Hey, Hey! It's the Monkey Festival

Nighttime, January 1 of this year. In the little plaza in front of the Catholic church in Hsiapinlang, the bonfire made up of stacked branches emits a sudden burst of sparks, illuminating the beads of sweat on the faces of the playing children.

This is now the focal point of the whole village. One missed step and the whole dance line will be thrown out of kilter, because they are all concentrating on listening to the old songs being chanted by the ina and ama (grandmother and grandfather in Puyuma), and are closely following the rhythm. Off to the side an old man is giving them encouragement: "Come on! You have to be real Puyuma men, and you can't be that if you can't do your own dances!" Having made it through two dances, a young man returns to his mother's side, and she pats his head by way of praise. Another boy takes over the baton to lead the group, and it gets passed on from one to the next without interruption.

This day marks the last part--the high point--of Hsiapinlang's monkey festival. Everyone crowds around the campfire to sing, dance, and celebrate the coming of the new year. The young people and the women carry glasses of rice wine and propose toasts to one another's hard work. After a few cups, they are feeling spry, grab hold of their fellow Puyuma's hands, and feel like they can dance forever....

In the years immediately after WWII, the young Puyuma still received training in the takoban, but the palakuwan system faded over the years, with many of its functions assumed by modern religions. （photo courtesy of Lai Ching-sheng）

The rough road to the festival

The monkey festival is a Puyuma celebration focused on young men (one focusing on women is held at the end of March). The celebration is further divided into the monkey festival for young men and the great hunt for adult men.

The monkey festival in Hsiapinlang had been interrupted for 30 years. Although the great hunt was held continuously, the overall ceremonies had deteriorated into mere formalities. The problem was that the festival was never something meant to stand on its own, but was closely tied to Puyuma society, which has been dissolving. In his article "Ceremonies in Twilight," Sun Ta-chuan, the first ever PhD candidate from Hsiapinlang, wrote: "Traditional Puyuma society was built on a strict palakuwan system as well as age stratification. The tribal chief (ajawan) and shaman (rahan) were in charge of political and religious affairs, respectively."

However, "the age stratification system gradually fell into disuse with the implementation of modern primary school education under the Japanese occupation. The period of service required of young Puyuma men in the palakuwan was shortened, seriously affecting the functions of the palakuwan system. After retrocession in 1945, the tribal community came under the jurisdiction of the local government, and the palakuwan system was eliminated entirely. The chief was head in name only, but lacked real authority. And with penetration by Catholicism, Protestantism, and Buddhism, the shaman was eventually saddled with the undesirable image of 'superstition,' and 'backwardness.'" Consequently, many ceremonies, so rich in meaning and function, also completely ceased to exist.

It was only in the 1980s, after the lifting of martial law in Taiwan, that aboriginal consciousness began to rise. With it came an increased appreciation among indigenous peoples for their own cultures. Traditional ceremonies, being closely associated with tribal sentiment, began to be revived.

For Puyuma youth, takoban training was part of the passage to true manhood.

A bamboo slap

Because Puyuma culture lacked writing, there are no detailed records of the specific features of the various ceremonies. Therefore the only way for us to get a picture of the Puyuma monkey festival was to visit the people of Hsiapinlang and examine studies done by scholars.

Tribal elders recall that the monkey festival used to begin when the flowers in the wild grass blossomed (about the end of October or early November).

After the shaman determined the best timing using bird divination, young men between the ages of 13 and 18, under the supervision of elders, constructed a takoban, or meeting house for young men. They then left home to live collectively in the takoban. They were divided into three levels plus one "adulthood preparatory" level at the top, with each level in charge of the one below.

Tseng Chien-tsu, a priest at the Chihpen Catholic church, has been studying Puyuma history for many years now. He relates that the takoban originally was built for educational purposes. Often five or six clans in the tribe would cooperate to build a takoban, like building a school; if a clan was too small to have their own takoban, they would send their children to "the next school district."

