Pattonkan, the original name given to Mts. Yushan by the Tsou tribes, who lived in the upper villages of the Jhuoshuei River. In order to consolidate Taiwan’s status, the Qing Dynasty, at the end of its governing period, enforced the policy of “opening mountain regions and assisting the savages”. The Qing authorities ordered chief general Wu Guangliang to lead an army to hew a path from Chushan in Nantou to Yuli in Hualien. They cut down weeds, built wooden bridges, laid stone paving down, completing what is called the “The Qing Dynasty Pattonkan Historical Trail” nowadays. In 1895, the year after the Sino-Japanese War, another war, the Yi-Wei war broke out. The Japanese Empire thus decided to develop Taiwan’s mountains in a positive and vigorous way, and, in order to make the aborigines fully assimilated with Japanese culture, a garrison road called “Pattonkan Cross Hill” was built.

      Today, these two “Pattonkan” trails, one built by the Qing dynasty chief general Wu Guangliang, the other by the Japanese, not only arouse the memory of modern man for their ancestors , but also represent the historical and humanistic traces across the pre-historical, through Japanese governing period and until the present time. This exhibition - “Refecting on the Meaning of Old Trail Discovery- The Story of Pattonkan”, tries to guide us, from an archaeological, anthropological and natural environment research prospective, to trace back and recall the story of the trail, as well as to educate us to reflect on the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature.