By June Tsai
After 18 months of intensive work, the Institute of Taiwan History at Academia Sinica, the country's top research body, set up an exhibition and released a book about the life of Sun Jiang-huai. Thanks to interviews and documents Sun had collected throughout his life, historians were able to piece together the lives of common people in the country over the past 100 years.
Sun was born in 1907 near Tainan, in the southern area of the island, where he still lives today. When the institute's historians met the old man for the first time, they discovered a trove of priceless documents. They were amazed by how carefully the documents had been preserved, and that Sun still remembered many details about past events and people. The researchers started their oral history project with Sun in January 2007. In May, Sun proposed to donate to the institute his archives, which included 35 boxes of documents and over 1,700 photos.
"What Mr. Sun had was an incredible treasure for researching Taiwan's history in terms of its commerce, legal institutions, but also for the study of the region," Lin Yu-ju, an ITH associate research fellow and project member, said Nov. 1. Part of the collection was displayed at an exhibition organized at Tainan County's International Center for Humanities and Social Sciences Research, Oct. 12-18, and at the Taipei-based Academia Sinica Oct. 25-Nov. 2.
Having completed only elementary school education, Sun managed to master the legal profession through practice and self-study. He started his career as a secretary to a "baozheng" at the age of 15. A baozheng was a district chief in charge of the security and administration of a determined group of households, who assisted Japanese police in administrative affairs during the colonial period (1895-1945). In 1923, Sun turned to business and started a grocery store. That same year, Japanese commercial and civil laws were implemented in the island colony.
Because he was often in contact with notaries and lawyers to solve business disputes, Sun developed an interest in the law and became an assistant to a Japanese notary. He eventually became a notary himself in 1932 and later opened his own firm specializing in both public and civil affairs.
Under the Japanese system, a notary handled the same tasks as a lawyer except he could not defend clients at court. Sun's documents revealed the key role notaries played in smoothing communication between ordinary people and the colonial government. "They actually helped solve many difficulties for the people when even the local gentry could not," ITH Director Hsu Hsueh-chi explained.
While court verdicts tell which legal articles were used in determining a case, Sun's papers show the whole procedure, such as the debates between the defendant and the plaintiff, Hsu said. "Sun's documents give us a picture of the people's life and how Imperial Japan enforced its colonial rule on the island, and how that rule was different from, for example, that in Korea."
What makes Sun noteworthy is his tireless effort at learning. If he had questions, Sun would write to judges and jurists, looked through old cases, and browsed law books.
"People had great trust in the law and the legal profession at that time," Hsu pointed out, though the court ignored or delayed cases when a ruling might have compromised Japanese interests. "The level of trust in the rule of law declined after the war," the historian continued, and the examination procedure for notaries ended in 1969 under the Kuomintang government. Notaries lost their prestige becoming nothing more than land brokers, she added.
As for his commercial activities, between 1923 and 1945 the entrepreneurial Sun dealt in retailing, manufacturing, orchid growing and investment realty. He also founded or co-founded five companies under the 'wartime controlled economy' that Japan started imposing in 1937. "His experiences are those of a typical Taiwanese entrepreneur forced by the environment to focus on business rather than politics," Lin said.
Sun was a successful businessman, and generous too, Lin remarked. Being an amateur photographer, Sun often went on trips. When he traveled, the businessman often took his whole family and company staff with him. And, like many of his contemporaries, he adopted western fashion. "Life must go on. The Taiwanese people's response to being ruled by outsiders has been to focus on trying to lead as decent a life as possible and win other people's respect," she observed.
Sun's collection documents as well the way Japan mobilized the colony's people and resources in preparation for World War II. "Official documents barely reveal anything regarding the actual operation of the wartime controlled economy, let alone its impact on people's daily life," Lin said. Sun's archives, however, fill that blank.
An important part of Sun's collection records his participation in public affairs, the historians said. Sun led a local business association in 1928 that once lodged protests against a sugar company, backed by the Japanese government, for polluting the environment. It also organized an ink painting and calligraphy exhibition with 350 works from around the island. Yet, Sun gradually withdrew from the public arena because of his father's opposition.
Though he was watched by the Japanese police for several years for heading the business association, Sun was asked to join the Kominhokokai, or Imperial Subject Service Association, a wartime organization that rallied local leaders and conscripted colonial subjects into the imperial forces. Upon the regime change after the war, Sun resumed his activities. He continued working as notary and thanks to his experience and extensive contacts, he helped the government in dealing with civil affairs reconciliation. In 1946, the versatile man raised funds to establish a high school in his hometown, and 10 years later he tried to invest in business again. He liked keeping busy.
However, only one of the 15 chapters of the interview, published last month, is dedicated to his life after the war. "Sun did not wish to talk about what happened locally after the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan," Lin said. Hsu believes this silence speaks for the difficulties ordinary Taiwan people of that generation faced in merging two cultures after being subjected to the rule of two different regimes, both imposed by outsiders and both seeking to deny the people's own identity.
"Having access to people like Sun, who had many interesting experiences and lived long enough to tell them, is a great opportunity for historians," she concluded. "They make history feel closer to us."
This article is published in Taiwan Journal Nov. 13, 2008.
Dec 29, 2009
Documentary film revives a lost stage
By June Tsai
“We feel appalled by the cultural amnesia of our society,” said filmmaker Waro Hsueh. Her documentary “E. Sha Age,” exploring the history of the influential E. Sha Singing and Dancing Group, sets out to make amends by rejuvenating old memories among middle-aged Taiwanese and creating new ones among the younger generation.
E. Sha was an all-female musical theater group modeled after Japan’s Takarazuka Revue. Founded in 1959, it soon became a box office smash and dominated the local entertainment industry for 25 years before it was disbanded in 1985. Its disappearance was so sudden and complete that Hsueh, who was trained in anthropology and whose films focus on history and the humanities, had never heard of it.
“I felt like a blind person stumbling across a national treasure,” she said in reference to learning about arguably the most popular show group of her parents’ generation. She first learned about E. Sha from a friend and researcher familiar with the history of theater in Taiwan.
Hsueh was intrigued by what she heard. “I wanted to know why they succeeded so well in their time, and why Japan’s Takarazuka Revue is still popular today, while in Taiwan no one seems to remember E. Sha.”
She discovered E. Sha’s all-embracing style and free use of a multitude of cultural components made it highly relevant to the study of changes in popular culture in conjunction with Taiwan’s political, social and economic history.
The documentary, which premiered Oct. 23, reconstructs E. Sha’s story in the context of this history, including censorship during the martial law era, the patriotic fervor following the break in diplomatic relations with the United States, Taiwan’s most important ally, the craze for baseball beginning in the late 1960s and the large infrastructure projects in the 1970s.
During the 1950s, the political atmosphere did not foster popular entertainment, while native forms such as Taiwanese opera and puppet shows were not encouraged. At the same time, strip shows were stigmatizing stage performance. In an attempt to initiate entertainment of a higher standard, Japanese-educated Wang Zhen-yu and his art-loving family invested their wealth in starting up the all-woman group.
The company recruited unmarried women, provided board and lodging, and trained them in a manner comparable to military discipline. The young women sang, danced, acted, made their own costumes and recorded their singing with big bands for use on stage. Former members of the troupe, some of them now over 60, still recall the hardships as well as the solidarity forged among them through living, learning and performing together.
“Surprisingly, no contracts were ever signed between the company and the performers,” Hsueh said. Yet those who could bear the rigors of training and the performing life received pensions when they retired.
E. Sha performances in their heyday boasted lavish costumes and makeup, elaborate set designs and sound and light effects produced by advanced equipment rarely seen locally at the time. A standard two-hour show would encompass large-group dance numbers, chorus lines, skits and melodrama.
In an age before the concept of intellectual property rights, E. Sha drew generously on ready-made stories and melodies, combining them with creative choreography mixing elements from folk and modern art. Genres ranging from Taiwanese opera to popular film, Latin dances to show tunes, and world literature to comic stories were all fair game. The group developed an eclectic repertoire appealing to a wide cross-section of audiences around the island.
E. Sha’s creativity could be seen in its response to censorship. “It happened that a song we were using one day would be banned the next, and we had to quickly change its lyrics for the next show,” recalled the group’s director, Tsai Pau-yu, now over 80 years old.
The troupe’s popularity soared in the early 1970s when Taiwan’s economy began to take off. Ticket prices could be 100 times the cost of a bowl of beef noodles, of 5 percent of a public servant’s monthly income. At its peak, E. Sha sold out 250 performing days a year. It delivered spectacular shows in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. In Hong Kong, a scheduled one-month sojourn was extended to six months.
E. Sha’s flexibility in accommodating contemporary feel and emotional need seemed to guarantee its continuing success. However, as the economy continued to grow, large movie theaters, which often provided venues for E. Sha, were either sold to capitalize on skyrocketing real-estate prices, or divided into many small theaters in order to accommodate the burgeoning number of movie-goers. This was the beginning of the end for the song and dance revue.
The biggest and deciding blow came with the death in 1984 of both the founder and E. Sha’s choreographer of over 20 years, Wang Yue-xia. After a performance in Taipei in June 1984, E. Sha decided to rest for two months, but those two months became forever.
