Badai (Pinuyumayan): Part I

I've been meaning to write about Badai for a while. The plan got stalled kind of because he is one of the most prolific indigenous writers in Taiwan, publishing often two or three times a year since his debut in 2007.

The books I've been reading recently, for example, all came out in 2009. All of them, too, were either about or directly developed from the art of traditional healing or shamanism he studied first-hand between 2000 and 2008 in Tamalakaw, his birth village. The Pinuyumayan word for that art is 'taramaw' (or spelt as daramaw). 

Badai (or Lin Er-lan, b. 1962) was born in Tamalakaw (or Damalakaw), the current Taian Village of Beinan Township, Taitung County. Tamalakaw was one of the old eight villages of Pinuyumayan people. Now, village residents number at 1,300 souls, occupying 31% of Taiwan's Pinuyumanyan population. Badai served as a First Lieutenant in the army and a Discipline Instructor at schools for years before embarking upon a full-time career as a writer. He is 'Mr. Ha-wu' (Mr. Shamanfan，哈巫先生). 

The book "Daramaw: The Art of Traditional Healing in Tamalakaw Village of Pinuyumanyan People" (2009, photo above) is based on Badai's MA thesis, which he completed in 2005 at Graduate Institute of Taiwan Culture, National University of Tainan. It gives a full description of the traditional art of healing (taramaw) in Tamalakaw, seeing it a part of Pinuyumayan religious belief rather than a practice of witchcraft or shamanism alone. 

According to Badai, taramaw is very much active at least in Tamalakaw with 'ragan' (male priest) , a hereditary role, taking care of public prayers / rituals, and  'temararamaw' (female healers), chosen by ancestral spirits and especially by powerful female healers from bygone days, taking care of prayers on behalf of individuals. 'Bazvalyu', the Soul-Pacifying Prayer conducted to lead a wandering soul back to its disoriented and frightened owner, and 'Gilabus',  the Post-funeral Cleansing Prayer conducted to separate the living from the deceased and thus ensure the living of their well-being, are two most common prayers required by the villagers. Badai talks about them in details. 

"Diguan: Tamalakaw in the Years of Taisho" (2007, photo left) was Badai's debut. This novel was a tremendous success, earning him awards and putting him in the same rank as other senior indigenous writers in Taiwan. 

Diguan was the name of a very powerful Pinuyumayan healer. In the novel, she lived through the Japanese Occupation Period, especially the Five-Year Project of Savage-Governing between 1910 and 1915 as indigenous peoples were forced to give up their guns to the Japanese government and share lands with Han Chinese immigrants. She, as the most powerful healer of Tamalakaw, helped her villagers fend off evil spirits from Han Chinese neighbors and solve the mystery of a missing rifle. 

Badai emphasizes that the taramaw scenes in the novel are no fiction. They are as real as what he observed during field research. It is such an innovated combination of colonial history with indigenous arts of hunting and  witch or traditional healing that marks his debut as impressive and very original. 

The story of "Betel Nut, Clay Bead, Small Witch and the Sqalu" (2009, photo left) goes even way back to the seventeen century to explain the origin of Sqalu people and introduce another powerful female healer Sepuy. 

Briefly, Sqalu people are Paiwanized Pinuyumayan. Back in the mid-seventeenth century, a group of Pinuyumayan people led by their female chief left their village and moved southward for new land and new life. Since Paiwan people were already living in the south, the migration of Pinuyumayan people resulted in contacts and conflicts just as the Dutch or the Japanese first entered the area. 

Backed up by the power of Sepuy and other two temararamaw, this particular group of Pinuyumayan immigrants overwhelmed Paiwan villages along the way and became the lord of the region, carried on the shoulders by the local. Nevertheless, since the number of local Paiwan far exceeded that of Pinuyumayan rulers, the latter were greatly influenced by the former in ways of life and gradually developed a distinct culture of the Sqalu. 

Though whether the Sqalu are still among the Paiwan remains a debate,  Badai's novel testifies once again his skills in retelling history as a novelist. 

 In "The Journey of Taramaw" (2014, photo left), the protagonist is a fifteen-year-old girl named Mei-Wan in 1996. Chosen by her ancestors to be a traditional healer or temararamaw, she experiences visions and demonstrates great power with the help of her 'Shamanfan' father who happens to be an expert on this traditional art.

Compared with the previous two novels, Diguan and the Sqalu, this story about Mei-Wan and her father exhibits some autobiographical elements. No readers of Badai can miss how similar Mei-Wan's father is to Badai himself. And it so happens that Badai himself also has at least one daughter.


On the whole, from my personal point of view, Badai has great stories to tell. Just like the Tao writer Syaman Rapongan has the ocean and neighbors on Lanyu for great stories of the sea, Badai depends a great deal on the traditional Pinuyumayan healers still active in his birth village Tamalakaw. Their traditional art (and faith) feeds on Badai's creativity and offers the essence of his novels. It is basically these women who make Badai a writer. 

However, it takes more than great stories to make a great novelist.

In all these stories, I experience great up-and-downs. Expectations are raised too high to be filled; characters are sometimes incongruous with their portrayed background; and dialogues just don't add up.  Most of all, in addition to that the scenes when female healers are demonstrating power are blunt exaggerations, they are also too similar in basics. What is a wonderful surprise in the beginning becomes...hm...slightly a disappointment in the end and a bore. 

Yet, I am determined to follow Badai's works. He lost his right eye to illness but still devotes himself to reading and writing for hours a day. I admire his discipline. Practice does make perfect, so I am yet to read his best.