Went to the Ketagalan Culture Center 凱達格蘭文化館 in Beitou on my way to soak in a hot spring with a bunch of old Taiwanese men. I really enjoyed it! (Both, but I’m talking about the Culture Center). The reason I ended up there is, since I’m (permanently) on this indigenous kick, I looked up what tribe would have been in what is now Wanhua/Monga (side note, that name is connected to the indigenous people (side side note, Wanhua is my favorite part of the city and I later learned the zip code was 108 (side side side note, I needed this note to figure out if I was nesting the side side note properly… I was not. 🥺)))

So The 108 brought me to the cultural center. Lots of cool things in there but I didn’t really absorb the one floor I was on. I’ll be back again next week as I’m making hot spring a weekly thing now.

One of the volunteers there walked me through a whole history of what is the indigenous Taiwanese (not sure if that’s the right way to phrase it…) version of the Noah’s arc story. Seems like cultures around the world have a flooding story.

Also of interest is they had a room with monitors showing a bunch of rituals done by “witches”. “Witches?!” I said. “Don’t you mean shaman?” They didn’t know that word. I pulled it up in a dictionary and they looked kind of disgusted and said “No, no, those are people in China. We call them witches.” I said “Men and women are witches?” They said “Yes.”

So interesting! I’m going to have to do some research on what shaman got translated into in Chinese because my Americanized ass brain hears “witches” and I want to shout “RUN DOROTHY! RUN! AND YOUR LITTLE DIG TOO!”

Anyhow, time for sleeping. It’s way past my bedtime.