Rinari, a lively resettlement community on the border of Majia and Neipu in Pingtung County, is home to Paiwan and Rukai peoples from Sandimen's Paridrayan, Majia Village, and Kochapongan. After the devastation of Typhoon Morakot in 2009, tribal members were uprooted from their ancestral homelands. Yet displacement did not sever their cultural roots—if anything, it sparked a more vibrant creative energy on this new land.

Drawing Inspiration from the Earth: Life as Art

Step into Ljaukui, Rinari's leather studio, and you're immediately greeted by the warm, mingled scent of medicinal herbs and leather. The studio's leather carver holds fast to a belief that creation must begin with the land. She gathers millet ears, ferns, Formosan fishtail palm (Arenga tremula), and flower seeds herself, drying them in the sun and wind before weaving them into floral ornaments and headdresses. She is equally skilled at incorporating Paiwan totems—butterflies, ceramic vessels, and the hundred-pace snake, all symbols of life and protection—into her leather carvings, transforming them into notebooks, wallets, and other everyday objects. Another artisan, Zepulj Kaluvung, carries on an ancient craft using paper mulberry bark. Adhering strictly to traditional methods, she pounds the bark repeatedly with a wooden mallet to draw out its supple fibers, then fashions them into placemats, lampshades, and garments.

In the community's cultural revival, food plays an equally vital role. Tribal members draw on millet, tree beans, and foraged mountain ingredients to restore the flavors of traditional cuisine. Cinavu—steamed millet dumplings wrapped in shell ginger leaves and filled with millet, peanut paste, and meat—a symbol of blessing and communal reunion. Slow-roasted pork in clay pots, rich and smoky, graces tribal feasts and ceremonies as an enduring symbol of communal sharing and cultural continuity.

Rinari is more than a post-disaster resettlement. It is a living testament to how tribal members redefine the meaning of home—through art, food, craft, and everyday practice. Here, every handmade object and every traditional dish carries the weight of a community's resilience and its capacity for renewal.

☛  Rinari 1N1 has been selected as one of the Ministry of Culture's inaugural 100 Culture Bases.