Nightsafari

We tread carefully through the night, the spotlight of our guide leading the way. The clouds shielded the stars and full moon from a terrace high up in the mountains of Taroko. But the darkness was alive with the croaking of toads, creaking of insects, and odd shrieks and shrills of creatures that will forever remain mysterious and hidden to me.

We were on a night safari in search of the Formosan flying squirrel. Three species are indigenous to and found only on the island of Taiwan. A member of the rodent family, this furry little creature looks like a squirrel, except from its ankles to its tiny wrists is a membrane that allows it to 'glide' (not really 'fly', as the name misleading suggests) from tree to tree. Its long, fluffy tail acts like a sort of airfoil which allows the little creature to control its direction, and allows it to 'brake' upon landing on branches. Only active at night, the squirrels glide down from higher altitudes in search of food, which consists of fungi, fruits and sometimes even bird eggs.

Our aboriginal guide-- a short, dark skinned man, who earlier had performed a moving solo singing act-- told us that the flying squirrel is not extinct, and that they are have been hunted by local Truku tribe members as food. "Fragrant", he commented in response to what the flying squirrel tastes like. The flying squirrel is easy prey, for if you shine a bright light at the creature, its eyes reflect back brightly like cat-eyes, and the animal freezes like stone. And so it was, after searching in the tree tops, the guide finally found no less than three pairs of glowing eyes which just stared back and stayed there like stars.

The nightsafari continued onto a trail through a bamboo forest. The guide led the way, and little by little unveiled what wonders this island, despite its small size, has to offer in terms of the range and variety of fauna and flora present. Due to the vast differences in elevation and the location of the island straddling the tropics and temperature climate zones, at last count, there are no less than 700 species of ferns, 400 species of butterflies, and some 4000 different species of insects on the island alone. In the crack of a boulder, a gigantic banyan tree has managed to take root and grow like a gigantic umbrella to shelter the earth all around it. Ferns, figs, and vines grow and coil together their branches and bodies in an unseprable tangled, wild mass. The bamboos that stand tall and thin and sway at the slightest wind provide wood for the aboriginals to build their huts and tools. When split open, the hollow insides of a bamboo can be filled with rice and cooked slowly over an open fire to produce delicious "bamboo rice", a staple in the local diet.

We looked down at where our guide shone the flashlight, and a grayish green creature lept and lept. A toad, he explained, and where there are toads, there are snakes. Suddenly, it seemed we all became very afraid and very aware of our surroundings. Unlike common misconception, snakes do not hibernate in winter in Taiwan. Maybe higher up in the mountains, but where we were, merely eight hundred or so metres above the sea, they are very much alive and slithering around. We walked on further, wary of where our feet were stepping on, for every few steps the sound and vibrations of our feet would trigger toads to leap out of our paths and into the dark, dense bushes all around us.

"There!" the guide exlaimed and shown light on a thick branch that was covered with dangling foilage, roots and vines. Looking more closely, my skin crawled. There on the branch, resting and not moving was a snake. Long, thin, slimy and scaly, brown with black markings along the length of its entire body. I could not see its tail end or figure out where its head was. Perhaps it was angrily slithering and staring at us for disturbing its prowl on some unknowing prey on the ground. The next day, early morning around eight, we would see even more snakes coiled and camouflaged in the dense foliage.

Out of the woods we went, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I cleared the bushes into an open field surrounding by wood cabins. The village which used to be situated on the terrace is called Bulowan, after the Truku word meaning "echo". It is said that if you shout into the mountains, you can hear your echo bounce back and reverberate in the valley below. It was here that the ancestors of the Truku people lived and hunted for decennia, if not millennia. For generations, like all the 14 (officially recognised) aboriginal peoples of Formosa, the Truku went about their traditional and ancient ways until the Han and the Japanese people appeared and gradually forced the aboriginals to move down into the plains. Many traditions have been lost, and through the decades aboriginal children have been assimilated into 'mainstream' society through education and migration into the cities looking for work. In one word, the traditions are dying. Thanks to efforts of people like our guide, and others who continue to perform their traditional songs and dance to curious foreigners like ourselves, the lifeline and cultural uniqueness continues to flow on like the creek that has flowed through the gorge since time immemorial.

We shouted as loud as we could, and eventually could indeed hear our echo. Hear our echo come back at us, and for a moment, recall the echoes and past voices of the Truku people who once roamed this land freely.