For the past seven years, moreover, Lover's Day and Turning 16 have evolved from one-day affairs to a 10-day series of activities, thanks to promotion of the Tainan International Chihsi Arts Festival by Tainan City's Bureau of Cultural Affairs. From the beginning, the festival celebrated love in all its forms--romantic love, parent-child love, intergenerational love and even international love between diverse cultures. Its centerpiece, however, has been the Turning 16 rite, which has developed from a private ceremony to a society-wide group activity now officially referred to as the "Coming of Age 16 Celebration."
This year's ten-day Chihsi Arts Festival, held from August 10 to August 19, saw the participation of many tens of thousands of people from all over Taiwan and countries around the world, while thousands of teenagers and their families from the Tainan area and around the island took part in the Coming of Age 16 Celebration.
City Hall has a double purpose in promoting society-wide celebration of Turning 16 in conjunction with Lover's Day. Most importantly, it aims at instilling in young people--not only in the Tainan area but throughout the nation--the values of gratitude, independence and responsibility, as well as the courage and confidence to "be all they can be." Secondarily, it aims to vitalize the city's unique cultural heritage and project it onto the world stage, possibly with commercial benefits from increased tourism.
As in past years, the 2007 Chihsi Arts Festival combined Turning 16 activities with music and dance performances, and exhibitions. One of the two major exhibitions highlighted the details of the authentic, old-time Turning 16 ritual, and other coming-of-age traditions around the world. The other focused on parallels and differences between Chihsi traditions in Taiwan and Tanabata (seventh evening) traditions in Japan. Each evening was filled with performances by musicians and dancers from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Singapore at Tainan's Confucian Temple Cultural Zone and other venues around the city.
Why do Lover's Day and Turning 16 both fall on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, which this year coincided with August 19? It all goes back to the famous myth of the Weaver Maiden and the Cowherd. One of the many variations on their story goes like this:
Jhihnyu, the Weaver Maiden--one of seven daughters of the Emperor of Heaven--and Nioulang, the Cowherd, fall in love and have children. They spend so much time with each other that no more beautiful cloth is produced, and the cows wander about willy-nilly. Angered, the emperor separates the two on stars on opposite sides of the Silver River--the Milky Way--so that they can attend to their work. Seeing that the two are heartbroken, however, he allows them to meet once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, when they can cross a bridge formed by magpies.
Such is the origin of Lover's Day. But what about Turning 16? Well, stories also say that Jhihnyu's six sisters took pity on hers and Nioulang's children, and helped to protect and bring them up. Hence, the seven sisters became revered collectively as the "Chi Niang Ma", or "Seven Maiden Mothers," who serve as children's guardian angels and share the same birthday--the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar. So, once you have made it through childhood safely and are about to enter adulthood, it is wise to express your gratitude to the Chi Niang Ma for their protection and seek their blessing as you take up the challenges of being an adult.
Although the Turning 16 ritual is said to have originated in Fujian Province in China, it has survived only in Tainan and, on a lesser scale, in Lugang, in central Taiwan's Changhua County. In Tainan, it is closely identified with boys and men who worked as stevedores, an important occupation in this seaport, which is Taiwan's oldest city. To earn full wages, one had to be at least 16 years old, making the 16th birthday a joyous and important affair.
Originally, the Turning 16 ritual was performed in the privacy of homes, with the maternal grandmother taking responsibility for the preparations. Food sacrifices are placed in seven groups, one for each of the seven celestial sisters, on a multi-tier altar known as the "Chi Niang Ma Pagoda." In the ceremony, 16-year-olds cross under the altar three times, with girls moving in a counterclockwise direction and boys in a clockwise direction. The altar, made of bamboo and heavy paper, is burned as an offering.
In the old days, cosmetics and cigarettes might be put on the altar to symbolize arrival to womanhood and manhood, respectively. Optionally, families held a special feast in honor of the new adult, with special gifts prepared by grandmother and given by relatives and friends.
Eventually, Turning 16 group ceremonies were held at the Kailong Temple, which is specially dedicated to the Chi Niang Ma. Now, they are held at several other temples in the city as well.
Over the past century, the popularity of the Turning 16 tradition declined due to Japan's colonial rule and subsequent authoritarian rule under martial law imposed by the Chiang Kai-shek regime.
It did not die out, however, and Tainan City's Bureau of Cultural Affairs has engaged experts on the Turning 16 rite of passage to train a new generation. Prior to this year's Chihsi Arts Festival, the bureau sponsored a two-day class for parents and grandparents who wish to learn how to conduct ceremonies in their homes. And for the past two years, it has sponsored a five-day-long camp for hundreds of kids--including those recommended by cultural bureaus in other parts of Taiwan--to give them the opportunity to reflect and find out together what it means to be an adult.
"We learned these really cool things like how to survive in the wilderness, and we also had to form groups and act out our dreams in a play," participant Hsu Huai-wen enthused. "In the past, dreams were things that never came true, things I never set out to do. But now I've gained deeper knowledge of myself and of my aspirations," she said, adding, "At first I didn't want to go to the camp. I was actually forced to go by my mother. But after I participated, I understood the importance of working together as a team and sharing with each other."
A major impetus for the Tainan City Government's involvement in promoting the preservation and appreciation of cultural heritage is to counter the homogenizing influence of economic and cultural globalization. It is essential for every society to achieve a balance between appreciation of global culture and universal values on the one hand, while, on the other, affirming the particular expressions of the human quest for goodness and beauty manifested in our communities. Only by preserving the old and particular, and mixing them with the new and universal--as Tainan is successfully doing with the Chihsi festival--can we experience the unlimited richness of human potential and creativity.
--Sherry Huang is a National Taiwan University student and an intern staff writer at Taiwan Journal.
Write to Taiwan Journal at tj@mail.gio.gov.tw