《蘭嶼觀點》Voices of Orchid Island

Towards the end of Hu Tai-li’s 胡台麗 1993 documentary, Voices of Orchid Island 蘭嶼觀點, there is a scene from the 1991 “Expel the Evil Spirits” protest （220反核廢驅逐惡靈運動）. The “evil spirits” referenced come from the Tao (aka Yami) belief in anito, but here they also stand for the nuclear waste the Taiwanese government began storing on the island in 1982. The initial decision to store waste on Lanyu （蘭嶼, the Chinese for Orchid Island, known as Pongso no Tao in the Tao language） had been made much earlier, as far back as the early 1970s. Lanyu was chosen because of its remoteness: Located 49 kilometers off the cost of the Taiwan mainland and lacking any large urban development, with a small mostly Indigenous population,2 it seemed like an ideal location to government bureaucrats.