Mapping the Roots

Syaman Rapongan describes how he catches fish with a hand-held spear. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

Publication Date：01/31/2007
Byline：ZOE CHENG

Syaman Rapongan, a Tao aborigine, returned to his home on the remote island of Lanyu with a cultural mission, to remove the "stigma" of being assimilated into Han society and recover his identity as a Tao. At the same time he has also become a unique Chinese-language writer.

It isn't easy to catch surgeon fish; they tend to swim deep and like fast currents. So Syaman Rapongan's haul of 15 fish, all caught with a hand-held spear at a depth of around 15 meters, would be something to boast about, except that elders of the Tao (previously known outside Lanyu as Yami) people are not given to boasting. As he offers the fish, smoked, then roasted, to guests sitting in the front yard of his house on Lanyu (also known as Orchid Island), he explains how he used wood from a Fijian longan tree to smoke his catch. "My wife and I love eating this fish, because the meat is chewy. But leave out the skin, that's too thick to eat," he says.

As the 50-year-old aboriginal entertains his guests with smoked fish, cups of wine and cigarettes, he appears to be utterly at home on this small, remote island, a 20-minute flight into the Pacific from Taiwan's southeastern coast, immersed in the traditional culture of the island's Tao inhabitants.

"For the Tao, the surgeon fish is traditionally for men to eat; this is alien to Han culture," Syaman Rapongan explains, meaning by "Han" all those in Taiwan descended from Chinese immigrants, about 95 percent of the national population. "We always distribute the fish we catch to villagers equally. This practice is also not customary in Han culture," says Mr. Wang, one of the seated guests. Syaman Rapongan cracks a smile. "For the Han, my life here is like something out of a legend--something beyond their imagination," he says.

A Double Life

Looking at a man so immersed in his own culture as Syaman Rapongan, it is hard to imagine that he leads another life, as a Mandarin-speaking writer and intellectual, or that his earlier life took a wide arc away from Tao culture, or that his current comfort is the result not of decades of living the traditional life but of a conscious and highly driven re-immersion.

Eighteen years ago, Syaman Rapongan lived a very different life and even had a different, Chinese, name Shih Nu-lai, given to him by a local registration officer. He spent his school years in Taitung and then in Taipei. Although born on Lanyu, he knew little about the traditions--diving, spear fishing and boatmaking--of a culture intimately bound up with the sea. Like other teenagers who left Lanyu, he lost the skills thought essential to a Tao male. "A Tao male who can't fish is useless," says his young niece, repeating the view the elders hold: "It's shameful for a Tao male to buy fish with money." Such strong traditional opinions nevertheless cannot halt the outflow of youngsters from Lanyu and the corrosive effect of modern culture on traditional practices.

In Taipei he fulfilled his childhood dream of getting a university education. But the experience was exhausting and left him feeling hollow. "That dream took me three years in cram schools and 10 years of manual work, moving pianos or crates of drinks around Taiwan, in order to be able to eat," he recalls. Awakened by the growing indigenous movements in the 1980s, he started to seriously reflect on his identity and the difficult plight his tribe was in. Slowly he began to understand that he needed to get in touch with his mother culture, that to rebuild his dignity as a Tao, he had to re-establish roots in his own culture. Eventually, when Syaman Rapongan was 32, a comment from his father brought him home. "There is no smell of the ocean there," he said. "Why stay?"

Upon returning home to settle down, Syaman Rapongan challenged the local government to drop the name Shih Nu-lai and allow him to use the traditional form of his name "Syaman Rapongan," which means "the father of Rapongan," Rapongan being his firstborn son. After having recovered his name, he then threw himself into a more difficult battle--removing the stigma of assimilation with the Han and cultivating the skills expected of a traditional Tao male. "In my father's eyes, a Tao man is capable of building houses and boats, catching flying fish, telling stories, chanting... he should be an all-rounder," he writes. Learning such skills and performing them adequately was, however, tough at first.

Much to Learn

However primitive traditional Tao fishing might look to an outsider, there is wealth of information to learn, and it has to be learned by experience. By dint of persistence, Syaman Rapongan eventually built up an understanding of the moon, the tides, the inter-tidal zone, boat-handling and fishing techniques. After he hunted giant trevally under the sea for the first time, he sat on the rocky shore alone and shouted for joy. When he led a procession fishermen to sea, his father smiled with joy. "When the neighbors saw my black-tongued unicorn fish hung on the drying rack one after another, first they were surprised and then full of congratulation. For my fellow villagers I had finally got rid of the stigma of Sinicization."

