Tafalong Ancestral Shrine

Tafalong is one of the first large settlements the Amis founded after migrating into the East Rift Valley. In the Amis language, 'Tafalong' means 'white crab', a name said to come from the many white crabs once found in the local streams. The ancestral shrine (kakita'an) is the spiritual center of the community. The original ancestral house was destroyed by Typhoon Winnie in 1958 and was rebuilt in 2006 from drawings left by Chijiiwa Suketaro in the Japanese era; most of the carved wooden pillars that survived are held by the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica. During the Japanese era, Japanese scholars carried out ethnological fieldwork in Tafalong and left valuable written records. In recent years the people of Tafalong have worked hard to revive their culture, restoring the ancestral shrine, singing the old songs again and taking up traditional crafts, and in 2023 they opened the Tafalong Cultural Artifacts Museum, making this old community a model for preserving indigenous culture in Taiwan.