In making the documentary, Hsueh sought out and interviewed many former members of the group, and ended up bringing them back together for the production of the film. These artists, in turn, volunteered to pass their skills down to an interested group of students from Kaohsiung City-based Chung Hwa School of Arts. The result is a film depicting E. Sha’s history and reproducing a typical E. Sha performance for today’s audiences.
Hsueh and her team not only made a documentary. They also helped to preserve historic materials relating to E. Sha. They drew on period films from the nation’s film archive to provide the social and political backdrop, and sought help from the public and private sectors in digitally saving photographs, posters and video footage from the 1960s to 1980s. They even hope to use proceeds from commercial screenings of the documentary to help revive E. Sha shows in the future.
“These performers and their professional spirit are part of our cultural treasure,” Hsueh said. Some of them, such as Chen Feng-gui, are still active in dance and other arts. Chen, better known as Xiao-mi, was a major star for E. Sha, admired for her ability to perform different roles, male and female, young and old, serious and clownish. Today she is an established Taiwanese opera actress and was recently awarded the Global Chinese Culture and Arts Award in the category of traditional theater.
“E. Sha Age,” linking this legendary group of the past to Taiwan’s present, opens up room for the revival of musical theater and new memories of the island’s vibrant artistic spirit.
This article is published at online Taiwan Today Nov. 6, 2009.
“We feel appalled by the cultural amnesia of our society,” said filmmaker Waro Hsueh. Her documentary “E. Sha Age,” exploring the history of the influential E. Sha Singing and Dancing Group, sets out to make amends by rejuvenating old memories among middle-aged Taiwanese and creating new ones among the younger generation.
E. Sha was an all-female musical theater group modeled after Japan’s Takarazuka Revue. Founded in 1959, it soon became a box office smash and dominated the local entertainment industry for 25 years before it was disbanded in 1985. Its disappearance was so sudden and complete that Hsueh, who was trained in anthropology and whose films focus on history and the humanities, had never heard of it.
“I felt like a blind person stumbling across a national treasure,” she said in reference to learning about arguably the most popular show group of her parents’ generation. She first learned about E. Sha from a friend and researcher familiar with the history of theater in Taiwan.
Hsueh was intrigued by what she heard. “I wanted to know why they succeeded so well in their time, and why Japan’s Takarazuka Revue is still popular today, while in Taiwan no one seems to remember E. Sha.”
She discovered E. Sha’s all-embracing style and free use of a multitude of cultural components made it highly relevant to the study of changes in popular culture in conjunction with Taiwan’s political, social and economic history.
The documentary, which premiered Oct. 23, reconstructs E. Sha’s story in the context of this history, including censorship during the martial law era, the patriotic fervor following the break in diplomatic relations with the United States, Taiwan’s most important ally, the craze for baseball beginning in the late 1960s and the large infrastructure projects in the 1970s.
During the 1950s, the political atmosphere did not foster popular entertainment, while native forms such as Taiwanese opera and puppet shows were not encouraged. At the same time, strip shows were stigmatizing stage performance. In an attempt to initiate entertainment of a higher standard, Japanese-educated Wang Zhen-yu and his art-loving family invested their wealth in starting up the all-woman group.
The company recruited unmarried women, provided board and lodging, and trained them in a manner comparable to military discipline. The young women sang, danced, acted, made their own costumes and recorded their singing with big bands for use on stage. Former members of the troupe, some of them now over 60, still recall the hardships as well as the solidarity forged among them through living, learning and performing together.
“Surprisingly, no contracts were ever signed between the company and the performers,” Hsueh said. Yet those who could bear the rigors of training and the performing life received pensions when they retired.
E. Sha performances in their heyday boasted lavish costumes and makeup, elaborate set designs and sound and light effects produced by advanced equipment rarely seen locally at the time. A standard two-hour show would encompass large-group dance numbers, chorus lines, skits and melodrama.
In an age before the concept of intellectual property rights, E. Sha drew generously on ready-made stories and melodies, combining them with creative choreography mixing elements from folk and modern art. Genres ranging from Taiwanese opera to popular film, Latin dances to show tunes, and world literature to comic stories were all fair game. The group developed an eclectic repertoire appealing to a wide cross-section of audiences around the island.
E. Sha’s creativity could be seen in its response to censorship. “It happened that a song we were using one day would be banned the next, and we had to quickly change its lyrics for the next show,” recalled the group’s director, Tsai Pau-yu, now over 80 years old.
The troupe’s popularity soared in the early 1970s when Taiwan’s economy began to take off. Ticket prices could be 100 times the cost of a bowl of beef noodles, of 5 percent of a public servant’s monthly income. At its peak, E. Sha sold out 250 performing days a year. It delivered spectacular shows in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. In Hong Kong, a scheduled one-month sojourn was extended to six months.
E. Sha’s flexibility in accommodating contemporary feel and emotional need seemed to guarantee its continuing success. However, as the economy continued to grow, large movie theaters, which often provided venues for E. Sha, were either sold to capitalize on skyrocketing real-estate prices, or divided into many small theaters in order to accommodate the burgeoning number of movie-goers. This was the beginning of the end for the song and dance revue.
The biggest and deciding blow came with the death in 1984 of both the founder and E. Sha’s choreographer of over 20 years, Wang Yue-xia. After a performance in Taipei in June 1984, E. Sha decided to rest for two months, but those two months became forever.
In making the documentary, Hsueh sought out and interviewed many former members of the group, and ended up bringing them back together for the production of the film. These artists, in turn, volunteered to pass their skills down to an interested group of students from Kaohsiung City-based Chung Hwa School of Arts. The result is a film depicting E. Sha’s history and reproducing a typical E. Sha performance for today’s audiences.
Hsueh and her team not only made a documentary. They also helped to preserve historic materials relating to E. Sha. They drew on period films from the nation’s film archive to provide the social and political backdrop, and sought help from the public and private sectors in digitally saving photographs, posters and video footage from the 1960s to 1980s. They even hope to use proceeds from commercial screenings of the documentary to help revive E. Sha shows in the future.
“These performers and their professional spirit are part of our cultural treasure,” Hsueh said. Some of them, such as Chen Feng-gui, are still active in dance and other arts. Chen, better known as Xiao-mi, was a major star for E. Sha, admired for her ability to perform different roles, male and female, young and old, serious and clownish. Today she is an established Taiwanese opera actress and was recently awarded the Global Chinese Culture and Arts Award in the category of traditional theater.
“E. Sha Age,” linking this legendary group of the past to Taiwan’s present, opens up room for the revival of musical theater and new memories of the island’s vibrant artistic spirit.
This article is published at online Taiwan Today Nov. 6, 2009.
Civic groups dissect national land planning act
By June Tsai
As post-disaster reconstruction work continues in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot, which hit Taiwan in August and caused the nation’s worst natural disaster in 50 years, an overhaul of the country’s land use has become imperative.
The government is moving full speed ahead in legislating the long-overdue National Land Planning Act. The bill was approved in a Cabinet meeting Oct. 12 and sent to the Legislative Yuan for immediate review. But speeding up the review of the law in its current form has civic organizations worried that a law not well thought through will do more harm than good.
In a forum held by the nongovernmental Organization of Urban Re-s Oct. 31, concerned members of civic groups congregated to exchange views and sought to revise the government version of the bill, which they felt leaves a lot to be desired with regard to its direction, principles and technical feasibility.
The act in question would divide national land into four zoning categories: land conservation, marine resources, urban and rural development, and agricultural development. The central government would mainly be responsible for demarcating land conservation and marine resources zones, while local governments would take charge of the other two.
In analyzing the bill, Hsia Chu-joe, a National Taiwan University professor of architecture and planning, said a schematic land-use plan such as the one under review would prove unfeasible or out of date as soon as it was passed.
Hsia argued that Taiwan’s landscape is undergoing a massive restructuring, and a forward-looking land-use plan should be in place to address the challenges brought about by the expansion of urban areas, the disappearance of rural regions and the growing frequency and impact of natural disasters. “Governments the world over are faced with similar challenges, which threaten to incapacitate them,” he said.
In Taiwan, where the private sector has been more flexible and active than the public one, “policies, rather than guidelines, will be better tools for managing growth and forestalling the consequences of rampant development,” he said.
Hsia pointed out that the act fails to face the reality that the development gap in Taiwan today is not one between north and south. “The reality is the urbanization of the long strip of Taiwan’s west coast.” He noted that many land issues, such as the management of mega cities, rivers that run through many administrative areas, and aboriginal territories, are not confined to the jurisdiction of one local government. “Overlap of jurisdiction would cause great problems,” the professor said.
To correct this, Hsia suggested a review committee should be established under the Cabinet-level Council for Economic Planning and Development, with the vice premier as its convener. This committee should be responsible for reviewing land-use proposals submitted by various government agencies when their budgets exceed NT$500 million (US$14.7 million). No money should be earmarked before review by this committee.
In relation to this, Hsia said the government should show its determination to really do something by assigning the responsibility for carrying out the act to the CEPD, which according to a government plan will be upgraded to become the Council for National Development. Implementation of the act is currently assigned to the Construction and Planning Administration, “which is merely an administrative agency, rather than a policy-making one.”
