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Betel nut chewing culture: the social and symbolic life of an indigenous commodity in Taiwan and Hainan

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Betel nut chewing culture: the social and symbolic life of an indigenous commodity in Taiwan and Hainan

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Content BETEL NUT CHEWING CULTURE: THE SOCIAL AND SYMBOLIC LIFE OF AN INDIGENOUS COMMODITY IN TAIWAN AND HAINAN by Christian Alan Anderson A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ANTHROPOLOGY) May 2007 Copyright 2007 Christian Alan Anderson ii Table of Contents List of Figures vi Abstract x SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter 1: Initiation and Orientation to the Present Study of Betel Nut 2 Initiation 2 Orientation 4 Initial Findings and Further Questions 6 Defining a Betel Nut Chewing Region 6 Taiwan and Hainan: Two Islands off the Southeastern Chinese Mainland 8 Ecological Conditions in Taiwan and Hainan 9 Demographics of Betel Nut Chewing Populations 12 Defining “Betel Nut” 13 Physiological Effects of Betel Nut for Habitual Chewers 16 Tolerance, Dependency and Addiction 19 Limits on the Regional Distribution of Betel Nut Chewing 21 The Scope of the Research: Orientation and Methods 23 SECTION 2: HISTORY OF BETEL NUT IN SOUTHERN CHINA 29 Chapter 2: Prehistoric and Early Historical Evidence of Betel Nut Chewing in China 31 Linguistic Analysis 31 Archaeological Evidence 36 Mythological Analysis 38 Historical Analysis 40 Early Chinese Historical Sources 42 Han Dynasty 43 Wei-Jin-Nan-Bei Dynasties 44 Sui Dynasty 48 Tang Dynasty 49 Song Dynasty 51 Yuan Dynasty 57 Ming Dynasty 59 Qing Dynasty 69 Discussion of Early Historic Sources on Betel Nut Chewing 83 Chapter 3: Modern History of Betel Nut Chewing in Taiwan and Hainan 85 Japanese Colonial Occupation of Taiwan 87 Early Twentieth Century Hainan (1900-1945) 92 The Legacy of War and New Beginnings: Taiwan and Hainan (1945-87) 94 iii SECTION 3: ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS WITH BETEL NUT IN TAIWAN 100 Chapter 4: Ethnic, Gender, and Socioeconomic Diversity in Taiwan 101 Cultural Geography of Taiwan 102 Ethnic Boundaries 103 Taipei: Portrait of the Capital City 107 Fieldwork in Taipei 107 Betel Nut in Taipei Public Transportation 111 English Teachers and Other Foreigners in Taiwan 113 East and West Taipei 114 Betel Nut and Boundaries: How Betel Nut Became Stigmatized 118 Lifting of Martial Law and the Rise of “Democracy” in Taiwan 125 Chapter 5: Myth, Ritual, and Symbolic Meanings of Betel Nut Chewing in Taiwan 135 Myths, Nursery Rhymes, Jokes, and Songs about Betel Nut 135 Areca Nut as Mother 140 The Amis Betel Nut Bag 142 Ritual Use of Betel Nut in Courtship and Weddings 149 Ritual Use of Betel Nut among Traditional Healers in Taiwan 157 Discussion of the Symbolic Meanings of Betel Nut in Taiwan 173 Chapter 6: Production and Marketing of Betel Nut in Taiwan 176 The Contemporary Betel Nut Industry in Taiwan 176 Betel Nut Beauties (binlang xishi) 185 Betel Nut Beauty Interview: Xuan-xuan 194 Betel Nut Beauty Interview: Xiao-ye 196 Betel Nut Beauty Customers 198 Discussion of Production and Marketing of Betel Nut in Taiwan 202 Chapter 7: Tourist Development and Betel Nut Chewing in Taiwan 206 Betel Nut Chewing Traditions in the Amis Village of Dulan 207 Dulan Sugar Factory: From Abandoned Space to Creative Space 216 Orchid Island: The Legacy of Isolation 226 Cultural Significance of Betel Nut in Orchid Island 229 Trouble in Paradise: A Hidden Nuclear Waste Dump in Orchid Island 234 Tourist Development: A Grand Canoe Launch 237 Discussion: The Legacy of Isolation in Orchid Island 243 Localism and International Tourism in Taiwan 244 iv SECTION 4: ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS WITH BETEL NUT IN HAINAN 247 Chapter 8: Ethnic Diversity and Betel Nut Chewing in Hainan 250 Utsat: Austronesian Language-speaking Muslims of Sanya County 251 Visiting the Utsat Village of Huixin 263 Han Chinese: Hainanese and Mainlanders 277 Hainanese High School Boys from Wanning 278 Han “Mainlander” from Jiangxi Province turned Betel Nut Chewer 281 Li: Native People of Hainan 284 Li Market Vender in Sanya City: Li tradition in Urban Context 285 Ledong: Constructions of Hostile Li in the Han Imagination 289 Bacun: Areca Nut as Cash Crop in Baoting County 295 Jiayao Village: Journey to a Li Mountain Village with an Utsat friend 298 Discussion of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries in Hainan 310 Chapter 9: Symbolic Meanings and Ritual Use of Betel Nut in Hainan Weddings 312 Hainanese Weddings 312 Li Weddings 313 Utsat Weddings 317 Utsat Women’s “Bridal Credit Association” 318 Utsat Weddings and Women’s Status 320 An Utsat “Double” Wedding 322 Significance of Betel Nut in Utsat Society 331 Chapter 10: Production and Marketing of Betel Nut in Hainan 334 Yacheng: Agricultural Market Town 334 Method of Areca Nut Propagation, Seedling Production, and Harvest 337 Two Kinds of Areca Nuts: Round and Long 338 Marketing Betel Nut at the Yacheng Rural Nightclub 340 Marketing Betel Nut in Sanya City 341 Chapter 11: Tourist Development and Betel Nut Chewing in Hainan 346 Sanya Tourist Industry 349 Dadonghai Beach (“Great Eastern Sea”) Tourist Resort 352 Mingyue Guesthouse: Budget Accommodations near Sanya Market 353 Beachfront Road Guesthouses 354 The Seabird Guesthouse 355 Tianya Haijiao: Beyond “The End of the World and Edge of the Sea” 358 Elusive Luobi Cave 361 Xidao: Extreme of Tourism Development in Sanya 363 Xidao Marine Play-garden 364 Xidao Fishing Village 368 Barbarian Valley Tours: Authentic Commoditized Tourist Experience 374 v Betel Nut Banned in Sanya 377 Discussion of Tourism in Hainan 381 SECTION 5: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 385 Chapter 12: Comparative Analysis of Betel Nut Chewing in Taiwan and Hainan 386 Betel Nut as Psychoactive Substance 386 Appetites for Chewing Betel Nut 389 Betel Nut and Boundaries: Literal and Metaphoric 394 Wrapping Betel Nut Quid 400 Shamanic Ritual Use of Betel Nut 404 Betel Nut Juice 405 Betel Nut Chewing as Personal Choice and Social Appetite 412 Modern Restrictions on and Stigmatization of Betel Nut 416 A Renaissance of Betel Nut Chewing Culture? 428 Bibliography 431 vi List of Figures Figure 1: Map of Betel Nut Chewing Region, showing Taiwan and Hainan 8 Figure 2: Map showing both Taiwan and Hainan (above), and map of Hainan (below, left) and Taiwan (below, right) 11 Figure 3: Scientific diagram of piper betle (left) and areca catechu (right) 14 Figure 4: Austric Language Diaspora Time Map 34 Figure 5: Chinese Pictogram for “Betel Nut” (binlang) 35 Figure 6: Qing Dynasty drawings of areca nut harvesting in Taiwan 72 Figure 7: Distribution of Production of Areca Nut and Betel Leaf and Presence of Betel Nut in Wedding Customs in Guangdong during the Qing Dynasty 82 Figure 8: Taiwan Ethnolinguistic Map 90 Figure 9: Household Penetration Rates of Cable Television in Taiwan 129 Figure 10: Penetration Rate of Telecom Service Subscribers, 1998-2005 133 Figure 11: Amis betel nut bags (left), and man wearing betel nut bag (right) 143 Figure 12: Enah performing a healing ritual at the Amis Folklore Great Singers concert in Los Angeles, California in 1998 161 Figure 13: Mr. Lai conducts Puyuma shamanic ritual using areca nuts 166 Figure 14: Green neon lights mark “betel nut for sale here” (right) even in this Tea Shop (left), displaying the typical green neon fan design 182 Figure 15: Mobile betel nut vending shop at temple market in Taipei (left), detail of betel nut for sale including baoye and qinya (right) 182 Figure 16: Medium-sized semi-mobile glass aquarium style roadside betel nut beauty shops, these two are in Taichung (left) and Taoyuan (right) 183 Figure 17: Large-sized permanent betel nut beauty shops, one in Taoyuan (above), and one of Mr. Wu’s shops in Hsinchu (below) 184 vii Figure 18: Annie (left, in black) specializes in betel nut beauty fashion design, and Mr. Wu’s collection of outfits by Annie (right) 192 Figure 19: Mr. Wu (right) with his three daughters and two employees, in the resting room upstairs above Mr. Wu’s shop, while Mr. Wu’s brother wraps betel nut 193 Figure 20: Betel Nut Beauty, Xuan-xuan, at work 194 Figure 21: Betel Nut Beauty, Xiao-ye, at work 196 Figure 22: Dulan Sugar Factory in 2003 (above), with detail of driftwood art (below) 216 Figure 23: Lanyu tourist map 239 Figure 24: Yami male elders at Canoe Launching Ceremony, with detail of betel nut basket prominently displayed on the ground (left) 241 Figure 25: Yami Grand Canoe Launch in Yeyin, August 2004 242 Figure 26: Utsat women’s head-coverings for elder married women (left) and for young unmarried women (right) 258 Figure 27: Utsat mosque (left) and Utsat house (right) in Huixin Village 260 Figure 28: Utsat village of Huixin, front gate 264 Figure 29: A mosque in Huixin Village (left), showing detail of an Utsat man giving directions to another larger mosque, while chewing betel nut given to him by the author (right) 265 Figure 30: Largest mosque in Huixin (left), with men worshiping inside (right) 266 Figure 31: Utsat female betel nut vendor in Huixin village 267 Figure 32: Elder and younger Utsat women with female child at betel nut stand 269 Figure 33: Utsat elementary school principal at the betel nut stand 270 Figure 34: Utsat school principal makes humorous ritualized gesture of giving betel nut to female friend at the betel nut stand, his son behind him looks on with amusement 275 viii Figure 35: Li woman in river with water buffalo (left), areca palm plantations in Bacun (right) 297 Figure 36: Areca nut processing station, Bacun Village, Hainan 297 Figure 37: Xiao Gao’s motorbike with sword (above left), a Miao woman (above right), Xiao Gao and me (below left), Xiao Gao crossing the river (right) 300 Figure 38: Jiaoyao terraces, areca plantations in front of traditional kitchen (above), cement house provided by the PRC with poster of Mao Zedong (below). 303 Figure 39: Utsat women at the groom’s house wrap betel nut in preparation for the wedding day (left), while women at the bride’s house (right) chew betel nut prepared by the groom’s female relatives 321 Figure 40: Utsat bride is dressed up by her female family members on the first day of the wedding 323 Figure 41: Utsat wedding registration table 326 Figure 42: Utsat elder men arrive to the groom’s house after all the women had finished eating and most had left the premises 327 Figure 43: Utsat bride covers her face while distributing betel nut to the women of her own family 328 Figure 44: Utsat bride walks through the village escorted by her sisterhood 328 Figure 45: Utsat bride with black veil escorted by sisterhood the second time, and then joined by groom 329 Figure 46: Utsat bride changes headdress for towel (above), and distributes betel nut to guests with her right hand (below) 330 Figure 47: Female betel nut vendors at Yacheng market 335 Figure 48: Two kinds of areca nuts, round (left) and long (right) 339 Figure 49: Areca palm gardens in Yacheng 340 Figure 50: Betel nut vendors in Sanya City 342 ix Figure 51: Size difference between Taiwan, Hainan, and Hunan betel nut (left), and the variety of fresh and dried betel nut available in Sanya City (right) 343 Figure 52: Sanya tour guide book cover (left), and poster advertising Miss World Beauty Pageant in Sanya in 2003 (right) 346 Figure 53: View of Sanya City Beach in December of 2003 349 Figure 54: Sanya tourist attire, flower-print clothing for sale in tourist specialty shop (left), and a tourist wearing the outfit (right) 352 Figure 55: Dadonghai Beach, view from mountain (left) and seashore (right) 353 Figure 56: Tianya Haijiao tourist beach in Sanya 359 Figure 57: One of many secluded beaches near Tianya Haijiao 360 Figure 58: Luobi Cave (above), with detail of wall engravings (below) 362 Figure 59: Demarcated swimming area on beach at Xidao resort 366 Figure 60: Houses in Xidao fishing village with walls made of coral 369 Figure 61: Betel pepper leaf garden (left), and betel pepper leaves growing up the trunk of an areca palm tree (right) in Xidao fishing village 370 x Abstract Betel nut chewing is a social practice that articulates boundaries. The history of betel nut chewing in Southern China indexes the ways in which non-Han minorities were sinicized, demonstrating how betel nut chewing culture was appropriated by Han nobles, and variously incorporated into Han cultural expressions in the southern region. In Taiwan betel nut chewing marks boundaries between groups in terms of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender. The stigmatization of betel nut in Taiwan is explained by political, economic, and historical factors related to the Japanese colonial prohibition and subsequent KMT neglect of a newly revitalized betel nut industry. Ethnic, gender and socioeconomic status was articulated by a re-introduced and fully commoditized practice of betel nut chewing, divorced from its former social significance, which continued only among Indigenous groups of the southeastern coast and in Orchid Island (Lanyu). Marketing strategies involving “betel nut beauties” developed in the betel nut retailing business, since almost all betel nut chewers were men. Perspectives within the betel nut industry reveal the economic incentives that contributed to this “shadow economy.” The symbolic nature of betel nut among the “Indigenous betel nut chewing cultures” of southeastern Taiwan articulates themes of cultural prosperity and wealth. Tourism development is based on cultivating Indigenous cultural capital. In Hainan betel nut chewing marks boundaries between local islanders and outsiders. The Utsat, a Muslim Austronesian-language speaking people, and Li language-speaking peoples in urban and rural villages provide non-Han “minority” perspectives within Hainan. Interethnic relations among Han, Utsat and Li are marked xi by salient cultural differences, though all share a common betel nut chewing culture. The use of betel nut in Utsat, Li, and Hainanese weddings show continued social and symbolic significance. Betel nut production and retailing remains integrated in the traditional economy. Modern tourism development restricts betel nut chewing, but local betel nut chewers respond to limitations by further embodying the habit. A comparative analysis of betel nut chewing cultures in Taiwan and Hainan reveals that internal boundaries are marked in Taiwan, and outsider/insider status is marked in Hainan. Analysis of the symbolic nature of betel nut and the process of chewing is found to relate to gendered complementary practice at its root, and extends to various expressions of betel nut in its social and ritual forms. The “choice” to chew or not arises from the socially constructed nature of chewing “appetites,” and shows how modern habits and traditional rituals of betel nut chewing cultures coexist and interrelate with each other differently in Taiwan and Hainan. 1 SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION A hand reaches into a well-used rattan basket, grasps a shining dark green leaf, and places it upon the open palm of the other hand and again dips into the basket emerging with a dab of white paste on one fingertip which glides across the leaf’s shiny green surface, leaving a trace of white dust. The open palm gently cusps around the leaf as thumbs and fingers delicately fold the leaf twice lengthwise onto itself, press it flat, and then slide to the tip and base of the leaf. Keeping tension, the leaf is wound around the forefinger making a loop. Again the hand dips into the basket and emerges with a light green olive-sized nut and brings it to the mouth where the front teeth bite the tip of its husk and lips eject the husk to the ground. In the same motion the fingers insert the nut into the ringed leaf and then into the mouth. Crunched between the molar teeth, the quid releases a burst of natural juice. As the quid is slowly and continually chewed, the accumulating juice fills the mouth until it dribbles out of the lips, and is then forcefully ejected in a swift movement of the lips and tongue. The quid remains in the mouth, continually producing a diminishing quantity of juice until it too is finally ejected. A process similar to this one is repeated daily by millions of people. 2 Chapter 1: Initiation and Orientation to the Present Study of Betel Nut This chapter relates my own initiation as a betel nut chewer in Taiwan in 1995, and addresses the initial questions that motivated this study. It further explores the demographics and ecological conditions of the betel nut chewing region, and reports the current state of scientific understanding of the effects of betel nut chewing on human physiology. Finally, it locates the islands of Taiwan and Hainan on the borders of the betel nut chewing region, and contextualizes their ecologies and cultural histories in terms of betel nut chewing culture. Initiation Beneath the high rugged mountains, at the side of a creek that runs into the Pacific Ocean, a five minute motor scooter ride from the Amis village of Makrahay in southeastern Taiwan, a group of around thirty men were gathered, waiting for something to happen. Women of the village were preparing food and their homes for guests expected to arrive the next day. Other men were fishing, setting up the public address system, and organizing the community plaza with chairs, water, cooking utensils and hearths. Children were generally running free; most were following me around, the curious outsider who they said resembled the paintings of Jesus that hung in every household, often above the television set, because of my long light brown hair and beard. I had arrived to the Amis village only the night before, with an eco-cultural tour organizer from Taipei who offered to introduce me to his friends in the community with 3 whom I hoped to stay for six weeks and learn the local language and culture. It was my first time conducting ethnographic fieldwork in a foreign country. I was plenty nervous, especially since I could not speak the local language or even Chinese language at that time. I relied on the eco-cultural tour group leader to inform me of what was happening, and so joined him and a group of Amis men who all piled into the back of a farm truck, and were, as yet unknown to me, headed to the creek to slaughter a pig. The people of Makrahay were preparing to receive a group of guests, an eco-cultural tour group from Taipei, who would stay in the homes of several of the families in the village the following evening. We arrived to the creek in trucks and motor scooters, and some of us washed our hands and faces in the refreshing water. The director of the eco-cultural tour group then instructed me to take off all my clothes and bathe in the river. I followed his direction to the amusement of the elder men gathered. No one else, including him, did so. Soon enough, another farm truck pulled up with a black-haired pig tied up in the back. The men wasted no time in ritually slaughtering, washing, butchering, and boiling the pig on site, with every movement of the men in harmonious cooperation as if choreographed. I documented the whole process on video, and then sat down with the group of men. After the pig was sufficiently butchered and several pieces of pork had been boiling in a large pot of river water for a while, everyone ate some of the fresh meat and drank the soup boiled with blood. One by one, each man pulled out a pack of Taiwan government tobacco monopoly cigarettes and offered one to the others, each of whom pulled out their own pack in response and all lit up holding lighters for each other. 4 The youngest man of the group then served rice wine to each person in the circle, pouring some out of a brown glass bottle into a single bamboo cup, then handing it to each man in turn and repeating the process, one by one. Then an older man sitting next to me passed me a green leaf-wrapped nut, placed one in is his own mouth and began to chew. At that time I could not speak Amis language, but relied on the eco-cultural tour group leader to translate. He, however, found it amusing to let my pantomime with the older man continue. He only laughed and said, “Just do like him.” The man placed the wad into his mouth and crunched into the nut, making a loud crackling sound, then began to chew. I followed along. A rush of fragrant juice filled my mouth, a grassy taste like no other I’d ever experienced— neither sweet nor sour, spicy nor pungent—but pleasantly fresh, the perfect counter to the unseasoned pork that was really not easy to get down. Then the man spat out a stream of bright red juice onto the ground beside him. I followed by spitting out the whole quid, still green and fibrous. Everyone laughed. The man opened his mouth and took out his quid to show me, magically having turned from solid and green to bright red and fibrous, put it back in his mouth and continued chewing. I asked my friend, the tour group leader, what this green leaf wrap was? He replied “betel nut.” “What is betel nut?” I pondered as I enjoyed the next chew. Orientation That initial encounter in 1995 first inspired my curiosity with betel nut. I began with the simplest questions. What exactly is betel nut? Where did it come from? 5 Why was it chewed? How did it transform in color and texture when chewed? What effects did it produce in habitual chewers? How had betel nut chewing become such a popular habit? Did the Austronesian language-speaking cultures introduce betel nut to Han Chinese, or vice versa? Did the Dutch introduce betel nut to Taiwan in the 17 th century along with tobacco? As it turned out, no one I met in Taiwan in 1995, or in seven later fieldwork trips could ever answer any of my questions. So I did some research into the medical, historical and anthropological literature, and conducted two years of ethnographic fieldwork among betel nut chewers in Taiwan to try to understand the phenomenon of betel nut chewing. Even after that, I found the answers to my seemingly simple questions embedded in complex cultural and economic historical processes. In order to better understand and contextualize betel nut chewing in Taiwan, I decided to also conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Hainan, an island of about the same size and also in the South China Sea, the only other place in the world at the time where Mandarin Chinese was the official language that had a contemporary betel nut chewing culture. The most fundamental thing I learned from my research on betel nut chewing in Taiwan and Hainan is that the betel nut evades simple definition while it promotes symbolic expression that reflects the nature of each encounter with betel nut. Betel nut is a material object that, owing to its chemical constitution, arouses social, economic, and spiritual transformation. It is the subject of myth and an element of magic. It is a gift and a commodity. It is a tradition and a habit. And, for me, it has inspired enduring questions. 6 Initial Findings and Further Questions From inquiring into the nature and origin of betel nut in Taiwan, I came to some interesting findings. The first was that contemporary chewers of betel nut don’t really know much, or indeed, care much about the history or origin of the practice. As long as there is plenty of betel nut to be chewed, there is no issue for discussion. Furthermore, very little scholarly attention had focused on betel nut, whether the social and cultural, economic, or medicinal aspects, though in 2002 a special issue of the journal Addiction Biology (vol. 7, pp. 75-168) was devoted to betel nut. Betel nut had been taken for granted in Taiwan, and thus was not a priority for anthropological research as much as documenting languages or other cultural practices that were perceived to be dying out, such as traditional social organization or material culture. When I searched university libraries in the United States for articles and books on betel nut, only a handful could be found. From them, I gained the following historical and linguistic perspective on betel nut chewing. In myths as in daily life, the betel nut is first a symbol of sexuality, marking the separation and fertile reunion of male and female, and is therefore incorporated in all kinds of ritual performance, from witchcraft to healing ceremonies, and rites of passage, especially in weddings. The areca nut was venerated in myths and lore, and songs of love and reunion throughout Southern Asia and Oceania (Rooney 1993). Defining a Betel Nut Chewing Region Chewing betel nut is common throughout Greater Monsoon Asia, extending from the equatorial and subtropical regions of the Asian continent to the islands of the Indian 7 Ocean and into the South Pacific Ocean at its eastern extreme. The betel nut chewing region (See Figure 1) corresponds to approximately longitude 45 degrees to 180 degrees East of Greenwich, and latitude 30 degrees North to latitude 20 degrees South of the equator. The northern boundary of pre-modern (“traditional”) betel nut chewing culture is roughly the Tropic of Cancer, extending somewhat more northerly along the southeast coast of China and in the exceptional case of Hunan (discussed below), as well as in the Indian subcontinent. The eastern boundary is somewhere in Polynesia. The southern boundary is roughly the Tropic of Capricorn, including all the islands of Indonesia, and potentially reaching into some settlements on the northern coasts of Australia. The western boundary is the Austronesian-settled island of Madagascar and perhaps parts of the tropical east coast of Africa, yet another natural psychoactive chew, called qat, is far more popular in northeastern Africa, and is also far stronger than betel nut (Cassanelli 1986). Looking at the map of betel nut chewing distribution on a globe is enlightening. Considering the span of the western extent in East Africa, at about 40 degrees East of Greenwich, to the eastern extent in the Tuamotu archipelago near Tahiti, French Polynesia, at about 130 degrees West of Greenwich. That area spans more than half of the earth. Furthermore, the population of people living in between the tropics in that area, including the whole subcontinent of India, the mainland of Southeast Asia, and all the islands of Austronesia, is very great indeed. Although the practice of betel nut chewing will likely not spread far outside of its current geographical region (for reasons discussed below), it will also not likely die out in the coming generations. The habit of betel nut chewing has become a tradition 8 Figure 1: Map of Betel Nut Chewing Region, showing Taiwan and Hainan. throughout the region. Therefore, whether or not one travels into this region personally, it is best to understand the betel nut, why people chew it, when they chew, and where they chew, in order to understand how betel nut has become a natural symbol of prosperity in its natural climatic region, and most practically, to understand basic social, cultural, and interpersonal interactions in the region. Taiwan and Hainan: Two Islands off the Southeastern Chinese Mainland There are several geographical and historical similarities between these two islands. First, Taiwan and Hainan are both sizeable islands situated very close to the Chinese mainland, with quite similar climates. Taiwan is bisected by the Tropic of 9 Cancer, and Hainan is located fully within the tropics; therefore, Taiwan has more natural climatic and (as we shall see) cultural diversity. Culturally, both islands have indigenous populations with histories extending back thousands of years, and have been the destinations of several waves of immigration from (Mainland) China over the past few hundred years. Politically, Hainan was incorporated into the Chinese empire during the Han Dynasty, over two thousand years ago. Taiwan was incorporated into the Chinese empire under the Qing dynasty, around three hundred years ago. Taiwan was then ceded to Japan in 1895 and became an official colony of Japan for fifty years, while Hainan was only annexed by Japan for six years, from 1939 to 1945. Both islands have also been and are currently governed by rival Chinese political authorities. While the current government of Hainan, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never governed Taiwan, the current government on Taiwan, the Republic of China (ROC) did officially govern Hainan for a short period between 1935 and 1947, though since that was broken up by civil war and the Japanese invasion, it is fair to say the ROC never really controlled Hainan in any significant way. In contrast to their nearest neighboring mainland provinces in China, Guangdong and Fujian, a continuous and still thriving betel nut chewing cultural tradition has been maintained in both Hainan and Taiwan islands into the present. Ecological Conditions in Taiwan and Hainan Ecological factors combined with social, political, economic, and cultural influences on the islands of Taiwan and Hainan to produce two island-specific 10 articulations of betel nut chewing culture. Both islands share a tropical monsoon environment with two main seasons, wet and dry, but Hainan is located fully within the tropics, while Taiwan is bisected by the Tropic of Cancer and so it has a semi-tropical north and a fully tropical south (see Figure 2). Taiwan, with greater climatic variation along with mountains of higher altitudes allowed for more variety of organic life forms, which also means more cultural diversity. While the islands of Taiwan and Hainan have roughly the same surface area, Taiwan with an area of 35,801 square kilometers (13,823 square miles) and Hainan with 33,912 square kilometers (13,093 square miles), Taiwan has both higher and more extensive mountains that dominate more than half of the island. Taiwan’s highest peak is Yu Shan at 3,952 meters (12,965 feet), and Hainan’s highest peak, Wuzhishan, is a mere 1,876 meters (6,154 feet) above sea level. One effect of this mountain to plains ratio is the relative inaccessibility of Taiwan’s high mountains compared with Hainan’s total accessibility, in both ancient and recent times. It was, for instance, easier for the earliest inhabitants of Hainan, the Li language-speaking peoples, to occupy the whole island, just as it was for Chinese imperial troops to dominate Hainan thereafter. As for Taiwan with its high mountains, Austronesian language-speaking peoples occupied them for thousands of years, but even the Qing Dynasty didn’t establish control in the high mountains or the eastern coast of Taiwan. It would not be until Japan colonized the island in 1895 and in the decades of infrastructure-building that followed that total political control of all Taiwan’s people under one authority would come about. 11 Figure 2: Map showing both Taiwan and Hainan (above), and map of Hainan (below, left) and Taiwan (below, right). The respective distances of Taiwan and Hainan from the mainland contrast greatly and this again coincides with the relative inaccessibility of Taiwan. There are 200 kilometers (124 miles) of ocean between Taiwan and the mainland, and only 18 kilometers (11 miles) between Hainan and the Leizhou Peninsula of Guangdong. 12 Hainan is clearly visible from the Chinese mainland whereas Taiwan is not. Since the first Chinese settlers of Taiwan came only in the seventeenth century, that betel nut was being chewed in Taiwan earlier than that proves that it was not the Chinese who introduced the habit to Taiwan Austronesian language-speakers, but it also does not mean that early Chinese settlers did not also already chew betel nut in their home country, which the next chapter proves was also true. Contrary to any popular ideas, that either betel nut was introduced by Chinese settlers to Austronesians, or vice versa, or else by the Dutch to both, are all proven false. All three of these groups, the Chinese, Austronesians, and Dutch, had previously been chewing betel nut, as will be proven in the following chapter. Demographics of Betel Nut Chewing Populations An estimated 10 to 20 percent of the world’s population of 6.5 billion regularly chews betel nut. In the year 2000, an “estimated 600 million people, mostly from Indo-Asian and Chinese populations” reportedly chew betel nut, making it the fourth most commonly consumed psychoactive substance after nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine (Warnakulasuriya & Peters 2002, 75). Rates of betel nut chewing in Kaohsiung, Taiwan were recorded at 13.3 percent of a sample population of 1,162 people; with significant differences for men (28.3 percent chewers) and women (1.4) percent chewers (Chen & Shaw 1996). According to betel nut chewing statistics for Taiwan published in 2002 by the National Health Department, Executive Yuan, ROC (Taiwan), taken from a sample of 26,748 people from around the whole island, betel nut chewing rates for the entire population of Taiwan were recorded at 9.1 percent; showing significant gender 13 difference, where 16.8 percent of men in Taiwan chew, and only 1.2 percent of women chew betel nut. Statistics on Hainan betel nut chewing rates were not obtainable by the time of writing, though my impression is that a higher percentage of people in Hainan chew, and a more even distribution of men and women are chewers. Betel nut is also chewed in dried form in Hunan Province of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Statistics reported of betel nut chewing obtained in Xiangtan City, Hunan, found 35.3 percent of a sample population of 11,406 (Tang et al. 1997), showing no significant gender difference, though a slightly higher percentage of men (39.3) chewed than women (35.3), and a much higher overall percentage of chewers than in Taiwan. Perhaps rates of chewing in Hainan are similar or even higher than those reported from Xiangtan, Hunan. While relatively unknown and culturally insignificant in the Western hemisphere, except among Asian immigrant communities (Pickwell et al. 1994), for chewers living in the betel nut chewing region, betel nut has been there through all their rites of passage for generations, “to welcome them into the world, to guard them in childhood, to see them safely married, and to accompany them into the next world" (Reichart and Philipsen 1995, 11). Defining “Betel Nut” Early English language accounts of betel nut identify it as merely “betel” or “betle” sometimes with the word “quid” attached. In Taiwan and Hainan, a “betel nut quid” is comprised of three essential elements: betel leaf, areca nut, and slaked lime (calcium 14 hydroxide). The “betel” in “betel nut” refers to the leaf of the crawling vine, piper betle, commonly called “betel pepper vine” (see Figure 3). Betel pepper leaf is an identifying ingredient of betel nut commonly chewed throughout tropical monsoon Asia and the South Pacific. Betel pepper vine is considered indigenous to peninsular Malaysia, and grows throughout the betel nut chewing region. Figure 3: Scientific diagram of piper betle (left), and areca catechu (right). The “nut” of “betel nut” refers to the seed/fruit of the areca catechu palm tree (see Figure 3), commonly called “areca palm” and sometimes called “betel nut tree” (Chinese, binlang shu). It has become perhaps exceedingly complicated, now perhaps impossible, to trace an exact origin for the areca catechu palm, since it has been domesticated for thousands of years wherever it currently grows, though it is believed to 15 be native to Sri Lanka, Western (Peninsular) Malaysia, and Melanesia (Gupta & Warnakulasuriya 2002, 77). The areca palm has no natural relation to the betel pepper, only that made culturally by humans in concocting the chew that is now called “betel nut” in English and “binlang” in Chinese. Harvested areca nuts can last for a maximum of two weeks if the cap remains attached and they are stored wrapped in a newspaper inside a dark and cold place, such as a refrigerator. However, if the cap is removed, kept in the same conditions, a harvested areca nut will last for less than a week. If wrapped into a betel nut quid with lime paste and betel pepper leaf, even in the same conditions, it would only last at most three days. Without refrigeration a harvested areca nut could last at most a few days. Slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) in either paste or powder form, the third essential element of betel nut, is traditionally derived from limestone or seashells that are burned and crushed, then left in powdered form or stirred up with water or wine to produce a thick white paste that is taken along with whole or cut areca nuts, often applied to betel pepper leaves. The combination of these three ingredients when chewed together with human saliva produces a bright red juice in the mouth, commonly called “betel juice” in English and “binlang zhi” in Chinese. “Betel nut juice” contains psychoactive chemicals which produce distinctive physiological effects in chewers. 16 Physiological Effects of Betel Nut for Habitual Chewers Habitual betel nut chewers in Taiwan and Hainan chew betel nut everyday, some even continuously from the moment of waking to the moment of sleeping, which could amount to between 40 and 120 betel nuts per day. What is it that inspires habitual chewers to chew at these rates? Is betel nut addictive? What are the physiological effects of betel nut chewing? The most popular reason to chew betel nut in contemporary Taiwan and Hainan is for the temporary, yet immediate, burst of physical energy, mental alertness, and general sense of “well-being” it bestows on the chewer (Cawte 1985). Certain physical, indeed biochemical, neurological, and metabolic processes occur during a chew, which bring immediately observable and common results, including the stimulation of heart rate and blood circulation to the head and chest, the generally warming of the body, increased salivation, suppressed hunger and thirst, heightened physical endurance and mental concentration. Chewing betel nut has definite, noticeable, and common human physiological effects on everyone that chews. The first physical necessity for chewing betel nut is the act of chewing, which itself produces chemicals that act as euphoria-inspiring agents in the brain, as those who habitually “grind the teeth” can attest. While chewing a betel nut quid, accumulations of betel nut juice are held in the mouth, which enter the blood-stream by means of absorption through the mouth membranes. The chemical alkaloids arecoline, arecaidine, guavacoline, guavacine and perhaps others from the areca nut and phenylalamine and other alkaloids from the betel pepper plant are kept active by the slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) when mixed with human saliva. Often the initiatory 17 experience of chewing betel nut is novel and unexpected, but subsequent chews produce predictable and characteristic effects. One set of experiments conducted in Taiwan came to the following conclusions regarding the physiological effects of betel nut chewing. Betel quid chewing increased the heart rate with onset within 2 minutes, maximal effect within 4 - 6 minutes and an average duration of 16.8 minutes. The cardio-acceleratory response was more prominent for fresh and occasional chewers than for habitual chewers; (2) betel quid chewing increased the skin temperature with onset and duration similar to a cardio-acceleratory response. The hyperthermic effect was abolished by atropine and partly inhibited by propranolol. (3) Betel quid chewing had no effect on simple reaction time but shortened the choice reaction time. (4) Betel quid chewing produced widespread cortical desynchronization of EEG. (5) Chewing of one or two betel quids attenuated the sympathetic skin response while continued consumption of more than two betel quids affected the RR interval variation. (6) Plasma concentrations of noradrenaline and adrenaline were elevated during betel quid chewing. These studies have confirmed several effects claimed by betel quid users. The effects of betel quid chewing appeared to be habit-related and dose-dependent. Although arecoline has been thought to be responsible for several effects of betel quid chewing, the present data suggest a role also played by sympathetic activation. [Chu Nai-shin, 2002, 11] Further pharmacological (chemical) effects of chewing betel nut are summarized as follows. [Areca] nut is often consumed in combination with other substances, which may themselves exert an independent psychoactive effect such as tobacco products or phenolic compounds in the piper betal [betel] leaf. The nut contains a number of psychoactive alkaloids, of which arecoline is the one present in the greatest quantity, although many others may contribute to the effect. Both sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems appear effected, with modulation of both cholinergic and monoamine transmission. It has a stimulating effect upon the parasympathetic nervous system causing dilation of the pupil, a hyperthermic effect on skin temperature, as well as an increase in pulse rate and systolic blood pressure. Recent studies suggest tolerance to these stimulant effects may occur in regular users. Human studies have found that betel chewing is associated with elevation of adrenaline and noradrenaline, suggestive of sympathetic activation. [Winstock 2002, 135] 18 Another scientific review came to the following conclusions on the specific effects of the “nitrosated derivatives of arecal alkaloids” present in betel nut quid on alpha and beta activity in the brain: Betel quid consumption leads to increased alpha activity in the occipital region, with more general and more marked increases in beta activity … found together with reduction in theta activity. Together these findings support the suggestion that arecal alkaloids do in fact increase cerebral arousal with some lesser increase in ‘relaxation’. Reaction latency time has been shown to be increased within minutes by betel chewing while visual information processing is not altered in habitual chewers. [Boucher & Mannan 2002, 104] Betel pepper leaf contains an essential amino acid (phenylalanine), which can be converted (to tyrosine and further) into dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine in the human body. A synthetic form of phenylalanine is used to combat chronic pain (such as in severe PMS) and increase energy and mental alertness (such as heightening focus among ADD sufferers). Taken together in the betel nut quid, the alkaloids present in the areca nut and betel leaf effect both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Betel nut is readily available for purchase in both islands. In Hainan, it is sold in local markets and on the streets. In Taiwan, it is sold in roadside stands in the cities and along the highways throughout the island. In the cities, markets, construction sites, and agricultural fields, people chew betel nut for the relaxed but energized sense of heightened mental alertness that is useful when working, dancing, driving, or chatting. Aside from the observable physical effects of chewing betel nut, its juice is also believed to cleanse away bacteria in the stomach and intestines. 19 Tolerance, Dependency and Addiction First time and non-habitual betel nut chewers experience a short-term dizziness or “drunkenness” during a chew that vanishes completely within a few minutes without any lingering symptoms. Habitual chewers reportedly no longer feeling dizzy or drunk when chewing, but become used to the effects and develop tolerance, and so come to rely upon chewing to maintain their usual state of waking consciousness. Still the question of whether betel nut chewing is psychologically addictive, inspires physical or chemical dependence, or is merely habitual is still open to debate. Much depends upon who asks and is answering the question and the particular social and cultural context in which it is asked. Those with an interest in labeling betel nut chewing as addictive will do so. Those who prefer to class betel nut chewing as non-addictive likewise may assert as such. Most habitual chewers claim that betel nut chewing is not addictive in the way that cigarette smoking or coffee drinking is, but merely habitual, inspiring psychological dependence. In Hainan and Taiwan, however, some adult non-chewers as well as chewers who “wished to quit” thought betel nut chewing was addictive. In Taiwan, perhaps owing to extensive government propaganda and media reports confirming the addictiveness of betel nut chewing, both chewers and non-chewers agree that betel nut chewing can be habit-forming and also addictive. If addiction describes a chronic pattern of behavior that continues despite adverse consequences, betel nut chewing can clearly become addictive in some cases. Habitual chewers continue to chew after their teeth have fallen out, or after they have contracted gum or mouth disease. Even if we delineate two aspects to addiction, physical 20 dependence and psychological addiction, betel nut chewing can be considered to have both potentials. Insofar as the physiological consequences of betel nut chewing are desirable to the chewer, however, chewing tends to continue as frequently as the ingredients are available. Therefore, physical dependence and psychological addiction are clearly possible in Taiwan and Hainan, but would not be possible outside the betel nut chewing region where the ingredients are not available for the simple reason that not enough betel nut could be procured to chew habitually. When betel nut is not available to habitual chewers, the cessation of chewing will not induce physical withdrawal symptoms such as those reported in cessation of tobacco (nicotine), coffee (caffeine), alcohol, or opiates. In this sense, chewing betel nut seems more of a masticatory or “chewing habit” that is physical and psychological in nature, although it can develop into a chemical dependency in long-term habitual chewers with ongoing access to betel nut. A Puyuma elder woman in Taitung, Taiwan chews betel nut while she works at home. Her comments reveal the potential addictiveness of chewing and highlight the perceived benefits of chewing among habitual chewers. Chewing betel nut keeps me awake while I am working. Sometimes I think betel nut is not really that delicious, but I just have to chew it anyway. For habitual chewers, chewing betel nut energizes you, so you won’t feel tired. But non-habitual chewers don’t think of these benefits of chewing at all. From perspectives outside of betel nut chewing cultural traditions, chewing betel nut is usually considered as a potentially addictive “bad habit.” In the traditional chewing cultures of Hainan and Taiwan, however, betel nut chewing represents health, maturity, and even 21 beauty, but this is changing among the younger generation, as modern Western definitions of beauty are colonizing visual media in Taiwan and Hainan. While there are certainly potential dangers associated with habitual betel nut chewing, such as periodontal or gum disease and mouth cancer, folk wisdom and medical research both concur that there is no harm done to the teeth themselves (Trivedy et al. 2002, 116), although the teeth of a long-term habitual chewer may eventually fall out as a result of periodontal gum disease. Indeed, before the introduction of Western-style toothbrushes and toothpaste, the people of Hainan and Taiwan used the areca nut and quid to polish and its fibers to floss their teeth. Even though recent medical evidence indicates increased risk of mouth cancer and gum disease among betel nut chewers (Trivedy et al. 2002, 118), habitual chewers continue to affirm the healthiness of the habit, and are not generally dissuaded from chewing for these reasons. Habitual chewers who prefer the Western aesthetic of white teeth can simply brush their teeth with whitening toothpaste daily, which tends to keep stains from forming. Limits on the Regional Distribution of Betel Nut Chewing Although betel nut is the forth most popularly consumed legal psychoactive substance in the world today, its use has not spread to the Americas or Europe, other than among migrant betel nut chewing populations. Clearly, the other ancient natural psychoactive substances—coffee (beans), coco (leaves), tea (leaves), and tobacco (leaves)—have made their way around the world, been commercialized and capitalized, turned into cash crops, and become part of “global culture,” but why not the betel nut? 22 First let us briefly look at the origin and spread of tea drinking for the reason that it originated in the same geographic region, the present-day provinces of southwest China during the Tang Dynasty, over 1,000 years ago. It may be shocking for contemporary Chinese people to imagine that tea was not at all popular in China before that time, except perhaps with Buddhist monks who had made the pilgrimage to India and encountered tea along the way. In fact, Southern Chinese people were chewing betel nut long before drinking tea. How did tea ultimately infiltrate and become totally absorbed into Chinese culture when betel nut did not? The simple and fundamental answer is climate. Tea trees grow well in sub-tropical and high-altitude climates whereas the ingredients of betel nut grow only in tropical and low-land climates. In addition, tea leaves can be dried and preserved to be freshly “brewed” at any time in the future, whereas betel nut ingredients are best consumed when freshly harvested. Of course areca nut can be consumed “dried” as it is in Hunan, and even packaged into commercially appealing individual plastic wrappers, though a dried betel nut cannot be “brewed” into a fresh state as with tea. For fresh areca nuts, the time it takes to transport the ingredients, without air travel, would have limited the extent of betel nut chewing outside its area of production. In other words, a kind hearted merchant-trader from the tropics would be able to introduce the betel nut to his partner in the north, but he would be hard-pressed to keep a constant supply coming at the rate it would take if the whole village took to the habit. The northern Chinese imperial elites, however, were able to chew betel nut because they had a constant supply from their southern tributary states (as we will see in the following chapter), though even these nobles would likely not be able to chew 23 constantly. Moreover, it would not have been possible for an entire population of people in the north to maintain daily betel nut chewing habits, first of all for the difficulty and time necessary for transport, and secondly for the amount of areca nut and betel leaf production possible in the southern region, unless that was the only crop produced. Another reason betel nut did not succeed in infiltrating the greater Chinese culture, or extend much beyond its prehistorical chewing region, has to do with the cultural aesthetics of chewing betel nut. To chew a betel nut, one must usually spit out a stream of blood-red colored juice during the chew, and finally eject the chewed quid from one’s mouth, a thoroughly non-modern (“barbaric”) undertaking. In other words, there is no “gentlemanly” or “lady-like” way to spit out a stream of red juice, unless one is already prescribed in the local cultural etiquette. For the uninitiated, the sight of someone spitting betel nut juice could be terrifying, since it appears like blood. Furthermore, after years of daily chewing without brushing the teeth, all of the teeth will become stained dark red and eventually black. While blackened teeth are considered a sign of adulthood among traditional chewing cultures, for people in the northern latitudes of Asia and “civilized” countries around the world, black teeth would be a sign of decay. Moreover, the cosmetic attitudes of people in the northern latitudes preclude such kind of behavior that would “tarnish” their bodily appearance in the eyes of their fellow compatriots. The Scope of the Research: Orientation and Methods This project began when an Amis elder in eastern Taiwan simply gave me a betel nut to chew. After that first experience of chewing betel nut, I became curious about what betel nut actually was and how it worked physiologically and culturally. From that 24 initial motivation, the whole research project on betel nut chewing gradually emerged. I first became interested in how betel nut was used in Amis culture, its social significance and symbolic meanings, and noticed the use of areca palm trees as boundary markers. Upon observing that betel nut was being used outside of Amis culture in Taiwan in different ways, sold in vending stands by “betel nut beauties” in a wholly different cultural milieu, I thought there must be some explanation for how that phenomenon developed, though no one in Taiwan could explain it to my satisfaction, and no books had yet been written about it in English or even Chinese at that time that I could reference. In discussion with anthropologists at Taiwan’s prestigious academic institutions, including the Anthropology Department at National Taiwan University and the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica, I learned that the topic of betel nut was considered “taboo” for domestic researchers, but that I as a foreigner could conduct a study that, because of my outsider perspective, might shed some light on the phenomenon. I wrote a research proposal to conduct ethnographic fieldwork on betel nut chewing culture in Taiwan and Hainan, and received a research grant from the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines in 2002-2003, and a U.S. Fulbright Student Award to Taiwan and China in 2003-2004. I am grateful for that support, and the support of countless friends and colleagues along the way. 1 1 I am especially grateful to my teachers, including Mari Womack, David Blundell, Bien Chiang, Janet Hoskins, Eugene Cooper, and Nancy Lutkehaus for encouraging me to undertake this project and providing indispensable feedback throughout the research and writing process. Without the love and support of my parents, Lynn and Janet Anderson, and my wife, Winnie Huang, this project would not have been possible. 25 During the fieldwork in both Taiwan and Hainan I was fortunate to be joined by my wife, Winnie Huang, who not only enabled faster and more fluent communication in Chinese language, but most significantly has from that time into the present writing remained fully engaged in the project, providing her valuable perspective as a Taiwan-born Chinese who was initially not a betel nut chewer, but had been chewing for a few years before we met, yet as most people in Taiwan, didn’t know much about betel nut chewing culture or history, and so especially enjoyed participating in the research process. During the fieldwork in Taiwan and Hainan, we interviewed betel nut chewers from diverse socioeconomic statuses, cultural backgrounds and ages, urban and rural residents, men and women, and those involved in the betel nut industry, including farmers, wholesalers, retailers, as well as non-chewers to gain as many different perspectives on betel nut chewing in the islands as possible. We photographed our fieldwork experiences (many of which appear in this printed version) and recorded hundreds of hours of video and audio, which was indispensable for further analysis after the fieldwork was complete. I was trained in visual anthropology and so applied my understanding of the use of visual research methods from the beginning of the project. Perhaps there are not many anthropologists who would attempt this admittedly ambitious project. If not for my own personal enjoyment in chewing betel nut, it would also be impossible for me. One of the blessings of doing research on betel nut is that there is always an excuse to sit for a while and talk while chewing betel nut. In fact, 26 most of the interviews that contributed to the research were conducted while chewing betel nut. After having completed ethnographic fieldwork in Taiwan and Hainan, there remain many unanswered questions relating to the history of betel nut chewing in both islands, especially about the historical relations between Chinese culture and the native cultures of Taiwan and Hainan. Again there were not many resources available on betel nut chewing, only two studies specifically on betel nut chewing in Taiwan have been published in Chinese (Wang Shu-Gui 1999 on contemporary culture, and Jiang Shu-Ru 2002 on Qing Dynasty Taiwan), and none have yet been published in English. For Hainan, nothing has yet been published specifically on betel nut chewing. Only primary and secondary historical sources in Chinese language were available to construct Section 2, a history of betel nut chewing in Southern China. Section 3 focuses on Taiwan, where betel nut chewing is found to be a social practice that marks boundaries between ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender groups. The present-day stigmatization of betel nut in Taiwan is explained by political and economic historical factors which relate to the Japanese colonial prohibition and destruction of mass plantations of areca nut and subsequent KMT neglect of a newly revitalized betel nut industry which allowed it to grow into a “shadow economy.” Ethnic, gender and socioeconomic status was articulated by a re-introduced and fully commoditized practice of betel nut chewing, divorced from its former social significance, which interestingly still continued only among Indigenous groups of the southeastern coast and in Orchid Island (Lanyu). Marketing strategies employing “betel nut beauties” developed in the highly competitive betel nut retailing business since almost all betel 27 nut chewers, with the exception of Indigenous people, were men. In-depth interviews with the boss of a “betel nut beauty” stand provide his perspective and those of two of his employees on the industry and their involvement. The section further explores the symbolic nature of betel nut among the “Indigenous betel nut chewing cultures” of southeastern Taiwan, including Amis, Puyuma, Paiwan, and the Yami (also known as “Tao”) of Orchid Island. Special attention is devoted to the effects of recent tourism development on betel nut chewing in Taiwan, especially among indigenous betel nut chewing cultures, with specific cases reported from Taitung and Orchid Island. Section 4 is devoted to Hainan, where betel nut chewing culture is found to mark boundaries between local islanders and outsiders, as well as internal socioeconomic status, which happens to correlate with ethnic group status, but not gender differences. First ethnic relations and strategies of boundary maintenance are explored among various Han and non-Han “minorities” in Hainan. Special attention is devoted to the Utsat, a Muslim Austronesian language-speaking people who live in the southern coastal port city of Hainan called Sanya, and Li language-speaking peoples in both urban and rural contexts. Detailed descriptions and analysis of the use of betel nut in Utsat weddings, and also reports from Li and Hainanese weddings are provided and analyzed. Ethnographic data on agricultural production and retailing of betel nut in traditional markets and on the streets of Sanya is presented and explained. Local interethnic relations in Hainan are explored in the case of a fieldtrip we took with an Utsat friend into a Li village in the mountains north of Sanya. Finally the impact of recent tourism development on betel nut chewing culture in Hainan is presented with special focus on the off-shore island of Xidao (West Island), and the way local betel nut 28 chewers have responded to prohibitions on selling betel nut and spitting betel nut juice in Sanya by continuing to chew, but not spitting out the juice, instead swallowing it, thereby further “embodying” the practice both literally and metaphorically. The final chapter provides a comparative analysis of betel nut chewing cultures in both Taiwan and Hainan, and addresses the question of how the social practice of betel nut chewing differently articulates boundaries in the two islands. Here we find internal boundaries more saliently marked in Taiwan, and outsider/insider status more prevalently marked in Hainan. Analysis of the symbolic nature of betel nut and the process of chewing is found to relate to “gender complementary” beliefs and practices at its root, and extends to various expressions of betel nut as complementarily gendered in its social and ritual forms. We also discuss the social construction of “appetites” for chewing, the factors that enable or limit individual people’s “choice” to chew or not, the ways in which “habits” and “traditions” of chewing inform one another, and finally, how processes of modernization and the development of tourism have differently impacted betel nut chewing cultures in Taiwan and Hainan over the years. 29 SECTION 2: HISTORY OF BETEL NUT CHEWING IN SOUTHERN CHINA The first chapter in this section traces the social, symbolic, and economic significance of betel nut in Southern China, from the earliest times when the “southern tribes” were incorporated into the Han Chinese world. The questions to be addressed include the following. How are the “boundaries” of the Chinese betel nut chewing region for this period negotiated and defined through everyday practice? How do Hainan and Taiwan, as two island societies on the borders of the Chinese, Southeast Asian, and Austronesian worlds, figure in to the dynamic of defining a “betel nut chewing region” and a “Han Chinese cultural world”? How has betel nut chewing been introduced to and adopted by people in formerly non-chewing areas in the region of Southern (and sometimes Northern) China? What factors have limited or propagated the further spread of betel nut chewing, both in and outside of the Chinese world and specifically in Taiwan and Hainan? The most significant finding gleaned from early historical references to betel nut chewing is that in (northern) Han Chinese culture, from the Han Dynasty through the Qing Dynasty, betel nut chewing was primarily the habit of kings, nobles, and artists. During the same (2000 year long) period among the state-defined “non-Han” (variously Bai-Yue, Li, or simply “barbarian”) peoples of Southern China, however, betel nut chewing remained a common practice for everyone, where it was and remained a required gift in wedding ceremonies and social occasions through the Qing Dynasty. Historical data from the Qing Dynasty shows the extent of betel nut as present in the traditional wedding extending only slightly more northerly than the 30 northern boundary of betel pepper leaf production, itself just north of the Tropic of Cancer in Guangdong Province. In the next chapter on the modern history of betel nut chewing in Taiwan and Hainan, we explore more recent developments. Only in the twentieth century, during the Chinese Nationalist (since 1911) and PRC years (since 1949) did betel nut chewing largely vanish from the Southern Chinese mainland, though it remained in Hunan where a dried form of betel nut is chewed, and in Hainan island where fresh betel nut is still chewed into the present (and from where betel nut is exported to concoct the now famous Xiangtan dried betel nut). The history of betel nut chewing in Taiwan has been influenced by the customs and traditions of early “non-Han” Austronesian language-speakers, heavy Han Chinese immigration in the 17 th century, the brief Dutch VOC presence in the 17 th century, and perhaps most significantly by the fifty years of Japanese Colonialism (1895-1945) and forty years of Chinese Nationalist (KMT) martial law (1947-1987). 31 Chapter 2: Prehistoric and Early Historical Evidence of Betel Nut Chewing in China While it remains unknown when, where, and how betel nut, the individual ingredients, and the knowledge of how to use them originated in Southern China, whether the knowledge developed independently, by diffusion, or both, still some timeframe can be deciphered by reviewing evidence from linguistics, archaeology, and mythical and early Chinese historical accounts. Linguistic Analysis Southeast Asia is home to more than 1,000 ethno-linguistic groups belonging to five major language families: Austroasiatic in the Indian subcontinent, Austronesian in the islands, Sino-Tibetan in Southern China, and Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien in Southern China and Mainland Southeast Asia. All of these languages have different words for betel nut, areca, betel pepper, and lime. Where did the word “betle” in the scientific name “piper betle” come from? The English word “betle” (pronounced “beh-tl”), and later spelled “betel” (pronounced “bee-tl” in American English), likely comes from British transliteration of the Malay word “pinang”, which is used for “areca nut,” “areca palm,” and “betel quid.” The Chinese language has evidently created its word for “betel quid,” “binlang” also from the Malay pinang, as the pronunciation is almost identical. Linguistically, the Malay pinang seems to be an influential word for “betel nut,” at least throughout the South China Sea. This perhaps indicates the commercial significance of betel nut (as the 32 Malay pinang) in the Malay peninsula, and also lends support to the currently accepted suggestion that betel pepper is indigenous to the Malay peninsula. Contemporary Mandarin Chinese (hanyu) language has separate names for betel leaf (laoye), areca nut (binlang), and lime paste (shihui), but uses the same term for betel nut as for the areca nut itself (binlang). This makes sense in ancient Chinese consideration, since the areca nut was a medicinal herb used to treat stomach, intestinal, or digestive ailments. While betel chewing was indeed common in Southern China for hundreds, if not thousands of years, especially along the Southern Chinese seaports, its usefulness to Northern Han Chinese civilization was limited to the areca nut’s particular medicinal value. As early as 420CE, the Han emperor imported areca catechu palms from the south to grow in his garden, which were described as viewed in the emperor’s garden by imperial historian Si-Ma Xiang-Ru in his book Natural Geography; however, at this early date there is no reference to betel pepper leaf (laoye), lime paste (shihui) or betel nut as a whole. While translations of the Chinese language “binlang” into the English are complicated because of the one Chinese term used for both “areca nut” and “betel nut,” in my own translation, I gloss the Chinese “binlang” as “betel nut” or “areca nut” based on the context of writing or speaking, and use the most specific term in English expression. During my first ethnographic research trip to Taiwan in 1995, I discovered that among the Amis (Austronesian Formosan) language-speakers who live along the southeastern coast in the county of Taitung, areca nut (which is called “icep”) is significant if not central to daily life. It is used in ceremonies and social gatherings, 33 and has both the social significance of tea in Japanese culture and the ritual significance of tobacco in North American native cultures. In Taiwan, there are specific terms for the betel nut, areca nut, betel leaf, and lime paste among the contemporary speakers of Min-nan (Fujian Chinese language), as among the Austronesian language-speakers. In Taiwan’s Min-nan (Taiwanese) language, the areca nut is called “qinya”, literally “green nut.” This makes sense in that languages local to tropical and sub-tropical Southern China, including those spoken in Guangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, Fujian, and Taiwan, will have specific terms for the different parts of the betel nut, while Mandarin Chinese language, created in Northern China, will be less exact, but still highlight the importance of the areca nut as a medicine. Taiwan’s different Austronesian language-speaking groups provide an interesting case study for the origins of betel nut chewing. Those living in the central mountains at elevations over 1,000 meters traditionally did not have a custom of betel nut chewing, and also do not incorporate betel nut in wedding rituals, but only developed a habit of chewing well after the KMT took control of the island in the 1950s. This could mean that the ancestors of the high elevation Austronesian language-speakers on Taiwan could have migrated to the island before the practice of betel nut chewing arrived to coastal Southern China. Around 6,000 years ago, Austric language-speaking people are estimated to have arrived to Taiwan, having ancestors that migrated out of what is now the Yunnan-Burmese-Assam border, down the Yangzi River to the Zhejiang coast, and further south to Fujian, Taiwan, Guangdong, Hainan, Guangxi, and Vietnam, where they would have met their “cousins” who migrated directly south on the Mekong River to its mouth in Southern Vietnam. Figure 4 (provided by the 34 Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative) maps the Austric language-speaking diaspora with dates of the earliest arrivals of Austric (and later Austronesian, in the case of Taiwan) language speaking peoples in the region. Figure 4: Austric Language Dispersal Time Map. This map shows three migration routes out of a central origin point in what is present-day Yunnan Province, one directly east down the Yangzi River through Southern China and then returning south-westerly along the Fujian coast into Taiwan, then Hainan, and finally northern Vietnam. This is the route that produced the ancestors of present-day Taiwan’s Austronesian language-speakers as well as Hainan’s Li language-speakers. Another route travels directly south along the Mekong 35 River through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and another one southwesterly along the Brahmaputra River into the Ganges River Delta in the Bay of Bengal. