Tobacco Barn House Village

Fenglin (鳳林) was famous for tobacco leaves harvesting since the Japanese Colonial Era. At that time, Japanese government arranged Fenglin, Ruisui (瑞穗), Jian (吉安), and Yuli (玉里), that were towns along the East Rift Valley, as the places for tobacco leaves growing. Tobacco leaves were significant cash crops. In the past, there was a tobacco barn on top of each house, and it was used to roast the freshly harvested leaves. The bigger barn one had, the richer one was. The process was harsh. Basically, after harvesting for one whole day, farmers had to roast leaves right away. During the roasting process, farmers had to flip the leaves and rearranged the position to ensure all parts were roasted evenly and no burning part. After this drying process going through the night, farmers would put them to the barn for the next. There was a small cottage on top of the barn for exhausting the smoke. The wall of the barn was made of stems and shells of rice to allow good ventilation and heat preservation overnight.

Because the whole process of making tobacco was not healthy to farmers and the roasting machine was invented, the tobacco leaves roasting culture gradually declined. Not until 21st century did the government start to preserve the barns. There are only a few left and some of them are more than sixty years old.