50 words journal about a story

By Huang Chun-Ming, Translated by Willy Chenjia Du

In modern history, to hear of four generations of men from the same family, from the same society, from the same country—all four, fighting wars for their country. To hear of four generations of men, in the name of family, in the name of society, taking the role of clan-warriors, sent to fight foreign militias, or made into soldiers under its colonizer, fighting invaders of the invader’s enemy, within one generation—or less than one generation—made into soldiers of the next invader of his native soil. Fighting a people with no history of bad blood, warring until one is gone. In the world of today, it might be difficult to find a scenario so absurd.

Planning my documentary film production Fragrance Island in the early summer of 1973, I was all over Taiwan, searching for and collecting subject matter with reportage potential. Immediately after concluding eight days of Matzu ceremonies in Dajia, then back to Beitou Taipei for a night, up early playing with children all morning the next day, on I went to Wutai. Knowing it has produced one marathon runner after another, a golden goose of marathoners, I wanted to see Wutai firsthand, to scribble down some notes and take pictures. Travelling from Shandimen to Wutai on a steel oxcart, I befriended an aboriginal youth, Mr. Du, whom the people there called Xiong. While we chatted, Haocha,[footnoteRef:1] the name of his village, charmed me. Despite Xiong’s warning that Haocha had no electric lighting, lots of insects and snakes, and took a four-hour trek to get to, I nevertheless told Xiong that unless he did not welcome me, I wanted to go there. Xiong quickly guaranteed my pseudo-lost self that he welcomed my visit and that nothing contrary to that had crossed his mind; he even offered me his home in the mountains for spending the night, if I wanted to stay. I then decided to drop my original plan and head deep into the mountains with Xiong that very afternoon. [1: “Good tea,” “pleasant tea,” or “quality tea” (see footnote 24).]

With a firm grip on his bush-cutting machete, Xiong chopped away the Cymbidium grass that flushed the edges of the lane. He told me that all Haocha villagers passing through had to do this, or else the road would disappear in a matter of days. “Especially now, in summertime,” he added. Xiong was quiet but not taciturn. If I asked a question, he answered. Our conversation was like starting a fire; if no one fanned the flame, the sparks would go out. As we approached Haocha, I had pretty much obtained everything I needed to know from our conversation; my understanding of Haocha would be fuller and deeper after I blended the pieces of mental information in my mind with the actual scene the moment I stepped into it. My perspective more or less coalesced with Gu Yanwu’s preference for concrete learning over wishy-washy theorizing: learning through direct and indirect experience; with an emphasis on learning on-the-spot, and so on, made the effort of getting there worthwhile.

In the valleys between mountains, where bats caught insects flying low in the air, the sky began to go cloudy. I looked at my watch. We had been walking for nearly five hours, and ought to have already arrived. Xiong said that my pace was too slow and that we still had some ground to cover. I was put off with that; he might be the more capable walker, but I could go at a healthy pace; I counted myself very competent at walking. I told him to let me be and to walk however he pleased and I’d keep pace behind him. Just moments after having said that, I looked ahead at my friend, whose steps seemed identical to those before. Mine were forcibly widened as I tried to stay not far behind. The effort was becoming strenuous. After I switched gears to faster, shorter steps, I was trotting. Xiong turned and looked at me. I had no surplus energy in my tank for asking this or that anymore. After continuing for a while in silence, he suddenly eased off the throttle. Turning around, he told me my way of walking wasn’t right; my forward steps landed too heavily. The energy misspent made me prone to fatigue. That explained why I couldn’t walk fast. He added that I didn’t breathe right and that my panting was very loud. He suggested that it would be better if I slowed down. He said light from the sun wasn’t a concern; he had a flashlight. While he spoke, at some point he turned on the flashlight he was holding and shone it on my face. Maybe because my look of total exhaustion seemed comical, or because I was so tired after a trek like this, he turned off his flashlight, laughing. The beams of his flashlight touched my face for less than ten seconds, but the moment he switched it off, he seemed to flick the sunlight off in one motion. I couldn’t see anything. By the time my pupils adjusted, the sun had settled into the dusky skies.