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that these areas have the most prevalent betel nut chewing traditions and habits in the region today. The two Chinese characters that make up the word binlang have the meaning of “people as guests” with the radical for “wood” (see Figure 5). Figure 5: Chinese Pictogram for “Betel Nut” (binlang). The selection of the two main characters, “bin” and “lang,” as noted above, could be an attempt to reproduce the sound of the Malay “pinang” while the wood radical (pronounced “mu”) indicates that the word is related to trees. The characters “bin” and “lang” already existed in Chinese language without the “mu” radicals before their 36 incorporation into the novel word “binlang.” In this new combination, both the pronunciation and the meaning of “betel nut” was translated (from the Malay “pinang”) into Chinese language and culture at least as early as the Tang Dynasty (618-906) when it was used in tax and tribute records from Hainan and also by the poet Huang Pu Song, and perhaps as early as the Jin or even Han Dynasty, long before the advent of tea in Chinese culture. Archaeological Evidence Archaeological evidence of betel nut chewing is sufficient to establish the custom in the area surrounding the South China Sea well over 4,000 years ago with a continuous presence into modern times. As of 2006, the earliest reliable archaeological evidence of betel nut chewing comes from Mainland Southeast Asia, what is now Thailand, and dates to Neolithic times. Traces of piper seeds, most likely piper betle and areca catechu, were found at the Spirit Caves of Northwest Thailand in association with strata levels dated to between 7,500 and 9,000 years ago (Gorman 1970), a period possibly pre-dating the invention of systematic agriculture in the area (Brownrigg 1991). Although betel nut chewing is recently vanishing from the urban centers of Thailand, because of the development of Thailand’s tourism industry, it still continues in the countryside, mostly among the elderly, and is widespread throughout Vietnam. Another early evidence of betel nut chewing dating to the Early Neolithic Period was found in the Philippines on the southwest coast of the island of Palawan (see Map). The skeleton of a male aged 20-30 years, whose “teeth were stained probably 37 from betel chewing” was found buried face-down in the Duyong Cave. Among the associated materials found in the grave were shell ornaments and “six arca shell lime containers, one of which was filled with lime.” The radiocarbon date for the site is 4,630 years ago (Barretto-Tesoro 2003, 304). In Taiwan, the earliest archaeological evidences of betel nut chewing come from three sites: the Beinan site in the southeastern coastal city of Taitung, the so-called “Liao Stone Graves” site in the southernmost county of Kenting, and the “Shi San Hang” site in Bali, near the mouth of the Danshui River in northwestern Taipei County. Since chewing betel nut both stains and changes the shape of teeth, wearing them down at the tips in a characteristic way, archaeologists in Taiwan interpret these markings on teeth of skeletal remains to indicate betel nut chewing. Analysis of human skeletal remains from the Beinan site in Taitung, southeastern Taiwan, indicates the customs of betel nut chewing, along with headhunting and teeth-knocking, at strata levels dating between 5,300 to 2,300 years ago, during the Neolithic period (Lian Zhao-mei 1989). Similar finds of skeletal remains among the Kenting Liao Stone Graves (Miyamoto N. 1998) confirm these customs to have been practiced in the southern tip of the island. In the northwestern plains of Taiwan, at the Shi San Hang site in Bali, evidence of uneven teeth wear, where those on one side of the mouth have been worn out in excess of those on the other side, along with the characteristic staining patterns on skeletal remains dating to between 3,000 and 3,800 years ago, indicates the early people of this area also chewed betel nut (Zhang Jing-fang 1992). All these discoveries indicate that people were chewing betel nut in 38 Taiwan at a time when only Austronesian language-speaking peoples occupied the island, which is before the arrival of the Dutch, Portuguese, or Chinese, all of whom could have brought new waves of betel nut chewing culture as well. Material evidence of betel nut, including areca nuts and lime paste containers, have recently been found on sunken Chinese “priority” ships that date between the 13 th and 15 th centuries, en route from Guangdong through Vietnam, Thailand, India, to Persia and as far as the Ottoman Empire (Wade 2003, p. 25, 29, 31). More evidence will surely become available as archaeological research continues throughout the region. Suffice to say there is enough evidence of the custom of betel nut chewing in both the mainland and the islands of Southeast Asia, early enough in the prehistoric record to suggest the practice was widespread at least 4,000 years ago, and likely much earlier. Mythological Analysis Betel nut is mentioned in the myths and lore of India, including the Ramayana, Mahabhrata, Bhagavad Gita, and Kama Sutra, and also Vietnam. The origin of betel nut chewing in India cannot be precisely dated, but it has been mentioned in literature and texts for almost 2,000 years. In a southeastern Indian Tamil classic story, Silappadikaram, the heroine feeds her husband with betel quid. Betel nut is also listed as one of the “eight enjoyments” in classical Indian literature. In Vietnam, the origin myth of betel nut is a romantic tragedy of a young woman in love with one of two twin brothers. The twin brothers die, and end up turning into the limestone and the first areca palm tree, and the young woman turns into the first 39 betel pepper vine, and crawls up the trunk of the areca tree, her lover. A wise man instructs then King of what is now Vietnam, Hung Vuong (c. 2880BCE, the contemporary of China’s Huang-Di and Chi-You, roughly 5,000 years ago), on how to combine the three elements to test their consanguinity. Upon burning and crushing the limestone, and mixing the betel leaf and areca nut, a bright red, bloodlike juice is created. The king instructs all brothers and sisters, and all lovers to chew this new concoction to represent their own consanguinity and mutual adoration. The story concludes with the following claim: Brothers and sisters began to chew the quid of betel to demonstrate fraternal love, and newly wedded couples chewed it to demonstrate conjugal love. The habit spread very quickly, until in the end it became the custom to offer the quid of the betel at all social meetings, ‘to maintain mutual affection.’ [from “The Betel and the Areca Tree Legend of Vietnam,” Available Online, <http://www.nhandan.org.vn/english/shortstories/19990515.html>] Since the botanical elements of betel nut grow only in tropical and subtropical climates, and grow best in low elevations, below 1,000 meters, near oceans, one would not expect to find plantations in central or northern China. It was only in the southern tropical coastal region, including the contemporary provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan, that areca palms or betel pepper vines could grow naturally. Since we have early evidence of betel nut chewing in the Southern Chinese region that includes present-day Vietnam, since the ancestors of the Vietnamese are the same ancestors of the indigenous peoples of the other Chinese southern provinces, including the Li people of Hainan, and the Miao/Hmong people of Mainland Southwestern China, it is clearly probable that all of these “southern tribes” had adopted the practice of chewing betel nut thousands of years ago. 40 It could also be possible that all peoples claiming an ancestral relation to the mythical King Chi You would be betel nut chewers. In the mythical time of Huang Di, who is considered the “ancestor the Han Chinese” and Yan Di, considered “the divine farmer” of Chinese mythology who identified various herbal medicines around 5,000 years ago, Chi You, the “God of Rain” who was often depicted wearing an iron mask and eating stone pebbles, was the descendant of Yan Di, also a deity in Hmong mythology and a beast in Chinese mythology, was defeated by Huang Di at Zhoulu, in a legendary battle on what is now the border of Hebei and Liaoning provinces. After his defeat, Chi You’s descendants, believed to have become the southern tribes that include the Li and Miao, moved southward into what is now Southern China, including Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. This also coincides in time with the origins of Austronesian language (4,000 to 6,000 years ago), which could have happened either in mainland Southeast Asia, or on the island of Taiwan. These are the betel nut chewers, the peoples of the tropical region of Southeast and South Asia. Mythologically speaking, they are not the descendants of Huang Di, the (Northern) Han Chinese, but are the descendants of Chi You and the southern tribes. Historical Analysis While areca nut or betel leaf was not recorded in trade records when it was not a major trade item, in the cases where it was used as tribute or part of “priority” cargo, it was recorded. In addition, if we can only establish the presence of betel nut in South China Sea coastal communities and their respective inclusion in regional trade networks, we can then suggest that betel nut was present on trading vessels, and then 41 we can predict that the custom of betel nut chewing would easily spread around the region through trade contact, especially since betel nut has the primary social meaning and value as a gift. As long as one lives in the tropics, after acquiring a betel nut chewing habit, it could easily be turned into a tradition since planting the ingredients would be indefinitely sustainable. The earliest evidence of Southeast Asian maritime trade networks is presented by Solheim (2000), who has found a Nusantao (Nusantara) maritime trading network ranging from Vietnam to the rest of the archipelago as early as 7,000 years ago. Since there is archaeological evidence of betel nut chewing in mainland Southeast Asia at earlier dates, at least 7,500 years ago in Thailand (Gorman 1970), and in the insular Southeast Asia at later dates, perhaps in Taiwan by 5,000 years ago (Lian Zhao-mei 1989), and confirmed in The Philippines by 4,600 years ago (Barretto-Tesoro 2003), it is possible that betel nut was being carried on these trade routes from the Southeast Asian mainland to the islands surrounding the South China Sea. If betel nut culture was not already incorporated in the islands and coastal communities in and around the South China Sea before the time of the “Nusantao” maritime trade, perhaps it could have been introduced through human migration and/or diffusion at that early date. Further evidence is necessary to evaluate the earliest dates of betel nut chewing in each island, but it is safe to say the people living in this region were chewing betel nut thousands of years ago, and have been continuously into the present with the exception of certain locations, as we will see below. In the winter, winds off the eastern coast of China blow southeasterly, strong and constant, turning to direct southerly winds as one continues out to sea, continuing 42 south of the equator. In the summer, northwesterly winds are strong and constant, turning to directly northerly winds as one crosses the equator into the southern hemisphere. Therefore, it was possible to make sailing voyages from the (present-day) Fujian coasts to Taiwan, The Philippines, and the Indonesian islands even in ancient times. This is significant for at least two reasons. First, the migration of people who would become the ancestors of the present-day Austronesian Formosan language-speaking peoples (of Taiwan) could (and in fact, did) easily navigate from the southeastern coasts of mainland Asia with outrigger sailing vessels, and settle the island of Taiwan, as scholars of Austronesian studies, including Peter Bellwood (2000), proposed to be likely between 4,000 to 6,000 years ago. Secondly, these consistent winds could enable voyages from later explorers after the advent of Chinese civilization in the region as is documented in the Chinese historical sources below. Early Chinese Historical Sources 1 There is mention of betel nut in most every Chinese dynasty from the Han through the Qing. Below are noted the significant events, people, and references to betel nut which show how betel nut chewing culture was constructed throughout Chinese history. Special attention is devoted to the southern region of Guangdong and the islands of Hainan and Taiwan so that a full context of the significance of betel nut chewing in Chinese culture, and especially in the two southern islands can emerge. 1 My rendering of the following material is based on primary and secondary sources, almost exclusively in original Chinese language. Translations into English were completed in collaboration with Winnie Huang. 43 The first Qin emperor, Qin Shi Huang, set up three southern counties in 214 BCE, called Nanhai (present-day Guangdong, including Hainan), Guiling (present-day Guangxi), and Xiang (present-day Northern Vietnam), and mandated a team of 500,000 people, including criminals, single men, and merchants, to live on the borders and guard the area called “Wu-ling,” also called “Nan-ling,” the mountains that divide the Yangzi River and the Pearl River (Zhujiang) located in northern Guangdong, for the explicit purpose “to mingle with the Bai-Yue,” a term used for the non-Han peoples of the southern region (Yang De-Chun 1988, 28). This was the first attempt by northern “Chinese” to assimilate southern tribes. The first Chinese merchants to arrive to Hainan did so in the late Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE). They set up trade ports on the northern and southern parts of the island, from where they sent back to the Chinese emperor valuable exotic specialty items, including turtle shells, elephant tusks, and rhinoceros horns. These items became tribute and were also acquired and traded locally for profit (Yang De-Chun 1988, 29). While it is probable that betel nut was being chewed in Hainan at these early dates, there is no historical reference to areca nut in the Chinese sources, but less than one hundred years later areca nut is mentioned for the first time. Han Dynasty The earliest historical evidence of betel nut in China comes from records of the Han Dynasty (c. 206 BCE – 220 CE). Although some officials opposed establishing imperial infrastructure in Hainan, and deemed it “more trouble that it’s worth” (Yang De-Chun 1988, 70), still the first Chinese imperial office on the island of Hainan 44 opened in 110 BCE (Xing Guang-yin 1990, 11), the same year Han Wu Di “conquered” the Southern Yue. During that time, the famous writer Si-ma Xiang-ru (179 BCE – 118 BCE) mentioned areca nut in an ancient verse called “shang lin fu” (also known as “The Emperor’s Hunting Excursion”) using the term "renpin" but not yet “binlang” (Jiang Shu-Ru 2002, 21). After the initial Han conquest of the Southern Yue (Vietnam, Guangxi, and Guangdong), the emperor ordered exotic southern plants, including areca catechu palms, transplanted into his garden. In 110 BCE after Han Wu Di conquered the Southern Yue, he built a garden called Fu-li-gong where hundreds of exotic species brought back from the south, including longan, litchi, olive, citrus trees and areca catechu palms were planted. [Wang Guan-Chung 2004, 134] As yet, there is no mention of betel pepper or lime paste, or the betel nut as a whole, but areca catechu palms have been planted in the emperor’s garden. Wei-Jin-Nan-Bei Dynasties The following description of the areca catechu palm tree is perhaps the earliest historical evidence of betel nut chewing in Southern China to appear in Chinese writing, originally written in 304 CE during the Jin Dynasty, as part of the Description of Southern Plants (nanfang caomu zhuang), and attributed to the author Ji Han. The entry for areca catechu falls under the category of “fruit”: Areca palm trees grow as tall as several zhang (丈) with rings like bamboo…. The leaves look like banana leaves, as if to put the banana leaves onto bamboo trees. Under the leaves are fruits… the taste of which is bitter… but to chew it with pepper vine and seashell powder, it is smooth and delicious, and also releases intestinal pressure. It came from Champa and the local people treasure it. They must treat their relatives and guests at the beginning of the wedding. To meet someone unexpectedly without offering it would cause resentment. 45 This is direct evidence that betel nut, the combination of areca nut, betel leaf, and lime paste, was chewed in Southern China as early as 304 CE. Also in the same time, the “preciousness” of betel nuts, coconuts, longan, and litchi, was noted to come from their rarity (Wang Guan-Chung 2004, 135). While the population of betel nut chewers was increasing among Han Chinese, still it remained limited to imperial officials and nobles because of its exoticness outside of the “Southern Dynasties.” The following three stories written during the Nan-Bei Period (c. 420-589 CE), collected in Southern History (nan shi) express the significance of betel nut in the lives of famous historical figures of the Southern Dynasties, the capital of which was in present-day Jiangsu. The first story shows the role of betel nut as a digestive aid, and also its significance as a gift to guests. When Liu Mu-zhi was young, his family was poor, but he loved consuming wine and food, and paid little attention to moderation. He always went to his wife’s family and begged to join their meals, and even asked for betel nuts afterwards. His brothers-in-law ridiculed him, saying, “Betel nuts are for chewing to help digestion, but you are hungry all the time. Why do you need to chew?” Later when Liu Mu-zhi became an imperial official, he invited his brothers-in-law, and treated them with betel nuts placed on a golden dish. [from Southern History, vol. 15, quoted in Wang Guan-Chung 2004, 136] The next story shows that people in the Southern Dynasties chewed fresh areca nuts daily, and could have been habitual chewers. It also indicates that perhaps since the time of transportation from the closest region of areca nut production in southern Guangdong to Jiangsu, near present-day Shanghai, the quality of areca nuts might at times have been unreliable, which may have discouraged chewers from living far away from the source of areca nut production. Ren Fong’s father loved chewing betel nut, and he chewed all the time. On his deathbed, he asked to chew betel nut for one last time, but after opening hundreds 46 of areca nuts, he still couldn’t find one good nut. Ren Fong also loved to chew betel nuts, but because of this incident, he has hated betel nut ever since and never chewed again for the rest of his life. [from Southern History, vol. 59, quoted in Wang Guan-Chung 2004, 136] The final story shows how betel nut could have become part of ancestor worship. Before Xiao Yi died, he told his offspring to include betel nuts as the offerings to worship him during his funeral and after he passed away. [from Southern History, vol. 42, quoted in Wang Guan-Chung 2004, 137] By this time, Han nobility in the Southern Dynasties were so fond of chewing that betel nut had become an appropriate gift among them, given to reward others or treat guests, and it was being imported from Guangdong to Jiangsu, fast enough to chew fresh areca nut, and in quantities large enough for an individual to have access to hundreds of chews per day. The following example shows how and why Han Chinese moved southward towards the end of the Wei-Jin-Nan-Bei Period, and exemplifies the main process by which Li language-speakers in the southern mainland were sinicized. Madame Xian (b.552 – d.602), a woman born in a Li chiefly family in what is present-day Guangdong, personally negotiated the beginnings of Han assimilation of all the Li language- speaking peoples. Her legacy maintained peace throughout Ling-nan, the region including Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan, for over one hundred years, and to this date she is remembered as a respected politician and military leader. The man who would become Madame Xian’s husband, Fong Bao, was Han Chinese and a descendant of the King of Bei-yan (present-day Liaoning and Hebei). After northern nomadic tribes had destroyed Bei-yan, the Fong family escaped to one of the Southern Dynasties called “Song,” and was then sent to Guangdong to become 47 local officials of the southern region. As a county official, Fong Bao’s father heard about Madame Xian and with hopes for political alliance between his family and the chiefly lineage of the Li, he decided to propose marriage for his son and Madame Xian. Following Han Chinese custom, Madame Xian married Fong Bao, thus assimilating herself as Han Chinese. However, her authority over the Li people remained. She successfully convinced all the Li language-speaking peoples of the region (formerly called “Bai-Yue”) to first unite, and after the fateful end of the Southern Dynasties and the ascension of the Sui, persuaded the Li people to submit to the first emperor of the new Sui Dynasty without fighting, which avoided what could have been a bloody war, and eventually unified China for the first time after four hundred years of division, since the end of the Han Dynasty. She assisted her husband and son in local political affairs to stabilize the southern Li region, including Hainan (Xing Guang-yin 1990, 11), and was given royal title and great military power over the region by the first Sui emperor. In 601 CE, Madame Xian reported to the Sui emperor that a corrupt Guangdong governor was instigating the Li people to rebel, and per her request the Sui emperor ordered the corrupt governor executed. Madam Xian then used her political power to placate the rebellious Li by re-establishing local Li village leaders, and thus maintained peaceful relations between the Han and Li throughout the region. In modern times, former PRC Prime Minister Zhou En-lai commended Madame Xian as the first national heroine in Chinese history (Guangdong Province, Yang-xi County Government, n.d.). 48 Sui Dynasty During the Sui Dynasty (581-619), in the years 605 to 610, Emperor Yang (reign 605-616) sent three maritime expeditions from the northern Fujian coast to the Eastern Sea that five days later landed on an island which they called Liu-ch'iu, an early name for Taiwan and the Ryukyu islands that are now part of Okinawa. The following is gathered from Sui History (580-643 CE), volume 81, biography number 46, attributed to the author Wei Zheng (http://www.guoxue.com/shibu/24shi/suisu/ sui_081.htm). The first Sui expedition into the Eastern Sea in the year 605 CE established contacts with native people living on the coast of an island the Sui called Liu-ch’iu. The second expedition in 607 CE sent messengers to ask for submission to the Sui emperor, which was refused. The mission of the third expedition in 610 CE was to attack the natives and bring back captives. In Liu-ch’iu the Sui mariners encountered domesticated pigs and chickens, stone blades for the slash-and-burn method of horticulture, and soil suitable for cultivation of rice, millet, sorghum, and beans. They reported customs of tattooing for women, headhunting, and cannibalism of the natives own deceased family members' bodies and perhaps enemies. Also described is wine-making, and singing and dancing customs. Camphor trees were found, and salt was derived from ocean water. The presence of tattooing customs and camphor trees indicates the Sui mariners had perhaps landed in northern Taiwan or the southern islands of present-day Okinawa, and the list of customs is consistent with Austronesian culture in northern coastal Taiwan and the Ryukyus. Interestingly, no mention of areca palm trees or betel 49 nut chewing is made. Thus it is possible that betel nut chewing was not practiced in northern Taiwan at that time, which is consistent with later reports in the late Ming Dynasty, by which time betel nut chewing is already confirmed in southern Taiwan. Or else, they might have landed in the Ryukyu islands where betel nut chewing did not take hold. Tang Dynasty The Tang Dynasty (618-907) incorporated all of the former subjects of the Sui emperors and, owing to advances in boat-building technology, also sent more Han Chinese officials to set up ports in Hainan. By this time, the local-exotic products exported as tribute from Hainan island included turtle shells, areca nut, rattan, ginger, herbs, spices, and tropical fruits (Yang De-Chun 1988). During the early Tang Dynasty, (pre-Islamic) Persian merchants also began frequenting ports along the South China Sea, including those in Hainan, on their way to Guangzhou. Also during the Tang Dynasty, exiled Chinese officials were sent to Hainan Island, which was already considered the “furthest extent of the Chinese world” by that time. In Hainan, rice was being planted and harvested by the Han immigrants nearby their merchant-port settlements, and Han immigrants were trading salt with people from the local villages of Li language-speaking people for areca nuts and textiles. The Li villages immediately adjacent to the Han port settlements cooperated with the Han, and eventually became incorporated first as “assimilated Li” (shou-li, literally “ripe” or “cooked” Li), and eventually, over several generations, became indistinguishable from Han Chinese, fully sinicized in dress, custom, and language. 50 Buddhism began to flourish in China during the Tang Dynasty, as the capital in Chang-An (present-day Xi-an) became a center for Buddhist thought. Several Han Chinese Buddhist monks made state-sponsored “journeys to the west” (India) to bring back Buddhist Sutras. Records from Monk Xuanzang's journey to India, which is the historical basis for the fictional novel titled “Journey to the West” and translated in abridged version into English as “Monkey,” mentioned that Monk Xuanzang received a daily ration of “rice, cardamom, and 20 betel nuts,” as was common practice for Buddhist monks in India (Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association, 2004). Xuanzang spent sixteen years in India, evidently chewing 20 betel nuts per day, before he returned to Chang-an with hundreds of Buddhist Sutras and was sponsored by the Tang emperor to establish a center for Sanskrit translation of the Sutras in the imperial capital, and wrote a book of his journey to India commissioned by the emperor in 646 CE. By this time, Buddhist monks were incorporated among the privileged Han nobility, and joined the ranks of the early betel nut chewers among the Han Chinese. During the Tang Dynasty, while the state’s cultural and political focus was on the northern-central region, evidence of “traditional” betel nut chewing culture in the southern region continues. Huang-Pu Song, a Tang Dynasty poet who had traveled to Guangdong, wrote the following two lines, published in the Collection of Tang Poetry (Quan Tang Shi, part 3, vol. 891, article 14): Areca nut flowers blossoming, partridges fattening up. The male flies into the haze, so does the female. By the end of the Tang Dynasty, it seems Han nobility were still chewing betel nut as a marker of their privilege, while the common non-Han and assimilated Han peoples 51 of Southern China continued to incorporate betel nut into their traditional lifestyles in weddings and social occasions. Song Dynasty The same configuration of Chinese chewers continued into the early Song Dynasty. The following verse written in the capital city of the early Song Dynasty, Kaifeng (present-day Henan) between 937 and 978 CE, by a famous poet and writer, King Li Qin-Zhao demonstrates that by this time, and perhaps earlier, female Han concubines also chewed betel nut. After putting on make-up for the night, she adds a little incense-made decoration to her lips. The tip of her tongue can be seen when she sings, her cherry mouth opens temporarily. Her dampened red sleeves, darkened by wine, because the wine in her cup had spilled over. She leans coquettishly on the sofa, and spits out the overly chewed red quid to the servant with a laugh. 2 One of the most famous poets of China was Su Dongpo, also known as Su Shi (b. 1036- d.1101), was born in Meishan, Sichuan, and worked as an imperial official for some years but because he was often at odds with the ruling political faction, he was exiled to southern China, Guangdong and later Hainan. While he was living in Guangdong, as a “guest from the north,” he wrote a poem titled, “Chewing Betel Nut,” from which the following lines are excerpted. Guests from the north are not familiar with betel nut chewing, Local customs of chewing are very difficult to turn down when persuaded… Sucking the saliva, gives a subtle sweetness… The taste of betel nut can tender even strict cold faces. 3 2 Original Chinese Available at <http://content.edu.tw/junior/chinese/ks_wg/chinese/content/ poem/a28.htm> 3 Original Chinese Available at < http://cls.admin.yzu.edu.tw/cm/bin/ poem_showlist.asp?sPoem_ID=2088> 52 After being exiled further to Hainan, Su Dongpo lived on an areca palm plantation in a small bungalow that he called “Betel Nut Hut” (binlang an) in his later years, and his poetry continued with even more references to betel nut and the effects of chewing. When Su Dongpo saw the Li people chewing betel nuts, he wrote poems based on his experience: In lavender dress, jasmine flowers adorn her head, Cheeks flush crimson as if drunken with betel nut. 4 And, Crimson waves flood your cheeks, dainty and charming. But who knows that you are only drunk from chewing betel nuts. 5 And finally, “Do not worry all the time, for betel nuts have babies and so do bamboo.” 6 Another piece of poetic prose from the Song Dynasty by Yao Kuan (c. 1150-60) describes the practice of betel nut chewing in Southern China in a book called Xi xi cong yu [West Creek Collection], vol. 1: People in Fujian and Guangdong chew betel nuts. It starts with the cutting of the nut, then adding some clamshell powder and wrapping along with the betel pepper leaf. The first chew makes you feels a little drunk, and your face turns red. 7 With so many imperial Han officials chewing betel nut, since areca palms cannot grow north of the Yangzi River, it had to be imported from the southern provinces. 4 Original Chinese Available at <http://cls.admin.yzu.edu.tw/QSS/BIN/ ti_brow.asp?auid=000005&id=00016587> 5 Original Chinese Available at <http://cls.hs.yzu.edu.tw/su_shih/su_time/ismsu_all/ song_kind_brow.asp?spaper_id=4203> 6 Original Chinese Available at <http://cls.admin.yzu.edu.tw/QSS/BIN/ ti_brow.asp?auid=000005&id=00016135> 7 Original Chinese available at <http://cls.hs.yzu.edu.tw/su_shih/su_time/ismsu_all/ song_kind_brow.asp?spaper_id=4203> 53 Beginning in the late Tang Dynasty and continuing through the Song, areca nut was recorded as part of the tribute given from the southern provinces to the emperors of China. An official report of areca nut given as tribute from Hainan comes from the Qiongzhou Sanya Report, in the year 1111, during the Song: “They contributed betel nut and money from almost 9,000 households” (Zhou Qufei, c. 1178, Ling Wai Dai Da, Chapter 8 - 9 “Flowers, Trees and Animals,” Article 165 “Betel Nut”). The report also contains records of men trying to "quit chewing betel nut." The Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) moved the dynastic capital from Kaifeng (Henan) to Hangzhou (present-day Zhejiang) and furthered development of the Fujian area with an expansive southern emphasis of Han Chinese civilization. The following report, written by Zhou Qufei in 1178, from Ling Wai Dai Da (Chapter 6, Article 122, Shi Bin Lang), titled “Chewing Betel Nut” is quoted in full because it provides a comprehensive picture of the betel nut chewing culture of Guangdong in terms of its social aspects and associated material culture, while also indicating and evaluating the efficacy of claims for the medicinal value of betel nut chewing by a local healer. South of Fujian, in Guangdong and Guangxi, all the people chew betel nuts. Hosts offer betel nuts instead of tea to treat guests. They cut the areca nut into wedges, mix some water with shell powder into a paste and apply it on the pepper leaves, wrap the areca nut wedges to chew, and then spit out a mouthful of red juice. Then they continue chewing, drawing in the remaining juice. Within a short time, chewers’ faces turn red, as a poet once wrote “drunken by betel nut.” If no shell powder is available, they use limestone powder. If no pepper leaves are available, they use pepper vine stems. Where betel nut chewing is most popular, in Guangzhou, spicy herbs such as lilac cloves and sweet osmanthus are added. The rich and poor, young and old, men and women all chew from dawn till dusk. They would rather give up meals, but must chew betel nuts addictively. The rich put betel nuts on silver platters; the poor put betel nuts on tin platters. During the day, they congregate around these 54 betel nut platters and chew. At night, they keep betel nut platters next to their pillows to chew until they fall asleep. For people of lower economic status, chewing could cost them a fortune. Some people laugh at them saying, “People walking on the street in Guangzhou look like sheep,” indicating that their mouths are always chewing, like sheep grazing on grass all day long. Everyone you meet has blackened teeth and reddened lips. Wherever several people gather, the ground surrounding them is covered with red spots, which is really disgusting. Traveling officials always carry portable betel nut kits, which are divided into three separate parts, one each for betel pepper, shell powder, and areca nuts. The ambassadors from Jiaozhi (Annam, Northern Vietnam) also chew. I asked people, “Why do you chew so addictively?” They replied, “To eradicate miasma, release gas (qi) and help digestion.” After one has been chewing for such a long time, one can’t stand to be without it for even a moment. Without chewing betel nut, one’s mouth and tongue become tasteless, and the released gas (qi) becomes filthy. I also consulted a medical healer for such a reason and was told, “Chewing betel nuts can bring down the qi and also consume it. Lungs are the master organ of qi, and are located above the diaphragm, as to cover the filthiness in the intestines. For long-term betel nut chewers, when their lungs shrink [during an exhale] and fail to fully cover the filthiness, then the filthy qi from the intestines rises to their mouth and cheeks. So they often chew betel nut to lower this qi. Regarding miasma, chewing betel nut actually provides no benefit. There are so many cases of miasma, which have nothing to do with not chewing betel nuts.” 8 Miasma is defined as “A poisonous vapor or mist believed to be made up of particles from decomposing material that could cause disease and could be identified by its foul smell” in Webster’s New World Medical Dictionary, 2 nd Edition (Wiley Publishing, Inc.). In the context of traditional Chinese culture, miasma was identified as the cause of many tropical diseases. We will hear more of the alleged benefits of betel nut chewing for the purpose of avoiding miasma by locals in Hunan and Taiwan below. It is instructive to note here that Chinese physicians as early as the Song Dynasty did not believe that betel nut chewing protects one against or cures miasma, though popular beliefs attributing this power to betel nut chewing continued in 8 Original Chinese Available at <http://www.lit.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~maruha/kanseki/ lingwaidaida06-7.html#Chap6> 55 Southern China. In Hunan, in fact, avoidance of miasma became the instigating reason for taking up the habit of chewing dried betel nut in the early Qing, and was commonly expressed as a reason for chewing among the early Han settlers of Taiwan, also during the Qing Dynasty, as we will see below in more detail. Throughout the Song dynasty, not only Su Dongpo, but many political exiles as well as criminals were sent out of the Chinese mainland to Hainan, and many of these exiles once in Hainan associated with infuriated “unassimilated Li” (sheng-li) villages and participated in Li rebellions against the local Han officials who operated the merchant ports. Maritime merchants, now increasingly Muslim, would stop in Hainan’s ports on their way between Guangzhou and Persia; sometimes if the ship was irreparable they would even stay on and take up residence in Hainan. Around the first millennium (1000 CE), both imports and exports of areca nut from Hainan increased dramatically. The main exports were a fragrant wood used for incense-making, areca nut, coconut, rattan, wax, ginger, timber, Li traditional textiles, and crystal. Imports included iron tools, rice, flour, fabrics, porcelain, and salt. Within Hainan, there was no currency, and all transactions took place by barter. Han merchants would travel to various Li villages and trade for their textiles and areca nut. During this period, an official tax was imposed on areca nut exported from Hainan ports, listed under “miscellaneous taxes” in Song records. Within the island, areca nut was extracted from Li villages to use as tribute along with silver and ginger to the Song emperor. Tax-collectors and middlemen in the Han ports of Hainan became ever richer and more corrupt as they padded their pockets in local exchange transactions. The “assimilated Li” (shou-li) were taxed and became registered citizens of the Song empire, while the “unassimilated Li” 56 (sheng-li) villages in the interior of the island were neither taxed nor incorporated into the Song educational system, but still operated their villages within a traditional horticultural, hunting and fishing organization (Yang De-Chun 1988, 57-60). A major revolution in rice production spread throughout southern China during this period. Originating in the Kingdom of Champa, so-called “Champa rice” strains and technology spread all throughout the tropics of Asia. This was a rice strain that could produce three yields per year instead of the former one yield per year, and was easier to grow. The Song state incorporated this new strain of rice and technology into the education system, teaching locals throughout southern China and in Hainan, including Li language-speaking people, how to irrigate fields for maximum yield (Yang De-Chun 1988, 54). The earliest historical account of a migration of people from Champa to Hainan is indeed documented in Song History, Chapter 489, and states that in 986 CE, hundreds of Cham people fled to Hainan Island to escape a “national disaster” in Annam, and settled in a place in northern Hainan called Zhanzhou. In another historical account dated to the late Qing Dynasty, in the book titled Aizhou Zhi (Hainan Gazetteer), some Cham families reportedly took fishing boats to flee the coast of Annam for the southern coastal area of Sanya, Hainan during the Song-Yuan Dynasties, also to avoid “local chaos.” The present-day Utsat of Hainan, an Austronesian language-speaking Muslim community in Sanya, claim descent from these early immigrants, as well as from Persian Muslim merchants who had become shipwrecked in Hainan en route to Guangdong. More about the complicated ethnohistory of the Utsat, the most assiduous betel nut chewers in contemporary Hainan, is explored in depth below. 57 In the late Southern Song Dynasty, the first Han immigrants to permanently settle islands in the South China Sea were Fukien fishermen who sailed into the Peng-hu archipelago and found the islands uninhabited. They brought with them coins and pottery that dates their arrival. The Peng-hu settlement, however, was never free from danger. In 1171, Visayan pirates sailing across the South China Sea from what is present-day Cebu, Philippines attacked the Fujianese settlements in Peng-hu and captured some Fujianese settlers, confiscating their millet, wheat, and hemp, temporarily dissuading further Han settlement in Peng-hu (Knapp 1980), which would not develop for another two hundred years. Yuan Dynasty Meanwhile, on the Chinese mainland, the Yuan Dynasty (c. 1206-1387), ruled by formerly nomadic Mongolians extended their Empire throughout China and into Eurasia. 9 The Yuan state delineated four separate classes of people. The highest class was, of course, the currently ruling Mongolian people, the second class was foreigners from Western Asia and Eastern Europe (of which there were 23 kinds elaborated), the third class was northern Han Chinese, and the fourth class was all “southern peoples,” including Han and non-Han “barbarians” such as Li language-speakers (Yang De-Chun 1988, 74-75). 9 It was not until 1298, after returning from extensive travels along the Silk Road, that Marco Polo became the first European explorer to publish comments on the habit of betel nut chewing. He wrote in his travel log, "The people of India have a habit of keeping in their mouths a certain leaf called the tembul" (Latham 1958). 58 The Yuan sent a court appointee to govern the sub-prefect of Peng-hu in 1264-1294 under Emperor Shi-Zu, and officially incorporated the archipelago under imperial authority for the first time. Taiwan was of course not included, as no Han Chinese had yet settled the island. In 1292, however, Emperor Shi-Zu sent an expedition to Liu-ch'iu (Taiwan) but returned without having made contact. Perhaps owing to the perceived fierceness of the native headhunters who lived along the coasts, Han Chinese did not attempt to settle Taiwan, though some trade between Han maritime merchants from Peng-hu and natives of Liu-ch’iu was taking place. In 1335, under the Yuan Dynasty, Peng-hu established its first police station. By 1347, the Han Chinese traveler Wang Ta-yuan visited Peng-hu and in his “Brief Accounts of the Island Barbarians” written in 1349, described life there as "rustic" with many long-lived people. Salt was derived by boiling ocean water, millet was being fermented into liquor, and fishing along with grain horticulture provided the staple. Domesticated oxen and goats were kept, and sesame and green beans were grown. Temples were built to Ma Zu, goddess of the sea, to provide protection from the harsh climate. Wang Ta-yuan also made a brief voyage to the island of Liu-ch'iu (Taiwan) in 1349, but found no Chinese people there at all (Thompson 2002, 28-29). The Yuan Dynasty stopped imperial education for residents of Hainan because they were categorized as the lowest class “southern peoples” and therefore neither Han nor non-Han in Hainan had any chance of rising into official status under the Yuan. Instead, Hainan focused on developing its ports which were now linked into an increasing maritime trade network. Local middlemen and government officials becoming increasingly corrupt and wealthy at the expense of local villagers, now a mix of Han 59 immigrants, exiles, and assimilated Li. Migrations of Han Chinese into Hainan also increased, attracted by the more lucrative maritime trade opportunities in Hainan’s increasingly urbanized port cities (Yang De-Chun 1988, 51-53). An interesting event related to Hainan’s Li textile culture contributed to a technological revolution in the weaving industry. Huang Daopo, a woman born in Shanghai who had left home to escape an abusive family and unwanted arranged marriage, fled to Yazhou, Hainan as a young woman and lived with Li people, where she learned and soon mastered the Li traditional textile designs. While in Hainan she invented a weaving machine with foot pedals that increased efficiency threefold, and was the most advanced weaving technology of that time. In her later years, she returned to Shanghai, introduced her invention, and taught students how to weave Li textile designs (Yang De-Chun 1988, 56). By the end of the Yuan Dynasty, betel nut chewing continued as a local tradition among the “lowest class” people of the southern region, and perhaps maintained a presence among the few Han officials. Although we found no evidence of betel nut chewing among Mongol elite, it would not be a stretch to suggest that imperial officials would incorporate the prestige habits of the conquered Song nobles, especially since the network of tribute already included areca nut from the southern region. Ming Dynasty The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the last great Han dynasty in Chinese history, was a period of initial increasing focus on the southern maritime merchant trade, and then a 60 retreat into isolationism. Technological innovation enabled Ming vessels to engage in long-distance voyages as regular trade routes were established through the South China Sea reaching as far west as the eastern coast of Africa, and the Ming collected tribute from all the major Asian maritime empires. From 1405 to 1433, the Ming state sponsored seven maritime expeditions led by perhaps the most famous and influential Muslim in Chinese history, Zheng He (b. 1371 – d. 1433). Zheng He was born in Yunnan and subsequently captured as a child by the Ming, castrated, and taken to the imperial capital where he became a eunuch. On each of his seven voyages, Zheng He commanded hundreds of Ming vessels, including treasure ships, supply ships, and war ships, and crews of men up to 30,000 demonstrating the great naval power of the Ming. The voyages of Zheng He were commissioned by the state to demonstrate its superiority and collect tribute from as many other maritime empires as possible, rather than for strictly economic interests, though furthering trade contacts was of course an important result of the voyages. Joseph Needham (1971) characterized Zheng He’s voyages as “a navy paying friendly visits to foreign ports” (Wade 2003, 8). However, more recently an interpretation of the voyages as potentially more aggressive and violent, suggesting that the armadas sought to dominate the trade routes across the maritime realm of the East Asian, South China Sea, and Indian Ocean has also been suggested by Geoff Wade (2003), who terms the voyages and their impetus “proto-colonialism.” At any rate, the significant presence of the Ming state was felt throughout the maritime region in the 15 th century. 61 While we have no evidence of the presence of betel nut on Zheng He’s voyages, there is evidence of betel nut in sunken Ming ships dating to the late 15 th century, shortly after Zheng He’s voyages. In the Lena Shoal Wreck, discovered in 1997 in the waters northeast of Palawan (Philippines), betel nut along with lacquer, ivory, iron ingots and woks, bronze cannons, glass beads and the well-preserved ceramics were found (Wade 2003, 29). In the Chinese mainland, Ming imperial officials continued to chew betel nut, especially when traveling in the southern region, as evidenced by the following account of Liu Bowen (b. 1333 – d. 1375), a native of Zhejiang who was stationed in Guangdong. In a letter written to his friend, he mentioned that areca nut was commonly chewed wrapped in a green pepper leaf. He described his first experience chewing betel nut. Ming local officials urge me to chew since it can protect me from the worrisome miasma. When I first chewed, a tingling rose into my cheeks, as if a sting in my throat. My eyes were full of flashing dots and my head felt dizzy. At the beginning I thought I had eaten poison, but after a second thought I knew that was not the case. Then my face got hot, and beads of sweat started to emerge. After the chew, there was a refreshing feeling throughout my lungs, and no more filthy smell was left. [Chen Mong-lei 1706, 678] Another report from southeastern Guangdong mentions that betel nuts were used in the local engagement rituals in the year 1457 (Hua-zhou Gazetteer [Guangdong], Yi wen bao [Art and Culture Section], p. 327). Clearly betel nut chewing is continuing as a local traditional practice in Guangdong, and is even being prescribed to treat miasma among Ming state officials in the southern region. 62 According to the “Outline and Details of Roots and Herbs” [Ben Cao Gang Mu, Fruit Section, volume 31, p. 1831], an encyclopedic work that describes over 1,800 medicinal plants for treating hundreds of diseases published in 1596, Betel nut can cure diarrhea and body inflation, various chest and abdominal pain, cure constipation, relieve the bowls and urinary tract, expurgate phlegm, cure shortness of breath, cure various kinds of malaria, and prevent miasma. Areca nut is chewed fresh (raw), and must be chewed with betel pepper vine and shell powder. Spit one mouthful of red juice and then it is smooth and delicious without astringency. Its effect is to lower the qi and help digestion. The three ingredients are so different and unrelated however they combine into something extraordinary. Here we have evidence of betel nut’s alleged efficacy in treating various diseases including all sorts of intestinal ailments, not only miasma, but also malaria, and in the most prominent and copious ancient Chinese medicinal textbooks. Below we will see the ramifications of this claim specifically in the development of betel nut chewing cultures among Han Chinese in Hunan and Taiwan. Meanwhile, as a result of the thriving maritime merchant trade, by the mid-Ming Dynasty, capitalism developed throughout the southern region. Hainan was poised to enter the bourgeoning maritime trade based on export of its native resources which compelled enough demand to earn profits. Hainan had opened twenty-eight ports of trade, a dramatic increase from earlier times (Yang De-Chun 1988, 77). Taxes were levied on betel nut, coconut, animal hides, ginger, fish, feathers, wax, and tea leaves sold to Ming officials in the Hainan ports who controlled export, putting a heavy burden on locals, and keeping them in poverty while imperial officials acting as middlemen became even wealthier since they could keep tax revenue for themselves, and also profit from sales to maritime merchants who stopped in Hainan’s ports. Ming local officials in Hainan differentiated all 63 kinds of taxes on almost everything imaginable, even separately taxing areca nut and betel leaves, seaweed, and even import taxes on salt, and a general household head tax (Yang De-Chun 1988, 97-99). By this time, a fully functional capitalist commodity exchange system was operating in Hainan, with betel nut integrated as one of the main commodities for export. At the same time, in the Li villages in interior Hainan, and also among the Han of the merchant ports, betel nut was most likely continually used as a gift in daily social interactions and presented at engagement and wedding ceremonies, though direct evidence of this has not yet been found. Roads were built to connect local markets and Li villages to Hainan’s ports, venturing further into the island’s interior. Schools were built in Han settlements along these roads that were encroaching into former Li territory, as more Li were becoming assimilated. Corruption of local Han officials complicated matters, heightened the distance between rich and poor, and led to a 200 year period of Li rebellions. All along the coasts, Han settlements thrived next to assimilated Li villages. In the interior, traditional Li villages still maintained their subsistence livelihoods from horticulture, hunting and gathering, but had become dependent on the salt trade. Rising Han animosity among some assimilated Li brought about an almost continuous Li rebellion from 1440 through the end of the Ming Dynasty in 1644 (Yang De-Chun 1988, 106). After Ming efforts to suppress Li rebellions proved ineffective and efforts to use assimilated Li to manage relations also failed, in 1614, in order to thwart further Li rebellions, Ming officials decided to bring Miao warriors from their homeland in Guangxi to settle in between the Han and Li villages, creating a buffer zone, and commissioned the Miao to fight against the Li, using both traditional sorcery techniques 64 as well as armed combat. Miao people were notorious for their medicinal knowledge of applying poisonous substances on weaponry, such as arrows, and became widely feared by Li in Hainan, though their presence did not stop further Li rebellions. Li living in the more remote non-assimilated villages depended on Han merchants for salt, which would be traded for Li textiles and other local and exotic items such as animal skins. Frequent and fair trading practices between non-assimilated Li and Han salt merchants as well as the real need for salt, kept the Han salt merchants safe from Li hostility, but still tensions between Li and Ming officials and rebellions continued. Elsewhere in the South China Sea, piracy had become a major concern for the Ming. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, in 1372, well before the voyages of Zheng He, the Ming state ordered all Han settlers of Peng-hu to return to the mainland ostensibly for threat of attacks from which the Ming could not or did not wish to offer protection. Those who stayed on in Peng-hu either became “pirates” themselves, or were considered as such by the Ming. In 1404, the Ming decreed that all “drifting subjects of the emperor” (liu min) must return to the mainland at once, and sent expeditions to inform whatever Han populations remained in Peng-hu. Zheng He’s voyages included the mission of “carrying the Imperial Edict” to the “Eastern Barbarians” of Liu-ch’iu in its itinerary, where he “bequeathed brass bells” to them, but was finally unsuccessful in proclaiming them subjects of the Ming empire (Thompson 2002, 36). In each of his seven voyages, Zheng He landed in Peng-hu and Liu-ch’iu (Taiwan). 65 This was the context in which, during the early Ming period, the first Han settlements on Liu Ch’iu (Taiwan) took place, not state-sponsored but for the private commercial interests of those Han “liu min” who had remained in Peng-hu or else “drifted” out from the Fujian coasts. There had already been a fairly constant trade of deerskins and antlers from Taiwan for Han glass beads and salt along the coasts of western Taiwan for several generations, but no settlement of Han people on the island itself until the Ming. With increased piracy in the South China Sea, Han “liu min” could act as middlemen between the indigenous villages and foreign merchant-pirates operating in the deerskin and salt trade. The “ethno-linguistic” composition of Liu-ch’iu (Taiwan) in the early 17 th century was entirely Austronesian language-speakers with the exception of some Japanese pirates, who had been attacking the coasts of Fujian, and were successfully driven out of northern Taiwan by Ming General Shen Yu-jung in 1603 on a military voyage for that purpose, from which we have an eyewitness account written by Commander Ch’en Ti (Thompson 2002, 31). There were also some Fukien language speakers from Peng-hu or coastal Fujian living on the island who had taken up residence within native villages and had learned the local Austronesian languages, in at least enough depth to negotiate exchange relations. Although inter-village headhunting raids by natives as well as incursions from pirates remained endemic along the coasts of the island, a phenomenon of a single male Han “agent” (pusan) in each of several native coastal villages developed out of the earlier trade connections. The “agent” would negotiate with local village leaders on exchange rates and vie for access to deer hunted in specific territories (Shepherd 66 1993, 35). The “agent” would also make deals with Chinese, Japanese, and eventually Portuguese and Dutch merchants and pirates. Upon the later arrival of the Dutch in 1622, it was these Chinese “agents” who had become village-based trade-brokers, with no particular loyalties to the Ming state, who eventually helped the Dutch to control the indigenous villages of the western coastal plains of Taiwan, to which we now turn our attention. 10 In the late Ming dynasty, in 1604, Dutch VOC merchant ships arrived to Peng-hu looking to establish a base for trade with China. They were denied a base in the Pescadores by Ming officials, but were encouraged to carve out a place for themselves in southwestern Taiwan, which they did in 1624, and established the Fort Zeelandia at what is present-day Tainan, Taiwan. According to the Batavia Dairy, official records kept by the Dutch officers, in 1624, banana trees, lemon trees, and areca palm trees, were already being cultivated in southwestern Taiwan at the time the Dutch arrived. Austronesian language-speaking peoples of Taiwan’s southwest coastal area, including the Siraya (documented in Shepherd 1995), were involved in taking heads of rival communities for maintaining hunting territory and carrying out feuds, much in the same way as peoples of coastal New Guinea and Indonesia at the time of foreign contact. Making the most of existing warfare patterns as they had already done elsewhere, the Dutch managed to align themselves with some of the most powerful tribes, forging out a place for themselves in the southwestern port of Tainan, where they built Fort Zeelandia. 10 Referring to the island of Taiwan, the Ming used at least two names, "Hsiao-tung tao" (little eastern island), and "Ta-hui kuo" (the country of the Ta-hui, or the Tayouan tribe which lived on the islet near present-day Tainan). From "Tayouan" the Chinese later derived "Taiwan" (Thompson 2002, 38). 67 The Dutch East India Company (VOC) applied a strategy of “political spectacle” in dealing with native people in Taiwan (Andrade 2002). One of their early spectacles involved the areca palm tree. In order to demonstrate allegiance to the VOC, every household in the local villages was forced to bring a seedling of an areca palm tree to the Dutch. In 1635, when the VOC first attacked the Siraya in Ma-dou village, people fled their houses for the mountains. The Dutch destroyed and burnt down their houses, but preserved the coconut and areca palm trees that surrounded the houses. Later Ma-dou villagers approached the Dutch and negotiated for submission. The Dutch requested they uproot and transplant their own areca catechu and coconut tree seedlings from their family gardens to a designated location in a ritual manner, as evidence of their submission and allegiance to the Dutch VOC. Ma-dou villagers agreed to the following article recorded in the official submission agreement. We agree, as presenting these coconut and areca palm seedlings grown on our land, our power of control on the plains around Ma-dou, west to the coast, and east to the mountain, all the land we inherited from our ancestors, shall transfer to the congress of the Dutch VOC. [from Batavia Diary, quoted in Jiang Shu-Ru, 2002, p. 34] As Dutch business continued to grow, Han men from coastal Fujian and Guangdong were attracted to settle and work in Taiwan. The Dutch also actively recruited Chinese laborers to work on rice and sugarcane farms that were supplying Japanese markets. These migrants from Southern China, including speakers of Min-nan and Hakka languages from Fujian and Guangdong were leaving the overcrowded and overdeveloped agricultural areas of southeastern coastal China with aims of earning a share of the fertile and undeveloped western plains of Taiwan. 68 These Han laborers, mixing and inter-marrying with assimilated Siraya, also became the first to start large-scale plantations of areca palm trees on Taiwan’s western coastal plains. Demand for betel nut rose as more Han men arrived to the island. In 1646, the Dutch VOC opened the first large-scale areca palm plantation in Taiwan. By the late Ming and early Qing, a betel nut industry had begun in western Taiwan. Waves of Han migration would continue through the 18th and 19th centuries under the Qing Dynasty. Dutch settlement, while influential, was short-lived on Taiwan. Alas, Dutch goals of establishing a trade connection with China were never fulfilled. In 1661 the Ming loyalist and mariner Koxinga 11 (aka Zheng Cheng-gong or Cheng Ch’eng-kung) fled to Taiwan along with 25,000 troops in retreat from the Qing Dynasty, attacked the Dutch in Tainan, and handily expelled them from the island, took over their Tainan trade hub, and moved it to Xiamen, a small island off the Fujian coast, from where his descendants, the Cheng family, monopolized trade in and out of Taiwan for two decades. This significant movement of the regional trade port away from the island of 11 Koxinga (Cheng Ch'eng-kung) is an interesting character in the historiography of the South China Sea, and especially Taiwan, for the versatility of his representation as a “hero,” even among opposed political entities. Born in Japan to a Ming merchant father and a Japanese mother, Koxinga was educated as a Ming loyalist, and later became a maritime merchant and pirate. He has been considered a hero by Chinese Nationalists (ROC) both in Mainland China and on Taiwan because he was a Ming loyalist and an anti-Manchu leader, and for his role in expelling the Dutch from Taiwan, which the ROC portrays as establishing “Chinese rule over the island.” During the Japanese rule of Taiwan, Koxinga was honored as a bridge between Taiwan and Japan for his maternal linkage to Japan. In Kuo-min-tang (KMT) Taiwan, Chiang Kai-skek invoked Koxinga as a fighter who retreated to Taiwan, from where he established a base to launch counterattacks on Mainland China, just as Chiang hoped to do three hundred years later. More recent “Taiwanese Independence” perspectives portray Koxinga as a “native Taiwanese hero” seeking to keep Taiwan independent from a mainland Chinese government, in that case, the Manchu (Qing Dynasty). In Tainan, Taiwan, there is a temple dedicated to Koxinga and his mother. In Japan, the play Kokusen'ya Kassen (国姓爺合戦; formally 国性爺合戦) about his heroic life, was written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon in the 18th century, and first performed in Kyoto. A movie of the same title was produced in 2002 by the People's Republic of China and Japan with Mandarin Chinese dialogue. 69 Taiwan had lasting consequences. Once the Qing arrived to rule Taiwan, they also kept the main trade port in Xiamen, and the earlier Dutch port in Tainan lost its former direct links to Indonesia and Japan (Wills 2002). Though he died that same year, Koxinga's heirs continued to rule western Taiwan until 1683, at which time the Qing Dynasty finally defeated them and officially incorporated Taiwan under imperial rule, marking the first time Taiwan was included in the territory of a Chinese empire, now as an island within Fujian Province. Under the reign of the Zheng family, Han immigration to Taiwan continued and within a mere two decades the whole of Taiwan’s western plains were filled with Han Chinese immigrants from Fujian and Guangdong, the ancestors of Taiwan’s present-day Hakka and Han Taiwanese. Qing Dynasty The Qing Dynasty (1609-1912) came to power in China gradually, especially in the frontier regions where Ming loyalists continued to hold their ground. Even within the mainland, its military forces had to wage brutal massacres. Perhaps one of the most severe massacres of the early Qing was in Xiangtan, Hunan Province. According to the Xiangtan City Gazetteer, in 1650, the Qing military massacred the residents of Xiangtan City for nine days, and countless people were killed. Only less than one hundred people survived. One of the few people who lived through the massacre in Xiangtan was a Buddhist monk who from experience suggested that chewing betel nut could help to avoid contracting diseases from the filthy job of cleaning up corpses. From that 70 situation, the betel nut chewing habit in Xiangtan is said to have originated and has continued to expand ever since. In 1779, Xiangtan City was struck with an epidemic disease. Residents were suffering from “intestinal inflation” (鼓脹病, gu zhang bing). The Xiangtan County governor, who was originally from Guangdong, distributed “medicinal betel nuts” to patients to cure them. Afterwards, people in Xiangtan continued to chew betel nut and it eventually became a widespread habit. There have been three phases of the betel nut industry identified in Xiangtan, according to a recent report (Xiangtan zai xian 2003). The first phase was from 1950 to 1970 when betel nuts were processed “in the traditional way,” which means “dried” and sold by less than a few dozen betel nut retailers in the city. The second phase was from 1981 to 1991 when Xiangtan betel nut had a breakthrough development as a way of economic productivity and was promoted along with economic reforms. During this phase, there were 4,000 private companies selling or processing betel nuts in Xiangtan, and the industry reached total sales of 700 tons, valued at RMB 50,000,000 annually. The third phase was from 1993 to 2003 when Xiangtan betel nut boomed with diversification of brands and flavors, reaching unprecedented success. “After hundreds of years of development, Xiangtan betel nut has become popular in all the households, alleys and streets in Xiangtan City, and is even exported outside of Xiangtan” (Xiangtan zai xian 2003). As of our fieldwork in 2003, we witnessed Xiangtan betel nut being chewed in Guangzhou by a university professor who hails from Henan, and sold in grocery stores in Hainan, where the areca nuts that are processed into Xiangtan betel nut are actually grown. 71 The origin of betel nut chewing among the common people of Xiangtan, Hunan is explained as arising from practical motives to ward off disease. Similarly in Taiwan, when Han Chinese from Fujian began to immigrate to the island, they encountered all kinds of hitherto unknown tropical diseases which seemed to not affect the natives, but only recent Han immigrants. Perhaps as a result of earlier “popular wisdom” that betel nut chewing could help prevent the onset of “miasma” (bad qi), these new Han immigrants to Taiwan took up the habit of chewing with an enthusiastic immediacy that propelled the betel nut industry in Taiwan to unprecedented heights. During the Qing Dynasty in Taiwan, betel nut chewers epitomized the appearance of health, and everyone – young, old, men, women, Han, non-Han – living in the western plains chewed betel nut. Han women chewed betel nut especially for the cosmetic effects of red lips and flush cheeks, as reported in the Heng-chun County Gazetteer (Jiang 2002, 73). During the Qing Dynasty in Taiwan, pictures of areca nut harvesting appeared, published in the Zhu-luo Gazetteer in 1717 (Zhou Zhong-xuan 1962, 165), alongside description of two methods of harvesting areca nuts. One method was practiced by “barbarians” who climb up palm trees with their bare hands and jump between trees, and another method by Han who stay on the ground and use tools made of long sticks with sharp metal blades attached to the top. The following pictures show these two methods of areca nut harvesting (see Figure 6). The black and white drawing (on the left) shows the use of a tool and the color picture (on the right) shows a man jumping between two areca palms. Both pictures show men atop coconut palm trees on the right side of the frame. 