TGIF, Sandimen, and 'The Premiere Tim Experience': Week 4 of Teaching, Week 6

Week 4 of school is complete! Woohoo!

I had a few new experiences this week, one being TGIF (Thank God It's Friday), the school's youth group that meets on Friday nights. It was so nice interacting with some more of my students outside of the classroom. Plus, I got to play games with Jon, Grace, and Melissa afterward!

As of Wednesday of last week, I'm breaking my record for time spent outside of the United States. I'm officially in uncharted waters (if I wasn't already). Good thing I got a guide this week! On Saturday, Ben, Kelly, and I got to spend a day being led by Tim McGill, the superintendent of Morrison and a missionary kid who grew up in Taiwan. He took us to an amazing waterfall and up to Sandimen, an aboriginal village in the mountains of Taiwan. 

For the rest of this post, I'll give the general quotes from Tim along with the pictures of what he's describing- I needed to type furiously to catch even the biggest parts of his stories, but hopefully I got the facts straight! Tim or Bonnie, let me know if there are any glaring mistakes here.

On the way to Sandimen, Tim gave us some background on the Taiwanese indigenous tribes:

"During the Japanese oppression, the tribes were animist and fought each other violently. Then, one woman converted, and the Japanese were trying to find her because she was bringing in a foreign belief. It was amazing how God protected her from being found by the Japanese. She would keep telling everyone the Gospel and it spread to her whole tribe. By the time the missionaries came back after WWII, the entire island had Christians. Most every Aboriginal identified as Christian, and there were bamboo churches with crosses everywhere!" 

The graves in Sandimen are covered out of respect and show the beliefs of the people.

"My parents came over a little later as missionaries, and they kept working with the Aboriginals. My parents couldn't communicate with them so they had to make up a new way to communicate because the government was suspicious of anything communist (they couldn't use ABC). In fact, the first printing of the New Testament on the island was burned. Last week, when I took the Taipei group, we couldn't go into the mountain village because there's a police barrier- they're so suspicious of communist influence. By the time I was in middle school, my dad was translating about a verse an hour for 10 hours a day. Every month, they'd call together a committee to check for accuracy and legibility. My brother was recently up in the very center of the island- it's an apple-growing village and quite wealthy (they have an organ in their church). They told him, "Your parents united the tribe." Keep in mind that the village is way deep in the mountains. My dad was the only one going into all the villages. The transportation system is different today, obviously, but it was very different back then."

"Are those rice fields?" Ben asked, gesturing to the flooded fields by the interstate. 

"Actually, they're fishing ponds. See the egrets? You've probably seen pictures of them around the school."

"Okay, just so I'm absolutely certain," I asked, "Are those smaller buildings on top of houses pigeon huts?"
"Yeah! They'll release them in the morning or afternoon to exercise, and if they don't come back soon enough, they'll set off bottle rockets. On race days, they'll put a code on the side of the bird's foot, and they'll load the birds into a truck and release them. Then, the birds have to fly home. When they make it home, you call in the code. The mafia here will steal the birds for ransom because they're worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. There's a huge market for the pedigree of winning birds. I know someone, Sam (his parents were TEAM missionaries) who went to school entirely on his bird winnings. He went to Berkeley."

  

Tim pointed off toward the nearest mountain as Ben asked, "How do you find this waterfall?" 
"Just google waterfalls and it'll pop up. In the valleys in the hot season, it cools down while still being sunny."

"See these trees? Some are palm, some are beetle-nut. Oh It's addictive, It gives a buzz. and it helps truck drivers stay awake. They take off the seed pods and take them to a local place to process them, cut them, and add this red stuff that's a sort of acid to cause sores in your mouth so the buzz gets into your system faster."

"You'll see that the southern tribes use more slate in building while the northern tribes use bamboo. By the way, if you want to watch a fairly historically accurate movie about Taiwan, look up [Warriors of the Rainbow: Seedic Bale]."

"I used to do grilling on this trip, but the government has become so pollution conscious that we can't do that anymore, so it'll just be picnic today."

If the video link above doesn't work
"See the bananas? They're covered to keep them from being bleached by the sun. This area is one of the poorer counties in Taiwan because it's all agriculture. There's a lot of smaller palm trees here because this area was totally flooded by the big typhoons 10 years ago. The dikes broke, and a bunch of morrison people came to help dig sediment out of these homes (it was a foot deep)."

