instead of spending millions on Jifuen tourism to compete with Mainland Chinese attractions, why not promote Taiwan’s pivotal role in being a historical foothold for almost every Austronesian people in the world? Note: there are hundred millions of Indonesians and Filipinos who have genetic ties to Austronesians.
the majority of local taiwanese doesnt even know about this as well
KMT has been telling Taiwanese that they’re worthless and that even impoverished countries like Brazil is better than Taiwan, so we just keep aspiring to be some other country.
Taiwanese tourist board promoting Austronesian culture could be good, but mostly would end being shit and patronizing and involve a lot of grilled meat and dancing
Taiwan is pushing the indigenous angle more and more. But it needs to be done right. Fake harvest festivals or worse, real harvest festivals with invasive tourist presence aren’t a good look.
Also it’s not 100% proven that everything came out of Taiwan in terms of austronesian culture etc.
We’ve already got that with the Austronesian Cultural Festival in Taitung. Alas, non-Chinese from Indonesia and Malaysia don’t have much interest in or feel connection to Aboriginal culture in Taiwan. Their roots go back to local kingdoms and tribes in the Malay world, and not before.
How many people of English descent explore their roots in northern Germany, compared to old castles in Britain?
Whenever the DDP is voted into power, they would host the Austronesian forum, which aims to improve Taiwan’s connections with other Austronesian speaking communities around the world. Other than official state to state contacts, the forum also hopes to enable indigenous groups to reach out to one another.
The inaugural Austronesian forum took place in 2002. 12 Austronesian nations participated. Since then, the Austronesian forum was held for the next 5 years. However, funding was slashed when DPP was voted out of power, and for a while, the 2008 Austronesian forum in Palau was the last one to be held.
In 2016, newly elected President Tsai pushed for its revival, and the rebooted forum was held in 2018. Originally the 2020 forum was going to be held in Hawai’i, but the pandemic hit, so it was instead scaled back moved to Taiwan. The 2021 forum is scheduled to be held in the Marshall Islands.
That’s the government’s main effort of forming an Austronesian community and foster consensuses on international challenges.
If you are talking about using Austronesian culture as a draw to get tourists, I think it wouldn’t feel genuine unless we improve language and culture equality on this island. Taiwan needs to move towards a model similar to the one New Zealand has, where by returning land ownership of traditional territories to the tribes as communal property, and enable them to generate revenue to rehabilitate Indigenous language and culture, as well as to improve living quality.
Maori population is 16.9%. Taiwan is 2.4%. Australian aborigine 3.3%. US 2%. Canada 5%. Taiwan is not going to generate large amounts of revenue from aboriginal tourism.
Aside from the tourists focused villages in the Rotorua area, which recreated pre-European villages, Maori tourism really isn’t placed front and center. I didn’t get to visit the Northland area, so maybe that’s why. Instead all the Maori place names felt much more ubiquitous.
I also didn’t goto one of those villages, I instead went to Whakarewarewa because it seemed more likely to get a conversation going.