72 Figure 6: Qing Dynasty drawings of areca nut harvesting in Taiwan. Betel nut was chewed not only for cosmetic effects, but as a prophylactic and a preventative medicine among the people of tropical southern China, Hainan, and Taiwan, to ward off malaria, and generally prevent or slow the on-set of disease. Even if a person was suspected to have already contracted malaria, betel nut chewing was indicated as a remedy. Even in mainland southern China: “When people encounter these conditions [of tropical diseases], they will hurriedly lie face down, or chew betel nut, or else hold a piece of local sugarcane in their mouths, which gives them some chance of escaping and the person may [well escape]” (Tian Wen observed in Book of Guizhou, quoted in Dikotter 2004, 84). Betel nut chewing is claimed to have been adaptively healthy in Taiwan. Some evidence of this comes from Qing Dynasty records of early Han immigrants to the island 73 when it was inhabited by a majority of Austronesian language-speaking people. In the first few generations of migration, many Han settlers became inexplicably sick and died soon after taking residence in the tropical jungles of western Taiwan. The Austronesian language-speaking people of Taiwan, however, lived in the tropical jungle environment for countless generations without any health problems, yet a majority of Han immigrants would still become severely sick upon arrival. Qing officials observed that one of the many dangers of living in Taiwan for mainland Han Chinese was a disease similar to malaria identified only as “miasma,” along with hostile encounters with the “Eastern Barbarians,” and general robbery (Jiang 2002, 53). For Han immigrants, if they hadn’t developed betel nut chewing habits back home, they would soon pick up the habit of chewing betel nut, and then notice that, like the native people, they wouldn’t suffer from miasma. The Zhang-hua Gazetteer of 1830 notes, “Chewing betel nut can keep miasma away, and no matter rich or poor, young or old, everybody chews betel nut [in Taiwan], which is why all their teeth are laughably black.” In 1870, the Dan-shui Gazetteer makes a further connection between health and social customs, “Chewing betel nut is very popular because it can keep miasma away, so people commonly give betel nut to show their respect for each other. When having disputes, as long as dishfuls of betel nut are presented, people will forgive each other right away” (Jiang 2002, 51). As Han agriculture expanded, the jungle on Taiwan’s western plains was cut down and replanted with crops such as rice and areca palm trees. Betel nut chewing thrived and cases of miasma decreased. Tropical jungle diseases caused by miasma were also common in southern China, and people there also chewed betel nut 74 specifically “to keep the diseases away” (Jiang 2002, 51), since a widely known benefit of chewing betel nut was energizing and warming up the body. Instead of the betel nut being a remedy for tropical diseases, perhaps the different ancestral history of the two groups is responsible. The health histories of the ancestors of Austronesian language-speaking people of southwestern Taiwan, who lived near the Tropic of Cancer for several thousand years, are arguably different from those of the early Han Chinese settlers from Fujian whose ancestors lived in the southeastern Chinese mainland, north of the tropics. This difference could make the Han settlers who arrived to Taiwan from Fujian comparatively more susceptible to tropical diseases at higher rates than the Austronesian language-speaking people of Taiwan, whose ancestors are all survivors of local tropical diseases. In other words, the ancestors of the coastal Austronesian language-speaking people of Taiwan, while evidently also chewing betel nut, must have developed antibodies or resistance to local tropical diseases in order to live to reproduce the next generation, and so on. It is not clear if betel nut chewing was a factor that provided for the adaptive success of the ancestors of Taiwan’s contemporary Indigenous people, though betel nut chewing clearly indicated those people who were not becoming ill with tropical diseases, while not chewing betel nut was a marker of those who were more susceptible to tropical diseases. Contemporary betel nut chewers in Hainan and Taiwan also chew for their health, for quick energy, to protect their teeth, to alleviate boredom or sleepiness, and to participate in social encounters. There is less concern about the potential detrimental effects of betel nut chewing in Hainan than there is in Taiwan, perhaps because less 75 exposure to medical research on betel nut has been publicly available, and there is less concern about detrimental effects among chewers than among non-chewers in both islands. Over the thousands of years of the practice of betel nut chewing in Taiwan and Hainan, betel nut represents health, but if consumed in excess of course, only possible after the modern industrial technology and conditions which make possible large scale plantations, it can also bring on disease. It is precisely the health-generating properties of betel nut that make it appropriate to give to guests at traditional weddings, alliances, and in social encounters. Perhaps where the practice of giving betel nut on these occasions has faded away, it is because of the modern risk of mouth cancer when betel nut is chewed habitually over many years. While there were some dissenting views that the betel nut could ward off miasma, still no one dared suggest that betel nut chewing was unhealthy, only unsightly. From the 1750 Revision of Taiwan County Gazetteer, the following passage notes that the claim of betel nut preventing miasma was also disputed in Qing Taiwan. It is said that chewing betel nut can save one from contracting miasma, but actually it is not true. However, when there is a dispute among neighbors, presenting betel nuts will personally smooth over arguments, whether big or small. [Jiang Shu-Ru 2002, 54] Among Han Chinese in Qing Dynasty Taiwan, betel nut was understood as a lubricant for social relations. In both Taiwan and Hainan, betel nut was traditionally offered to ask for forgiveness. The person seeking forgiveness offers betel nut to the person whom they have wronged. If the person accepts the gift of betel nut, they also accept the apology, and the giver of betel nut is forgiven. In this way, offering betel nut becomes a question, and how it is received 76 provides the answer, all without spoken language. Li people of Hainan still use this method to test the feelings of fellow Li people. Each offering of betel nut is a question about the nature of the relationship between the two people. If there is a problem between them, betel nut would not be accepted; if the relationship is smooth, betel nut will be accepted. Although there were many conflicts in Taiwan society, most Han immigrants had not yet developed the idea of law to settle disputes with reasonable compensation. Disputes were rarely settled by the Qing state, but by locals themselves. According to the level of severity, different ways of compensation or penalties were indicated. Penalties from light to heavy included: distribution of betel nut, lanterns, donation of items to local temples, or hosting banquets that served wine, hiring an opera troupe to perform in front of local temples, and donation of money to local temples (Jiang Shu-Ru 2002, 60). The Han of Qing Taiwan also used betel nut for magical purposes. The East Islands Travelogue (東瀛識略 Dong ying shi lue, p. 36) written by Ding Shao-yi during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1739-1795) mentions two examples reported from the Danshui district of northwest Taiwan. People would put the ashes of burnt papers of Taoist magic writings in water, and if it is drunk while the target person chewed betel nut, it would befuddle them and enable robbery or rape. There are also reports of prostitutes using their own betel nut spittle to magically attract or hook their customers. Prostitutes would wipe their betel nut spittle on the end of their customers’ braded hair to charm them and keep them from leaving. If a customer hadn’t visited the prostitute in a while, she would burn incense and spirit money and 77 chant in front of the shrine to call him back [invoking the magical power of her earlier betel nut spittle on his hair]. The power of the betel nut spittle was considered to mark a customer to remain “faithful” to that particular prostitute, and gave her influence over him from a distance. Areca nut was taxed in Taiwan, beginning with the first large-scale plantations administered by the Dutch, which were later taken over and extended by Koxinga and his heirs, and further developed during the Qing Dynasty. As more Han immigrants arrived in Taiwan, eventually occupying the whole western plains, the severity of the habit increased. The following description of betel nut chewing from the Record of Small Liu-qiu, written by Zhu Shi-jie around 1763 notes: The locals chew betel nuts, sometimes for 60 or 70 yin yuan [silver coins] to hundreds of yin yuan worth [per day?], both men and women. The only time people don’t chew is when they are sleeping. Upon waking they start chewing and continue all day long, constantly, so their teeth are all black and some have fallen out. I have heard that one wealthy family of 7 to 8 people offered to pay a betel nut seller 50 jin yuan [golden coins] to cover their annual supply of betel nut. But, worried that it would be a losing deal the seller refused. As for the poor, if they don’t have enough money, they still chew every day and go with less food, or even without food. The chewing habit is so strong and stubborn. Although people said chewing betel nuts can prevent miasma and jungle fevers, but some officers from Mainland China didn’t get any diseases even if they don’t chew betel nuts at all or rarely chew. So it must be just a local bad habit. Here is an early reference to “betel nut sellers” in Taiwan, an occupation which had already become a lucrative business as demand for betel nut skyrocketed. Further evidence of areca palm plantations and even export of betel pepper leaves to Mainland China is noted by Jiang Shu-Ru (2002, 79). The first urban center that formed in Tainan, called “Taiwan County,” was surrounded by two major areca palm plantations. Areca nuts were transported to the county market daily. … Millions of jin of betel pepper leaves were exported from Taiwan to China. 78 The occupation of “betel nut seller” is noted in the 1788 Records of the Imperial Conquering of Taiwan (欽定平台灣記略 Qing ding ping Taiwan ji lue) to the effect that solders who had no money to do other businesses would sell betel nuts and cookies on the streets, or offer services to weave or repair straw shoes. Since selling betel nuts did not require any special skills or investment, it was well-suited for the newly arrived Han immigrants to start their own businesses. One particularly successful family who began with a betel nut vending business upon emigrating from Xiamen, Fujian was the Chen family of Zhang-hua. Chen Wu, the first generation to emigrate from the Mainland, started his career by selling betel nuts and ended up as a wealthy man. The Chen family house, built in 1846, is still preserved as a national monument today (Jiang Shu-Ru 2002, 82). In Qing Taiwan, areca palm plantations and betel nut vendors were taxed and even the Siraya, who planted areca palms around their houses, were taxed, categorized as “miscellaneous tax” according to average annual areca nut production for the region. Various standards for tax calculation, based on the value of areca palms and betel pepper leaves at different stages of maturity were set (Jiang Shu-Ru 2002, 85). The old records and contracts show that areca palms surrounding Siraya households had become “private property,” and indicate that these early “non-Han” peoples of western Taiwan also grew areca palms for commercial purposes; since they hired workers to harvest their areca nuts, huge profits were likely made selling the nuts (Jiang Shu-Ru 2002, 87). Even on the southeastern coast of Taiwan, areca palm plantations were noted in the Zhang-hua Gazetteer by 1848. The specific area of 79 description is not known, though it seems to be the Beinan River Valley, which is present-day Taitung City. Moving hundreds of kilometers toward southeast [from Tainan?] there is a place facing the Pacific Ocean to the east, called Ba-nan-mi. There is a long opening between the mountain and ocean, which if someday is developed for rice plantations, great profits and tax revenue can be generated. Local products like areca nuts and yam are found everywhere. Sometimes, boats from other counties arrive there for trading, where Han Chinese acquire deer horns and dried deer meat from the natives, and no money is accepted, only barter. [quoted in Jiang Shu-Ru 2002, 80] This reference indicates two interesting findings. First, the native peoples of the southeast coastal area (likely Amis, Puyuma, and perhaps Paiwan) had already developed plantations of areca nut before their integration into Taiwan Han society, and second, that maritime trade was being conducted in the southeastern coastal area where only unassimilated Austronesian language-speaking peoples (sheng fan) lived, all outside of Qing state control. For how many previous generations and with whom these southeastern coastal peoples traded is not known. However, it is likely that a maritime trade in the Western Pacific linked them with Chinese, Japanese, and the earlier mentioned “Visayan” pirates (from Cebu, Philippines) for centuries. Further archaeological research at the Beinan site in Taitung could reveal the extent and time-depth of the trade, and could perhaps reveal more concrete evidence for betel nut chewing in the area. So far the only evidence, as mentioned above (Lian Zhao-mei 1989) claims a betel nut chewing culture dating back to between 5,300 to 2,300 years ago, but remains inconclusive since it is based solely on interpretation of tooth wear patterns on skeletal remains. 80 In Hainan under the Qing Dynasty, Han immigration to Hainan increased, as did assimilation of the Li people. Han immigrants settled villages in the interior mountains of Hainan, including Wuzhishan, and many intermarried with assimilated Li people. Most of the Li living in coastal areas became thoroughly sinicized, and eventually indistinguishable from Han. Confucian education was bolstered throughout the island, and the former Ming tax structure was modified. Formal tribute to the Qing emperor included a fragrant wood used for incense (agar), areca nut, specialty items (turtle shells, etc.), wax, and pearls. Taxes were also levied on the burgeoning wine-making industry, and mining operations were opened. By 1685, Haikou became the main port of trade, operated by the Guangzhou Customs Office. The Qing state’s tax policy included reforms that eliminated the former Ming “head tax” on individuals, but instead taxed farmland. The main tax revenue from Hainan during the Qing came from areca nut, at 38% of the total. Areca nut was also exported from Hainan during the Qing to Guangzhou, from where it was traded throughout the mainland (Yang De-Chun 1988, 129-140). During the 1880s, for the first time Hainan’s imports exceeded its exports because of British imports of opium. In 1886, opium constituted 64.7% of total imports; in 1890 opium made up only 30% of total imports (Yang De-Chun 1988, 141). Before and after the era of opium imports, Hainan was and would remain an agricultural and raw materials export-based economy (2006). On the southern Chinese mainland during the Qing Dynasty, literary evidence indicates the continuing practice of betel nut chewing. Pong Shun-Ju (b. 1631 – d. 1700), a Qing Dynasty poet, wrote the following verse describing life in Ling-Nan, the 81 region “south of the mountains” (present-day Guangdong and Guangxi). The poem describes how southern people used burned clam shell paste to paint the walls of their houses, and also mentions betel nut as a local specialty. A creek enters a pond at a concubine’s house. A straw hat with rattan door and clamshell pasted walls. Remember to come inside the shade of the banyan tree, When you have time to enjoy a chew of betel nut. 12 Betel nut was still included in the traditional Han and non-Han Guangzhou wedding custom during the Qing Dynasty. The bride’s family’s prescribed return gift included betel nut, whether or not the groom’s family had given betel nut. The groom had to provide chickens which represent the energetic life-force, coconuts which represent grandfather and sons and family bliss, and a wedding cake given to the bride’s female relatives to share, along with money to demonstrate his wealth and prove that his wife would not have to suffer from poverty. Upon receiving these gifts from the groom, the bride’s family returns gifts that included betel nut. Recent research conducted on the annals of the counties in Guangdong province during the Qing Dynasty conducted by Yu Siyan (2005), has mapped the distribution of areca nut and betel pepper production as well as the presence of betel nut in wedding customs in Guangdong. Yu Siyan found that temperature was the most important factor that affected the boundaries of areca nut use in weddings. The custom of using areca nut in weddings was broadly retained throughout Guangdong, with 79.3% of counties using areca nut in wedding customs (see Figure 7). 12 Quoted in Liang Shou-zhong (梁守中), “The Local Characteristics of Lingnan Juzhi V erse” (嶺南竹枝詞的地方色彩 Ling nan ju zhi ci de defang secai). Available Online. 2006 <http://www.gzsdfz.org.cn/ycjg/lbyw/lbyw038.htm> 82 Figure 7: Distribution of Production of Areca Nut and Betel Leaf and Presence of Betel Nut in Wedding Customs in Guangdong during the Qing Dynasty. The northern boundary of areca nut use during wedding custom was drawn at roughly 24 degrees North latitude, including most of Guangdong Province. The northern extent of betel pepper production was drawn at roughly 23 degrees North latitude, but continued rising north along the coastal region toward Fujian province. The northern extent of areca nut production was drawn at roughly 22 degrees North latitude, including only the Leizhou Peninsula and the southern coast of Guangdong. One major finding indicated the relation between the southeastern extents of snowfall with the northern extent of the presence of betel nut in wedding customs. In other words, where it snows, betel nut tends to not be included in wedding customs. 83 Discussion of Prehistoric and Early Historical Sources on Betel Nut Chewing So far in this chapter we have traced the history of betel nut chewing from prehistoric times up to the end of the Qing Dynasty (in 1912) in the region of Southern China, and found betel nut chewing as an integrated cultural practice throughout the southern coastal Chinese mainland and the islands of Hainan and Taiwan. Specifically, we have shown that emperors and imperial nobles of the various Chinese dynasties from the Han through the Qing chewed betel nut as an exotic privilege. In the later dynasties, more and more Han Chinese began chewing betel nut as they moved south. In the Tang Dynasty, Buddhist monks who traveled to India, as well as those who remained in China were often betel nut chewers. In the Song Dynasty, as more Han Chinese officials moved south into Guangdong, they became chewers themselves and furthered the sinicization of the southern peoples. The Ming medical encyclopedia mentions the health benefits of chewing betel nut to ward off miasma-related diseases, and even those Chinese doctors who were critical of such claims admitted that betel nut chewing “lowers the qi” and aides with digestion. As the “southern tribes” (descendants of the “Bai-Yue barbarians”) became ever more sinicized during the Qing Dynasty, even a majority of “Han Chinese” counties in Guangdong were using betel nut in wedding ceremonies. In Hainan, the Han immigrants adopted the habit of betel nut chewing just as those in Guangdong. Han immigrants to Taiwan developed a reportedly even more severe chewing habit, justified at first for protection from miasma, and then fully expressed and integrated into social habits and customs. Betel nut was first commoditized and taxed in both Taiwan and Hainan in the period of 84 capitalist development during the Ming Dynasty, and economic production of areca nut and betel pepper continued through the Qing in both islands. Sometime between the end of the Qing Dynasty and the 1980s, however, betel nut chewing stopped completely in Guangdong and throughout the mainland of the PRC, but remained only in Hainan and Taiwan (with the sole exception of “dried” betel nut chewing in Hunan, discussed above and in Section 4). With such a long and continuous cultural history of betel nut chewing in southern China, how could the practice be completely abandoned in the Chinese mainland? We will now turn to the evidence in the modern historical period, after the end of the Qing Dynasty, to address this question and trace the more recent history of betel nut chewing in Taiwan and Hainan. 85 Chapter 3: Modern History of Betel Nut Chewing in Taiwan and Hainan This dissertation’s primary focus is on Taiwan and Hainan, yet the previous chapter has delved into southern Chinese history for the purpose of contextualizing the betel nut chewing habits and traditions in the islands relative to the mainland. Now it is clear that betel nut chewing traditions among Han Chinese in Hainan and coastal Guangdong, as well as among Han Chinese in Taiwan and coastal Fujian, share common historical roots. Under the Qing Dynasty, betel nut chewing in southern China, Hainan, and Taiwan were widespread, and the incorporation of betel nut in wedding customs was noted in all these places. At the turn of the twentieth century, however, Taiwan became a colony of Japan, while Hainan was host to competing gangs of warlords fighting the Chinese state as well as each other. It is during this period that betel nut chewing was severely restricted in the southern Chinese region. Perhaps the influence of the opium trade and then tobacco imports by the British in the mid to late 1800s and the political chaos of the early 20 th century could explain some why betel nut chewing vanished from the southern Chinese mainland, as it could have been “replaced” with other “modern” commercialized and socially acceptable (in the case of tobacco, not opium) psychoactive substances. Perhaps the influence of the Maoist collectivization and the subsequent famines of the 1950s, and the totalitarian mania of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s was the final breakdown of betel nut chewing culture in Guangdong. The scope of the present research is not sufficiently large to address that particular question, but it would be interesting for future researchers to investigate. 86 Betel nut chewing did in fact survive in one of mainland China’s provinces, Hunan, into the present, though the style of chewing is nothing like that of Hainan or Taiwan. In Hunan, dried betel nut imported from Hainan is chewed. It is not reported to be used ritually, however, since I have not conducted research there, I am not in a place to comment much on the Hunan style of betel nut chewing. Looking at the history of Hunan betel nut chewing, however, it seems that it could have escaped extinction during the Cultural Revolution since it was not associated with elites, no “unsanitary” and “unsightly” spitting is necessary when chewing Xiangtan-style dried betel nut (so it is easier to chew “secretly”), and the source of production remained within the “nation” (that is, in Hainan), where it could be domestically acquired, not for profit, but in line with the Maoist ideology of collective goodwill. Or perhaps Hainan areca nuts could have been smuggled into Hunan and used in such a small scale (and secretly) that it was not noticed by the authorities. By the 1980s, Xiangtan (Hunan) betel nut could be heralded as an ingenious effort at a “locally based commercial enterprise” during the time when it indeed spread throughout Hunan. Suffice to note this is a question for future research. 1 In Hainan, betel nut chewing and areca nut and betel pepper production continued after the Qing Dynasty, through the early Republican (ROC) period, and although 1 The case of Hunan betel nut chewing is noteworthy and would make for productive future research. Could chewing the Xiangtan-style dried betel nut, a fully commoditized product that looks like individually wrapped hard candies and lasts up to one year without spoiling, spread throughout China or even to Western Europe or the Americas nowadays? Perhaps it could, but the barriers to international trade and the myriad issues with the unknown but potentially cancer-causing ingredients in betel nut, even in dried form, would make the legal import to North America or Europe very costly and difficult, not to mention the issues for restriction of access to “minors” that would arise in Western contexts, especially of a product that so much resembles candy. 87 areca palm plantations decreased in the early Maoist period from the 1950s through the 1970s, betel nut production has been booming ever since the late 1980s when Hainan was made its own province and declared a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Hainan was able to hold onto its betel nut chewing culture through the Cultural Revolution, perhaps because of its already peripheral position within the PRC, and the fact that areca nut was defined as one of four “Southern Medicinal Herbs” (discussed further below). The situation for betel nut chewing in Taiwan is doubly unique as compared to that of Guangdong, Hunan, or Hainan owing to fifty years of Japanese Colonialism (1895-1945) immediately followed by forty years of Chinese Nationalist (ROC/KMT) martial law (1947-1987). To understand the current state of betel nut chewing culture in Taiwan, it is necessary to explore in more depth this 90 year period, to which we now turn. Japanese Colonial Occupation of Taiwan After the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the Qing Dynasty signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki that ceded the islands of Taiwan and Penghu to Japan. Upon arrival in Taiwan, the Japanese found a majority Han population, speakers of Hakka and Min-nan languages, along with sinicized (former non-Han) who were taxed under the Qing Dynasty and called “plains aborigines” (ping pu zu) living along the western plains. All these people, as their compatriots in the southern Chinese mainland, practiced foot-binding for women, wore a characteristic hairstyle with a single long 88 braid for men (called a queue), and many were addicted to opium and/or were betel nut chewers. All of these habits and customs were scheduled for eradication. Shortly after their arrival in Taiwan, the Japanese set up a special government committee to suppress the chewing of betel nuts. They still felt disgust toward the popular habit of chewing betel nut, not just aesthetically, but also for its perceived threat to public health. The Office of the Governor-General (OGG) enforced a ban on the chewing of betel nut by ordering areca palm plantations cut down in mass (Jiang Shu-Ru 2002, 76). This marks the first time in the history of Taiwan that state power was used to stop betel nut chewing, and it was effective. During Japanese occupation, betel nut chewing as a “fashion” or “habit” was weakened dramatically, especially in the western plains. The formerly unregulated betel nut industry that had developed in response to local demand was destroyed. Individual families in rural areas could only keep and plant so many areca palm trees on their plots of land as could fit along the borders of their rice paddies, next to their houses, or perhaps on neighboring hillsides. According to a Japanese census in 1905, around 1.2% of Taiwan’s population was identified as “unassimilated aborigines” (高砂族 gao sha zu). These formerly “non-taxed” inhabitants of Taiwan had been referred to by the Qing state as “uncivilized barbarians” (sheng fan), and the Japanese had changed their designation to “unassimilated aborigines,” and instigated a policy of assimilation into the new Japanese colonial society through both force and education. Anthropological research among the “aborigines” (gao sha zu) began in the Japanese period, sponsored by the OGG and carried out by Japanese anthropologists 89 and linguists, Detailed field reports, collection of ethnohistories, and linguistic studies identified nine Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan, including eight “Formosan” languages (Atayal, Saisiat, Bunun, Tsou, Rukai, Amis, Puyuma, and Paiwan) spoken on Taiwan island, and one “Batanic” language (Yami) spoken on what is present-day “Orchid Island” (Lanyu). Between 1930 and 1933, the Institute of Ethnology at Taihoku Imperial University (present-day National Taiwan University), was sponsored by the OGG to conduct a systematic research project including all Austronesian language- speaking groups in Taiwan, which resulted in the completion of what is still respected as “one of the most brilliant achievements in ethnohistory written by Japanese scholars” (Shimizu 2000, 187), called The Formosan Native Tribes: A Genealogical and Classificatory Study (1935). One of the collaborators, Mabuchi Toichi later published an abridged version called “Genealogy of the Taiwan Natives” (1935), summarizing the major findings which initiated the Japanese Journal of Ethnology in the same year. Contemporary Austronesian studies in Taiwan are based on this initial research (see Figure 8). These ethno-linguistic categories were applied to speakers of Austronesian languages in Taiwan, and for the convenience of the OGG, speakers of each language were identified by their “group” (zoku in Japanese, zu in Chinese, which was unfortunately later translated into English as “tribe” even though the original Japanese ethnographers did not use such a term). With the exception of the Yami language-speakers, all the other “aborigines” still practiced headhunting. The Atayal language-speakers practiced facial tattooing and tooth-knocking (removal of teeth at 90 the rite of passage to adulthood). The Amis, Puyuma, Paiwan, and Yami language- speakers of southeastern Taiwan all had traditional betel nut chewing cultures. Figure 8: Taiwan Ethnolinguistic Map. 91 Informed by ethnographic reports, education for the gao sha zu included the stigmatization and eventual elimination of former “barbaric” customs that held no potential for the economic growth of Japan, including headhunting, facial tattooing, ear piercing, tooth-knocking, and betel nut chewing (Chang Shu-mei 2005, 9). Education through primary school was compulsory for all Japanese nationals resident in Taiwan, and at first voluntary for Taiwanese and Aboriginals. Schools were segregated by these three groups until 1941 (Huang Fu-san 2005, Ch. 6). Under the Japanese, colonial society was sharply divided between two primary classes: the colonial administration and its subjects. In contrast to the Qing period which never sought much administrative control over the whole of Taiwan, especially in the areas inhabited by the “barbarians,” Japanese colonial administration became much more stable. Colonial subjects who cooperated with the economic and educational policies of the administration saw a significant improvement in their standard of living. As a result, the population and living standards of Taiwan during the 50 years of Japanese rule both reached unprecedented heights. Roads and railways were constructed around the island, especially to link the sugarcane plantations with ports in the north and south. "Industry for Japan, Agriculture for Taiwan" remained the official slogan until 1930 when industrialization was begun within Taiwan due to Japan’s increasing military needs as it was invading mainland China and elsewhere throughout Asia, including Hainan. In a study of Taiwan’s agricultural industry conducted by Tsai Ping-lee (n.d., 2006), the following statistics for areca nut production during the Japanese period were presented. In 1921, there were an estimated one million areca palm trees growing 92 in Taiwan, with a population of around 3.5 million people, which is an average of three and a half residents per areca palm tree. During this period the value of areca nut production exceeded that of mango production. From 1921 through the end of Japanese administration, areca nut production rapidly decreased, so that in 1943 there was an average of only one areca palm tree for every 21 people, which marked the lowest production of areca nut in Taiwan’s recorded history. After 1945, production of areca nut increased 60% but by 1960 was still only .064% of agricultural production. For the fifty years that Taiwan was colonized by Japan, while betel nut chewing was suppressed, areca nut continued to be cultivated in small scale by “aboriginals,” including at least the Amis, Puyuma, and Yami and perhaps others, and its memory continued in the social imagination of Han elders, long enough to bridge the end of Japanese occupation and the return of a free and unregulated betel nut industry in the following period. Early Twentieth Century Hainan (1900-1945) For Hainan, the first fifty years of the twentieth century were characterized by political chaos, almost continuous warfare, and economic instability. The fall of the Qing Dynasty and the rise of the Republic of China in 1911-12 ushered in several decades of local warlords vying for power in southern China. While the Japanese imposed strict and total authoritarian rule in Taiwan, groups of vigilantes roamed the countryside of the southern Chinese mainland and Hainan. Military leaders battled each other in Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong (including Hainan), and tried to convince peasants to grow cash crops of opium and tobacco to finance ongoing battles. Officially, the Republic of China became the central power of China in 1911, with their headquarters in Nanjing. 93 Unofficially, the country was in shambles. In contrast to the situation in Taiwan, in Hainan betel nut chewing cultural traditions continued unbridled through this chaotic period, even after the Japanese eventually occupied the island in 1939. Japanese occupation of Hainan lasted for only six years, 1939 to 1945. While in Hainan, the Japanese focused on extracting minerals and lumber, and built a railroad connecting a mine in the western hinterlands running along the west coast to the southern port in Sanya, from where they shipped the resources back to Japan. Although Japan planned to extend the railroad into the northern parts of Hainan, eventually to connect to Haikou, it was not completed by the end of the Second World War, and even during my fieldwork (over fifty years later) still only connected Sanya to the small western coastal port of Dong-fang (also called Ba-suo). Moreover, Japan did not suppress the plantation of areca palm in Hainan, and so the habit of chewing betel nut continued into the post-war years. Throughout this tumultuous fifty years in Hainan, betel nut chewing, areca palm plantations, merchant transactions, and markets largely evaded government regulation. Corrupt local officials, however, continued to maintain powerful positions. Betel nut was being chewed by local islanders, given as gifts and produced and consumed as commodities in the markets, while it no doubt maintained its traditional significance in engagement and wedding rituals, was integrated into local markets, and continued to be taxed and exported. 94 The Legacy of War and New Beginnings: Taiwan and Hainan (1945 to 1987) A portrait of betel nut chewing culture in Taiwan and Hainan in the early 1950s reveals sharp contrast. In Hainan, men and women of Han and non-Han descent were all chewing, as betel nut circulated in the gift economy and commodity markets. In Taiwan, however, only so-called “Aborigines” were chewing betel nut that they planted and harvested themselves in household gardens. After fifty years of no betel nut in Taiwan’s markets, betel nut lost its former commodity status and remained only a (even more precious) gift and ritual object among “Aboriginal” communities in southeastern Taiwan. For both Taiwan and Hainan, the end of the Second World War in 1945 marked another turbulent period that coincided with intense civil war on the Chinese mainland between the reigning Nationalists (KMT) and Communist (CCP) revolutionaries. When Japan was defeated by the Allied Forces in 1945 and ordered to return Taiwan to China, the Republic of China (ROC) was the officially recognized government, and so it sent troops to claim the island under its jurisdiction as Taiwan Province of the ROC. In 1947, Taiwan was put under ROC martial law which continued until 1987. After losing the civil war to the CCP in the mainland in 1949, the ruling party of the ROC, the Kuomintang (KMT) led by General Chiang Kai-shek (aka, Jiang Jieshi), fled to Taiwan with the whole KMT military and supporting staff, and the ROC became a “government in exile” in Taiwan. In the same year, Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the leadership of the CCP, including all of the former provinces of the Republic of China, except for Taiwan. Upon the arrival of the KMT to Taiwan, betel nut was mainly chewed by Amis, Puyuma, Paiwan, and Yami language-speakers in southeastern Taiwan. As a result betel 95 nut chewing was associated with “Aboriginal” customs. Over the next few decades, the habit was again taken up by Han Chinese and other sinicized “Plains Aborigines” (pingpu). Betel nut chewing would thus become a kind of social class marker in Taiwan, as will be explained in the following chapter. At this point, suffice to note that the KMT state paid little attention to internal dynamics of Taiwan, and enforced no regulations on planting areca palm. Gradually over the following two decades (1950s-1960s) as Taiwan-born Han Chinese farmers and entrepreneurs began interacting with Taiwan Indigenous people, they encountered betel nut again, and also took up the habit. This time around, under the KMT government, there were no taxes levied on betel nut, either on production, wholesale, or retail. The KMT government’s official policy on betel nut called “The Three No’s Policy” (san bu zheng che) provided no government incentives for production, no government instruction on planting, and no government funding for farmers who grew areca palm trees (Wang Shu-Gui 1999). Thus, those interested in planting areca palms were free to do so. When demand for betel nut rose, the potential profits from planting areca palms outweighed those of other crops, and Han farmers opened areca palm plantations throughout southern Taiwan at an unprecedented scale beginning in the late 1970s and continuing through the 1980s. By the 1980s, vast plantations of areca palms filled the hillsides of the tropical central and southern counties from Nantou to Pingtung, as producers struggled to keep up with rising demand. Betel nut was again fully commoditized in Taiwan, but not regulated or taxed. And this time around, among the Han betel nut chewers, there remained no traditional or ritual use of betel nut in local culture. Only among the Indigenous betel nut 96 chewers did the traditional social and ritual significance of betel nut remain. For urban Han in northern Taiwan, it seemed that betel nut chewers were only laborers, truckers, or farmers, all of the lowest socio-economic status, and mostly from the south, below the Tropic of Cancer. By the 1980s, for the first time in Taiwan, betel nut chewing was marking social class and ethnic identity boundaries. Meanwhile, in Hainan, as it underwent the Maoist collectivization and modernization projects, betel nut chewing continued among locals, Han and non-Han, men and women, and young and old alike. Perhaps betel nut chewing was able to survive the Cultural Revolution in Hainan (but interestingly, not in mainland Guangdong) because it was not considered to be connected with “superstitious” (or religious) beliefs (though it actually was and remains so today), and also was not associated with elite lifestyles, but was a common part of life for “hard-working farmers,” the new “heroes” of Maoist China. In fact, areca nut continued to be locally produced as a “Southern Medicinal Herb” throughout the PRC years. The following report issued in 1980 by the Ledong County Agricultural Planning Report, collected and published by the Hainan Island Tropical Agricultural Planning and Integration Team, indicates the situation of areca palm plantations in Hainan during the Maoist period. Areca nut is one of the major “Southern Medicinal Herb” plantations in Hainan Island. Currently [in 1980], we still need to import [areca nuts] from foreign sources to meet the people’s medicinal demands. In the mountainous areas, the minorities still have a betel nut chewing habit, and betel nuts are precious wedding gifts, so the needed quantity is great. Before liberation in Ledong County, Huang-liu Commune Bao-yi and Bao-er teams had areca nut plantations of 1,000 mu [1 mu = 100 square meters]. It was said that in the old society, “one dan [50 kg] of areca nuts equals nine baskets of rice, and nine dan of areca nuts are enough for one to chew for the rest 97 of one’s life,” which indicates that areca nut plantations were lucrative. After liberation, when the agricultural system became cooperative, all the areca palms became government property, and were sometimes cut down or damaged severely. Now there are only 1,000 to 2,000 mother trees [in the commune in Ledong County] that produce 10,000 areca nuts. Besides, there were small-scale areca palm plantations, but the production was very low, and there was nothing left over for the government. Because of the lack of responsibility to attend to the needs of the areca palm plantation, people stole the harvest all the time, from flowering to fruiting. Areca palms have strict requirements of water and fertilizer, and so are suitable to plant on both sides of rivers and low valleys in between hills. In order to develop areca nut production, Ledong County Medicinal Supplier Company had produced 30,000 areca palm seedlings in Chung-zhi Commune, and plans to produce areca nuts in combination of collectively and individually managed plantations. [We] should plant areca palm in large scale. Ledong had old areca palm plantations covering 60 mu, which produced 300,000 to 400,000 nuts on average per year. If we actively produce seedlings for the next five years in the nursery, we can make at least 100,000 to 200,000 areca palm seedlings per year. If we develop 100 to 200 mu per year, we will develop 500 to 1,000 mu by 1985. [p. 272-274] This report confirms the continued practice of betel nut chewing and its status as a wedding gift among the “minority” (non-Han) communities of Hainan, which included Li, Miao, and Utsat. Most significantly, it proves that areca palm plantations continued through the Maoist period of collectivization, though there was some loss of production initially, communes in Hainan were able to justify their efforts at increasing production because of areca nut’s status as a “Southern Medicinal Herb.” The following reference to areca palm plantations comes from the Hainan Agricultural Planning Report authored by the Hainan Administrative Public Agricultural Planning Committee and collected and edited by the Hainan Island Tropical Agricultural Planning and Integration Team in the early 1990s. It further confirms the situation, and also notes that areca nuts were at that time imported from Southeast Asia. 98 Areca nut was one of the important Southern Medicinal Herb plantations in Hainan, and has thousands of years of plantation history. Areca palm plantations are mainly in the southeastern coastal area and the central mountainous lower moisture valleys. According to the statistics, in 1952 the total plantation of areca palms in Hainan island was 15,000 mu [mu = 100 sq meters], and reached to 27,000 mu in 1958, with the total production of 27,000 dan [dan = 50 kg] of nuts. Because of the interference of Lin Biao and the extreme leftist “Gang of Four” [as a reference to the Cultural Revolution in general, c. 1966-1976], lots of areca palms were cut down. Under the influence of organizational supervisors, areca palm plantations once again have developed. According to statistics from the Hainan Medicinal Herbs Company, from 1952 to 1975, there were 70,000 mu of areca palm plantation in Hainan. In 1975, the total production of [fresh] areca nuts was 1,000 dan and dried areca nuts 2,000 dan [exported to Hunan?]. Because the policies were constantly changing, some people would plant seedlings and others would destroy them at the same time, which definitely effected areca palm plantation development. In 1979, the size of the areca palm plantations reached 23,000 mu. In 1980, research of the first half year showed that areca palms were growing on 14,310 mu, of which the only productive area was 4,000 mu, which had not yet matched the level of production in 1952. Currently [early 1990s], to meet the domestic needs of our nation [PRC], we still must import areca nuts from Southeast Asia in the amount of 50,000 dan annually. From 1980 to 1990, the total areca palm plantation reached 60,000 mu, with 10,000 dan of areca nut [likely per year]. Recommendation: Areca palm plantations should combine both collective and individual management. Members of communes could utilize ground area surrounding their households to plant areca palms. For the areas with a betel nut chewing habit, it is required to encourage commune members to plant areca palm on small pieces of land. The government could charge for providing the seedlings, but the areca palms belong to individual commune members to chew, and they could give the excess areca nuts back to the government. This report gives evidence of the effects of the Cultural Revolution on areca nut plantations in Hainan, and also notes that areca nut was imported from Southeast Asia, most likely Vietnam, to compensate for lack of local production, even in the early 1990s. The Planning Committee’s recommendation was evidently taken, as contemporary southern Hainan is full of areca palm plantations, and even produces in excess of local demand to support the Xiangtan dried betel nut industry in Hunan. 99 The last synchronization of historical turning points in Taiwan and Hainan came in the mid-1980s when KMT martial law was lifted in Taiwan and Hainan was named a Special Economic Zone and became its own province in the PRC. Since then, unbridled capitalism has allowed the betel nut industries in the two islands to develop “naturally,” which means according to their own unique social, political, and economic histories. With this history in mind, we now turn our attention to the current situations of betel nut chewing culture in the two islands, first in Taiwan and next in Hainan. 100 SECTION 3: ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS WITH BETEL NUT IN TAIWAN This section presents ethnographic findings on contemporary betel nut chewing culture in Taiwan, culled from several sessions of fieldwork over the past decade, from 1995 through 2005. It is organized into four thematic chapters. Chapter 4 provides an introduction to gender dynamics, ethnic and socioeconomic status in Taiwan, and explains how betel nut chewing marks certain boundaries and inscribes social and political group membership. Chapter 5 analyzes various myths, rituals, and symbolic meanings of betel nut in Taiwan. Chapter 6 focuses on the production and marketing of betel nut in Taiwan, including the “betel nut beauty” phenomenon. Finally, Chapter 7 examines the current situation of localism, and the ways in which tourist development influences betel nut chewing in Taiwan. 101 Chapter 4: Ethnic, Gender, and Socioeconomic Diversity in Taiwan Ever since my initiation to betel nut chewing in Taiwan in 1995, I thought to make a full study of the phenomenon (see Chapter 1). After completing a master’s thesis on Taiwan Amis cultural performance (Anderson 2000), I oriented to commence ethnographic fieldwork on betel nut in Taiwan and Hainan. I wrote a proposal and received funding from the Fulbright Foundation, and in February 2003, I returned to Taiwan as a U.S. Fulbright research fellow, and affiliated with the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, in Taipei. While I had taken the flight from Los Angeles to Taipei several times before (in 1995, twice in 1998, 1999, and again in 2001), this time was different. I would stay in Taiwan for six months to conduct an in-depth study of betel nut in the whole island. My research agenda was to investigate the significance of betel nut among the Indigenous cultures of Taiwan’s east coast and Orchid Island, and compare that with betel nut chewing traditions and habits among the majority population of “Taiwanese.” Furthermore, I hoped to understand why “Mainlanders” in metropolitan Taipei held the betel nut in such low regard, and explain why it had developed a negative social stigma among them. I was interested to identify how betel nut chewing articulated ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender boundaries in Taiwan. On earlier trips to Taiwan I had noticed that among Indigenous people, both women and men, young and old, all chew betel nut. But, among Taiwanese, only men tend to chew betel nut. Among so-called “Mainlanders” (wai sheng ren), hardly anyone chewed betel nut. I hypothesized that betel nut chewing was an indicator of 102 local island identity, but that still could not explain why Taiwanese women did not chew, or why the recent generations of “Mainlanders” born in Taiwan would not pick up the habit. I sought to identify the significance of betel nut in the local cultural life of these different ethnic communities to sort out the underlying meanings of its evident stigmatization by Mainlanders and Taiwanese women. Cultural Geography of Taiwan Taiwan can be meaningfully considered to have an eastern and western region, with the central mountains serving as a natural boundary, as well as a northern and southern region divided by the Tropic of Cancer. Eastern Taiwan is less urbanized, less accessible, and still characterized by Austronesian language-speaking (Indigenous) cultures of Amis, Puyuma, and Paiwan. The terrain is mountainous with only three relatively small and isolated areas suitable for agricultural development, one in the northeastern county of I-lan, one in the eastern rift valley between Hualien and Taitung, and one in the Beinan river valley that is now Taitung City. Western Taiwan, however, is one large fertile plain that extends from Hsinchu County in the north to Kaohsiung in the south. The area was first developed for agriculture during the Qing Dynasty, and is currently fully developed with two major urban centers, Kaohsiung and Taichung, that have a majority of Taiwanese (Fukien language-speakers) with pockets of Hakka language-speakers in the northern county of Hsinchu and also outside of the major cities of Taichung and Kaohsiung. The two main urban centers in Taiwan, Taipei in the north and Kaohsiung in the south, have developed with different characteristic specializations. Taipei became the 103 seat of the ROC government, the hub of domestic and international communications, and the financial capital of the island. Kaohsiung developed into a southwestern regional “central place” as a port city based on import and export of goods by ocean-going vessels. Ethnic Boundaries Ethnic boundaries (as conceptualized by Fredrik Barth 1969) are negotiated in Taiwan according to patterns of interpersonal interaction and self-conscious group representation. Abrupt periodic shifts in hegemonic power in Taiwan, including that from the Qing Dynasty to Colonial Japan in 1895 and then to the Republic of China (ROC) in 1945 and the ever-penetrating “forces of globalization” in recent decades, have all left their imprints on contemporary generations of people in Taiwan, not only in terms of education and language proficiency and preference, but also in the local consciousness of group boundaries and membership. Ostensibly, Taiwan consists of three distinct Han populations (Taiwanese, Hakka, and Mainlanders) making up around 97% of the population, and twelve (non-Han) Austronesian language-speaking groups (Amis, Puyuma, Paiwan, Rukai, Yami, Bunun, Atayal, Tsou, Saisiyat, Thao, Kavalan and more recently Taroko) making up only 2% of the population. There are also populations of Southeast Asian immigrant workers and “foreign brides,” so many as to warrant Vietnamese supermarkets and a magazine published specifically for Vietnamese brides of Taiwanese men in Kaohsiung in 2006 (Taipei Times, 2006 June 16), as well as a growing presence of Westerners over the 104 past decade, but taken together they all still make up less than 1% of the island’s population of 23 million people. The majority population of Taiwan, consisting of 70% in 2005, describes itself as “Taiwanese.” This group includes descendants of the first Chinese settlers in Taiwan from Fujian Province, and those whose ancestors from Fujian intermarried with Austronesian language-speakers who assimilated with Han immigrants (became “sinicized”) and their descendants in western Taiwan from the Qing Dynasty until the Japanese occupation in 1895. These people speak a Fukienese language (also referred to as Hokien, Holo, or Min-nan) that they call “Taiwanese language” (taiyu) in their own dialect. These peoples’ ancestors in Taiwan all chewed betel nut, and nowadays Taiwanese men still chew betel nut and are the bosses of the betel nut industry. Taiwanese women, however, do not chew betel nut because a social stigma developed against betel nut chewing during the Japanese occupation and followed through the ROC period such that “civilized women” do not chew betel nut. Another significant and distinct population, consisting of around 15% in 2005, identifies itself as “Hakka” (also called “kejia ren” in Mandarin Chinese, meaning “Guest Families”), and speak a language incomprehensible to others in Taiwan. The ancestors of Hakka people emigrated from their remembered homeland in the Yellow River valley of northern China to Guangdong Province and then to Taiwan in several waves beginning in the Qing Dynasty. Communities of Hakka language-speaking people are found today throughout Mainland China, and even in Hainan Island (Feng and Goodman 1997). Group boundaries are maintained by language practice. Exclusively Hakka language-speaking communities are scattered around Taiwan, but 105 concentrated in the northwestern county of Hsinchu. Recently Hakka identity has been celebrated in Taiwan in frequent festivals, and the establishment of their own television channel, called simply Hakka TV. In a similar pattern to the “Taiwanese,” all Hakka people in Taiwan chewed betel nut before Japanese Colonialism, and after the arrival of the ROC, only Hakka men chewed betel nut, while women did not. The descendants of those Han Chinese who arrived to Taiwan with the ROC after the Second World War are referred to as Mainlanders or (wai sheng ren, literally “outside province people”), and make up around 12% of Taiwan’s population as of 2005. Their ancestors came from every province of Mainland China, but most came from the southeastern coastal provinces. The first generation immigrants to Taiwan spoke their local languages as well as Mandarin Chinese. The next and following generations, born in Taiwan, spoke primarily Mandarin Chinese. This group was traditionally not betel nut chewers, and even in the second and third generations tended not to develop the habit of chewing. The non-Han population of Taiwan, generally referred to as “Taiwan Indigenous Peoples” (yuanzhumin), formerly “Formosan Aborigines,” includes speakers of twelve distinct and mutually incomprehensible Austronesian languages. Speakers of the Amis language who live along the eastern coast in Hualien and Taitung counties make up the most numerous population of Indigenous people in Taiwan, estimated at 140,000 in 2003 (Taiwan’s Council of Indigenous Peoples, Executive Yuan). The categorization of languages spoken in Taiwan was undertaken by Japanese ethnographers in the colonial period. Historically, the highest level of social organization among indigenous communities was at the village level (Anderson 2000), 106 although in the last five decades since the arrival of the ROC, and especially since the 1990s when an Indigenous Cultural Renaissance was sponsored by Taiwan’s government, people have come to identify themselves as one of twelve Indigenous groups, as well as “Taiwan Indigenous.” Except for those who lived in the high central mountain, all of the ancestors of the Indigenous people of Taiwan chewed betel nut. The reason those in the central mountains did not chew was for lack of access and trade with coastal peoples. After the modernization and booming of the betel nut industry in the 1980s, Indigenous peoples in the mountains, both men and women, also began chewing betel nut. The majority population of “native Taiwanese” (bensheng ren) includes two language-speaking communities that are considered Han Chinese, the Taiwanese and Hakka, as well as contemporary assimilated descendants of speakers of Austronesian languages who were once considered non-Han. Since both of the hegemonic powers that ruled Taiwan in the twentieth century, the Japanese and the ROC, were not betel nut chewers, and Japanese Colonial authorities systematically cut down areca palm plantations and replaced them with rice fields or other crops for export to Japan, after the ROC took control of Taiwan, potential areca nut farmers were left to their own means. This “break” in hegemonic control over betel nut production, along with the ease of production and the lucrative income, would soon make possible a boom in areca nut plantations, which would remain untaxed and unregulated even to date in 2006. Local “Native Taiwanese” (but not Indigenous) islanders ran all aspects of the betel nut industry in Taiwan, which directly correlated with all kinds of illicit activity 107 of “gangsters,” while the newly arrived ROC ran the government, infrastructure, and global-commercial and educational industries. Taipei: Portrait of the Capital City Taipei is an ethnically diverse, even “multicultural” city, not only in terms of its language diversity, but also its different enclaves of foreigners from Southeast Asia and elsewhere. There are temporary and long-term residents from Africa, Europe, and South America, and even “foreign” spouses from the People’s Republic of China and Vietnam. The so-called “Mainlanders” are not from the PRC, since they left Mainland China before the PRC existed. It is significant that except for those 1,020,000 people fleeing the Chinese Mainland with the KMT from 1945 to 1949, of which 600,000 were military (60%) and the rest were government workers or teachers (Huang Fu-shan, n.d.), there has been no legal immigration from Mainland China to Taiwan during the entire twentieth century, for over one hundred years, except for recent “foreign spouses,” almost exclusively female. Taiwan’s total population after the immigration of the KMT became 9 million in 1949 and is currently around 23 million. The rise in population is not due to immigration, but to internal population growth alone. In other words, since the KMT fled to Taiwan, there has not been any sizable immigration of populations to the island. Fieldwork in Taipei With the help of the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, who also sponsored my research in Taiwan, I found an apartment in urban Taipei on a small 108 street with no less than three betel nut vending shops, in a community of Taiwanese (Fukien) language-speakers. Contrary to my earlier experiences in Taipei, I found that people of this community were heavy betel nut chewers, and betel nut actually played a very significant role in their lives. The owner of one of the betel nut shops, Mr. Guo, was essentially the eyes and ears of the neighborhood. Nothing escaped his attention, especially my arrival. I introduced myself and my project, and he was happy to help explain what he knew about the betel nut industry in Taiwan and the local situation. I could tell that he was the local depository for neighborhood gossip, and suspected perhaps even the local “mafia boss” when my friend who helped me move in added, “Please look after him.” The day I arrived was by chance marked with explosions of firecrackers and drums beating in rapid succession with all manner of cymbals clanging in cacophonous clamor. My first trip outside, down 48 steps to the alley floor, was to investigate the source of the noise. I followed the sounds into the local park, which was atop the subway system, where hundreds of people were gathered, congregated outside a temple. The drummers had moved into the temple plaza, and several men were holding a shiny metal sculpture of a seated human form decorated with flowers atop a sedan chair, touring the temple. It was the birthday of a local god who evidently lived at a nearby temple. I later found out that gods customarily visit local affiliate temples on their birthdays. Even though Taipei is a “postmodern” metropolis, it is still governed locally at the neighborhood level through temples. Taiwanese temples are a blend of Taoist and Buddhist influence with Confucian elements informing the ethos of neighborhood as 109 family. Each temple has a primary god, and up to dozens of secondary, tertiary, supporting, and other gods. In my neighborhood there were over ten temples within a few blocks’ walk. Other recently developed parts of Taipei, such as the former military bases, have no temples but have become purely commercial districts with rows upon rows of apartment buildings. These newly developed areas tend toward more reliance upon the legislated laws of society, and the intervention of professional police to implement them. Taiwanese communities like my neighborhood are scattered throughout Taipei City, identifiable by their intricately engraved and brightly painted wooden carvings of dragons and phoenixes on the buttresses of their temples, their daily outdoor fresh vegetable markets, and the smell of “stinky tofu” (chou doufu) that permeates the thick humid air in the early evenings. In these enclaves of Taipei, there are usually betel nut kiosks and stores, operated by respectable local couples who become responsible for more than selling betel nut. When something happens in the neighborhood, at any hour of the day or night, people can ask the betel nut vendor for a summary, or even details if inclined. Even local police know that the best witness to a crime, or lead on a case, is the betel nut vendor. He or she sits in a corner location watching the happenings of the street from sunrise to midnight or even later, and chats casually with all the neighbors as they pass by, especially all the men when they buy betel nut. The betel nut vendor knows when people leave for a trip, have business here or there, their daily schedules, even when they are not feeling well. He or she celebrates their triumphs and consoles them through their defeats. The betel nut vendor can become as reliable as a friend or family 110 member, someone who can always make a connection in time of need, much like a secretary in a corporation, the keeper of secrets. And so, one power of the betel nut vendor is the choice of when to reveal what knowledge and to whom. Everyday when I left the apartment, I first visited Mr. Guo and his wife at their shop, “Imperial Betel Nut” (diguo binlang zhan), bought betel nut, and chatted with them and their customers who used the shop as a local rest-stop. The neighborhood was predominantly Taiwanese, so when Mr. Guo and his wife would chat with customers, they usually used “Taiwanese language” unless I was there, for my benefit they would speak in Mandarin Chinese, or at least translate for me interesting points spoken in Taiwanese. Mr. and Mrs. Guo knew my daily schedule, when I dropped off my laundry and picked it up, where I ate lunch and dinner, which friends I invited to my apartment, and when I went on trips to other places in the island. My neighborhood in Taipei was adjacent to what used to be the rest and relaxation district for Japanese soldiers stationed in Taiwan during the occupation. The area had continued with that “R & R” specialty during the Cold War occupation of the United States military. Unlike the bars I was used to in the university district of Taipei where students would congregate to meet and exchange stories, the bars in this district were designed for single men. Inside each establishment were several young women, dressed in provocative and revealing outfits, whose job was to accompany and chat with the clientele of “single” (at least for the moment) men. Some of the hostesses were from Taiwan, but just as many were from Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Thailand, and The Philippines, and had come to Taiwan with three-year work visas to earn money that they would send home to their families in rural villages. For these 111 hostesses, one month of work in these bars could earn over a year of income in their native country, and that is after paying for their own living expenses in Taipei. At night the streets and bars filled with clientele, mostly Western foreigners and Nigerians temporarily working in Taipei, but also Japanese tourists and some local Taiwanese businessmen. These kinds of bars, I would later find out, are frequented by businessmen who are trying to secure international deals. They take their foreign clients out to “show them a good time” with the hopes of signing a contract. During the day, my neighborhood bustled with activity. People walked the streets and shopped in the outdoor markets or the local shopping mall. During rush hour, cars and motorscooters filled the streets while children walked home from school dressed in their uniforms. Betel nut was sold literally at every corner by vendors with small portable kiosks or in street-front shops such as Imperial Betel Nut. The only people chewing betel nut, however, were adult men. Even Mr. Guo’s wife, a betel nut vendor, did not chew. Betel Nut in Taipei Public Transportation The local subway station was only one block from my apartment, so it was very convenient for me to get around Taipei City. I would make frequent trips to the university neighborhood called Gong-guan to meet with friends I had known from previous visits. On the subway train, I noticed that no one was chewing betel nut, and in fact, part of the message on the running marquis indicated that spitting betel nut juice was punishable with a fine. Another interesting phenomenon on the subway was that the announcement of the next station through the loudspeakers was in four 112 languages: Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, and English. It was impossible to guess which language someone spoke just by looking at them, but evidently there was a much wider diversity of local ethno-linguistic heritage in Taipei than it seems. While the message prohibiting spitting betel nut juice was in Chinese, no such message was translated into English. Instead, the English message prohibited chewing gum. Later on, evidently after some people kept chewing betel nut on the subways without spitting, the Chinese message changed to “no chewing betel nut” instead of “no spitting betel nut juice.” The official language of Taiwan has been Mandarin Chinese since the arrival of the ROC in 1945, yet the majority of the population is native Taiwanese language speakers. While most people are conversant in Mandarin, especially the generations younger than forty years old, many elders never learned to speak Mandarin, though they can read Chinese characters and pronounce them in their native language, either Taiwanese or Hakka. Although the generation of elders who are over sixty years old can speak Japanese fluently as a result of their education under Japanese occupation, instead of simply broadcasting in Mandarin and Japanese, the Taiwan transportation authorities decided to use the two other languages as well. This shows a concern with local ethno-nationalism that in this case outweighs convenience. English is evidently included for the benefit of foreign workers or English-speaking tourists, but also is useful for local people, especially children who are usually required to learn some English, to hear some spoken English on their daily commutes. 