All dark nighttimes seem the same everywhere. But because of the stillness and feathery sweetness of an angelic breeze here and now, even if I had been deliberately placed in this dark mountainous night in secret; I would know, just by my senses, that where I was now was already very deep inside that place. Xiong told me we had arrived. Dogs barked. I listened attentively for a moment. Almost a complete halt was needed before I could hear them yowling from a distance. It didn’t sound convincingly real, almost like a sound in a delusion. Not long after, their barking got louder; not fully confident with my listening, still I was able to hear them, and it was the sound of more than two or three dogs. It was also the hour when it became absolutely clear we had arrived in Haocha. Why did I single this out to tell myself, emphasizing this feeling of having arrived at Haocha? I couldn’t really say. I felt there was a great difference of opinion between Xiong’s and my own mind’s-eye about the distance we covered to make it to Haocha. When about seven or eight dogs came circling our heels, they rendered me a kind of bonus procedure; one by one they pressed their icy-cool noses to my hands, giving them a few sniffs. I looked around at my surroundings: still one big chunk of dark without a trace of light. And the village? Xiong said it was straight ahead. We walked for another ten minutes or so before arriving.

We had left Wutai shortly after two o’clock. It was already past eight when we got there. Since the villagers used no electricity at night, and because they were early sleepers, I was still unable to see the village. Yet I, the outsider, giving off a scent of otherness to the air, did cause a stir among all the dogs of the village. Had it not been for Xiong, who hollered at them the whole time, the uproar could have awoken the whole village.

Xiong pushed open a half-closed door. From the shadowy interior, the voice of a woman talking became audible. It was a form of mountainese I couldn’t understand.

Xiong responded with a few short sentences. He told me that the woman was his mother. She was sick, and it was not good for her to get up from bed. I could not see where Xiong was, but I still managed to hear his voice. One moment it was right beside me, the next it came from inside. Just as I was pondering how Xiong managed to walk to and fro without his flashlight, I saw a spark of light from the place he had entered. Then out walked Xiong with a candle in his hands. By the yellow flare of the candle I had my first clear look at the inside of the house. Compared with the houses I’ve seen before of my countrymen from the mountains, there wasn’t much of a difference, it was just simpler. Building with dark schist chiseled from the sides of river valleys is a hallmark of Lukai tribal construction. There were also items made of fabric woven from moon plum bark; those placed on the ground were mats, others put up on the sides were wall coverings. I was familiar with that, too. Moreover, other than the trophies and tapestries that studded the walls, in between were two windowsills lined with little photographs, and three framed portraits of people.

Xiong was starting a fire under stone cookware, preparing noodles. Curious, I fetched the candle stuck to the table, and brought it before the figurines. Aside from the one of Christ’s Passion, the piercing eyes of every photograph seemed intent at tracking me down. One in particular gave me chills—the portrait that resembled a Japanese soldier, next to Jesus. On its head was a cloth battle cap, on his back and by his sides hung cloth sun discs. The person was clad in the uniform of Japanese soldiers dispatched to southern China during the Pacific War. It was obvious that the figure had been enlarged from a group photo; the bottom left corner showed half of another person’s head; its pixels were visible, almost as much so as in a high-contrast effect in photography.

“Who is this soldier?”

“My mother’s husband.” Answered Xiong from the kitchen.

“Your father?” I felt the manner of his reply was very strange.

“No, I was born after my mother married her second husband.”

“And what about this soldier?”

“My mother told me he died in combat in the Philippines. The Japanese soldiers said he was very brave, the medals on the wall are his.”

My visual trajectory was drawn to the third figure on the wall. That, too, was a soldier, but he had a different sort of hat, like the small ones made of cloth worn by early Nationalist troops. The image quality was as coarse as the second one with the Japanese soldier; it too had been enlarged from a joint photo.

“Who is the one next to the Japanese soldier?”

“Oh! You mean that communist bandit…”

The manner of Xiong’s replies kept me tense.

“Communist bandit?”

