Taiwan Today

Twilight of the Puyuma tribe? Not necessarily. Reflections on a mother's past may raise worries about the survival of cultural traditions, but they also provide a model of quiet resilience. Mother is seventy-nine this year. She has lived through tumultuous times of great change – two world wars, the Japanese occupation, the acute social changes in Taiwan and mainland China, and the developments, by leaps and bounds, in scientific technology. She witnessed them all. Mother is like all elderly indigenous people living on the margins – peaceful and serene. She just shut her eyes as if none of it mattered, as if she lived outside of history. From an early age I liked to ask mother about her past. I could never accept the lack of a sense of history among the Puyuma people. If ever I have loved or understood the Puyuma or other indigenous people, then without a doubt my mother is responsible. From the events of her life as she recounted them, and the attitude she developed toward life, I was able to piece together the fragments of a dim tribal memory and thereby grasp the wisdom and philosophy of my people. For me, mother's history is the history of the Puyuma. She made me realize the depth of my own history. The wide and multifaceted world itself exists as an historical truth. But does that mean that the marginal world is any less true? Though the marginal world is weak by comparison, it can still help us understand history because it is true and possesses a hidden virtue. These are thoughts that come to me whenever I think about mother's life. Tivitif is mother's Puyuma name. It means "no shortage of grain." When my grandmother was six months pregnant with my mother, my grandfather died. And my grandmother died when mother was twelve. Mother took her four half brothers and sisters to stay with my great-aunt. Her life was uncertain until my great-aunt died at the age of forty and she took charge of the household. Whenever my great-aunt and great-uncle are mentioned, mother's eyes invariably fill with tears. As an orphan, she was grateful to the two old people, but also feared and respected them. She remembered quite clearly many details of their lives and the things they said. Sometimes she would sing an ancient Puyuma song that the old people were fond of hearing. The song – and her tears – allowed me to glimpse the harmony of life as well as the mysteries of the Puyuma which have been passed down for thousands of years. There were many indications that the decision to bequeath the family property to mother was made by my great-aunt in her later years. Like other large families, the inheritance process was rather complicated and full of twists and turns. Mother said it was my great-aunt's steadfast will, and her own filial piety and diligence that were behind the decision. These were the most significant aspects of my mother's character. Mother, as I remember, was always busy. Even today she works under the scorching sun to hoe the garden, mend a fence, or do some embroidery. She always said labor tempers the will. This is perhaps the result of her experience as an orphan. In compliance with my great-aunt's demands, when mother was thirteen she quit the "aborigine school" which was set up by the Japanese, and immediately went to work in the fields. Her regrets at never having finished school made her determined that her six children would complete their educations. When mother was seventeen my great-aunt and great-uncle arranged her marriage with my father. To this day she has never had second thoughts about the decision. One event left a deep impression on me. In the late 1950s a Catholic missionary came to the village. My great-uncle, who was the leader of the village, weighed the situation and decided the village would convert to Catholicism. Mother was against the idea at first, fearing that it would destroy our traditions and customs. My great-uncle felt Catholicism would bring modernization to the tribe. He pointed out that the church would respect the tribe's customs and traditions. My mother submitted to my great-uncle's decision in the matter. "A promise is a promise, you cannot have two hearts," he said. The following year the entire family was baptized. The same year my great-uncle died of a heart attack. The first Catholic funeral ceremony was held in the village. I remember that day. Mother stood by great-uncle's coffin. He was dressed in traditional Puyuma clothes. She appeared particularly calm and pious. That look appeared later in her religious life. Society changed, and the Catholic church declined in the village. People are no longer enthusiastic about it, and some have even changed religions or have no beliefs at all. But mother has never changed. She still prays before dinner and before going to bed. For years she has risen at four or five in the morning to read the Bible and say her rosary. I don't know how well she understands the tenets of the Catholic church, but I do know that if people keep a promise and never waver, they already approach the holiest realm of religion. Even when I am away from home, I know with certainty that she prays for me every day. That closeness is the deepest feeling I received from my mother. After quitting school at the age of thirteen, mother joined the village misahor, or hoe brigade. Traditionally, Puyuma boys are sent to the palakuwan, or lodge, to complete preparations for entering society. There is no systematic plan for the socialization of girls. The hoe brigade fulfills this need. When the busy summer season arrives, the women customarily form a hoe brigade and do all the farm work as a group. The brigade is usually organized by an older woman with leadership ability. First thing in the morning, she calls the brigade together and then they set off. The group organizer is responsible for calling rest breaks, encouraging the workers, and leading the group in folk songs to ward off fatigue and the effects of the hot sun. The brigade works until evening when they go home and take care of the household chores. By working together, the women cultivate friendship and learn how to get along with others. Experience and knowledge are handed down to build character and strengthen morals. In other words, the hoe brigade is not just a labor force – the character of a Puyuma woman is molded through collective labor. Mother herself underwent this same character-building training. Her richest legacy from the hoe brigade is a vast knowledge of Puyuma