Sung Lung-sheng, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at National Taipei Teachers' College, wrote in his study entitled "The palakuwan system of the Puyuma of Nanwang Village" that young people who entered the takoban would be slapped with a bamboo stick, beginning with those of the highest rank (the "adulthood preparatory grade"). On the one hand this established the chain of authority and encouraged the members to respect the rules and injunctions of the tribe, and on the other it also taught them courage and endurance. Hsiapinlang has a similar tradition.

In the takoban, the young people had to study rites, taboos, and myths and legends. They also had to undergo trials of courage and physical ability and undergo military training. The purpose of all of these was to prepare them to become "true Puyuma men." Further, when the adult men went out hunting, the younger men would be somewhat more capable of protecting the community.

After passing out of the takoban, the next step was to receive further training in the palakuwan; only then was the individual socialized and then allowed to marry and have children.

Becoming a real Puyuma man

After five years of training in the takoban, young men reaching the age of 18 entered the palakuwan proper. They remained in the palakuwan until they were married, and left only to move into their wife's home. Unlike the takoban, which required annual rebuilding, the palakuwan was a permanent structure in the community, and was the focal point of activities for adult Puyuma men.

The spirit of training carried over from the takoban to the palakuwan, though the methods were somewhat different. Young people had to learn how to resist hunger, thirst, and exhaustion; they also faced competitive training to test their physical fitness and their reactions. In the palakuwan, young adult men also improved their understanding of life rituals, of how to deal with people and things, of rites, and of the construction of houses and the making of tools. Their socialization process was only fully completed after these several stages, only then were they recognized as adults, and only then could they marry and have children.

Today, however, neither adolescents nor young men live in the collective residences, and the training period has been reduced to a matter of days. During our visit to the village, the village elders repeatedly warned us that females are not allowed to go too near the palakuwan. From a religious point of view, notes Chen Wen-ming, the Hsiapinlang shaman, in the past Puyuma girls were seen as unclean because of menstruation. Sun Hsiu-nu, the second eldest sister of Sun Ta-chuan, says that it has nothing to do with any taboo or inauspiciousness; it is just that the young men undergo very strict training, and have the rule against women approaching because they are afraid their mothers will not be able to stand the sight. As far as young girls are concerned, separating the boys and girls can enhance the mystery of the opposite sex.

In former times, these forms of training reached their height around the monkey festival. Through the ritual ceremonies, the stages of life were tied together in an unbroken thread, and they dramatically underscore the significance of the rites of passage in life.

Through hunting in the mountains, elders passed their experience on to the young men, while the latter served and protected the former.

The monkey festival begins

It is the young boys who open the curtain on the monkey festival.

Fifty-two year old Chen Ming-wen recalls that when he was small, on the eve of the monkey festival, the adolescents had to make their own bows, arrows, and shields. In those days there was no liquid ink, and they had to mix sap from plants with charcoal ash to create black pigment. They then used splintered bamboo as pens to paint designs onto the weapons.

On the day of the monkey festival, young people with both parents still living were selected to go to the homes where there had been a death in the family in the previous year in order to "sweep out" the inauspicious atmosphere. The family would give them tobacco leaves by way of compensation. Thereafter, the monkey cage that had been placed in the palakuwan was moved to the "Victory Gate." The monkey was released, then stabbed and shot with arrows. This was followed by a race back to the palakuwan. The front-runner won three cups of wine, symbolizing unsurpassed glory. However, because the Japanese occupiers before WWII considered the whole ceremony too bloodthirsty, a monkey image made of grass replaced the live monkey, and thereafter adolescents had to learn how to make the grass monkey.

After the monkey corpse was carried back, the old people took the arrows out and rubbed them against painful areas on their body, after which the arrows were placed back with the monkey corpse. This represented the transfer of the pain from their own bodies to that of the monkey. Young people,on the other hand, stood on the takoban and beat the dust from deerskins, which also symbolized eliminating inauspiciousness. Finally, the monkey corpse was dumped outside the village, and all the bad things from the previous year were expelled along with it. At night there was a dance at the takoban, in which the young women would participate, and it would only end when the adults returned from the hunt.

