When February brings a different New Year: Inside Taiwan’s Indigenous worlds and the Tsou Mayasvi

As much of Taiwan marks February with Lunar New Year celebrations and reunions, the Tsou people of Alishan observe another calendar — one defined not by firecrackers and red envelopes, but by Mayasvi, a solemn tradition often described as a “war ritual.”

A festival outside the lunar calendar

February in Taiwan is usually synonymous with the Lunar New Year, the most important holiday for the ethnic Han Chinese majority, which consists of around 96% of the population.

Yet in the mist-shrouded mountains of Alishan (Ali Mountain) February carries a markedly different meaning. For the Tsou people (鄒族), one of Taiwan's Indigenous peoples, this is the season of Mayasvi.

Often translated as a “war ritual,” Mayasvi has deeper cultural meaning. Historically, when tribes still engaged in warfare, it commemorated victorious returns and honored ancestral spirits.

Today, stripped of violence but rich in symbolism, it functions as a collective rite affirming courage, social order, and communal memory. The ritual not only commemorates past wars, it also includes prayers to ward off misfortune, disasters and disease, and for strength in future challenges.

Male participants dress in traditional attire, and collect dendrobium, deemed by the Tsou people as a sacred flower. The plant is used as a ceremonial marker of hospitality toward the deities.

In addition, they perform ritualized dances and chant sacred songs in ceremonial spaces known as kuba — the men's meeting house.

After the main ceremony, people of all ages join hands and, led by the elders, dance and sing in praise of the heroic deeds of their ancestors.

A closing ceremony is held before midnight. The chieftain leads the warriors in singing songs again, including war songs and the sending-off songs meant to say good-bye to the deities. Then the bonfire is extinguished, officially concluding the festival.

The ritual is treated with gravity. It is not staged for tourists, but a living tradition governed by ancestral law.

Through Mayasvi, Tsou society remembers the hardships their ancestors endured, learns traditional tribal ethics, and reaffirms fundamental social and cultural values. For the Tsou people, Mayasvi signifies social rebirth, as members unite through collective rites and shared responsibilities.

Who are the Tsou?

The Tsou people primarily inhabit the Alishan region of Chiayi in southern Taiwan. Although the Tsou language, just like other Indigenous languages, belongs to the Austronesian family — a linguistic lineage that stretches from Madagascar to Easter Island — it is considered linguistically significantly distinct from neighboring Indigenous groups.

Tsou society has traditionally been organized around age grades and male houses (kuba), with rituals like Mayasvi reinforcing social cohesion and moral order.

Records describing the Tsou date back to the Dutch Formosa era in the 17th century, when the Netherlands ruled part of Taiwan through the Dutch East India Company or Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie. The Tsou also appear in records from the Qing era and the Japanese colonial period.

Crucially, the Tsou are one part of a much larger mosaic. Taiwan officially recognizes 16 distinct indigenous peoples, including the Amis, Atayal, Paiwan, Bunun, Rukai, among others.

Each group possesses its own language, cosmology, social structure, and ritual calendar. Collectively, Indigenous peoples make up about 2.6% of Taiwan's population — numerically small, yet culturally foundational.

Taiwan's indigenous peoples: Policy, recognition, and redress

Over the past three decades, Taiwan has undertaken a sustained — if still incomplete — effort to address historical injustices faced by Indigenous communities. The Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, enacted in 2005, serves as a constitutional cornerstone, affirming cultural autonomy, land rights, and political participation.

Other measures include formal name-rectification policies, clearer legal standards for recognizing Indigenous status, and the institutionalization of Indigenous-language interpreters in court proceedings.

As a part of Taiwan's “affirmative action,” Indigenous students receive additional points in college and high school entrance examinations. Other measures include employment assistance, entrepreneurship counseling, preferential loans, and hunting rights including regulated ownership of hunting firearms, with an aim to balance cultural practice with modern governance.

Language revitalization from courts to classrooms

One of the most consequential areas of policy is language. Taiwan has elevated Indigenous languages to national-language status and promotes their use in education and public life.

Universities such as National Taiwan University (NTU) and National Chengchi University (NCCU) offer a wide array of Indigenous language courses as well as courses on the history, anthropology and public policy. NCCU also hosts a dedicated credited certificate program in Taiwan Indigenous Development.

At the grassroots level, initiatives like the Tamorak Mother Tongue Co-learning Center, Taiwan's unique full Amis-language immersion school based in the rural county of Hualien on Taiwan's east coast, demonstrate what cultural revival looks like in practice. There, children learn mathematics, science, and ethics in Amis, reclaiming linguistic fluency once eroded by assimilationist policies of the past.

Amis is not a subject confined to the classroom at Tamorak. It is the fabric of everyday life at Tamorak. Teachers use Amis to guide children through activities such as felt-making and watercolor painting.

Children chant songs in Amis as they turn soil, sow seeds, and water plants, learning the rhythms of both language and the land at once. Meals, playtime, even quarrels unfold in Amis. The result is total immersion in an environment where the language is a constant.

At Tamorak, Amis is both the primary subject and the medium through which other forms of knowledge are acquired. Children learn their own culture through their ancestral tongue, on their own terms.

Beyond the firecrackers

As Lunar New Year celebrations continue this February, Mayasvi — and other indigenous cultural festivities — serves as a quiet counterpoint. It is a reminder that Taiwan's temporal rhythms are plural, not singular.

To understand Taiwan fully is to recognize that its identity is not only negotiated between Beijing and Washington, or forged in silicon fabs, but also sustained through lived experience — in mountain rituals, ancestral chants, and classrooms where endangered languages are spoken anew.