Remains of Life: A Novel by Wu He (chapter 1)

Remains of Life

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he first time I read about the Musha Incident was probably back when I was still a teenager, the White Terror1 had passed giving rise to the simple and gray sixties, the economy of this island nation had yet to take off, there were still no McDonald’s fast-food restaurants and we had yet to be bombarded by electronics, computers, and the mass media, we had more than ample time to carefully read whatever we could get our hands on, in one book I read about a brutal and bloody incident that occurred on a mountain called Musha, at the time traces of the trepidation and shock that marked my hot-blooded teenage years still clung to me, up until I read a book on the history of social and political movements among Taiwan’s ethnic minorities, only then did I realize that it had happened more than a decade after everyone down in the plains had given up any form of armed resistance against their colonizers, the decision to stop resisting must have been the outcome of comprehensive deliberation wherein they were in the end left with no other choice, but didn’t this information make it to the aborigines living in the mountains, I was forced into the army to carry out my term of obligatory military service when I was twentyeight and had yet to get through all the Confucian classics required for college, for the first time I clearly felt that on our land there existed

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such a thing as a “nation”—an entity in which a system of authority and power is embodied in, and transformed into, a system of violence—that invisibly controls the heart and resources of this island nation; I look back on the artistic days of my youth as nothing more than a kind of mildly insane romanticism, I was discharged from the military in 1981, at the time I came to the painful realization that I had been “castrated by the army,” I decided not to immediately jump into the flames of anti-Nationalist political activities, instead I moved to Danshui, a small town on the margins of this island country, where I lived in quiet seclusion, I spent all of my time lost in historical and philosophical works, I wanted to understand the origins and meaning of concepts like the “army” and the “nation,” finally after months in solitude reading about countless bloody battles, the illusions about war fostered by the history textbooks I had read as a youth had all melted away, transforming into a true “historical reality,” it was perhaps then that my mind first turned to the blood spilled in our mountains, I settled down from the hot-blooded excitement of my younger days and began to contemplate the legitimacy and appropriateness of the Musha Incident. Winter ’97, I was renting a place on reservation land when one evening I saw my neighbor, Girl, standing facing the misty mountains in the distance, she quietly uttered, “I am the granddaughter of Mona Rudao,”2 every night Girl’s door was left half open, the Ancestral Spirits followed the twists and turns down Valleystream until they arrived at Riverisle, throughout those difficult times, the Ancestral Spirits were with them every day, Girl always believed that if you follow Valleystream all the way upstream you will eventually find the Mystic Valley—the place where her ancestors, one after another, threw themselves off a cliff to their death, “I left everything behind to return home, now I’m taking time to recuperate and play with the shrimp and fish,” Girl bent over in the knee-deep water to pick up a rock beside the stream, beneath the rock was a fi sh trap she’d buried there a week before, she didn’t

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turn around but could sense me following her, carefully wading my way through the unfamiliar waters, “I have a plan,” Girl uttered as she stood back up and gazed out over Valleystream toward the sea of mountains in the distance, “One day I’m going to set out in search of . . .” But is that a genuine return?, returning to the Mystic Valley where she can hold hands with the Ancestral Spirits, eating and drinking in ecstasy. In the beginning Riverisle was a place of exile, “We began by opening up the virgin land,” I inquired about the tribal hunters and one of their sons told me, anyone here over seventy has lived through the hard times and should remember, it started with planting rice, the civilized rulers taught them how to sow rice paddies, from being a tribal hunting clan that stood erect they learned to squat and bend over, “They have been a tribe of rice planters ever since,” as time went on some of them started planting bananas, and while harvesting the rice they didn’t forget to plant some taro on the ridge beside the field, later betel palms began to sprout up everywhere, and then someone discovered that the night air in the mountains was perfect for growing plum trees and transformed the entire mountain basin behind the cemetery into a plum orchard, the mountainous slopes were fi lled with even larger areas of Chinese silvergrass and wild forest, but they left them pristine and untouched, only in deep autumn when the silvergrass sprouts its white buds and the forest leaves turn from green to yellow to a dull crimson do they sigh, knowing that yet another year has been spent in exile, “There haven’t been any tribal hunters in ages, the only animals we catch are the squirrels and flying squirrels we trap in the fields,” when his father arrived in this place of exile he was already past school age, the blood of a hunter must have still flowed in his veins, one year when he was almost thirty he went hunting in the back mountains, he returned with a wild boar or mountain goat but his fellow tribesmen did not welcome him with celebratory wine and dance, he was instead greeted by a vicious beating from the Japanese authorities,

