Central Taiwan Culture & Language

Central Taiwan holds the island’s strongest indigenous presence and some of its most distinctive Han traditions.

Bunun singing

The pasibutbut, sung before the millet sowing, is an eight-part polyphony in which voices enter one at a time and slide upward in microtonal steps toward a unified chord, the pitch of which is taken as an omen for the harvest. When recordings reached Europe in the 1950s they overturned the assumption that complex harmony was a late and Western development. It is still sung, and it is unlike anything else.

The Mazu pilgrimage

The nine-day procession from Dajia Jenn Lann Temple, carrying the goddess’s palanquin some 340 kilometres and back through the central plain, involves millions of participants and is listed as national intangible heritage. Households along the route feed pilgrims for free, and people kneel in the road for the palanquin to pass over them.

Tea

High-mountain oolong from Lishan, Shanlinxi and Alishan — grown above a thousand metres, hand-picked, lightly oxidised and rolled into pellets — commands some of the highest prices in the tea world, and competitions are followed closely.

Lukang’s craft

Lantern making, tin work, fan painting and woodcarving survive as working trades.

Lacquer and the Japanese legacy

Taichung was the centre of Taiwanese lacquerware, introduced under Japanese administration in the 1920s when craftsmen were brought from Kagawa to teach the technique using local wood. A handful of workshops still produce it, and the Taiwan Lacquer Museum in the city holds the surviving output of an industry that once exported across Asia and now supports perhaps a few dozen people.

Bubble tea

Invented in Taichung in the 1980s, with two tea houses claiming it, and now one of Taiwan’s most successful exports.

Mandarin is the official language, written in traditional characters, and is universal.

Taiwanese Hokkien is very widely spoken here, more so than in Taipei, and is the everyday language for many people on the plain and in Lukang.

Indigenous languages — Bunun, Tsou, Atayal, Seediq and Thao — are spoken in the mountain communities. Thao has only a handful of fluent speakers left and is the subject of an active revival effort.

English is less widely spoken than in Taipei, though Taichung’s cafes and the main tourist sites manage. In the mountains and on the plain, expect limited English and use a translation app.

Useful Mandarin: ni hao, xie xie, duo shao qian for how much, hao he for good to drink — which is the right thing to say at a tea farm.