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Traditionally, the Rukai depended on growing millet, sweet potato, and taro. Even though millet plays an important role in the Rukai’s daily life as the primary food in the yearly rituals, sweet potato and taro are the main dietary food for the Rukai in their daily life. The baked dried taro can be preserved and it is the common food for the Rukai. It is often cooked with vegetables and meat to make congee. In addition, peanuts are easy to be grown and become a common supplementary food.
The Rukai dress in splendid clothing. Attire reflects the hierarchical system of the Rukai. The clear distinction between the noble and the common features on their attire. Leopard teeth head dress, leopard skin vest, and precious glass beads, eagle feathers only belong to the higher ranking nobles whereas one hundred pace snake, sun, head, and pottery urns belong to the chief. Yet the common can get the permission of using these features by offering to the chief. Currently, there is no distinctive hierarchy between the nobles and the common. Hence, the clothing pattern indicates no distinction between the noble and the common.
C. Decoration with Lily Flower
Lily flower is well intertwined with the legendary origins of the Rukai ancestors, representing a holy place. In the lily blossom season, any woman can wear lily flower. Yet a red goldilocks with the bunch of lily flowers are seen as complete lily flower decoration, worn only at the wedding or engagement ceremony. In addition, it can only be worn after proper flower purchasing ritual.
Flower purchasing ritual plays an important part of the Rukai women. If economy permits, the parents of single women would often choose dates to slaughter pigs, make rice wine, and bake millet cakes to offer to the tribal chief to obtain rights to purchase flowers, known as Kialidao.
The Rukai is noted for their stone-slab houses. This type of house was built by first digging out a dustpan-shaped depression in a gentle slope, and then piling up small pieces of stone to make the rear and side walls. The front wall was built using large stone slabs. Two diagonal supports under the front eves kept the front wall from toppling forward. The back wall was supported by the earth behind it so it too was kept form falling over. Although this kind of dwelling could withstand the strongest typhoon, it might be destroyed by an earthquake. The double-sloping roof was covered with stone slabs, and these slabs were likely to slide off in a major earthquake. Some of these stone houses were built in the shape of an arrowhead, and were moderately deep from front to back. The houses of the nobility were as wide as ten meters or more, and the eaves were one and half meters high. Because this is about as high as a person’s chest, people wishing to enter the house had to bend over to go in. There is a sculpture carved along and under the roof of their slates, making their house mysterious and beautiful.
A. Beautiful Attire
The Rukai have developed unique clothing design, known for their cross embroidery, and glass beads embroidery. The patterns are complicated and beautiful, very similar to those of the Paiwan.
B. Holiness of the Lily Flower
The lily flower is the Rukai flower. The love and respect toward lily flower is transcended to the spiritual meaning, symbolic of social regulations and ethics.
C. Respect toward Hundred-pace Snake and Cloud Leopard
There are may legends about the “hundred-pace snakes”. For example, the hundred pace snakes are the ancestors of the chieftains. There are also many taboos about the hundred pace snakes. For instance, humans should avoid any contacts with snakes and the Rukai treat them with respect and worship. This society resembles the Paiwan in its use of the one hundred pace snakes.
D.Artistic Life Style
The Rukai distinguish their artistic features in living, attire, and dancing. In any Rukai village, we can soon realize how the Rukai demonstrate their artistic living, in wood carving, embroidery, weaving, landscape design, all integrated into part of their daily life.
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