Romantic Route3
Sleeping Ae’em
Ae’em is the Saisiyat term for the pangolin, an important creature in their mythology and daily life. The name reflects its deep cultural significance within their community.
In the myths of Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples and Hakka communities, the pangolin dwelling in the low-elevation mountains is both a slumbering youth and a golden spirit beast that gently turns the soil and nourishes the earth. Yet in the reality of our world, pangolins, their scales falsely believed to hold medicinal properties, have become coveted prey in the transnational smuggling trade—a human greed that has woven an endless curse upon them.
Once, Taiwan exported tens of thousands of pangolin skins each year; it was not until the enactment of the Wildlife Conservation Act in 1989 that pangolins were listed among the first group of protected species, slowly retreating from the brink of disappearance. This history traces a long and difficult journey of reconciliation between humans and nature.
In Hengshan, Hsinchu, Sleeping ‘ae:em
takes the form of a giant pangolin curled up in a fallow rice field. Surrounded by the bald cypress trees and quietly guarded by an old Earth God temple, everything seems suspended outside the flow of time. Covered in shimmering white scales, this fantastical creature silently welcomes every visitor, whispering the still-unfinished stories of conservation woven through the mountain forests.
Romantic Route 3
The golden spirit beast slumbers in the fields, as the reconciliation between nature and humanity quietly unfolds.
Docking Structure and Scale Strategy
This large sculpture is dismantled into five components and transported to the field for on-site assembly and each scale and its quantity are precisely calculated and simulated using 3D software.
◇ Location : Han House Bald Cypress Fun Base, Hsinchu, Taiwan
◇ By Googlemap : 24°42’52.6″N 121°07’32.4″E
◇ Artist : Hsiangfu Chen
◇ Curator : Eva Lin, Chihiro Minato
◇ Co-Curator : Ting Tsou, Feng Hsin
◇ Structural Engineers : Null_Robotics Ltd., Yencheng Lu, Yuhung Chiu
◇ Production Co. : Yenfang Kuo, Weiting Hsu, Yuxiang Tang, Zhonglin Sun, Linlin Chen, Yichen Liu
◇ Local Co. : Han Family, Yokoyama House, Hengshan Community Development Association
◇ Special Thanks : Hsuan Huang, Szuwei Wu, Chingtang Chen, Pingchen Chen
◇ Photo Provided : mt.project
◇ Photography : Yunglun Hsu