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surrounded by the silent confused gazes of his tribespeople, the rulers used the beating as an opportunity to warn the people, “This man is a lazy scum, instead of working with everyone out in the fields, he sneaked off to the mountains to do evil”—there were two possible punishments for doing evil, the first was to be forever exiled from this place of exile, possibly chased into a cage by one of those “German shepherd police dogs,” the second was to be bound to a wild boar and left outside in the dirt field under the blazing sun for three days, the hunter chose the latter and in the process sacrificed his last bit of dignity—from then on all the way up to his death Dad was a farmer who lived the rest of his days bent over in the field, he never passed on any of the techniques or stories of the hunter, his children and grandchildren had no idea how to respect the memory of their ancestors’ lives as hunters, it was good thing then when the old rulers were replaced by a new set of rulers who legalized cigarettes and alcohol, Dad spent the rest of his days gazing at the distant mountains and drinking himself to death, that’s right, the distant mountains, and not the rice fields that spread out before his eyes, when I was a kid, after dusk each day when our work in the fields was finished I would drink with Dad, my old man would drink in silence, “It didn’t seem to matter what we said or what was going on around us,” drinking became an addiction, the bottle became the source of this addiction, nothing in life seemed to be as important, I’ve heard that with democracy the people suddenly became most important, but for him nothing was ever as important as a drink, it wasn’t that he didn’t understand that drinking every day will lead to what you academics call “self-destruction,” young people hit the bottle especially hard, “as a descendent of a hunter I have lived out my life between the bottle and the field, my time in the tribe is past, the lives of our young people along with the brave and courageous lives of our Seediq people have all been lived out on the road to self-destruction. . . .”

And here we are at the fin de siècle, already nearly seventy years have

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passed since the incident, Mona Rudao’s statue and memorial tablet stand high, overlooking the elementary school field where he carried out his massacre, on October 27 of each year Riverisle dispatches a group to bring sacrificial offerings to their former homeland to commemorate the anniversary of the incident, they also offer their favorite mixed drink of Whisbih3 and rice wine to Mona Rudao, from the speech made by the commanding officer, they understand that even today their ancestor Mona Rudao is still heralded as the spiritual leader who led the people around Musha and Reunion Mountain, “no one ever investigated” the legitimacy of the massacre he launched because that fact had already been verified by government authorities, each year the cherry blossoms planted here so long ago by the Japanese shed their flowers and flutter to the ground for only Mona Rudao and him alone to see. . . . During the course of my investigation into the Musha Incident, I only encountered two people who had a different take on the massacre than others, both of them were Seediq tribesmen,4 both of them outstanding aboriginal scholars who held degrees from two of the top universities in Taipei, and both of them had respect and authority in their tribe and both were approaching middle age, Bakan, a member of the Seediq Daya tribe who was living in Riverisle, believed that history had misunderstood the fundamental meaning of the Musha Incident, “The true nature of the incident lies as a traditional headhunting ritual,” headhunting was an important daily ritual for the Seediq people, the motivations for headhunting may have always been quite complex, but they were never particularized, the Seediq tribe grew accustomed to this complex ritual where “you are blamed for not showing proper respect to the tribe if you don’t partake in the hunt,” Bakan’s grand-uncle severed the head of the prefect commander with his own two hands, there was nothing really particular about that head as compared with the other decapitated heads, the civilized rulers were utterly panic-stricken by such a large-scale “primitive custom,” so much so

