Taroko's aboriginal-run hotel

Until the late 17th century, Taiwan was predominantly inhabited by its aboriginal population, though there had been strong Spanish, Portugese, and Dutch presences, along with many others. It's a particularly complicated history.

But then along came the Ming Dynasty Han Chinese, and they came to dominate the place, with the aborigines retreating to the mountains. It's a bit analogous with Australia and its European invasion a bit later. And the Japanese ran the place from 1895 until 1945, of course.

 But back to the aborigines. They're in a bad way generally, but the Government runs generous programmes to support them, we were told.

There's also an interesting private programme, in the shape of the Taroko Village Hotel. It's owned by a wealthy non-aboriginal Taiwanese, but the employees are aboriginal, and the hotel is styled on the original village.


They serve traditional foods, notably different from the usual Chinese fare.



It's rather expensive too. We only dined there. Guide Samantha said their last group also stayed there. I asked her what went wrong. "Nothing went wrong", she said. I think it was just our budget that went wrong!