David on Formosa

I visited Smangus this week to continue the research for my thesis. There were some significant changes in the village since my visit last year. The major one was the new classroom building near the main entrance to the village. Construction began in July last year and was completed in April. There are currently 12 [...]

Before attending the Pasta’ay in Wufeng I spent the day in Qingquan village (清泉). I met Sandy early in the morning in Zhudong and she drove me up to Qingquan. Sandy is my classmate at NCCU and she is a teacher at the Taoshan Primary School (桃山國小) in Qingquan.
Qingquan is an Atayal village located in [...]

Pasta’ay (巴斯達隘; 矮靈祭) is the biennial festival of the Saisiat people (賽夏族; also spelt Saisiyat). The Pasta’ay is held in two locations. One in Wufeng and the other in Xiang Tian Hu (向天湖) in Nanzhuang. I visited Xiang Tian Hu which has a Saisiat Museum in May last year, although it wasn’t the time of [...]

After last year’s grill party, Taiwan bloggers again turned out in numbers for another big night out in Hukou (湖口), Xinzhu County. The Bushman’s Blogtoberfest, hosted by MJ Klein and Hui-chen, brought together a great bunch of Taiwan bloggers along with their partners, friends and children.
The children deserve a special mention because there seems to [...]

On Saturday I went on my second trip to Smangus. The weather was perfect and it was a great day to travel in the mountains. This time I travelled with my NCCU classmate Sandy and her husband. Sandy has worked as a primary school in some of the villages in this area. We stopped at [...]

I have written about Smangus (司馬庫斯) a number of times on this blog. I then chose it as the topic for my group project in the Culture and Ethnic Structure of Taiwan class at NCCU (政大). This weekend I finally had the chance to visit Smangus and learn more about the case. 

The journey began [...]

The 2007 International Conference on Religious Culture and Gender Ethics (宗教文化與性別倫理國際學術會議) was held over the weekend at Hsuan Chuang University (玄裝大學) in Xinzhu. 

I was one of the MCs at the conference. I made all the announcements in English, while Doris made the announcements in Mandarin. 

On the first day of the conference the keynote speech [...]

On Saturday afternoon I met up with Todd at Taipei Station and caught the train down to Hukou. From the train station we headed to the home of Michael J Klein and Hui-Chen for the grill party. Todd and I were the first to arrive. We headed up to the fourth floor of Michael's home [...]