"See these drinks? They're not yogurt- they're a probiotic with some green flour in it."

The man gave us a sweet red tea for free! It's basically southern sweet tea!

"See these stores for temple money? It's especially popular for ghost month. Taipei City has ordinances to restrict burning, and the temples are having protests. That's their revenue source; it's based on fear. It's like the old Catholic Church."

Ben found that the annual revenue for temple money is 400million USD. 

"I was listening to a Tim Keller sermon on the way down this morning, and in it, he said the Hebrew word for "create "is along the lines of "only God can make it" because only God can create something out of nothing. I say that because when I was young I would watch the clouds rise from the mountain floor and float past you while you're walking."

"We're gonna open a satellite campus in Jaii, grades 1-6, next year for the missionary families in the mountains."

"This is the village, but where it's straight roads, it's from Japanese influence. If it's scattered in the mountains, it's the original village houses. The original aboriginal maleo-Polynesians married with the Han Chinese and their culture has been lost. The Hakka tribe here is ethnically Chinese, from mainland china. "

 

During the show-"The aboriginal people here maleo-Polynesian, and they're very musical. They're built differently than the Han-Chinese. The Taiwanese Ami are on the east coast. 

"They're going to demonstrate a dance, and there's a spot where you have to bow low to give a blessing. It's a common step dance in this show."

"She wants "to give us a blessing and encouragement. If you have a physical hurt, reach down, touch your body, and pull back up. I want you to be blessed. Squeeze your hand, grab the pain, release your air, and throw it away." 

"The Atayal is where my dad worked. The movie with Seediq Bale is the Seediq. We are with the Ami. In the morning I'd hear the pounding of the millet."

"The thread in this loom is rami. It's the longest natural fiber in the world."

"This is real. When I was growing up, my caregivers had these tattoos. The darker, the more beautiful. The men had them on their chin and forehead. 

"This was very common. Most of the men I saw had one of these."

After we walked through the museum, we headed up the mountain to watch an aboriginal dance show!

Every main tribe is represented on the stage!

Ben, Kelly, and I got to participate in the dance and were shown the steps! Can you see the giant in the middle of the row? That's me!

"What would you say is the relationship like between the aboriginals and the other Taiwanese?" I asked.

"[The Aboriginals} were oppressed by the Chinese until recently, and the Japanese. They were forced into slave labor in the lumber industry. When they came to Christ, it was so freeing! It freed them from spirit worship, from the warring, from all of it. In more recent years since Taiwan has become wealthy and aboriginals have gotten jobs in the towns, they make money from pouring cement and selling fruit- now the Taiwanese govt is giving them money to build community centers. A lot of young aboriginals get good money for going to university.

We walked down into a housing display area where we could see most every living style of indigenous Taiwanese.

"A typical house has the raised bed and during rain would get water damage. You'd bring the chickens and dogs inside. Fleas can be bad too. 

"On orchid island, people lived in houses like this. A lady we know lived in one of these for ten years typing away at her manual typewriter a bible translation for this small village. 

A little different the Silver Dollar City Barn Swing, right Brown family?

"The lean to off the right is a kitchen area. This is like what I lived in when I was young."

The view from the road up to the dance show.

"Oh, that's the dance we did!"- all of us at some point or another after examining the artwork.

See the snakes? You know it's Aboriginal art when it features snakes. Also, I have memories of seeing fields of orchids here as a child."

We didn't have time to walk this bridge, but the view is stunning from the edge!

A much cooler swing bridge than the SDD one, right, Brown family? "We used to do lots of swing bridges. When I was 6, I crossed this huge bridge with one wire on each side to hold onto, and some of the boards were missing. My mother would talk about those times as the scariest moments for her."

After the museum, we headed over to see a waterfall park in the village!

"The sign says not to swim, but they provide a boost to let you over the fense along with life preservers. Welcome to Taiwan."

Mom, this beats Cumberland Falls.
As I stood under this wonder of God's creation, I watched the cliff moss dance with water droplets in the afternoon sun and was in awe of the creator.

Psalm 95:6-In his hand are the depths of the earth,   and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
Psalm 96:11-12-Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. 

"Show this picture to your mom!"

It was such a blessing getting this experience from Tim! As you can see, we had a blast! Thanks again, Tim!