“Yeah, he was from the last group of soldiers sent to fight in mainland China after Taiwan became free of Japanese rule. Many from our village went. Rumor has it that they all were caught by the Eighth Route Army and made into bandit troopers by the communist bandits.”

I couldn’t see Xiong, who was in the kitchen. His words seemed to issue from all sides of the shadowy surroundings and I could hear them clearly.

“What was his place in your family?”

“Just my old man.”

The light of the candle wick was flickering, my hands were shaking; the little flame was dancing in panic. The figure before my eyes grew tired, its body seemed to sway slightly, but those eyes that glared—at me—they did not change. My heart turned weak, as if it could not contain anything more. I became dazed. Dazed before the Figure of the Passion, the Japanese soldier, before the one whom Xiong called “communist bandit.” Suddenly, I felt as if I’d been brought before a judge. Oh Gosh! My Gosh! I was screaming inwardly at the thought of this family, at the thought of this minority group, and the thought of my ancestors who had come to pioneer this island, all this structural violence formed a flurry of emotions within me.

“‘Old Huang,” the voice issued from behind the moon plum mat. Even though I recognized it as Xiong’s voice, it astounded me, I had turned so weak. Xiong said: “I thought you were going to keep asking about the communist bandit. My mother said he’s probably dead. News of him never came. When we were little kids, mother said every year that she couldn’t support us if she didn’t remarry, but she never did. She doesn’t say it anymore… old now, ‘Old Huang?”

“I, I’m here.”

“I’m telling you their stories only because you have an interest in these photographs; what’s the point of just looking at them?” As he spoke, he brought two large bowls of noodles from inside. “Nothing fancy in the mountains. Now come, we don’t have main dishes, we’ll open canned fish and eat.”

I was still standing in front of the photographs, half dazed, fearing my field of vision would touch him. I wasn’t completely sure why this was so, but was clearly aware that I was afraid at that moment.

He put down his noodles, walked over and stood alongside me.

“What, aren’t you hungry? This is my older brother.” He drew my attention to the small photograph in the large picture frame and, pointing to the camouflaged Nationalist soldier in it, said: “He’s dead too. He was a frogman, sacrificed for the country after having been sent on a mission. Look!” He pointed to the other colored photograph. “This was at our village meeting place where he was mourned. Even the chief of the squadron came for this. Heard he was killed by communist bandits during an ambush in China, though at the meeting the squadron chief said my brother’s unit accomplished their mission. They were heroes.”

Instinctively I became aware that I could listen to no more about the tragic events all taking place in this one family, hearing him tell it as though it were someone else’s story. No. Even if he were telling me about another person’s tragedy, the tone just would not be as matter-of-fact as Xiong’s now. Then I didn’t have the nerve to cut him short.

“This is my second eldest brother. He wasn’t killed. Before he retired from the military, he joined the Ju Guang Unit. He fished on the seas. He was also a marathon runner of Wutai township.” He pointed to the photograph of his brother wearing a big military hat, and then to one among the many faces of marathon runners.

“Mercy from heaven!” The screams I had inside my mind burst from my lips.

“Heaven? What heaven?” Xiong asked.

“It’s nothing. Let’s eat noodles.”

We turned around and sat at the table. Xiong grabbed his chopsticks and started eating away. My stomach was really empty, but I had no appetite at all. I suppressed the pain of all the sorrow from the mixed emotions I had inside me and glanced at Xiong, who was relishing his meal; seeing his unfettered, un-resentful look, I felt that either him or me, one of us does not belong in this room; it should be him, I thought. Images of the men in the photographs on the wall were whirling about in my mind. I hadn’t really left that room. But then again, how long had Xiong had those photographs as company! However I tried to explain it, I was unable to see how Xiong, when he talked of what had befallen those people, when they were his very own kin, he couldn’t have been more calm and unperturbed. Xiong raised his eyes and looked at me. Sipping the wet noodle on the edge of his bowl, he said:

“You won’t eat?”

“In a minute. I’m thinking about a lot of things right now.”

