My first night at the Bunan indigenous tribe village

After a two hour drive we finally arrived at my destination for the Christmas weekend. My first impression was "Am I still in Taiwan?" I was, and I was at Fengqiu, an indigenous tribe village in central Taiwan.

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THE INDIGENOUS TRIBES IN TAIWAN

The indigenous tribes have been in Taiwan long before the Han people from China arrived over 400 years ago. Later, when the missionaries arrived in the mid 19th century, they introduced writing and religion to the indigenous tribes. Around 70% of the indigenous people are Christians now. The indigenous tribes form about 2% of Taiwan's population and the Bunan tribe is the 4th largest of the 16 tribes recognised by the government.

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BUNAN VILLAGE

One of the Bunan tribe village is called Fenqiu, home to 373 indigenous people. This is where we would be staying for the weekend. We parked outside our host's place, and there was a party going on. I later found out regardless of the time of the day, they always seem to have some sort of gathering outside people's home here. There was never a dull moment in the village.

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OUR ACCOMMODATION

Our hostess took us over to our accommodation. It was at the community building next to the church. Being in the village, everything was basic, but that was fine. There were four bedrooms and 2 toilets between 15 of us 😄

Two of the room are normal one with beds, hubby and I stayed in one of them. The other two are Japanese tatami style where everyone sleeps on the floor. This is quite common in economical accommodation in Taiwan so you can sleep as many people as you feel cozy with. The girls slept in one of these rooms and the guys in the other.

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MY FIRST NIGHT IN THE VILLAGE

By the time I got into bed it was around midnight. I didn't really get much sleep that night. The people in the house outside was up all night chatting. The gates squeaked as they went in and out. Dogs barked and cats meowed, their sounds rippling gently across the quiet village. And you know the most weird sound I heard in these early hours? Don't worry it's nothing spooky. It was a rooster crowing at one o'clock in the morning!!

It was actually quite comforting lying there listening to the rural sounds, as opposed to the occasional traffic passing by my bedroom window back home. Gradually I dozed off.

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THE NEXT MORNING

Very soon I was woken up by the others getting up. When you have 11 people using two bathrooms at 4am in the morning, things can get quite chaotic.

The reason we were up at this time of the morning was to attend the Christmas service. Normally, the Christmas mass is held on Christmas eve. In Taiwan, Christmas isn't a public holiday so the Christmas celebrations in the village are held in the preceding weekend. As to why the Christmas service is held at 4am in the morning and not midnight? I was told it's to accommodate the elderlies who are early risers. Fair enough.

So we walked across to the church. The service had already started, but since none of us were Christians, we waited outside quietly listening to the choir sing. It was beautiful and I felt very peaceful, even though I was not religious at all.

Whilst waiting for the service to finish I browsed around the lobby area. It was obvious this was a place that was very important to the villagers. Many trophies were on display, and there was a big image of the bunan tribe with the words Jesus loves Bunan in Chinese. The Roman letters at the top should be the same message written in the tribe language. This is again thanks to the missionaries who helped the indigenous tribes to develop a written form of their tribal language which did not exist before.

Someone from our group starting giving out candles. They were really thoughtful and had prepared cardboard candle holders. From here, my morning continues in my video below. I have shared this video previously where we walk around with the village for carol singing.

You can't actually hear any singing during the walk as our group was quite far back from the core group. The first part of the singing you hear in the video is from the morning service in the church, and the second part is recorded live outside the church after the walk. The video ends with a spectacular firewalk display. By the time the events had finished, it wasn't even six o'clock yet, but we had all experienced a very special Christmas.