Encounter at Sun Moon Lake

Rew and I were in a ghost village. It was a late afternoon on a Monday at Sun Moon Lake, several kilometers from the town from which we’d come.

We had hiked for hours, fighting spiderwebs along scarcely walked trails and jealously eyeing passing cars on the highway. The last time either of us had eaten was breakfast, and now it was pushing dinnertime.

So, exhausted and starving, we expected reprieve when we finally found some signs of life at the Thao village. The Thaos are a small aboriginal tribe – less than 300 – that makes its home at Sun Moon Lake.

But when Rew tried to buy water at a town general store, no one was even around to ring us up. We settled for the only thing around that was open, a restaurant across the street with just one table occupied.

We sat down and ordered.

“Hey there! Hello! Wei!” the other table was waving us over in English and Chinese.

“Come over here! Come sit with us!” they gestured. Rew walked over, curious. I remained in my seat, hesitant. Foreigners sometimes attract unwanted attention; I wondered if this would turn sour fast.

But they waved me over too – and what followed was an hour-plus-long mutual crash course in our respective life stories, complete with exhortations to booze it up and a meal of wild muntjac (山羌) – which we saw at the zoo a month earlier – specially ordered for us.

They were an assemblage of Thaos. The dark, young-ish man across from us was none other than the chief of the Thao tribe. He had inherited the position from his father, who had inherited it from his.

“You walked here?” they exclaimed, eyes wide. “Drink! Drink!” the 18-year-old girl pleaded. “Please stay one more day! We’ll take you around!” she continued. “Fate brought us together,” an older one insisted. Then the karaoke began, along with drunken dancing.

They were smitten with us, as we were with them. They treated us to the food we had ordered ourselves, then took us to watch them perform traditional dances for a group of mainland Chinese tourists.

Before we finally parted ways, the youngest of the Thao girls negotiated a hefty discount for us on our boat ride back across Sun Moon Lake.

Shortly after, we were on the bus back to Taipei. Like most Sun Moon Lake tourists, we had rowed a boat on the lake’s waters, we had hiked its trails. But we can make one claim most people probably can’t: we made friends with the people of Sun Moon Lake. We dined with the chief of the Thao.