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that they offered a politically inspired military assault in response to this headhunting ritual, according to the local traditions an appropriate way to bring the incident to a conclusion would have been to have the Seediq and Japanese work things out face to face and “bury the hatchet through reconciliation,” perhaps some respected Han Chinese—like the Gu family from Lugang or the Lin family from Wufeng—could have come up to the mountains to serve as witnesses, but who would have imagined that the “civilized savages” would turn around and send their civilized planes, cannons, and poisonous gases to the “savage primitives” to show them the true face of civilization; customs and rituals in the end led to a horrifying and destructive cycle of revenge, the result was the historical-political entity known as the “Musha Incident,” fear was always a strange thing in the Seediq people’s lives, “the Ancestral Spirits will approve of Mona Rudao’s headhunting ritual, but they will never understand this thing called the Musha Incident . . .” Danafu of the Seediq Toda subtribe went even a step further in denying the historical existence of “the Incident,” claiming there was only a large-scale Musha “headhunting ritual,” the ritual was coordinated by the clan leader of Mhebu, thus there never existed any such thing as a “Musha Incident” and the common people must learn to forget the “man who led the ritual—Mona Rudao,” the Toda tribe was one of the six tribes that did not take part in the headhunting ritual, they were later recruited to form the front line of the savage search team, Danafu said that it was only in his old age that his father finally began to talk about the excitement and joy he felt as he decapitated large numbers of Mhebu people, the Mhebus had actually planned to take the heads of the seventeen people led by the chief of the Toda tribe, and so that same rush of excitement and joy existed when the 101 heads were cut off during the surprise attack on the detention center, “This is my father,” Danafu points to one of the figures in the commemorative photo taken after the ritual, in the photo Danafu’s father was squat-

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ting on the ground with an expressionless head propped under his arm, his father never understood what the “Second Musha Incident” was, let alone anything about its place in history, “I also think that those people writing the history books these days base everything on the explanations of government propagandists and misguided academics,” the academics subscribe to the governmental line that it was a plot instigated by the Japanese rulers, and that was the only way to explain the vicious tragedy of savages killing savages, “But this is only a tragedy as defined by civilization, how could anyone ever say that we Seediqs were the ones who prompted the killing, at the time we Seediqs knew all too clearly about the rules surrounding each tribe’s headhunting rituals,” it had absolutely nothing to do with the plots and unrighteousness that often appear in the history books, and so, a few years later, when the Toda tribal elder came all the way to Riverisle to propose a marriage, the Riverisle elders accepted his proposal, “We are all members of the Seediq tribe, we understand one another. . . .” I found it so surprising that neither of the two intellectuals who received a civilized education viewed the surprise attack on the detention center as what civilization would refer to as a so-called “massacre,” they resented the fact that civilization used their civilized tools to “massacre” the six savage tribes—almost to the point of genocide—but could not accept the idea that savages would “massacre” other savages, nor was this something that was going to be resolved by debating back and forth, nor do I believe that historians can advocate a balanced historical theory, “Primitive vocabulary doesn’t even have a word for massacre,” I self-mockingly thought to myself as I gazed at the fish-tailed hunting knife left behind by Danafu’s father—the knife still bears traces of human hair—“Only civilization is capable of carrying out massacres,” the inscription on the “Memorial to the Remains of Life,” which lies on the rear side of the Riverisle reservation bears no mention of the Second Musha Incident, as a descendent of the Mhebu tribe, Bakan did not have any

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real opinion when it came to the way Mona Rudao was venerated by the government, neither he nor Danafu agreed with “the government’s politicization of the headhunting ritual as an exemplification of the anti-Japanese spirit,” during our talks Danafu seldom mentioned Mona Rudao, and it was only on one occasion that Bakan happened to vapidly mention Mona Rudao as the “hero of our tribal head-hunting ritual.” I told Girl about the conversations I had with Bakan, although she never saw one, she knew what a “headhunt” entailed, however, she had absolutely no idea what a “headhunting ritual” referred to, nor did she understand the majority of Bakan’s ideas, “My father never lets us talk about those things, you won’t find any hunting knives hanging in our living room either,” who knows when her family’s fish-tailed hunting knife disappeared—she had never laid eyes on one in her entire life, I asked her about that capricious little brother of hers, she said that the only schooling her brother received was through the classes offered by the reservation church, for a while he had a job helping out around the church, he is the only young person on the entire reservation who doesn’t drink or smoke, instead he spends all his time riding aimlessly around the reservation on his motor scooter, “my little brother is the most kindhearted person on the reservation,” Girl’s voice grew stern as she continued; unlike Bakan, who not only has the best education, but also is “the best when it comes to women and wine”; I understand what Girl is getting at, during my time on the reservation there were three “democratic elections,” election campaigns in the mountains have become indistinguishable from those held down in the plains; campaign trucks decorated with colored flags drive around the streets and alleys of the reservation making a ruckus and there are a few more groups of people sitting around drinking and debating politics than usual— Bakan is one of the few tribe members who has a vested interest in the election, the majority of public servants on the reservation also fall into this category, the ball is always in their court when it comes

