Village’s rebirth began with a ban on fishing
Print Edition
Weekend mornings in Shanmei, high in the mountains of central Taiwan, burst with life. Buses full of tourists arrive and villagers are busy selling fresh fruit and vegetables in the village market.
“The village was completely different three decades ago. Most young people had left and only the elderly and children were left behind. It was almost deserted,” said Chuang Hsin-i, 50, chief of the village development council.
A highway was built through the Ali Mountains in the 1970s and since then, the people of Shanmei have encountered problems typical of a traditional community in the face of modernization.
Easy transport brought outsiders to the Ali Mountains and tea gardens and orchards replaced deep forest. Shanmei is home to about 600 people of the Zou ethnic minority, who gradually abandoned their traditional hunting and farming lifestyle to become hired hands at big farms and construction projects owned by outsiders.
“We did not actually benefit from the improvements. Most of our people were uneducated and did not have professional skills. The only jobs we could find were hard labor,” Chuang said.
A bigger problem was the damage that development brought. For generations, a nearby brook, the Dannayiku, had provided villagers with a delicacy, the guyu fish.
“At that time, many outsiders came to fish in the brook. Some used electricity and poison. In the late 1980s, we could hardly find any fish in the stream,” Chuang said. Back then, as a young man in his 20s, he did not see any hope for the village.
A few village elders decided to try to do something about the situation. One of them, a clergyman named Kao Cheng-sheng, was inspired by nature reserves in Africa and came up with a plan to ban fishing and, in 1989, a village meeting did just that, the first community convention for conserving a water source in Taiwan.
All male villagers aged from 18 to 50 were assigned patrol duties to watch for poachers. Villagers also brought guyu fry from valleys deep in the mountains.
“Villagers did not see the point of a fishing ban at the beginning, but many came around. We have a deep-rooted tradition of valuing the gifts of nature,” said Chuang, one of the earliest proponents of the scheme. “The plan also gave villagers a common purpose and united them.”
The silver fish survived and prospered and the Dannayiku was gradually restored to match its name, which means “worry-free” in the Zou language.
The idea of environmental protection has been extended from the valley to the surrounding forest with the village council refusing to allow commercial development.
With the environment improving, Shanmei is gaining a reputation for its beautiful natural environment and is attracting more and more visitors to watch fish and butterflies. Some villagers have turned their houses into guesthouses and opened restaurants while others organize short tours to watch the wildlife.
The Ali Mountains are now one of the island’s most popular tourist destinations and 3.6 million tourists from the Chinese mainland visited last year. Shanmei is a popular stop for tourists keen to experience local life.
“On the busiest day in October, we received 60 tourist buses, a bit overwhelming,” said An Li-hua, the village head.
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