Sunday December 12th, our last day with the people of Nankeng for this year !
After six months of work, we ended by a full day of activities.

- Distribution of the Map of the 1000 Steps Old Trail and the CD (wait for the next article on this blog for more information)
- A presentation and discussion about this year’s project
- A concert by the group of musicians of Nankeng playing Beiguan (Wow ! They are playing every week now, they can perform a few times a year, and they play even better than before)
- A good meal of Hakka Food (Gui-Zhu loves cooking !)
- A hike on the 1000 Steps Old Trail, concluded by a fire and walking down in darkness with old-style torches
- Another good meal (we love the food cooked by Gui-Zhu !)
It seems that everyone was quite happy. A huge thank you to the people of Nankeng for this fantastic adventure.
A bit later we’ll build up a simple website for the village. And next year… there will be new ideas !

 28.10.2010: Pawang teaches the Atayal mother language to the kids. We collaborate with him to imagine some games based on Atayal phonetics. To “warm up” the class, we firstly played two videos extracted from Youtube : the famous Inuit Throat Singing duet by Kathy Keknek and Janet Aglukkaq and the amazing interpretation by Jaap Blonk of “Ursonate”, composed by Kurt Schwitters. No need to say that the kids loved these extracts…

For our small exercises we asked Pawang to translate from Chinese to Atayal a short text we wrote, derivated from the story told by Bawnay Baesu. We extracted from this narration a few phonems that are specific to Atayal and don’t exist in Chinese Mandarin. We repeated them, the result being somewhere between sound poetry and war ritual :-).

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The Atayal text transcription :

mnanak na qalang
ki’an yan gwiloq na paris
qpatung ga bzywak
bzywak ga huzil
ihi’ ihi’ cila cila
hala ta’ qalang na Tayal

The Chinese version :

一個奇怪的地方
那裡有像草莓的敵人
(他們的)山豬是(我們的)青蛙
(我們的)山豬是(他們的)獵狗
唉呀!唉呀!快跑!快跑!
帶我們到太陽(人類)的世界

And the English translation :

A weird place,
There are some enemies who are like berries,
Their wild boards are frogs,
Their hunting dogs are wild boars,
Aya ! Run away ! Aya ! Run Away !
Bring me back to the world of the Sun.

That workshop involve observation of documents of the Atayal traditional weaving. This practice was once forbidden by the Japanese during the colonization era. Their aim was to eradicate Atayal culture, and they succeed to harm it. Later the Nationalist Government of Taiwan, the industrialization and social changes helped the slow vanishing of traditional activities. Weaving is an activity only for women and one must be skillfull in order to get the traditional facial tattoo. When a lady pass away, she’s judged by her ability before being accepted into the Ancestors realm, beyond the Rainbow. Weaving and hunting are extremely important in Gaga, the Atayal Ethic. Nowadays only some families still keep this knowledge. But in some villages, some workshops try to revive and share this fundamental aspect of Atayal Culture. One of the most successful is Yumataru in Miaoli County. In Taoshan area, the Mindouyou village also hosts a workshop.

The workshop we held with kids from 5th and 6th grade was to draw some patterns from traditional weaving. (27.09.2010)

Classes in Taoshan for visual interpretation of the story told by Bawnay Baesu.
1. Listening to the recordings of the story
2. Drawing animals involved in the story (frogs, dogs and boars)
3. Cutting and exchanging the heads of the animals

Workshop with 2nd and 3rd grade (23 and 24.09.2010)

Listening to a story in a language that you don’t understand. The words can’t describe anything. But the voice, the onomatopea provides images. This is what we discussed and recorded with very very young students… (14.09.2010)

For the preparation of the design for the map of Qian Duan Qi (see the previous posts on this blog), we invited a teacher expert in Chinese paper cutting. Xuan Zhi 琁芝 taught some basics and invited the students (children and adults) to create a few characters and words. Results were surprising like always ! Have a look to the gallery of this event.

First steps for designing the map :

1. Finding some names for two anonymous rivers and some various spots on Qian Duan Qi 千段崎 (including sections of the old path, area nearby ruins of traditional houses, forests, etc.). 09.08.2010

2. Designing some stamps for these names. Workshop held on the 28.08.2010 under the supervision of Wan-Shuen Tsai would just learnt about this technique a few days ago…

Beiguan (北管) is a Chinese music genre still surviving in Taiwan. Its origin is related to theater, but nowaday it is mostly instrumental, and if in the past most of the temple would host a Beiguan group, it is decreasing, and people who have interest in music are more concerned by Classical Western music or (even worse) Chinese National Music (國樂).

In the village of Nán-Kēng (南坑), in Hsinchu County, some elders were still practising until four years ago, then stopped rehearsing and performing. Last year we convinced them to reform, to record a CD and to perform for some events. It seemed to work at least for a moment, since they were invited to do a few other performances. This year we hope to include some of the recordings into a sound collection related to the life of Tian Tuan Qi, an old path which is nearly forgotten…

Below are some pictures of the last rehearsal.

Last year, our projects in communities, commissioned by Cultural Affairs of Hsinchu County, included a Hakka village nearby Beipu : Nán-Kēng (南坑). We had regular meetings and activities with the inhabitants, mainly older people who are treasures of knowledge about the local history and the agricultural past of this area. Their practices are still very rich and it was easy to catch their attention on it, wakening old gestures such as bamboo weaving, hand-cropping of ricefields and playing Beiguan music. We eventually released a book containing visual documentation of these events (some photos were shot by the elders themselves) and a CD devoted to the Beiguan group that we could convince to reform after four years of sleep…

This year, we are focusing on a old path, Qiān Duàn Qí 千段崎, which was once a very important road. Opened 100 years ago, it was constitued by stairs made in stone, more than 1000 pieces. It led to differents traditional houses and fields above the hills. Nowadays the path is almost forgotten, some stones have been burried or stolen. With the inhabitant we are trying to retrieve the history and stories about this old path. Write the anecdotes, document the nature around, record the sounds of the traditional practices which are related to the place, draw a map…

Bawnay Baesu is 67 year old Atayal living in Wulai and working in Mindouyou, two of the villages in the area of Taoshan. During his youth, he worked as a volunteer for a non-profit organization and had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with elder Atayal people, listening and learning quite a lot of things related to the traditions and culture of Atayal.
This day, 18.08.2010, he told us a fascinating story about a second world where frogs are boars and strawberries are foes.
We’ll translate it in English soon or later…

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(recorded by Yannick Dauby - please don’t use without authorization)