“We’re up in the mountains, what’s there to think about?” Xiong took another mouthful of noodles.

“Is there a photograph of your grandfather?”

“How could there be? In our mountains…”

“Do you know what your grandfather’s ancestors did?”

“What they did? Mountain people hunt of course. He used to hunt bear. The old men in the mountains here all say they hunted bear when they were younger.”

“He wasn’t a soldier, was he?”

“No. But he fought some Japanese.” He paused a moment, “And my grandfather’s father.”

“Great-grandfather.”

“Yeah, my great grandfather was in a war too, with you flatlanders, ...” “Han-Chinese.”

“Yeah, fought you Han-Chinese many times. Pastor Lo said, our greatgrandfathers and grandfathers were very fortunate; they all fought wars for our own tribe.”

“Pastor Lo’s a foreigner?”

“No, he’s one of us Lukai.”

“He said my great-grandfather and grandfather were the tribal warriors of us

Lukai.”

I finally saw Xiong become animated and emotional. He quickly finished his noodles and cleaned up his soup.

“Here, have this other bowl. I’ll add noodles for you.”

“Very delicious. You won’t eat? There isn’t anything else.”

I shook my head; Xiong hesitated for a moment, picked up his chopsticks and started having his second bowl. The summer insects dancing around the candlelight burned up their wings, fell to the table, and crawled aimlessly. One by one I flung them off the table randomly with the tip of my finger.

“You asked earlier whether I had photographs of my grandfathers. Is that because you also want to see them hanging there too?” What Xiong said startled me. I had just been thinking that. I actually pictured two more warrior photographs in my mind, one with a rattan helmet and armor, holding a spear; that would be the great-grandfather. Another wearing neither helmet nor armor, with a curved knife strapped to his waist; that would be the grandfather.

“If they were lined up with photographs of Japanese, communist bandits, and our own Chinese soldiers, heh, that’d be real lively.” Xiong talked without a hint of strain.

“Has it ever occurred to you that these people are your family?” I was talking seriously.

“Well yes. Many of us mountain people are like this.” His tone turned flat as before.

“Don’t these things make you upset?”

“upset…”

“Make you sad and angry, …”

What I said made him think. After a few moments, I questioned him further: “Don’t you feel sad and angry?”

“Angry? At whom?”

Xiong’s question might well have been an indictment. He left me speechless there for a moment. Had he discontinued, I would have been even more ill at ease.

“My maternal grandfather also was a warrior. He said that when we burn a nest of ants, and later see ants somewhere else, then you know that the ants from before did not perish in the fire.” Xiong was having a lot of difficulty with his words because he was trying to convey something so that I could understand. Afraid that I didn’t get what he was saying, he continued: “Really did burn that nest of ants, you get it?”

I nodded more than once. Xiong, still worried, asked me again: “You get it? Sometimes even I doubt whether he truly knew the philosophy behind it.” The story about his grandfather took me by surprise. Total aggressive extermination was its embedded message. There was no denying that, historically, the lot of these mountain folk was to be attacked. The flipside to this philosophizing was resistance; there would be hope for them if just one of their soldiers remained. In an ideology of negation of the individual, with national and racial consciousness as its sole focus, sacrificing individuals appears as nothing in the bigger picture. Did Xiong understand this form of thinking, or had it become a social grammar of their aboriginal culture, causing them to act before they understood? That explained how Xiong could appear so calm emotionally when he talked about those framed photographs and their ill-fated subjects.

While we talked, Xiong’s mum tossed out a few words from her bed. I heard two or three exchanges between them in their mountain dialect, in a quarreling tone. Xiong told me she thought we were drinking; she wanted some of it, too.

“How about a little wine?”

“Oh! Nonono, I can’t drink. I get drunk after a few drops, badly drunk, as if I had caught dropsy.” I had no capacity for wine, whenever someone brings up the topic, I find it necessary to elaborate with many explanations. “If you want to, go ahead and drink, don’t mind me.”

