Wu Ming-Yi - The Man with the Compound Eyes

Our public officials, it seems, authorized the team to take a certain quantity of samples while refusing to implement an overly fussy trash-sorting system. They need to get this taken care of before the upcoming election. Some of the higher-ups told us privately that all we have to do is sort the trash into recyclable valuables and worthless junk, then divide the junk into combustibles and noncombustibles, and to do it as quickly as possible. “Junk is junk even after you’ve sorted it. What good does it do to study this stuff?” they said.

Though “Restore the Shore, Formosa!” (the stupid slogan the government came up with to get everyone involved in the “beach cleanup”) seems to be in full swing, I hear the expert assessment is that it’ll take more than a century for the coast to return to normal. For myself, I doubt whether there is even such a thing as “normal” anymore. Does the Seventh Sisid count as part of “normal?”

You know Hai Lee, the writer of ocean literature? He often visits the area around the Seventh Sisid, right? The past few days he’s been bringing students and volunteers to gather creatures that washed up dead on the beach. They’ve found shrimp, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, brittle stars, hermit crabs and true crabs. He says there are many species he’s never seen before. I asked him whether the sea would return to normal someday, and he said there’s no such thing as normal anymore: everything’s changed.

I said that’s not what my father taught me. My father said there were two things in this world that would never change: the mountains and the sea.

According to Bunun tradition, a man who doesn’t know how to hunt is not a real man. The Atayal call us “shadows,” because our hunting skills are so refined. But my father often said that the first thing to hunting isn’t learning how to hunt but getting to know the mountains.

Father said that during the colonial era the Japanese kept forcing the Bunun to move around for fear we would unite against the authorities. They even forced us to cultivate rice, just to prevent us from getting to know the mountains. Once we got used to paddy agriculture, the status of a hunter plummeted, and the Bunun people knew the mountains less and less. And mountains will not protect a person who does not know them.

My father said that traditionally Bunun kids start young, learning diverse mountain lore until they are old enough to participate in the hunt. That’s the year they undergo the ear-shooting ritual, which is like a qualifying examination to become a hunter.

I will always remember that year, the first time I was allowed to take part in the ear-shooting ritual. The elders put the targets in the ritual ground. There were six ears in all: at the top a pair of deer ears, in the middle a pair of roebuck ears, and at the bottom a goat ear and a wild boar ear. The goat ear was a furry little thing, so adorable. We stood so close that for a Bunun kid who had gotten trained in the use of a bow and arrow it should have been almost impossible to miss. My father was an ace marksman, both with a gun and with a bow. From the time I picked up a bow and arrow as a boy I was always told I had my father’s shooting stance. The elders took turns carrying us kids to face the targets, and the arrows would pierce the ears with a thunk. They carried my brother out and his arrow hit an ear, a deer ear. Then it was my turn. I picked up the bow with supreme confidence and aimed, but in the instant I shot for some reason my bow sagged. I hit the goat ear instead!

The goat ear was so cute and tiny and I went and shot it.

Everyone was dumbfounded, and my father’s face colored. Why? Because for the ear-shooting ritual you have to shoot either a deer ear or a roebuck ear. If you miss and shoot a wild boar ear it means you’ll get scared whenever you see a boar. And a boy who shoots a goat ear will always walk along the brink of a cliff, just like a mountain goat.

I shot the goat ear. My father wouldn’t talk to me for what seemed like forever. I thought he was mad at me. Only later did I realize he was actually worried for me.

My father is a Lavian , the captain of a hunting party. Our hunting ground is huge. We pile badan around it. See those piles of reeds over there? They mark our territory. Though I’m my father’s son, the title of Lavian is not hereditary. Whether a young hunter can become Lavian or not depends on many things — hunting, cooperation and leadership skills, and much else. Only the best young hunter has a chance to become Lavian . Although I had shot the goat ear, I still performed the best in the hunting ground. But I sensed that my father remained very worried. He thought that shooting the goat ear was bad luck that would come back and haunt me.

One time we tried to round up a large boar infamous for its repeated getaways. It had killed a number of hunting dogs, and once it even managed to escape after taking a couple of my father’s bullets. My father said it was Hanito , an evil spirit, and that you shouldn’t look it in the eyes when you shot it or you would become enthralled.

The Lavian that time was my father, as always. Before dawn, the party assembled and formed a ring in an open field and waited for my father to sprinkle wine and sing.

“Tell me what has come before my gun?” my father sang.

“All the deer have come before my gun,” sang the other hunters.

“Tell me what has come before my gun?” my father sang.

“All the boar have come before my gun,” sang the other hunters.

Our guns overflowed with the smell of liquor. On the way to the hunting ground, I overheard my father whisper to my uncle that he’d seen a sign in a dream, but somehow he’d forgotten it after the wine sprinkling ceremony. My uncle reassured him, saying that people forget dreams all the time. Besides, not having a dream or forgetting one is no reason to leave the hunting party.

That time we carried out Mabusau , a hunting technique. First the Lavian judges where the boar is hiding and lets the dogs drive it out. Then the hunters fan out to surround it. At about five in the morning, when the sky had just gone light, the dogs caught a whiff of the boar and started barking like crazy. My father saw something rustling in the grass from far away and knew it was a huge boar, maybe that Hanito of a boar. He guessed which way the beast had fled and assigned pursuit routes to each of the hunters. I got the left-most route, because I was still a child of these hills with everything to learn. I ran and ran, listening to the dogs barking and the grass rustling as the scent and shade of every tree went swooshing by. Then I tripped and fell, head over heels. I picked up my gun, got up and ran, pressing down on my knife with my hand to keep it from slapping against my thigh.

I don’t know why, but after I got up I couldn’t hear anything at all: the forest had gone completely quiet, as if the world had been silent from the very beginning. I stopped to check which way the wind was blowing, what direction the distant grass was swaying in, when suddenly a huge shadow swept past up ahead, moving fast as wind. I took a deep breath and went after it, running so swiftly I was almost holding my heart in my hands. I don’t know how long I had run when that shadow stopped dead, turned, and bellowed at me.

I was scared stiff. It was like watching a video that appears silent until it starts playing with the volume turned up all the way. Standing before me was a man. He was staring at me, his hair flying vinelike in the wind.

The man began to speak … if it can even be counted as speaking. His mouth didn’t move in the least, but I heard him loud and clear: “Child, you are fated never to catch a boar, never to become a good hunter.”