myth, legend, history, and an ability to sing the ancient folk songs. Mother joined the hoe brigade when she was young and later became a brigade leader. Because she had a great deal of contact with the older women when she was young, mother became a very typical Puyuma woman. The character of the tribe changed radically after the 1950s. The men's lodge system began disappearing, and it also became more difficult to organize the hoe brigade. The socialization of Puyuma men and women became less traditional. They faced a completely alien culture, and the world they were familiar with was rapidly vanishing. Several years ago, mother organized a muhamud (a traditional celebration held after the hoe brigade completes its work) with all the women of the village. The once joyous celebration was filled with a solemn atmosphere. When they began singing the old songs, they began to cry. Tribal society has declined much like traditional Han society with the emergence of modern industrial society. The fates of both being inevitable, there was not much anyone could say. But the concurrent disappearance of the Puyuma language made the older Puyuma people strangers in their own land. They could not communicate with their descendants (their descendants speak only Mandarin), nor could they enter the "new society." They had no choice but to isolate themselves in their own world, as if the outside world did not exist. Mother can speak Japanese. This was a useful tool in earlier days because most "Taiwanese" received a little Japanese education. Later, after the Mandarin movement and an anti-Japanese policy were fully implemented islandwide, the number of people mother could converse with was greatly reduced. I will never forget when we got a television set. Mother would sit in her rocking chair with her eyes glued on the TV set in front of her. The look on her face was a complex mixture of curiosity, conjecture, confusion, and perplexity. She really wanted to understand this world. If we brothers and sisters had time, we would sit with her and explain things. If we were in a bad mood, a conflict was unavoidable. After arguing, she would stare dejectedly at the TV and then doze off. Perhaps there was greater certainty in the world of her dreams. After father passed away, mother's lonely figure appeared sadder than ever. The year before last, when my older sister became seriously ill, mother accompanied her to a large hospital in Taipei. At one time, my sister wanted to eat noodles. To make her happy, mother went out in search of a noodle stand. She wanted to ask passers-by for directions, but much to her consternation, she couldn't express herself. Fortunately, she met a kindhearted old woman who, half-guessing what she wanted, showed her where to buy noodles. When mother returned to the hospital, my sister didn't feel like eating, but she knew how much effort mother had expended, so she forced herself to eat a few bites as tears fell in her bowl. When I was studying in Europe, mother was afraid I wouldn't understand the letters she wrote in Japanese, so she learned from a priest how to write our language using the Latin alphabet. For a seventy-year-old person, that required a lot of determination and fortitude. Every time I received a letter in her small, cramped, poorly-formed handwriting (they were naturally full of spelling errors), I would see her vividly in my mind asleep in front of the TV set, and I'd feel utterly worthless. A people without a written language or a history is easily forgotten. Mother had no hatred for and rarely criticized the "main actors" on the stage of Taiwan's history. She always felt her own people were backward, and should be more open to advanced society. I think it was great uncle who influenced her in this regard. In 1963, when my oldest sister graduated from college, she initiated a revolution in our domestic ways by marrying a man from mainland China. Afterwards, with the exception of one of my sisters and an older brother, we all married people from elsewhere: Honan, Kiangsi, Chekiang, and I myself married a Taiwanese woman. Mother often said that this was perhaps the future of Taiwan. Of course mother doesn't understand the complicated background to all the political and social transformations and conflicts of the 1970s. Once, I asked her what she thought of people from mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan. Her reply gave me much food for thought. She said: "The Japanese are to be respected and feared. They obey the law, have a sense of honor, and they stick to their word. I don't like their severity, but their contributions to the tribe can't be denied. The Taiwanese are selfish and realistic, and we always get the short end of the stick in dealing with them. The mainlanders are a little kinder. Hasn't Taiwan made a lot of progress in the last forty years? I don't understand their quarrel. Aren't they all Chinese?" Mother's criticisms are simple and emotional. She cannot distinguish the complicated factors of power and the distribution of wealth. She gripes about the Taiwanese because forty years ago the indigenous people had enough of their bullying, which was much worse then than it is today. During the Japanese occupation, the Taiwanese considered themselves Chinese and therefore superior to the indigenous people. Forty years later, they changed their identities and called themselves "Taiwanese" to demand more power locally. This is probably what lies behind my mother's criticism of the Taiwanese as being selfish and realistic. Surprisingly, I later discovered that many indigenous people harbor the same feeling. I know for a fact that they cannot understand basing the Taiwan nativist movement on notions of province or region. Taking the settling of old scores as the starting point for the restructuring of power will only add to the crimes of this land. I have relied on mother's history to grasp the history of the Puyuma people. Her sorrows are the sorrows of the Puyuma. Every time I see her serene and peaceful face, I see the twilight of the Puyuma. Her small responses to the wide world during her life have helped me see through today's illusions. I believe that unless we all have the courage to forget, we will never be able to come together and create our own history on this land. Perhaps the indigenous people will one day be the mother of Taiwan's history! – Sun Ta-chuan (孫大川), a Puyuma tribesman, teaches in the philosophy department at Soochow University in Taipei.