113 English Teachers and Other Foreigners in Taiwan There is a sizable population of American ex-patriats living in Taipei, and they have even established their own community in the northern suburbs of Taipei, the district of Tian-mu, where there is an “American school” to teach their children the equivalent of an education in the United States. Some Taiwanese also send their children to this American school with the hopes that it will broaden and increase their children’s chances for success in the ever-globalizing Taiwanese society. As a result, the demand for English language instructors in Taiwan has also been rising over the past decade. This has attracted “English teachers” from all over the world to Taiwan. On any busy street in Taipei, there is usually at least one “Westerner” walking along. Usually local Taiwanese will assume that he or she is an English teacher, as is usually the case. The English teachers who I met in Taiwan were from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Canada, and the United States, some even from Israel. They had all come to Taiwan specifically to earn money that they would use to support their further travels in Southeast Asia. With very few exceptions, they did not speak Chinese language, and usually had no interest in Taiwan’s local culture. In fact, to my amazement, many of them held a kind of disdain for Taiwanese people (though this has changed over the years). Once they had my captive attention, I would inevitably find myself listening to an endless stream of complaints. If they worked at a school, they would complain about the administrative structure, or the lack of interest among students. If they worked for a family as a private tutor, they would complain about frequent cancellations or the lack of income to support their basic necessities living in 114 Taipei. After a few interactions, it became clear that these foreigners were not “teachers” at all, but backpacking travelers who aimed to leave Taiwan as soon as possible with fatter wallets for sunnier skies in Southeast Asia. Another group of foreigners in Taipei were students carrying out research projects or learning Mandarin Chinese or Taiwanese languages at universities. None of these students taught English, and all of them had a primary motivation and deep interest in Taiwanese culture, which is what had brought them to Taiwan in the first place. This group preferred not to congregate among themselves, but rather to integrate themselves with local people. The group of Fulbright fellows, for instance, gathered only a few times during our stay in Taiwan, otherwise we tended to immerse ourselves in local culture. East and West Taipei Downtown Taipei is marked by the central railroad station. The city is divided into East Taipei and West Taipei. My neighborhood was in central Taipei, just north of the train station. West Taipei has a more historic and traditional feel about it. East Taipei is the central receptor of global culture that screams “aspiring young urban professional,” with extensive shopping malls and movie theaters that, if not for the Chinese language speaking environment, would seem identical to those in Santa Monica, California. East Taipei is a “trendy” postmodern fashion district where global culture, coming mainly from Japan and the United States, but also some from Western Europe, rules the scene. While West Taipei is full of betel nut kiosks and shops, and people (men) chewing betel nut while walking on the street, there is not one betel nut 115 stand for several large city blocks in East Taipei. Instead there are Italian restaurants, Danish bakeries, Irish bars, New York bagel joints, and American Coffeehouses (yes, Starbucks everywhere). It is also the location of Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world (as of 2003), constructed on a former ROC military base. Taipei 101 rises out of a shopping mall and cinema complex replete with larger-than- life-sized Warner Brothers cartoon characters (i.e., Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam), into the sky, without one other remotely tall high-rise building around. It sticks out like the lonely male-inferiority complex that must have motivated its construction. Visible from all over the city, the phallic structure inspires scoffs and chuckles from the people of Taipei, and perhaps the same reaction from those around the world, that is, if they are even aware of its existence and claim to greatness. In West Taipei, however, there is a famous outdoor mall and night bazaar called Ximen Ding (literally, “West Gate District” referring to the actual West Gate of the Imperial City of Taipei, which was constructed in the Qing Dynasty and later used by the Japanese as the capital of the Colony of Taiwan), where young people and elders both maintain their separate nightlife activities in the same space, in high contrast. The elders who frequent Ximen Ding are former military personnel for the ROC (KMT) who served during and after the retreat to Taiwan and retired since the 1970s. They are mostly never-married men, born in Mainland China, who still feel disconnected from Taiwanese society, and so live in a world of nostalgia that has developed in Ximen Ding to suit their needs. Chinese popular singers and movie stars from the 1950s are their primary conversational references while they sit in Karaoke bars listening to 116 songs from the old days, or at restaurants that serves their favorite dishes from their old hometown provinces in the Mainland. In the evenings and on the weekends, students pour into Ximen Ding to meet each other, enjoy outdoor concerts, watch the latest Hollywood movies, dance to Asian hip-hop music in nightclubs, and most of all to consume the latest Japanese youth culture fashions. Hair and nail salons, tattoo parlors, body piercing stations, Japanese toy stores, technology gadgets, and clothing stores with all the latest fashions adorn the streets. Mainland Chinese elders began frequenting Ximen Ding in the early 1980s to watch (and fantasize about) the young Taiwanese schoolgirls. By the late 1980s the trend had become a phenomenon, and all kinds of specialty shops had opened to cater to their needs. After all, these old men had a stable salary from their military retirement pensions, plenty of money to spread around, and they lacked (and needed) female companionship. The first MacDonald’s in Ximen Ding became the epitome of this high-contrast culture. Elder men would sit there all day long sipping a cup of coffee and watching the endless waves of young girls pass through. Before prostitution became illegal in Taiwan in the 1990s, the alleys behind Ximen Ding were a legitimate “red light district” that catered to this population of lonely elder Mainland Chinese men. Prostitutes, who would continue to work well into their fifties, were issued identity cards that noted their occupation and served as an alibi in case police officers harassed them. Nowadays, although prostitution is officially illegal, the phenomenon continues in public view in the area around the famous “snake alley” where the fresh blood of snakes is sold as a male virility potion. 117 Another option for these retired military personnel to compensate for their lack of female companionship was to order foreign brides from Southeast Asia. This became an island-wide phenomenon in the 1990s and continues into the present. It is reported in the Taipei Times (2005 November 21) that one in seven marriages in Taiwan is to a foreign spouse, and most of these are Taiwan-born men marrying Southeast Asian-born women. Taipei city is built on top of an ancient lake bed, and so is relatively flat. It is surrounded by mountains to the south and west, and to the north the Danshui River flows out to the Taiwan Strait. The southern and western part of Taipei basin is home to immigrants from various rural communities, and also to a growing Southeast Asian immigrant community. The suburb of Nanshijiao is a predominantly Burmese community that developed as Burmese workers were brought in to work at a Texas-Instruments factory there. In Nanshijiao one can find authentic Burmese and Indian style restaurants and even Burmese style betel nut. The Burmese, in the same way as people of India, use dried chopped areca nut as one of many ingredients that are wrapped in a lime dusted betel leaf to make a quid that must be held in the mouth and sucked, not chewed. I learned the correct method of “sucking” only after trying to chew the Burmese betel nut quid, which caused all of the tiny ingredients to dissipate throughout my mouth, making it impossible to talk for several minutes. I suspect the Burmese style of betel nut chewing would not catch on in Taiwan, where chewers are accustomed to betel nut quid that consists of a whole fresh areca nut wrapped in a lime-dusted betel leaf. Nonetheless, the option is available. 118 There are several communities of Taiwan Indigenous people living in Taipei. Many originally came to work in construction projects and tended to live in close proximity for convenience. Among the Amis communities of Taipei, people will usually return to their parents’ villages on the east coast for important holidays such as Lunar New Year and the annual harvest festival, though some now consider their home to be in Taipei. For Amis people living in Taipei, they tend to purchase areca nuts, betel leaves, and lime paste in quantities and do their own preparation of betel nut quid at home rather than purchasing pre-wrapped betel nut from vendors. Betel Nut and Boundaries: How Betel Nut Became Stigmatized Betel nut chewing is an especially salient marker of ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender boundaries in Taipei, and Taiwan generally. For men in Taiwan, betel nut chewing marks socioeconomic boundaries. Men of higher socioeconomic status do not chew, while men of middle to lower status chew more often than not. For women in Taiwan, betel nut chewing marks ethnic boundaries. Han women usually do not chew, while non-Han (Indigenous) women usually do chew. In order to explain this difference, we must understand the recent history of betel nut chewing in Taiwan. As documented in Chapter 3, during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, habitual betel nut chewing was not possible because all of the areca nut plantations that thrived during the Qing Dynasty, when even Han women chewed betel nut (Jiang Shu-Ru 2002), were destroyed. The only way to chew betel nut during Japanese occupation was to harvest one’s own areca nut from household gardens. The Japanese tolerated this practice only among the Indigenous people of Taiwan’s east coast, and in Orchid 119 Island, where there would be no potential for development of large-scale areca palm plantations. Orchid Island was, in fact, specifically guarded from all outside influence as a kind of anthropological laboratory (discussed in depth below). When the KMT gained control of Taiwan in 1945, no restrictions were placed on areca palm plantations. At that time, however, only Indigenous people still carried on the practice of chewing. But, instead of remaining isolated from the larger Taiwan society in their traditional village economies, which were organized to serve the interests of the Japanese government, either in local agricultural production for export, or being forced into the Japanese military and traveling overseas, the KMT applied the ROC ideology of national minority status to the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan and made them citizens of the ROC with ostensibly the same rights and responsibilities as all other citizens. Instead of the primary hierarchical relationship between the local people of Taiwan as colonial subjects and the Japanese as colonial masters, the primary relationship among all peoples of Taiwan began to favor collateral relations among themselves. In other words, the KMT was not on Taiwan as a colonial government, whereas Japan was. At this point, from the 1950s through the 1960s, Indigenous people were encouraged to find jobs outside their villages, contributing their labor to the wider society. Also under the KMT, compulsory public education was enforced for all citizens, both Indigenous and Han. For Indigenous people, this was a foreign idea. The KMT gave incentives for Indigenous people to further their education beyond elementary school. They were given “bonus points” on their junior high school, senior high school, and university entrance exams, which made it easier for them to pass than those 120 non-Indigenous students who would have to study much harder, and so many Indigenous students entered prestigious schools where they were ill-equipped to compete with other non-Indigenous students, and so received social discrimination from Taiwanese and Chinese students for whom getting into these schools was comparatively more difficult. During this period, from the 1960s through the mid 1990s, if an Indigenous person could “pass” as Taiwanese or Chinese, they made every effort to do so, yet they still took advantage of whatever governmental support was offered. Also under the KMT, beginning in 1947, each citizen was issued an “identity card” that listed that person’s “ancestral home” (zu ji) as a province and county. For “Taiwanese” the “ancestral home” would be listed as “Fujian Province” and whatever county was claimed. For “Hakka” it would read “Guangdong Province, Meihsien County.” For “Indigenous” people, their cards would list their status as either “Mountain Aborigine” (shandi shanbao) or “Plains Aborigine” (pingdi shanbao), and later were referenced by their township (xiangzheng) of residence and their language group, such as Amis, Puyuma, Atayal, etc. In 1949, when the KMT retreated to Taiwan, identification cards were reissued in standardized form. For Mainlanders (waisheng ren), their patrilineal home county, which could be anywhere in all of Mainland China, was listed. Identity cards were used to identify ethnic group membership within Taiwan, and of course, to identify Indigenous people so they could benefit from incentives to further their education. By the 1960s, Indigenous men would find jobs doing manual labor in the construction industry, working alongside Taiwanese men. On these construction sites, 121 Indigenous men would chew betel nut to increase their energy and cope with heavy work loads. Taiwanese men who did not chew betel nut at home would have the chance to chew betel nut (for the first time in their lives) in this context, and could have developed the habit of chewing in this way. Another possibility for lower socioeconomic status Taiwanese men to find work in the early years of the KMT would be as drivers transporting materials to factories, or transporting goods from factories to ports in Kaohsiung or for international air shipment from Taipei. Taiwanese and Indigenous male drivers would realize and appreciate the benefits of chewing betel nut to keep them awake and alert on long hauls. From this practical application of the physiological effects of chewing betel nut, once the benefits of chewing betel nut became more widely known, the demand for it must have increased, which undoubtedly led to further production and sales of betel nut throughout the island at roadside betel nut stations. Meanwhile, entrepreneurially minded Taiwanese entrepreneurs would start their own large-scale areca palm plantations, and learn that the southern tropical climate was best suited for areca nut and betel pepper leaf production. By this time, in the mid-1970s, during the first boom of the “Made in Taiwan” phenomenon when transporting factory-produced goods to ports was of primary concern, the number of truck-driving jobs also increased exponentially, and the truck drivers were Taiwanese or Indigenous men who learned to utilize betel nut for its energizing effects to keep them alert while on duty. Furthermore, by this time, Taiwanese and Indigenous men who served in the military would also realize the benefits of betel nut chewing to aid them on physically demanding training exercises. 122 Meanwhile, Taiwan’s betel nut industry had been reborn. Production of areca nut became a fulltime occupation for some, as wholesalers and retailers were getting rich with little effort. As demand increased, “secondary wholesalers” became necessary to supply betel nut to the growing number of retail outlets on highways around the whole island, all without governmental regulation. The profits available to everyone involved in the betel nut industry, from wholesalers to retailers, without any need for education or even agricultural experience, made betel nut farming or sales a lucrative business. By this time, betel nut had become the “green gold” of Taiwan. I believe this explains why Taiwanese men began to chew betel nut again after the departure of the Japanese. But why didn’t their wives and daughters become chewers? It would seem that once a man begins to chew betel nut, he would introduce it to his family and community. Somehow Han (Taiwanese and Hakka) women in Taiwan refrained from chewing betel nut even after their husbands and sons had begun to chew. Perhaps it is related to gender relations in the Taiwanese family. Even before the arrival of the Japanese, in Qing Dynasty Taiwan, men led separate lives from their wives. Men would conduct business and socialize together outside the home, while women would stay at home or socialize with each other in the neighborhood community. This pattern continued through the Japanese occupation and into the KMT period such that a distinct “Taiwan businessmen’s culture” emerged, and still persists into the present. As noted above, in Taipei there are still these kinds of bars that cater specifically to men with female hostesses that attend to them. Furthermore, Han women were not required or encouraged to do strenuous physical labor, but had to conduct the politics of family affairs, care for the elders and 123 children, and keep the home in presentable fashion. Whereas Indigenous women continued to chew betel nut as they always had, the Han women of Taiwan, including Taiwanese and Hakka, were not included in the “revived” betel nut chewing culture by the nature of their situation, although as will be remembered from Chapter 2, Han women in southern China and Taiwan did chew betel nut during the Qing Dynasty. In addition, “successful” Han women in KMT Taiwan of the 1950s – 1970s took full responsibility for their own lives, almost to the extreme of self-sacrifice, and skillfully managed relations between their in-laws and their own parents, devoting loving nurturance to children and comfort to elders. A “successful” husband would take care of his family financially, and improve the socioeconomic status of the family. During this period, the sexual division of labor was quite well-defined, and the social lives of men and women were quite separate, not giving many opportunities for a husband and wife to share a chew together. Even when women began to work outside the home in factories or picking tea leaves in the 1970s, and would come into contact with Indigenous women who chewed betel nut, they still wouldn’t dare take up the practice. Why? First of all, women who only met each other in largely anonymous occasions of work would not feel as part of a mutual social group, and so Indigenous women would not tend to offer betel nut to their Han co-workers, nor would Han women tend to ask for it, or accept it if given. In the same way that Anthony Reid (1985) argues that cigarette smoking replaced betel nut chewing in Indonesia, perhaps a concern with a “modern” self-image also affected Han women’s “choice” to not chew betel nut in the 1970s and into the present. 124 There could also be something related to Han women’s practical concerns with their primary role of taking care of the family, at their own expense. Whereas men would not be criticized for indulging in drink or chewing betel nut, women would “lose face” (diu lian) for such behavior. A Han woman would not be likely to actively challenge the social stigmatization of betel nut chewing by taking up the habit herself, especially if she was known to do so by her neighbors. I think this explains why Taiwanese and Hakka women in Taiwan did not chew betel nut. Relatively easier to explain is why Mainlanders, both men and women, did not take up the habit. None of the Mainlanders who fled to Taiwan with the KMT were betel nut chewers. Once they arrived to Taiwan, the only betel nut chewers they saw were Indigenous people, who were classified in the lowest socioeconomic group. The newcomers from Mainland China, of course, became the ruling elite. As the practice of chewing betel nut spread among Taiwanese and Hakka men, Mainlanders saw the practice as one more way to mark the difference between themselves and the “more barbaric locals,” that they were happy to allow, since betel nut chewing allegedly helps manual laborers to complete their work faster and with fewer complaints, which coincides with the KMT’s general “laissez faire” policy that was aimed to first increase agricultural production as a base upon which to advance industrialization. Perhaps this also explains in part why Taiwan’s betel nut industry remained unregulated for the past fifty years under the ROC. 125 Lifting of Martial Law and the Rise of “Democracy” in Taiwan Just as the agricultural development of the 1950s provided the base for the industrial economic boom in the 1970s, industrial development in the 1970s provided a base for a technological boom in the 1980s. Hsinchu Science Park (Xinzhu kexue yuanqu) first opened in December of 1980, and soon developed as a profitable industry manufacturing semiconductors and computer chips. Over the next two decades, Hsinchu Science Park diversified its specialization in all kinds of computer and peripheral development and manufacturing, including precision machinery, telecommunications, optoelectronics, and biotechnology. It became known as “Taiwan’s Silicon Valley,” and unlike California’s “Silicon Valley” it didn’t experience the bust that hit in the late 1990s. By 2003, there were approximately 100,000 employees working in 335 factories inside the park, with NT 705.5 million annual sales, which is approximately USD $20.75 million (Chen Fan 2004), and a steady rise in profits for all the associated companies and factories over the past two decades (Hsinchu Science Park, Official Website). While Taiwan’s economy continued to grow through an industrial and technological innovation age from the 1980s, political upheaval also struck the island. The majority population of Taiwanese had proved their industriousness in the first three decades of KMT-imposed martial law, but still had been kept out of the political process, which continued to be run by the minority Mainlanders. Under the more tolerant though still authoritarian rule of Chiang Ching-kuo, the 1980s saw a series of political protests by Taiwanese demanding full representative democracy in the island. Chiang Ching-kuo had selected Lee Teng-hui as his vice-president and thus, successor. 126 Upon Chiang Ching-kuo’s death in 1988, Lee Teng-hui was appointed the first president of the ROC who was born in Taiwan, in the year after martial law had been lifted in 1987. The late 1980s and early 1990s was a period of identity struggle for the people of Taiwan. It was obvious that the ROC and KMT were not ruling the whole of China from Taiwan. In fact, many KMT officials had immigrated to the United States in their later years since they never felt at home in Taiwan anyway. The majority Taiwanese population was asserting a local island identity as primary, in opposition to a “Chinese” identity, which they now came to associate with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and as a result with Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, which was obviously not part of their common experience. Questions of “Chineseness” vs. “Taiwaneseness” became most salient as fewer KMT officials could or would even try to justify official ROC rhetoric. The KMT’s appointing of Lee Teng-hui as president, a man who was born in Taipei County and was a native Taiwanese language speaker, was a strategic choice, since it brought ostensible representation of the majority Taiwanese population to governmental office. Still protests and criticism of the ROC government continued, and from this perspective seem to have been encouraged by Lee Teng-hui himself. Even before martial law was lifted, the ROC government had taken steps to appease potential protesters. The format of government-issued identity cards was altered in 1986 to list the city and province of each individual’s place of birth as a city in Taiwan and “Taiwan” as the native province of everyone. As noted above, in 1947 and 1949, the ROC issued identity cards to all citizens of eighteen years and older 127 with the location of their “ancestral home” printed on them. In 1954, identity cards were reissued. Fingerprints were removed from the cards and cards were provided to all citizens of fourteen years and older. In 1965, men and women were issued different color cards: light green for men and pink for women, and the name of the “head of household” was eliminated, but “blood type” was added. In 1976, the color of cards for men and women changed: men were issued light blue cards, and women were issued light yellow cards. Also, an authentication stamp was used to decrease the possibility of falsified cards, and a space was reserved to accommodate a stamp for each time a person voted in elections. In 1986, individual birthplace was added as a category to identification cards, and the “ancestral home” was left on the card but occupied by only a dash if the person was born in Taiwan, in an effort to decrease governmental discrimination on the newer generation that was all born in Taiwan (Wu Su-rou 2006). Within the last two generations of people living in Taiwan, there have been several official reassertions of national identity. In the early 1990s, Taiwan’s communications industry rapidly expanded with the introduction of satellite television and then cable television swept the island. According to the AC Neilson Media Index, in 1992, only 25.5 percent of Taiwan’s households had cable television, but by 1999, 80.3 percent had cable television (see Figure 9). Even if one’s own household didn’t have cable television, most of the local restaurants in both urban and rural communities would have their televisions on, broadcasting local news or dramas when customers came in to eat, further increasing demand. Once a cable was connected to one apartment in a building, it was not long before every household had spliced the line to enter their own apartment. 128 Personal communication devices, first pagers and then cellular phones, also came on the popular scene in the mid-1990s. All of this technology further increased the speed with which people communicated about personal, local, and community issues. It all served to intensify the focus on Taiwan as a primary site and source of information. Local broadcasts were first in Mandarin Chinese and soon also in Taiwanese language, along with Hong Kong channels, Japanese broadcasts, and Korean dramas. At the same time, televisions in Taiwan were linked to foreign sources of information such as HBO, CNN, MTV, and even the Playboy Channel. Any event that happened in Taiwan or the world would be instantly broadcast to viewers in Taiwan. There were, for instance, six local Taiwan news channels that broadcast twenty-four hours per day, and one in Taiwanese language. An intensified and local bonding experience began to be broadcast at all hours, and people in Taiwan demanded more. A common experience and perspective from within Taiwan of living in the world was confirmed. The communications revolution in Taiwan was, of course, appropriated by politicians, and the drama of Taiwan’s politics was just as entertaining, if not more so, than any fictional drama. By the mid-1990s, a new Taiwan-centric identity defined by common experience of having gone through the rapid economic and social changes that took place from the 1950s through the 1980s became possible (and then unavoidable) as a new generation of leaders took the social and political stage. Internal divisions had been both sharpened and brought into the same field of evaluation, ever more distant from and in opposition to an imagined “China.” Then-president Lee Teng-hui seized on this 129 sentiment and began promoting a “New Taiwanese” identity in 1998 while Chen Shui-bian was running for re-election as Taipei mayor. Figure 9: Household Penetration Rates of Cable Television in Taiwan. 1 1 Years are listed in the Republic of China (min guo) numbers, as is usual in official Taiwan publications. The Republic of China began in 1911, so the “min guo” year 81 refers to 1992. This method of reckoning of years is of course a constant reminder of the existence of the Republic of China (ROC) to which everyone in Taiwan has become accustomed. 130 A sizable middle class had risen in Taiwan, and family connections to “China” had become more distant in time, though economic investment in China had begun. The “New Taiwanese” officially included everyone currently living in Taiwan—Taiwanese, Hakka, Mainlanders, Indigenous people—as compatriots with a common experience and common future, without any reference or allegiance to China. Practically, this new identity was being appropriated by a now “ethnic Taiwanese majority” in a “democracy.” While some extremists still pushed for an independent Taiwan, and some still undoubtedly hoped for a future political unification with China, the mainstream majority recognized the status-quo of continued economic growth as Taiwan’s saving grace. In urban Taipei, government funding and promotion of all sorts of cultural developments such as international film festivals, concerts, art galleries, and book stores celebrated the island as a site of cultural production and a host of international culture. International trade shows happened every weekend. A general “festival frenzy” hit the whole island. I-Lan County promoted an annual two-month long International Children’s Folklore and Folk Games Festival (1996), Penghu had a Fireworks Festival, Hsinchu began holding a Hakka Festival, Taichung celebrated its Matsu Pilgrimage as a festival, Taitung had an Austronesian Culture Festival, and the list goes on. All of these “festivals” were sponsored with government funding and were heavily promoted on television, yet few if any of them were actual “festivals” in the sense that there remained spectators and observers, not everyone participated. It was at this moment, in the mid-1990s, that a group of Amis farmers recognized their voices had been mixed into Enigma’s worldwide popular hit song “A Return to 131 Innocence” and so applied for government funding to form a performance group of folk singers to make an international tour which I documented in 1997 and 1998 (Anderson 2000). The First Annual Austronesian Cultural Festival in 1999 brought cultural performance groups from throughout Oceania and Southeast Asia to celebrate a common Austronesian language-speaking identity. Scholars from Australia, including Peter Bellwood who had been promoting his recent finding that Taiwan was the homeland of Austronesian language, were invited to engage discussion with local scholars and Austronesian language-speakers in attendance. Anything and everything local to Taiwan, and especially local to particular counties or villages, was celebrated and promoted, except for betel nut. For instance there was no “international betel nut festival,” nor has there been yet (as of 2006). A focus on internal cultural capital and domestic tourism development took precedence from the 1990s, coinciding with a shortened work-week in Taiwan. Now people would have a two-day weekend, instead of working or attending school every Saturday, thus enabling and encouraging them to travel around the island and spend some of the money they had been saving. Hot springs locations throughout the island were developed with nearby guesthouses. Taiwan’s east coast was promoted as a pristine natural scenic area. The East Coast National Scenic Area and later the Beinan Prehistory Park and Museum opened in Taitung County. Entrepreneurially minded locals set up guesthouses and cafes in their local communities, and advertised on television and the Internet. The internal diversity of Taiwan was being celebrated to extremes. 132 Meanwhile, Taiwanese investors began sponsoring all sorts of projects and business ventures in Mainland China. Most of the low-technology manufacturing of toys and household items that had previously been stationed in Taiwan’s rural areas had moved to Shenzhen, China, where labor was cheaper, then gradually spread throughout China’s Special Economic Zones. Transportation within the city of Taipei was made faster and easier with the opening of the Metropolitan Rapid Transit (MRT) subway system, contributing to an ostensible homogenization of urban space, at the same time that local neighborhoods sought to define and celebrate their uniqueness. Rural counties and villages promoted their own “local specialties” to invite domestic tourists to experience “authentic” food, culture, or natural beauty on the newly available two-day weekends. People moved around the island more frequently and faster than ever before, not only in person, but on the Internet and with cellular phones, which now nearly everyone in the island, including school children and elders, carried with them at all times. By 2001, percentage of mobile phone subscribers reached 100% of Taiwan inhabitants, and continued to rise, meaning that many people had more than one mobile phone (see Figure 10). 133 Figure 10: Penetration Rate of Telecom Service Subscribers, 1998-2005. A seemingly endless cycle of defining and promoting everything “unique” to Taiwan captured the imagination of locals as they struggled to express an identity unrelated to the ever-present looming and threatening “Mainland China.” History books used in schools that had presented so-called “China-centric” perspectives were re-written to include local Taiwan history, and suddenly Taiwan Indigenous identity entered the mainstream as something to be celebrated rather than hidden. Popular 134 singers from the Amis and Puyuma language-speaking groups of Taitung, including A-mei (Zhang Hui-mei), Samingad (Ji Hsiao-jun), Chen Jian-nian, and even a group of performers called “The Betel Nuts” that brought together Amis folk singers with singers from Papua New Guinea, caught popular attention. Betel nut chewing that had been associated with Indigenous culture and lower socioeconomic class Taiwanese laborers and truck-drivers had also taken on a new popular cultural manifestation as roadside betel nut stands near highway entrances throughout the island had begun to hire young women dressed in seductive outfits to sell betel nut to the male clientele. The young women who became known as “betel nut beauties” inspired both critique and celebration (see Chapter 6 for further discussion of betel nut beauties). Before continuing with the economic and marketing strategies for betel nut in this new context, it is important to first explore the myths and rituals associated with betel nut chewing and its symbolic meaning in Taiwan’s society in the next chapter. 135 Chapter 5: Myth, Ritual, and Symbolic Meanings of Betel Nut in Taiwan This chapter explores the myths, rituals, nursery rhymes, jokes, and songs where betel nut is prominent in the lives of the people of Taiwan. In these occasions, betel nut is found to articulate a series of shifting boundary markers that have articulated Taiwanese, Chinese, and Indigenous identities over time. Indigenous rituals involving betel nut tend to mitigate relations between human and supernatural worlds, individual people and social groups, and among different social groups themselves. Myths, Nursery Rhymes, Jokes, and Songs about Betel Nut The story of the origin of the areca nut palm and the betel pepper vine is told in more or less similar ways among the Indigenous peoples of eastern Taiwan. The following two versions were recorded among the Amis during Japanese occupation, and are still recounted today among Amis elders. In Morotsan, a hamlet of the Pair’asun village of the central Amis, it is said that an adulterous shamaness and shaman committed suicide after their having been beaten by the husband of the shamaness. The shamaness transformed into the betel nut tree and the shaman into the betel pepper vine which still twined itself around the betel nut tree. According to a tale of the northern Amis, an adulterous wife along with her sweetheart committed suicide because she was ashamed of being scolded by her husband and a betel nut tree and betel pepper vine grew from their grave, the latter twining itself around the former. [Mabuchi 1964, 34] Here we see the origin of the areca nut palm and betel pepper vine are intimately related to social transgressions which translate into the self-sacrificial, suicidal deaths of the transgressors, after which the source of betel nut chewing ingredients grow out of their 136 remains, as a kind of gift which implicitly compensates for the transgressions of the deceased. In the two examples, adultery is the occasion of social transgression, and the act of suicide is an intentional crossing of the boundary between life and death. The surviving loved ones are implicitly invited to chew betel nut to comfort themselves in the absence of their deceased beloveds. Also noteworthy, and perhaps in contrast to other Austronesian language origin myths of betel nut, in the Amis case, the tree grows out of a woman’s body. This could perhaps be related to the matrilineal and matrilocal social organization of Amis, where only women became the most powerful shamans (discussed in more depth below). As mentioned in Chapter 2, gifts of betel nut were the primary method to settle social disputes among Taiwanese in Qing Dynasty Taiwan, since betel nut provides comfort to the chewer while smoothing over and re-defining proper social relations. The Amis origin myths similarly validate this practical application of betel nut chewing. Among Amis and Puyuma shamans, discussed at length below, betel nut is also used as a vehicle to cross boundaries between the material world of the living and the non-material worlds of the ancestors and nature spirits. Betel nut is also mentioned in nursery rhymes sung among Han Chinese in Taiwan. Here is an example (collected by Chang Chen-yi 2004, 107): Rock-a-bye golden nugget Rock-a-bye silver nugget Rock-a-bye piggy feet Rock-a-bye big pancake Rock-a-bye betel nut Let’s be each other’s guests 137 In this nursery rhyme, “golden nugget” means “little baby boy” and “silver nugget” means “little baby girl.” The other items mentioned are all traditionally presented as gifts from the groom’s family to the bride’s family during the engagement ritual. In the last two lines, betel nut is associated with guests. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the two Chinese characters for betel nut, binlang, have the root meaning of “guest.” The following joke, told to me by a Hakka friend in Taiwan when he learned I was researching betel nut, further exemplifies the boundary-defining nature of betel nut, in this case, the boundary between Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese ethno-linguistic differences. There once was a typical Taiwanese old man who loved to chew betel nut. He would consume at least two packs of betel nuts everyday. One time, he joined a tour group from Taiwan and traveled to China. Of course he brought betel nut with him to chew. When the tour group arrived to the Great Wall, the old man casually walked through the beautiful scenery indiscriminately spitting betel nut juice here and there. A female police officer saw him spitting, and approached him asking, “What are you doing? How can you spit betel nut juice in this famous ancient site, totally lacking any civility?” After the officer’s unfriendly remark, the old man became aware of his mistake and replied in Taiwanese language, “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” Then he quickly put his betel nuts back into his pocket and continued walking. The officer couldn’t understand his Taiwanese language and angrily stopped him again, saying, “Didn’t you hear me? Hand over your betel nuts!” [“bin lang jiao chu lai”] The old man’s eyes burst wide open in shock as he asked, “Is that really necessary? I only spit some betel nut juice.” The officer got even angrier. She yelled, “Hand over your betel nuts, right now!” The tour guide sensed that something must have gone wrong, and was afraid that the dispute would delay the group’s schedule. So he told the old man, “Just listen to her and do what she says.” The old man didn’t want to cause trouble for everyone, so he helplessly followed the officer’s order. He unzipped his pants and took out his penis, as he repeated the officer’s orders in his native Taiwanese language, “bin lan jiao chu lai” 138 In Mandarin Chinese, “bin lang jiao chu lai” means “hand over the betel nut” while in Taiwanese language, the same phrase means “flip out your penis.” In Mandarin, “binlang” means “betel nut,” “jiao chu lai” means “hand over” or “take out.” In Taiwanese, “bin” means “flip open,” “lanjiao” means “penis,” and “chulai” means “come out.” All the salient meanings of betel nut in Taiwan, as well as an explication of Taiwan and PRC (Mainland China) relations, are found in this single joke. First is the fact that the “typical Taiwanese old man” chews betel nut and spits the juice indiscriminately, which is of course true in rural Taiwan. Second is the fact that Chinese women don’t appreciate chewing betel nut. Although in this case, the woman is a PRC police officer, even in Taiwan, Han women don’t approve of betel nut chewing, at least ever since the time of Japanese occupation, as explained above. Third, the function of giving betel nut serves to resolve social disputes. This is evident since, if the Taiwanese man gives his betel nut to the PRC police officer, then his social transgression will be forgiven, although he doesn’t understand this because he doesn’t speak Mandarin Chinese language. Fourth, the practice of chewing betel nut, exemplified by spitting betel nut juice, is presented as forbidden in the PRC, indicating the cultural difference between Han in Taiwan and Han in the PRC. Fifth, the sexual nature of the joke, with the Taiwanese man finally being forced to “flip out his penis” at the female PRC police officer indicates that the outcome was against his will, but that he had no choice but to embarrass himself in public in Mainland China as a result of language and cultural differences. 139 There is one, and only one, popular Mandarin Chinese language song that not only mentions betel nut, but has the title “Harvesting Betel Nut” (cai binlang). The song was made popular in 1930s Shanghai nightclubs, and subsequently traveled with the Mainland Chinese to Taiwan in the 1950s, where it has remained a popular Karaoke hit even until today in 2006. The song was composed by Li Jin-guang, based on a Hunan folk tune, and embellished with lyrics by Yin Yi-qiu. The song was made popular by the first generation female Chinese Pop singer Zhou Xuan. The lyrics express the perspective of a young Southern country girl coming of age. Areca nuts fruiting on top of the tall trees, Who gets up first will taste it first, Who gets up first, I will help to fill up [their basket] Young man, harvesting areca nut, Young girl, looking up, carrying a basket, Looking down, thinking, He is handsome and muscular, No one else is better than him, Better quickly claim him as my man. Green mountain is high, Flowing river is long, The sun is about to set, The bird is singing on its way home, Calling us to return home without delay. Here we see that in the urban Mainland Chinese popular imagination of the 1930s, a celebration of the innocence, romance, nostalgia, and exoticism of the idyllic pastoral countryside is associated with betel nut chewing. Although the city dwellers of Shanghai would not have encountered betel nut in their own social milieu, surely they would have heard of the southern country where life is slower-paced and people chew betel nut, and so would indulge in the fantasy of imagining that kind of life. 140 Also we see an interesting fantasy for gender relations, where the female, although innocent, is choosing her romantic interest, which would have been forbidden in the north. This was also the time of increasing social power for women. Perhaps the ideal of women’s choosing their own marriage partner out of the “new” idea of “romantic love” is subtly expressed in this song. While the female lead singer is expressing herself from a “lower” position, looking up at the male figure and admiring his strength, it is she who is doing the selecting. Once Mainland Chinese who were involved with the KMT fled to Taiwan, the song must have taken on more significant meanings, now living in an island were people did indeed “harvest betel nuts” and the actual and perceived freedom of romantic encounters was greatly increased. That this song is still popular in Taiwan in Karaoke halls shows its enduring relevance to the current situation of ever-increasing validation of notions of romantic love as primary in bringing together reproductive unions of men and women, which references harvesting betel nut in an idyllic nostalgic way, but interestingly does not mention the actual chewing of betel nut, which could symbolically emphasize the romance of courtship (harvesting) without the necessary culmination in the sexual act (chewing) thereby making the meaning socially acceptable in a society that only recently validated notions of romantic love. Areca Nut as Mother As indicated in the Amis origin myth of betel nut, the areca palm tree grew out of the grave of a female shaman, and the betel pepper vine grew out of her beloved partner, a 141 male shaman. Among the Amis, the areca nut is female and the betel pepper leaf is male. This gendered conception is confirmed in practice among Amis children, even nowadays, and elsewhere throughout the region. Among the Dulan Amis, areca nut, betel leaf, and lime paste have been intimate companions for countless generations. Siki, a local man in his early-forties, a respected woodcarver and nationally renowned artist, had the following to say about his early childhood experience with areca nut: I started chewing areca nuts as soon as I could eat food on my own, probably at two or three years of age. When the child’s teeth grow in, it is very itchy, so our parents would give us some areca nuts to chew on. All of the children happily chewed even after their teeth started growing in. Areca nut was our snack food when we were children. Because we didn’t have money to buy cookies or candies, so we mainly chewed areca nuts. The front part is the tenderest. When it is fresh, it looks white and tastes very sweet. We often chew only the front part, and throw away the rest of the nut. We didn’t dare chew the whole nut because it would taste too bitter. We would removed the inside part and chew it without adding lime paste, since lime paste is spicy and would burn our mouths. We chewed until it lost its flavor, then we would throw it away, and the elders would scold us. [Siki, Dulan Amis, interview, 2005 May 1] In Dulan and among Amis and Puyuma communities in Taitung generally, children begin to chew on the soft tips of areca nuts as soon as they are weaned from their mothers’ breast-milk. The fresh whole areca nut becomes a natural ‘pacifier’ for teething children, and the sweet juice of the tip of the fruit rewards them and keeps them coming back for more. Elders may complain that children chew only the tip of the fruit, and then discard it, thereby wasting a potential betel nut quid style chew. Nevertheless, for elders and children alike, the areca nut (as mother) provides comfort and relaxation, along with stimulation and nourishment, just like mother’s milk. 142 Also in Taitung, a female Puyuma elder who only started chewing betel nut after the birth of her children describes areca nut as “just like coconut, with some sweet water inside, but smaller.” She told of her childhood experience with areca in this way: When I was young, we didn’t have candy, and we didn’t have money, so children always chewed on areca nut. Every child loved to chew because it tastes so sweet. But now when I chew areca nut, I also chew its wife and child together. Although chewing won’t really stop hunger, still it can take sleepiness away. Mrs. Zhen mentions the “wife and child” of areca nut, by which she means the areca nut, betel leaf, and lime paste are a family (without specific genders necessarily assigned to each individual ingredient). When the three elements are combined the betel nut quid is a complete family including mother, father, and child. The image of areca nut as mother, or in Mrs. Zhen’s case, the betel nut quid as a family, demonstrates the preeminence and central symbolic position of betel nut among the Amis and Puyuma. The Amis Betel Nut Bag When I was conducting my first ethnographic fieldwork in Taiwan in 1995, on the night before I was to depart from the Taitung Amis family with whom I had lived for six weeks in Makrahay, the father of the household, Mr. Gao and I were sitting in the living room of his home chewing betel nuts, drinking rice wine, and communicating as best we could in Amis language. That night Mr. Gao then ceremoniously presented me with a special gift, a colorfully embroidered traditional Amis betel nut bag, called aluvu (see Figure 11). 143 Figure 11: Amis betel nut bags (left), and man wearing betel nut bag (right). I had seen aluvu worn by everyone in the community during the harvest festival (kiluma’an) that had taken place the previous month. On the inside of the long shoulder strap he wrote with a felt-tipped pen in Chinese characters the date and his family name, and in Roman script, the Amis name he had given me, Kolas. His mood of intense concentration while writing suddenly broke into his familiar beaming smile. And then, with a satisfied gleam in his eyes, he held up the strap to check the finished inscription, and read it aloud. The only word I understood was my name, since all else was spoken in Chinese, which I had not yet begun to study. Nevertheless, his pride in giving me this special gift beamed through, loud and clear. The occasion was very emotional for me. At the time, I was sad to be leaving. Also, I was happy and felt honored to receive such a beautiful gift. Although I didn’t understand the Chinese writing, which turned out to be the date and Mr. Gao’s family name, nor did I realize the many levels of symbolic meaning involved, the general meaning was clear. Mr. Gao was expressing his happiness for having hosted me, and his sadness that I was 144 leaving. He was making clear that since he considered me as his son (wawa), I would always be welcome to return (minokay). Since I could understand all of his Amis language, and all as the result of his personal teaching, his ritualized gesture of giving the betel nut bag was so powerful to me and so well-timed, that I was overwhelmed with emotion, even to tears. All I could do was express my gratitude (array) and love (ma’ula) in Amis language, along with the body language of both hands pressed on my chest, over my heart. At that moment I felt intensely the meaning of “leaving home” that has obviously drawn me back again and again. Of course, it was Mr. Gao’s enthusiastic and patient instruction in Amis language and cultural traditions that had enabled me to understand the words for countless things and emotions, including “betel nut” (icep), which I did not yet know how to say in English. My own observations of the role of the “betel nut bag” (aluvu), as it is worn as part of the traditional dress in the “annual festival of the harvest” (kiluma’an), and the ritual style of his presentation in the living room of his house, that had become “my house” (iluma to kako) all suggested to me the meaning of becoming a family member, even if in this case, “fictive.” Confirmed only after several return trips (in 1998, 1999, 2003, and 2005), I found out that for all Amis, not only in Mr. Gao’s small community of Makrahay, but from Taitung to Hualien, all along the eastern coast of Taiwan, the ceremonial betel nut bag is the one and only required article of the formal traditional dress. All Amis adults wear one while participating in kiluma’an ceremonies. In these occasions, without a betel nut bag a person is not considered to be fully dressed. Conversely, if one is wearing at least their ceremonial betel nut bag, even without other articles of traditional clothing, he or she is 145 considered “formally dressed.” Moreover, without a betel nut bag, one cannot even participate in the most important ceremony, kiluma’an, as a community member. Outsiders, which includes visitors from other villages in the same category as visitors from other continents, no matter how distant, are all allowed and encouraged to dance together with the community in the grand finale “spiral line” dance, as I had done that season, but only those who are wearing betel nut bags from that particular host village community would be allowed to participate in the other dances. The betel nut bag represents legitimate status as a member of a family that is the basis for community membership. In the formerly-matrilineal Amis villages of Makrahay, Atolan (Dulan), and Malan, every child is given a betel nut bag that is made by their mother (ina), and ritually presented by their mother’s brother (faki) at the rite of passage to adulthood. This “private” ritual act is conducted in the heart of the home (iluma), the living room. Practically, and also symbolically, a child doesn’t need, and so doesn’t receive, a betel nut bag until he or she leaves home for the first time, and enters at first the community, for men that traditionally meant living in the men’s hut, and eventually travels further beyond, into the greater society as a hunter, fisherman, and warrior. However far the child wanders away from home, the betel nut bag always provides a symbolic, even magical, link to home; in a sense, the betel nut bag is itself a portable home. The Amis words for home (iluma), betel nut bag (aluvu), and annual festival of the harvest (kiluma’an) all share a common meaning. The iluma is the safe place for all family activities that creates and recreates its own sacred space, the aluvu is the individual 146 soul’s safe place as it travels along through different sacred and social landscapes, and the kiluma’an is the communal safe space in which community renewal occurs. The Amis word for betel nut, icep, literally means “vagina.” The symbolic association of betel nut with the female reproductive organ, the gate to and from the womb, is thoroughly integrated in the Amis (language-speaking) imagination. Amis are traditionally matrilineal, with property and surnames passing from mother to daughter, and also matrilocal, with men moving into their wife’s mother’s household after marriage. As with matrilineal societies around the world, for every child (wawa, a non-gendered term meaning “child”), the most important woman is mother (ina), and the most important man is mother’s brother (faki). Since women are the center of Amis social organization, the betel nut as a symbol of female fertility and reproductive power is likewise the central material element that bonds people together in meaningful relationships. It follows that the concept of iluma (home) could be derived from experience of feminine power and the safety of the womb. Traditionally, during the period after childhood and before marriage, Amis men, having left the iluma of their mother, live communally in a men’s house with all the other unmarried men of the village, symbolizing their social birth as “men.” After marriage, the groom moves into the iluma of his wife. The men’s house is not a “permanent” safe space, though it is sacred for men, and traditionally, any man without an aluvu or who did not already leave his mother’s iluma, is not allowed to enter. In other words, a man needs an iluma in order to acquire an aluvu that is necessary in order to attend kiluma’an. Furthermore, at kiluma’an, he will have the chance to participate in community sanctioned courting rituals that involve the aluvu as the primary site of activity. If a girl 147 grabs a boy’s aluvu, or even more obviously, inserts a betel nut (icep) into it, that means she wants to have children with him. Without an aluvu, a boy would not only have no chance to participate in kiluma’an, but also girls would have no way to physically and symbolically express their sexual desire for him, and he would not be getting married, at least not in that community. Interestingly, after the influence of Catholic and Protestant missionaries among Amis villages, the practice of signaling affection with betel nut at the kiluma’an was largely abolished, since the missionaries felt great sympathy for the inevitable few boys who received no invitations from girls at the festival. Thankfully, the festivals were not altogether eliminated, though certain aspects have been forcibly altered. Actually, there are two kinds of betel nut bags used by Amis men. One is the traditional and formal aluvu, made of cloth with elaborately embroidered and brightly colorful patterns and even mirrors with hanging bells and beads. The other is a practical or daily use betel nut bag, made of animal skin, which is packed with betel nut and whatever tools will fit, and taken on hunting or fishing expeditions. Along with the end of hunting (and headhunting) practices during the Japanese colonial period, these kind of purely functional betel nut bags, called kopid, became rarer, until there are only a few remaining in a couple of inland villages, and those are only displayed, no longer used. The lyrics to the contemporary Amis folk song titled Aluvu 1 were written some time after the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, and poetically express the symbolic meaning of the betel nut bag in the modern Amis worldview. Sung from the perspective of a young 1 Performed by the ‘Betel Nut Brothers’ on the album ‘Betel Nuts’ (1996), Taipei: Trees Music & Art, distributed by Sony Music Entertainment (Taiwan), Ltd. < http://www.cdroots.com/tm-betel.html> 148 man on the verge of adulthood, in Southern Amis language, the song expresses a kind of innocent fascination and curiosity with the contents of the betel nut bag: Ka-nu-si a-lu-vu When they wear their aluvu [betel nut bag] Ka-nu-si a-lu-vu When old men wear aluvu Ku ma-tu-a say What could be inside? U-ma an ku la la vu-ay What could possibly be inside? U i-cep a tu vi-la Areca nuts, lime, and betel leaves U sa pi ma an, u sa pi su lac What’s the use of these? What could be their use? Du-a-dis nu ma-tu-a say For those old men, they can clean their teeth O ay hee ye yan ho hee ye hay yan O ay hee ye yan ho hee ye hay yan Hee ho yi ye hay yan Hee ho yi ye hay yan [Chorus: Freestyle Polyphonic Harmonies] Ka-nu-si a-lu-vu When they wear aluvu Ka-nu-si a-lu-vu When old men carry aluvu Ku ma-tu-a say What could be inside? U-ma an ku la la vu-ay What could possibly be inside? E pah a tu ko-pu Some rice wine and a shell for a cup U sa pi ma an, u sa pi sa-sa What’s the use of those? What could be their use? To-ro-ray nu ma tu-a say To slowly take their weariness away O ay hee ye yan ho hee ye hay yan O ay hee ye yan ho hee ye hay yan Hee ho yi ye hay yan Hee ho yi ye hay yan Traditionally, an Amis man’s wife, sister, or mother would pack his betel nut bag before a hunting expedition that could last several days. Every man has his own aluvu, and just like the iluma, it is governed by women. Among the Amis and Puyuma, women are the most powerful healers, called sikawasay in Amis language, translated as “wushi” in Mandarin and “shaman” in English. Of all the people in Amis and Puyuma society, it is the sikawasay who deals most with betel nut. Below we will examine the shamanic use of betel nut, but first we should understand the status of betel nut in courting and wedding rituals in contemporary Taiwan. 149 Ritual Use of Betel Nut in Courtship and Weddings Perhaps the most significant ritual exchange of betel nut is during courting, engagement, and wedding ceremonies. In contemporary Taiwan, however, betel nut is less prominently featured in engagement and wedding ceremonies than in the past, owing to the influence of Japanese occupation, subsequent KMT rule, and recent regional globalization of wedding ceremonies, yet betel nut is still present in some weddings, and remains significant in courting rituals. Because of the recent exclusion of betel nut in many weddings in contemporary Taiwan, we should compare the ideal traditional wedding with the weddings as actually observed in 2003-2005 to find out how the former role of betel nut in traditional weddings has been replaced or not in contemporary ones. During the Qing Dynasty, Han immigrants in western Taiwan followed the same kinds of ritual gifting of betel nut at engagement and wedding ceremonies as their counterparts in Fujian, Guangdong, and Hainan. During the “completion of engagement” phase, the groom’s family was responsible for preparing “the wedding certificate, bride price, and the following gifts: sugar candies, betel nuts, pineapple, rice noodles, pig’s feet, chickens and ducks, candles, ceremonial incense, wedding headdress, skirts, bracelets and rings” (Chang Chen-yi 2004, 182). Traditionally, in Guangdong, homeland to the Hakka immigrants in Taiwan, betel pepper leaves and areca nuts symbolized husband and wife, and betel nut was one of the engagement gifts from groom’s to bride’s family. The following traditional Taiwanese wedding song titled “Chew Betel Nut” illustrates the symbolic meaning and significance of betel nut in the Han traditional wedding ceremony which used to be practiced among the Han in Taiwan. During a 150 wedding, the bride would carry a basket with betel nuts neatly placed inside. During the ceremony she would approach the elders or the matchmakers and ask them to give a blessing. The elder or matchmaker would pick up a betel nut while saying each line of the blessing. “Chew Betel Nut” 2 One chew, one stick of incense Two chews, makes a pair Three chews, three kinds of wealth and nobility Four chews, two pairs times two Five chews, achieves all the highest ranks Six chews, six times sixty years of successful results in imperial examinations Seven chews, seven sons and eight sons-in-law Eight chews, eight immortals, with that weird Old Man Chang [Zhang Guo-lao] Nine chews, nine dragons spitting spheres Ten chews, ten sons and ten daughters-in-law; Five pass as Ju-ren, five pass as Jin-si 3 Eleven chews, winter solstice chill Twelve chews, returns the whole basket to you Chew one quid of green betel nut The green nut delivers pregnancy Betel pepper leaf bathes in nurturing dew After the wedding today May the bride’s belly expand right away Give birth to a boy, become a high ranking official Give birth to a girl, become the empress Although each sentence of the blessing song includes the word “chew,” referring to chewing betel nut, the guest would return all the betel nuts back to the bride’s basket after the verbal blessing, and then upon saying “Chew one quid of green betel nut,” the guest would finally chew a quid of betel nut (Chang Chen-yi 2004, 185). 2 Lyrics translated from original Chinese, reported by Chang Chen-yi 2004, p. 185. 3 Ju-ren and Jen-si are titles awarded when passing the imperial examination. 