and containers - reusable ones.
The most thankful moment happened when I was getting Pork Knuckle Rice for dinner.
I was drooling while waiting in line, but the unfortunate happened when it was finally my turn: the dish fell-off my hand.
It fell-off just as it was being handed to me!
I was stunned and just as I wanted to order a new one, the owner gave me one on the house. It was the best Pork Knuckle Rice ever!
Now, to emphasize, this was a music festival.
The venue was by the beach. There were many grounds to cover: band playing area, tribal performing area, history & culture learning area, cinema showing area, and, of course, souvenir shopping area. The Amis crowd made sure we did.
We were planning to bring camping equipment the next time we come here.
Just before we head back to Taipei by the 4pm train, we also went to Tai-Dong Forest Park, Donghe Meat-Bun Place,
and Sugarapple (some may know it as Shikaya, a Tai-Dong locally grown fruit, a seasonal)
We definitely ate too much. We ate so much I can still recall the fullness from the festival.
I mean, we gained 2kg! That is 4.4 pound, each, in two days!
Not sure if it is the millet wine affect, but we can still hear the dance of the aboriginal culture, and still see the music swaying about.
We had the best time during that weekend, and will definitely go again this year.