When Syaman Rapongan was a kid, his father always disappeared in the dead of night and brought back big fish. His father would wake him up to eat the raw fish and eyeballs dipped in salt. Before his parents passed away, he was proud he was able to catch fish in return.

At the fishermen's return, family members gather together to share the fish as well as family history and anecdotes and stories about the sea. On such occasions, elders sing songs to compliment or warn the younger men. "For me this was like a baby sucking mother's milk. I gradually dissolved in the mother culture in this way," he writes.

"If I didn't have the experience of catching flying fish in the dark night or dolphin fish under the burning sun, I wouldn't be so enchanted with the ocean. Without that, I wouldn't treasure the island and my tribal culture," he writes. As his fishing skills have improved, he actually catches fewer fish, because he has become more selective, only going after larger fish. His uncle told him: "The ocean has its own recollections and life. Catching big fish is evidence of being humble. The point is that the ocean can remember you and tell you by your smell." Anthropologists interpret the Tao emphasis on humility as a mechanism to prevent the over exploitation of their environment. "But," says Syaman Rapongan, "it's more than that. Actually, the Tao people hold their entire environment in awe, which is really a form of animism," he says.

Tao culture revolves almost entirely around fish and fishing. Boat-building is a part of this culture and is regarded as the most important skill associated with a man's social status as well as providing a tool essential for living. Accepting his then-74-year-old father's invitation to build a boat together, Syaman Rapongan learned more things about his tribe, in particular about Tao animism. "My father would pray to the tree to 'stay in good spirits' and 'fall in the right place' as if the trees were his close friends. Prayers are given to bless the spirits of the trees so that they ride the waves better." In the beginning, he questioned his father's superstition. With accumulated experience at sea, he himself has developed this kind of outlook. And his boat, like his father's, will carry him to the core of Tao culture--the ocean.

Getting in touch with everything in Tao traditional culture--the ocean, diving, fishing, chopping logs for crafting boats, flying-fish ceremonies, or songs--describes the nature of Syaman Rapongan's life. "I don't practice these primitive ways of labor and production for economic gain." His interest has been in inheriting his ancestors' culture. But beyond this he wants to convey the details and textures of that culture to the outside world. The materially unsophisticated Tao fisherman is also a much-admired Chinese-language writer. He is in fact as skilled with a pen or a word processor as he is with a fishing spear. Only the day before offering his friends and neighbors home-smoked fish in his yard, he had been lecturing at a university in Tainan, in southern Taiwan.

The Recorder

"My ambition is to tell stories of the Tao on Lanyu. What I am really trying to convey is the nature of traditional work and labor that has nothing to do with monetary value," he writes in his book Smitten with the Ruthless Sea. Other titles he has published include The Myths of Ba Dai Bay, Recollection of the Waves and The Sailors' Faces. His work provides readers with a vivid picture of the way Tao life is bound up with the sea and chronicles the often sublime experiences he has undergone at sea. For an island, Taiwan has produced surprisingly little in the way of a literature of the sea; Syaman Rapongan's is almost unique.

Reintegrating himself into Tao society and mastering traditional skills were not the only problems he has had to face. Returning to Lanyu was not easy; according to a local official, of those youngsters who leave, hardly one in a hundred will return to settle and, except for a tourist industry, Lanyu has no job opportunities. If indigenous intellectuals do return, it is almost invariably as teachers, civil servants or political party functionaries, adjuncts of Sinicized Taiwan, almost completely divorced from traditional life. Syaman Rapongan had no intention of following this path, but avoiding it was a struggle. "That's not the kind of life I am pursuing," he says. Often, he was pushed to earn money. His wife complained as their children grew older and needed tuition fees. "Do you think they will be proud of a penniless father?" she asked. "My wife called me a modern Tao without a modern occupation," Syaman Rapongan recalls. He therefore had to write, not only for his one-man cultural mission but also out of financial need.

When it comes to writing, Syaman Rapongan has nothing but Chinese to use, because Tao has no written language. "The phrases the Tao elders use are highly metaphorical, which has had a great impact on my writing. For example, to say 'the sun of an old man is low' means he is aged or dying; the stars are 'the eyes of the sky;' 'men being looked down upon by the wind' refers to lazy men resting on the porch," he says. "Such phrases don't exist in Chinese, because these two different cultures are of two different cognitive worlds."