151 Here we see the central significance of the betel nut as a symbol of fertility. Areca nut represents the bride, betel pepper leaf represents the groom, and the betel nut quid represents their fertility and prosperity. However, during Japan’s colonial rule of the island, some traditional elements such as the role of betel nut as an engagement gift, and its distribution to guests during the wedding, were largely abandoned among the Han Chinese of the island because betel nut was more difficult to acquire. For the same reasons (discussed above) that Han women in Taiwan don’t chew betel nut, the ritual use of betel nut in Taiwanese and Hakka weddings has become a thing of the past. Nowadays in Han weddings in Taiwan, betel nut is only occasionally one of the many parting gifts given to guests as they leave the banquet dinner, depending on the betel nut chewing habits of the hosts and guests. In the several weddings of Han friends that I attended in Taiwan, in Hualien, Hsinchu, and Taipei, there was no reference to betel nut, nor was it one of the parting gifts. In some weddings, cigarettes were given as parting gifts along with hard candies, but they were not used in the ceremony at any point. It is possible that among Han families where the men are all betel nut chewers, betel nut would be provided as a parting gift, but it is doubtful that it would be included in the ceremonial rituals. Among the Austronesian language-speaking Amis, Puyuma, Rukai, and Paiwan of southeastern Taiwan, and the Yami of Orchid Island, all betel nut chewing cultures that continue to grow their own areca nut and betel leaves, still there seems to be relatively little contemporary ritual use of betel nut in engagements or the wedding ceremony proper. Of the several Amis weddings I attended from 1995 through 2005, betel nut was not part of the ritual, nor even offered to guests. Only in one wedding I observed on 152 Orchid Island among the Yami language-speakers was betel nut provided as a parting gift, along with cigarettes and hard candies. Let me present the traditional wedding customs of these groups, and then evaluate why the betel nut has recently been left out of the ceremonies. Traditionally, as far as could be determined, the Amis did not have a formal wedding ceremony. On the “wedding day” the groom would present freshly cut bushels of areca nuts to the bride’s family, which represented his intention to father her children. Only after the modern requirement of legal marriage did Amis people adopt foreign wedding customs. For the majority Christian or Catholic Amis, they hold a ceremony in a church followed by a Han Chinese style banquet for the whole village that includes Amis folk dancing and singing. The bride dresses in a white wedding gown and the groom in a western tuxedo. All the guests in attendance would bring their own betel nut to chew. However, the Amis people do have traditional courting rituals that involve betel nut, which could be considered as equivalent to marriage. In the Amis traditional matrilineal society, if a woman wants to have children with a man, she would give him a betel nut during the annual Harvest Festival (kiluma’an). Siki, a Dulan Amis man in his late thirties explained another variation on the courting ritual in this way: Betel nuts symbolize children, so during the harvest festival, while we [men] are dancing, if a girl comes up and grabs your betel nut bag, that means she likes you, and she wants to have babies with you. [Siki, Dulan Amis] If the man accepts and chews the betel nut, he is indicating his mutual interest. The following day, the woman would go to the man’s house (his mother’s house), and work for a day to demonstrate her capability in front of his mother. If all worked out, then the 153 man would serve the woman’s mother’s household for two years time, bringing gifts of fish and hunted animals or working on construction projects, and also visiting her at night in stealth, sneaking through the window and leaving before dawn. If she becomes pregnant and has a child, then the man would be recognized as the father, but the two would not need to hold any official wedding ceremony. As mentioned above, the most important man in any child’s life was not his father (mama) but his mother’s brother (faki). Among the Amis, the primary male-female relationship was brother-sister, not husband-wife. The traditional Puyuma wedding meant “to adopt a son-in-law” who would live in the wife’s household and assume the role of a son. The groom would actively send gifts to the bride’s house. To propose marriage, the groom would secretly offer his headscarf and betel nut bag to the woman he admired, and if she accepted the gifts, it signaled her agreement to his proposal (Chen Ming-zhen 2004, 75). The traditional Rukai wedding is centered on the bride. On the first day, the groom and his friends would go into the mountains and cut down a certain tree called “liva.” Then they would bring some iron pots, knives, betel nut, millet wine, chestnut wine and a pig to the bride’s house. Then both the groom’s and bride’s family and friends would dance in circles in the front yard of the bride’s house. On the second day, both families gather at the bride’s house for the official wedding ritual, and display all the wedding gifts in front of the relatives of the village. After the elders from both families finish giving speeches, the wedding banquet begins. Guest would feast on the pig brought by the groom, and dance and celebrate until dawn. On the third day, both groom and bride and their friends and family would go to the groom’s house to 154 celebrate the whole day, which marked the end of the wedding ritual (Chen Ming-zhen 2004, 73). The traditional Paiwan wedding would begin with the groom’s family’s gift of rice wine, betel nuts, and avay (millet cake) to the bride’s family. These gifts are basic ritual objects and had specially meaning when sharing (Chiu Hsin-hui 2001, 121). When harvesting areca nuts for use in weddings, Paiwan people use a whole bushel. When the areca nuts are harvested, the part connecting the bushel to the tree trunk should not be damaged, or else the groom’s family could be punished when the gifts were given. Most notably among the Paiwan, three to five headdresses made of areca nuts are made by the groom’s female family members using metallic threads to tie areca nuts into a circular shape. During the engagement ritual, areca nuts are carried in the procession, on top of barrels of rice wine along with other wedding gifts (Chiu Hsin-hui 2001, 135). During the wedding banquet, one bag of wrapped betel nuts would be provided to each table for guests to chew (Chiu Hsin-hui 2001, 144). In addition to the wedding ceremony that is between a man and a woman, Paiwan also would hold a “becoming siblings” (jie-bai) ceremony to validate two same-sex partners entering into a brotherhood or sisterhood, called “kipukaka, semanevetek” in Paiwan language. Simply becoming friends is called “kipuDava, kitataDava.” In the past, “becoming friends” usually involved relations with the headman’s family, and relations could only be established through certain public rituals. Both rituals, “becoming siblings” and “becoming friends” involved gifts of personal possessions, and Paiwan believed that the significance of “becoming friends” was less than “becoming siblings.” The rituals for these alliances were similar to weddings, and 155 preparation of wood, rice wine, avay (millet cakes), betel nuts, and dancing were all required. According to the Taiwanese ethnographer, Chiu Hsin-hui (2001), the current generation of Paiwan people no longer performs this ritual, but it still is recalled in the memory of the elders. The last “becoming siblings” ritual recalled by the people of the Paiwan village of Cha-pin was held in 1970. The traditional Yami wedding is the simplest of all wedding ceremonies, except for the Amis who traditionally held no formal wedding ceremony at all, and also simpler than any other rituals carried out by the Yami. Only immediate family members would attend a wedding. The groom’s father and brother would first visit the bride’s family to decide the wedding date. Then the groom’s family would begin harvesting yams, capturing pigs and goats, and collecting dried fish and freshly cut bushels of areca nuts. Sisters or female cousins of the groom’s family would then accompany the groom to visit the bride’s family, bringing the harvested yams, and betel nuts. The bride’s family would also prepare yams and betel nuts to treat them upon arrival. After the wedding, the bride could then be taken by her new mother-in-law back to the groom’s family (Ts’eng Chong-yi 2000, 28). The Yami wedding I witnessed in Orchid Island in 2005 had none of these elements. In fact the couple had already given birth to a child while living in Taiwan Island, and was merely returning to the Orchid Island to validate their legal marriage by hosting a banquet in the front plaza of the newly rebuilt Christian Church in the village of Yu-Ren. The bride arrived dressed in a white wedding dress, and was escorted into the plaza while firecrackers were set off. The ceremony, attended by friends and family but not the whole village, opened with a blessing from the minister of the church, Mr. Dong, spoken in 156 Yami language. Karaoke singing of popular Chinese and Taiwanese songs and even a performance of the Eagles’ “Hotel California” followed during the banquet. A café designed for tourists had recently opened across the alley from the church that played Eagles music every night, so the song was familiar to the guests. During the banquet, the bride changed into a Chinese-style qipao and returned to the banquet area. Just as in a Chinese-style wedding, the bride and groom then circulated among the tables and received general blessings at each table confirmed with a sip of their drinks. Finally, as guests began to depart, the bride and groom stood at the path leading out of the plaza, with the bride holding a tray filled with hard candies, individual cigarettes, and wrapped betel nuts, which guests took from the tray as they left. Mr. Dong explained that the couple, both of whom worked in the Orchid Island branch of the Taitung county government, had already been legally married in Taitung two years earlier, already had one child, and had waited until they had enough money to sponsor this banquet which confirmed their respect and allegiance to their ancestral village. Clearly betel nut had a central symbolic role in traditional weddings for all the various language-speaking communities in Taiwan. For the Taiwanese and Hakka, and the Indigenous betel nut chewing cultures of the Amis, Puyuma, Rukai, Paiwan, and Yami, betel nut symbolized the fertility of the union of man and woman. More specifically, the areca nut symbolized the bride and the betel pepper leaf the groom, while the betel nut quid symbolized their union, or the children that resulted. Traditionally, a bushel of areca nut symbolized the fertility of the bride that would bring new generations of children into the ancestral line. The temporary break in betel nut chewing under the Japanese occupation brought an end to the actual and symbolic use of betel nut in 157 weddings for most of these cultures. When betel nut chewing reemerged during the KMT period and wedding customs changed, betel nut was no longer featured in engagement and wedding ceremonies, but it retained its symbolic meaning and ritual use in courtship among Indigenous betel nut chewing cultures, and as we will see below, transformed into a commercialized flirting ritual among the Taiwanese and Hakka generally known as the phenomenon of “betel nut beauties,” where male clients purchase betel nut from seductively clothed young women. Ritual Use of Betel Nut among Traditional Healers in Taiwan Owing to the powerful symbolic nature of betel nut, it would be expected that betel nut is used in traditional healing, or “shamanic”—as defined by Tedlock (2005), in slight modification of Eliade’s original (1964) definition—rituals, and indeed it is among the Indigenous chewing cultures, and also features prominently in spirit possession cults among the Taiwanese and Hakka. During my fieldwork in Taiwan from 1995 through 2005, I found the “shamanic” use of betel nut still practiced among the Amis and Puyuma, and referenced as traditionally and perhaps still practiced among the Paiwan and Yami. Taiwanese and Hakka “tang kee” (Mandarin ji tong) and “ba-jia-jiang” are predominantly betel nut chewers themselves, but usually refrain from chewing during their ritual performances of spirit possession. Also interestingly, a revival of interest in the historical (but now extinct) Siraya culture (as described in Shepherd 1995) among Taiwanese in southwestern Taiwan who only recently began to consider themselves as descendants of the Siraya, has brought about contemporary performance of ancient Sirayan rituals, some of which use betel nut. 158 Betel nut was traditionally used in shamanic (healing and cursing) rituals by all the betel nut chewing cultures of Taiwan; however, with the suppression of betel nut production and chewing under the Japanese, and the recent advance of modern medical technology and western pharmaceuticals throughout Taiwan, many shamanic rituals have faded away. But just as many have continued alongside the more popular healing technologies of modern medicine, acupuncture, and reflexology, all of which do not rely on areca nut and betel pepper leaf for their practice. Areca nut is used in traditional Chinese herbalism in Taiwan, under the name “da fu pi” (literally, “big belly skin”), and is prescribed as a remedy for intestinal ailments (as discussed in Chapter 2). In dried form it is mixed with other herbs and boiled into a medicine, but the betel pepper plant is not part of the traditional Chinese herbal pharmacopeia (as mentioned in Chapter 1). For the Amis, all the important productive activities and rites of passage must be accompanied with religious rituals led by a sikawasay (shaman), usually a well-respected elder female of the community. Amis sikawasay traditionally performed rituals to assist pregnancy, childbirth, naming newborns, farming, hunting, initiation of war, headhunting, negotiation for peace, healing, asking for sunny days, asking for rain, funerals, tomb relocation, and construction of new houses (Chang Shu-mei 2005, 14). In 1995, I met a seventy-eight-year-old Amis woman from Malan village, who goes by the nickname Enah. She lives in a Taoist temple in a small community of Amis farmers near Taitung City. People told me she is a “shaman” (wushi in Mandarin Chinese, “sikawasay” in Amis language). She is also the keeper and host (called “daoshi” in Mandarin Chinese, translated as “Taoist priest” in English) of the Taoist 159 temple where she and her daughter reside with her son-in-law and two grandchildren. Her daughter was also training as a sikawasay and daoshi under her mother’s tutelage, as is traditional among the matrilineal Amis, though she was at that time only assisting her mother and would not dare to perform any rituals herself unless her mother directed her to do so. When the cultural performance group the Amis Great Singers formed in 1995 Enah was invited to perform as the group’s shaman because that was her actual status in the daily lives of all the other group members who were farmers in her local community of Malan, Taitung. Enah joined them as resident shaman on their 1997 tours to Japan, Belarus, and Seattle, and their 1998 five-city tour of the western United States. I also joined the group on their United States tours (Anderson 2000), and observed Enah’s relations with the group. She alone had brought betel nut for everyone in the group, and controlled its distribution to the group. Enah made sure people were chewing when they should be, and not chewing when they shouldn’t. She also had taken the risk of bringing all those areca nuts and betel leaves, which technically should have been reported to customs as “agricultural products” and in that case would have likely been confiscated upon entry to the United States. Betel nut and its ingredients are not nor have they ever been illegal in the United States, but under agricultural inspection laws, they may not be allowed for fear of transporting insects. On tour in the United States, Enah distributed betel nut in the morning, after each meal, and before and after rehearsals and performances. She must have brought at least 1000 areca nuts, which she distributed to the group of nine elders over ten days, 160 around 100 per day. When the group met with a Native American community on the Suquamish Indian Reservation near Seattle, Enah gave the community representative a betel nut to chew as a sign of friendship. The elder Native American man chewed it on the spot, and promptly turned red in the face and ears, and performed as happily shocked, to the amusement of all those gathered. She also brought rice wine, which she used in the performance of the healing rituals on stage, and her own home-grown tobacco which she rolled into long conical cigarettes and smoked by herself in relaxing situations after meals or at night, whenever outdoors. On stage, Enah performed a healing ritual on a volunteer from the group, the same man every time, who was known as the best dancer. He would sit cross-legged on the floor with the group encircling him. Enah would walk into the circle from off-stage, and first ritually cleanse all those present by waving a short branch of freshly cut bamboo with small bells attached to it in her right hand, and spitting rice wine in a fine mist through the air which she sipped from a small gourd in her left hand (see Figure 12). She would then perform an exorcism of evil spirits by violently stamping her foot on the ground while she brushed away evil spirits with her bamboo branch, and yelled out “ha!” or “tsa!” with each stomp. After the exorcism, she would lead the group in singing, during which time the now healed man rose up from the ground and danced with vitality along with Enah. Then Enah would re-join the group as a common member standing with them all in a semi-circle, representing the completion of the ritual and the return to daily life. 161 Figure 12: Enah performing a healing ritual at the Amis Folklore Great Singers concert in Los Angeles, California in 1998. For the Amis, diseases are caused by spiritual forces attached to material bodies, soul loss, or spirits having special requests of people. Shamans will perform sweeping (miasik), waving and slapping, chasing (mipohpoh), conjuring (mi’ang’ang), give offerings, or ritually change the names of people, to deal with individual cases. Enah’s healing ritual included all of these except the name changing ritual. Amis traditionally practiced rotating slash and burn horticulture of millet and dry rice, and gathering of wild vegetables. Yam and taro were the staple crops. Meat was acquired through men’s hunting and fishing. In the past, farming, fishing and hunting 162 required religious rituals to secure these means of survival. But during Japanese occupation, most Amis rituals were prohibited. Meanwhile, the Japanese government encouraged plantation of wet rice. As a result, when the KMT first fled to Taiwan the Amis lifestyle had become very similar to that of Han Chinese. Afterwards, due to improvements in the transportation and educational systems, contact between Amis and the outside world increased. Some Amis people also grew cash crops such as peanuts and corn. But the most obvious impact in Amis society was that young people, both men and women, left their native villages and relocated in the urban areas, working at factories or harbors, or as truck drivers. By the late 1980s, about two-thirds of the Amis population had left their villages and established permanent residence in cities (Chang Shu-mei 2005, 15). For Amis today, the “household” (iluma) is still the basic unit of social organization, and the ritual center of daily life. For example, farming rituals (misatudikung) and ancestor worship rituals (talatuas) require the use of bushels of areca nut and containers full of betel pepper leaves, glutinous rice cakes, and rice wine, which every household would prepare and place in a containers, along with a ceremonial round clay pot with a narrow opening on top. These objects are prepared by the family seeking a shaman’s assistance and must be placed together in the house (iluma), so the shaman can ask for protection when reporting to the spirits (tuas). The creator and ancestral spirits are considered to exist outside the visible and material human world. Ceremonial clay pots and betel nuts are the mediums for spirits of the dead to return into the human world, and enter into relations with living family members (Chang Shu-mei 2005, 31). 163 The following case of Amis sorcery was reported by Ts’eng Yue-Er (1978), herself a Taitung Amis, born in 1940. My aunt’s neighbor was a young shaman, who always bragged about her magical power and said bad things about another older shaman. One day, the older shaman took nine different beads made with glass, agate, porcelain, clay and wood, etc., and selected some small “tail-up” (dao diaozi) areca nuts. The older shaman opened the areca nuts with her bare hands, and inserted nine beads into the nuts, and then held the nuts in her palm and conjured a death spell. Afterward, the older shaman made an unexpected visit to the younger shaman at her home (iluma), and secretly threw the cursed areca nuts with beads inside into the corners of the younger shaman’s house. Shortly after the older shaman left, the younger shaman started rolling on the floor and realized there was a trick. All the neighbors were disturbed by a constant screaming and yelling to “break the spell for me!” But everyone was in such a panic that no one could recall the spell to relieve the younger shaman. So the young shaman died in pain. And the older shaman has also disappeared ever since.” [Ts’eng Yue-Er 1978, quoted in Wang Shu-Gui 1999, 194-195] The same basic understanding of the ritual significance and use of areca nuts to cure and curse people is also found among the contemporary Puyuma. In 2003, I met a Puyuma man in his fifties, called Mr. Lai, who had been observing and practicing shamanic rituals using areca nut for several years, but would still not identify himself as a “real shaman.” He considered himself a farmer who also could conduct rituals, what I would call a “part-time shaman.” Mr. Lai introduced himself with great humility. I first studied under a shaman for one or two years, and then began conducting my own rituals six or seven years ago. But I still don’t know how to perform some rituals. In the beginning, I was only an observer who attended the rituals, and I learned from other shamans, watching how they performed the rituals. He further mentioned that among the Puyuma, the most powerful shamans in both healing and sorcery were women: Female shamans are different than us, men are more casual. Anyone can learn to perform the rituals like men do. For the female shamans, they come from a 164 [matrilineal] shamanic lineage in order to become shamans. Numerous rituals are required before one can become a female shaman. Some rituals even last for seven days and must be reported to our ancestors, so they are very different than male shamans. Female shamans are more powerful and detailed than us. In other words, to be a male shaman is easier, and to be a female shaman is more complicated. If all the shamans gather together to perform a ritual for the whole village, the male shamans will proceed first since our rituals are easier, only then will the female shaman continue through the complicated aspects. Only female shaman can make symbols for different purposes; male shamans cannot. For this, female shamans use areca nuts, and spit wine onto the areca nuts. During the ritual, suddenly the areca nut will appear in the palms of their hands, and you won’t even notice when and where they prepared the areca nuts. But for us male shamans, we just aren’t as powerful, we can’t do that. We only do the few easier rituals. Although men acting together in their age grades or individually as headman or village leaders were documented in historical records as performing cyclic or seasonal rituals, usually the most powerful Amis and Puyuma shamans were and continue to be women who pass their title down through their matrilineage, from mother to eldest daughter. In her recent book titled The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, Barbara Tedlock (2005) uses an example from the Puyuma to suggest that the dominant gender of shamans changed from female to male: Indigenous Puyuma shamans often claim that a transvestite male named Samguan was the first shaman. There are two problems with that assertion. First, Samguan actually lived; he was twenty-five years old when Japanese invaders arrived in Taiwan in 1895. And second, the islanders’ own traditional praise songs tell of a woman ancestor called Udekaw and how she magically traveled to invisible worlds by crossing a bridge and arriving at a faraway beach. She, too, is said to be the first shaman. How could the identity of the original shaman change from female to transvestite male? The shift apparently took place at the beginning of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, when shamanic practices were forbidden. The Samguan story says that he was working in his field (women are the farmers in this society) when spirits possessed him. In his ecstasy he saw the special bag women shamans carry as their insignia of office and took it as his own, thus overthrowing Udekaw. Today shamanism is incorporated as a healing modality into the health care system and widely practiced by both women and men in Taiwan. 165 In the discrepancy between contemporary legends and traditional songs, we might discern how, in a moment of political subjection and social disorder, the dominant gender changed. While the ancestral shaman should be remembered as the woman named Udekaw (indeed, she is still sung about in this way), a transvestite man usurped her place in legend and became known as the founder of shamanism. [Tedlock 2005, 58-59] While Tedlock correctly observes that shamanism is practiced by both men and women in Taiwan among the Puyuma, and that the ancestral shaman should be remembered as a woman, her interpretation that Samguan might have usurped Udekaw’s rightful place in legend does not bear out among contemporary Puyuma shamans, where female shamans are considered the only “true shamans,” and male shamans admit themselves that they can only perform certain simple rituals, but would not claim to have the power that is considered innate for female shamans. Among the Puyuma, female shamans inherit their power through a matrilineal shamanic lineage while male shamans have attained power through practice and devotion to what seems to be a female domain of power, just as Tedlock suggests is often the case. In July of 2003, Mr. Lai allowed us to document one of his rituals and provided an explanation of each aspect. The ritual was performed for the sake of his brother who had moved out of his old house without notifying the resident spirit of the house, which was represented by an areca nut with a red bead inside, lodged in the woodwork of the house in a secret location. When Mr. Lai’s brother began experiencing all kinds of bad luck in his new house, Mr. Lai identified his brother’s transgression, and offered to perform the following ritual to help his brother’s luck turn for the better. Mr. Lai began the ritual at his own house, first chanting in Puyuma ritual language while holding each areca nut in his palm, and then placing them in line on top of a banana 166 leaf. Each areca nut was prepared with its cap still intact, and had been sliced length-wise down the center, but not all the way through, and tied with fishing line threaded through small red beads (see Figure 13). Figure 13: Mr. Lai conducts Puyuma shamanic ritual using areca nuts. After chanting into each of the areca nuts, Mr. Lai took them, still wrapped in the banana leaf, to the side of a rural road that leads through betel pepper leaf plantations and 167 other fields, just before sunset. At the roadside location, he chanted over each areca nut while holding each in his palms, and then placed them into a formation in the dirt, using additional fishing line and small red beads, and three small rocks. When asked the meaning of the areca nuts and rocks in formation, Mr. Lai replied, You ask about the three rocks. First, the five areca nuts placed in the front row are like the main figures, they are to scold, to argue, and to engage in battle. And then, the other three areca nuts are to apologize. Finally, the one areca nut that stands alone is the guiding spirit, which is the most important one. The rocks are there to provide backup strength for the areca nuts, since they are extremely hard, so the areca nuts can rely on the rocks and won’t fall back on the ground. When asked why he used areca nuts in his rituals, Mr. Lai explained that he used areca nuts because they are the fruit of the areca palm tree, which has a straight trunk. Since they are the fruits of a straight-trunked tree, areca nuts can therefore act as pure conduits of his intention. Trees, and therefore fruit of trees, with branches or bushy leaves represent all kinds of distraction and potential misunderstandings of intention. However, the areca palm tree is like a pure axis from the ground to the sky, and its fruit, the areca nut, is produced right at that intersection, the axis-mundi. And so, the areca nut is the most powerful of all fruits, and the only one useful in shamanic rituals. Furthermore, the areca nut itself represents a person, with the cap representing the head and the flesh representing the body. Individual areca nuts also represent specific intentions, which are ritually manipulated by the shaman, or put under his influence. In the ritual we witnessed, each activated areca nut is wrapped with fishing line and small red beads, and lined up with rocks behind them, thereby confirming their direction of influence. 168 Mr. Lai learned how to perform this ritual by observing elder shamans, and also was provided a copy of a textbook “written for educational purposes” that describes in detail how to perform various rituals. He told us some about the ritual to worship ancestors, and confirmed that areca nuts are required to perform any ritual. As for ancestor worship, which is conducted in our village ancestral temple, we need sticky rice, money, usually about fifty one-dollar (NT) coins, and areca nuts which are placed on top of a banana leaf. Also we need cups made of beads, sometimes seven cups, and sometimes nine cups. There is great variation, and many different ways to do rituals, but areca nuts are the most essential. No ritual can be done with areca nuts. We had witnessed some people breaking off and throwing pieces of the areca nut cap before chewing, and asked Mr. Lai about the meaning of that practice. He replied that if you are alone, without anyone else around, and you are afraid, then you could peal off the cap of the areca nut bit by bit and cast off the pieces on the ground around you for protection. Areca nut is also used to protect and bless a newborn baby, as was noted in early reports from the Qing Dynasty (Jiang Shu-Ru 2002). Upon the birth of a baby, a Puyuma shaman would rub a whole areca nut over the body of the newborn to bless and protect it from evil spirits. It is noteworthy in that Puyuma shamans are willing to teach anyone their art, regardless of ethno-linguistic heritage. In fact, Mr. Lai was willing to teach me and the four other members of my fieldwork team from Taipei anything we wished to learn, even while sadly reflecting that the children of his own village have little interest in learning how to conduct rituals. He noted that the only “new students” of shamanism nowadays were people over the age of fifty. Younger people had shown up on occasion to observe rituals, but very few, and usually they would not return, perhaps because it requires 169 learning an ancient dialect of Puyuma ritual speech, when Puyuma children nowadays don’t even necessarily learn modern Puyuma speech. When we say the prayers, we must use both ancient and modern Puyuma speech. Even people older than me still can’t say the prayers without proper training. If your crews are made of ten people [perhaps meaning a sacred number, or merely a sizable group], you can come to each family in our village and collect our knowledge of the past. It seems that the younger generation of our village is not interested in our own past. Young people don’t know much about our poems and songs. Only elders know, even though we all have to sing them during the New Year. Young people sometimes show up at the activity center, but only once, never the second time. They are too lazy. If you outsiders would like to learn this, we won’t reject you. Instead, we will welcome you! When asked if he was worried that the younger generation of Puyuma might know nothing about the traditions, he replied, “Of course, I do worry about that. Our young people nowadays know nothing, and also forget our own culture.” Although it seems that no young people are interested in learning the way of conducting shamanic rituals among the Puyuma, in fact the high status of elders, not only elder shamans, among the Puyuma might contribute to fewer middle-aged or younger people attempting to learn out of ostensible “respect” for the elders. For instance, among the Amis, younger men are often too embarrassed to sing in front of the elders, except at the annual ritual of the harvest, and so don’t end up learning the beautiful and subtle singing techniques until they are more advanced in age. Also, the demands on young people in Taiwan are very high. They should study and try to find a high-paying and respectable career. Only those who choose to remain in the farming village or else fail at school would even become potential candidates. However, in recent years the younger generation of Puyuma has excelled in singing and songwriting and been celebrated throughout Taiwan as musicians who have come to 170 represent their own Puyuma culture in a way that has affected mainstream popular music in Taiwan. Mrs. Zhen, the grandmother of one of the most famous Puyuma singers in Taiwan, named Samingad (Ji Xiao-jun) also lives in the same village as Mr. Lai. In fact, when we asked her about the shamanic use of areca nut, she told us that she didn’t know much about that, and recommended we talk with Mr. Lai. She did mention that her aunt was a shaman, but Mrs. Zhen saw how her aunt would sometimes become possessed and look terrifying, so even though Mrs. Zhen came from the same matrilineal shamanic line and had the chance to join the profession, she refused, and instead adopted Catholicism. Since that time, Mrs. Zhen had no interest in learning the ways of shamanic practice, though she does use the magical ritual of protection which involves casting off pieces of the areca nut cap when she feels lonely. The following account, reported by Wang Shu-Gui (1999), further confirms the willingness of Puyuma shamans to teach outsiders, in this case a sixty-some-year-old Paiwan woman named Mrs. Cai who had apprenticed to a Puyuma female shaman. It also shows the malevolent use of areca nut by Puyuma shamans, something that was widely feared by Amis people in contemporary Taiwan, but not acknowledged among the Puyuma shaman we interviewed. Both Mr. Lai and Mrs. Zhen, however, did note that Amis people are quite fearful of Puyuma shamans, but thought it was strange, since neither of them had heard of any malevolent use of areca nut rituals. Mr. Lai only noted that if Amis people see a charmed areca nut on the ground, that is one with the fishing line and red beads tied to it, they would be too afraid to pass by. According to Mrs. Cai, 171 Puyuma believe the areca nut represents the human being. The cap of the nut is the head, and the nut itself is the body. Whole areca nuts are also like bullets, which can harm people. Puyuma sorcerers would put tiny red beads inside areca nuts, sometimes even adding iron chips. If they want to harm someone’s head, they use a needle to stab the cap of the areca nut, and the intended victim would die from a headache. If they want to harm someone’s body, they use a needle to stab the body of the areca nut, and their victim would suffer a stomachache and could even die in more severe cases. Puyuma sorcerers mostly harm people with the practice of betel nut witchcraft. [Wang Shu-Gui 1999, 196-7] In 1996, Mrs. Cai recounted events that transpired in the 1940s to her elder sister, who became a victim of Puyuma areca nut sorcery. Mrs. Cai’s sister was a very beautiful woman and a talented singer, who attended singing competitions in Taitung and Taizhong, and was very famous in her neighborhood of Danan, especially sought after by the local men. But my sister didn’t like those men, and my mother didn’t like them either. My mother’s reason was, don’t be friends with the [Puyuma] people of Bei-nan and Li-jia because they use sorcery to harm people. One day, a man gave my sister a betel nut. When she chewed the nut, she found that there was some sand in it, but she didn’t know that was a bead. Soon afterwards, my sister became sick with a stomachache and then passed away ten days later. Only after, we realized my sister had eaten a cursed betel nut. If we thought about that earlier, we would have found a way to save her, and she wouldn’t have died. In the past, whenever we found areca nuts, we shouldn’t pick them up or chew them, because we were afraid they were cursed. If we saw some areca nuts under the bed or at the front door, we shouldn’t touch them. Once we confirmed those areca nuts were cursed, we had to ask a Paiwan shaman to break the curse. Our [Paiwan] shaman would put a bead inside her own areca nut and use it to rub people who found the cursed areca nut, from head to toe, and the curse would thus be broken. [Wang Shu-Gui 1999, 197] Mrs. Cai told another story of her mother using areca nut rituals to heal a man who had been cursed. My [Mrs. Cai’s] mother was also a [Paiwan] shaman and practiced sorcery. In 1958, a young man in Da-niao village suddenly became ill. The young man felt there was a thorn in his throat, and couldn’t talk or eat. Da-niao villagers asked my mother to do a ritual to help him. Before leaving for Da-niao village, my mother heard from local villagers that this young man was married, but was still 172 having affairs with other women. After my mother finished the healing ritual, she found a dried areca nut on the floor of his house with a bead in it. So she wrapped the nut with a handkerchief and took it to the river, where she prayed and broke the curse. The young man recovered immediately and is still alive today. [Wang Shu-Gui 1999, 197] As for the areca nut sorcery rituals, Mrs. Cai described some details: The shaman would take ten areca nuts, with their caps facing east, and place them in a straight line, then conjure [chant]. If the shaman wanted to make a person sick or immobilized, she would use a thread to tie around the areca nut. The length of the thread and the number of ties depends on the individual shaman’s situation. Actually, even the number of areca nuts used in the practice varies. Some use twenty nuts to lay a straight line. [Wang Shu-Gui 1999, p. 198] Mrs. Cai also reported a case of an areca nut ritual used to break up a relationship. Here is a story about a mother who didn’t like her daughter’s boyfriend, and asked a shaman to break them up. The shaman first found two rocks, one representing the girl, the other one representing the boy. She laid twelve ritually prepared areca nuts in front of the two rocks. She placed areca nuts with five beads in front of the girl’s rock, and placed areca nuts with seven beads in front of the boy’s rock. Then she started conjuring, and took one areca nut from the boy’s side and pointed it to the girl’s side, demanding him to stop loving the girl. And she did the same thing by using one areca nut from the girl’s side, to demand her to stop loving the boy. After finishing conjuring, the shaman buried the areca nuts inside the house, and then stomped the ground firmly and spit phlegm on top of them. The two broke up months later. [Wang Shu-Gui 1999, 198] In these examples, the same general guidelines of conjuring and chanting over areca nuts to activate them, inserting beads and tying them with fishing line, and lining them up in negotiation to activate a kind of play or performance are also found. Furthermore, the most harmful of all areca nut sorcery is administered through the “target” chewing a cursed areca nut, or else burying cursed areca nuts in the house of the target. 173 Discussion of the Symbolic Meanings of Betel Nut in Taiwan As we can see in all these cases, betel nut is primarily a boundary marker. It defines domesticated environments from wilderness, one’s own property from another’s, a social status and group membership as in marriage or alliance or rites of passage, ethnicity among Han and non-Han, gender among Han, and the boundary between the human material world and the spiritual non-material world. Throughout the shamanic use of areca nut among the Amis, Puyuma, and Paiwan, there is a common symbolic understanding of the areca nut as a boundary marker, which is subjectively perceived and often in need of re-articulation, a conduit of pure intention, and the symbol of the axis-mundi, which also symbolizes the human being with a body and head. This symbolic understanding of areca nut is explained as a natural interpretation of its origin, as it is the fruit of the areca catechu palm tree. In the same way that areca nut is ritually used among shamans, farmers and ordinary folk use the areca palm tree to physically mark boundaries between households and fields, and also use the trunks of the areca palm as supporting beams in various structures. It was confirmed by numerous interview subjects among the Amis and Puyuma that the dried trunks of areca palms will last over six decades if kept out of direct sunlight or rain, and since they are among the most durable, strong, and straight pieces of wood available, they were always preferred for use in traditional house construction. The ritual and symbolic meanings of areca nut alone, and also the betel nut as chewed, have evolved out of generations of observations and experimentation among the Indigenous peoples of southeastern Taiwan. Most significantly, the primary ritual specialists among these Indigenous cultures remain “shamans” who integrate all kinds of traditional knowledge, and all validate the primary 174 role of areca nut in their diverse practices. Among these Indigenous cultures, betel nut marks the boundary between the human material world and the spiritual non-material world. Elsewhere in Taiwan, among the Taiwanese and Hakka language-speaking communities, while betel nut is chewed, it primarily marks not the boundary between sacred and profane, but between men’s and women’s social worlds, or else it marks class boundaries. Instead of one person acting as a “shaman” there has been a diversification of healing specializations that include “spirit possession cults,” “herbalists,” “acupuncturists,” “chiropractors,” “reflexologists,” “fortune tellers,” “feng shui masters,” and “Western medical doctors.” While many of these specialists are themselves betel nut chewers, the medical delivery of betel nut and its ingredients is strictly limited to the “herbalist” who can prescribe areca nut, but not betel leaf or lime paste, for certain conditions. In fact, one result of the diversification of specialization has led to betel nut becoming stigmatized as harmful to health, the exact opposite of its original meaning among Indigenous cultures. There is medical evidence lending support to either side of this issue, yet the interesting opposition between the two views match up not with chewers versus non-chewers, but rather with Indigenous chewers versus non-Indigenous peoples in Taiwan. From this vantage point, the social versus the spiritual primacy of the use of betel nut comes to represent a symbolic boundary between Indigenous chewing cultures and those of the Taiwanese and Hakka “guests” who have now come to dominate the island (making up over 85 percent of Taiwan’s population). For this majority population, betel nut marks a social boundary between men and women, and between higher and lower 175 socioeconomic class, and does not (directly) relate to spirituality at all. With this in mind, we will explore the contemporary state of production and marketing of betel nut in Taiwan. 176 Chapter 6: Production and Marketing of Betel Nut in Taiwan This chapter examines the production and marketing of betel nut in contemporary Taiwan, and describes the way in which the current betel nut industry works, following the production of areca nuts, betel leaf, and lime paste from farmers and factories to primary and secondary wholesalers and on to retailers. Finally, the phenomenon of “betel nut beauties” as a marketing strategy is analyzed in terms of contemporary popular culture in Taiwan. The Contemporary Betel Nut Industry in Taiwan When the KMT fled to Taiwan in 1949, the island’s economy was based on agricultural production for export to Japan, which of course did not include production of areca nut. During the 1950s the new KMT/ROC government of Taiwan promoted increased agricultural production to provide a base for future industrialization. By the 1960s, industrialization based on foreign capital investment and technology, mostly from the United States, brought factories into the formerly agricultural rural countryside, as the “Made in Taiwan” phenomenon infiltrated world markets. Rural location of factories helped keep labor and rent costs low enough to compete in the world economy. “By 1973, agriculture contributed only 11 percent to Taiwan’s Gross Domestic Product, while industry accounted for 43 percent. Taiwan was no longer an agrarian society.” (Ho 1978, 130; quoted in Gallin 1984, 384). In the early 1970s Taiwan’s betel nut industry also experienced unprecedented economic expansion. Areca nut farming became more lucrative than any other cash 177 crop. The trend continued through the 1980s, until 1993 when it reached its apex (Interview with Mr. Wu, 2003 June). In the mid-1990s, supply of areca nut finally outmatched demand, and by 1996 areca nut farmers were cutting down areca palm trees to limit supply. The betel nut industry still remained profitable at all levels, but its growth stabilized. During this period, betel nut retailers developed specific marketing strategies to sell their product to the mostly male clientele, which included hiring young beautiful women to represent their shop and make the transactions. Mr. Wu, a native Hakka language-speaker and the owner of two betel nut shops in Hsinchu (northwestern Taiwan) that he named “Miss China” and “Spicy Chinese Girls,” which are both located within walking distance of each other on the same side of a busy boulevard that connects to a highway onramp, was happy to talk about his involvement in the betel nut industry since the early 1990s. Mr. Wu entered the betel nut business because he loves to chew betel nut and he saw that he could make a living selling betel nut. He told of how he and his brother first entered the business. Since we chew a lot of betel nuts ourselves, we thought if we operate a betel nut business, we can chew betel nuts and make money at the same time. We saw that selling betel nut is a really lucrative business. People said if you sell vegetables, the profit is only 50 percent. Betel nut business is seasonal, when areca nut is expensive our profits are 50 percent, but when areca nut is cheap, our profits are 80-90 percent. And because we understand betel nuts, and also have secondary wholesaler experience, we can control the quality based on the wholesale price. Plus my wife can sell betel nuts, so I just keep doing it. Mr. Wu described the most profitable period for the betel nut industry in Taiwan that he could recall was in the mid-1990s. Seven to ten years ago [1993-1995], when one areca nut cost NT 12, and one areca palm tree could generate NT 10,000 to 20,000 profit annually. One areca palm usually bears three bushels of areca nuts, perhaps 600 to 700 per year. But in the south, such as in Nantou, one areca palm bears up to one thousand nuts per year. So 178 each fully matured and harvested areca palm could generate profit of NT 30,000 to 40,000 annually. The best time was seven years ago. Afterwards, it has gotten slower and slower every year. Mr. Wu then described why profits had recently decreased as follows: People in Taiwan chew billions of NT dollars worth of betel nuts annually. Growing areca nut is still far more profitable than any other fruit. But it is not as good now. Many farmers cut down the areca palms. Perhaps the market is full, supply has exceeded demand. For example, there were 10 million areca palms three years ago in the year 2000, and now in 2003 there are 15 million areca palms. But the number of chewers hasn’t increased. So for those farmers who couldn’t make enough money to support the plantation labor, they cut down the palms to plant something else. Chewers are still chewing, but for those who used to chew NT 500 per day, they only chew NT 100 per day now, because the general economic boom has slowed down. Those who used to chew NT 100 per day, now perhaps only chew NT 50 a day. If the betel nut stands have bad business, then it affects every link in the business chain, the secondary and primary wholesalers, and then the farmers. That is why the farmers end up cutting down some of their areca palms. In terms of areca nut production, after areca nuts are harvested, they go through several stages of processing before they arrive to shops for sale. Mr. Wu elaborates, First the primary wholesalers use a machine to classify the nuts according to the size and weight, and then areca nuts of different classes are separated into another machine to count the number of nuts. The primary wholesalers who own all these machines buy areca nuts directly from the farmers, and then ship the areca nuts on trucks to secondary wholesalers around the island. Usually the secondary wholesalers have to pick up the areca nuts themselves at some local place. Areca farmers harvest their nuts for specific primary wholesalers, who need to contact their secondary wholesalers in different areas. Secondary wholesalers place orders on the phone, and then wait for shipment. Some primary wholesalers sell 200,000 to 300,000 nuts a day. The areca nuts arrive the following day. For example, if a farmer in Nantou harvested some areca nuts today, they will be packed tonight before 10 pm, and trucks will carry the nuts away immediately; perhaps arriving in Hsinchu at 4 am. The secondary wholesaler picks up the areca nuts the next morning, and repacks them in smaller quantities before making deliveries to each retail stand. There are three major primary betel nut wholesalers: one in Pingtung, one in Nantou, and one for Taitung and Hualien. These three set and manipulate the price. If they want to raise the price, everyone’s price rises. The primary betel nut wholesalers have meetings with secondary wholesalers. For example the primary wholesaler in Nantou will meet up with secondary wholesalers in the North, who 179 represents the Tao-Chu-Miao [Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli] and Taipei areas. The unions decide the wholesale price around the island. One can’t harvest areca nuts for a higher price because they look healthier, or sell areca nuts at a different price. They just control the price. If they want to raise the price of the areca nuts, the price in all of Taiwan will rise. For example, now one areca nut costs NT 3, secondary wholesalers sell it for NT 3.3, and make NT 300 per bag of 1000 nuts. Sometimes they make NT $ 0.2 per nut. Unions can also affect the price. For example, if the market is slower now, or there is less demand, the unions will push to lower the price. If there is still a good demand, they will try to keep the price the same. But, the unions have to listen to the major wholesalers. Areca nut is not too expensive now, which is reasonable since the betel nuts in Pingtung are in season now [in June]. But the farmers nowadays are very strange. They will intentionally not harvest areca nuts and the price will rise in the summer. In other words, each county has a secondary wholesaler union director who deals directly with primary wholesalers, and then sells betel nut ingredients and other related amenities to retail shops all over the county. Mr. Wu commented on the seasonal availability and pricing of betel nut at the time of the interview, June, versus other times of the year. The Nantou season is from August to February. After February, usually the Pingtung production can have their first harvest. But if not, the production from Hualien and Taitung can cover the market demand. If the season in Nantou and Pingtung bridges the gap, then areca nuts harvested in Eastern Taiwan can’t make any profit. There are three basic kinds of areca nuts: extra tender, white meat, and red meat. Nantou wholesalers provide all three kinds. Customers dislike areca nuts from Hualien and Taitung because they think the quality is poor. When you chew good areca nuts such as from Nantou or Pingtung, you get very little quid remaining. When you chew areca nuts from Hualien and Taitung, you get a huge quid, with hard fibers, like straw. Good areca nuts should become smaller and smaller as you chew, and end up with very little quid. Upon starting a betel nut retail business, merchants are paid visits by wholesalers. When one is about to open a betel nut retail business, the secondary wholesalers will come to visit. They have everything you need to operate a betel nut stand: betel leaves, white and red lime paste, even drinks, cigarettes, and all kinds of tools. If you have good relations with them, they give you things for free such as a knife 180 to cut areca nuts or lime paste containers. If not, you have to buy those things from them. My secondary wholesaler is my wife’s godfather, so he takes good care of me. It’s not embarrassing to admit that he lends me money from NT 50,000 to 70,000. He will evaluate the sale capacity of the betel nut stand, and let us [betel nut stand owners] owe him money, sometimes from NT 100,000 to 200,000, which is like credit. Because he knows the money will be returned, so he can lend that much. The secondary wholesaler delivers a package of areca nuts like this one, which contains one thousand nuts and now costs NT 3000. Once we get the areca nuts, we start cutting off both ends of the areca nuts, and open some of the nuts in half. We first rinse them off in water, and then soak them in bleach. Soaking areca nuts in bleach keeps them a shiny green, but according to Mr. Wu, doesn’t harm chewers, since they are washed off afterwards with water. We asked about the potential cancer risk of chewing betel nut, and Mr. Wu indicated he thinks it relates to individual body-type. Many elders in Taiwan have chewed betel nuts their whole lives and never had any problems, while only a few have, and those are usually younger men who in Mr. Wu’s opinion chew lots of “low quality” nuts. Mr. Wu referenced government and newspaper reports that suggest the “betel leaf flower” (laohua) and “red lime paste” (honghui) are the cancer-causing culprits. Mr. Wu believes that chewing the traditional “leaf-wrapped” (baoye) variety of betel nut should not cause cancer since all of the ingredients are purely natural. Baoye variety of betel nuts consist of a whole areca nut wrapped in a white lime paste dusted betel pepper leaf. Another variety of betel nut, which is only popular in Taiwan, is called qinya. It is prepared by slicing halfway through an areca nut and inserting the tip of the betel pepper flower with red lime paste, which is conventional white lime paste flavored with additional Chinese herbs including ercha. When asked the secret to opening a successful betel nut stand, Mr. Wu replied that in addition to cultivating good relationships with the secondary wholesaler, 181 You have to find a good location with heavy traffic flow, or next to a highway entrance. Some stands in the urban centers rely on their good reputation. They must have the best quality betel nuts. These can even have sellers who are men or middle-aged women and still have a great business. But they still can’t rely on how much money they will make during certain periods. For those famous stands in the urban centers, like A-Hung Betel Nut, the quality of their areca nuts is even better than ours, and they always look very fresh and green. Such stands must rely on regular customers. You must find the best quality ingredients. Because of the soil, I buy areca nut from Nantou. Those are very tender. For plantations in altitudes from 500 to 1,200 meters, the higher the altitude, the more tender and sweet the areca nut. The worst areca nuts are from Hualien and Taitung. The best are from Nantou, then Chia-yi, and then Pingtung. The only time when areca farmers in Hualien and Taitung can sell their nuts for profit is when the season in Nantou has ended but the season in Pingtung has not yet started. Usually, areca nuts from Hualien and Taitung are eliminated through competition, because no one likes to chew them. If there is not enough supply of betel nut in Taiwan, even from Hualien and Taitung, then primary wholesalers import areca nuts from Hainan Island and Thailand, although it is risky, since it is illegal and they might be caught and have the areca nuts confiscated. But our government is so strange that they will catch the illegal smuggling of areca nuts, and then allow them to be sold in the market anyway. Only if there are no more areca nuts in Hualien and Taitung, or the price gets very expensive, the Thailand or Hainan areca nuts will appear. They are cheaper, and less tasty. We can sell a great quantity of those areca nuts, but somehow I can’t get used to the taste. Also, since the betel nut business is so lucrative, the competition is very intense. Therefore, you need to have the best quality “betel nut beauties” to sell for you, and the most beautiful and eye-catching design for your shop. You must have a big sign with bright colors, and a spacious storefront. Everyone has equal opportunity to open a betel nut stand, but some have a great business and some don’t. That’s just how things work. The weak become the prey of the strong, or the big fish eats the small fish. The “most beautiful and eye catching design” has a stereotypical aesthetic found in Taiwan betel nut vending stands and shops. A common indicator of a betel nut stand, with or without betel nut beauties, is a green florescent light tube or a pattern made of several green neon light tubes arranged in a fan, like the leaves of an areca palm tree (see Figure 14). The simplest betel nut vending stands are mobile refrigerators with glass tops, so customers can see the ingredients and freshly prepared betel nuts before 182 they make a purchase. These can be moved into high-traffic locations in markets or night bazaars (see Figure 15). Figure 14: Green neon lights signify “betel nut sold here” (left) even in this Tea Shop (right), displaying the typical green neon fan design. Figure 15: Mobile betel nut vending shop at temple market in Taipei (left), detail of betel nut for sale including baoye and qinya (right). Medium-sized betel nut vending stands, the most common size, are large semi-mobile glass aquariums set up along highways (see Figure 16). The largest betel 183 nut vending stands are actual shop-fronts with large windows, mirrors, usually painted in one bright color on the interior (see Figure 17). These kind usually also employ betel nut beauties, such as Mr. Wu’s shops in Hsinchu. Mr. Wu told us that it costs about NT 200,000 to 300,000 to set up a stand like this. Just for his “Chinese Spicy Girls” sign alone, it cost more than NT 100,000. Figure 16: Medium-sized semi-mobile glass aquarium style roadside betel nut beauty shops, these two are in Taichung (left) and Taoyuan (right). Betel nut vendors have found a wide range of ways to gain customers’ attention, including big signs with bright colors, flashing florescent lights or even multi- colored spinning siren lights. A row of betel nut vending shops at night appears like a miniature version of downtown Las Vegas. 184 Figure 17: Large-sized permanent betel nut beauty shops, one in Taoyuan (above), and one of Mr. Wu’s shops in Hsinchu (below). 185 With a full understanding of the production end of the betel nut industry, now we turn to the marketing side, and examine the phenomenon of “betel nut beauties” (binlang xishi) in more detail. Betel Nut Beauties (binlang xishi) The name “betel nut beauty” (binlang xishi) refers to a legendary historical figure named Xi Shi, renowned as one of the Four Beauties of Ancient China, and part of the common historical understanding of people in Taiwan and Chinese people generally. In the contemporary imagination of people in Taiwan, Xi Shi conveys a woman whose beauty translates into social or economic power. Traditionally in Taiwan any beautiful women working in the market would be called by the name of whatever they were selling with the added title “xishi,” such as “tofu xishi.” Thus, when young women began selling betel nut in Taiwan, they were called “xishi.” The likely origin of the phenomenon of “betel nut beauties” could date back to the 1980s when betel nut vendors must have noticed that if they asked their beautiful young daughters to operate the business front, then sales would increase. By the early 1990s in Taiwan, on a comedy variety television show called “Lian Huan Pao,” there was a running skit in which two female actors portrayed themselves as the “betel nut sisters” (binlang jiemei hua). The “betel nut sisters” were the daughters of a betel nut vendor. Their family operated a betel nut stand in Shuang-dong, Nantou County. The sisters were portrayed with exaggerated make-up and fashionably styled hair, wearing 186 miniskirts, and singing humorous songs about their family’s betel nut stand in the manner of Saturday Night Live, including all kinds of physical comedy. In the mid-1990s, after hiring “betel nut beauties” became more popular in Taiwan, an unfortunate association developed between “binlang xishi” and “prostitution,” as exemplified in the following joke: A man drives up to a roadside betel nut stand. A seductively and scantily clothed beautiful young woman runs out of the shop, comes up to his car window, leans in and smiles. The man says, “Hi, how much for betel nut?” She replies, “That depends on which kind you want.” “What are the options?” “There are two kinds, cold and hot.” “How much is the cold kind?” “Three nuts for NT 100 [USD 3].” “How can that be so expensive?” “One for you to chew, two for you to view.” “Wow, how about the hot kind?” “Three nuts for NT 1,000 [USD 30].” “What is the difference compared with the cold kind? “Oh, the hot kind includes tax.” 1 This joke expresses the common stereotypical view that “betel nut beauties” offer more than betel nut for sale, that they could also be selling sexual intercourse. There are of course prostitutes in Taiwan, and they have their own methods and places of business, which are actually not connected with betel nut sales at all. As noted in Chapter 4, prostitutes (jinu) work in “tea houses” in “red light districts” or as “call girls.” In the 1990s, an alternative career for young women to make money without necessarily engaging in prostitution was to work in “men’s nightclubs” as “hostesses” (jiudian xiaojie) who are hired to sit and drink with men, and could accept offers for prostitution 1 In Mandarin Chinese “tax” and “sleep” are pronounced exactly the same, “shui” in the “4 th tone.” 187 at their own will, outside of the nightclub itself. While prostitution is an “option” for the young women who work as “hostesses,” it is not part of the job requirement for all of them, though drinking alcohol with male clients and being physically fondled and potentially humiliated by them is required, and at least some must be willing to accompany a male client to a motel later to ostensibly engage in sexual intercourse. In fact, for financial reasons, many “hostesses” could be impelled to do so. Whatever money they make from their client must also be reported to their boss in the nightclub, who will also collect a percentage, acting as a “pimp.” These “hostesses” earn around NT 5,000 per shift or NT 600 per hour (2006 report from Taichung), which could add up to over NT 80,000 per month, not including off-site business. Betel nut beauties, however, do not need to endure men’s physical fondling, and are not forced to drink alcohol, yet they remain potential targets of public insult or sympathy, and as objects of male exploitation in the public domain. The only required physical contact with customers, however, is the handing of a bag of betel nuts in exchange for money. Their job requirement is to attract men and tease them flirtatiously so they will return again. Consequently, betel nut beauties also make less money than “hostesses” who presumably could deliver the “real thing,” only around NT 30,000 to 40,000 per month, which is enough to rent one’s own apartment and eat healthily each month with a little left over for investment, gifts, or pampering oneself. And of course, women who work as betel nut beauties always have the option to become a “hostess” or “prostitute” of they wish. If they could allow themselves to become a “prostitute” then they would at least choose to work as a “hostess,” not a “betel nut beauty,” since they could earn more per month. Since this is the case, betel nut beauties should have a 188 higher social prestige than “hostesses.” Whereas betel nut beauties, like people who work in any occupation, may engage in sexual intercourse with anyone they wish for whatever reason they wish, they are not under the control of a “pimp” or “master” in the way that “hostesses” and “prostitutes” are, though certain exceptions could arise. Indeed, they rely on their “beauty and sex-appeal” for their work, as do models, actors, and celebrities, but they are not required to engage in private physical contact with men as are traditional “sex-workers” in Taiwan. Betel nut beauties need only look beautiful and dress provocatively. They are viewed by men, but need not come into physical contact with them. Furthermore, working as a betel nut beauty does not limit one’s future potential of becoming a success in Taiwan society. For example, the 2004 Olympic Games winner of the female Tae-kwan-do gold medal was a former betel nut beauty (Lin Chieh-yu 2004). When she returned to Taiwan after the Olympics, in October of 2004, Chen Shih-hsin was celebrated as the first Olympic gold medal winner from Taiwan, and was given the honor of leading the collective singing of the national anthem during the October 10 celebrations of the founding of the Republic of China (Wang Hsiao-wen 2005). Actually, betel nut beauties are protected by the owners of the betel nut stands, and monitored by video surveillance, in case anyone threatens them. For example, Mr. Wu hires young men who are ready to intervene in such situations. We always have young men upstairs who act as security guards. For instance, at night, if some drunken customer sexually harasses the ladies, we will step out to help the ladies. We installed a surveillance system so we don’t have to be physically present downstairs in the shop, which would scare away some 189 customers. We also put up a sticker on the window that reads, “This shop is under 24 hour video surveillance.” That way, the customers will be less daring, and we can still present the ladies as if they are alone. Betel nut beauties must be presented as if they are alone in a glass-enclosed aquarium-like structure because that way they seem vulnerable and approachable. If three surly men were standing behind them in plain view watching, many potential customers would not dare to approach. With this technology, the ladies can appear vulnerable but still confident that they are protected from any physical contact. Mr. Wu first witnessed the trend of hiring “betel nut beauties” develop around 1995 in the Tao-Chu-Miao area of northwestern Taiwan, and suggested that it consequently spread south throughout the west coast, coinciding with a trend toward “beautifying” betel nut stands, which meant presenting the space as a kind of showcase for the betel nut beauty. This translated into walls made entirely of glass and mirrors with colorful flashing lights. The increased emphasis on marketing strategies in the mid-1990s coincided with the stabilization of formerly rapid economic growth of the betel nut industry, and as such represents a strategy of continuing profits after the “natural” boom of an industry. Mr. Wu elaborated on the importance of having betel nut beauties in his business nowadays, how many betel nut beauties he has hired over the years, and his method of selection. I have hired more than two hundred betel nut beauties over the last seven years. They are mostly locals from Hsinchu City and vicinity. I’ve also hired ladies from the south, but very seldom. Because if they want to be a betel nut beauty, there are plenty of betel nut stands in their neighborhoods, they don’t have to come here to work unless they are trying to get away from home and relocate in the north, and that has happened sometimes. 190 The best way to find new hires is through current employees who recruit their friends. Then you have better chances. You can also post ads in the newspaper, but other betel nut stands also do the same thing. Or you can also post a sign that reads “Now Hiring” on the window, and those who are interested will approach actively. My wife is bolder. She asks those girls who chew betel nuts, or those who come to buy betel nuts if they want to become betel nut beauties. Anyway, it is very difficult to find betel nut ladies, especial the good-looking ones. For ten to twenty ladies who come to interview, you can probably only find one who is good-looking with a nice body. Take the lady who works at the stand next door for example. She is chubby, and doesn’t look beautiful, so their business is very slow. It’s useless. There is a Chinese saying that goes “rather go without than have something shoddy.” I would rather have no betel nut beauties than ugly ones. Normally I hire four ladies, if you include my wife, there are five ladies. One shift is nine hours. The first shift is from 9 am to 6 pm. And the second shift is from 6 pm to 3 am. That’s closing time. Even though the traffic on this road connects to the highway, it still isn’t enough to support a late-night/early-morning shift. Nowadays, you must hire betel nut beauties to sell betel nuts; otherwise it will be difficult to make profit. There are different ladies and you must hire those good-looking ones; that’s the most important thing. The second most important thing is they have to dress seductively. The latest trend is to wear thong bikinis. But if the ladies are beautiful, the customers always come. Actually if the betel nuts are not so tasty, the customers will feel as if they are tasty anyway. When the ladies sell betel nut, also you don’t need to put so many areca nuts in each box. Like the betel nut stand next door, they sell 20 nuts for NT 100, but we sell only 9 nuts. There is a real difference. You also must give the ladies a relatively high salary; otherwise no one will come. So the basic monthly salary I offer is NT 40,000, plus a daily sales bonus. They can easily make NT 45,000 per month. If the ladies are diligent and have full attendance, they make NT 45,000 for showing up at all the promised working hours. I know that other betel nut stands rarely pay more than NT 40,000 per month. The average monthly wage for betel nut beauties is a little over NT 30,000. But if you go south, past Miaoli and Taichung, the monthly wage is lower. In Chia-yi, Tainan and Kaohsiung, the monthly wage is only around NT $20,000. But it is the same for cement workers as well. They make only NT 1,800 to 2,000 per shift in the south, and could make NT 2,500 to 3,000 per shift in the north. If they just don’t want to work for you anymore, they won’t show up no matter how much more you pay them. Because their mentality is to have fun, and they get tired of this business after working for a while and they tend to quit, or change to a different betel nut stand. These betel nut ladies don’t care about money that much, they care more about having fun. For example, I offer NT 10,000 bonus for full attendance, and they don’t care about that, all they care about is their own feelings and moods. They tend to think 191 in the “I do everything as long as I am happy” sort of way. So that is why these ladies usually change jobs rapidly. Mr. Wu explained what other amenities are necessary for hiring betel nut beauties, including clothing, music, and the display window. He has a boom box that the ladies operate to play their favorite music, which keeps them in a good mood. The front of the shop is entirely glass so that customers can see inside. He asks the ladies to stand near the doorway as much as possible, not only for quicker delivery, but mostly to be seen by potential customers. Mr. Wu calculated that sales increase at least by NT 2,000 when the ladies are standing at the front door. The most important amenity is the betel nut beauties’ outfits. Mr. Wu orders between three and five dresses twice a month, from a local fashion designer named Annie who specializes only in betel nut beauty outfits (see Figure 18). Each dress costs around NT 1,000. Before he met Annie, his betel nut beauties would wear traditional Chinese qipao dresses, which worked for a little while and went along with his “Miss China” theme. As trends changed, Mr. Wu kept up with the current fashions and changed the name of his shop to “Chinese Spicy Girls.” Ever since he met Annie when she visited his shop a few years ago, he has relied on her designs. Now the trend has changed again, and the “Spice Girls” are in, so the outfits like nurse uniforms or racing car ladies have become more popular. There are one or two hundred dresses available for our betel nut beauties, so they just keep changing. Once a lady wears a dress a few times, we take that dress back and buy new ones. We purchase dresses at least twice a month, so customers can see something fresh and new every time. And when the ladies first put on a new dress, such as the nurse or racing car lady outfit, they are really effective and sales increase. Mr. Wu provides all the clothes and shoes that the betel nut beauties wear at work. The only thing they must provide themselves is their own make-up. He also consults with 192 the ladies on what kind of dresses they would like to wear from Annie’s collection. If they like something, then he buys it. Figure 18: Annie (left, in black) specializes in betel nut beauty fashion design, and Mr. Wu’s collection of outfits by Annie at his shop (right). Although it might seem that Mr. Wu, or other betel nut retail owners, are only interested in making money, from conversations with the “ladies” who worked for him, we found out that Mr. Wu cultivates a family environment where they feel comfortable confiding in him. He not only encourages the sales efforts of the ladies he hires, he also develops personal relationships with them and helps them out in times of need with genuine understanding and support (see Figure 19). Mr. Wu told us that, Of the betel nut beauties who worked here, nine out of ten are from single parent families, and most of them have some kind of family problems. They’re usually around 17 to 18 years old. Since the personnel of betel nut stands are very unstable, any lady who works here for longer than six months can be considered excellent. 