Hsia said another very serious problem is the lack of an aboriginal-centered government body having greater power than local governments to carry out land-use planning involving aboriginal territories effectively and with understanding of indigenous people’s cultures and concerns.
“Indigenous people have rarely been included in the policymaking process involving their traditional territories, rights and ways of life,” he said. In fact, regulations in the National Land Planning Act pertaining to aborigines would supersede those of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act of 2005.
Participants were positive about the setting aside of land conservation zones, yet many were suspicious about Article Five of the act, which is dedicated to issuing land-development permissions.
“It’s like opening a back door to the evils of overdevelopment within a law meant to enshrine the protection of national land,” said Peng Yang-kai of OURS.
Likewise, Peng said, the bill does not put an end to a controversial article in the country’s Agricultural Development Act, which allows residences to be built in the midst of farmland and has since its passage in 1999 opened the door to the rapid annexation of arable land.
The act on national land planning was first proposed in 1993. Yet in the past years, drive for economic development, pressure from vested interests and election campaigns have kept it from becoming law. Now the rush to pass the law looks like a strategy for the government to evade the real issues of land conservation and the destructive consequences of decades of overdevelopment, said Ho Chen Tan, president of the Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation.
“There are actually enough laws in place if the government has the will to recover overused land and prevent further disasters from happening soon,” Ho Chen said. He pointed out that the bill, which fails to clearly set a date for the act to go into effect, gives a six-year time frame for the land use plans to be completed.
“If all goes well, it would take at least four additional years for other related rules that contravene this one to be amended, but by then it might be too late.” Ho Chen urged civil groups to focus on getting the government to clarify its position on individual development projects where there is policy conflict. “We can then ask the government to abide by what it professes, rather than allowing it to use the legislation as a shield to deflect its responsibility.”
Hsia concluded that if it were not for the past typhoon disaster, this act would still have been sitting idly in the Legislative Yuan. By intervening in the law-making process, society should oblige the government to take the law and the problems it sets out to cure seriously, he added.
“Friends used to joke that the only viable development plan for Taiwan is to build the island into a global junction for tourism and the cultural and creative industry,” Hsia said. “They might be right.”
This article is published at online Taiwan Today Nov. 20, 2009.
As post-disaster reconstruction work continues in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakot, which hit Taiwan in August and caused the nation’s worst natural disaster in 50 years, an overhaul of the country’s land use has become imperative.
The government is moving full speed ahead in legislating the long-overdue National Land Planning Act. The bill was approved in a Cabinet meeting Oct. 12 and sent to the Legislative Yuan for immediate review. But speeding up the review of the law in its current form has civic organizations worried that a law not well thought through will do more harm than good.
In a forum held by the nongovernmental Organization of Urban Re-s Oct. 31, concerned members of civic groups congregated to exchange views and sought to revise the government version of the bill, which they felt leaves a lot to be desired with regard to its direction, principles and technical feasibility.
The act in question would divide national land into four zoning categories: land conservation, marine resources, urban and rural development, and agricultural development. The central government would mainly be responsible for demarcating land conservation and marine resources zones, while local governments would take charge of the other two.
In analyzing the bill, Hsia Chu-joe, a National Taiwan University professor of architecture and planning, said a schematic land-use plan such as the one under review would prove unfeasible or out of date as soon as it was passed.
Hsia argued that Taiwan’s landscape is undergoing a massive restructuring, and a forward-looking land-use plan should be in place to address the challenges brought about by the expansion of urban areas, the disappearance of rural regions and the growing frequency and impact of natural disasters. “Governments the world over are faced with similar challenges, which threaten to incapacitate them,” he said.
In Taiwan, where the private sector has been more flexible and active than the public one, “policies, rather than guidelines, will be better tools for managing growth and forestalling the consequences of rampant development,” he said.
Hsia pointed out that the act fails to face the reality that the development gap in Taiwan today is not one between north and south. “The reality is the urbanization of the long strip of Taiwan’s west coast.” He noted that many land issues, such as the management of mega cities, rivers that run through many administrative areas, and aboriginal territories, are not confined to the jurisdiction of one local government. “Overlap of jurisdiction would cause great problems,” the professor said.
To correct this, Hsia suggested a review committee should be established under the Cabinet-level Council for Economic Planning and Development, with the vice premier as its convener. This committee should be responsible for reviewing land-use proposals submitted by various government agencies when their budgets exceed NT$500 million (US$14.7 million). No money should be earmarked before review by this committee.
In relation to this, Hsia said the government should show its determination to really do something by assigning the responsibility for carrying out the act to the CEPD, which according to a government plan will be upgraded to become the Council for National Development. Implementation of the act is currently assigned to the Construction and Planning Administration, “which is merely an administrative agency, rather than a policy-making one.”
Hsia said another very serious problem is the lack of an aboriginal-centered government body having greater power than local governments to carry out land-use planning involving aboriginal territories effectively and with understanding of indigenous people’s cultures and concerns.
“Indigenous people have rarely been included in the policymaking process involving their traditional territories, rights and ways of life,” he said. In fact, regulations in the National Land Planning Act pertaining to aborigines would supersede those of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act of 2005.
Participants were positive about the setting aside of land conservation zones, yet many were suspicious about Article Five of the act, which is dedicated to issuing land-development permissions.
“It’s like opening a back door to the evils of overdevelopment within a law meant to enshrine the protection of national land,” said Peng Yang-kai of OURS.
Likewise, Peng said, the bill does not put an end to a controversial article in the country’s Agricultural Development Act, which allows residences to be built in the midst of farmland and has since its passage in 1999 opened the door to the rapid annexation of arable land.
The act on national land planning was first proposed in 1993. Yet in the past years, drive for economic development, pressure from vested interests and election campaigns have kept it from becoming law. Now the rush to pass the law looks like a strategy for the government to evade the real issues of land conservation and the destructive consequences of decades of overdevelopment, said Ho Chen Tan, president of the Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation.
“There are actually enough laws in place if the government has the will to recover overused land and prevent further disasters from happening soon,” Ho Chen said. He pointed out that the bill, which fails to clearly set a date for the act to go into effect, gives a six-year time frame for the land use plans to be completed.
“If all goes well, it would take at least four additional years for other related rules that contravene this one to be amended, but by then it might be too late.” Ho Chen urged civil groups to focus on getting the government to clarify its position on individual development projects where there is policy conflict. “We can then ask the government to abide by what it professes, rather than allowing it to use the legislation as a shield to deflect its responsibility.”
Hsia concluded that if it were not for the past typhoon disaster, this act would still have been sitting idly in the Legislative Yuan. By intervening in the law-making process, society should oblige the government to take the law and the problems it sets out to cure seriously, he added.
“Friends used to joke that the only viable development plan for Taiwan is to build the island into a global junction for tourism and the cultural and creative industry,” Hsia said. “They might be right.”
This article is published at online Taiwan Today Nov. 20, 2009.
Aboriginal artists sculpt and rebuild with driftwood
Driftwood artworks are found in many places in Taitung County, such as this installation by Amis-Kavalan artist Zu Num at the Taitung Railway Art Village. (Photo: June Tsai)
By June Tsai
While driftwood would seem to be natural material for making art, in Taiwan it is part of a complex social web involving indigenous peoples, environmental protection and government sponsorship of art.
Driftwood originates in the indigenous peoples’ “sacred mountains,” and they have traditionally used it for firewood, building and carving. For over a decade a dedicated group of aboriginal artists based in the eastern counties of Hualien and Taitung have been making new forms of driftwood art.
With typhoons battering Taiwan every year, driftwood is seldom in short supply. Yet the wood also implies the disasters the storms often bring. “A sincere artist is very sensitive to the environment and nature, and no less to their destruction,” said Amis sculptor Siki Sufen while carving a screaming face at Taitung City’s Seaside Park Nov. 28.
“Through driftwood, nature is telling us of its course, and in carving the wood into art I respond to a calling that I feel from the material,” he said. The wooden mask with a hollow mouth is a child’s face shouting, mutely, “What On Earth Happened?”—the name that Siki gave to his piece.
More artists were working alongside him in the park for the 2009 International East Coast Driftwood Art Exhibition. In August, the apocalyptic Typhoon Morakot washed away mountainsides and brought down a huge amount of wood. In the aftermath, an estimated 980,000 tons of driftwood were produced, clogging harbors and jamming up waters off great stretches of the island’s coasts. In eastern Taitung County alone, 190,000 tons of trunks and stumps drifted back to shore.
Upon the urging of local aboriginal artists and also in a bid to highlight the connection between driftwood and the cultural characteristics of the region, the Taitung Forest Bureau District Office and Taitung Living Art Center co-organized the driftwood art exhibition. The forest office offered driftwood such as camphor and cypress fit for sculpting. Artists from Taiwan, South Korea and Japan were invited to work on the logs at the seaside park and demonstrate their creative processes to the public between Nov. 21 and 29.
On the fifth day of the exhibition, however, a surprising act by participating aboriginal sculptors threw a hitch into what had seemed to be a smooth-running show. But it also highlighted the situation of Taiwan’s aboriginal artists. Seven out of the 10 aboriginal artists went “on strike” to protest what they called discriminatory treatment and the exhibition’s digression from its expressed purpose.