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to local elections and they are the ones who delegate power, naturally they never fail to lend their support to those among their ranks with “the greatest actual strength,” in the middle are those people who “never have opinions about anything,” they work in the fields during the day and sit in front of the TV drinking when they get home at night, and then there are those people like Girl who “never seem to have anything to do,” at the most they get only a slight glance from men like Bakan; Girl returned to the reservation dejected and all alone, everyone in the tribe looked at her in the same way they look at those routed men who returned after ruining their bodies working in the city factories, after her marriage to a member of the northern Atayal tribe fell apart, she left her two daughters behind and, surrounded by loneliness, she left the reservation and went to Valleystream, no one seemed to care what she did, she spent her time fi shing and swimming—swimming together with those fi sh she couldn’t catch—she spoke to them, “Valleystream is the place of my dreams,” she followed the riverbed, picking up rocks and pieces of dead branches along the way, “Look at these beauties, it is incredible what the handicraft of nature can do,” the beauties were scattered all over her bedroom and living room, she even taught people how to distinguish them from one another, “This piece was formed by a bolt of lightning, it is like an angel of time, the rushing waters of the stream shaped this one over an extended period, it resembles an elderly man who has endured a long hard life,” who knows how long it had been since the tribespeople had heard such “dream talk,” most everyone thought she was insane, deep in the night I could often hear strains of beautiful music coming from nearby, during my first night on the reservation I suddenly heard Chopin’s “Nocturnes” and almost thought I was back in the city at some recital hall or fancy coffee shop, the next night I heard Mozart, I pulled open my curtains to discover that all the lights were out in Girl’s room, but that melody seemed to sneak out from that dark place and rise into the night,

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she brought a kind of mysteriousness to the reservation, leading them to confront a feeling of loss and the unknown, it was a good thing that the tribespeople had long grown accustomed to living amid the fog and mist of the mountain hillocks. It was an early autumn afternoon and rays of light were coming off the face of the courtyard reflecting a hot beam of sunlight inside through the window, I was in the living room wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, reading a work by a great Japanese scholar entitled Investigative Record of the Savages,5 when Girl suddenly appeared outside my door, she was also wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, but her outfit was entirely black, “I know this scholar, he brought a team of researchers here to examine the Musha Incident, my grandparents were all interviewed by him, although my maternal grandfather had a bad stutter, he knew more about the incident than anybody else, they kept him the longest— my mom told me that they didn’t feed him, by the time he got home he was dead tired and she had to warm up some taros for him to eat,” “But didn’t that scholar have to eat too?” I asked, “Didn’t it enter their minds that they should feed their guest?” Girl rolled her eyes, “My mom said that Grandpa would rather starve to death than eat their sushi,” Girl picked up my book and nosily flipped through its pages, “I’ll bet this book about savages is no page-turner; c’mon, let’s go over to the general store to sing karaoke,” it is not every day that you get a chance to sing karaoke in the mountains, I was so excited that I threw my book aside, walking side by side in T-shirts and shorts we approached the bamboo forest, the trail on the way to the general store was fi lled with the strong aroma of blooming betel palms, the overcast chain of surrounding mountains made me feel as though I was closer to the mountains than ever before, the general store stood alone built in an arid depression, it was constructed of crude sheet iron and surrounded by a wide courtyard in front and a large bamboo forest behind, of all the reservations I had visited this one had the fanciest general store of them all, the large refrigerator