Fieldnote_Mar 29 2023 _ Naluwan_Sherily

We spent this week's class with the older generation of Cultural Health Station. As soon as we entered the classroom, we danced and exercised with the elderly. Afterwards, we followed the group list and met with our tribal families. Today, we mainly met with Grandma Wen, who runs a grocery store at home. Before starting to interact with the tribe's people, Scott shared several audio recordings of traditional music he had previously recorded with indigenous friends, and reminded us to chat with the tribe members about music related content.

When interacting with Grandma Wen, the teaching assistant helped to open many topics due to their shyness. Thank you very much! Grandma shared with us her life in the tribe. When she was still living in Taitung, her family mainly engaged in farming. Initially, she moved from Taitung to Xiangshan to work due to abundant fishing resources. Her main livelihood was fishing, with bamboo rafts as the main tool. According to Grandma Wen's explanation, it seemed that she used trawling to catch fish, mostly as a couple. However, she also experienced some thrilling moments due to the strong wind in Hsinchu. In addition, due to the inability to anchor and fix the relationship, he was once caught by the wind during the fishing process and eventually rescued by another ship and landed. Then the grandmother changed her profession to running a grocery store and occasionally helped with fishing.

The grandmother also mentioned the matter of the tribal harvest festival, and preparing for it was an important thing. She recalled that in the past, when preparing for the harvest festival in Taitung, the elders had very strict requirements. At the same time, the entire festival lasted for up to three days, and everyone sang and danced together. She also smiled and said that it was no longer possible to dance too difficult now, and even Wen Jian had to slow down the movements of his body's dance at the beginning because he was afraid of falling, Grandma also invited us to participate in the harvest festival held in Xiangshan. In addition to dancing, she also sang a drinking song in both Ami and Mandarin versions. Finally, let's conclude by sharing the stories we heard with each other, which is called today's distance. We have heard many rich and interesting stories!