“The original idea was to have people reflect on our relationship with nature, particularly in the wake of Morakot, through activities centering on driftwood art,” said Nikar Fusai, spokesperson for Dulan Sugar Factory. The factory-turned artist village in Dulan Village, Taitung, had played a major role in making the festival possible.
The reflective intent was somehow shoved to the background as the exhibition evolved into a festival-like event, she complained, with irrelevant song and dance programs enlisted to embellish the weeklong activity.
Another reason for the strike concerns an oral contract in which organizers offered each of the aboriginal artists NT$60,000 (US$1,866) in return for their finished works, carved from the driftwood now listed as national property. On the other hand, the organizers promised to purchase work done at the same time by Wu A-sun, one of Taiwan’s foremost artists, for a sum of NT$2 million. The discrepancy was not revealed until after the event began.
“The way organizers engaged the aboriginal artists seems discriminatory, at least viewed from the outside,” Yang Meng-che, assistant professor of comparative culture at National Taipei University of Education, remarked.
“These problems are essential here, that the art world is relentless and celebrity counts,” Yang said. Yet without aboriginal artists working here, the driftwood art scene would not have been what it is today and the show would be meaningless, he said.
“The organizers owe these long-time driftwood artists fair treatment and an apology. After all, they are all excellent and experienced artists,” he said.
One example is Rahic Talif, one of the artists on strike and a regional pioneer in driftwood art. In his struggle to become what he is today, Rahic had to first hide his aboriginal identity. Using a Han Chinese name, he became successful in the design world of urban Taipei for his interior and commercial design in his 20s. Later he abandoned that life out of a feeling of commitment to his tribal community. When he decided to return home to work as an artist, Rahic, now 47, had to persuade people that for his art to be good it did not have to be noticeably “indigenous.”
Rahic’s artworks have won critical acclaim in Taiwan for their independent genius catering neither to stereotypes about aboriginal art nor to the typical contemporary art taste that highlights form over spirit. When he withdrew from the driftwood art show, he was demanding respect for art.
“The deal organizers made with local artists is no different from employment subsidies for us,” he said in a telephone interview.
On the other hand, three aboriginal artists remained at the scene, including Siki. The sculptor, singer and theater director insisted on living up to his end of the deal, though he is not happy with the situation. “I might try to express my anger in the artwork, ” he said.
Paiwan artist Kulele, who has used materials ranging from wood to steel in his career, came back to work after three days on strike.
“This is a broken stump that I got,” he said, not without disappointment. “But I need to complete the carving; otherwise, I feel I owe something to this piece of wood,” he said while trying to bring a flower out of the dead wood.
Kulele’s piece is called “Five Kinds of Thirst.” Typhoon victims are in urgent need of five things, the sculptor explained: food, clothes, houses, transportation and spiritual nourishment.
Yang praised the flexibility of these artists and their strategies for maintaining their dignity in the face of prejudice. Without the strike, the insensitive and unjust treatment they were subjected to would have remained unnoticed.
“The unfinished pieces should be left as they are on site as a reminder so that the error can be avoided next time,” he said. “After all, mistakes are allowed in art as long as they serve to improve art and the conditions in which it is made.”
Taitung Living Art Center Director Lin Yung-fa, a painter himself, admitted administrative negligence. “There will be more cooperation with local artists in the future as the government ponders how to deal with the several square kilometers of driftwood piles,” he said. “The logs are waiting to be enlivened by the artists’ hands.”
Rahic and other sculptors who withdrew plan to use their skills in a different way, one that they believe better serves the cause of the exhibition: to help rebuild tribal villages destroyed during the typhoon, particularly south of the county’s Taimali River. Their first stop is Jialan Village.
“Many villagers still do not have even temporary housing. Homes, traditional meeting halls and furniture, to name the major things, all need constructing and we will do our best,” he said. “The important point is to return the driftwood to those who share its territorial origin.”
This article is published at online Taiwan Today Dec. 18, 2009.
While driftwood would seem to be natural material for making art, in Taiwan it is part of a complex social web involving indigenous peoples, environmental protection and government sponsorship of art.
Driftwood originates in the indigenous peoples’ “sacred mountains,” and they have traditionally used it for firewood, building and carving. For over a decade a dedicated group of aboriginal artists based in the eastern counties of Hualien and Taitung have been making new forms of driftwood art.
With typhoons battering Taiwan every year, driftwood is seldom in short supply. Yet the wood also implies the disasters the storms often bring. “A sincere artist is very sensitive to the environment and nature, and no less to their destruction,” said Amis sculptor Siki Sufen while carving a screaming face at Taitung City’s Seaside Park Nov. 28.
“Through driftwood, nature is telling us of its course, and in carving the wood into art I respond to a calling that I feel from the material,” he said. The wooden mask with a hollow mouth is a child’s face shouting, mutely, “What On Earth Happened?”—the name that Siki gave to his piece.
More artists were working alongside him in the park for the 2009 International East Coast Driftwood Art Exhibition. In August, the apocalyptic Typhoon Morakot washed away mountainsides and brought down a huge amount of wood. In the aftermath, an estimated 980,000 tons of driftwood were produced, clogging harbors and jamming up waters off great stretches of the island’s coasts. In eastern Taitung County alone, 190,000 tons of trunks and stumps drifted back to shore.
Upon the urging of local aboriginal artists and also in a bid to highlight the connection between driftwood and the cultural characteristics of the region, the Taitung Forest Bureau District Office and Taitung Living Art Center co-organized the driftwood art exhibition. The forest office offered driftwood such as camphor and cypress fit for sculpting. Artists from Taiwan, South Korea and Japan were invited to work on the logs at the seaside park and demonstrate their creative processes to the public between Nov. 21 and 29.
On the fifth day of the exhibition, however, a surprising act by participating aboriginal sculptors threw a hitch into what had seemed to be a smooth-running show. But it also highlighted the situation of Taiwan’s aboriginal artists. Seven out of the 10 aboriginal artists went “on strike” to protest what they called discriminatory treatment and the exhibition’s digression from its expressed purpose.
“The original idea was to have people reflect on our relationship with nature, particularly in the wake of Morakot, through activities centering on driftwood art,” said Nikar Fusai, spokesperson for Dulan Sugar Factory. The factory-turned artist village in Dulan Village, Taitung, had played a major role in making the festival possible.
The reflective intent was somehow shoved to the background as the exhibition evolved into a festival-like event, she complained, with irrelevant song and dance programs enlisted to embellish the weeklong activity.
Another reason for the strike concerns an oral contract in which organizers offered each of the aboriginal artists NT$60,000 (US$1,866) in return for their finished works, carved from the driftwood now listed as national property. On the other hand, the organizers promised to purchase work done at the same time by Wu A-sun, one of Taiwan’s foremost artists, for a sum of NT$2 million. The discrepancy was not revealed until after the event began.
“The way organizers engaged the aboriginal artists seems discriminatory, at least viewed from the outside,” Yang Meng-che, assistant professor of comparative culture at National Taipei University of Education, remarked.
“These problems are essential here, that the art world is relentless and celebrity counts,” Yang said. Yet without aboriginal artists working here, the driftwood art scene would not have been what it is today and the show would be meaningless, he said.
“The organizers owe these long-time driftwood artists fair treatment and an apology. After all, they are all excellent and experienced artists,” he said.
One example is Rahic Talif, one of the artists on strike and a regional pioneer in driftwood art. In his struggle to become what he is today, Rahic had to first hide his aboriginal identity. Using a Han Chinese name, he became successful in the design world of urban Taipei for his interior and commercial design in his 20s. Later he abandoned that life out of a feeling of commitment to his tribal community. When he decided to return home to work as an artist, Rahic, now 47, had to persuade people that for his art to be good it did not have to be noticeably “indigenous.”
Rahic’s artworks have won critical acclaim in Taiwan for their independent genius catering neither to stereotypes about aboriginal art nor to the typical contemporary art taste that highlights form over spirit. When he withdrew from the driftwood art show, he was demanding respect for art.
“The deal organizers made with local artists is no different from employment subsidies for us,” he said in a telephone interview.
On the other hand, three aboriginal artists remained at the scene, including Siki. The sculptor, singer and theater director insisted on living up to his end of the deal, though he is not happy with the situation. “I might try to express my anger in the artwork, ” he said.
Paiwan artist Kulele, who has used materials ranging from wood to steel in his career, came back to work after three days on strike.
“This is a broken stump that I got,” he said, not without disappointment. “But I need to complete the carving; otherwise, I feel I owe something to this piece of wood,” he said while trying to bring a flower out of the dead wood.
Kulele’s piece is called “Five Kinds of Thirst.” Typhoon victims are in urgent need of five things, the sculptor explained: food, clothes, houses, transportation and spiritual nourishment.
Yang praised the flexibility of these artists and their strategies for maintaining their dignity in the face of prejudice. Without the strike, the insensitive and unjust treatment they were subjected to would have remained unnoticed.
“The unfinished pieces should be left as they are on site as a reminder so that the error can be avoided next time,” he said. “After all, mistakes are allowed in art as long as they serve to improve art and the conditions in which it is made.”
Taitung Living Art Center Director Lin Yung-fa, a painter himself, admitted administrative negligence. “There will be more cooperation with local artists in the future as the government ponders how to deal with the several square kilometers of driftwood piles,” he said. “The logs are waiting to be enlivened by the artists’ hands.”
