Chihpen Village is a little Puyuma village in Taitung County; it was once the main village for eight Puyuma communities.
Since being part of a major performance in 1992 at the National Theater Concert Hall, the people of Chihpen Village have been giving serious thought to ways of reviving their heritage: reinstating traditional festivals, re-establishing their "youth groups" (known as parakuang in the Puyuma language), and bringing back the old six-year training system for young men of the village. In order to make all this a reality, the entire village has worked together to build a community center, from picking the location, to collecting materials and putting up the buildings, amongst other activities they've worked on to help revive their culture.
These photos come from my time doing volunteer work with the Puyuma villagers in 1992. Everything that we did, I recorded with my camera. The main theme of these photos is the mid-July festival they call the "Gatherer's Festival." This ancient festival includes testing the strength and gathering skills of the young men of the village, celebratory parades, warrior dances, sacrifices to the spirits in special ancestral worship buildings, and even big parties where the whole village gets together to sing and dance. For ten days, the full glory of Puyuma culture is on full, vibrant display.
The celebratory parade of the village's young warriors heads out from the youth center, and under the hot midday sun each and every villager is out singing, dancing, and having fun. The effigy in the center is a representation of a Puyuma warrior.
The wrestling contests are one event that each and every man in the village must take part in. They are sorted into age groups; the matches in the adults' division are always the fiercest.
Wrestling is more than just a test of strength and stamina-it also tests the participants' technique and smarts.
A young man from Chihpen carries out a pot full of steaming hot, freshly cooked sticky rice as he walks out of the "Hall of the Ancestral Spirits." Villagers waiting outside will mold the rice into sticky rice cakes, to be shared out amongst the entire village.
The warrior's dance, which moves clockwise in massive leaps and squats, is a demonstration of the young men's strength, agility, and stamina. Their Kating, or traditional leg coverings, are decorated in red diamond shapes, representing their passage into adulthood (vangsalarng in Puyuma.)
Puyuma women always wear the traditional bamboo hat, which is decorated on the inside with a piece of dried pineapple skin for scent and leaves on the back for sun protection.
The Puyuma people love to wear hand-crafted garlands whenever a festival rolls around.
The square hat decorated with flowers is a special accoutrement of older Puyuma men.
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