“All right. I’ll have half a bowl to help myself sleep.” He rose as he spoke, and came back with a half-bottle of michiu. Holding the bottle, he moved it toward the candle, had a look and said: “Oh no! My mum stole some. She has a bad liver, she can’t be drinking.” Turning his head, he talked to the other one inside the room, this time with a stricter tone. Xiong’s mother also talked back, but her voice was overpowered by Xiong’s, who was louder. Then all of a sudden, Xiong’s mother stopped speaking. She started to sing instead; it was a half-sung, half-hummed, without-a-real-tune noise.

During the day it wouldn’t have had much effect, but at twilight deep in the mountains, it felt as if it saturated the earth, tingling the spine. I sensed something familiar; in our own villages, the rural requiems, especially those sung by very old women, don’t sound much different. I listened intently.

“Pay no attention to her, have a small dose yourself.” There was a small soda glass on the table, he filled it half way: “Just this much.” He poured the rest into his noodle bowl, filling it with precision.

“Is there any meaning to your mum’s tune?”

“Yes. She says her life is miserable, says I refuse to let her drink; she wants my dad and our ancestors to weigh in on this. All the people she’s talking to are dead, those dead guys on the wall. Pay no attention to her, tonight she’ll be singing till dawn; come.” He raised his glass, “welcome to you, let’s have ourselves some.” He took a big gulp.

I took half a glass. I didn’t expect to feel no burning whatsoever when it touched my lips; it was the same when I savored it in my mouth. “This is millet wine?” “Yes. It’s michiu from the Bureau of Public Trade. Look.” He picked the bottle up and put it on the table.

There’s a saying, drinking depends on mood; I experienced this now for the first time. I drank again and finished what was left.

“Old Huang, you can drink. Come, let us drink our xiaomichiu.” Xiong went looking for some.

Very quickly, the alcohol from the xiaomichiu started to have an effect on me. Besides feeling like I had a fever, I began having illusions. It was a moment where the spirit songs hovering from the bed summoned an uncanny air, and the candle’s flame— like the pounding artery of a breathing creature, its center, with all its unease wanted to escape from its glowing stamen. Its quivering hastened the fall of the candle’s teardrops, the emerging stamen of the candle appeared to look longer as it burned, and the flame stamen flowered into a blaze. Xiong’s shadow shook turbulently on the wall, the images of the photographs turned vivid amid the flickering candlelight.

As Xiong was pouring my glass full with xiaomichiu, to his left and right stood two little children, who looked curiously at me one moment, then at the table the next.

“Oy! What did you get up for?”

“What are you eating?” asked the younger child.

“Go, off, away. My mother woke them up again. They’re my brother’s children, there are three more.”

“Oh right, I have crackers here.” I pulled up two packs of Nutrition Crackers and a can of throat candies from my bag, which I gave them. Then suddenly, I noticed there were three more bashful, giggling little girls standing next to the table. “Uh-oh.”

“Not at all. Here take this, hurry back to bed.” The youngest took it and, neither heavily nor softly Xiong slapped him on the head saying: “Don’t know how to say thank you!”

The little kids all started laughing. The spirit song circled the dim room as it did before, unnoticed by the little ones.

“You all need to squeeze to the inside more, you need to leave some space, uncle will be sleeping here with you tonight.”

The little ones started to laugh again, especially the three little girls.

Seeing that the children didn’t want to go to sleep, Xiong lifted his drinking glass, saying, “Come, let’s all have a drink, now hurry to bed, you still have school tomorrow.” Having said that he brought the wineglass near their mouths, the children had a mouthful each. “This little rascal took the biggest swig.”

He pointed at the kid who was hugging the crackers: “To bed, go!”

With great reluctance, the little ones entered the corner in the dark, though they could not be seen, their giggles and whispering could still be heard.

“Your young ones also drink?”

“No, it was just for fun. Come, cheers.”

I had a look at the glass, gulped down some clean saliva, and downed the millet wine. Maybe it was the fact that my forehead looked exaggeratedly creased, but Xiong said, laughing: “Oh yeah! You are my kind of a person.” He gurgled down one big bowl.