Rahic and other sculptors who withdrew plan to use their skills in a different way, one that they believe better serves the cause of the exhibition: to help rebuild tribal villages destroyed during the typhoon, particularly south of the county’s Taimali River. Their first stop is Jialan Village.
“Many villagers still do not have even temporary housing. Homes, traditional meeting halls and furniture, to name the major things, all need constructing and we will do our best,” he said. “The important point is to return the driftwood to those who share its territorial origin.”
This article is published at online Taiwan Today Dec. 18, 2009.
Dec 15, 2009
Rowers keep ancient Tao tradition alive
Photo: Courtesy of Lin Chien-hsiang
By June Tsai
"In the territory that is not ours we rowed, passing by a coastline that was strange to us. We remembered the colors of the sky and ocean, and how the breaking waves near Hualien's steep cliffs wet our skin. We tell all these things to our children. One day when they are in that part of the world, they will remember what their fathers told them and will have a special feeling for those places. They will want to protect them. This is probably contrary to what the Han Chinese will do to nature."
--Shyaman Vengayen, Feb. 5.
Last year, tribesmen from the Tao ethnic group--also known as the Yami--made an historic voyage up Taiwan's east coast in a traditional handmade boat. The 35-day journey helped write a different chapter to the long, often uncomfortable, relationship that exists between the aboriginal group and mainstream society.
Boats are integral to traditional life on the outlying Orchid Island, home to the Tao--Taiwan's only ocean-going tribe. Over the past few decades, however, the island's boat culture has faced the threat of going into decline, as many of the tribe's younger members left to seek work. The elder generation that remained on the island also gradually lost the strength to collect the necessary timber. To revive the tradition, and highlight the diminishing connection between humankind and the sea, Shyaman Vengayen and Lin Chien-shiang came up with the idea for the Tao to make a large boat and sail it to Taiwan.
Fishermen and farmers for generations, the Tao people build their wooden boats in accordance with methods passed down orally from their ancestors. Whenever a boat is built, the whole society gets involved in the project from start to finish. "The process was intriguing," Lin said Feb. 4. Lin is a Taiwanese documentary filmmaker who began working with Vengayen, a Tao social and political activist, in 1988 on a film project. Since that first meeting, Lin has been closely engaged in the island's culture.
The first-ever project to showcase the Tao's boat-making skills was initiated in 2001 when nine Tao people made a boat to be displayed in Taichung's National Museum of Natural Science. Since then, five more vessels have been built for museums and various other cultural agencies and organizations. But as one tribal elder said upon seeing the craft, "Why not actually row it since the boat has been made?" Lin agreed, "A boat should not merely be an item on display."
In November 2006, with the backing of five fishing clans from Vengayen's Langdao Village, work on the boat commenced. Decorated with patterned carvings imbued with supernatural meaning, the red, black and white craft was finished two months later. It was constructed using 60 planks, and measured 10 meters in length, 1.7 meters in width and 2.7 meters in height. It was the longest Tao vessel made in living memory, being able to take 14 rowers. The finished product was named "Ipanga na 1001," with the number indicating the length and the words meaning "crossing over."
After joining other boats in activities related to the flying-fish season from March to June and being tested for sea worthiness, the boat was finally ready for its journey to Taiwan on June 19, 2007. The initial 80-kilometer trip to Taitung County that required crossing the Kuroshio Current took approximately 14 hours. With an estimated 35 to 47 strokes per second, around 100 people, coming mainly from four of Orchid Island's six villages, took turns to finish the whole voyage.
The boat followed the coastline, stopping along the way to replenish supplies and change hands. The colorful boat and rowers in their blue-and-white ceremonial clothing were a source of fascination for Taiwanese tourists who saw it in the distance, according to Lin, who filmed the whole trip. The boat finally entered Taipei City via the Danshuei River on July 28 to a rapturous welcome.
It was an historic moment for the Tao. "The Taiwan public's impression of the Tao may have been of an angry group that often protests against the dumping of nuclear waste on its island," according to Lin. However, the voyage has helped change that, he continued. "Taiwanese people now see a proud group showing their strength and wisdom." In 1982, Taiwan Power Co., the nation's energy provider, built low-level radioactive-waste storage facilities on Orchid Island. Ever since then, Vengayen and other activists have staged many demonstrations, leading to frayed relations between islanders and Taiwan society.
For Vengayen, the boat project is a new strategy to highlight another struggle. The introduction of motorized boats in the 1970s and the encroachment of Taiwanese fishermen using modern technology on traditional Tao fishing grounds have been seriously threatening the survival of boat-making and navigation skills. "The loss of these skills would mean the destruction of the whole tribe because the wooden boat is an embodiment of every aspect of the Tao culture, from economy and psychology to language. The boat is a matter of life and death," he stressed.
In that regard, last year's voyage was seen as being the Tao's proud demonstration of their traditional culture, and more importantly, it represented the possibility of its continuation. "My people regained a degree of pride after the successful journey," Vengayen stated. "They felt that the flame of their culture had not been extinguished by the Han Chinese culture. The voyage also helped facilitate communication and inspire self-reflection in people who took an interest in our heritage."
The fact that many Taiwanese people volunteered to support the venture by participating in onshore jobs was an example that proved the power of the Tao's historical and cultural uniqueness to affect people. Lin, for instance, helped raise funds and find people or organizations to make sure the journey could be completed. After having ridden the waves, the boat was later exhibited in museums in Taipei and Kaohsiung in December. According to Lin, he will also arrange the sale of the boat and make sure the income is distributed among the Tao tribesmen.
"In the very beginning, not many people thought this was possible. Some of the Tao even had doubts," Lin emphasized. Recalling the pre-journey planning, he said, "Behind the realization of this seemingly romantic project were a lot of calculations, competitions and politics." This is the reality of life for islanders, who have long been relatively isolated with limited resources, Lin reminded. Knowing this harsh existence would prevent people from romanticizing the indigenous group, which would definitely not help with mutual understanding, he suggested.
"Many people thought we ignored taboos and broke tribal rules along the way. Some Taiwanese critics even said that our project marketed the Tao culture like a commodity. These accusations are not true," Lin said. "Any decision concerning boats has to be made with permission from each and every Tao participant." Lin explained that it took a great deal of time and social skill to put the idea into reality. Lin said he and his team learned in the process the Tao way of doing things, which shows a great respect for nature and for every individual.
Vengayen confirmed that over the years he had noticed a certain degree of progress in Taiwanese people in terms of respect and appreciation of different cultures. Everybody should try to learn something from indigenous peoples' method of managing resources in their hunting grounds, he said. As an example, he cited the Tao's ban on catching other kinds of fish during the flying-fish season.
In many cultures, the sea is something to be afraid of. Yet for the Tao, the ocean is like a road--a passage that connects people, experiences and cultures. To emphasize the point, Vengayen explained how several participants had even written accounts of what they had seen. "They put the colors of the waves, shapes of the cliffs and bays on Taiwan's east coast into words," the activist said. Their compositions will be sung in tribal ceremonies and thus passed from generation to generation. In that sense, the ocean had indeed brought together, as it was proposed, "the Tao and the Taiwanese, the traditional and modern, the oceanic and the terrestrial cultures."
This article was published in Taiwan Journal March 6, 2008.
An earlier report on June 29, 2007
Tao aborigines paddle fishing canoe to Taipei
By June Tsai
Boats are integral to traditional life on Taiwan's outlying Orchid Island, home to the Tao people--also known as the Yami--who lived primarily by fishing and farming. Their white, red and black wooden boats, symbolic of this lifestyle and surrounded by ritual, are still made by hand according to methods passed down orally from their ancestors.
Over the last few years, a dream coalesced among some Tao tribespeople to build a boat and make an ocean voyage to, or perhaps even around, Taiwan. The journey would showcase the group's boat-making and navigation skills and raise awareness of its vanishing culture and customs. Furthermore, it would highlight the diminishing connection between humankind and the sea for all Taiwanese living on the main island. Drawing on these concepts, they proposed a project and applied to the Johnnie Walker "Keep Walking Fund" for sponsorship, which subsequently awarded them around US$36,000.
According to this proposal, the project was the brainchild of Tao social and political activist Shyaman Vengayen. He was supported by Lin Chien-shiang, a Han Taiwanese filmmaker who had worked closely with Orchid Islanders in the past on documentary films. Vengayen was also backed by five of the island's fishing clans, kinship organizations based around fishing teams unique to Tao society. Last November, they started to build a traditional Tao fishing boat, Lin said June 23.
This particular boat, composed of 60 wooden planks and measuring 10 meters in length, 1.7 meters in width and 2.7 meters in height, was the largest in living memory, Lin said. Nevertheless, it was made using traditional skills.
This reflected one of Vengayen's concerns: the preservation and revival of Tao culture. The fishing-clan social structure and the manufacture of wooden boats by hand and without the use of nails were at the core of Tao tribal tradition, Vengayen said in a June 6 CNA report. Following the introduction of motorized boats in the 1970s and encroachment of Taiwanese fishermen with modern technology on traditional Tao fishing grounds, the skills were starting to be lost.
