This is a translation from the original 想讓人一去再去部落，就先自問台灣人為何熱愛去日本旅遊吧！ by Vanessa Lai, an editor for Mata Taiwan. Originally published by Mata Taiwan. Translation by Tim Smith.
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Before eating the culinary creations cooked up by Luluwan, L-Instyle Boutique Travel Services’ tour guide Aaron Wei (魏兆廷) asks everyone to wash up so they can help make abay (a traditional rice ball delicacy) and cinavu (wrapped up, cured pork and taro strips in vinegar-soaked banana leaves, tied up altogether with cord) with the grandmas.
The dishes resemble something that Han Taiwanese might feast on during tuan-ngoo, the Dragon-boat Festival. But as soon as you sink your teeth into one of these dishes, banana leaf and all, your mouth waters up and softens, cools, and everything melds together from the rich, full-bodied aroma of millet and wild vegetables.
Balu is the owner of Luluwan, a restaurant in Taiwan’s southernmost Pingtung County. After Typhoon Morokot devastated much of southern Taiwan in 2009, he came back to his hometown to start a new experiment. He brought with him his culinary expertise from working in top restaurants in Taipei, combining that with an exploration of the innovative possibilities in traditional indigenous cuisine. Balu wants to inspire his guests as to the potential of new techniques but also pass down old culinary traditions.
On both sides of a table filled with handmade traditional foods are cards of interviews with tribal members talking about traditional Rukai tribe fare. They describe what types of crops they planted, how they cultivated them, what culinary methods are used to prepare the dishes and illustrations that emphasize ingredients like millet, red quinoa, taro, pigeon peas, and sweet potatoes. The aim is to allow tourists who try these delicacies to have an opportunity to have a good, in-depth understanding and knowledge of these traditional foods.
Yet according to Aaron Wei, describing the cultural connotations of these traditional Rukai foods isn’t even the most important task to him.
Ask questions beyond the obvious
While everyone has returned to the the kitchen table after touring around to enjoy the feast, Wei throws out a question for everyone: “In ancient times, after people had figured out how to use fire, how did they first cook their food?”
“They boiled their food in water!” “They roasted it!” “Did they steam it?” After everyone had given an answer, Wei then told them “You’re all correct! The next thing we’re going to eat has been roasted, boiled, or salt-preserved. We can taste the most essential flavors of each dish…it’s what we would nowadays call ‘food flavors in the raw.'”
Showing guests the ways of indigenous cuisine is a simple, easy-to-understand, yet important guide-post in the trek into an unfamiliar culture. On this short two-day trip to the Maolin National Scenic Area, the meal at Luluwan played the role of a bridge, much like a priming for the guests for bigger things to come.
While the guests were still unaccustomed, the dishes acted as a “prologue” which enables more of the guests to have a deeper understanding of what they’re experiencing in the later parts of the tours. The guide can play the role of “guide” rather than “lecturer” when guests encounter what might be impossible to understand at face value.
Wei describes his attitude towards the task of being a guide: “You need to get your guests to ask the questions that they are afraid to ask,” he says. For example, if a museum staff member is speaking too fast while explaining something, the guide should anticipate and ask the questions the guests may have, or use an additional way to educate the guests, like using metaphors. “Taiwan’s indigenous culture encompasses many, many things. There are many different ethnicities within this group. If you don’t know clearly what you want to sell, then it’s easy to come off as clichéd or that all indigenous products are more of the same.”
Having a depth of experience
L-Instyle’s tour started as a project by the management department of the Maolin National Scenic Area. They have two goals for this project: to set up a brand for a tour group in Pingtung County, and to make indigenous culture more accessible to the masses.
When most people think of travel to indigenous areas of Taiwan, they primarily think of Hualien or Taitung on the eastern coast, but not Pingtung. Yet the reality is Pingtung’s indigenous populations are also quite large. Moreover, the hope is that consumers won’t be pressured, or assume that they must have some cultural understanding first, in order to take part in this kind of tour. The tour group doesn’t want visitors to have a self-reinforcing feeling of separation; that if they “don’t understand, then they shouldn’t come.”
“We want to entice them so they can come here without feeling pressured, and not be frightened by cultural issues.” explain the Maolin excursion’s trek planners. “Cultural tourism should be a step by step process. It’s like a person who doesn’t tend to drink coffee, who starts to understand how to appreciate the beverage. The person often starts from an easy-to-accept stage of drinking lattes to later on, maybe drinking Italian-styled ristrettos or more refined coffees.”
