Hsiyu's Hong Min-tsung--Chronicler of Home-Town Life

It's not yet 8:00 a.m., and 43-year-old Hong Min-tsung is out the door to work just as any other civil servant. As head of the office of administration in the Social Affairs Department of the Penghu County government, he is responsible for administering and communicating with more than 130 civic organizations and for promoting cremation. He ploughs through a stack of government documents that's nearly a foot high, but he still has an afternoon of attending various groups' meetings ahead of him. That classic jab at public officials, that "they wear pretty clothes and eat till their bellies bulge while playing dumb" simply doesn't apply to him. When he finally finishes his office work, he goes home, grabs his tape recorder and note pad and hurries to catch a bus for Hsiyu.

On an afternoon shortly before the Mid-Autumn Festival, a bright sun shines over the blue sea and only a few Indian blankets remain in bloom on the roadside. Within the stone windbreaks, the peanuts are just now being picked, and by the time the festival has passed, Penghu will be a parched yellow expanse. We cross the Cross-Sea Bridge and are on the road for 45 minutes before reaching Hsiyu.

Peanuts in the fields. Hong helps pick them and uses them as a topic to stir pao songs deep from grandmas' memories.

Duets

In addition to his on-going effort to collect pao songs, Hong Min-tsung is also working with National Taiwan University's Department of History on its book, The Local Records of Erhkan. He is helping gather orally transmitted literature: folk songs, proverbs and legends.

Walking in this small village where the old architecture has been preserved intact, Hong Min-tsung's small body is like a top spinning from street to alley, from front door to backyard. Along the way he says hello and asks people how things are going. In a peanut field he finds the 85-year-old Mrs. Chen Yen-hsuan.

"Grandma Hsuan, I've come to hear your pao songs," Hong says as he bends to help her pick peanuts. "Singing should come from the heart," she says, eyes watering in the golden glare of the sunset. "But with so much on my mind where do I have the heart to sing?" When Hong hears this, he doesn't bring up pao songs again. Instead he helps her while they discuss why so many of the shells are empty and how one goes about husking and cooking sorghum. An hour passes, and as Hong surveys the peanuts in front of him, a few songs about peanuts come to his lips.

"The sorghum is high enough to hide in," he sings, "and the flowering peanut plants lay like a bed. Though not far from her man, the distance hurts like a knife to the heart." The song opens up a flood of memories in the old woman--and one song after another about peanuts or sorghum. "The sorghum stalks sway in the wind, while peanut plants sprout like a lady's shoe," a man sings in praise of a women's beauty. She responds, "Crooner, go fill the sea, and take these hoofless pig's feet too. Go fill the sea for blinking so coy, how silly it makes you look."

When we leave the fields, it's already dark, and the night wind is blowing hard. Along the way, feeling the afternoon was well spent, Hong sings pao songs that take their metaphors from nature.

Wu Min-ching, who hails from Taipei and is on the team compiling The Local Records of Erhkan, says that Penghu's accent was once the same as Tongan's in Quanzhou of Fujian Province. But because there was little communication between the islands early on, the accents grew different. "We're so lucky that Hong Min-tsung has joined the team, or otherwise we'd be up mud creek. Look at me. I've already been in Erhkan for more than two months and I still can't completely understand the local accent." For collecting folk songs, Hong's facility with the local patois is matched by his personal experience farming and fishing. At any time over the course of a conversation with old people, he can enter their lives, making them take him as one of their own.

Small and gentle, Hong worked three years as a fisherman before passing the civil service exam.

Taking to the fields and the sea

Pao songs are an improvised form of singing or chanting. Most of them are four lines long. Sometimes a sole singer relates his or her feelings, and sometimes they are in the form of a duet or even a relay between several singers. All of them are an oral reflection of the lives of the people at the bottom of society.

