Suupu mekan ido （eating together）
This summer, we traveled to the indigenous Alan-Gluban (or Qingliu) community in Ren-ai Township, Nantou County, to carry out "Community Empowerment Project for Qingliu Aboriginal Village: Solar Energy, Local Industry, and Cultural Retrieval", a USR (University Social Responsibility) project of National Chung Hsing University. In collaboration with the Pusu Association for Sustainable Development, we organized a workshop entitled "Qingliu Community Co-learning 2020 – Plants used for and Manufacture of Seediq Weaving Material". During the eight days, the harvesting, scraping, and kneading of ramie, as well as the plying, dyeing, and coiling of threads were completed collaboratively by a generation-spanning group of community members. Since those who are familiar with the traditional weaving and knitting techniques are already elderly, the chairman of the association, Mahung Pawan (we call her "Mum" like everybody in Qingliu) was hoping for the workshop to be filmed as an instructional video, so we put together a team to help.
During the eight-day workshop, the team documented on film not only the complete production process of the Seediq weaving material, but also captured some of the intangible aspects of the Seediq's traditional weaving culture such as the gender division of labor, vocabulary of the Seediq language, the living wisdom of using local resources, the memory of the community's cultural continuation etc. Mahung Pawan's mother, the 79-year-old Lubi, and Rabe (78), have grown up together since childhood. They recalled their memories of walking with their parents for three hours up into the mountains to plant ramie and sweet potatoes. The Seediq helped each other in their fields through a practice called mssbarux (labor exchange). The women would twist threads while walking with their children on their backs, and after a long day of farming and household chores, they would weave cloth until late at night.
In the afternoon after the workshop, we interviewed Lubi with the help of Mahung Pawan. Speaking in her native language, Lubi told us about her adoptive mother, Mahung Mona, the only survivor of the Mona Rudo clan, who often sang Seediq songs while weaving, both songs of sadness and songs of joy.
On the way back to our homestay, Mahung Pawan suddenly mentioned that several people from the community were listed in her family's household register. Lubi told her that they were all "suupu mekan ido" ("eating together"), people who had been living at their home for some time after the Musha incident (1930, the last major uprising against Japanese forces in colonial Taiwan. After a Seediq attack on the Japanese population in Musha, Japanese military retaliated heavily). Some of them were orphans, some were separated from their parents, or their parents came to the community later than the children. They left when their parents arrived or when they got married and started their own family.
Nearly ninety years ago, the Seediq–due to their resistance against the Japanese colonial regime–were almost completely exterminated. The survivors were forced to relocate to Chuanzhongdao (the present location of the Qingliu Community), not without first tearfully burning down their homes in accordance with gaya, the Seediq's ancestral rules. Remaining under the close supervision by the Japanese police, many Seediq could not cope with the loss of relatives and trauma, or had difficulties adjusting to the new environment and hanged themselves. Those who survived did so by supporting each other, with hard work and courageous commitment, and finally created the rich agricultural and ecological landscapes of today's Qingliu community.
When in 1976 the government advocated land rezoning, each household had to shoulder one-third of the cost (tens of thousands of dollars) and leave the land fallow for three years. Rabe remembers that out of the three neighboring communities of Zhongyuan, Meiyuan and Qingliu, only the Qingliu community accepted the rezoning of their land. As a result, Mahung Pawan's father moved to Taipei to work in construction to support the family during the fallow period. With the completion of the rezoning, the community people worked hard and were able to repay the interest-free loan provided by the government within a few years. The original gravelly, fragmented land has been transformed into large, well-manicured plots of farmland with complete irrigation facilities, providing enough agricultural farmland to support the community.
After the devastations of the Jiji Earthquake (1999), Qingliu started with community development and introduced cultural tourism. After returning to Qingliu from the city seven or eight years ago, Mahung Pawan has started gathering the children of Qingliu, so that the young and the old can learn together how to revive the traditional Seediq culture, that's when everybody started to call her "Mum". By the end of our weaving material workshop, the children were able to run their own summer camps, much to the delight of "Mum".
The history and spirit of the Qingliu community's painful, yet determined rebuilding of their homeland has been the driving force behind our USR project. We introduced Delta CSR (corporate social responsibility) to assist in lighting the Qingliu Bridge to guide the people on their way home. In addition, we held workshops on traditional rattan weaving and weaving material to enable generation-spanning co-learning of the transmission of Seediq traditional culture. At the same time, we cooperate with the Shungye Museum of Formosan Aborigines to recreate both house construction and mythological legends using interactive AR/VR technology. For the future, we are planning to introduce green energy technologies such as solar power generation and self-driving vehicles and to assist the community in developing local tourism based on Qingliu's rich cultural, historical and ecological resources by building guided eco-trails, compiling a field guide of the local plants with their names in the native language, and promoting "the sour trio" (lemon, green plum, and bayberry). Finally, we aim to guide students of Chung Hsing University to explore the community's historical experiences and cultural implications.