In a move to help conserve these traditions, in 2001 a group of Tao people from different fishing clans were commissioned by the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung to build a big boat inside the museum. This broke a number of taboos surrounding boat construction, which, for one thing, is normally undertaken by a single clan. Permission was received from tribal elders, however, and the project was so successful it led to commissions from other organizations. Nine more were made, but some people felt that the boats were losing their significance in the process, the proposal stated. They therefore suggested making an 11th large boat using inter-clan cooperation, only this time it would take to the water, Lin said.
The boat would be called "Ipanga na 1001," the number meaning it was more than 1,000 centimeters in length and the words meaning "crossing over." This represented the trip it would make, Lin said June 23, "as well as a crossover between the Tao and Taiwanese, the traditional and modern, and the oceanic and terrestrial cultures."
Finally, with the money secured from Johnnie Walker, more promised by the central government, and a remaining sum of US$15,000 donated from a number of private individuals, the boat was finished. The 12 Tao tribespeople began June 19 the "Keep Rowing" journey that will take them and other islanders from Langdao Village on Orchid Island to Taipei in northern Taiwan. Even at the last moment they were delayed for a week by inclement weather but, once it improved, the boat was able to make the 49-nautical-mile crossing to the coast of Taitung County. The fast-flowing Kuroshio Current meant they had to take a somewhat circuitous route, however.
From Taitung the rowers will take about 30 to 35 days to travel up the east coast, stopping at Hualien, Yilan and Keelung. They will then round the north coast, and enter Taipei City via Danshuei River in time for the Tao representatives to attend the creation of a forum of Austronesian indigenous groups, scheduled for Aug. 1.
According to the original proposal, four teams of rowers would take turns in the boat but, to date, only two teams had volunteered. The project was open to people from Taiwan's main island, Lin explained, so that they could also get a taste of Tao fishing life.
After arriving in Taipei, he continued, the boat would be exhibited in front of the National Taiwan Museum. "We thought about exhibiting it in front of Taipei 101 to see what sparks it would ignite; placing the most traditional thing face-to-face with the most modern."
The boat would eventually be sold to a collector, and the money made would be distributed among the different clans "in accordance with the Tao culture of 'distributing fishes.'" The private investors would also get their monies back, Lin estimated.
Another reason for making the trip was to show how the Tao's ancestors had been able to journey from island to island across the Pacific Ocean. The next project for Vengayen and his team, once funds were raised, Lin said, would be to travel to the Batan Islands to the north of the Philippines, to meet the local Ivatan inhabitants with whom the Tao share much of the same language, culture and origins.
"In the territory that is not ours we rowed, passing by a coastline that was strange to us. We remembered the colors of the sky and ocean, and how the breaking waves near Hualien's steep cliffs wet our skin. We tell all these things to our children. One day when they are in that part of the world, they will remember what their fathers told them and will have a special feeling for those places. They will want to protect them. This is probably contrary to what the Han Chinese will do to nature."
--Shyaman Vengayen, Feb. 5.
Last year, tribesmen from the Tao ethnic group--also known as the Yami--made an historic voyage up Taiwan's east coast in a traditional handmade boat. The 35-day journey helped write a different chapter to the long, often uncomfortable, relationship that exists between the aboriginal group and mainstream society.
Boats are integral to traditional life on the outlying Orchid Island, home to the Tao--Taiwan's only ocean-going tribe. Over the past few decades, however, the island's boat culture has faced the threat of going into decline, as many of the tribe's younger members left to seek work. The elder generation that remained on the island also gradually lost the strength to collect the necessary timber. To revive the tradition, and highlight the diminishing connection between humankind and the sea, Shyaman Vengayen and Lin Chien-shiang came up with the idea for the Tao to make a large boat and sail it to Taiwan.
Fishermen and farmers for generations, the Tao people build their wooden boats in accordance with methods passed down orally from their ancestors. Whenever a boat is built, the whole society gets involved in the project from start to finish. "The process was intriguing," Lin said Feb. 4. Lin is a Taiwanese documentary filmmaker who began working with Vengayen, a Tao social and political activist, in 1988 on a film project. Since that first meeting, Lin has been closely engaged in the island's culture.
The first-ever project to showcase the Tao's boat-making skills was initiated in 2001 when nine Tao people made a boat to be displayed in Taichung's National Museum of Natural Science. Since then, five more vessels have been built for museums and various other cultural agencies and organizations. But as one tribal elder said upon seeing the craft, "Why not actually row it since the boat has been made?" Lin agreed, "A boat should not merely be an item on display."
In November 2006, with the backing of five fishing clans from Vengayen's Langdao Village, work on the boat commenced. Decorated with patterned carvings imbued with supernatural meaning, the red, black and white craft was finished two months later. It was constructed using 60 planks, and measured 10 meters in length, 1.7 meters in width and 2.7 meters in height. It was the longest Tao vessel made in living memory, being able to take 14 rowers. The finished product was named "Ipanga na 1001," with the number indicating the length and the words meaning "crossing over."
After joining other boats in activities related to the flying-fish season from March to June and being tested for sea worthiness, the boat was finally ready for its journey to Taiwan on June 19, 2007. The initial 80-kilometer trip to Taitung County that required crossing the Kuroshio Current took approximately 14 hours. With an estimated 35 to 47 strokes per second, around 100 people, coming mainly from four of Orchid Island's six villages, took turns to finish the whole voyage.
The boat followed the coastline, stopping along the way to replenish supplies and change hands. The colorful boat and rowers in their blue-and-white ceremonial clothing were a source of fascination for Taiwanese tourists who saw it in the distance, according to Lin, who filmed the whole trip. The boat finally entered Taipei City via the Danshuei River on July 28 to a rapturous welcome.
It was an historic moment for the Tao. "The Taiwan public's impression of the Tao may have been of an angry group that often protests against the dumping of nuclear waste on its island," according to Lin. However, the voyage has helped change that, he continued. "Taiwanese people now see a proud group showing their strength and wisdom." In 1982, Taiwan Power Co., the nation's energy provider, built low-level radioactive-waste storage facilities on Orchid Island. Ever since then, Vengayen and other activists have staged many demonstrations, leading to frayed relations between islanders and Taiwan society.
For Vengayen, the boat project is a new strategy to highlight another struggle. The introduction of motorized boats in the 1970s and the encroachment of Taiwanese fishermen using modern technology on traditional Tao fishing grounds have been seriously threatening the survival of boat-making and navigation skills. "The loss of these skills would mean the destruction of the whole tribe because the wooden boat is an embodiment of every aspect of the Tao culture, from economy and psychology to language. The boat is a matter of life and death," he stressed.
In that regard, last year's voyage was seen as being the Tao's proud demonstration of their traditional culture, and more importantly, it represented the possibility of its continuation. "My people regained a degree of pride after the successful journey," Vengayen stated. "They felt that the flame of their culture had not been extinguished by the Han Chinese culture. The voyage also helped facilitate communication and inspire self-reflection in people who took an interest in our heritage."
The fact that many Taiwanese people volunteered to support the venture by participating in onshore jobs was an example that proved the power of the Tao's historical and cultural uniqueness to affect people. Lin, for instance, helped raise funds and find people or organizations to make sure the journey could be completed. After having ridden the waves, the boat was later exhibited in museums in Taipei and Kaohsiung in December. According to Lin, he will also arrange the sale of the boat and make sure the income is distributed among the Tao tribesmen.
"In the very beginning, not many people thought this was possible. Some of the Tao even had doubts," Lin emphasized. Recalling the pre-journey planning, he said, "Behind the realization of this seemingly romantic project were a lot of calculations, competitions and politics." This is the reality of life for islanders, who have long been relatively isolated with limited resources, Lin reminded. Knowing this harsh existence would prevent people from romanticizing the indigenous group, which would definitely not help with mutual understanding, he suggested.
"Many people thought we ignored taboos and broke tribal rules along the way. Some Taiwanese critics even said that our project marketed the Tao culture like a commodity. These accusations are not true," Lin said. "Any decision concerning boats has to be made with permission from each and every Tao participant." Lin explained that it took a great deal of time and social skill to put the idea into reality. Lin said he and his team learned in the process the Tao way of doing things, which shows a great respect for nature and for every individual.
Vengayen confirmed that over the years he had noticed a certain degree of progress in Taiwanese people in terms of respect and appreciation of different cultures. Everybody should try to learn something from indigenous peoples' method of managing resources in their hunting grounds, he said. As an example, he cited the Tao's ban on catching other kinds of fish during the flying-fish season.
In many cultures, the sea is something to be afraid of. Yet for the Tao, the ocean is like a road--a passage that connects people, experiences and cultures. To emphasize the point, Vengayen explained how several participants had even written accounts of what they had seen. "They put the colors of the waves, shapes of the cliffs and bays on Taiwan's east coast into words," the activist said. Their compositions will be sung in tribal ceremonies and thus passed from generation to generation. In that sense, the ocean had indeed brought together, as it was proposed, "the Tao and the Taiwanese, the traditional and modern, the oceanic and the terrestrial cultures."
This article was published in Taiwan Journal March 6, 2008.
An earlier report on June 29, 2007
Tao aborigines paddle fishing canoe to Taipei
By June Tsai
Boats are integral to traditional life on Taiwan's outlying Orchid Island, home to the Tao people--also known as the Yami--who lived primarily by fishing and farming. Their white, red and black wooden boats, symbolic of this lifestyle and surrounded by ritual, are still made by hand according to methods passed down orally from their ancestors.
