ABORIGINAL TAIWAN: EXPLORING AUSTRONESIAN CULTURE AND GENETIC TRAIL FOR MASS TOURISM

In the context of modern-day history and cross-cultural tourism, the island of Taiwan, adjacent to Mainland China, remains a complete identity mystery. Presentday, geopolitics dictates that a `one-China’ policy be dominant, thus international relations, media exposure and tourism of Taiwan had been perceived as part of a Chinese backwater. On top of that, Taiwanese tourism information available, too, failed to dispel adequately that Taiwan is neither a Chinese province nor China per se. In turn, world tourism extols China and forgets Taiwan. To add to this identity `mix-up’ is Taiwan’s ethnic mix. Taiwan is a unique polyglot consisting of majority Chinese Hoklo and Hakka, amidst a growing sociopolitical Austronesian (Malay) Aborigines (yuangzhumin). The yuangzhumin factor had been existing within only local political and academic circle of anthropologists, archeologists and ethnologists for sometime, but never articulated to be part of the national identity like the Aborigines of Australia and the Maoris of New Zealand.Yet in the not-too-distant past, Taiwan had been a Malay island, with substantial interactions with other Hmong, Miao Malay communities of Yunnan, Vietnam and the Philippines, not to mention Borneo, Indonesia and Malaysia further south. Aboriginal Taiwan consists of at least 21 tribal groups like the Atayal, Yami, Thao, Rukai, Paiwan, Kavalan, Amis, Puyuma, Yami to name a few, yet they seldom made world headlines like the Amis Folklore Great Singers and pop star A-mei. Their presence is only felt at the Wulai Cultural Village in Taipei and the Sun Moon Lake Cultural Village of Nantou County, Taichung. However, if the Malay World could be informed of the yuangzumin’s existence, it may trigger tourism interest from a 370 million `Malay’ tourism market.The combined perspective of sociocultural and genetic science, this paper lay a new and exciting cultural tourism perspective