Ren'ai Township covers 1,300 square kilometers of some of Taiwan's most rugged terrain — the second-largest township in Nantou County by area, yet home to only about 15,000 people. That low density is not emptiness. It is mountains: steep, forested ridgelines that rise into cloud, river gorges cutting through the Central Mountain Range, and high-altitude meadows where the air is thin and the light changes hour by hour. The township's main artery, Provincial Highway 14, climbs from the flatlands of Puli into this world, connecting Ren'ai to the coast and to Hualien via Highway 14A across the range. Traveling the mountain road, the landscape insists on your attention. This is not a place that lets you pass through it casually.

Ren'ai's indigenous communities are not a single bloc but three nations living across different valleys and elevations, each with distinct cultural identities. The Atayal are Taiwan's second-largest indigenous group and have long inhabited the northern and western ridges of the Central Mountains. The Seediq — recognized as a separate people from the Atayal in 2008, after decades of administrative grouping — live primarily in the Wushe area, carrying traditions of weaving, headhunting ritual, and the gaga ethical code that governed community life. The Bunun occupy the higher southern reaches, known for their polyphonic vocal music and deep relationship with the deer-hunting calendar. Today all three communities maintain active cultural programs, languages under revitalization, and a visible presence in the villages of Ren'ai.

Mona Rudao, chief of the Mahebu village, had watched for years as Japanese colonial administration eroded Seediq life: forced road-labor, prohibitions on traditional tattooing and head-hunting ceremonies, humiliating treatment by police officers, and the grinding pressure to abandon the gaga. After a flash point in early October 1930 — a Japanese official rebuffed a toast offered at a wedding — Mona Rudao united six Seediq villages in a carefully planned uprising. On the morning of October 27, some 300 warriors attacked the Wushe public school during an athletic meet, killing 134 Japanese civilians and police. The Japanese colonial response was overwhelming and methodical: army units, air bombardment, and — in what historians have documented as likely the first use of chemical weapons in Asia — gas bombs dropped on Seediq positions in the forests. Of the approximately 1,200 Seediq directly involved in the uprising, 644 died. Around 290 chose to end their own lives rather than surrender. Mona Rudao died on November 28, 1930, in the mountains above Wushe. He was found years later, his body preserved by the forest conditions, and has since been returned to his homeland with the dignity his life deserved.

The Wushe Incident did not end with Mona Rudao's death. The following year brought what is sometimes called the Second Wushe Incident, in which the Japanese colonial government tacitly permitted rival indigenous groups to attack the surviving Seediq who had surrendered. The remaining Seediq of the six uprising villages — reduced from more than 1,200 to around 500 — were relocated to a lowland settlement and further marginalized. For decades under both Japanese and later Kuomintang rule, the Wushe Incident was a complicated and often suppressed chapter. Mona Rudao was variously cast as a bandit, a hero, or a tragic figure depending on the political moment. Today a memorial park in Wushe village, a museum, and the remains of the old school ground bear witness to what occurred. The 2011 animated film Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale brought the story to international audiences. The Seediq people's own telling of their history — on their own terms — continues.

For visitors today, Ren'ai is most accessible through Qingjing Farm, a high-altitude agricultural area established in the 1960s by veterans of the Republic of China military who were resettled here after the civil war. The farm sits above 1,700 meters and is known for its open grasslands, sheep, and views across the Central Mountains. In cooler months, mornings bring a sea of cloud below the ridgelines. Cycling the mountain roads demands fitness and respect for the terrain — checking your tires before setting off is earnest advice, not a formality. The road to Taroko National Park via Highway 14A is one of Taiwan's more dramatic mountain crossings, threading between cliffs and river valleys on the way to the east coast. Ren'ai asks more of travelers than flatter places do. Most find it worth the effort.