Though the ceremony focused on adolescents, the killing of the monkey in the ceremony was by no means only for the benefit of the young people. It was a religious ritual produced by the need to preserve and protect the entire community.

（above and below） Today the biggest prize from the hunt at Hsiapinlang Village is a flying squirrel, but most of the animals captured are just mountain rodents. After being dried in the mountains, they are divided among people in the village.

From hunting heads to hunting monkeys

Tseng Chien-tsu informs us that the earliest festivals did not in fact use a monkey at all, but involved headhunting. In traditional Puyuma culture, agriculture was women's work, while men were responsible for clearing land and protecting the village and hunting grounds from the encroachment of enemies. Off all the types of grains they planted, the most precious was barley, so they made the most valuable sacrifices--human heads--to the Barley God.

It was only after Han Chinese took over Taiwan and banned headhunting that the monkey, with the most human-like form of any animal, was used instead. The knifing and shooting of arrows into the monkey was meant to inspire the young men with courage to kill their enemies.

At the same time, prior to the sacrifice of the monkey, the young men had to rear it and take care of it for more than a month, and it was only when they had built up an emotional attachment that the monkey would be killed. The purpose was to teach the boys how to give up things they loved, for only then would they be prepared at any time or place to forsake their families to go to war for the tribe. With each monkey festival, not only would each young man be one year older, he would rise one level in the palakuwan system, so that the monkey festival has always been seen as a coming-of-age ceremony.

In the Puyuma language, the monkey festival is known by two names: vasivas and mangayangayau. Chen Wen-teh, an assistant researcher at the Institute of Ethnology of the Academia Sinica, asked elders of the Nanwang tribe about this. They said that vasivas indicates the coming of the new year, while mangayangayau is a double-word drawn from mangayau, the word for the great hunt of the adult males. Sun Ta-chuan explains that double-words are a form of "practice," and symbolize the rite of passage into the palakuwan. For example, each year after the monkey festival the takoban is torn down, and rebuilt the following year. The purpose is to give adolescents a chance to practice their construction skills.

Puyuma women meet the men returning from the hunt at a prearranged place, bringing floral leis, a change of clean clothes, cigarettes and betel nuts to their loved ones to celebrate their safe return.

Cooperation and conflict

Only after the adolescents' monkey festival has been held can the shaman do divination to determine the time when all the adult males in the tribe participate in the great hunt. According to tradition, the adult males cannot go out hunting until the monkey festival is completed. Sun Ta-chuan explains that in Puyuma culture, young men are seen as a "newly rising" force, so their part of the ceremony is held up front. This tradition is also evidenced in the Puyuma myth about the relations between brothers.

In the myth, the elder brother is friendly and stable, while the younger sibling is decisive and dynamic. Thus the elder brother is the stabilizing force, while the younger brother is the innovating force. These role assignments also reflect the tension between cooperation and conflict in their relationship.

The tension produced by the juxtaposition of these qualities produces a circulation among subtly changing forms during the great hunt.

Before they set off on the hunt, the young men at the "adulthood preparatory" level in the takoban have a blue waist cloth wrapped around them by an elder of the same surname. This symbolizes that they have formally made the passage into the palakuwan. Then they go into the mountains together.

Seniors held a great deal of power among the Puyuma, and there was no exception even deep in the mountains. Tasks like setting up tents, night sentry duty, or carrying the kill all fell to the young men. But the elders would also deliberately create opportunities for the young men to challenge their authority. For an example, an adult might insult a young man, at which point the young man could take issue with him. Of course the older man would know full well that his insult was unwarranted, and would naturally figure out some way to let the issue fade out unresolved. "Therefore, it was very important to the people of the tribe to know just how and when to start an argument," laughs Sun.