How do individual and collective lives proceed? Under the impact of environmental change, natural and man-made disasters, how can the life, history, language, and culture of a fractured ethnic group be retrieved, rebuilt, and recreated? The stories of the survivors of the Musha incident offer thought-provoking insights into the "sustainability" of humanity. During the eight days of the workshop, we stayed with the community as people "suupu mekan ido (eating together)" and reflected on how to connect past, present and future through the memory and transmission of a community's history and culture.
During the eight-day workshop, the team documented on film not only the complete production process of the Seediq weaving material, but also captured some of the intangible aspects of the Seediq's traditional weaving culture such as the gender division of labor, vocabulary of the Seediq language, the living wisdom of using local resources, the memory of the community's cultural continuation etc. Mahung Pawan's mother, the 79-year-old Lubi, and Rabe (78), have grown up together since childhood. They recalled their memories of walking with their parents for three hours up into the mountains to plant ramie and sweet potatoes. The Seediq helped each other in their fields through a practice called mssbarux (labor exchange). The women would twist threads while walking with their children on their backs, and after a long day of farming and household chores, they would weave cloth until late at night.
In the afternoon after the workshop, we interviewed Lubi with the help of Mahung Pawan. Speaking in her native language, Lubi told us about her adoptive mother, Mahung Mona, the only survivor of the Mona Rudo clan, who often sang Seediq songs while weaving, both songs of sadness and songs of joy.
On the way back to our homestay, Mahung Pawan suddenly mentioned that several people from the community were listed in her family's household register. Lubi told her that they were all "suupu mekan ido" ("eating together"), people who had been living at their home for some time after the Musha incident (1930, the last major uprising against Japanese forces in colonial Taiwan. After a Seediq attack on the Japanese population in Musha, Japanese military retaliated heavily). Some of them were orphans, some were separated from their parents, or their parents came to the community later than the children. They left when their parents arrived or when they got married and started their own family.
Nearly ninety years ago, the Seediq–due to their resistance against the Japanese colonial regime–were almost completely exterminated. The survivors were forced to relocate to Chuanzhongdao (the present location of the Qingliu Community), not without first tearfully burning down their homes in accordance with gaya, the Seediq's ancestral rules. Remaining under the close supervision by the Japanese police, many Seediq could not cope with the loss of relatives and trauma, or had difficulties adjusting to the new environment and hanged themselves. Those who survived did so by supporting each other, with hard work and courageous commitment, and finally created the rich agricultural and ecological landscapes of today's Qingliu community.
When in 1976 the government advocated land rezoning, each household had to shoulder one-third of the cost (tens of thousands of dollars) and leave the land fallow for three years. Rabe remembers that out of the three neighboring communities of Zhongyuan, Meiyuan and Qingliu, only the Qingliu community accepted the rezoning of their land. As a result, Mahung Pawan's father moved to Taipei to work in construction to support the family during the fallow period. With the completion of the rezoning, the community people worked hard and were able to repay the interest-free loan provided by the government within a few years. The original gravelly, fragmented land has been transformed into large, well-manicured plots of farmland with complete irrigation facilities, providing enough agricultural farmland to support the community.
After the devastations of the Jiji Earthquake (1999), Qingliu started with community development and introduced cultural tourism. After returning to Qingliu from the city seven or eight years ago, Mahung Pawan has started gathering the children of Qingliu, so that the young and the old can learn together how to revive the traditional Seediq culture, that's when everybody started to call her "Mum". By the end of our weaving material workshop, the children were able to run their own summer camps, much to the delight of "Mum".
The history and spirit of the Qingliu community's painful, yet determined rebuilding of their homeland has been the driving force behind our USR project. We introduced Delta CSR (corporate social responsibility) to assist in lighting the Qingliu Bridge to guide the people on their way home. In addition, we held workshops on traditional rattan weaving and weaving material to enable generation-spanning co-learning of the transmission of Seediq traditional culture. At the same time, we cooperate with the Shungye Museum of Formosan Aborigines to recreate both house construction and mythological legends using interactive AR/VR technology. For the future, we are planning to introduce green energy technologies such as solar power generation and self-driving vehicles and to assist the community in developing local tourism based on Qingliu's rich cultural, historical and ecological resources by building guided eco-trails, compiling a field guide of the local plants with their names in the native language, and promoting "the sour trio" (lemon, green plum, and bayberry). Finally, we aim to guide students of Chung Hsing University to explore the community's historical experiences and cultural implications.
How do individual and collective lives proceed? Under the impact of environmental change, natural and man-made disasters, how can the life, history, language, and culture of a fractured ethnic group be retrieved, rebuilt, and recreated? The stories of the survivors of the Musha incident offer thought-provoking insights into the "sustainability" of humanity. During the eight days of the workshop, we stayed with the community as people "suupu mekan ido (eating together)" and reflected on how to connect past, present and future through the memory and transmission of a community's history and culture.
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University characteristic Startup Stage Project
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Taichung City
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National Chung Hsing University
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