I am Su Pei-yu, a third-year student of the Graduate Institute of Humanities in Medicine (GIHM). I am currently a full-time student and expect to graduate in the 2019-2020 school year. Working as a research assistant for Lin Yi-ren, I had the opportunity to lead a group of students to the Tbahu tribe as part of a fieldtrip, through which I discovered that the farmers of this tribe are particularly susceptible to poor health and wellbeing. I guessed that overwork was one of the primary factors burdening their health, so I decided to enter the GIHM to find answers and explore the issue in greater depth.

The study was conducted in the tribal community of Tbahu in Jianshi Township, Hsinchu County. Last year (2018), I stayed in Tbahu for a long time to live with the tribe's farmers, in order to understand their work schedule and work conditions. I realized that during these past 50 years, after the modern economy entered the tribe, they began to grow cash crops in an attempt to adapt to the so-called modern society. However, wanting to live a better life than before requires them to work harder.

I hope that the people of Tbahu can understand that earning more through growing more is not a long-term solution because they have to sacrifice their health for greater crop yields (or “sell health into the crops”). The Tbahu people need to realize that the livelihoods of their dependents would be at risk if they were to collapse due to poor health from overwork.

In the future, I hope to have the opportunity to help them improve their crop sales and crop processing, and ultimately, increase the output value so that the tribal farmers are able to gain reasonable financial returns without overworking themselves.