（above and below） In the past there was no transportation but feel, and women were accustomed to carrying bamboo baskets. Almost all of the younger generation today have motorbikes.

Life v. death, man v. woman, old v. young

Also, when the hunters went into the mountains, the tents of those who had had a death in the family the previous year were separate from those of the rest of the community. But they weren't cut off, because members of the tribe, led by the elders singing traditional songs, would visit them. Though they drew a division between life and death, they also maintained some connection.

Traditionally women were not allowed into the mountains. Whenever the men were returning home, they would fire off weapons or make vocal signals; the women would respond by rushing to greet them with leis made of flowers, clean traditional clothing, and cigarettes and betel nuts. Together they would all proceed to the "Gate for Welcoming the Hunt," after which they would ritually separate and then be reunited.

After some drinking of wine and singing and dancing at the Gate, those from bereaved families were led to the side of the Gate by the oldest woman in the tribe, where they would be solaced by women of the tribe, then given leis. This meant that they were once more welcomed back into the community. When this year's monkey festival reached this point, a light rain began to fall, increasing in intensity with the cries of grief of the families of the deceased. And when they finished crying, the rain suddenly stopped. Perhaps nature was showing its sympathy with them!

After this ended, the whole group ran back to the palakuwan. Although the younger men proved more swift, every so often they would circle back behind the older men, to show their respect for and their willingness to protect the latter. The older people and the younger were like a magnetic field, never quite coming together.

After returning to the palakuwan to report to their ancestors that all had returned safely from the hunt, the men then visited the homes of those who had suffered a death in the family and sang songs of solace. The repeated singing often called back the sorrow of those in the family, and onlookers could not avoid a tug at their hearts. Then, after chanting "hey-yah... huh" three times, they sang joyful songs, thus bringing together sorrow and happiness in one ceremony.

The next day, amidst singing to celebrate the new year, the families of the deceased greeted the young unmarried men whose parents were both still alive and led them to the very forefront, where the elders led them in dance. It was only at this point that the family of the deceased was considered fully unyoked from death, and could return to the community to share the life of the "living."

Only after the process of "sweeping away death" can the family of a deceased person "come back to life" and rejoin the collective activities of "the living.".

In search of the past

While describing the meaning of the monkey festival, Sun Ta-chuan exudes powerful feelings which suggest a profound respect and nostalgia for his ancestry. Especially today, with Puyuma social organization disintegrating, the holding of the monkey festival has an even more important mission.

The monkey festival was resumed in Hsiapinlang in 1990 under prodding by Sun Ta-chuan. Today the collective training for young people--who are in school most of the time--has been cut back to half a day or a day. As for the great hunt, because many adults cannot get time off from work, and because hunting is now banned, the group spends only three days in the mountains, and their prey is mostly small mountain rodents.

Although it is impossible to restore the complete rituals, more and more Puyuma are beginning to sense the importance of resurrecting old ceremonies. This is not simply a matter of recreating the ancient ways, but of the very survival of the culture. Thus, the first year of the revived monkey festival only five or six people participated, but now nearly all of the eligible boys in the 79 households in the village take part together.

Sun says that before the restoration of the monkey festival the village had lost its focal point. Young people drank too much and got in fights frequently. Now that the monkey festival has been resumed, the community has regained some of its authority, and peers have more fellow-feeling with one another.

At the same time, elderly people have especially dedicated themselves to the ceremony. Because most of them can only speak Puyuma or Japanese (from their occupation-era educations), they ordinarily have a difficult time communicating with the younger generations, who mostly speak Mandarin or Taiwanese. Only at this time of year can they escape from their isolation and hear the old rhythms of their past, and once again recall and experience community life. Meanwhile young people can use this experience to understand from where their elders have come.