Over the last few years, a dream coalesced among some Tao tribespeople to build a boat and make an ocean voyage to, or perhaps even around, Taiwan. The journey would showcase the group's boat-making and navigation skills and raise awareness of its vanishing culture and customs. Furthermore, it would highlight the diminishing connection between humankind and the sea for all Taiwanese living on the main island. Drawing on these concepts, they proposed a project and applied to the Johnnie Walker "Keep Walking Fund" for sponsorship, which subsequently awarded them around US$36,000.
According to this proposal, the project was the brainchild of Tao social and political activist Shyaman Vengayen. He was supported by Lin Chien-shiang, a Han Taiwanese filmmaker who had worked closely with Orchid Islanders in the past on documentary films. Vengayen was also backed by five of the island's fishing clans, kinship organizations based around fishing teams unique to Tao society. Last November, they started to build a traditional Tao fishing boat, Lin said June 23.
This particular boat, composed of 60 wooden planks and measuring 10 meters in length, 1.7 meters in width and 2.7 meters in height, was the largest in living memory, Lin said. Nevertheless, it was made using traditional skills.
This reflected one of Vengayen's concerns: the preservation and revival of Tao culture. The fishing-clan social structure and the manufacture of wooden boats by hand and without the use of nails were at the core of Tao tribal tradition, Vengayen said in a June 6 CNA report. Following the introduction of motorized boats in the 1970s and encroachment of Taiwanese fishermen with modern technology on traditional Tao fishing grounds, the skills were starting to be lost.
In a move to help conserve these traditions, in 2001 a group of Tao people from different fishing clans were commissioned by the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung to build a big boat inside the museum. This broke a number of taboos surrounding boat construction, which, for one thing, is normally undertaken by a single clan. Permission was received from tribal elders, however, and the project was so successful it led to commissions from other organizations. Nine more were made, but some people felt that the boats were losing their significance in the process, the proposal stated. They therefore suggested making an 11th large boat using inter-clan cooperation, only this time it would take to the water, Lin said.
The boat would be called "Ipanga na 1001," the number meaning it was more than 1,000 centimeters in length and the words meaning "crossing over." This represented the trip it would make, Lin said June 23, "as well as a crossover between the Tao and Taiwanese, the traditional and modern, and the oceanic and terrestrial cultures."
Finally, with the money secured from Johnnie Walker, more promised by the central government, and a remaining sum of US$15,000 donated from a number of private individuals, the boat was finished. The 12 Tao tribespeople began June 19 the "Keep Rowing" journey that will take them and other islanders from Langdao Village on Orchid Island to Taipei in northern Taiwan. Even at the last moment they were delayed for a week by inclement weather but, once it improved, the boat was able to make the 49-nautical-mile crossing to the coast of Taitung County. The fast-flowing Kuroshio Current meant they had to take a somewhat circuitous route, however.
From Taitung the rowers will take about 30 to 35 days to travel up the east coast, stopping at Hualien, Yilan and Keelung. They will then round the north coast, and enter Taipei City via Danshuei River in time for the Tao representatives to attend the creation of a forum of Austronesian indigenous groups, scheduled for Aug. 1.
According to the original proposal, four teams of rowers would take turns in the boat but, to date, only two teams had volunteered. The project was open to people from Taiwan's main island, Lin explained, so that they could also get a taste of Tao fishing life.
After arriving in Taipei, he continued, the boat would be exhibited in front of the National Taiwan Museum. "We thought about exhibiting it in front of Taipei 101 to see what sparks it would ignite; placing the most traditional thing face-to-face with the most modern."
The boat would eventually be sold to a collector, and the money made would be distributed among the different clans "in accordance with the Tao culture of 'distributing fishes.'" The private investors would also get their monies back, Lin estimated.
Another reason for making the trip was to show how the Tao's ancestors had been able to journey from island to island across the Pacific Ocean. The next project for Vengayen and his team, once funds were raised, Lin said, would be to travel to the Batan Islands to the north of the Philippines, to meet the local Ivatan inhabitants with whom the Tao share much of the same language, culture and origins.
Bunun heritage comes alive on trails of sacred mountain
Trekkers experience changing habitats as the trail climbs up the slopes of Yushan Dec. 9, 2007. Standing at 3,952 meters, Yushan is the highest mountain in Taiwan.(Photo: June Tsai)
By June Tsai
The highest mountain in Northeast Asia has gone by many names over the years. It was once called Patunkuanu, or Quartz Mountain, by the indigenous Tsao tribe, and Mount Niitaka--"the new high mountain"--by the colonizing Japanese. For most people it is now known as Jade Mountain, or Yushan, but for the Bunun tribe, the Taiwanese mountain has a sacred name: Tongku Saveq.
In the Bunun language, Tongku Saveq roughly means "the mountain that provides sanctuary for the living," explained Negou Soqluman, a guide with the Son of Yushan trekking company. The Bunun people have lived in the region for generations and consider Yushan to be at the center of their mythology, he added Dec. 8, 2007.
The tough-as-teak Bunun told his audience of early-morning trekkers at Tataka Anmabu Dec. 9 that the origins of Tongku Saveq could be traced back to a time when a huge snake lay across the Jhuoshuei River, causing the surrounding land to flood and forcing his ancestors to flee for their lives to the higher ground of Yushan. At an elevation of 2,610 meters, Tataka Anmabu was the starting point for the group's hike into Yushan National Park.
Established in 1985, the park encompasses an area of 105,000 hectares, including the 3,952-meter-high Yushan and 10 other connected peaks with heights of more than 3,000 meters. "For many Taiwanese people, it is a dream to climb to the top of Yushan at least once in their lifetimes," Negou Soqluman said. "Yet [the real goal] of our tour today is to transcend ourselves."
Setting the mood for the group's ascent, Negou Soqluman held a cup of millet wine and offered up a prayer to the spirits of the mountain: "May the sky bless our footsteps. May our ancestors accept our project and may the elves accompany us on our journey." After a short pause, he continued, "It's okay to have fun with us occasionally, but please don't play serious pranks," he asked the elves, with a twinkle in his eye. Every member of the group took a sip of wine to honor the moment.
Negou Soqluman, 32, has guided groups up to the peak over 60 times, so it was a surprise to discover his first ascent was not until the relatively "mature" age of 28. But that was not so unusual for the people who lived on Yushan. He explained, "Despite living and working in the mountains, nearly 90 percent of the Bunun have never even been to the top." When one spends his daily life in the hills, climbing to the highest point seems a little unnecessary, he elaborated.
It makes sense that the Bunun people are involved in the trekking industry, as they have been living and hunting in the region for generations. But, for many years, tribesmen were not always officially recognized whenever they offered their services, and were never granted mountain-guide licenses, according to Negou Soqluman. This unfair treatment resulted in protests that culminated in a training program being set up over six years ago by Yohani Isqaqavut, a tribal pastor who served as head of the Council of Indigenous Peoples between 2000 and 2001. Inspired by Yohani Isqaqavut to help return a sense of dignity to his tribe, Negou Soqluman completed the program and founded Son of Yushan in 2004.
As the trail climbed higher into the national park, the hikers started to pay more attention to coordinating their breathing and walking. Negou Soqluman and Lahuy Icyeh, a young Atayal assistant guide, sang spontaneously to motivate those who felt tired until they got to the next resting spot. Around noon--having covered five kilometers in around four hours--the group reached a little wooden pavilion that provided a view of White Wood Forest. As the original forest had been consumed by fires long ago, all that remained were dead, skeletal trees that had turned white with the passage of time, Negou Soqluman explained.
It was the aborigines who had brought the big logs to the pavilion when it was being constructed, because mountain people in Taiwan have always been respected for their ability to use traditional methods to carry heavy loads, he said. One such example is the Bunun man who used a headstrap to help a dehydrated climber descend Saser Kangri in India. "It was not because he was stronger than anybody else, but because we [the Bunun people] know how to use traditional techniques," he said, adding that a man could carry up to 100 kilograms by using a headstrap.
Despite such a proud reputation, however, not so many people associate Yushan with the Bunun these days. "Some of the Bunun themselves have even forgotten that Yushan is their traditional territory," Negou Soqluman told the group. He went on to express the hope that by setting up Son of Yushan, his tribe could be reminded of their heritage. "The other goals are to teach non-aborigines more about the connection between Yushan and the Bunun, explore that implication concerning Taiwan's multiculturalism and share our know-how with other interested parties," he stated.
Accessing Bunun legends is another method he uses to achieve his objectives. At every rest spot along the trail, the group of trekkers was told a fresh story, which helped imbue the landscape with a colorful personality. A book of tales that Negou Soqluman has adapted from Bunun mythology is also in the pipeline.
Lahuy Icyeh supported Negou Soqluman's approach, saying he joined the tour as an assistant guide to learn how to set up the same kind of operation in Smangus, a village in a remote area of Hsinchu County.
The Atayal tribe in Smangus is reputed for practicing a communal form of governance. The first paved road to the village was only built in 1995, and ever since then, the villagers have had to stand firm against development conglomerates. In 2004, the village council decided to attract visitors by opening restaurants and lodges, maintaining existing trails, offering hiking facilities and taking care of an ancient cypress forest that grows in their territory. Any financial gain from the tourist industry is shared among the villagers.