193 Figure 19: Mr. Wu (above, right) with his three daughters and two employees, in the resting room upstairs above Mr. Wu’s shop. Mr. Wu’s brother (below) wraps betel nut. Those who stay for over six months tend to develop emotional attachments to their fellow colleagues as “sisters,” and to Mr. Wu as a kind of surrogate father-figure, since he is in his early forties, and because many of the ladies hired as betel nut beauties don’t have a good relationship with their fathers at home (see Figure 19). 194 Betel Nut Beauty Interview: Xuan-xuan (see Figure 20) Figure 20: Betel Nut Beauty, Xuan-xuan, at work. I am seventeen years old, live in Hsinchu City, and am Min-nan (Taiwanese). I started working as a betel nut beauty two years ago at a different stand in this neighborhood. But I quit when I went back to school. When I needed a job again, I applied at gas stations and convenient stores, but no one called back. So I came here, and Mr. Wu’s wife asked if I could start working. Now, I’ve worked here for one year. The pay here is better than other places. I can buy the things I want without relying on my family. Because I only graduated from junior high school, and did poorly in school, so I could only get into a private senior high school, which was too expensive. I felt embarrassed to ask for money from my family, and so I started working. Afterwards, I felt making money is more important than going to school, so I dropped out of school. The happiest part of working here is listening to my favorite music and having fun, joking around with my colleagues. I’m very happy to work here because my boss and his wife are very reasonable and can understand me. Also, because I’m the youngest, they indulge me in some ways. Whenever the boss is going to purchase clothes, for example, he will ask for our opinions. If we don’t like something, he won’t buy it. If we do, then he will. 195 I chew betel nut, but not very often. I like to chew because it makes me feel warm inside. There are so many betel nut chewers in Taiwan, so I don’t think there’s anything special about chewing betel nut, also because I work here it’s convenient. However, I don’t like my boyfriend to chew because I feel it is disgusting. Even if I don’t have to see his mouth, if we are kissing, then I’ll think of that. So, my boyfriend chews, but secretly. If you chew too much betel nut, well … just look at Mr. Wu’s teeth, they’re all black! When asked about her personal life and what her family thinks about her working as a betel nut beauty, Xuan-xuan replied, My family is pretty open, so they aren’t against my working here. Although my boyfriend doesn’t like that I have to work at al, but he still can’t promise to take care of me either. [She begins to cry, and continues speaking through her tears.] I’m the only child in my family. My parents got married very young and then divorced. My father had to go to prison. I feel very lonely without any siblings. I have cousins, but they treat me badly because I’m on my own, and my father is not around. So, I can’t forgive my father for leaving me behind. But I don’t hate my mother. In fact, I meet her once a month. But, I still live with my father and have to see him every day, but I just don’t like him. He has a girlfriend who is only two years older than me. So I hate him and his girlfriend. When asked, “How long do you think you can work at this job?” and “What is your plan for the future?” Xuan-xuan replied, Well, this place is my shelter. At least I have something I can depend on. I wish I could get away from my father. It doesn’t matter how difficult it is, or where I have to go, I don’t care. But, I need a shelter so when I’m lost or sad I can be taken care of. This betel nut stand is my shelter and something I can depend on. I’ll become a housewife, a very nice housewife. I used to think if I studied better in school, then I could become a soldier. That was when I was a child. Because, you know, watching television, you see soldiers are so handsome and charming. For now, it’s fine, as long as everything is safe and sound, and no more turbulence. Betel Nut Beauty Interview: Xiao-ye (see Figure 21) I am twenty years old and live in Hsinchu City. I graduated from junior high school, and even started one semester in senior high school, but because my family had no 196 money, so I had to quit. I think I was a really bad girl in the past. I left home. I ran away from home because I had no money. Well, I behaved badly myself. My mom would ask me to do something but I always did whatever I wanted without minding her. When I was sixteen years old I ran away from home. Then I found that in order to live, eat, and stay somewhere, you need money. So I started working at the roller-skating rink selling tickets, but the pay was very low because I was a child. I had to work 12 hours per day and could only take 3 days off per month. I even had to distribute flyers on the weekends and holidays. The pay was only around NT 10,000 per month, so I only worked one month there, then my friends introduced me to this betel nut shop. This is the first betel nut stand I have worked for. But now my relationship with my family has improved. It’s actually pretty good now. We contact each other. Now I’m living with my boyfriend and his family. My mom also knows about that. She moved to a different county, so it’s inconvenient to live with my family because I have to work here. Figure 21: Betel Nut Beauty, Xiao-ye, at work. Working here, of course there are unhappy times, but there are more happy times than not. And Mr. Wu is really nice. If we have no place to stay, then he’ll provide us a place. So my friend introduced me to this place, and I’ve been working here for three years. [At this point in the interview, someone enters the upstairs room and gives money to the ladies.] 197 Mr. Wu sets a goal for the total sales per shift. If we reach the goal, then we get a bonus. Besides our monthly salary, we get a daily bonus. If we make money for the business, then we can also borrow money from Mr. Wu. I have never heard of any betel nut shop that pays better than here, really. I’m very happy that I started working here from the beginning because Mr. Wu and his wife treat us very nice, much better than other places, whatever the occupation. Whenever I have difficulties, I tell them and they will always help me. So anytime they need my help, I never hesitate to help them. When I’m in the back room, if I’m frustrated, I will tell them. They are the best listeners. We’ve known each other for three years. I think they don’t act like other bosses at all, they’re more like friends, and we always joke around together. Some bosses really do boss people around, as if on their high-horses, but these bosses are not like that. They always ask my opinion before making any decision, so I can act on my own will. I don’t have to follow other people’s directions. But at other places it would be impossible to be as free as I am here. So I think it’s really worthwhile to work here. This place is like home to me. It doesn’t feel like working at all. Mr. Wu is like my second father, and Mrs. Wu is like my sister. It’s really a nice feeling. But, it would be a lie if I said I like to dress like this, because so many men are very lustful, and I think that’s disgusting. But for this business we have no choice. For me to work here I must be mentally prepared to dress like this. Every job has its requirements. For people like us, without an educational degree, we can’t find other jobs. I really want to go back to school. I don’t know why, but I remember when my parents said that because we have no more money I couldn’t continue with school. I cried that whole night. If I can work here in the day and go to school at night, then it would be better. But I have to wait for my family’s problems to be solved because they have less money now. Sometimes my mom needs money and I have to give it to her. My younger brother is attending senior high school this year, but he should have started long ago. He also helps make money for the family. So this year I helped my brother to register in high school. I think it’s best to let him go to school first because he is smarter. I’m slower and more forgetful. [We asked, “Do you chew betel nut?”] Yes, I chew betel nut. I started in junior high school, because my older brother’s girlfriend was also a betel nut beauty. When I went to see her at work I had my first chew out of curiosity. Later in junior high school my peer group loved to compete “who dares to chew betel nut” so I easily won that competition. Sometimes when I feel sleepy I will chew, or when I am preparing betel nut I will also chew to test if I’ve washed off all the bleach thoroughly. So sometimes I chew for personal need, and sometimes for my work ethic. Only a few of us betel nut beauties chew. Sometimes I feel betel nut is not bad. It’s pretty tasty. I don’t think there’s anything special about chewing betel nut since I’m selling it myself. But, I hate when my boyfriend chews the wrapped leaf (bao-ye) kind because it is much more stinky. Many people can’t chew the wrapped leaf kind, me neither. To chew those kind makes me feel like vomiting. 198 In the stories of Xuan-xuan and Xiao-ye, we notice that they are both betel nut chewers, which goes against the commonly held stereotype that Taiwanese women don’t chew betel nut. Mr. Wu also noted that “one in one hundred buyers are women,” which of course does not even indicate that those female buyers are chewers themselves. They could be buying betel nut for male friends or guests. Anyway, some non-Indigenous women, even if very few, actually do chew betel nut. Below we explore more about the demographics of Mr. Wu’s customers, and find that even Taiwanese men of high socioeconomic status buy betel nut from betel nut beauties. But are they really “chewers” in their own or others’ definitions of “chewer,” or do they simply purchase betel nut to legitimate up-close interactions with “betel nut beauties”? Betel Nut Beauty Customers When asked how Xiao-ye likes dealing with customers, and if there are any customers who pursue her, she replied, “At least eight out of ten cars stop to look at us, not just to buy betel nut.” Then Mr. Wu interrupted, “Many of them pursue her! They give their cell phone numbers or deliver meals, candy, flowers. The only thing you haven’t yet received is a car!” We asked Xiao-ye to continue, “How do you react to those customers?” Of course I have to react to them! To do business you must have the skill to keep the customers coming back, otherwise they will just buy from somebody else tomorrow. You must make them feel like you want to have some kind of relationship with them, at least make them feel it is possible. And then, the customer will continue to struggle with making a relationship with you. I feel I’m so evil to do this, but in this business I have no choice. Sometimes I feel it is very exhausting. 199 Mr. Wu continued talking about customers, If a customer wants to chew betel nuts, he would wait and buy them here, because he can check out the ladies. If the ladies wear transparent dresses, word of mouth will spread out. Customers will tell each other which betel nut stand’s ladies wear nearly nothing, or which lady is very beautiful, and they will come to check out those ladies. Our customers are usually young men; they love to chat with the ladies. Customers want to see the ladies, and chew betel nuts. They don’t care about how many nuts are there. Actually the quality of our betel nuts is pretty good. But, the real betel nut chewers don’t care about how good-looking the betel nut beauties are. They care whether the betel nuts are tasty or not. Our customers are about half passersby, and half locals. Those local frequenters are not only loyal to you, but buy from different stands every day, rotating among different local stands. When asked further about the demographics of customers, Mr. Wu replied, The diversity of betel nut chewers is really great. From homeless people to those who drive Mercedes Benz’s, from the very lowest to the very highest, from the poorest to the richest. My daughter also chews. She loves the sweet taste of the red lime paste. So does my parrot. Chewers are really from all walks of life in the society. From the “high-tech nobles” [a special term that refers to young professionals who work at the Hsinchu Science Park, and have extremely high monthly salaries and annual stock shares] who dress in suits and ties, to pig butchers, lawyers, doctors and business owners. All kinds of people chew betel nut. The customers here mostly have a certain financial foundation, and range from their mid-twenties to elders. The younger ones are more likely to buy betel nut during the beginning and middle of the month, and stop buying at the end of the month, since they have already spent all their money. But for those who must chew, they will keep buying and chewing. Once you are addicted to betel nut chewing, you will feel something missing psychologically if you don’t chew. When asked further about the “high-tech nobles,” since it is well-known that high-class people often express the opinion that chewing betel nut is bad. Mr. Wu pointed out the hypocrisy in contemporary Taiwan public culture: Many of those high-tech nobles stop here to buy betel nuts and chew. Anyway, I think people nowadays are very hypocritical. They say things on one occasion, and then act to suit whatever occasion they are currently in. People nowadays say all sorts of things against their conscience. Even for the high ranking government officials, they’re all the same. I think the current situation in Taiwan is just awful. Don’t you think so? It really is hypocrisy. 200 Eighty percent of those high-tech nobles who come to buy betel nuts do so just to check out the ladies. And they actually want to know get to know the ladies. The richer one gets, the stranger one’s mentality becomes. They want to check out these ladies. But if you come here, and instead of buying betel nuts, you only order a can of soda, the ladies will dislike you. So the ladies will shake the soda can fiercely before giving it to those customers who buy only soda [without betel nut]. In operating betel nut stands; our main goal of course is to sell betel nuts. Drinks are only extras, in order to meet the other needs of our customers. Although there is a regulation that betel nut stands shouldn’t sell cigarettes, but it is not fully enforced. In the old days, only stores with the official sign of the “Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Board” could sell cigarettes, but now you can sell cigarettes everywhere. Selling drinks in betel nut stands is just to give customers convenience, and of course the price is more expensive than the convenience stores because we deliver to your car. Otherwise, you have to get out of your car and walk into a convenience store to buy your drinks at regular prices. It turns out that counter to all official rhetoric, and even to informal conversations with “high social status” men in Taiwan, many of them actually do buy and chew betel nut. However, it might be that they only buy betel nut from “betel nut beauties” for the experience of interacting with them, and would not necessarily buy betel nut for the sole purpose of chewing. The transaction of a male purchasing betel nut from a female “betel nut beauty” also recalls the traditional courting rituals of the Amis and other Indigenous peoples in Taiwan where a woman gives the man she adores a betel nut to indicate that she wants to have children with him. The great difference, of course, is that in the urban commercial transaction, men must pay for betel nut, and the female givers are not sincere in their intentions. This is what makes Xiao-ye feel that she is “evil” to have to tease the male customers, making them think that there is a possibility for future sexual relations when there actually is not. While the gender dynamic of female giving and male receiving remains the same, instead of betel nut remaining a generalized gift as among Indigenous 201 cultures, it is exchanged in commercial transactions as a commodity among urban Taiwanese. We asked Mr. Wu, Xiao-ye, and Xuan-xuan if they experienced any foreign customers. They confirmed that tour busses full of Japanese tourists as well as individual Western foreigners have shown up at the shop. In Mr. Wu’s words, As far as customers, the Japanese tourists are the horniest of all. The whole tour bus stops and all the tourists get out and want to take photos. Each time they offer to pay NT 500 to take photos, but we don’t allow them. Xiao-ye: I once encountered a Westerner escorted by a Taiwanese friend to buy betel nut. Probably he was curious. Mr. Wu: Yes, probably curious, but those Japanese tourists are just plain horny. Xiao-ye: The local people asked me to offer the foreigner a betel nut, so I did. I thought it would be okay. And, the change of his facial expression was really funny. For them, since they had never chewed before, they probably felt it was really disgusting. Continuing with the dialogue on “foreigners,” we asked Mr. Wu if he ever thought about hiring betel nut beauties from outside Taiwan. He replied, I want to hire Russian ladies, for their blond hair and blue eyes. They’re so different from everyone else. That would definitely boost up the business greatly. The only problem would be their working visas. If there was no such problem, we would immediately hire them. Like the Indonesian migrant worker we have here, there are so many legal requirements; such as she cannot appear in the shops or any business location [in public view], otherwise the police would take her away. As for Mainland Chinese [PRC] brides, they must stay over two years to get an identification card, and only then can they work legally. It’s all about legal issues. Anyway, in twelve years my three daughters will become betel nut beauties, seriously! And, I want to pass down this business in my family. The betel nut business is really lucrative, so if I have a chance, then I hope my children can take over. Discussion of Production and Marketing of Betel Nut in Taiwan 202 The betel nut industry provides lucrative business opportunities for all involved from farmers to wholesalers and retailers, and even for the young women who work as “betel nut beauties.” But for entrepreneurs in the industry it also requires hard work and devotion in order to keep making profits. Farmers must monitor their production so as not to exceed demand, wholesalers must constantly be ready to place orders on short notice, and retail business owners must always be on site, wrapping betel nut, tasting the product so they know exactly what they are selling, monitoring customer conditions, and thinking up creative ways to market their product more effectively than their competition. Betel nut beauties must dress seductively and apply all their efforts to gain new and keep old customers. From the outside, it may seem like “easy money,” but from the inside we see that it requires hard work. While it is said that the betel nut industry is open to all who want to participate, without the need of educational credentials, in fact the only successful participants are chewers themselves who have and continue to educate themselves about betel nut chewing in Taiwan. The practical and experientially-based knowledge required for success demands personal devotion. Only those who really love chewing betel nut could amass such knowledge and keep up with all the fast-changing trends. Indeed, the betel nut industry in Taiwan operates without ostensible influence from powerful forces of “globalization” which have infiltrated all other sectors of Taiwan’s economy, and is also, so far, free from corporate influence or governmental regulation. As we have seen, the wholesalers consciously determine market prices in frequent meetings, and so come to regulate the industry from the inside. Farmers also do what they can to keep the prices for their products as high as possible, even if it means 203 limiting supply by voluntarily cutting down areca palm trees. Retailers do what they can to increase demand through marketing strategies, the most effective of which has been hiring “betel nut beauties” which has reportedly increased sales among young professional men with disposable income, such as the “high-tech nobles” who otherwise might not buy betel nut, and still tend to deny that they chew betel nut. Owing to an absence of market regulation, betel nut chewers in Taiwan are less “alienated” from the product than in other industries, but alienation has increased as marketing strategies have developed. Chewers demand and can usually expect to purchase betel nut made from areca nuts and betel leaves which have been harvested less than forty-eight hours before they are sold. All ingredients, including lime paste, are locally produced and locally consumed, except in the rare occasions that areca nuts are imported from Hainan or Thailand. Even in those occasions, areca nuts must be fresh, and so must arrive to retail outlets within forty-eight hours from when they were harvested. Although officially, import of areca nuts is illegal, even if the government confiscates imported areca nuts, they merely sell them to wholesalers and keep them in the market anyway. This has become a sore point for Taiwan’s areca nut farmers who have asked the government to enforce penalties on the illegal import of areca nut, without success. The ROC government has interestingly never taxed the betel nut industry at any level, from production to wholesaling to retailing, which has allowed the market to develop and prosper on its own. The betel nut industry remains an actual “free market” in Taiwan. Not so with tobacco and alcohol, which were instantly set up as government monopolies upon the ROC’s arrival in Taiwan. Although these two industries have now 204 become privatized, they are still regulated and high taxes are levied on them. In 2002, in preparation for entering the World Trade Organization (WTO), for example, the ROC applied an extremely high tax on locally produced rice wine (mijiu). In 1998 one 600 ml bottle of rice wine cost NT 24. In order to be accepted to the WTO, however, Taiwan-produced rice wine could not be sold on the international market for such a low price, to protect other rice wine producers in the WTO. By 2003, the price of the same 600 ml bottle of rice wine in Taiwan was NT 185, of which NT 110 was tax (Tsai Wen-ting 2003). Betel nut, however, was exempt from this kind of taxation for purposes of entering the WTO because it is an “agricultural product” that needs no processing (such as fermentation) between its harvest and retail sale, unlike the distillation that is necessary for rice wine, or even the processing of farmed tobacco leaves into commercial cigarettes. However, there has been a recent effort to apply a tax on betel nut in Taiwan. In January of 2005, the Department of Health, Executive Yuan, ROC (Taiwan) announced an initiative called “Regulation of Preventing Betel Nut Damage,” which would tax betel nut sales from wholesalers. If passed, the proposal would apply a tax of NT 0.74 per areca nut in order to compensate for deficits in the National Health Insurance budget. If implemented the tax revenue would amount to an estimated NT 28.3 million per year, the amount supposedly spent on the health care of the betel nut chewers in Taiwan (He Yi-shun 2005). Of course, implementing and enforcing the tax would be beyond the capacity of the Department of Health or the ROC government, since the betel nut industry remains unregulated, and because betel nut remains classified as an agricultural product. 205 Whether betel nut would or could be taxed in Taiwan remains a question. Other questions also remain. The ROC government is considering allowing legal import of areca nut, to which the whole betel nut industry is opposed, especially farmers. Could the proposed relation between betel nut chewing and negative health consequences decrease demand for betel nut in Taiwan? How effectively will the innovative marketing strategies of betel nut retailers increase demand for betel nut in Taiwan? For instance, could women also be targeted in the future? Finally, in which cases is this model of the betel nut industry in Taiwan applicable to other markets, either domestically or internationally? These all remain questions for future research. 206 Chapter 7: Tourism Development and Betel Nut Chewing in Taiwan This chapter examines the impact of tourism development on betel nut chewing in Taiwan, and examines specific cases in the Amis village of Dulan as well as in the small island of Lanyu (Orchid Island) in the recent decade. It further evaluates the sustainability of tourism development in these two communities, paying particular attention to how betel nut chewing culture is part of the tourist experience and how it has been impacted by tourism development. Finally, we will note recent efforts to promote international tourism since Taiwan’s ascension to the WTO in 2002, and evaluate how the Taiwan tourism industry has handled tour groups from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which were allowed only since 2002. While tourism development is a relatively recent phenomenon in Taiwan, beginning only in the 1990s, the pace of its development has been very rapid and almost exclusively based on domestic tourism, which blossomed only after Taiwan’s citizens were given a two-day weekend in the late 1990s. As mentioned above, this also coincided with a “festival frenzy” in Taiwan. On every weekend, domestic tourists can choose from literally hundreds of options around the island. Special promotions of week-long or even month-long events in the summer, such as Indigenous Harvest Festivals or the Austronesian Cultural Festival began also in the mid to late-1990s. In particular, the Amis Harvest Festivals (kiluma’an), which take place in nearly every Amis village from Taitung to Hualien, begin in early July in the south and continue into August in the north, each lasting for around one week. These have been promoted by the ROC government with increasing financial support and 207 advertising over the last decade. While not every Amis Harvest Festival in every village draws tourists, and in fact some communities are adamantly against allowing tourists to attend their festivals, many Amis communities have secured government funding and promotions and use it to their advantage, such as the village of Dulan in Taitung County. In Orchid Island, the Indigenous inhabitants had been protected from the advance of modernity for several decades under Japanese occupation, when the island was promoted as an experimental anthropological laboratory open to Japanese and foreign researchers. After its incorporation in the ROC, gradually Orchid Island also became a target for tourism development, and by the turn of the 21 st century increased efforts to promote local cultural heritage on the island, while not yet actually increasing tourism, have laid a base upon which future low-impact sustainable tourism might develop. We will first examine the situation in Dulan, and then turn our attention to Orchid Island. Betel Nut Chewing Traditions in the Amis Village of Dulan Located around ten miles north of Taitung City between the coastal mountain range and the Pacific Ocean, Dulan is a small village, both in population and spatial distribution. The east coast scenic highway runs through the center of town and is lined with several shops and a few restaurants, most of which are run by Taiwanese merchants, and even one 7-Eleven convenience store. The Dulan Amis have a long and unbroken tradition of chewing betel nut. Nowadays, young and old, and men and women all chew. Areca nut is used in courtship and shamanic rituals, in the same way as it is among other Amis communities. In the daytime, women usually work in the household or on farms, while men go fishing or 208 help in the farms. The younger generation has mostly moved out of the village to go to school or find work in construction sites or as truck drivers, and returns to Dulan only twice a year, once during the annual Harvest Festival in July and once during the Lunar New Year in February. Despite the lack of a young generation in the village, the elders in Dulan have succeeded in passing down their traditional knowledge to the youth, who indeed feel a certain pride in their identity as Dulan Amis. The Amis people of Dulan have planted and harvested areca palm trees for their own use as long as they can remember, yet they have never sold areca nuts in markets or ever tried to cultivate mass plantations of areca palms as cash crops. The following narration on the history of betel nut chewing in Dulan is given by Siki, an Amis man in his early forties who was born in Dulan and has lived there his whole life. While sitting in the patio in front of his house, Siki talked about the significance of betel nut for Dulan Amis, and how it has changed over the years. We have grown areca palms since before anyone can remember. When they are seedlings we transplant them, after that, they don’t require tending. In my childhood memory, there were only terraced rice fields, and the only tall things around were areca palm trees. Everything looked very flat, and you could see directly to the ocean. The sight was so beautiful when the rice seedlings were first transplanted, without one bushy tree on the fields, so you could see for a long distance, all the way from Dulan Cape to Fu-gang Harbor. That view was really impressive. As far as the eye could see were only rice fields and rows areca palms. We wouldn’t assign a specific field to grow areca palms. We only grow them on the borders, on the lines between terraces. When we were in elementary school, one of our duties as children was to climb the areca palms and harvest the nuts. There’s no need to ask anyone’s permission to harvest nuts from any areca palm tree you see, because this is all our own land, and no one cares if you take their areca nuts. Every family has some areca palms on their own land, so no one would steal others’ areca nuts anyway. In the past, the areca nuts we harvested were enough to provide for our household needs, and there was no excess to sell. If there were some excess nuts, we preserved them for chewing when there are no more fresh nuts to harvest. 209 Siki mentions that in the past there were no bushy trees because nowadays there are many bushy trees in the fields surrounding the village that were grown especially to transplant elsewhere, such as in parks or aside highways. Many of them did not sell and so remain, now blocking the view to the ocean. For the Amis, not only in Dulan but throughout Taitung and Hualien, areca palms have a value beyond bearing areca nuts, such as in house construction. Parts of the tree are also edible. Siki continues, Areca palms have a great value to us. Usually after the tree is very tall and we are unable to climb it, we cut it down and use the trunk to build houses. The trunks of old areca palm trees become very thin, and then it becomes too dangerous to climb. So the elders would say the slim trunks are just right for using as beams to build houses. Our old house was built in the Japanese period, and used to be right here. This [current] one was built later, in 1990. But the areca palm tree trunks that were used as the beams to build our old house didn’t rot even after 60 to 70 years. The main long beam was wood, but all the other shorter beams were areca palm tree trunks. This is one of the areca palm’s additional values. We also eat the center top part of the areca palm, its sprout and leaves when we cut down the tree to build a house. Otherwise it would be wasteful. So we try to make the most of it. If you want to grow some areca palm trees here, the best location would be on the hillside, or on the plain where a river passes through. When the areca palms are pretty old, before we cut them down, we don’t harvest them, but let the nuts fall down, so they will seed and start growing a new generation. So there will usually be many younger betel nut trees around the old tree. Usually we remove the ones we don’t like and save one or two, and allow those to grow. Using this method of propagation, Amis people have cultivated areca palms for countless generations. Unlike their Taiwanese neighbors in the western part of the island, they did not intentionally select for smaller or tenderer areca nuts, but only let the areca palms grow naturally to an old age and then let the last bushels of nuts drop to the ground as seeds. 210 As for the betel pepper vine, it grows wild throughout southeastern Taiwan, and while Amis would keep some growing in their household gardens, there was no intentional farming of betel pepper until the late 1980s, and there are still no betel leaf farms in Dulan. Siki explains as follows: Betel pepper leaf grows wild everywhere, so we would just choose an area to be our betel leaf garden, and allow it to continually grow there. I used to have a betel pepper vine growing in the garden over here. When we wanted to chew betel nut, after we harvested some areca nuts, we would gather betel leaves and prepare the nut here for a chew. I heard there are many betel leaf farmers in Taitung nowadays. And the profits generated in betel leaf sales are one of the main sources of income in Taitung County. There are three economic agriculture products in Taitung: betel pepper leaf (laoye), the flower of betel pepper plants (laohua), and a fruit we call Buddha’s head [called cherimoya in English, and shijia in Chinese]. The flower of the betel pepper plant is used in wrapping a Taiwanese style of betel nut called qinya, mentioned above by Mr. Wu. Traditionally Amis do not use the flower of the betel pepper for chewing betel nut. For coastal Amis, lime paste used to be manufactured by burning and crushing seashells, then mixing with fresh water. For the past few generations in Dulan, lime paste was available from the local Sugar Factory, so the traditional method has long since been abandoned. Siki explains, As for the lime paste, we used to acquire it from the Dulan Sugar Factory. The purpose of lime in the sugar-making process is to condense the impurities. My parents used to work there, so they would just take a little lime paste from the factory every day for chewing betel nut. But you couldn’t get it without having relatives who work there. Unlike the Taiwanese, Amis people prepare dried areca nut to chew when there is no fresh areca nut available, or for use on long trips away from home. Even nowadays, Siki mentioned that his mother has a stash of one year’s supply of dried areca nut, 211 though she rarely has the chance to chew them since there is usually fresh betel nut available. Nowadays, we rarely chew dried areca nut or even the bigger areca nuts because the new breeding technology allows us to have fresh betel nut around the year. We don’t even have a chance to chew those sliced betel nuts, since all the nuts have gotten smaller. During the 1970s when we were in elementary school, betel nut was very expensive. So as soon as the areca nuts were mature, the elders would order us children to climb the trees and harvest all the nuts. After harvesting, they would boil the nuts overnight, and the next morning would spread the cooked areca nuts on top of a net, or on a rattan mat, without cutting them. We dried the whole nut. We would boil the nuts in fresh water, cook them until they started swelling, and then scoop them out to dry. We placed the nuts in a shaded area to avoid direct sunlight until they were dried. The nuts shrink in the drying process. So when we had no fresh nuts to chew, we chew dried nuts. According to the elders, the dried nuts have more endurance; they won’t break down so easily, but the effects of chewing are the same as fresh nuts. Our saliva provides the water for the dried nuts. In the past, when the elders left home for a long trip, for example, hunting expeditions that could last a week or even a month, they wouldn’t bring fresh nuts because those would go bad, but these dried nuts won’t go bad. And they wouldn’t bring betel leaves either. They would bring the stems or roots of betel pepper plants, which can survive for over a year. They would just scrape off some of the betel pepper plant and add some lime paste whenever they prepare a chew. When they traveled outside, they had to bring these along, both men and women, just put them in the aluvu, which is our betel nut bag for travel purposes. Even nowadays, Dulan Amis don’t need to rely on purchasing betel nut from vendors and can still chew every day, unlike urban Taiwanese who must rely on the whole industry of farmers, wholesalers, and retailers, because, as Siki explains, Chewing betel nut is part of our tradition. It is very ordinary, so chewers don’t need any special situations to chew, because we chew every day. I could rely on my family’s modest plantation and still chew betel nuts every day. Most significantly different from the Han Chinese customs of betel nut chewing is the Amis tradition of supplying betel nuts to guests in a special basket called dadalu’an 212 which is placed in the meeting area. Guests freely pick up nuts, leaves and lime paste and wrap their own chews at will. Every household prepares a betel nut basket at their homes, which we call dadalu’an. Inside are fresh areca nuts, betel leaves and lime paste with all the required tools. If I am visiting you today at your house, you will place a dadalu’an at the front door to treat your guests. As a guest I will instinctively prepare my own betel nuts, without your having to offer or attend to me. One time I visited a Paiwan village with a Han friend. My Han friend didn’t know that Paiwan people also have this habit of placing a dadalu’an on the table. Since for me this habit is very natural and normal, I went and prepared myself a betel nut to chew. And my Han friend scolded me saying that I should not invite myself to chew other people’s betel nuts without asking permission. But chewing betel nut is common among all the Austronesian cultures. Other than that, there is very little in common between Amis and Paiwan culture. As far as taboos for betel nut chewing among the Amis, there are not many. The only taboo Siki could think of was chewing “twin-nuts” or perhaps “upward growing nuts” or the heaviest ones on the bushel, though he did not explain why. You shouldn’t chew those twin-nuts, which is two nuts grown into one. You shouldn’t eat twin-bananas either. Anyway, don’t eat anything that grows into twins. Also, some people avoid the upward growing nuts. When areca nuts grow in heavier bushels, some will hang down, and those are also taboo. Siki explained that before the 1980s there were no betel nut vendors in the Dulan area, and so it has only been in the last two decades that Taiwanese merchants have opened betel nut vending stands in Dulan, and of course, there are still no “betel nut beauties” throughout all of the Amis communities in Taitung and Hualien Counties, since advertising is unnecessary. People on the east coast are not going to be convinced to purchase betel nut through marketing schemes. They are more likely to begin chewing by observing their elder family members. In fact, in Dulan fresh betel nut is sold at the grocery store. 213 In the 1980s when the economy in Taiwan started booming, I was in senior high school. That was when the merchants started selling betel nuts. In the 1980s, there were still only two areca nut harvesting seasons, so there was a huge gap when no fresh nuts were available. That was the season when the elders would start chewing dried areca nuts, which came from our own areca palm trees. Since everyone buys betel nuts nowadays, if someone is short of money, they just can’t afford to buy betel nuts. Betel nut vendors used to sell nuts imported from Thailand, which are really small, but not very tender. I couldn’t ever get used to that kind. There are so many white-meat areca nuts grown in Pingtung nowadays, so those nuts from Thailand don’t even make it into Taiwan anymore. The local betel nut stands are actually quite competitive now. Since they don’t have to pay taxes, nor are they required to register their business, it really is the best business. And the law-making system in Taiwan is really slow. All those people have already made tons of money without being taxed, while we common people have to pay high taxes even when we only make a little money. It’s so strange. Those betel nut vendors are making tons of money, and all they need to do is put up a sign and then start making money. But the government never thinks about taxing them. Seriously, they should be taxed. For what we produce in our rice fields in Dulan, we can only support ourselves. We have no excess to sell. Moreover, if everyone sets up plantations of areca palm trees because the betel nut business generates easy money, then we will all face an environmental crisis. From Siki’s perspective, he feels that in the same way his own income is taxed, out of fairness, the profits made in the betel nut industry by wholesalers and retailers should also be taxed. As we have seen in the previous section, while there are proposals under consideration to tax betel nut wholesalers, enforcing taxes at the retail level would be nearly impossible because of the mobile nature of betel nut vendors. Permanent betel nut vending shops, however, such as Mr. Wu’s, are required to pay taxes commensurate with the average profits in their area of business, but not especially for betel nut sales. When asked to compare the significance of betel nut, alcohol, and tobacco in Dulan Amis culture, Siki gave a very interesting and thoughtful reply that explicates gender and ethnic identity issues in Dulan over the past few generations. For the elder generation, betel nuts were quite common but alcohol was more precious because it takes time to ferment and distil. The elders told me that in the 214 past every household had to contribute a few scoops of their own homemade alcohol for the harvest festival. The collected alcohol was stored in the activity center, and that was the only occasion we would drink it. There was always an abundance of betel nuts, so you would show up with your own in your aluvu. Everyone also grew their own tobacco, so that was not precious at all. When my grandmother was still alive, she used to grow tobacco and pick the matured leaves to dry, and then roll them herself. The elders would praise each other’s tobacco plants, and share the best seeds to grow at home. When smoking, they used pages from daily calendars or newspapers to roll the tobacco leaves. So nowadays many elderly women smoke, but not as many elderly men do, because in the past men were basically busy doing the heavy work outside the house, like hunting, farming, or fishing, while women were working at home, organizing things, caring for children, or spreading the rice under the sun. So the women had more leisure time to smoke and chat. This brings up another interesting phenomenon among us Amis, which is that men tend to have a shorter lifespan, especially in Dulan. So we often see only elderly women instead of elderly men sitting around smoking. I don’t know why Amis men have shorter lives, but my mother and many other women of her age are all widows. Perhaps it is because of the modern times? For example, in the 1960s and 70s men usually worked on boats in the high seas, and after that, men all went to work on construction sites. So it was only women who stayed home and took care of children and did the farming. At that time, all we saw in the village were women and children. This phenomenon was quite common along the Amis coastal areas, a high contrast in the lifespan of men and women. In the past, Amis society was matriarchal, and then the patriarchal Japanese and Han Chinese societies came in. Amis men of my father’s generation had to face great conflicts with the different and opposing family structures of the dominating cultural influences. After they came home from working, they wondered why their status as men was lower, very different compared with when they were outside the home. And subsequently, many problems arose, such as alcohol abuse. I think the whole society should pay attention to these kinds of issues. Today our conflicts are largely caused by ourselves, but for my father’s generation, who experienced half Japanese and half KMT authorities, they had more conflicts, because they encountered different nationalities and ethnic identities, and even had to choose among different religious groups. That was too complicated. No one could be certain who he was or should be at any moment. I think it is because of the National Tobacco and Alcohol Bureau that alcohol abuse became more severe. It simply became too easy to acquire. But at least the National Tobacco and Alcohol Bureau imposed quality control. Nowadays, after the end of the government monopoly and the beginning of privatization, people can again produce their own alcohol, and no one can control the quality. I think our society is really sick. After handling some Indigenous issues myself, I wonder why people always associate Indigenous people with alcohol. Our ancestors didn’t teach us to become heavy drinkers. It’s only the fast-paced 215 social changes. It all happened too fast, and we haven’t found a way to adjust ourselves yet. It may take a long time to gradually adjust. Nowadays, the elders actually chew less betel nut than before. Like my mother, she buys one pack of fresh betel nuts for NT 50 and she can’t even finish it in a week, so the betel nuts sometimes sit in the refrigerator and turn rotten. The elders only chew after finishing their daily work, unlike us young people who chew one after another all day long as if they are peanuts. The elders don’t chew like this. I know for me, one pack could never last longer than one day. But, compared to the elders, young people have greater pressure. Perhaps it has something to do with the whole society? Why do people chew so heavily and drink so heavily? Even in the remotest places of Taiwan, the pressures of modernity and fast-paced social change have penetrated daily life. However, when compared with the urban center of Taipei, life in Dulan remains much slower and relaxed, and less commercialized. The main challenge for Siki and his generation is how to navigate and appropriate the powerful forces of commercialization emanating from the urban centers, expressed by governmental and private enterprises who aim to develop tourism in the East Coast National Scenic Area. Dulan has been targeted for such development, and Siki is the one who has taken on the role of representing the people of Dulan and trying to make the best out of a potentially disastrous situation. Dulan Sugar Factory: From Abandoned to Creative Space Siki currently works at the Dulan Sugar Factory (see Figure 22) as a woodcarver. His carvings have been commissioned for use in hotel lobbies, train stations, cafés, and various exhibitions. He is also the director of a permanent gallery exhibition of his elder, the master woodcarver Eki who recently passed away. 216 Figure 22: Dulan Sugar Factory in 2003 (above), detail of driftwood art (below). Siki has set up several exhibitions in the Sugar Factory about local Dulan Amis culture. He also represents Dulan Amis in bids for government funding and sponsored programs, and has been involved with a growing community of artists from Taipei who took up residence in Dulan and frequented the Sugar Factory since the year 2000, and continues this work into the present writing (in 2006). 217 In order to understand the current situation of tourism development in Dulan, we need first to give a brief overview of the history of the Sugar Factory, which is the primary location not only for Siki’s workshop, but also is the site of the Dulan Café, the community gathering place for the many outsiders who took up residence in Dulan over the past decade. The Dulan Sugar Factory was built by the famous Chen Family from Kaohsiung in the 1910s to process locally grown sugarcane, and from that time provided the main economic activity of the area under Japanese occupation. In 1960, a Mr. Huang from Hsinchu visited, and eventually decided to buy the factory. Because of its remote location, there was no electricity in the area at that time. During the mid-1970s, the sugar cane production of Dulan Suagr Factory increased and even surpassed all of the privately owned sugar factories in Taiwan. However, in the mid-1980s, the economic structure of Taiwan changed dramatically. As the cost of labor increased, many sugar factories closed down, and Dulan Sugar Factory was the only surviving sugar factor in all of Taiwan. Following the decline of the sugar processing business, in 1991 the factory closed down. The Huang Family then opened a guesthouse on the premises, and provided an activity center to host performances and art exhibitions, but left all the infrastructure of the factory intact and abandoned. Since the mid-1990s, with the Huang family’s permission, and owing to the fact that the factory was build on Dulan Amis land, Siki set up his woodcarving workshop in an abandoned room of the old factory, and the abandoned factory began to transform into a creative working space. I first visited 218 Dulan during the Amis Harvest Festival in 1995, and met Siki while he was first setting up his workshop in the Sugar Factory. That year a young Hakka man from Hsinchu, called Futuru, who had become an honorary member of the Amis community of A’tolan (Dulan), and has since written about the incorporation of world music in the younger generation performances at the annual A’tolan Amis Harvest Festival (Tsai, Cheng-liang 2005), was staying in the village. Futuru was helping manage a government-sponsored educational program to inoculate the young people of the village in the traditions of the elders. Also in 1995, a team of archaeologists from National Taiwan University were conducting excavations in the foothills behind Dulan, led by Professor Sung Wen-hsun (1980). Other than this team and a few passers-by, there were not many outsiders in attendance during the Dulan Amis Harvest Festival that year. The annual Amis Harvest Festival is attended by all the Amis members of the Dulan community. Most of the younger generation, however, does not live in Dulan, and so must return from urban centers where they attend school or work. Often those who work in the construction industry, as do many of the young men, will be fired from their jobs after they return from the week of activity. While interviewing a group of young Amis men in Dulan after the Harvest Festival, several of them were wondering how a particular man could afford to remain in Dulan for so long after the festival, and asked him, “How can you still be here among us? Shouldn’t you be back in Taipei?” The young man replied, “Every time I attend the harvest festival, I get fired. Then I just return and find another job, until the following year, when I know I will be fired again for taking so many days off to attend our festival. So I’ve had up to a dozen jobs all these 219 years!” Only very few of the younger generation can maintain their lives in the Dulan community. Either they must work as farmers and fishermen, or as Siki does, as a woodcarver and unofficial village representative. In the years since 1995, owing to promotion of the East Coast National Scenic Area, which extends from Taitung City to Hualien County along the eastern coastal highway, more and more Taiwan residents having explored the area, found both the environment of the east coast and the Amis people who live there amenable. Some outsiders began to take up residence in Dulan, including young artists from Taipei, some Western foreigners who had lived in Taiwan for several years, and a few retired elders who wanted to move to the countryside. These outsiders have since the late-1990s set up several cafés, restaurants, and bed and breakfasts in and around Dulan and along the Taitung coastal highway. Around the year 2000, Dulan Sugar Factory began to attract a group of artists who had fled the overly commercialized urban lifestyle in Taipei, and wanted to live in a more serene and slower paced environment where they could more freely explore their artistic impulses. Many of the artists were already betel nut chewers before their arrival to Dulan, and many also began chewing betel nut once in the Amis betel nut chewing environment. By 2002, an old office building in the Sugar Factory had transformed into a café, and there was a veritable community of outsider-artists who frequently set up exhibitions at the Sugar Factory and installation art at local beaches. By 2004 the café began hosting musical performances by local and Indigenous singers, which attracted visitors from as far away as Kaohsiung, Taichung and Taipei. 220 By this time, Siki had become a master woodcarver himself and various Indigenous and “Taiwanese” artists from elsewhere in Taiwan had come to study with him. Also several people from English-speaking countries around the world, including Australia, the United States, and Canada took up residence in Dulan and the neighboring villages. Meanwhile, local Amis villagers participated in cultural performance groups who traveled to Yunnan China and the United States demonstrating their traditional dances and songs. It was a time of great change and experimentation for the village of Dulan. From the late 1990s into the present, numerous Indigenous cultural performance groups from Taitung and Hualien received governmental and private foundations’ sponsorship to make international tours through Southeast Asia, China, Japan, and the United States, promoting Taiwan Indigenous or specifically Amis culture. Local performance group organizers in Taiwan would seek invitations to cultural arts festivals abroad, and with their invitation they could obtain funding from within Taiwan. At the same time, local festival organizers in Taiwan invited foreign performance groups to perform at international festivals in Taiwan, such as the Austronesian Cultural Festival, but also in smaller scale festivals such as the Dulan Mountain Arts Festival. In October of 2002, the Council of Cultural Affairs, Executive Yuan, ROC (Taiwan) and the Taitung County Government sponsored the first annual “Dulan Mountain Arts Festival” specifically to develop tourism in Dulan. The theme was “driftwood as art,” and included exhibitions of local artists’ work, mostly made of driftwood collected at the nearby seashore, but also paintings, live music performances, and poetry. In 2003, at the second annual “Dulan Mountain Arts Festival” the theme 221 was “gems” collected from Dulan Mountain. After the official festival finished, a gallery opened of the works of a Dulan Amis elder woodcarver, Eki, who had recently passed away. Many of Eki’s friends attended and celebrated his life’s work at the Sugar Factory. The “Dulan Mountain Arts Festival” has continued every October into the present, and attracts visitors from all over Taiwan. Relations between the Amis community in Dulan and the community of outsiders who have taken up residence in and around the Sugar Factory were not smooth from the beginning. In fact, many Amis elders consider the outsiders as “dirty artists,” because they of their unkempt appearance and ragged clothing, and discourage their children from associating with them or attending activities in the café. Siki, because he also works at the Sugar Factory and is involved with the group of outsider-artists, was even jokingly accused by his mother of becoming a “dirty artist” himself, especially if he hadn’t showered for a few days. Elders in the Dulan Amis community would often complain that festivals and activities in the Sugar Factory, such as the Dulan Mountain Arts Festival and the weekly concerts, did not include Amis cultural elements. In fact, many of the weekend concerts featured Puyuma singers, and the Puyuma were traditionally the enemies of Amis people. Another criticism was that when short-term visitors came to Dulan for festivals or activities at the Sugar Factory, the Amis community did not benefit financially from their presence, but only the operators of the cafés, restaurants, and guesthouses which were run mostly by outsiders would benefit. Siki’s position as a Dulan Amis community member and his association with the Sugar Factory has forced him into the role of mediator for these kinds of issues. He intimately understands both perspectives and so 222 does what he can to bridge the gap. He realizes that the community of artists has a lot to offer the Dulan village, and also has the interests of his native Amis community at heart. The artists who have become residents in the community, likewise, all have a primary concern with the sustainability of Dulan as a small coastal village, and are all against its development as a major tourist attraction. They don’t want to build anything new, or allow outside business ventures to construct five-star hotels anywhere near Dulan. The reason they moved to Dulan in the first place was to escape the over-development and truly outrageous commercialism of Taiwan’s urban centers. One of the first artists to move to Dulan from Taipei was a young man named A-Cai, a graduate of Taipei National University of the Arts. A-Cai was a theater performer, painter, and environmental activist, who in the late 1990s organized experimental theatrical performances and helped to rebuild villages in central Taiwan that had been devastated by a major earthquake in Nantou in 1999. He moved with his wife to Dulan in 2000, and together they worked to transform the Dulan Sugar Factory into a center for artistic production. He became good friends with Siki and various Amis people including elders, and created an Amis performance group teaching them what he knew about theater. A-Cai was well-respected for his involvement with the Amis community in Dulan, and would often attend the activities such as fishing ceremonies and harvest festivals. One night in late August of 2003, A-Cai swam out into the Pacific Ocean from Dulan Cape and never returned. He left behind a red bag, containing a headshot of himself, a flashlight, a necklace given to him by his mother, and an article he had written titled, “God Bless Dulan Cape,” which had earlier been published in a journal, the 223 content of which expressed his opinion that the government should not develop Dulan Cape into a tourist attraction. A-Cai made it clear to local people that he sacrificed his life to protest several proposed Build-Operation-Transfer (BOT) projects that planned to construct large-scale tourism development projects in Dulan that would severely damage the natural environment and disrupt the local people’s traditional ways of life. As a result, many Dulan Amis were deeply moved and inspired by his sacrifice, and held a memorial service for A-Cai at the place where he swam out into the ocean, which was the Dulan Amis traditional fishing area, and the sacred mythical place where the ancestors first landed on the island of Taiwan. Afterwards the Amis villagers united to claim their rights to their ancestral land and protested the proposed BOT projects. A-Cai’s wife, who still lives in Dulan and still worked at the Sugar Factory in 2005, has since opened a gallery to exhibit A-Cai’s and other local artists’ work, including her own. In May of 2004, she and the manager of the Sugar Factory Café, a woman who moved to Dulan from Taipei around the same time, started a beach cleaning activity in Dulan. The event was co-organized with Black Current Foundation, a group that monitors ocean water quality and works to protect Taiwan’s beaches. Local residents, including the artists’ community along with Amis villagers, all gathered on the beach and worked together, clearing out truckloads of garbage. A Canadian environmental activist and long-term Taiwan resident volunteered to canoe around the island to raise money for the Black Current Foundation and promote public awareness of environmental protection issues. When he arrived to Dulan, the local beach clean-up team met him and invited him for a traditional Amis meal with the community. Although there were no television news reporters present, it was indeed a memorable 224 event for all those involved as it showed a united effort among the local Amis villagers and the community of artists toward a common purpose, the protection of Dulan and the traditional Amis culture that still thrives there. During the 2004 Amis Harvest Festival in Dulan, the Council of Cultural Affairs, Executive Yuan, ROC (Taiwan) and the Taiwan Indigenous Cultural Development Association sponsored 80 high school students from all over Taiwan to participate in the festival. Over 100 (non-Amis) students wrote biographical essays explaining why they wanted to participate in the Dulan Amis Harvest Festival and what they hoped to learn, of which 80 were accepted. These students were temporarily integrated into the Dulan Amis community as the youngest age-grade, called pakalungay, and learned along with actual Dulan Amis pakalungay the traditional knowledge of how to become a successful member of the community, including how to identify medicinal plants, make bamboo cups and containers, how to perform traditional rituals, dances and songs, and proper relations with elders. In the festival, the students performed along with the pakalungay, to the great amusement of the Dulan elders. This kind of activity, a kind of outgrowth of Futuru’s 1995 work to promote the continuity of traditional knowledge within Dulan, confirms Amis villagers’ confidence in their own cultural heritage while also promoting outsiders’ understanding and respect for Amis traditions. Another kind of Indigenous cultural activity co-sponsored by the Austronesian Community College in Taitung and the East Coast National Scenic Area was an “East Coast Amis Traditional Raft Building Contest and Race.” The first competition was held in Chang-bin Township in August 2003, and another was held in Makrahay in April of 2005. These competitions were promoted to revive traditional raft-building 225 technology among Amis coastal communities. The events didn’t attract many outside visitors, other than the organizers, but did bring together over one thousand Amis people from ten villages. The organizers felt their efforts were successful since they inspired a healthy competition among different Amis communities to show off their skills and demonstrate their traditional knowledge. I attended the competition in 2005 in Makrahay and can confirm that the general mood was light-hearted, but each village was serious in its efforts to win the competition. Rafts were judged on their beauty, as well as their seaworthiness in a series of races. The team from Dulan led by Siki had made a very beautiful raft, but once it got out to sea, it broke down and had trouble returning to shore, inspiring great laughter among the participants and spectators, while the team from Makrahay built a seaworthy but purely functional raft that ended up to win many of the races. Events like these are very effective in confirming and inspiring and reinforcing revivals of traditional knowledge. While critics could claim that the raft building competition, the pakalungay training for outsiders, the Dulan Mountain Arts Festival, or the Austronesian Cultural Festival are merely superficial façades that contribute to the commercialization of Indigenous culture, these kinds of events are actually designed to heighten Indigenous consciousness of their own cultural capital. In the rapidly changing high pressure society of contemporary Taiwan, without recognition of one’s own potential cultural capital, it is unlikely that the Indigenous cultural traditions and place-based knowledge will continue into the future. There are several different layers of internal and overlapping communities in Dulan, including the Amis village, the young artists, a growing retirement community, 226 part-time residents, and short-term visitors. All of these communities share a common concern with maintaining the natural environment and strengthening the cultural capital of all the communities in Dulan. With people like Siki in Dulan negotiating relations between the ROC government’s political agenda and private business’s economic plans for tourism development, because he has the needs of the various local communities in mind, hopefully real sustainable tourism development based on the preservation of the natural and cultural environment and the cultivation of cultural capital can proceed. Orchid Island: The Legacy of Isolation Orchid Island (Lanyu), located in the Pacific Ocean around 60 miles southeast of Taitung City, is one of several small islands off the coasts of Taiwan. The small volcanic island, with an area of only 17.5 square miles, is home to speakers of an Austronesian language who actually have closer affinity to the Batanic languages of the northern Philippines than the Formosan languages of Taiwan. The legacy of Orchid Island’s isolation is still evident in contemporary daily life among the Indigenous people to whom it is home. The people of Orchid Island, called Yami and more recently Tao (pronounced “dao-wu”), have maintained their traditional way of life for hundreds of years with comparatively less contact and influence through the Qing Dynasty, Japanese Colonial, and Republic of China periods than the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Although the Dutch and Qing were aware of the island, and referred to it as “Red Head” (hongtou) island in Chinese and “Botel” in Dutch languages, neither of them inhabited the island; only the native inhabitants remained 227 living there in isolation until the Japanese arrived to in 1896 and conducted a survey to determine its potential usefulness to the Japanese empire. After the Japanese completed a survey of Orchid Island, they determined it was not suitable for growing any crops for export, and so proclaimed the small island an anthropological laboratory which would be kept in isolation from further contact. Several long-term ethnographic studies were then conducted, including Tori’i Ryuzo’s Research Report on the Local Customs in Botel Tobago (1902), and Kano Tadao’s An Illustrated Ethnography of the Formosan Aborigines: The Yami (1945) which was revised and updated in 1956. The Yami traditionally lived in six coastal fishing villages around the island, which remain distinct and separate to this day. After the ROC government took over the island in 1946 a police station, public school and hospital were established, and Christian missionaries were allowed in. The official name of the island was changed to Lanyu (Orchid Island). In the 1950s, the ROC established a military base, opened postal service to the island, established a radio station, and in 1959 constructed a prison on the eastern side of the island to which they sent 1,000 of the most dangerous criminals, some waiting to be executed. During this time Chinese ethnographers from Academia Sinica began conducting ethnographic research on Orchid Island. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the ROC government funded a cement house construction project for all the villages, which was not appreciated by the Yami. Previously Yami had all lived in traditional houses which were complexes of one underground dwelling used during the typhoon season, one raised platform used in the hot summer months, and one “social house” that served as a workshop for boat construction (Smith 1998, 24-29). 