Lin Chang-ping, born in 1953, returned from Hualien to Hsiapinlang to take part in the monkey festival this year for the first time. He has lived outside of the village since middle school, and he never received traditional training. This year he not only returned to participate in the ceremony, his son represented Hsiapinlang in the Eight Tribes Harvest Festival Mother Tongue Speech Competition. For him, the significance of the monkey festival is this: "If there were no monkey ceremony, how could we explain to our children who we are?"

The tribal elders are often the most enthusiastic when it comes to the monkey festival, because they can relive memories of their childhood.

Learning the spirit of the ancestors

There are still people who are skeptical, wondering whether or not a monkey festival without a palakuwan system is mere empty ceremony. Sun Ta-chuan looks at it this way: The history of the Puyuma is not something written down by historians, but is something realized in the life of generation after generation. Therefore people from the tribe need only participate in one or two ceremonies, and they are not likely to forget for the rest of their lives. The tribe is a living thing. Sun does not want the next generation to be able to touch their own history only through the written word or videotapes.

It is true that the ceremony has been revived, and that the community is gradually restoring its authority. But if Puyuma culture is to go a step further and be passed along, argues Tseng Chien-tsu, "the key is that the young people must take the initiative to show concern and to learn."

There are many things about the ways and ideas of the old Puyuma that may appear backward from a modern point of view. For example, hand-woven grass tents have been replaced by convenient tents of sailcloth, and imported foreign husking machines have replaced the rice husking methods of old. Nevertheless, the old things represent something very important: they are the fruits of the struggle of the ancestors to cope with and master their environment.

As Tseng Chien-tsu says, at the same time that young people are learning the wisdom of their fore-fathers, they should not forget that the most important thing is to live out the spirit of their predecessors, and to figure out how to cope with and master their modern environment. "We should try not to give a worse showing than our ancestors!"

[Picture Caption]

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(left) Now that modern civilization has penetrated the mountains, will the monkey festival provide the only chance for Puyuma children to touch their roots?

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In the years immediately after WWII, the young Puyuma still received training in the takoban, but the palakuwan system faded over the years, with many of its functions assumed by modern religions. (photo courtesy of Lai Ching-sheng)

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For Puyuma youth, takoban training was part of the passage to true manhood.

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After passing out of the takoban, the next step was to receive further training in the palakuwan; only then was the individual socialized and then allowed to marry and have children.

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Through hunting in the mountains, elders passed their experience on to the young men, while the latter served and protected the former.

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(above and below) Today the biggest prize from the hunt at Hsiapinlang Village is a flying squirrel, but most of the animals captured are just mountain rodents. After being dried in the mountains, they are divided among people in the village.

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Puyuma women meet the men returning from the hunt at a prearranged place, bringing floral leis, a change of clean clothes, cigarettes and betel nuts to their loved ones to celebrate their safe return.

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(above and below) In the past there was no transportation but feel, and women were accustomed to carrying bamboo baskets. Almost all of the younger generation today have motorbikes.

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Only after the process of "sweeping away death" can the family of a deceased person "come back to life" and rejoin the collective activities of "the living."

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The tribal elders are often the most enthusiastic when it comes to the monkey festival, because they can relive memories of their childhood.

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After a series of training activities and ceremonies, all the bad from the previous year is swept away, and on January 1 the new year can be welcomed in. (The photo is of Chien ho Village, one of ten Puyuma communities.)

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A father in sunglasses and a daughter munching potato chips. Tradition and modernity intersect in their persons.

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Sun Ta-chuan thinks that the significance of the monkey festival lies in giving the Puyuma an understanding of what their ancestors went through.

After a series of training activities and ceremonies, all the bad from the previous year is swept away, and on January 1 the new year can be welcomed in. （The photo is of Chien ho Village, one of ten Puyuma communities.）

A father in sunglasses and a daughter munching potato chips. Tradition and modernity intersect in their persons.

Sun Ta-chuan thinks that the significance of the monkey festival lies in giving the Puyuma an understanding of what their ancestors went through.