This painting shows hunting techniques used by Austronesian peoples who lived in the western plains of Taiwan before Sinification. The inscription indicates that the scene describes “cooked aborigines” (熟番, that is to say pacified aborigines) from the central plains area: “Toward the end of fall and beginning of winter, each tribe gathers a group together to hunt deer. This is called ‘going into the grass’ (出草).” For many villages, hunting dogs were an important part of traditional hunting. Image is from the Fan she cai feng tu (番社采風圖 Genre Paintings of Taiwan Aborigines), used by permission of the Academia Sinica Institute of History and Phililogy. Source: Academia Sinica Institute of History and Philology Credit: From 六十七, 番社采風圖; published in 1998 by 杜正勝 for the Academia Sinica; more online at:

From How Taiwan became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han colonization in the seventeenth century by Tonio Andrade