The alcohol content of xiaomichiu was apparently much higher than that of michiu. I felt my breath quicken, my heartbeat race, and my head grow thick. I knew I could not drink even a tiny bit more. Making the most of my moment of sobriety, I indicated to Xiong that I wished to stay at the table to write a few things by myself, and asked him to get some rest before I had mine. Xiong was someone who was rarely demanding of other people and very respectful. After showing me where to sleep and the agenda for tomorrow, he said to me: “By the way, if you bump into a big serpent, don’t be afraid, that’s the elaphe snake of the house, and it does not bite people; we don’t have a single rat in the house because we got him. He rarely comes out. I actually hope you’ll see him.” Having said that he left the table.

I spread my notebook on the table, but my feelings were mixed and dense. For a while I did not know where to start remembering. All I could do was put down my ballpoint pen, support my head with both hands, and allow my thoughts to wander wherever they wanted. After a little while, several drops of uncontainable tears splattered the notebook. I fixed my eyes on the watery marks of my teardrops. After seeing the

Japanese soldiers and communist bandits beside Jesus’ Passion, I could also picture two Lukai warriors clearly on the other side of the wall. I knew this was all part of an illusion, and yet the spirit song from the sickbed and the sound of children’s agitated laughter were clear in my ears. Then finally, I also heard slapping sounds as Xiong went over to the children.

Everything got quiet, the winding spirit song made the night all the more still. The illusory human figures like phantoms in the mind deepened the night even more. I still remember, on the top of the notebook wet with my tears, grabbing my pen, the pen that had trouble listening to my summons, writing crookedly the slated words: “On earth, where could there be a history more disheartening than this? Where would there be an ethnic minority with a fate more heartbreaking?”

Whichever way I faced the wall, the warrior figures from different generations continued to appear before my eyes. Just before my will succumbed to the influence of the alcohol, those figures seemed to bulge. Facing the wall lined-up with the photographs, I was still able to pick up the wine glass that was empty except for a few drops and mumble repeatedly in my heart:

“Cheers, soldier!”

Dropping my head, I felt my nose tremble, dropping as I lost all my bearings. I felt so sad at heart that I resorted to opening my mouth to control the agitation. Drool and tears, all the more. I knew I could not hold back my urge to sob; all I asked of myself was to make no sound, to not lose my control, and not to startle the others. I did my best to keep my mouth wide open. That was the one method I knew to keep myself from making noise.

I could still hear faint shouts of, “cheers, soldier.” I still…

The next morning, we walked, quietly, to the village in Ahli. Xiong said there was a factory route by which I could return to Wutai if I took a steel oxcart. Xiong thought very hard as he tried to make me feel better, but didn’t find a way to do it. He would not understand my ancestors—who came to pioneer the island—how they felt; nor the guilt from the systematic violence they inflicted on the indigenous mountain people. He could not have understood why I wanted to leave the village before I’d even seen it.

“You scared the daylights out of my mother too. Or she would have sung until daybreak.”

“Did I really not do anything embarrassing?”

“All you did was yell ‘cheers, soldier,’ retch, and cry loudly, that was all.”

“My sincere apologies.”

“None of that. The whole village came to see you. After I told them about you, the older people all said you were a friend indeed.”

“You have already explained this to me in great detail, I know my way back. You can stop sending me off here.”

“No. This hill is very steep, all the way down for two hours will get you to Ahli. Sending you off to Ahli and no further will do.”

“But will you have to go up on this steep hill on your way back?”

“My maternal grandfather says, up the steep hill once increases your years by one.”

I meditated on those words after hearing Xiong’s second mention of his maternal grandfather. Do the Lukai consider him a philosopher of theirs? And yes, he’s also a warrior of the Lukai.

“Old Huang.” His tone expressing sincerity, calling to me Xiong said, “Will you come to our Haocha again?”

“I will! I will come to Haocha again to toast cheers with the soldiers!” “Cheers, soldier!” Xiong exclaimed.

Along our return path of gloomy sentimentality, this was the first moment of spontaneous laughter. And together we laughed the mirth right out of the sky.