A-mei’s star status, wealth and fast lifestyle have taken her a long way, figuratively and literally, from the island’s indigenous people. “When I first became a star, I very rarely saw other aborigines,” she says. “But the other day I actually saw some working with the camera equipment.” That’s about as far up the economic ladder as most aborigines go. Most of Taiwan’s 380,000 native people (only 1.7 percent of the total population of 23 million) languish in poverty. The island’s original occupants were slaughtered by Chinese settlers from Fukien province more than 300 years ago. In a brutal saga familiar to most indigenous peoples, their lands were gradually stripped away by force and fiat. They now own less than 2,400 square kilometers–less than 7 percent of the island–much of it steep mountain slopes unsuitable for farming.
The big problem is a lack of education. The Chinese school system banned native speech from its underfunded village schools; as a result, most aborigines are qualified only for menial jobs. Unemployment hovers around 30 percent, compared with 7 percent for ethnic Chinese. Alcoholism and prostitution are rampant. “There are a few aborigines, like A-mei, who have become successful,” says Takisugan Bion, an aboriginal pastor. “But most of us are still an enslaved race.”
Until recently, many aboriginal families sold their daughters to human traffickers, who turned them into child prostitutes. Most of the families were tricked or coerced into selling; others did it for the money. So common was the practice that a native proverb describes the birth of a daughter as the surest way “to bring fortune.” Bidai Hayung (a pseudonym) was married off by her family more than 40 years ago to one of a dozen Chinese soldiers billeted on her Bunun tribe’s native village (the same tribe A-mei belongs to). When he mistreated the 13-year-old, she ran away–and quickly fell into the hands of a prostitution ring. After decades in brothels, she managed to return to her native village. Ashamed of her past, she tried to purify herself through a tribal ceremony of slaughtering a pig and washing it clean of blood in a river. But she could not shake her alcoholism. In need of money to buy liquor, she returned to Taipei and her former life. Now, past 60, she works as a cleaning woman in a cheap hotel, still drinking and struggling to pay for diabetes medicine. “She is very wretched,” says a younger cousin.
At last the government is trying to help. As an opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) encouraged aborigines to fight for their rights. Since coming to power in March, the DPP has sponsored a bill that would spend $45 million to improve education in aboriginal areas, including teaching in native languages. Payen Talu, an aboriginal activist and legislator, complains that the government still imports unskilled laborers from southeast Asia, who take away jobs from his people. But, he acknowledges, most Taiwanese are at least aware of the aborigines’ plight. Perhaps A-mei deserves a bit of credit. Talu recently played a hit song for former prime minister Vincent Siew, then asked him if he knew the artist. Not only did he know it was A-mei, he even knew the name of her tribe.