In Penghu there is little rain, and the land is poor. The vast majority of households are "fishermen-farmers." The men go out to sea to fish, responsible for the more dangerous work of deep water fishing and the physically taxing work of stacking rocks to make tidal fish traps. Besides the work of tilling the fields, the women also handle the "lighter" fishing work of digging for clams and catching the small fish along the shore. When you see women in their seventies and eighties still working the fields, with knuckles bigger than men's, you start to realize how tough their lives have been. It's no wonder that people say, "A Penghu woman does the work of a Taiwan water buffalo."

Since the people of Penghu live by wresting a living from the sea and the fields, most pao songs have these activities as a backdrop. For Hong, who has worked both places, collecting these songs is like returning to childhood--they're all so intimating and familiar.

This is only a small part of Hong's collection of shells. Over a period of a year and a half, he slept for only two hours a day so that he could catch the ebbing tide and record the abundant marine resources of Hsiyu.

Tragic songs of leaving for Taiwan

On Sunday Hong is in front of the home of his Great Aunt Hong in the neighboring village of Chihtung. Excitedly he tells her of the pao songs he has collected recently. When he reads, "Oh, if you could give me just one night to bid me leave; woman, I would brag of how you treat a man," the risque lyrics prompt his great aunt to hide her face behind her hands. "How can you be singing that kind of song in public?" she asks. "Look at my great aunt," Hong says affectionately. "She's more than 90 and still so innocent. Who would think she would have so many regrets about life." A tough life such as hers was also one of the favorite topics of songs in the early days.

In Penghu, before the retrocession of Taiwan from the Japanese, almost without exception "the men fished and the women tilled." If a husband wanted to go to Taiwan to make a living, then his wife would have to stay at home, caring for her in-laws and working the land. In this way, if things didn't go smoothly for the husband, he could always go home. But many men who found success on Taiwan would find a new wife there as well, and their first wives living in poverty in Penghu would be abandoned. Recalling the bitterness of her life, Great Aunt Hong intones this long song:

"I wasted my time giving him my love/ All I gave him he gave another/ Oh how I have wasted my time/ Complaining that what was mine has become another's. . ./ My body is wet from head to toe/ With no dry clothes in my closet/ And not a penny in my pocket/ All my talents are for naught. . ./ How others hurt, I hurt double/ None has suffered as I do clear through/ That fine deed of his making/ Has given me a life of misery/ No shirt, no pants, but no hate for these/ I hate having no money/ Hate this, hate that, hate myself/ I hate the day I was born."

"Who knows how long Great Auntie Hong had this buried in her mind?" Hong Min-tsung asks himself while watching her wipe her tears. It's hard to imagine how she could do it--gritting her teeth in that conservative age as she went on serving her in-laws and raising her children. For Hong Min-tsung, collecting a pao song is saving not only a song nearly lost but also a piece of Penghu's history. And it isn't just a song, but a record of the joys and tragedies of the singer.

Whether it's a duet sung by a man and woman flirting in a field or by the shore, or a description of the struggles of someone who left home, all beat to the pulse of life in Penghu. In two-plus years Hong has collected nearly 200 of them.

"With just one net, you can catch many different species of fish." Lacking a boat, Hong uses the simplest of methods to complete his study on Hsiyu's coastal marine products.

What should I do?

Over the last five years, besides collecting Penghu's pao songs, Hong has also published a book, The Folk Annals of Hsiyu Rural Township. And he has another--Hsiyu's Coastal Marine Resources--awaiting publication.

Why did he suddenly do so much work on behalf of his hometown? There's nothing really earthshaking about it. Five years ago, when he had already been a public servant for 20 years, with his children already in high school and with nothing to worry about, he thought about his life until then and how he had never made it his ambition to do any great deed. After finishing high school, he failed the joint college entrance exam three years running, and so he just went off with his friends to fish, waiting for the army to call him to serve. Who would have guessed they would change the law so that at his height (153 centimeters) he would be exempted from duty. He thought about it--intellectually he wasn't any better than the next guy, and he wasn't of overpowering physical strength. And so, not wanting to leave his hometown, he took the advice of his. parents and sat the civil service exam. At 22 he began work as Hsiyu's household registry examiner.

