{"id":5593,"date":"2023-06-02T18:44:51","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T13:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=5593"},"modified":"2023-06-02T19:18:47","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T14:18:47","slug":"taiwan-tribe-despairs-as-drought-shrinks-bamboo-crop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/world\/taiwan-tribe-despairs-as-drought-shrinks-bamboo-crop\/","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan tribe despairs as drought shrinks bamboo crop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chiayi County, Taiwan, June 2: Hacking at a bamboo plant with a machete, Avayi Vayayana peels back the shoot’s stiff bark as he scans southern Taiwan’s mountains, anxious for more of the money-making crop his Indigenous tribe increasingly struggles to find.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generations of the Tsou tribe have lived off Alishan township’s bamboo forests, which Vayayana says were planted by his forefathers and typically harvested in April and May.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But “the weather in the last few years has really been out of whack”, the 62-year-old tribal chief tells AFP.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The rainfall has been delayed and the bamboo shoots’ growth is noticeably affected.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Indigenous village T’fuya, the dark-brown cones of the island’s native stone bamboo — or phyllostachys lithophila — have become harder to spot.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The little young shoots will not sprout if there’s no rain. After a while, they will die inside the ground,” Vayayana says.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The February-to-April rains are crucial to the growth of bamboo shoots — which are popular in Asian cuisine — but since late last year, there have not been any significant downpours.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tsou tribe, which has a population of 7,000 in Alishan, has seen their bamboo shoot harvest steadily decline.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a misty May morning, a welcome drizzle finally blankets the bamboo forest Vayayana is working in, but he tells AFP it is too late.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, his haul is one-third of 2022’s harvest.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse, Vayayana and his family must now also contend with crop-raiding monkeys, he explains after an airgun shot rings out in the distance: his cousin trying to scare away the marauders.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Because many surrounding bamboo forests have died, now where there are bamboo shoots, all the monkeys will go,” he says.
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Chiayi County, Taiwan, June 2: Hacking at a bamboo plant with a machete, Avayi Vayayana peels back the shoot’s stiff bark as he scans southern Taiwan’s mountains, anxious for more of the money-making crop his Indigenous tribe increasingly struggles to find.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Generations of the Tsou tribe have lived off Alishan township’s bamboo forests, which Vayayana […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5593"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}