Guluo Tribe Introduction
Gulou Village is the largest Indigenous tribe in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period, located on a mountain slope at an altitude of 1,000 meters. Even in the plains, it still retains strong Paiwan traditions. The five-year festival in Gulou Village endures due to competition. The oldest chieftain family, Jiling, faced challenges from the emerging Tsuilokankan family during the Japanese occupation. As a result, both factions competed during important rituals, leading to increasingly grand celebrations of the five-year festival in Gulou, while other tribes were losing their traditions. The bamboo pole ceremony, also known as the five-year festival, is the most important ceremony for the Paiwan people. Originally a three-year ceremony, it commemorates an agreement between the ancestor Limoki and the goddess of creation Delenka to meet every three years, termed "the covenant ritual between humans and gods." Ten days before each ceremony, shamans would perform divinations to determine the auspicious time. Smoke from burning millet stalks serves as a bridge to invite ancestral spirits to join their descendants. Currently, only Gulou Village in Laiyi Township, Pingtung County, and Tuban Village in Daren Township, Taitung County, still preserve this ritual.
