Kimbo and I were able to have an extended chat that afternoon; he agreed to allow me to interview him for The Wild East Magazine, about his experiences not only as an award-winning Aboriginal singer, but what led him to become an activist and leader in Taiwan’s democratic and human rights movement.
Kimbo was born in 1950 in Xinku, Taitung, “near a small harbor of the Amis tribe,” he said. His mother was Amis and father Baiwan. He lived there until he was 2 ½ years old, then moved again to the village Jialau, near Taimali, his “final home,” as he called it.

“Typhoon loves us,” he said, of the village that floods and is nearly wiped away every few years; the latest devastation took place during Typhoon Morakot last August.