"Changing from a life dependent on game to one reliant on tourism was a big challenge for our village. There were a lot of difficulties in the process, yet it was important for us to have more contact with the outside world," Lahuy Icyeh recounted as the group left the pavilion, moving ever higher. "We should make good use of our knowledge of the area and not lose our connection with it. We used to hunt wild hogs or flying squirrels, but now we hunt tourists and mountaineers," he joked.
It was a few more hours before the group finally reached Paiyun Lodge, which was 8.5 kilometers away from the beginning of the trailhead, at an altitude of 3,402 meters. The lodge was the only accommodation on the trail and where the group spent the night, before it was woken up at the crack of dawn for the final 2.4-kilometer trek to the summit.
At 3 a.m. Dec. 10, only the sound of breathing and people walking could be heard in an enveloping darkness that was occasionally punctuated by shooting stars overhead. After tackling the final few boulders that lay just below the peak, exclamations arouse from the group as it witnessed the sun emerging from the twilight. The surrounding mountains to the northeast suddenly caught aflame in a glow of warmth, while the shadowed side of the peak still shivered in darkness.
Negou Soqluman pointed in the direction of his hometown of Wansiang that was on a plateau 1,000 meters above sea level in Nantou County. He explained how people were forced to relocate from the Central Mountains by the Japanese, finally choosing to settle in Wansiang in the 1930s. The villagers chose to live there because they would always be able to see Tangku Saveq when they opened their doors, he said.
The group gathered to take a photo around a stone plaque that read "Mt. Jade Main Peak." However, they also posed in front of a homemade banner that said: "This mountain is called Tongku Saveq." Being aware of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's name-change campaign, Negou Soqluman proposed to the group that Yushan be renamed. He stopped short of saying the idea should became an official government policy, instead suggesting the name would more likely be changed in people's minds by such things as his writings on aboriginal culture and his informative tours. "We want to share the cultural background of the name with everybody," he said. "And I think [my methods] are positive ways to build harmonious relationships among people of different ethnicities."
This article was published in Taiwan Journal Jan. 4, 2008.
By June Tsai
The highest mountain in Northeast Asia has gone by many names over the years. It was once called Patunkuanu, or Quartz Mountain, by the indigenous Tsao tribe, and Mount Niitaka--"the new high mountain"--by the colonizing Japanese. For most people it is now known as Jade Mountain, or Yushan, but for the Bunun tribe, the Taiwanese mountain has a sacred name: Tongku Saveq.
In the Bunun language, Tongku Saveq roughly means "the mountain that provides sanctuary for the living," explained Negou Soqluman, a guide with the Son of Yushan trekking company. The Bunun people have lived in the region for generations and consider Yushan to be at the center of their mythology, he added Dec. 8, 2007.
The tough-as-teak Bunun told his audience of early-morning trekkers at Tataka Anmabu Dec. 9 that the origins of Tongku Saveq could be traced back to a time when a huge snake lay across the Jhuoshuei River, causing the surrounding land to flood and forcing his ancestors to flee for their lives to the higher ground of Yushan. At an elevation of 2,610 meters, Tataka Anmabu was the starting point for the group's hike into Yushan National Park.
Established in 1985, the park encompasses an area of 105,000 hectares, including the 3,952-meter-high Yushan and 10 other connected peaks with heights of more than 3,000 meters. "For many Taiwanese people, it is a dream to climb to the top of Yushan at least once in their lifetimes," Negou Soqluman said. "Yet [the real goal] of our tour today is to transcend ourselves."
Setting the mood for the group's ascent, Negou Soqluman held a cup of millet wine and offered up a prayer to the spirits of the mountain: "May the sky bless our footsteps. May our ancestors accept our project and may the elves accompany us on our journey." After a short pause, he continued, "It's okay to have fun with us occasionally, but please don't play serious pranks," he asked the elves, with a twinkle in his eye. Every member of the group took a sip of wine to honor the moment.
Negou Soqluman, 32, has guided groups up to the peak over 60 times, so it was a surprise to discover his first ascent was not until the relatively "mature" age of 28. But that was not so unusual for the people who lived on Yushan. He explained, "Despite living and working in the mountains, nearly 90 percent of the Bunun have never even been to the top." When one spends his daily life in the hills, climbing to the highest point seems a little unnecessary, he elaborated.
It makes sense that the Bunun people are involved in the trekking industry, as they have been living and hunting in the region for generations. But, for many years, tribesmen were not always officially recognized whenever they offered their services, and were never granted mountain-guide licenses, according to Negou Soqluman. This unfair treatment resulted in protests that culminated in a training program being set up over six years ago by Yohani Isqaqavut, a tribal pastor who served as head of the Council of Indigenous Peoples between 2000 and 2001. Inspired by Yohani Isqaqavut to help return a sense of dignity to his tribe, Negou Soqluman completed the program and founded Son of Yushan in 2004.
As the trail climbed higher into the national park, the hikers started to pay more attention to coordinating their breathing and walking. Negou Soqluman and Lahuy Icyeh, a young Atayal assistant guide, sang spontaneously to motivate those who felt tired until they got to the next resting spot. Around noon--having covered five kilometers in around four hours--the group reached a little wooden pavilion that provided a view of White Wood Forest. As the original forest had been consumed by fires long ago, all that remained were dead, skeletal trees that had turned white with the passage of time, Negou Soqluman explained.
It was the aborigines who had brought the big logs to the pavilion when it was being constructed, because mountain people in Taiwan have always been respected for their ability to use traditional methods to carry heavy loads, he said. One such example is the Bunun man who used a headstrap to help a dehydrated climber descend Saser Kangri in India. "It was not because he was stronger than anybody else, but because we [the Bunun people] know how to use traditional techniques," he said, adding that a man could carry up to 100 kilograms by using a headstrap.
Despite such a proud reputation, however, not so many people associate Yushan with the Bunun these days. "Some of the Bunun themselves have even forgotten that Yushan is their traditional territory," Negou Soqluman told the group. He went on to express the hope that by setting up Son of Yushan, his tribe could be reminded of their heritage. "The other goals are to teach non-aborigines more about the connection between Yushan and the Bunun, explore that implication concerning Taiwan's multiculturalism and share our know-how with other interested parties," he stated.
Accessing Bunun legends is another method he uses to achieve his objectives. At every rest spot along the trail, the group of trekkers was told a fresh story, which helped imbue the landscape with a colorful personality. A book of tales that Negou Soqluman has adapted from Bunun mythology is also in the pipeline.
Lahuy Icyeh supported Negou Soqluman's approach, saying he joined the tour as an assistant guide to learn how to set up the same kind of operation in Smangus, a village in a remote area of Hsinchu County.
The Atayal tribe in Smangus is reputed for practicing a communal form of governance. The first paved road to the village was only built in 1995, and ever since then, the villagers have had to stand firm against development conglomerates. In 2004, the village council decided to attract visitors by opening restaurants and lodges, maintaining existing trails, offering hiking facilities and taking care of an ancient cypress forest that grows in their territory. Any financial gain from the tourist industry is shared among the villagers.
"Changing from a life dependent on game to one reliant on tourism was a big challenge for our village. There were a lot of difficulties in the process, yet it was important for us to have more contact with the outside world," Lahuy Icyeh recounted as the group left the pavilion, moving ever higher. "We should make good use of our knowledge of the area and not lose our connection with it. We used to hunt wild hogs or flying squirrels, but now we hunt tourists and mountaineers," he joked.
It was a few more hours before the group finally reached Paiyun Lodge, which was 8.5 kilometers away from the beginning of the trailhead, at an altitude of 3,402 meters. The lodge was the only accommodation on the trail and where the group spent the night, before it was woken up at the crack of dawn for the final 2.4-kilometer trek to the summit.
At 3 a.m. Dec. 10, only the sound of breathing and people walking could be heard in an enveloping darkness that was occasionally punctuated by shooting stars overhead. After tackling the final few boulders that lay just below the peak, exclamations arouse from the group as it witnessed the sun emerging from the twilight. The surrounding mountains to the northeast suddenly caught aflame in a glow of warmth, while the shadowed side of the peak still shivered in darkness.
Negou Soqluman pointed in the direction of his hometown of Wansiang that was on a plateau 1,000 meters above sea level in Nantou County. He explained how people were forced to relocate from the Central Mountains by the Japanese, finally choosing to settle in Wansiang in the 1930s. The villagers chose to live there because they would always be able to see Tangku Saveq when they opened their doors, he said.
The group gathered to take a photo around a stone plaque that read "Mt. Jade Main Peak." However, they also posed in front of a homemade banner that said: "This mountain is called Tongku Saveq." Being aware of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's name-change campaign, Negou Soqluman proposed to the group that Yushan be renamed. He stopped short of saying the idea should became an official government policy, instead suggesting the name would more likely be changed in people's minds by such things as his writings on aboriginal culture and his informative tours. "We want to share the cultural background of the name with everybody," he said. "And I think [my methods] are positive ways to build harmonious relationships among people of different ethnicities."
This article was published in Taiwan Journal Jan. 4, 2008.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)