228 In 1967, Orchid Island was first opened for tourists from Taiwan, but remained difficult to access, since the only way to arrive was on infrequent boats from Fu-gang Harbor in Taitung City. In 1969 the first airstrip was completed in Orchid Island near the village of Yuren and the Orchid Island Hotel opened in the village of Hongtou. Still flights were only from Taitung airport, and subject to cancellation according to weather conditions. Even after a regular flight schedule was set in 1973, air travel remained infrequent and subject to cancellation. A one-lane paved road was constructed which connected all the villages around the island. Very few tourists visited Orchid Island in these years, but anthropologists continued to conduct research and missionaries continued to work with the Yami. Compulsory education through junior high school was begun on the island only in 1968. The current generation of elders in Orchid Island therefore cannot read or write, and most cannot speak very much Mandarin Chinese language either. As a result, however, the younger generations are literate in both Mandarin Chinese and their native Yami language. Cultural Significance of Betel Nut in Orchid Island The Yami traditional subsistence economy was and is still largely based on wet taro, yam, and millet horticulture in terraced fields tended by women who also collect wild vegetables in the nearby hillsides and mountains. Men harvest food resources from the sea, sometimes diving underwater to spearfish from the coasts, and also voyaging out to sea in canoes and using nets to collect flying fish and diving in deeper waters to spear fish. They also keep goats that roam the island, and chickens and pigs inside the 229 villages. Unlike the indigenous cultures of Taiwan, it is still possible for Yami people to subsist in their traditional way. Also unlike the indigenous cultures in Taiwan, the Yami did not traditionally produce alcohol or grow tobacco. After tobacco was introduced to the island, which was reportedly during the Japanese occupation, the Yami people developed an affinity for smoking, but didn’t harvest their own tobacco (Smith 1998). They did, however, traditionally chew betel nut. They cultivated areca palms, collected wild betel pepper vine, and manufactured their own lime powder from seashells. In Yami language, betel nut is called manmama, or avuwa, and “chew betel nut” is miwalam. Almost every Yami family grows their own areca palms, and Yami parents also encourage their children chew betel nut to make sure that someone will harvest areca nuts for them to chew when they are too old to harvest themselves. Elders continue to chew even after they have lost most or all of their teeth. They simply crush up the betel nut in a container and put it in their mouths to chew. Areca palms are planted around each household, and also in a circular pattern around particular trees in the mountains that a family wants to use in the future to build canoes. While areca palm trees do not mark boundaries between fields, as they do among the Amis, for the Yami they mark claimed ownership of certain other trees in the forest by a particular clan or family group. The betel nut basket which is kept in every household is called pimamamanan, and is used in the same way as among indigenous betel nut chewing cultures in Taiwan. The contents of the basket, however, are slightly different. Instead of chewing fresh ripe areca nut, the Yami elders usually chew the hardened mature nuts, and often use the 230 roots or stems of the betel pepper vine instead of the fresh leaves, even while relaxing at home. Instead of lime paste, Yami traditionally used lime powder which they manufactured themselves by crushing and burning seashells in an annual ritual activity that took place in October, described below. When Siki, our Amis friend from Dulan, first visited Orchid Island for the first time, he noticed a slight difference in the betel nut chewing habits of the Yami. In Orchid Island, I saw the elders chew areca nuts that have already grown very large. They chew the mature nuts, even nuts that have already turned yellowish. They peel the nut with a knife and wrapped it with leaf and lime paste. Our Amis elders in Dulan are pickier. If they are making dried betel nut, they cook the nut while it is still green. I think it is related to ethnic differences and the environmental conditions. [Siki, Dulan Amis] The Yami use betel nut to test the motivation of one’s guests in social encounters. Whenever a guest arrives, he or she can prepare a betel nut and chew without asking permission from the host, just as among the Amis, Puyuma, and Paiwan. However, if a host actively presents betel nut to guests, it is used as a kind of social divination. If the guest readily receives it, then that indicates the gathering should be a happy occasion. If the guest rejects the betel nut, that signals they have come to argue. Since Yami people traditionally respect strong men and abhor the weak, some hosts will purposefully put the more mature hardened areca nuts in the betel nut basket to observe their guests’ strength. If a guest uses only one hand to hold both the knife and the areca nut to slice it open, then it means he has great strength, and so should be respected and would be better attended to (Dong Sen-yung 1997, 107). Just as among the Amis, a young Yami woman gives betel nut to the man she adores, and if the man also likes her, he happily receives the betel nut and immediately 231 chews. Also similar to Amis, Yami people consider areca nut as female, betel pepper as male, and lime paste as the “affection” or “love” that binds the quid together. For Yami, all dreams have significant meanings. If a man dreams about planting betel pepper vine and areca palms with a girl he knows, it is interpreted that they should be a couple, and he would likely propose marriage to her. If a pregnant woman or her husband dreams about planting betel pepper, it is the sign that she will deliver a baby boy; whereas if she dreams about planting areca palm, it is a sign that she will deliver a baby girl. According to Mr. Dong Sen-yong, a local historian who lives in Yuren Village, fishermen would collect a certain kind of seashell throughout the year, specifically for manufacture of lime powder. Whenever they saw these shells, they would bring them back and store them in the house until the time of the annual lime paste manufacturing ceremony. Sometimes they would go diving specifically to find these shells. Burning lime was a four person job. Two people prepared the seashells, and two prepared wood. They brought the wood and seashells to the beach. They placed some rocks in a crisscross formation on top of the sand, and then stacked the wood on top of the rocks, and lastly set the seashells on top. They then added another layer of wood and some kindling and lit the top. Once the top caught the fire, it would gradually burn to the bottom. When the fire had consumed all the wood, the seashells would be well burnt into a white color and cracked into smaller pieces. Then, using long bamboo sticks they would pick out the burnt seashells and place them in pots. Each of the four people who organized the production could fill up two pots, and the villagers gathered around would share all the rest of lime left on the ground. People would pour a bowl of seawater into the pot containing the burnt seashells, then cover and seal the pot. They would store the 232 pot in a cool shaded area and allow the contents to settle for a while before using it (Dong Sen-yong 1997, 105-108). Every family would keep a pot of lime powder in their house. Unlike the indigenous people of Taiwan, the Yami of Orchid Island have extensive taboos that relate to the fear of ghosts that haunt people and cause all sorts of misfortune. Ghosts, called anito, are demonic spirits that have returned to the world of the living to cause harm, and there are no benevolent ghosts (Smith 1998, 33). In order to keep oneself free from their influence, certain rituals must be performed. For instance, when men travel from their homes to the ocean to go fishing or between villages, they will sometimes wear a metal helmet that is meant to protect them from evil spirits, and swing their machete in the air to keep ghosts away. Unlike the indigenous cultures of Taiwan, the Yami had developed a traditional metallurgy technology. They would find sunken ships and collect pieces of metal, bring them back to the village, and create knives and metal helmets. Also unlike the indigenous cultures of Taiwan, they were the only ones to wear battle armor, though they never fought each other or engaged in headhunting as did all of the indigenous cultures of Taiwan. Since lime powder is considered to be the affection or love that brings together and activates the areca nut and betel pepper, it is also used for healing, which of course means “combating evil spirits” among the Yami. If someone is attacked by a ghost in a dream and wakes up, then he or she would grab some lime powder and throw it at the ghost to blind it, then the ghost would go away (Dong Sen-yung 1997, 109). Lime powder is also used to remedy skin infections. It is applied directly on the infected area while chanting, “I use lime 233 powder to curse you evil spirit! Why do you harm my child? Please change your mind and cure my child!” (Wang Shu-Gui 1999, 193). Before the introduction of industrial paint to the island, lime powder was also used to coat the highly valued fishing canoe, which has a white base with red and black designs. (See Photo of Yami canoe.) Lime powder symbolically integrates and activates the canoe in the same way it does a betel nut quid, and protects it from evil spirits. Nowadays, industrially produced lime paste is widely available, and the annual ceremony of lime powder production is no longer practiced. Areca nut and betel pepper vine seem to have no ritual use, but the leaves of the areca palm do. The following two stories relate the mythical healing power of areca palm leaves. Several young people were having a water drinking contest, but one of them drank too much water and his body exploded. So others collected all his bones and placed them on an areca palm leaf, fanned them, and chanted over them: “All you bones, please reunite immediately.” Slowly, all the bones reunited and he returned to life again. [Ts’eng Chong-yi 2001, 98] A child’s mother passed away when he was very young. He asked his father where his mother had gone. The father pointed to a gravesite. The child dug out his mother’s bones and put them inside the areca palm leaf, and wrapped them up. Then he started fanning the bundle until all the flesh grew back. When he opened the leaf he found his mother had returned to life. [Ts’eng Chong-yi 2001, 105] Amis, Puyuma, and Paiwan shamans use the areca nut in their healing rituals, yet the Yami focus on the healing power of lime powder and areca palm leaves. Also, while the Yami could be considered to practice shamanic healing, there are not particular people who are identified as shamans, rather all the elders in the whole society are equipped to perform all the necessary rituals for a family member in need. Trouble in Paradise: A Hidden Nuclear Waste Dump in Orchid Island 234 Although it seems counterintuitive from our perspective in the early 21 st century, for some reason Orchid Island was selected by the ROC government as the best place to store all of Taiwan’s nuclear waste, even though there were and still remain plenty of small uninhabited islands in the waters surrounding Taiwan. We may never know the reasons for the decision, but the legacy of Orchid Island’s isolation must have been a factor. The local inhabitants did not understand the meaning of nuclear technology; they could not understand the risks associated with it, nor were they informed that the proposed new port in the south of the island was for the purpose of receiving such waste. Taiwan first developed nuclear technology in 1961. Thirteen years later, in 1974, the “Orchid Island Project” was proposed by the ROC government’s Atomic Energy Council, Tai-Power Corporation, and scientists at the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research and National Qing Hua University. In 1977, Tai-Power contracted for the construction of a “nuclear waste holding facility” in Orchid Island (Lin Bi-yao 1995). According to Yami elders, the Lanyu Township (Orchid Island) and the Taitung County government approved the proposal, but since the Yami elders who represented Lanyu Township couldn’t read Chinese, they had no idea about the content of the proposal, and signed under what we would consider duress. The villagers were allowed to believe that the government intended to build a fish cannery on the island. The people of Taiwan were also kept in the dark about the proposal. In fact, the first public press release announcing the “Orchid Island Project” was published in April of 1982, in the Atomic Energy Council Newsletter. The following month, after the facility had been completed in the southern tip of Orchid Island, the head of the Minister of Economic Affairs personally accompanied the first delivery of nuclear waste to 235 Orchid Island. Ever since then, all nuclear waste produced in Taiwan has been stored in that site on Orchid Island (Lin Bi-yao 1995). It was not until 1985 that the younger generation of Yami began to understand what nuclear waste actually was. Armed with this knowledge for the first time, young Yami took action, and three years later, in 1988, one year after martial law was lifted, staged the first large-scale protest against the dumping of nuclear waste on their homeland at the Tai-Power building in Taipei, which they called “Expelling the Evil Spirits” (Lin Bi-yao 1995). As a result, many activists in Taiwan became informed of the injustice and joined the cause, resulting in the second phase of the project being terminated. In 1991, the Yami announced their demand to relocate the nuclear waste dump, and terminate any future plans for its development. Ten years later, after many protests and shut-downs of the Nuclear Waste Site, in 2001, the ROC government-owned Tai-Power Corporation offered compensation of NT 220 million to the Lanyu (Orchid Island) Township, which decided to issue NT 70,000 to every resident registered in Orchid Island for over six months, of which there were around 3,000 people. However, Tai-Power Corporation had strings attached to their offer, and required that Lanyu Township had to propose a concrete plan to use the compensation that would benefit the whole community of Orchid Island, and refused to issue the compensation if it would be equally distributed to individual residents. (Chen Xiang-lan & Shen Ming-chuan 2002). Although the Tai-Power Corporation’s contract expired at the end of 2002, they did not succeed in their plan to renew the contract, nor did they relocate the nuclear waste site. In November of 2003, the promised compensation money of NT 220 million 236 was paid to the Lanyu Township, plus an additional NT 200 per barrel of which there are 97,000 barrels, which equals NT 19.4 million. The Lanyu Township decided to distribute this compensation money according to the following schedule. Using the date of November 1, 2002 as a base, Yami people who were permanent residents in Orchid Island for the previous six months were compensated. Taiwanese women or men who married Yami men or women residents before that date were compensated. Any other Indigenous people from Taiwan who were permanent residents in Orchid Island for twelve years before that date, and Han Chinese from Taiwan who had lived as permanent residents in Orchid Island for fifteen years previous to that date were compensated. According to the number of qualified residents, each person received NT 63,000 (Luo Shao-ping 2003). The people spent the money on completing their cement house construction projects, or upgrading their household equipment, such as purchasing refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, or televisions. Many residents actually felt compensated and began to have a favorable impression of the ROC government and Tai-Power, while many other residents continued to protest against continued storage of nuclear waste on the island. An internal division has developed between these two factions. Protesters realized that dependence on compensation money would sap the island of its traditional strengths of self-reliance and dignity, and so continue to fight for the removal of the nuclear waste site, but without the total allegiance of all their fellow islanders. Tourist Development: A Grand Canoe Launch 237 With NT 3 million of funding from the Taitung County Offshore Island Tourism Development Budget, the Lanyu Township sponsored the construction and launching of a Yami traditional grand canoe in the village of Yeyou in August of 2004 (see Figure 23). Traditionally grand canoes were constructed and owned by clans. This canoe, built by the villagers of Yeyou, however, would be owned by the Lanyu Township office. Traditionally, and even into the present, every Yami man would own his own small canoe that would be used for fishing, whereas only a few grand canoes would be built, and only occasionally. According to Dong Sen-yong (1997), Not all of the Yami people know how to build canoes, especially the younger generations who spent many years living in Taiwan. Also the Yami don’t have to build new ones every year, but only when the old ones are beyond repair. Although not all Yami men currently have their own canoes, but if one doesn’t have his own canoe, he will not have the ability to catch enough fish, most importantly flying fish, and would consequently live a poorer life. To be a real Yami man, one must own at least one canoe. Traditionally, sponsoring the construction of grand canoes was undertaken in order to gain social prestige for a clan or family. After the introduction of motor boats to the island, the practice of building grand canoes, which could hold up to a dozen men, gradually faded away, though building the smaller individual canoes continued. The Taitung County Tourism Development board decided it would be a good idea to revive the traditional practice of building and launching grand canoes because the rituals involved in their launching are quite striking and picturesque, and would bake a good draw for tourists. Traditionally, the construction of a grand canoe would be planned three years in advance, because it required preparing enough taro and pigs to hold a village-wide feast. The grand canoe launch scheduled for August of 2004, however, was only planned several months in advance. Instead of asking the Yami 238 villagers of Yeyou to produce all the necessary taro and pigs, those were also supplied by the Taitung County government. Figure 23: Lanyu tourist map. The rituals performed in August of 2004 were somewhat simpler than those traditionally performed, but still achieved the desired result. Hundreds of tourists from all over Taiwan arrived for the activities, mostly photographers, anthropology students, and reporters. A young British filmmaker and fellow Fulbright scholar, Andy Limond, who was living in the neighboring village of Hongtou conducting making a film about 239 the process of Yami canoe construction, had invited a group of photographers from Japan. From him and other anthropologists based in Taipei, I learned about the activity and so was also there to witness it. Travel from Taipei to Orchid Island is difficult to plan, especially in the summer typhoon season. Boats and flights are frequently cancelled. Even if one is able to secure airfare from Taipei to Taitung, and then from Taitung to Orchid Island, which would have to be booked a few weeks in advance, it would be more expensive than round-trip airfare from Taipei to Hong Kong, for example. Furthermore, the small planes that fly between Taitung and Orchid Island can carry only 20 passengers. Getting to Orchid Island from Taipei by train and boat, conversely, takes at least two days. Arriving to Taitung by train takes between seven to eight hours. And then, the boat ride from Fugang Harbor in Taitung City to Orchid Island takes three to four hours, since the boat always stops first at Green Island, a popular tourist destination which has no indigenous people living there. In addition, there is only one scheduled boat leaving Fugang Harbor daily, which is in the early morning. For boat passengers, they must have planed one night’s stay in Taitung City, or else have arrived to Taitung in the early morning on an over-night train. Once in Orchid Island, return travel to Taiwan is just as unpredictable. One must be ready to wait through typhoons that could last for days before leaving the island. Anyway, it takes a great deal of effort and flexibility for tourists from Taiwan to vacation in Orchid Island. Two days before the scheduled launch, the Yami of Yeyou Village gathered in the central plaza and performed traditional dances. The next day, more dances and songs were performed and the grand canoe was decorated with taro. Yami of other villages 240 were invited to a traditional meal of yam and taro as guests, all wearing their formal traditional dress, for men that included the large metal helmets and armor. A basket of betel nut rested on the ground in front of them, and anyone could prepare themselves a chew at any time (see Figure 24). Elders gathered together and sang traditional songs until dawn at the household of the “owner” of the grand canoe, who was in this circumstance appointed by the Lanyu Township. Figure 24: Yami male elders at Canoe Launching Ceremony (left), with detail of betel nut basket prominently displayed on the ground in front of them (right). At dawn on the morning of the grand canoe launch the taro decorating the canoe was distributed to the village households and several pigs were slaughtered. The men of Yeyou then performed a ritual to scare away evil spirits with a fierce dance. They then lifted the grand canoe above their heads, and carried it to the seashore, where they hoisted it into the air three times and set it into the ocean (see Figure 25). Upon launching the grand canoe, several men got aboard and paddled around the bay, then 241 returned to the shore, where a new crew of men boarded the canoe and paddled around again. This continued for several times until all the men in the village had tested it. After the launch had concluded, the grand canoe was placed on the beach and Yami men posed for photographs. Figure 25: Yami Grand Canoe Launch in Yeyin, August 2004. The following day a press conference was held to discuss a recent finding of several barrels that appeared to contain nuclear waste, found on a bluff above a rocky seashore north of Yeyou. Representatives from Tai-Power, the contractor working for Tai-Power, and officials from the Lanyu Township government were present. Although an engineer from Tai-Power used a hand-held device to show the local people that the barrels did not contain high levels of radiation, still no one could explain how the barrels 242 got there in the first place. The nuclear waste problem in Orchid Island is an on-going issue. Discussion: The Legacy of Isolation in Orchid Island Even before any outsiders had contacted the Yami of Orchid Island, they were isolated from their neighbors. Although the Yami had historical trade-relations with the people of the Northern Batanes, and elders remember stories of occasionally meeting fishermen from the Batanes in the open ocean, their land was never at risk of being invaded by any outsiders. Their traditional culture developed out of the necessity of self-sufficiency. Even after their initial contact with outside authorities, the Japanese not only allowed but forced the Yami to persist in their traditional ways of life. Only after the ROC government took control of the island, did it become a target for development, but not inclusion in the general society. Only a prison and later a nuclear waste dump were built there. Nowadays Yami people are still isolated from Taiwan society, but also are becoming ever more distant from the possibility of self-reliance. While the financial compensation given to the islanders for the nuclear waste dump seems an effort at goodwill, the effect of it is only to reduce the islanders’ dignity and self-respect. There has been no effort to remove the nuclear waste, but only to hook the Yami into accepting payments to allow it to remain. Promoting tourism development on the island by convincing the Yami to revive traditions that have already lost their current necessity, such as building grand canoes, while it may increase a short-term sense of cultural dignity, cannot compensate for a 243 deeper loss of self-sufficiency, which has only snowballed after the fateful decision to build the nuclear waste facility and then provide cash payments, instead of removing the nuclear waste altogether. As we have seen around the world, once a subsistence economy is made dependent on a cash economy, it has no way back, but can only become further implicated. And that is what has happened on Orchid Island over the past few decades. On the other hand, enforcing isolation, while it allows the subsistence economy to continue for awhile, seems overly paternalistic, and only serves to postpone what seems to be the inevitable inclusion in a cash-based economy even more devastating and painful later. For now, the Yami people in Orchid Island still retain a dignified sense of local identity that is based on daily practice. But forces outside of the island are competing to either eliminate that difference by “increasing the standard of living” to match that of urban Taiwan, or to push it to the other extreme of “commercializing the potential cultural capital” of the Yami. Either way the result is similar, the further implication in the cash-based economy, with the continuing reality of isolation. Inside the island, and in the hearts and minds of every individual who lives there, the conflict continues day to day. How or if it will ever resolve is a question for the future. Localism and International Tourism in Taiwan Defining local identity in Taiwan is a continuing struggle, but an essential one. The question of who are the locals and who are the outsiders continues to bring people together and divide them at the same time. Indigenous people (yuanzhumin) called Hakka and Min-nan (Taiwanese) outsiders, who in turn called Mainland Chinese 244 (waishengren) outsiders, who called Southeast Asian immigrants and Western foreigners outsiders. Just like the United States, Taiwan is a society of immigrants, “indigenous people” make up only 2% of the population, yet the whole population considers itself as local. It takes only one or two generations to identify as local Taiwan people. In the past, there were very few short-term visitors to Taiwan, mostly from Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Usually, these were businessmen or academics attending conferences who might be taken on a few days of touring, however, because of the former colonial relationship, a steady though small number of tourists from Japan have continued over the decades. Most foreign visitors to Taiwan would stay from several months to several years, or even decades in some cases, working as English teachers, academics, or involved with international or local business ventures. Some, such as foreign spouses, would eventually become residents. Only recently, after a decline in domestic economic growth, was there an active effort to attract foreign tourism. An opportunity for developing foreign tourism was already knocking on the door, across the Taiwan Strait, in Mainland China. Although ROC citizens were allowed to join tour groups to China since 1987, and many also set up business ventures there, it was not until 2002 that the ROC first allowed Chinese tour groups from the PRC to travel in limited numbers to Taiwan. The number of Chinese tour groups and total number of Chinese tourists has been steadily growing into the present. From January to July of 2006, a total of 56,949 PRC citizens joined tour groups to Taiwan, which is more than the total of PRC visitors over the entire year of 2005 (Tourism Bureau of Taiwan). Tour groups are taken to the most 245 famous attractions in Taiwan, in week-long tours, which including Sun-Moon Lake, Ali-Shan and hot springs in the central mountains, night markets, and of course, the highest building in the world, Taipei 101. Although it was not originally a scheduled part of the tours, when the tour bus would exit a highway or was about to get on a highway, or traveling down local roads, while passing betel nut beauty stands, tour guides were frequently asked to explain why those young women were dressed like that and what they were selling. Over time, tour busses began making regularly scheduled stops at the betel nut beauty stands. Sometimes a betel nut beauty would enter the tour bus, sell cigarettes and soft drinks, and even give instructions on how to chew betel nut for the inquisitive. Without any intentional promotion or inclusion in the tour schedule, betel nut became a highlight of these Mainland Chinese tourists’ experience of Taiwan, but only because of its relation with betel nut beauties. It is evident that tourists from Mainland China will be coming to Taiwan in ever increasing numbers into the future. How will the structure of Taiwan’s society and economy be impacted or adapt to this new layer of “outsiders” who share a common historical and cultural heritage that has been severed for the past century? Could betel nut come to represent the “local flavor” of Taiwan in the imaginations of visitors from Mainland China? How would betel nut in Taiwan and Hainan be differently imagined? Before moving to comparative issues, it is best to understand the social and symbolic life of betel nut in Hainan, to which we now turn. 247 SECTION 4: ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS WITH BETEL NUT IN HAINAN This section focuses on contemporary betel nut chewing culture in Hainan, culled from four months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted from September 2003 to January 2004. The nature of my research in Hainan was merely to make an ethnographic “snapshot” of the current situation of betel nut chewing, primarily for comparison with Taiwan, rather than as a case study in itself. The present ethnography of betel nut chewing in Hainan is admittedly limited by these factors. 1 This section is presented in four thematic chapters. Chapter 8 provides an introduction to ethnicity and boundaries in Hainan, which explores contemporary ethnic group definitions in Hainan and how betel nut chewing marks boundaries between a “local islander” and “outsider” status. Chapter 9 details the production and significance of betel nut in the marketplace and provides a view of the contemporary economics of the betel nut industry in Hainan from the perspective of areca nut farmers, wholesalers and retailers in southern Hainan. Chapter 10 explores the symbolic meanings and ritual use of betel nut in engagements and wedding ceremonies among the Hainanese, Li, and Utsat. Chapter 11 notes the impact of tourist development on betel nut chewing in Sanya, including analysis of the relations of Mainland tourists and local Hainan residents. 1 Although I followed the protocol of contacting and meeting with a local scholar who agreed to assist in facilitating my research, an anthropologist at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, himself a betel nut chewer from Hunan, he recommended that I simply go to Hainan myself and conduct my project without any official procedures, which is evidently not the usual practice for anthropological research in the PRC. Perhaps because of the location of the fieldwork, within the Special Economic Zone of Hainan and the brevity of the proposed study, I was exempt from official bureaucratic process, and was allowed to conduct my research without any official limitations, for which I am grateful. 248 The section begins with an overview of Hainan to provide a context for contemporary ethnic diversity. Ethnic boundaries in Hainan are found to be maintained through language use and kinship practices, and betel nut chewing is found to mark local islander/outsider boundaries. Here we explore the local betel nut chewing cultures of Sanya and the differences among several ethno-linguistic communities: the Hainanese, Utsat, Li, Miao, and the so-called “Mainlanders” (dalu ren) who have migrated to Hainan in two waves, the first immediately following the founding of the PRC and the second after the establishment of Hainan as a Special Economic Zone in the late 1980s. Recent Han immigrants from the Chinese mainland to Hainan were initially not betel nut chewers, but many became chewers after living in the island for some time, thus adopting and variously defining their newly claimed “islander” identities. Those born in Hainan (Hainanese, Li, Utsat, Miao, and children of immigrant Mainlanders) often develop the habit of betel nut chewing, or at least understand and accept the social significance of giving and receiving betel nut. The following chapter details the significance of betel nut in traditional and contemporary wedding ceremonies in Hainan among the Hainanese, Li, and Utsat. Special attention is paid to two Utsat weddings observed during fieldwork. Information on Li and Hainanese weddings was gathered from ethnographic interviews. In short, betel nut is indispensable in contemporary weddings in Hainan where it serves as an invitation to guests and a gift from groom’s family to bride’s family that is in turn distributed at the wedding ceremony to guests. The social and symbolic significance of betel nut in weddings is also reflected in daily social interactions where gifts of betel nut signal asking for and accepting of forgiveness or 249 demonstrating group solidarity. In weddings and daily life, betel nut is differently distributed according to whether it is used as a ritual or habitual object. When betel nut is ritually distributed from one person’s hand to another’s, it is charged with symbolic status expressed in each specific encounter, but always related to the deep symbolic meaning of betel nut itself, which is the reproductive or “fruitful” union of two complimentarily gendered entities. The next chapter deals with areca nut production, and examines traditional wholesale and retail markets. From the perspective of Hainanese areca nut farmers in Yacheng, we learn the economic and social significance of betel nut in the lives of people in a rural agricultural area in southern Hainan. We follow betel nut into the markets of Sanya City and observe how and by whom it is sold and purchased. The final chapter explores how tourism has impacted betel nut chewing habits in Sanya. Tourists from Mainland China, of which there is a continuous and increasing flow and presence, may not understand betel nut chewing, and usually are actively kept away from finding out about it by locals who are influenced by provincial and county (state) strategies, and so tend to not even have the opportunity to chew betel nut. Two examples of controversial tourism development, one in Xidao and the other the “Barbarian Valley” phenomenon, are presented and discussed. In particular, we note the ways in which Utsat specifically utilize their commercial, entrepreneurial, and cosmopolitan orientation to benefit from the tourist industry that has developed around them. Finally, we examine the ways tourism has impacted the public presence of betel nut in the urban markets of Sanya, and identify the ways in which social characteristics are read into the fact of betel nut chewing in public places. 250 Chapter 8: Ethnic Diversity and Betel Nut Chewing in Hainan Similar to Taiwan, Hainan is a “multiethnic” and “multicultural” island society. Although Hainan’s total population is only one-third of Taiwan’s, the percentage of state-defined “minorities” on the island is much greater. As of the 2000 census, out of a total population around 8 million, the percentage of “Han Chinese,” which includes “Hainanese” (Hainan ren), “Hakka” (kejia ren) along with other “Mainland Han” (dalu ren) immigrants, was 86 percent, the Li made up 16 percent, the Miao 0.8 percent, the “Zhuang” 0.7 percent, and the “Hainan Hui” (Utsat) with a population of only around 5,000 were negligible (less than 0.01 percent). Hainan’s total population in 1980 was 6 million, including a majority “Han Chinese” population (which as above, includes Hainanese, Hakka, and Mainland Chinese), and “minority” populations of around 700,000 (11.67%) Li, 200,000 (0.03%) Miao, and 3,700 Utsat (Enderton 1984). Socio-economic status in Hainan society is highly contrasted and distinct. The upper class includes primarily tourists or visiting investors from Mainland China, all temporary residents of the island, who come from provinces in the mainland. The middle class also includes mostly Mainland Chinese who have migrated to the island, as well as some local Hainanese, Utsat, and Li merchants, business owners, tourist industry managers and workers, and government workers. The tourist industry is indeed lucrative in Hainan, but most local Hainanese still work in agriculture or local markets. The lower class includes mostly local Hainanese and Li, though also some 251 Mainland Chinese street vendors, farmers, fishermen, and labor workers. The very lowest class includes the indigenous people, Miao and Li, still living in the mountains. Outcastes include the newly arrived unemployed and vagrants, of whom there seemed to be not many. Utsat: Austronesian Language-speaking Muslims of Sanya County At the time of fieldwork in 2003, the population of Utsat was estimated around 7,000, all of whom live in Sanya County in two villages located near the Phoenix International Airport, called Huixin and Yanglan, with a few Utsat temporarily studying abroad in the Chinese mainland and other Islamic countries (Interview with Mrs. Pu, 2003 December 26). According to village statistics gathered in 1988, there were 4,437 Utsat, living in 715 households in the two villages (Pang 1992, 27), and as of the 1980 census, there were 3,700 Utsat. These data confirm actual and perceived population growth, but not in terms of population percentage. The Utsat are the smallest government-defined “minority” group in Hainan, referred to as “Hainan Hui,” having consistently less than .01% of Hainan’s total population over the past few decades. Yet, their proportional significance in Hainan, and their “international” links to a Chamic diaspora and Islamic world, has been comparatively strong. They are the only Austronesian language-speaking Muslim group in China. Although they share a common religion with the other state-defined “Hui” (Muslim Chinese) in the mainland, their Austronesian language and coastal fishing and merchant culture marks their closer cultural affinity to Southeast Asian Austronesian language-speaking Muslim societies rather than Mainland Hui. 252 These people call themselves “Utsat” in their own language, which means literally “speakers of language” or loosely “the people,” even though Dru Gladney (1991, 34) erroneously reported that “Utsat” means “Muslim.” He was likely confused because when speaking the language of the state, Mandarin Chinese, Utsat call themselves by the state-defined term, “Hui.” Their variety of Austronesian language is classified as Chamic (Pang Keng-Fong 1992, 27), and even shares some commonalities with the Austronesian languages spoken on Taiwan, for example the word “tsat” for “language” is similar to the Taiwan Amis word for “speak language” is “tsatsiaw.” Also, the Utsat word for “pig” (a-fuy) is similar to the Taiwan Amis language “fafuy.” Utsat language, called “tsat,” has also been infused with numerous Arabic words, especially in reference to religious practice. The Utsat sense of community and practices of ethnic group boundary maintenance contrast greatly with those of other ethno-linguistic groups in Hainan, and so make them an interesting case to explore in more depth at the outset. Utsat ethnic identity is defined primarily by language and religion, but also by kinship practices, sexual division of labor, dress, and their particular incorporation of betel nut in local customs. In terms of language practice, when speaking among themselves, of course Utsat use their native Tsat language. In “Hainanese” language (a variety of Min-nan spoken by the majority of people in Hainan), they are referred to as “huan-nang” which means literally “barbarian,” yet are not offended by the term and even use it to identify themselves when speaking Hainanese language (Pang 1996). Utsat feel no need to 253 clarify their self-defined ethnic identity in these contexts precisely because their internal sense of identity and community is solid on its own terms. Some theorists, such as Dru Gladney (1991, 1998, 2004), have identified the state-defined term “Hui” as an ethnic identity, which does not bear itself out in the case of the Utsat. Instead, for Utsat, Hui is a religious identity. While Utsat allow “others” to define them in any way they wish, “Hui” or “huan-nang,” and even participate in using these “identifications” for themselves depending on the language-speaking context, local considerations of these state-defined and “majority”-defined categories have not replaced the internal integrity of Utsat as a primary ethnic identity. While the Utsat do feel a sense of camaraderie with Mainland Hui in terms of a shared religion, they consider all non-Utsat to be members of other ethnic groups, whether sharing the same religion or living in the PRC. In other words, all Muslims around the world are equally fellow members of their religion, but are not considered fellow members of the Utsat ethnic group, which only includes the roughly 7,000 people from the two villages in southern Sanya County. Muslim religious identity is of primary significance in Utsat definitions of themselves, and is manifest in daily practice for men and women. According to Islamic restrictions, the Utsat are forbidden to eat pork, drink alcohol, and smoke tobacco. The restriction against eating pork is strictly followed, whereas those against alcohol and tobacco are less rigidly enforced. However, there was no restriction on chewing betel nut, and at the time of fieldwork in 2003-2004, both men and women, young and old all chewed without restraint, except for men while they are praying inside the mosque. Smoking tobacco and spitting betel nut juice is also forbidden on 254 the grounds of the mosque, and chewing betel nut anywhere in the village or in sight of other Utsat is forbidden during the month of Ramadan, though restrictions on chewing betel nut during Ramadan are lifted at nightfall. Utsat men frequently smoke cigarettes in the village community and would reportedly occasionally drink alcohol if in a “non-Utsat” context, but never in front of elders. Below, in the section on tourism, we will describe one such occasion where an Utsat friend of ours guided us into a Li village and partook of the homemade millet wine prepared by our Li hosts. Other than this one occasion, we personally witnessed no other use of alcohol among the Utsat. To be Utsat is to be Muslim (but, perhaps worth emphasizing again, to be Muslim is not to be Utsat), which extends into kinship practices and dress. Utsat may not marry non-Muslims unless they renounce their Utsat identity and would be banished from the village. The first preference for marriage is village exogamous, but community endogamous marriage, that is marriage to an Utsat of the other village, but marriage to non-Utsat Muslims is also acceptable. In order to marry an Utsat man or woman, the “outsider” must either be a practicing Muslim or else first convert to Islam before engagement and wedding ceremonies can take place. In the following section, we will detail two Utsat weddings, one of the preferred kind and one of a Taiwan-born Han Chinese man to an Utsat woman where exactly this procedure took place, that is, the groom had to convert to Islam. Although he married in to the Utsat village, he was not considered Utsat, even after his conversion to Islam. Islamic law mandates that Utsat women cover their heads, which also marks them as separate from the rest of Hainan’s population, and is perhaps related to the Hainanese language “huan-nang” term, which could have resulted from a 255 misunderstanding of Utsat as “indigenous” people of Hainan, which they actually are not. Utsat men also mark their bodies as different from Hainanese or Li by growing goatees, which was explained to us by a middle aged Utsat man as follows. Muslim elders should keep goatees. It’s a requirement, usually, when one reaches fifty years old. As for the younger men, since they have to work outside, it is too inconvenient for them to grow one, so they don’t have to. For the elders, they only stay home doing housework, or worship in the mosque, so they all have goatees. But I still shave my chin every day. Because I work outside, if I have such a long goatee attached to my chin, people would think I am really strange. That would make me look too different from others. Sexual division of labor among the Utsat also contributes to ethnic boundary maintenance. After the Cultural Revolution a reorganization of Utsat economic life occurred, such that men’s formerly primary productive activity (fishing) was no longer a viable means to support life in the Utsat villages. After men and women were forced to work collectively in the communes in the Maoist period, and then after the 1980s when commercial markets were opened in Hainan, Utsat men worked in the fields and women went to market to sell the produce. The result was a noticeable presence of Utsat women in the local Sanya markets, all wearing head-coverings and traditional-style blouses, which could have been mistaken as “huan-nang” (barbarian) customs by the Hainanese merchants and customers. Nowadays Utsat women usually work in the markets of Sanya selling vegetables or other items, such as cellular phones and accessories. Some Utsat women walk along the tourist beaches, or inside tourist destinations selling hand-made jewelry, seashells, or sugarcane. While we didn’t witness women ever attending worship at village mosques, they reportedly do worship, separately from men as prescribed by Islamic law, at their places of business throughout the day in a rented space that also serves as 256 a store-house for the items they sell at the markets (Yan Mong-Chun 2004). The only Utsat female we witnessed at the village mosques was a young girl, perhaps 4-5 years of age, who had accompanied her father to the mosque, and was playing on the front steps while he was inside worshipping. When we asked the men about the girl’s presence, they told us that young girls are allowed to play on the mosque grounds, but soon enough they learn that the mosque is a male domain, and stop coming to play there as they get older. In the Utsat village, throughout the day, men’s and women’s social worlds are largely separate. Both young and middle-aged men and women tend to work outside the village, so in the daytime only infants and school-aged children, elders, and a few middle-aged local vendors or vegetable farmers are present. Utsat men’s and women’s worlds, however, overlap at night when chatting and chewing betel nut together, as we will explore in more depth below. All of the capital generated by women and men is either re-invested in entrepreneurial pursuits, invested in the household to build more and larger houses, or in sponsoring (usually male) children to study abroad in Arabic language-speaking Muslim nations, which is understood as not only improving the lives of those individuals, but also the Utsat community as a whole, and so bestows prestige on the whole family. The success of Utsat women in commercial and market activities over the past two decades paralleled, and it seems enabled Utsat men’s further immersion in Islamic practice, which has become stricter over the years since men have been exposed to Arabic Muslim teachings. 257 An Utsat married woman with one daughter, Mrs. Pu, who was living and working in Shanghai, and had during our fieldwork returned to the Utsat village to attend her cousin’s wedding mentioned that in China generally there are very few Muslims, and furthermore, people in Mainland China usually are not even aware that there are Muslims in Hainan, and so it is to be expected that some of the Islamic regulations might not be strictly followed by Utsat or Muslims in China generally. In an interview in 2004 [January 2], Mrs. Pu said, Nowadays, Muslims as a minority in China have mingled with the Han and become less restrictive on smoking and drinking alcohol. In Muslim nations such as Saudi Arabia, women shouldn’t go out and conduct business with men. But, now we [Utsat] can go out and chat with friends, even non-Muslim men. She went on to note that from her experience in Shanghai, people tended to mistake her as a “mountain indigenous minority” because she wears a brightly colored (yellow, orange, red, or green) towel covering her hair, “Like this towel I’m wearing, many people don’t know “which tribe” I’m from. When I tell them I’m Muslim, they correct me, saying I shouldn’t wear only a towel.” She explained how the use of the brightly colored towel for women to use as a head-cover began after the Utsat were brought into line with the wider Muslim world in the late 1980s and 1990s: After Iranian Muslims visited and invested in building mosques in our village, and sponsored our pilgrimages to Mecca, they also required Utsat women to wear head-covers. Then, when Utsat men returned from pilgrimages, they also brought back more restrictions. Utsat women wear the brightly colored towel as a head cover, especially middle-aged and elder women. Many younger Utsat women wear a different kind of head-covering made of a lighter fabric with brightly colored shiny patterns or light embroidering (see Figure 26). The Utsat women’s head-covering is essential in the daily life of Utsat 258 women, and also plays an important role in the Utsat wedding ceremony, as we will see below. Figure 26: Utsat women’s head-coverings for elder married women (left) and for young unmarried women (right). The current gender dynamics among the Utsat are very similar to those Suzanne Brenner described in Java among Austronesian Muslims, in the article “Why Women Rule the Roost” (1995) and book The Domestication of Desire (1998). Utsat men could similarly be considered “lazy” by outside standards, but actually their devotion to Islamic practice and education justifies their lack of participation in the commercial world, both to themselves and significantly to Utsat women, who are quite happy to “hold the purse strings.” One result of the Utsat sexual division of labor is the increased wealth of the community, especially as compared to other people within Hainan. As a direct result of women’s economic activities, Utsat men are able to participate in the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, as well as further their Muslim education in Arabic speaking countries. This cycle of increasing specialization, female commerce and male spirituality, continues to reinforce and further itself and has been confirmed with a 259 rapid rise in Utsat standards of living over the last two decades. This newfound wealth has modified the way betel nut chewing fits in with Utsat culture. In the past, Utsat used to grow their own areca nut and betel pepper vines, and presumably had to manufacture their own lime paste from seashells. Nowadays, there are no more plantations of areca nut in the Utsat villages, though individual areca palms can still be found sandwiched between the walls of houses, but even these are probably not harvested. And while the Utsat are perhaps the most avid betel nut chewers in all of Hainan, with a majority of adults chewing almost constantly throughout their waking hours, all the betel nut they chew is purchased (usually by Utsat women) at wholesale markets from Hainanese or Li farmers and wholesalers. The principal of the local elementary school expressed the situation as follows. Many people here in our village like to chew betel nut. But now we don’t plant areca palms because we don’t have enough land. In the past, every household planted several areca palms in order to chew betel nut. Now we have more children, and need to build more houses, so we cut down the areca palms [for the land] to build houses. But all the elders, at least over 90%, chew betel nut. Chewing betel nut that is purchased and not locally grown has become one of the many markers of wealth among contemporary Utsat. 2 The most obvious markers of wealth, however, are the several mosques and the houses themselves, some of which rival the mosques in magnificence (see Figure 27). Bringing together the primary ethnic identity markers for contemporary Utsat, they currently understand and narrate their own origins with reference to their religion, 2 The following chapter details the symbolic and ritual significance of betel nut among the Utsat. Suffice to note here that betel nut is not only required in engagement and wedding ceremonies, but is used as one of only a few symbolically charged objects, which for the Utsat nowadays must be purchased at the market. 260 language, and merchant-fisherman lifestyle, claiming ancestry from three sources: Arabian (Islamic) missionaries to China, Persian merchants, and Cham fishermen who fled the Kingdom of Champa (perhaps before as well as) during its collapse in the late 15 th century. Figure 27: Utsat mosque (left) and Utsat house (right) in Huixin Village. The elementary school principal noted that, We don’t speak Arabic here. We have our own language, Tsat. We believe in Islam. In Champa, Vietnam, they also speak our language. We Utsat in Hainan, “Hainan Muslims” (Hainan musilin), in the past, we went out fishing, and we were not part of China, I don’t know how long exactly, several hundred years ago, and we landed here on floats. Our people who went to Saudi Arabia to study [in the 1990s] met other students from Champa, Vietnam, and they found that some linguistic terms such as “eating meals” and “hungry” are the same. Utsat local identity, therefore, draws heavily on these two extra-island or nowadays “international” links, which at the same time separate them from other intra-island connections. In this way the “boundaries” of Utsat identity in Hainan are also the links to an “extra-Hainan” identity. 261 According to contemporary writings of educated Utsat, as posted on their own website, “Hainan Tianya Muslim Online” (Hainan Tianya musilin 海南天涯穆斯林 <http://www.hntymsl.com>) of how Islam was first introduced to China, they state that “the nephew of Muhammad (the founder of Islam) was sent along with thirty other missionaries to spread Islam into China for the first time on a voyage to Guangzhou in 651 CE. Some of these missionaries wound up in Hainan.” This coincides with Chinese Tang Dynasty historical references that describe a visit to China by Saad ibn Abi Waqqas (ra), one of the companions of Prophet Muhammad, in 650 CE. The authors note that in 1942, Taihoku Imperial University Hospital, in Japanese colonial Taiwan, conducted anthropometric studies of Muslim people of Hainan, in the Utsat village of Yanglan and found that Sanya Utsat had “traces of Arabic genetic heritage.” This has proven to present-day Utsat that they are the direct descendants of Muhammad, for which they are very happy. They also believe that they are descended from the Cham people of Vietnam. The first group of Utsat students from Sanya sent to study in Arabia in 1991 wrote letters back home commenting that “some foreign students from the U.K., U.S., France, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, and Vietnam, all spoke similar dialects to our own.” Upon further investigation, these students found that the other Muslim students all had heritage that traced back to the Champa Kingdom in central Vietnam, in other words, they were all descendants of a common Chamic diaspora. Every year, Utsat who go on pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina can communicate with other pilgrims from all over the world who speak similar Chamic (Austronesian) languages. Although they have discovered some variation among the different dialects, they share 262 a common usage, and can ultimately communicate with each other. Nowadays, all of these Muslim pilgrims who can communicate using their native languages believe they are the descendants of the Cham people of Vietnam who had fled their native villages during a war with the Kingdom of Annam several hundred years ago. The online Utsat ethnohistory article indicates that, “according to two Cham scholars who wrote a book called Indochina Muslims, the kingdom of Champa was established by Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) people in 202 CE, and was the only kingdom in Indochina ever made up entirely of Muslim people” (Hainan Tianya Muslim Online, 2006). Although the conclusion that Champa was the “only kingdom in Indochina every made up entirely of Muslim people” indicates that Champa was a “Muslim kingdom,” which it was not (officially) until after its defeat by Annam in 1471; in fact Champa was a Hindu Kingdom (Willoughby 1991). Still the fact that the ancestors and descendants of the Cham were and are Austronesian language-speakers is true, as is the fact that many people, especially those who lived in coastal fishing communities of Champa had become Muslim much earlier, owing to the presence of Muslim merchants who traveled back and forth between Guangzhou and Persia, and even made frequent stops in Hainan as early as the Tang and Song Dynasties (as discussed in Chapter 2). Relating Utsat ethnohistory to the current issues of ethnic identity, it is significant to note that the title of the article quoted above is “A Brief Introduction to Hainan Muslim Culture [Hainan huizu wenhua gaishu 海南回族文化概述]” and is published on the Utsat-maintained website itself titled “Hainan Tianya Muslims [Hainan tianya musilin海南天涯穆斯林].” While in English translation, “Hainan Muslim” remains 263 the same in these two titles, however in the written Chinese characters, the difference of the two writings of “Muslim” -- for the title of the article, as “huizu,” and the name of the website, as “musilin,” -- indicates the shifting self-identification of the Utsat depending on their audience. The website is written by and about “Muslim people who live in Tianya, Hainan” and so therefore doesn’t invoke “Chinese” or “Muslim Chinese” (Huizu) at all. The article is titled and written for non-Utsat outsiders who are familiar with the PRC state-defined term for “Muslim Chinese” (Hui). This is a prime example of the even more subtle ways Utsat consciously manipulate their own representations of themselves to outsiders depending on the context. In the contemporary Utsat imagination, the PRC state-defined category of Hui is not an “ethnic identity,” rather it is a state-defined “minority status” that corresponds to a “Muslim religious identity.” Visiting the Utsat Village of Huixin Our first sight of the Utsat community was from the train coming into Sanya in September of 2003, of two tall towers that later we would learn was a mosque (see Figure 25, right). From the Sanya City guesthouse where we stayed, above the Sanya City “Second Market” (di er shi chang), not knowing the name of the Utsat village, we asked a taxi driver to take us to the “Hui village where there is a mosque.” The Hainanese taxi driver could take us as far as the front gate, which was also a railroad-highway crossing. From him we learned that only Muslim taxi drivers were allowed to enter into the village. We stood across the highway from the village gate and noticed Utsat female elders dressed in black slacks with dark blue blouses and 264 black bibs, some with black head-covers, some with bright orange towels covering their hair. A few middle-aged women were sitting near the gate, selling candies and fruit (see Figure 28). Figure 28: Utsat village of Huixin, front gate. We saw a village taxi driver, and asked him to take us to the “biggest mosque.” We rode along the paved main street, passing an elementary school, small stores, some small brick and concrete decrepit buildings interspersed among many more multi-storied elaborately and brightly painted houses with arched windows that looked like they could be mosques as well. Winding through smaller dirt alleys with red brick walls, and through vegetable gardens, finally we arrived to a mosque. The first mosque we stopped at was full of men cleaning the courtyard with water. As one man approached the taxi, I got out and offered him a betel nut. He accepted and chewed. I asked him, “Where is the biggest mosque?” Winnie added, “One with two tall towers that we saw from the train.” He pointed us along the road (see Figure 29). 265 Figure 29: A mosque in Huixin Village (left), with detail of an Utsat man giving directions to another larger mosque, while chewing betel nut given by the author (right). We continued walking past a vegetable garden, down a wide paved road, and then to the mosque we had seen. We waited for someone to show up. The empty grounds had a large dirt courtyard and marble steps with a wide platform verandah in front of the main doors. Gradually men arrived by foot, motorbike, and cars for afternoon prayers. The groundskeeper noticed us and asked why we had come. I told him of my research on betel nut chewing, and asked if we would be allowed to talk with some people about that. He asked us to wait on the marble verandah of the mosque until after the worship was complete, then some men would be willing to talk with us. We watched the worship through the front doors, which consisted of around thirty men lined up facing south-west, evidently toward Mecca, chanting and prostrating (see Figure 28). 266 Figure 30: Largest mosque in Huixin (left), with men worshiping inside (right). After worship, most of the men stood and sat outside the main doors, chatting with each other. Several men, aged 20-30 years, approached us to talk. The first things they said were critical of then United States President George Bush and his “War on Terror” which was expressed by the men as the “United States’ War on Muslim People” that had been launched after the 2001 World Trade Center attack, and had expanded to an overthrow of Sadam Husain’s Iraqi government since March of 2003. I replied that I did not agree with that war, and was not involved with that, but only wanted to research betel nut in Utsat culture. The Utsat men, however, only wanted to discuss global politics and religion. After finding that Winnie and I were not Muslim, but also not “anti-Muslim,” the next subject was a discussion of several famous Muslim people, and finally the reasons why we should personally covert to Islam. We expressed our appreciation of their views and sharing with us, and asked if we would be welcome to return to talk with people about betel nut. They said we have only to return and talk with people directly, there should be no problem. Then, one man offered to drive us to a locally operated 267 Muslim restaurant located just down the highway toward the city of Sanya. There we ate Muslim dishes, then caught a taxi back to Sanya City. The next time we returned to the Utsat village, we walked through the main gate along the street, passing the elementary school and several shops and houses again, when we noticed a middle-aged woman sitting in her front patio with a large basket of betel nut, chatting with several other women. We walked up and asked to buy betel nut. Compared with the previous day’s talk with the men at the mosque, conversation with this middle-aged woman betel nut vender and her friends and customers was much more informative and relaxing. From the conversations we had with this woman and her customers over several days, we learned about the significance of betel nut in Utsat village life, and eventually were invited to attend two weddings (see Figure 31). Figure 31: Utsat female betel nut vendor in Huixin village. 268 Sitting and chatting with the Utsat betel nut vendor, we learned her son is currently studying abroad, and also met her husband a few times in the afternoon. We asked what she adds to the betel nut quid. She replied, “Only lime,” and opened the cover of her basket to reveal tools and betel pepper leaves. On top of the basket cover was an open jar of lime paste with a stick in it, a tray of betel pepper leaves folded into triangles, and a dozen or so whole areca nuts. The vendor indicated she started chewing betel nut as a teenager, and that usually when children are around ten years old, they pick up the habit, adding “Everyone here chews to an elderly age, and their teeth are all ruined!” Another middle-aged woman, a friend of the vendor, walked in and casually released a mouthful of betel nut juice on the ground directly in front of us and commented, “We won’t get drunk when chewing, but you will.” I asked her how many nuts she chews per day, and she replied “At least 5 to 6 RMB worth, 5 to 6 nuts.” That is equivalent to between 20 and 24 chews, and since each Hainan areca nut is cut into four pieces, is nearly constant chewing, except for eating and sleeping. A younger woman in her early-30s came over to buy betel nut. She gave the money, and the vendor started cutting up the areca nuts, removing the top and bottom tips. Then she grabbed a small plastic bag, counted the folded leaves and nuts and put them into the bag, tied it gently and passed it to the young women. When asked about her chewing habit, she replied, I didn’t chew before, until a couple months ago. Every one around me chews, so I also started chewing. But I only chew when there are fresh betel nuts. My husband is an avid chewer. He chews every day and has tried many times to quit, but always fails (see Figure 32). 269 Figure 32: Elder and younger Utsat women with female child at betel nut stand. An Utsat man in his forties, the principal of the village elementary school walked over and joined the conversation. After learning that we came from Taiwan, he started a political discussion about the One China issue, and Taiwan’s status as a “renegade province,” but seeing we were unimpressed with talking about that issue, after a while, began to talk about betel nut. We asked him how long he had been chewing (see Figure 33). For a long time, at least a decade, since I was in my thirties. Although I grew up here, still I didn’t like chewing betel nut when I was younger. I used to think it was dirty. Later on, since I always drink tea with my friends, and they are all chewers, I first started to chew in the wintertime to keep myself warm. Then, I decided to clean my teeth and quit chewing. At my age, chewing too much sometimes dries my throat at night when sleeping. The teeth look terrible, and it is very impolite. I often meet with friends, colleagues and supervisors. They always criticize and tell me to quit chewing, because my teeth look ugly when I talk. I am planning to go to the hospital and ask the doctor to clean my 270 teeth, and quit for good. My wife often scolds me for chewing. But chewing is an addiction. Whenever I see others chew, I also want to chew .Once I traveled to Hunan, and didn’t chew for several days. I asked the locals if any betel nut was available. They gave me those plastic-wrapped dried nuts, and I chewed one. It was too sweet, and without the flavor of betel nut. I heard that the nuts in Taiwan are very small. Once when I was drinking tea with some Taiwanese men, they let me try some and I did like the flavor. Figure 33: Utsat elementary school principal at the betel nut stand. When asked if many Utsat invest in the betel nut business, he replied, Generally not many people. My older brother did it once, decades ago. That was when betel nut in Hainan was very expensive. He bought some nuts from Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, from the minority people called Daizu. He dried the nuts there and brought them back here to sell, just for that one time. Nowadays [Utsat] people are not interested in the betel nut business. They mostly farm fruits, vegetables and melons, or else go out to do some small business like selling pearl necklaces or jewelry. We don’t know where else to find good betel nut. Mostly businessmen from the mainland come here. Recently there is a wholesaler on the highway [at the 271 edge of the village] who buys and sells areca nuts. But now the price of betel nut is too cheap. However, for these old ladies, they have nothing to do anyway, and since there are so many people in our village who like to chew, they buy a few jin [a Chinese measurement of weight equal to 0.5 kg] of areca nut for selling here to the villagers, but it’s not a large-scale business. For myself, I can’t quit chewing! Nowadays elementary and high school students have also become addicted. They even chew in class. My son is in junior high school. Sometimes he comes home with a red mouth, so I asked him if he was chewing betel nut. He said it has no flavor, and claimed he only chewed a couple times. So I think we shouldn’t chew at home, or else our kids will all start chewing. As long as there is a family member who chews, at least one or two kids will pick up the habit. Another middle-aged woman approached, selected a few areca nuts from the vendor, and weighed them with a traditional scale. The principal continued, Now, if I must choose between smoking a cigarette and chewing a betel nut, I’ll choose betel nut. When I was in my twenties, I smoked, and could still appreciate the flavor. Later after I started chewing, it has overpowered the flavor of smoking. Whenever I finish a meal, I want to chew. Now, sometimes I even sleep with a betel nut quid in my mouth, and only when I wake up the next day, find the quid is still there in my mouth! The principal feels addicted to betel nut and wants to quit chewing primarily because his supervisors in the Sanya government education system criticize him for his red-stained teeth. It has nothing to do with Islamic restriction, which as noted above, does not apply to betel nut chewing. In an interesting discussion of gender, the principal suggested that men should stop chewing betel nut, but women should continue. I think men shouldn’t chew too much betel nut. But for women they should chew, because chewing betel nut makes women look more beautiful. There is a female teacher in our school. She is Han Chinese. When she first arrived to our [Utsat Huixin Village] school, she didn’t chew. But because other female teachers in our school are chewers, so soon enough, the new Han teacher tried her first betel nut. Now she is addicted, and often wants to chew. Whenever she chews, her face immediately glows red. Chewing really makes a difference. She looks more radiant and energetic in an instant! 