On the way to practice for an aboriginal dance competition (see post below for the highlight of that day...) I decided to snag a few moments of the bus trip as we drove down our road, Highway 193, towards the town of Fong-Lin.
Song-Pu Elementary is taking part in a regional competition of their ancestral stories told through dance. It is a very....very....impressive performance, not jus tby the kids that we know but by the whole group of schools. It is done mostly in languages that are not chinese - as the long history of Taiwan was anything but Chinese - so the conversation and songs are lost on me. But the dance tells a story clearly, and the kids do it quite well. Each school will have its story to tell, based on the tribe that most of its students are from. There are 13 recognized tribes in Taiwan, and then the three waves of Chinese immigrants. So, diversity is high, cultures are intensely different, but it all seems (now) to work as one central unit of "Taiwan". Mostly.