Examining household registries for 15 years, he was firm in not accepting anything offered from the citizens--even a glass of juice would be refused--and this made a deep impression on the residents of the town. So did his fulfilling the first major ambition of his life: taking a tall woman for his bride. While checking household registries during his fourth year as examiner, he discovered that Waian Village had a young woman 173 centimeters tall who was not yet married. Having never been in love before, he just went to her home and straightforwardly asked her family elders about the possibility of arranging a marriage. His proposal was accepted. "When I was young I hated being so tall, for I couldn't wear high heels," says Mrs. Hong in recalling her motives for saying yes. "We think of the marriage as benefitting the next generation." As might have been predicted, their two sons are already over 170 centimeters though still in their teens.

And then five years ago he took a look at himself: He had steady work, a house and children. But that unanswerable question nagged: What's the meaning of life? What should I do with my future? Suddenly. . . an epiphany or, depending on how you look at it, a queer notion: "I should write a book a year!" By making a record of Hsiyu's folk customs and the coastal marine life that he had seen over the course of his life, "I can at least let my children and grandchildren know what Hsiyu was like in their grandfather's time; what there was of interest here." In this way, in a quagmire of doubts about the meaning of life, the middle-aged Hong Min-tsung made a new start.

The men fish, going out to do battle with the wind and waves, whereas the women shoulder all of the work in the fields. This is a distinctive feature of life hereabouts. As a result, most of the pao songs are on the topics of fishing and farming. （photo by Cheng Yuan-ching）

Photographing fish and shrimp

Hong evinces even more enthusiasm for his report on marine products than for The Folk Annals of Hsiyu Rural Township, which is on sale at Hsiyu's Hsitai Fort, a class-one historic site. Although folklore is also part of his life experience, he has had more direct personal contact with harvesting seafood.

At the shore, out on the flats while the tide is ebbing, Hong's only tool of capture is a harrow. By just turning over some stones, he soon has a full basket of snails (Nerita pica and Turbo coronatus). "On Penghu, we all grew up this way," he says."The shell fish of the tidal flats were our major source of protein." Back then, everyone knew how to do this kind of work.

Wearing waders, he gathers from the shallow waters what is trapped in a net he set that morning. At the same time he explains, "This is called black sea bass; it's an excellent variety of fish and can grow quite big; I'll put this in the basket first. This is a rabbit fish. It may not be listed as a poisonous fish, but when it cuts you, the blood will flow and the pain will be so great you'll cry for Mama."

Doing without a boat, Hong Min-tsung uses the simplest methods for "taking to the seas." In the tidal zone he picks up with his own hands or hooks or nets himself what he needs for his study of Hsiyu's marine products, and he has found more than 300 varieties of lobster, octopus, squid, and crab in over a year.

Why not just go to the harbor market and be done with it? He has his reasons. For starters, if he bought them, he wouldn't be sure they're from the sea off Hsiyu. And the creatures that live in the tidal flats, he explains, have always had the closest relation to the life of the village. He also emphasizes how doing it himself helps him understand how a species is on the way up or down. Then he makes comparisons to his youth. "My memories are a kind of index! For example, there aren't as many chiuwantzai fish [among Hsiyu's most common] as there were when I was a kid--when I could catch a Taiwanese pound or two in one go. Even those 'big headed snails' (Turbo coronatus) are fewer. Back then you could fill a basket easily. And so you can tell how much the environment has changed. I don't know what my grandchildren will be able to catch when it's their time. I hope it's more than today!"

Coming from the life of the common people, improvised pao songs always make people smile knowingly. Take this song about a woman who says she won't accept her suitor's offer of marriage "until that rock bears a child. "How anxious such sallies must make her suitor!

Tears filling the earth

From systematically recording the produce of Hsiyu's tidal flats, to writing the Folk Annals of Hsiyu Rural Township, to proceeding with the collecting of pao songs, Hong Min-tsung just gets happier. Organizing materials about the historical legacy and marine products of his town, he is leaving a record for his grandchildren of things soon to be lost. And in the process of collecting pao songs, the lively lyrics that speak straight to people's hearts have given him solace.