“Over the past several years, I have seen a misconception that if you want to attract tourists, you should do something that makes them want to come back again and again.” Wei says. He gives an example about the popularity of travelling to Japan. “Is it really because Japanese culture is appealing to everyone? Actually I think it’s mainly because of factors like budget airlines, good food, and shopping. Cultural understanding comes later.”
Reflecting on these tourism factors, Wei sums it up with saying “great food, fun, a sense of trust, and abundant friendliness are what will bring consumers back.”
Come in with your stereotypes
The trek planners carried out a field survey from the consumer’s viewpoint. Trek planners believe it’s important to motivate guests to proactively ask about the environment and things all around them when they’re on their trip. Sometimes they ask about things the locals take for granted,
At the same time, the main focus is on “good eats” and “fun.” The tours selected by L-Instyle incorporate both cultural and storied aspects, such as using food curation for a small farm-table dinner. The trip organizers emphasize that the culinary tastes “can’t just be geared towards Han visitors, but should also be geared for international visitors, which means we shouldn’t avoid indigenous cuisine in its original form. Some people don’t like too much salt. Others don’t like a fire-roasted flavor, but this is a part of tribal life.”
Similarly, DIY experiences organized by the tribal travel groups should also pay attention to the levels of cultural relevance, as well as be able to allow consumers to leave with something connected to the experience. On the Maolin trip, they chose to work with the Taobuli Cultural Innovation Space, setting up a DIY activity for weaving baskets with shell-ginger leaves. The shell-ginger leaf is a weaving material used in the everyday lives of the Rukai tribe. At the end of the trip, guests can take these DIY souvenirs home as something that will remind them of their experience and journey.
“Although there are still some stereotypes that some Han Taiwanese hold towards Indigenous Taiwanese, they are also drawn to Indigenous culture as something exotic,” making traveling to a tribal land almost like traveling abroad. The cultural customs are different, and so the attitudes of acceptance of differences are much greater. This is also why on the first day of the trip, Wei asks everyone on the bus “what are your impressions of Indigenous Taiwanese people?” Millet wine, harvest festivals, and churches are common answers. He lets those stereotypes stand and at first does not give too much of a lecture on any of these answers. “I’m not trying to force you to cast off your impressions, but to guide you to learn and understand for yourself.”
Becoming more efficient as a business model
After the project plan has concluded, the Maolin team will also customize their itinerary for other tour companies or travelers’ needs. Small tour groups in Taiwan are not an easy business: the excursion planning team had once planned for ten tour groups, but eight out of the ten had to be canceled due to a lack of participants. L-Instyle’s customized tours are now down to one tour a month.
“However, the Maolin excursion is still in the product research stage. We’ve not yet invested in marketing the tour. We still need a great breakthrough in marketing so the tour can become a stable product.” To scale up the product, more steps are needed, such as lowering the overhead for manpower costs that have to be put forward by the tour group by increasing the capabilities of the local services.
The trip planners believe that empowering the tribal travel services locally is going to be an adjustment process. First, the local residents have to realize that receiving visitors on a large scale has to be run like a business, and have to see where they can improve. Then they have to actually learn the skills to build up the tourist traffic, which then enables an economic incentive for more people to come into the tourism industry.
They’ve observed that because many tribes have gotten used to working in shifts and operate on an ethos of mutual sharing, the “front of the house” service people and “back of the house” management are often mixed together. As a result, Wei suggests that “out of ten tourist stops, we can then try to fully devote one of those stops to welcoming and serving guests and use staff from the other stops to provide support such as making reservations and follow-up customer service. This is the only way to elevate the quality, and therefore the price, of the service we provide.”
As a whole, the trip planning team in this instance is playing the role of an adhesive, to draw the guests and tribal cultures closer by focusing on the advantages of each tour area, discovering local stories, and easing the anxiety of visitors unfamiliar with tribal cultures. As tourism grows, more people will see what young tribal members are doing in their hometowns.
“We’re coming from a point of learning from each other. Each time we bring the tour, we talk with the tribe about possibly adjusting things to make them better. However, instead of us drawing up a blueprint for them, we still hope the tribes’ drive the process themselves to elevate tourism for everyone.”
(Feature photo by Mata Taiwan)
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- Rethinking Indigenous Culture and Tourism in Taiwan - August 9, 2018
- Sharing a Pot of Rice to Rediscover Roots: Taitung Bunun Youth - July 24, 2018