In this painting, inhabitants of the village of Sinkan (新港) work together to put up the roof of a house (乘屋起盖). The house is elevated above the ground, a hallmark of Austronesian traditional architecture. In this case, the base appears to be made of earth, but in other areas the houses were built on wooden stilts. 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