In 1997, Smitten with the Ruthless Sea received a Ten Best Books of the Year award from the United Daily News. In 1999, Black Wings was awarded the Wu Choliu Literature Award and was on the Central Daily News' Ten Best Books of the Year list. Syaman Rapongan sees his task as a writer not just to provide anecdotes about the Tao but to promote their alternative view of the world. As a small people living surrounded by a vast ocean, their culture with its animism and attention to humbleness, stresses a respect and harmony with nature very different from Western-style narratives of "conquering" the ocean. To deepen his understanding, he has pursued a graduate degree in anthropology and a doctorate in Taiwanese literature.

In 2005, Syaman Rapongan realized another childhood dream. A Japanese company sponsored him to join a month-long voyage with other Austronesian people from Indonesia to sail along an ancient route of Austronesian migration. That experience left him with even more understanding of and respect for Tao seamanship. "The training I received from my father was 100-percent useful," he says. However, the voyage itself was not his purpose, neither was the money the company offered. What was important was deepening the life experience he has been pursuing.

The night is getting late as the casual gathering in Syaman Rapongan's front yard continues. The Tao people present at the gathering know very well that all the traditional skills Syaman Rapongan has devoted himself to mastering are not necessary for young Tao to earn their living in the modern world. They doubt too many others will follow his path. "There should be more fools in Lanyu to disseminate our culture," says Mr. Wang. "Indeed, the essence of a race's culture is always established by fools," echoes Syaman Rapongan, who always describes himself as a tragic hero on a wild goose chase.

After passing many turning points in his life, Syaman Rapongan has come up with another dream for the future: "I will write essays." A film based on his life story will also be shot soon. No matter what dreams he embraces, Lanyu and his tribe will always be the window through which he peers into life's depths. "Lanyu is where I find peace," he says. "It's like sailing a boat on a tranquil night. The breeze pushes the boat. Only the sound of the boat sliding over the waves can be heard. In the process, the depth of a man's life is plumbed."

A Tao Odyssey

In The Sailors' Faces Syaman Rapongan wrote about an episode which took place when he was a high-school student in Taitung. One day his father visited him. Father and son could barely recognize each other, as the writer had grown much stronger and taller while his father, who had been sick, had become thin and weak, far from the burly sailor he used to be.

Hearing that his father had been to the Pratas Islands to collect red algae in order to earn his tuition fees, Syaman Rapongan was deeply moved by the heroic gesture. In the extract below he paints a portrait of his father as part of landscape honoring the skill and hardihood of the Tao warrior.

In 1973, on a Sunday in May, a time of year when the Tao go hunting dolphin fish, my cousin and I sat under a porch nearby the seashore to watch boats returning from fishing, which was always the greatest pleasure for Lanyu's boys. The weather was very bad. It rained heavily and the wind was high. Of the six men sailing one-man boats, four were members of my family--my father, his two brothers, and his brother-in-law. They rowed back at the same time but lingered at a distance of 60 to 70 meters off the shore. The breakers were between two and three meters high ....

The strength of the giant waves hitting the shore is powerful enough to tear apart father's boat. All of those watching on the shore feel nervous. Some say: "Who are those without souls (meaning courageous men)?" I am very pleased to hear such high praise for my father ....

The roar of the pounding waves grips our terrified hearts. The youngest son of my grandfather's youngest brother runs to the shore to greet his cousins. He is our spiritual teacher and we feel relieved upon seeing him. All of a sudden, we hear the roars of my father and his brothers striving to row back. They know very well that the strength of the sixth and seventh waves is the weakest. If they don't forge ahead instantly, the ninth wave will definitely crush their boats.

As soon as their boats are about to be engulfed, they seize the moment and jump out of them into the turbulence of the breaking waves. A while after, their blackened skin emerges from the silver spindrift with their hands holding the rim of their boats. They lift the boats and run fast. With the help of young people they make the shore safe and sound. After thanking the helpers, they turn to gaze upon the rough sea. Something in their eyes seems to convey a mixture of fear and respect for the ocean. Their muscles are visibly throbbing. The salty seawater runs along the lines of their muscles and drips onto the sandy beneath. My father holds my left hand tight, with the other hand carrying dolphin fish. I can feel his pulse. In the sternness of his face and cloudiness of his eyes, the sailing stories of my ancestors are visible.

--translated by Zoe Cheng

Write to Zoe Cheng at zoecheng@mail.gio.gov.tw