In half a life things have gone smoothly, without any big ups or downs. What bothers him most is that he hasn't been able to make any progress in pushing cremation. Penghu natives are attached to their ancestral land and unwilling to leave it. It's all the more so for their tombs. When you die in Penghu, you are put in the ground--and there is where you stay. They don't even have the Taiwanese custom of later putting the bones into an urn. And so it's very difficult to get people to move their ancestors from their resting places or practice cremation. Accordingly, this post within the county government has always been filled grudgingly. "I was always bothered by it until I collected a pao song one day that made me feel I was being comforted by Mother." Hong Min-tsung recites, "Seeing the soil of Chungtun, the tears soak the ground; seeing Chungtun Mountain, the sobs pain my chest." It is sung by a girl from Paisha Village, who has married into a family from Chungtun. Because the earth in Chungtun is so hard, tilling it is particularly taxing. Whenever she returns to Chungtun after visiting her parents, she can't help but feel pain inside.

Hong Min-tsung has replaced "Chungtun" with "Penghu" and takes the song to convey his own feelings upon seeing the tombs haphazardly dotting Penghu's plains and mountains. He says it describes exactly how he feels. While one song won't be any help in the government's efforts to convince the farmers, it's been of great comfort to Hong Min-tsung. Similarly, though the books he has written one after another haven't been able to tell him the meaning of life, at least he's stopped asking himself why he's alive.

In the autumn of last year, Hong suddenly lost hearing in one ear and started vomiting continually. Staying for half a month in the naval hospital in Penghu, his blood pressure dropped to nearly critical levels several times. Once his condition grew stable, Hong put aside his ambition of writing a book a year. "Life is impossible to predict," Hong declares.

Unable to get out of bed or move, he and the several grandfathers who were his roommates would sing pao songs. And so his collection includes three that he learned at the naval hospital.

"Funny songs are a balm for the blues," one always-smiling grandpa told Hong. "We see something, and we can sing a song about it. We walk a few steps, and we've got another. Who says there's no happiness in life?" To conclude, Hong quotes this old man, who has lived a life of toil and trouble but lost none of his passion and wit: "With songs and music, you'll always feel lighthearted. Without them, you'll become a dolt."

[Picture Caption]

p.96

After several years of diligent collecting, Hong Min-tsung has filled nearly 60 of these notebooks with more than 500 proverbs and 200 pao songs.

p.97

Peanuts in the fields. Hong helps pick them and uses them as a topic to stir pao songs deep from grandmas' memories.

p.98

Small and gentle, Hong worked three years as a fisherman before passing the civil service exam.

P99

This is only a small part of Hong's collection of shells. Over a period of a year and a half, he slept for only two hours a day so that he could catch the ebbing tide and record the abundant marine resources of Hsiyu.

p.100

"With just one net, you can catch many different species of fish." Lacking a boat, Hong uses the simplest of methods to complete his study on Hsiyu's coastal marine products.

p.101

The men fish, going out to do battle with the wind and waves, whereas the women shoulder all of the work in the fields. This is a distinctive feature of life hereabouts. As a result, most of the pao songs are on the topics of fishing and farming. (photo by Cheng Yuan-ching)

P.101

Coming from the life of the common people, improvised pao songs always make people smile knowingly. Take this song about a woman who says she won't accept her suitor's offer of marriage "until that rock bears a child. "How anxious such sallies must make her suitor!

p.102

"Oh, how I hate to go/ My falling tears are this ship's cargo/I'd like to stay and learn to fish/ But fear others' laughter/Oh, how I hate to go/ Leaving my father, mother, wife and children/I have to travel for thousands of miles/ When will I see my neighbors again?"

Collected by Hong Min-tsung in Penghu's Hsiyu Rural Township (photo by Vincent Chang)

Collected by Hong Min-tsung in Penghu's Hsiyu Rural Township （photo by Vincent Chang）