272 The principal’s preference for the reddened face and “radiant energy” of women is neither unique to him nor to only Utsat men. Throughout the betel nut chewing cultures of Hainan and Taiwan, and Southern China as evidenced by some of the poetry quoted in Chapter 2, and perhaps elsewhere, men appreciate and are attracted to women who are chewing betel nut, since it represents sexual excitement in younger women as well as a kind of “mature beauty” in older women. As elementary school students began walking out of the village school down the street, some stopped and listened to our conversation. We asked if there were any regulations prohibiting children from chewing betel nut in school. The principal replied, Rules are rules, but they still chew, and they won’t let you see them chew either. Even in the middle of a class, they sometimes spit while you are not looking. Anyway, even the teachers chew! The other teachers are younger than me, but their teeth are worse than mine. They always have a bag of betel nuts in their pockets. When asked about how betel nut chewing affects his health, the principal replied, Actually, I’m thinking to quit chewing. My throat gets too dry at night when I sleep. Not just from chewing, but also smoking. I think betel nut juice is really dirty, and it definitely affects my health. Like this lime paste, it’s just not meant to be eaten. If you chew too much betel nut, your body accumulates the lime. Not to mention the harm to the teeth. I think the interiors of my teeth are starting to rot, perhaps also damaged by the lime. We still consider these [health] issues, but the elders would never think about these. They must chew no matter what. Our observations of Utsat elders’ chewing support the principal’s assessment that over 90% chew. While elders had little regard for potential negative health effects from chewing, middle aged people frequently mentioned these concerns. Many Utsat women use the freshly cut areca nut to polish their teeth between chews, as this is 273 thought to keep the teeth from becoming stained. In our observations, the practice seems to work. Women who polish their teeth tended to have generally whiter teeth than those who didn’t, and we never witnessed a man polishing his teeth between chews. When asked about the economics and production of betel nut in Hainan, the elementary school principal told us, The most expensive period for betel nut here, is when the season first starts. Then it’s about 17-18 RMB per jin. Sometimes, areca nuts are also imported. The local harvest season is from about July and August, and these local areca nuts are delicious. The imported ones are too dry, and the skin is too tough. As the principal’s son walked up and joined us, the principal announced, “Even my son chews betel nut!” The principal’s son humbly took a seat next to the vendor lady. An old Utsat man with a goatee slowly sauntered towards us, holding his hands behind his back, casually chewing a betel nut. The principal commented, “Look! This old man is walking while chewing.” As the old man approached, we greeted him, and I passed him a bag of betel nut, and invited him to have a chew. He agreed and took one, passed the bag back to me and asked, “Where are you from?” I replied, “The United States, and we came here from Taiwan.” Then he asked Winnie, “Are you also Muslim?” She replied, “No, I am Han Chinese.” The old man smiled, nodded, and strolled away. The principal told us he is going to the mosque to worship, and chewed another betel nut. A middle-age man parked his motorcycle-taxi next to us and stopped to buy betel nut. He squatted and with great concentration selected a few areca nuts from the vendor’s basket, then paid the vendor and abruptly rushed back to his 274 motorcycle-taxi and drove off. Many Utsat men work as taxi drivers, especially at the nearby Sanya airport, which was built adjacent to one of the Utsat villages (Yanglan). Because the airport is considered to be on Utsat land, Utsat taxi drivers have the first rights to pick up customers there. Hainanese taxi drivers do not attempt to wait at the airport. Utsat men also work at government jobs in Sanya, in tourist resorts such as Xidao Marine Play-garden (discussed in Chapter 11), and the most “educated” become local “Abu” (religious leaders), one of whom is appointed the Imam of each mosque, of which Huixin Village has at least two. There were people doing road construction and sweeping on the other side of the road as late afternoon turned to evening. Men were walking to the mosques to worship, some women were coming home from work, and children coming home from school. Another older woman joined the group and sat down. The principal was joking with other neighbors now sitting and standing all around us, “See, they are filming us as father and son. We are going to move to Taiwan and will not live in China anymore!” Then he opened a pack of cigarettes, and asked if we smoke. He passed a cigarette to me, and I accepted. The neighbors were all chewing and comfortably chatting in Utsat language. An energetic middle-aged woman showed up and began joking with the principal. She sat down with us and yelled out in Utsat language, as if scolding the principal. Then he jokingly passed her a betel nut, and in a purposefully strange, mock-foreign accent of Mandarin Chinese, he said, “Look, I pass her a betel nut to chew. It’s the affection between us!” The woman acted as if she was still angry at him, pretended to hit his hand, in which he held the betel nut quid offered to her. It 275 was obvious to all present that the woman was already chewing, but she accepted the betel nut anyway, and kept carrying on in Utsat language, and people around were all laughing (see Figure 34). Figure 34: Utsat school principal makes humorous ritualized gesture of giving betel nut to female friend at the betel nut stand, his son behind him looks on in amusement. When the school principal was joking with his female classmate, he made a ritualized gesture, personally presenting a betel nut to her with his own hand, while saying the words, “Look, I passed her a betel nut to chew. It’s the affection between us!” One of the reasons the interchange is humorous is because the ritualized presentation of betel nut also signals asking for forgiveness. The female classmate must accept the betel nut if she accepts her male friend’s apology. In this case, if she did not accept his betel nut, it would signal that she also does not accept his apology, and that would be serious, no longer joking. As the joking fight between the two continued, the principal told us, 276 She used to be my classmate. She doesn’t understand any words, but only knows how to chew betel nut. Every night, she spits betel nut juice here, right in front of my house. See, how red it is! People kept chatting in Utsat language, and laughing occasionally. The vendor’s husband emerged from the house, and walked away very quickly, ignoring the principal’s calling, “Lao Liu, come here. Let me give you a cigarette. Let’s smoke!” Lao Liu walked on down the road, without a reply to the principal’s invitation. The principal and his female classmate continued joking in Utsat language. We purchased another bag of betel nut to share with everybody. The men and women gathered together became more animated, and their voices got louder. We all kept chewing. An elder woman, one of the vendor’s relatives, removed the basket cover and took some bills from the basket for change. Then, the principal made another observation in Mandarin Chinese, as two young women walked by while chewing betel nut, “Look, walking and chewing!” One of the women replied, “Is it prohibited or what?” in a manner that was pretending anger, but really joking. The principal replied, “Of course, not. It’s allowed.” Then he commented to us, That woman who I just joked with comes here every night and talks like a comedian, sharing her jokes. In our village, people sleep at the earliest after 10:30 at night. Relatives and friends like to get together and chat at night, especially during Ramadan, every night we must get together. Among the Utsat, when adults gather together to chat, that includes chewing betel nut, except for the men who gather together in front of the mosque shortly before and immediately after the worship. While working, however, Utsat men and women usually do not chew, unless taking a break. For men who work as taxi drivers, however, they could chew while driving. 277 In talking with some Utsat young men, we learned there are different qualities of betel pepper leaves available at the local markets, the highest quality leaves coming from Xidao, a small island in the Sanya bay where several young Utsat work as tour guides in resort called “Xidao Marine Play-garden” discussed below. One young Utsat man said he would have trouble purchasing betel leaves from Xidao in Sanya’s local markets because one must speak Hainanese language to communicate with the vendors, which he doesn’t speak. Still Utsat are able to get Xidao betel leaves directly from Xidao from the few Utsat who work in the tourist resort. The Utsat are among the most avid betel nut chewers in Hainan, and while we have noticed that many claim they want or try to quit, they still continue the habit. For Utsat betel nut chewing is not only a habit, but also a tradition, as we will see in the detail of their marriage customs in the following chapter. Presently we turn our attention to the Han Chinese betel nut chewing culture of Hainan. Han Chinese: Hainanese and Mainlanders In Hainan as elsewhere throughout the PRC, and even in Taiwan, the state-defined category of “Han” marks simply non-minority ethno-political status. Politically, the category implies historical continuity and contemporary unity of what is actually a fragile and easily splintered “imagined community.” In daily practice, as appropriated by people themselves, “Han” usually marks a cultural rather than a political identity. In other words, people who do not identify as “non-Han” are by default “Han.” In Hainan, other than the state-defined “non-Han minorities” of Li, Utsat, Miao (and Zhuang), no matter the diversity of local dialects and languages, all 278 other citizens of the PRC are categorized as “Han.” Our encounters with self-identifying “Hainanese” and “Mainlanders” in Hainan indicate that although people of these two “groups” share a common collective Han cultural and political identity, they differ in terms of locally expressed “ethnic” characteristics, which tend toward even further sub-divisions down to particular local townships or even village-based communities. Hainanese High School Boys from Wanning Four high school boys noticed us chewing betel nut after our meal one night at Sanya City First Market (di yi shi chang), and approached us to comment that they had never seen a foreigner chew betel nut before. Three of the boys were 17 and one was 18 years old, all described themselves as Hainanese (Hainan ren) who are originally from Wanning, southeastern Hainan and whose parents moved to Sanya City around a decade ago to work in the markets. In the following interview transcript, we don’t differentiate among the four boys, though each boy responded at certain times. Winnie [W]: Do you all chew betel nut? Boys [B]: To be honest, yes, for two years now, since I was 15. I started chewing out of curiosity. I think it makes me look more handsome if I chew, with the red lips, it looks beautiful! The first time I chewed, I felt drunk and it tasted bitter, then I felt sleepy and dizzy. There are two kinds of nuts. One is the drunken kind, and the other is the non-drunken kind. Not every betel nut will make you drunk, and after you get used to it, you won’t get drunk anymore. W: Do you buy betel nut every day on your own? B: Not every day, but sometimes. If you chew too much, your teeth will turn black. So, I don’t chew too much. W: What if you get caught chewing betel nut at school? B: The punishment for chewing betel nut at school is to clean up all the betel nut juice stains on the campus. It can’t be worse than that. If it is severe, then you might have that duty for a whole week! W: So you have to hide to chew at school, you cannot be seen, right? 279 B: Well, it’s okay to be seen chewing. W: Then, you have to clean the betel nut juice stains if they see you chew, right? B: No. You won’t be punished if you are not caught spitting. But, basically, you have to hide to chew, or else they can ask you to clean the betel nut juice stains off of all the buildings. W: Will your mother allow you to chew at home? B: I don’t know. We chew outside. I wouldn’t let her see me chew. It smells good, but it doesn’t really taste that good. W: Do your parents chew? B: My parents don’t chew. Only my father chews, my mother doesn’t chew. In our school, the minorities, both boys and girls chew. W: Do you have any schoolmates who are Li or Hui [Utsat] people? B: Yeah, I just got a phone call from a minority friend. He asked if I am going to Mei-mei, a place to sing popular songs. I can sing a little. W: Would you know they are Li people if they didn’t tell you? B: No, we can’t tell they are Li people unless they tell us, but we can identify who is Hui [Utsat] by the way they dress. W: After you grow up, will you stay in Hainan? B: If we have the chance we will definitely go out to explore the world. W: Do you know many people from the mainland who moved here to work? B: Yeah, there are lots of them in Sanya. W: Do you know any jokes about betel nut? B: Yeah, sometimes you can intentionally put lots of lime paste on purpose and give it to someone to damage that person’s mouth. That’s fun. At this moment, a beggar came up to us to ask for money. Boys [to Beggar]: If you want something to eat, we’ll give it to you. We are just kids, we don’t have any money. Leave us alone! [Then, to us] If we don’t mind him, he will leave. In our hometown, a person like him will still work on the farm and remain productive. The boys asked if the weather in Taiwan gets colder than in Hainan, and we confirmed that it does get a little colder in the wintertime. Then, they proudly proclaimed that they can wear short-sleeved shirts in the winter, unlike in the mainland where it becomes freezing. Although they all appreciate the climate and life in Hainan, they all want to travel to far away places to experience different ways of life, so they can have an appreciation of the outside world. 280 One boy mentioned that he was a Christian and knows how to pray because his parents are Christian, then asked about Christianity in the United States. This was a little surprising, though we had seen one Christian church near a military base along the highway in Sanya. Evidently, after the economic reforms of the 1980s, religion was again allowed in China, and even Christianity was being practiced in Hainan during our fieldwork. We told the boys about the “betel nut beauty” phenomenon in Taiwan and asked if they thought something like that could work here in Hainan. They replied, No way, it definitely wouldn’t work here, because only old people can sell betel nut. No young people would be willing to do that. But, if there is some beautiful young lady who sells betel nut on the streets, I would certainly buy it from her every day. But, no local girl would ever do such a thing! Our betel nut is big, and it only costs fifty cents RMB and you can have four chews with one nut. [Another boy chimed in “Thailand betel nut is also big.”] Yeah, but Thailand betel nut is not tasty. W: Have you tried the dried betel nut, the Hunan style? B: I tried it, but found it too sweet. I don’t like it. And, you don’t know if it’s clean or what’s the process to make it. W: When do you usually buy betel nut? B: When I go to school, it’s sold right in front of my school gate. [laughs] I buy one and put it in my pocket and then go into school. At the break, I can have a chew and a smoke. Sometimes when I walk on the street and see betel nuts for sale that look very beautiful, then I just buy one. These four high school boys shared their perspectives about betel nut chewing from their personal experience. Although there are penalties for spitting betel nut juice on campus, chewing betel nut is generally not penalized or negatively stigmatized. In fact, the boys are proud to chew since it makes them appear “more handsome” with reddened lips. Furthermore, we learned that betel nut is still ritually significant for Hainanese in weddings, funerals, and other social gatherings as will be discussed below. 281 Han “Mainlander” from Jiangxi Province turned Betel Nut Chewer In Sanya City First Market, we met a watch vender who we noticed was chewing betel nut. Mr. Yu was born and raised in Jiangxi Province, and has been living in Sanya for five years. He had visited Sanya once in 1995, and liked the climate so much that he decided to move his whole family here. Every day, he and his wife wake up early and set up shop at the First Market, and stay there all day until the market closes around midnight. When asked how long it took him to start chewing betel nut after he came to Sanya, Mr. Yu replied, When I first came here and saw people chewing betel nut, I felt strange, because it is a green material you put in your mouth and then it turns red! It’s really interesting! My first attempt to chew, I felt dizzy. It’s just like drinking beer, but I don’t drink alcohol. Actually, I didn’t like it at first. I felt like vomiting. But, I still continued to chew occasionally. It took me one or two years to get used to chewing betel nut. Now, for the past five years, I’ve chewed from 7 to 8 betel nuts every day [which is constantly]. Generally, after I wake up in the morning, and also after meals I feel like chewing. I thought about quitting several times. My teeth have turned black. Even after I keep brushing my teeth, it won’t go away. I guess I could quit, but since it is not really harmful to my body, and it is good for the teeth, so I continue chewing. The blackened teeth are just an appearance. W: How about your family, do they oppose your chewing betel nut? Y: No, there are three brothers in my family, and we all started to chew after we moved here. I don’t think it’s my influence on them, but rather the environment. Basically, all people can adopt chewing betel nut as a habit, but it depends if they have this environment for chewing. But, some people think it is dirty, so they can’t take it. W: Do you go back to your hometown? Y: Yes, once or twice a year, I go back home [to Jiangxi] to visit. But, my wife and children, my whole life is here [in Sanya]. Only my oldest daughter lives with my father in the mainland. I consider Hainan as my home now, that’s for sure! Already half of my family is here. After I had been chewing betel nut for a while, and then went back to my hometown, the elders in my family saw me chewing and they thought it was disgusting. They said, “Why are you bleeding? What happened to your mouth?” 282 and they felt I was strange, because they didn’t understand. In my hometown, nobody had ever seen people spitting fresh betel nut juice before. W: Do you worry that if you leave Hainan, you can’t survive without betel nut? Y: That doesn’t matter. Betel nut isn’t like those drugs that you get dependent on. You can quit any time you have to. If you like to chew, you can chew; if you don’t want to chew, you can quit. But, the [fresh] betel nut, in all of China, only Hainan has it. You can’t find betel nut anywhere else, not in Guangzhou or Fujian. You can find some dried betel nut in the mainland, but you can’t find these kinds of nuts that are just freshly harvested from the tree! W: Do you buy betel nut from certain people or vendors? Y: Wherever you go there are betel nut sellers, so I buy it randomly. W: Have you heard about betel nut beauties in Taiwan? Y: My friend’s uncle was in Taiwan doing some betel nut business. He sells Taiwan betel nut to Hunan. I remember when I was a child, he once brought dried betel nut to our house, from Hunan. I remember it was tasty and interesting. W: So you already knew about betel nut when you were a child? Y: Yes, but I had never seen any fresh betel nut, only the dried kind. In Hunan, everybody chews [dried betel nut], children and adults. We also have dried betel nut [in Sanya], but relatively fewer, since there is fresh betel nut. But now, the season is about to end. Usually, during the Lunar New Year, there will be no fresh betel nut available. W: So, what do you do then? Y: Well, you can chew less. W: Will the price go up? Y: Yeah, of course, the price will go up to 1 or 2 RMB per areca nut. W: How long will the dry season last? Y: Usually in May or June there will be no fresh areca nut at all, only the dried ones. But, the local dried betel nuts are just dried without flavor added, so they are not too tasty. When told about the “betel nut beauty” phenomenon in Taiwan, and asked if he thought that kind of marketing method would work in Hainan, he replied, Here in Hainan it is the opposite of Taiwan. The betel nut sellers are all elderly women. No young people would ever do this job. Perhaps it would be better because they would be cleaner in terms of preparation, but I don’t think people here can afford that kind of consumer luxury product. When asked about betel nut in weddings among the Han and Li, he replied, Y: At any party, you need to prepare a lot of betel nut to display on the table for your guests. When the groom goes to the bride’s family to receive his fiancé, he also has to bring betel nut with him to give. W: So this is not just a minority tradition, Han people also do this, right? 283 Y: Right, but for the Li people in Zhanzhou [in northwestern Hainan], still not everybody chews. So, every place has its own different custom. I think that the biggest population of chewers is in the counties of Wanning, Lingshui, Sanya, and Haikou. Among all the betel nut in Hainan, those from Wanning are the tastiest because they put sesame and white sugar in the leaf when they wrap it. W: Do they also add lime paste? Y: Yes, you need the lime paste for it to turn red. If you don’t add lime paste, the quid will not turn red. When asked if he knew any jokes or interesting stories about betel nut, he replied with this story of his using areca to cure his stomach disease. If you use the flower of the areca palm to boil water, and then drink it, it can cure stomach ills. Areca nut is itself an herbal medicine that can cure stomach or intestinal disease. I myself have had stomach disease ever since I was a teenager. All this time that I have been chewing, my stomach disease has remained the same, it didn’t get any worse. Earlier my stomach disease was just a normal infection, but later it turned quite severe, and the doctor said my whole stomach was about to fail. But, since I have been chew betel nut, and I feel it is getting better, and I never even have any stomach pain. I still do an annual check-up, and it hasn’t gotten any worse. I believe that chewing betel nut is not harmful to your health, but still you shouldn’t chew too much because your body can’t take too much at once. Returning to our discussion of gender issues in selling betel nut, and the specific reasons that only elderly women seem to be betel nut vendors in Hainan, Mr. Yu noted the following gender differences between Mainland and Hainanese: No men sell betel nut here. You can’t find one man in ten sellers. Generally, people can’t accept that. Here, unlike in foreign countries where men and women are equal, men are usually sitting around resting or playing mahjong, but women are outside working all the time. You see it is like this everywhere in Hainan. So, you could say that women’s status here seems to be very low. They have to take care of the household and do all the work! And, by the way, all the manual laborers are men from mainland China, from Jiangxi, or Hunan, or Hubei. I don’t know what the Hainanese men do every day, but for us [Mainlanders], our kids must go to school and we must support our parents’ lives, so we have to send money over to them. Anyway, in conclusion, the lifestyle of Hainan men is very good! So, many women from Hainan have married men from our province [Jiangxi]. Hainanese women evidently have great endurance, but they become that way on their own. Hainan men don’t treat women as lower on purpose. And, 284 there are not any adversarial feelings between men and women here. I feel it is just natural. The rural area in Hainan is really poor and primitive. But, when you’re in the city it is totally different. Since economic reforms have only been applied for one or two decades, the gap between rich and poor is still very great. I discovered that many things here in Hainan are far behind the times, for example traffic and transportation. But one thing that is improved here is the cleanliness of the environment. Mr. Yu discussed several significant issues about betel nut chewing in Hainan, and also applied his own analysis of his own choice to keep chewing betel nut as a medicine or for health purposes. He thinks chewing betel nut is not harmful, based on his experience with stomach disease. In addition, his account shows how he defines his Jiangxi and Mainlander identity differently from local Hainanese, and he also pointed out gender differences specific to Hainanese. Li: Native People of Hainan Unlike Utsat, the Li of Hainan can and many do “pass” as Han, especially in urban contexts. Furthermore, as described in Chapter 2, there is over one thousand years’ history of Li assimilation in Hainan such that all contemporary Li have fully adapted to and many have adopted Han culture. However, certain markers of Li identity remain salient, including language, homemade millet wine production and drinking culture, and the use of betel nut as primary in engagement rituals rather than wedding ceremonies. In this section we first relate our interaction with a Li woman who works as a vendor in the Sanya City market selling breadfruit. We then recount our experience in the agricultural town of Ledong in central-western Hainan where, although we met no Li people personally, we gained a Han perspective on perceived threats from Li and 285 Miao. We then examine two highly contrasting Li villages, Bacun Village in Baoting County located in the southeastern foothills, which was operating a relatively prosperous areca nut production business, and then Jiayao Village in the remote mountains of northern Sanya County which is more distant from contacts with outsiders. Most generally, any attempt to identify the Li of Hainan as an “ethnic group” fails because of the great internal diversity, not only owing to assimilation and acculturation, but also to the diversity of ecological environments. While most Li live in mountainous areas near rivers, historically there were also coastal villages, which now have all been thoroughly assimilated, some taken over by early Han settlements, later military bases, or more recent tourism development. In addition, there are several (perhaps three or five) dialects of Li language which are perhaps mutually unintelligible, but even if they are not, contact among different communities of Li language-speakers is limited by geographical boundaries as well as transportation difficulties. Moreover, there is neither a common consciousness nor ever was there a political unity of Li at any level. Each community traditionally operated at a village level with intermittent alliances with other villages, much in the same way as the indigenous communities in Taiwan. In a sense, to speak of Li people is not even as efficient as speaking of “Taiwan Indigenous people.” Li Market Vender in Sanya City: Li Tradition in Urban Context Sanya City’s First Market, is located between the port and the main street. There are many vendors selling everything from vegetables to cell phones. The market opens early 286 in the morning and continues as a night bazaar into the late evening. One night we met a vender, a 35-year-old mother of three teenagers, who works as a breadfruit vendor. After she finished promoting her “pesticide-free” produce, we bought some breadfruit and sat down next to her and started a conversation. She said she lives in Gaofeng, a rural Li community in the mountainous area of Sanya County, otherwise we wouldn’t have guessed she was Li, since her Mandarin Chinese was quite fluent. She mentioned that in her community, people still sing traditional folk songs at funerals. Even though young people know how to sing the songs, however, since they prefer to sing modern songs, they usually refuse to sing along. We offered her a betel nut. She said that she quit chewing betel nut because she thinks it is addictive. We asked her if she grows areca nut at her home. She replied, Yes, of course, and my husband chews betel nut every day. I always tell him, if he chews betel nut, I won’t kiss him. He still buys betel nut to give to friends, and they give him betel nut in return. So, my boys have also adopted the habit, but since I don’t chew, my boys can’t chew at home. All three of her sons chew, even the youngest one. She indicated that the young boys chew because adult men give betel nut to them, so they pick up the habit that way. We asked if she would allow her sons to chew after they have grown up. She replied, Well, after he has grown up, for sure he has to chew when he makes friends. For us Li people, betel nut chewing is just a custom or social manner. For example, to treat guests or to renew a friendship after a fight, if betel nut is accepted, forgiveness and renewal are given, even without verbal exchange. The action of giving betel nut means asking for forgiveness. If the betel nut is not accepted, that means that forgiveness is not extended, which means you still don’t want to be friends with me. Among the contemporary Li, the meaning of giving betel nut remains the same as it was historically throughout Southern China. 287 We asked if she planned to visit her family during the Lunar New Year. She said indeed she did, on the second and third day, as was traditionally prescribed, but had some anxiety about the upcoming visit. If you visit your family on Lunar New Year, you must bring fireworks and red envelopes with money to give your mother’s siblings’ children. These are the two required gifts. If a woman is wealthy, she would also bring a pig, wine, sticky rice cakes, chickens, and ducks, and lots of big fireworks that last a long, long time. You have to first set off the fireworks, and then enter the house. As for the pig, your parents will ask your brothers to kill the pig and then have a big feast. But, our family is not rich, I’m still struggling. To do all that, you also have to invite your husband’s family to take care of everything. If you don’t have money, you just don’t go home. Honestly, if you don’t have money to do that, even your mother will ask you to not come back during the Lunar New Year. When you have money, then you can come back. This is our Li custom at home. The Han custom is a slightly different, a bit simpler than ours. Since she didn’t initially mention betel nut, we asked if she would also give betel nut upon visiting her parents during the Lunar New Year. She replied, Of course you’ll bring betel nut back to your parents’ house, because all the relatives and guests will come for the meal. So, to visit the parents’ house for a married daughter is very costly. Sometimes you’ll have to spend a couple thousand RMB, including all the red envelopes for the children. And then, as long as we drink, we’ll sing. We make our own wine, the sweet millet wine. We also drink wine after a woman gives birth to a baby. A “couple thousand RMB” is equivalent to $2,000 USD for the people of Hainan. Although the RMB was valued at one-eighth of the USD at the time of fieldwork, the overall cost of living worked out to about an even exchange on USD and RMB in the local economy. That means this woman would have to save what an American citizen would value at $2,000 just in order to be able to visit her family’s home during the most festive occasion of the year. She lamented that environmental pollution has recently become a problem. She reflected on her youthful experiences when she lived at Dadonghai beach, which used 288 to be a Li village. First the PRC military took control over the place and forced all the Li people out, and then after Hainan became an SEZ, Dadonghai was developed for the tourist industry. As a teenager, which must have been in the 1980s, she and her “husband” used to hang out on that beach, and collect clams and crabs. At that time, many Li people would still go there at night, collect and cook seafood, and engage in romantic encounters with each other. Nowadays, she lamented, there were no more crabs, only tourists. We pondered the relation between the two. Just then, two Hainanese men who also worked at the First Market sat down at our table and started to chat with us all. They overheard our conversation and upon seeing our bag of betel nut on the table, struck up a conversation. Whoa! Betel nut! There’s a lot of betel nut in Wan-ning. Lingshui has a lot of betel nut, too. Qiongzhou also, almost every household grows betel nut there. In the past, very few Han people chewed. Nowadays, Han people see that everyone chews betel nut, and believe that it is beneficial to your teeth, so everyone just follows along. It’s not only good for your teeth, but it’s also good for your stomach. The breadfruit vendor replied, The white powder in the betel nut, the lime paste comes from burning seashells. After you burn the shells, it looks like flour. Then, you put it on the betel leaves. That’s its special purpose; it is not used for other things. I also grow betel pepper leaves to sell, especially in the wintertime, the price is very good, 8 RMB per jin. The Han man chimed in, “Oh, that’s laoye! Did you know there is male and female laoye?” The breadfruit vendor replied, “Yeah, when you plant them, you have to plant male and female plants so that they will reproduce, and you’ll have a lot of production.” The Han man, however, was not talking about the production of betel pepper leaves, but rather the symbolic meaning of the shape of the leaves, some being more round, and therefore “female” and some longer and thin and thus “male” in his 289 imagination. He believed that “the female leaf is tastier, while the long male leaf is stronger; the taller vines produce female leaves, and the crawlers produce male leaves.” This was the first time I heard about different kinds of betel pepper leaf, male and female. Still I am not sure if that is also a farmer’s distinction, but clearly it is a local gendered analysis of the shape of the leaves which shows his understanding of male and female qualities. Females are round and tasty, and males are long and strong. The breadfruit vendor defined Li customs as different from Han in terms of the family obligations, especially during the Lunar New Year. Also, as we will see in the next section, in Li marriage customs, the primary significance of the betel nut is not during the wedding ceremony, but at the engagement. Ledong: Constructions of Hostile Li in the Han Imagination Ledong is an agricultural town located in the center of the western inland plains, where four cross-island roads connect. The bus ride from Sanya City should take around two and a half hours. However, because of constriction on the dirt road the day we took the bus, the journey took over six hours. When we arrived in Ledong it was dusk, and we were exhausted. Upon arrival we hired a rickshaw (which in Hainan is a motortricycle-taxi) to look for a guesthouse, a practice that had worked fine in other towns. But our taxi driver in Ledong kept pushing us to stay at a particular guesthouse that was far outside of Ledong’s central market area, even after we told him clearly several times that we wanted to stay on the main street near the market. When we were 290 about to leave the busy main road section, we both got a little worried and demanded he turn around and stop at the next guesthouse. We exited the taxi and paid him the price he demanded, though it was higher than we had experienced elsewhere. Then, to our surprise, he followed us into the guest house lobby. We tried to ignore him at first. But, even when the guesthouse receptionist was showing us the room, he still followed us. At that point we felt really uneasy, and asked him to stop following us any further. That was the one and only unpleasant experience we had with any particular person during the whole fieldwork trip in Hainan. Most of the people we met were very friendly, though also very shy. In Sanya, only people who wanted to sell us something, usually a “romantic” tricycle ride on the beach, a trip to a seafood restaurant, pearl necklaces or sugarcane, would actively approach us. Outside of Sanya, however, no salespeople of any kind approached us. It was not difficult to notice us walking in public, with my obviously “foreign face.” Children everywhere would usually first stare at us, and many of them would even speak some simple English greeting, such as “Hello” or “How are you?” and then become very shy and laugh, run away, or conversely become curious about our digital camera, and hover around us to watch pictures we would take of them. In this way we took many photographs of children. What I came to call the “Hello phenomenon” extended to some adult men as well. As we would pass by a group of local men, one would yell out, “Ha-lo.” The sound of this is not like the American-English “Hello” or even perhaps the British pronunciation, instead it is the sound “ha” followed by the sound “low” both in a 291 rising question tone (the “second tone” in Mandarin Chinese). So, at first I would reply with my American accent English, “Hello,” followed with Chinese language, “Hello” [ni-hao] or “How are you?” [ni-hao-ma?], and then pause to see if he wanted to engage in conversation. A usual method would be asking where I was from, or what I was doing here, etc. Without exception, however, the man who yelled out “Ha-lo” would start laughing, hide his face from me, and the whole group would laugh. I would smile, look quizzically at Winnie, and then walk on. The first twenty or so times (over a two-week period) that this happened, I remained ready for an actual conversation to break out, but after daily incidences of “Ha-lo” followed by laughter, I just gave up on any hope of communicating with what I came to consider the “Ha-lo laughing hiding birds.” After we finally settled into a guesthouse in Ledong, not the one where the taxi driver followed us in, but one across the street from the central market alley, we walked through the market. The first thing we noticed was a majority of children walking on the streets in groups of six to over a dozen. Other than the vendors and business operators, there were very few middle-aged people around, and no elders. Another thing that instantly caught our attention was a couple of “strange people” walking in the middle of the main street, not on the sidewalks. Within less than five minutes walking on the main street towards the market, we saw two different half-naked people, could be men or women, covered with black dirt, their hair in long dreadlocks, at first walking then frozen in mid-step in the middle of the road, and talking to themselves. This only added to the already eerie feeling that was developing. 292 In the market, we sat among the children, most of whom were dressed in their school uniforms, and ate some barbequed street food. The next morning, we tried to hire a local motorcycle-taxi to take us to some nearby Li or Miao villages, which is why we went to Ledong in the first place. We stopped several drivers, showed them the map, pointed to the villages we would like to visit, and asked if they could take us there. The taxi drivers all refused. We were frustrated, thinking maybe we should just walk there. Just then, five teenage boys wearing their school uniforms, who had been standing near us, witnessing our bad luck with taxi drivers, kindly asked if we needed any help. We told them we were looking for a driver to take us to these Li and Miao villages and showed them the map. With some fear in their eyes, they said they would never dare to go there, and recommended we not try to go there either, certainly we would be robbed. Through further conversation, we found out these students were children of Han Mainlanders, and had frequently heard of incidents of robbery from their elder family members. Although there were some Li and Miao students attending their school, these Han students were too afraid to even interact with them, because robbery among students was also frequent. They told us the reason these people had “turned bad” was because of drug addiction. There were some drug processing factories run by “gangsters” hidden in this area, and so, according to these Han boys, most of the local Li and Miao villagers were involved with an illicit drug production industry and also addicted, so were desperate for money. Since “they take drugs everyday” and had no income, they robbed people to make their living, either to buy more drugs, or to buy 293 food. We asked them what kind of drugs these people were making, taking and becoming addicted to? They said heroin [bai-fen]. They warned us also to not walk into the “back alleys” behind the main street, especially at night, for we would surely be robbed there as well. We suspected the boys’ account could be exaggerated. But the sincerity and real fear on their faces was convincing enough to demonstrate they believed what they said. They were really worried about our proposed visit to those villages, and they didn’t even know us. We thanked them for the information, and promised that we wouldn’t go there. Instead we went back to the market to explore further. There were a few betel nut stands in the market, among other fruit vendors, but not many people chewing, perhaps owing to the lack of adults. Inside the market alley, a few steps away from the main street, there was a tobacco shop. We bought a bamboo bong from the owner and two bags of tobacco, sat down in the market and smoked. In the early evening tricycle taxis arrived to pick up children in school uniforms. The next day, we ate lunch at a Dongbei Dumpling restaurant. Restaurants like this were found in all the towns in Hainan, the names of these restaurants was usually a reference to city, province, or region in Mainland China and noted a specific cooking style. Naturally, the owners of these restaurants were from different parts of the mainland, and their homeland would be reflected in the names of their restaurants. These Han immigrants from the Mainland were usually the first or second generation to live in Hainan and in towns like Ledong and Wuzhishan they stayed on and operated businesses on the main streets near the markets. 294 We chatted with the dumpling restaurant owner, and she further confirmed what the teenage boys had told us the day before. She complained that some Li people had stolen her son’s bicycles three times over the past two months. Although the bicycles were parked and locked up right in front of her restaurant within her sight, but the thieves quickly stole the bikes while she wasn’t paying attention. Once she saw two thieves running away with the bike, one boy around twelve years old elevated the back wheel of the bike because it was locked, and the other, younger than ten, operated the handlebars. She described these thieves as “helpless.” She recalled that the previous month, a visitor from the mainland had gotten lost in the area and drove into a village. His car was stopped by cattle blocking the road. The villagers promptly broke his windows, grabbed him out of his car and beat him up. He was seriously injured and all his personal belongings were taken. She indicated this was a common tactic, setting up domesticated animals in the middle of the road to stop drivers. If drivers refuse to stop, or cause any injury to the animals, payment to compensate the injuries would be demanded. We commented that we felt safe walking on the main street. She said even that is not really safe. Sometimes robbers would wait in a dark alley off the main street for potential prey, or force a single pedestrian from the main street into a dark alley where they would be robbed and beaten. We wondered why she chose to remain there. Ledong was as close to a “frontier town” as we had seen in Hainan. There were no tourists and no factories, other than the alleged drug production facility, which we only heard about from the Han teenage boys. Our experience confirmed that in Ledong, Han hold negative stereotypes against Li as “criminals” and “drug addicts.” 295 Later when exploring remote beaches in Sanya County, we met two Han men who told similar stories of having their belongings stolen by Li people while they were sleeping, and upon returning to our motorbike, our helmets were missing. So, perhaps there is a grain of truth to the alleged thefts, but whether it is only Li people who are involved remains unknown. Clearly, however, from Han perspectives, ethnic boundaries are defined between themselves and Li based on this criteria. Bacun: Areca Nut as Cash Crop in Baoting County After a meal in a restaurant in Baoting City, we were chewing betel nut and sipping rice wine when a man at another table made eye contact with me. I smiled and raised my glass to him. He raised his glass, and then invited himself and another man over to our table, and we started chatting and drinking together. It turned out these two men were cousins, and also relatives of the restaurant owner and chef. They live in Baoting City most of the time doing business and running the restaurant, and return to their home village in Bacun once a week. Upon learning about my research project on betel nut, the two cousins proudly announced that Bacun is famous for its areca nut plantations. We accepted their invitation to take a tour of their village the following day. These two cousins were heavy drinkers and heavy betel nut chewers. They drank whole glasses of rice wine after each completion of a conversational paragraph. They would call out the names of those who didn’t drink together, inevitably either Winnie or myself, and insist everyone should keep up with their pace. Before long, we were 296 all quite drunk, but the moment of meeting these Li cousins was very warm and genuine, and we looked forward to joining them the next day to their village. We met them for lunch in the restaurant the following day. They had already started drinking before we arrived. We noticed that while drinking they didn’t eat any rice, but would only have occasional bites of dishes of vegetables, fish and meat. Only in the final five minutes of the meal, they would quickly finish a whole bowl of steamed rice each and clean up the remaining dishes. They told us “this is the Li dining style.” By now, my “participant-observation” moved decidedly more toward observation than participation, since I still wanted to be conscious of the village tour. There were seven of us riding in one compact car from the restaurant, and thankfully neither of the cousins was driving. Half an hour later, we arrived at a dirt road, and in another thirty minutes driving up to the foot of higher mountains at the fork of a river, we were in Bacun Village. There were several areas of mass areca palm plantations extending up the mountains surrounding the village (see Figure 33), but only a small portion of terraced rice fields. As we entered the village, we saw an elder woman walking through a small river, carrying a basket and machete, and accompanied by a water buffalo (see Figure 35). We noticed chickens and pigs freely roaming around the village. The main road was less than fifty meters long, with an areca nut purchasing station (shou gou zhan) on one side, a few meat stands and a household grocery store on the other. Some men were playing mahjong; some were just hanging out, chatting and chewing betel nut. 297 Figure 35: Li woman in river with water buffalo (left), areca palm plantations in Bacun (right). We offered to buy a chicken for dinner, so the cousins took us to the village center. There we noticed some business transactions going on at the areca nut purchasing station. Some local villagers had brought in huge sacks of areca nuts to sell (see Figure 36). Our hosts told us that most of the villagers have areca palm plantations on the nearby hillsides, and everyone sells their areca nuts here. However, the increase of areca palm plantations is a relatively recent phenomenon. Several decades ago, all the areca palms were still planted only within the village, just enough for self-sufficiency, and most of the villagers were involved in a mass rubber tree plantation, making their livings on that. Figure 36: Areca nut processing station, Bacun Village, Hainan. 298 The two cousins led us around the village, joking with friends and family in Li language, regardless of gender and age, often grabbing and hugging, even kissing each other, showing much more physical contact than we had seen elsewhere in Hainan. The atmosphere was more like the Taiwan Austronesian Amis-language speaking communities than Chinese, Hainanese or Taiwanese, or Utsat, which are all more reserved in terms of personal contact. During dinner, we learned from our host that the government had designed a new housing plan for part the village. Since their houses were currently located in a potential landslide path, they were scheduled to be relocated in a few months. Our hosts were really grateful and full of praise for the government when they told us that relocating to a new house was as important as getting married or having babies for Li people, and all the villagers would celebrate the occasion together with a big feast. The Bacun Li people, not only the two cousins, seemed to have a good outlook and quite a prosperous life. Their successful and flexible cash crop economy had been continuing for at least several decades. There is also a hot springs that has been recently developed as a tourist attraction in a nearby mountainous area, surrounded by beautifully shaped mountain ridges. Tour groups from Sanya were already being taken to the hot springs in buses, some even staying overnight. Jiayao Village: Journey to a Li Mountain Village with an Utsat Friend In the Utsat village of Huixin, we met an adventurous young man called Xiao Gao. His family operates a hot springs resort located in the foothills between several 299 Li and Miao villages a few miles up the road from the Utsat village of Yanglan. He told us of his occasional explorations into the local mountains north of the hot springs and when we expressed interest he suggested we all take a day trip together to explore a pristine river with beautiful waterfalls near a remote Miao village. We told him of our experience in the Miao villages near Wuzhishan, where we bought homemade millet wine and an embroidered women’s hat, and confirmed our intention to meet Miao people in a potentially more hospitable context where we could interview them on their use of betel nut. We made a plan to meet early one Saturday morning, and ride our motorcycles into the mountains together. That morning we woke at dawn and rode our motorcycle over to Xiao Gao’s house in Yanglan. He was dressed in full camouflage and was carrying a three-foot long sword as he exited his house. We asked why he must bring the sword, and he replied, “In case we meet any Miao sorcerers, we have to protect ourselves. Those Miao can even make logs dance. We have to be ready!” He fastened his sword to the front forks of his motorcycle (see Figure 37). We were not sure of Xiao Gao’s personal agenda, but I did reflect on the notion that whatever weapon one takes into battle could potentially be used against oneself. Still Xiao Gao was of personable and friendly character and we couldn’t imagine an actual sword fight ensuing. We rode over to the Utsat market to buy beef that was slaughtered according to Islamic custom and some vegetables and betel nut to share with our potential hosts. We followed Xiao Gao up the dirt road until we arrived at his family’s hot springs resort. We took a look around but no one was there at that early hour. A few minutes’ ride north we stopped at the residential dormitory of the hot springs workers and Xiao 300 Gao went up to a house to ask if his friend whose family lived in the mountains was home. She was not home, and so we continued up the dirt road to a market town called Nandao where Xiao Gao bought a pair of sunglasses to keep the dust out of his eyes. Figure 37: Xiao Gao’s motorbike with sword (above left), a Miao woman (above right), Xiao Gao and me (below left), Xiao Gao crossing the river (right). We continued up the mountain road, passing some Miao and Li villages, none of which posed a threat (see Figure 37), and finally came to a river crossing. Xiao Gao told us we had arrived to the river with the beautiful waterfalls. He asked a man walking on the road for directions and then continued up a steep grade. At the top was 301 a village with a sign that read “Jiayao Village.” We rode into the village smiling and waving at people. Xiao Gao asked one of the people we met for a particular family’s house and they pointed us in the right direction. We arrived at the house and Xiao Gao called out the name of a former employee of his family’s hot springs business. At Jiaoyao Village, a 23-year-old unmarried woman named Zhu Zhen came out of the house looking very confused, and greeted us. Xiao Gao announced that he had brought some fresh beef and vegetables, and two friends to whom he wanted to show the beautiful country life and pristine river. She invited us all into the kitchen to sit in the shade and talk. I offered betel nut to everyone, and we all started chewing. Zhu Zhen asked Xiao Gao, “Who brought you here?” He replied, No one invited me. I just came here on my own. I found this place by driving down that road. Although it’s my first time into the village, actually I crossed the river and rode halfway up this hill once before, but I felt somewhat apprehensive to enter the village by myself. Zhu Zhen still looked confused. Winnie and I were also a little surprised to hear Xiao Gao’s introduction, since we thought he had planned this trip and arranged it in advance. It turns out this was also his first time here, and he had was not really acquainted with Zhu Zhen, but had only heard that her family lived in this village. We had unwittingly become his excuse to visit. In addition, we were prepared to visit a Miao village, but here we had arrived to a Li village. Xiao Gao then broke the uncomfortable silence with a further self-introduction. I’ve been through so much suffering. As a child, I worked splitting rocks, without even telling my family! All my Mainland Chinese friends were making a living this way, so I wanted to see what it was like. It’s really toiling work! I went for only three days, and then felt too tired, so I just quit and went home. Then, I continued school for several years, then became a driver, and later served in the 302 military. After all this, I have my current understanding of the world. Now I work in the hot springs dormitory. Those employees are very difficult to control. If I’m tough with them, they are tough back to me; if I’m soft with them, then they don’t even listen to me. As we all tried to make sense of what was happening. Xiao Gao continued, The environment here is very nice, so much more peaceful than Sanya. In a quiet place like this my mind is also at ease. Here people don’t have to face interpersonal issues, they can just work for self-sufficiency. To live here, you have to be self-sufficient, and do physical labor to make a living. Outside of here, young people could easily get caught up in gangs, and their attitudes tend toward violence and ignorant behavior. Here in Jiayao Village, you probably don’t have that problem. While Xiao Gao was talking, Zhu Zhen’s sister and brother arrived. Xiao Gao asked about their employment, and promised to look into finding jobs for them at the hot springs if they wanted. Zhu Zhen then invited us all to her uncle’s house where we sat and chatted for a while. Mr. Zhu told us his ancestors have lived in this village for around thirty generations. Only recently, the PRC had helped them to start farming, and built cement houses for them (see Figure 38). He was full of praise for the government. He mentioned that the local river has also recently become a minor tourist attraction, with many visitors every year, and told us about a mining operation in the local mountains. And then someone mentioned an unexplainable phenomenon they frequently witness, pieces of luminous organic objects flying through the sky from the mountain at night. 303 Figure 38: Jiaoyao terraces, areca plantations in front of traditional kitchen (above), cement house provided by the PRC with poster of Mao Zedong (below). Some outsiders were said to have come to try to document it, but to no avail. The phenomenon was left to rest in the curious consciousness of each of us gathered in a moment of silence. Xiao Gao broke the silence asking if it was convenient for everyone if we all ate lunch at their house together. Mr. Zhu welcomed us all. We asked if we could first buy some millet wine from a local vendor to share at the meal. Mr. Zhu said he would ask around, but anyway there is already plenty of millet wine at home. 304 They then took us all on a tour of the village which consisted of around thirty houses, all with small areca palms planted around them, and some vegetable gardens, with pigs, chickens and ducks roaming the village freely (see Figure 38). When asked the age of the small areca palms, Mr. Zhu replied, They are three years old. They were all planted the same day construction was finished on our new houses. Traditionally, every household would plant areca palms when construction is finished, all on the same day. The government has provided everything you see here, including the flowers, areca palms, even the furniture. For poorer families, they gave even more. Mr. Zhu’s son came into the house and greeted us. Xiao Gao asked about his work. He replied that he used to work for the government but didn’t like it because he always had to flatter other people, so he quit that job even though the salary was very high, over 1,000 RMB per month. Now that he returned to the village and has become a farmer, the annual income is between 3,000 and 5,000 RMB. When lunch was ready, we returned to the host family’s house to eat together with Mr. Zhu, Zhu Zhen, her cousin, and mother. We asked if Mr. Zhu would sing a Li folk song for us. He said, “After our meal, we will all sing,” and then proclaimed, “I have to be drunk to sing.” We all laughed and kept eating and chatting. Mr. Zhu continued, We sing old songs and new songs, even Mao Zedong style ones. Generally, good singers are most popular here. But, nowadays young people get their education in schools, so they only sing new songs. I only sing old songs because I didn’t learn any new ones. In the old days, we had a VCR and television, but not Karaoke. Now, we have that, even with Li language songs on it. In the old days, everyone from here to Dadonghai would all sing folk songs, and there were annual singing competitions in Wuzhishan. We also keep the practice of tattooing. The elders still have tattoos on their arms, legs and faces. In Ledong, they have them all over their bodies. We use the traditional embroidery needle and make flower patterns. The person who specializes in embroidery does the tattoo work. 305 A little further on, I asked Mr. Zhu to tell the story of where people came from, and he replied, There was a melon floating on the ocean that landed on the shore. The first people came out of that melon and became Li, Miao, and Han—all kinds of people. All of us have the same ancestors that were floating in the melon on the ocean. The elders told this story to the next generations. Those who listen will know. Some people can only understand half of it. We are originally from Sichuan, the first generation, before coming to Hainan. Now all the elders have died out, and the new generations have come, but Sichuan is our old homeland, very long ago, too long ago to remember, over eighty generations. Now we’re all in the same county, so it doesn’t matter where you live. We’re all the same nationality. Old Chairman Mao said that in Hainan 80% of the population are Li people and only 20% are Han and others. So, we’re all brothers! All these 80% of Li people depend on the mountains for their livelihood. We use shovels to dig for sweet potatoes or yams for our staple. Later on, the PRC decided that old men shouldn’t have to depend on the mountain alone, and gave us agriculture. Gradually, we cleared off some land and started farming. The most important thing is diligence. You can’t be too lazy or else you’re useless! In the past when we were poor, every couple would have seven or eight children. Nowadays couples have at most three or four, but usually only two. Although minorities don’t need to follow the One Child Policy, still the more children you have, the harder life will be. For those who have more children, it is because they were trying to have a boy or a girl. It’s best to have a boy and a girl. At least you need to have one girl to be with the mother. Boys will bring in a daughter-in-law and girls will marry out. Mr. Zhu was caught up in his story-telling. We encouraged him to eat and talk slowly, but he continued talking anyway, now about the traditional salt trade: Those old days without the PRC leadership were very difficult. Usually we would just go into the mountains and collect wild vegetables. We didn’t even have salt to cook with before the PRC helped us. We had to go down to Yanglan [the Utsat village where Xiao Gao lives] to get our salt—and we could be robbed on the way back! So the elders say the old days were much harder. Now it’s more comfortable. They used to have to walk for five or six days to get salt, and then worry they would be robbed on the way back home. If you were robbed, bandits would force you to take off all your clothes and take everything you had. If you resisted, they would kill you. We used to walk everywhere—Yanglan, Sanya, Haikou takes 17 or 18 days—all looking for salt. 306 No one would dare send other people, or else you would be responsible for their deaths! You had to look for your own salt. If you were lucky, you would find a traveling salt merchant on your way. Then you could ask him to send the salt back home for you, and he would follow you home. After one meeting with the merchant, you would become friends. Then you could get on his scheduled trip list and he would come back to deliver each time. Robbers wouldn’t harm the salt merchant since they also relied on him. If you rob the salt merchant, then he wouldn’t sell to you anymore. So all the local people would protect and love him. Young men of the village would escort him out and then he would happily give them some gifts in return. So, the friendship with the salt merchant was central. We called him “Big Daddy” or just “friend.” Those salt merchants were mostly Han Chinese who lived on the coasts where they made salt. They would also have paper, clothes, and other things that we had no access to then. You had to tell the merchant what you needed, and he would bring it the next time. So it is best to make friends, then you would have a happy life, helping each other. And if you were in trouble, or had difficulty to pay, he would just give things to you as a friend would. We would give him wild boars, monkeys, dried meat, and medicinal plants. If you gave him homemade gifts and then ask him to bring more things for you, he would. In those old days, there were lots of wild boars and monkeys and not so many hunters. Now there are too many hunters and not enough animals. If there is one animal, everyone would compete to hunt it. We use dogs to hunt, to circle the prey, and then we shoot the prey. Those Miao people are really good hunters. The whole family hunts, even today! For us Li people, only the elders remember how to hunt. In the past we had to dig for yams and hunt. Nowadays we must do agriculture to survive, farming bananas, areca nut, and sugarcane as cash crops to sell at the market. We rely on farming and raising animals. No more hunting! In the old days, men would carry their guns into the mountains to hunt everyday. Nowadays, the government assigns us a farm to do agriculture, one or two mu for each family. If you don’t use it, someone else will, and that shows that you are lazy! The first two days of the Lunar New Year are especially for story telling like this, and afterwards we sing! We asked if we could return during Lunar New Year to hear the old stories. Please come! We sit at a table just like this with two or three elders who tell stories in Li language, sometimes in Hainanese for those who don’t understand. After the story-telling, then we start singing. My sister-in-law [Zhu Zhen’s mother, also at the table] won the singing competition. She’s a very good singer! But now she has gotten older and drinks a lot, so sometimes her tune is not too accurate. Zhu Zhen refilled our cups with millet wine, and Mr. Zhu continued talking, now about men and women’s relationships. 307 Men are no good at talking, but if you don’t talk, then women won’t care about you. Women just do whatever they want! Men tend to be more reserved. Xiao Gao: So women do whatever they want and they’re more talkative? Mr. Zhu: That’s right! [laughs, everyone drinks together] Mr. Zhu: Women have sisters. That’s their most important relationship. Later on, when they have relations with men, they can decide whether to accept or reject any man they wish. Xiao Gao: If they like you, they like you. Mr. Zhu: Right. And if they don’t like you, they don’t like you! At this point everyone, including our Utsat friend, Xiao Gao, was drinking their second cup of millet wine. Winnie and Xiao Gao discussed some similarities in Fukienese [“Taiwanese”] and Hainanese languages, including the phrase for “let’s drink!” I then introduced the Taiwan Amis phrase for “let’s drink!” which is “koman to pah” and Xiao Gao noted that the Utsat phrase is “wei pah,” the same word for “wine.” I asked him what the word for pig was in Utsat language, and he replied “a-fuy”. The Amis word for pig is “fa-fuy”—again very similar. Perhaps my mention of “pig” inspired Xiao-Gao’s unexpected but honest and interesting commentary. What in the world is more ugly and lazy than the pig? I believe pigs carry infectious diseases. Chris: You all [Utsat] don’t eat pigs, right? Xiao Gao: Ever since we became Muslim, we don’t eat pigs, or dogs. We can eat other wild animals, just not dogs because they eat shit. Xiao Gao [to Mr. Zhu]: So you Li people eat dogs? Mr. Zhu: Yes. Xiao Gao: Dogs eat shit and you eat dogs? Then, that means you eat shit? Winnie: Well, shit is basically fertilizer. You need it to plant rice. So that means that eating rice is also eating shit? Chris: Also, you need fertilizer to grow vegetables. Xiao Gao: Plants are different than animals. Animals that eat shit are different. Chris: At least for wine there is no problem. Let’s drink! Xiao Gao: We also shouldn’t drink wine because liquor is a kind of stimulant. It’s really strong. [Everyone is sufficiently drunk by now.] Xiao Gao: Once a missionary told us a story about wine and a beautiful girl. He said, “If the king ordered you to kill a beautiful girl, or asked you to rape her, would you do it?” No way! So, you wouldn’t follow the king’s order. There’s a clay pot of wine over there. If you had to choose whether you rape the beautiful 308 girl, drink the pot of wine, or kill her, what would you do? You would drink the pot of wine, right? [Everyone is looking confused, but still concentrating on the story.] So, you choose to drink the wine because of course it is most beneficial to other people. But after you drink it, you have to waste your time trying to control your own behavior. So if you choose to drink wine to avoid killing or raping the beautiful girl, then that’s your personal choice. But after you are drunk, and then you see a beautiful girl next to you, then you hug the girl, and you end up raping her anyway! So even if you chose to drink, you still rape or kill the girl anyway after you are drunk. Winnie: Well, that would not really be drunk if you could still rape and kill. A drunk person would be more like a log. Xiao Gao: No! It means that these three—drinking wine, raping, and killing—are the same. All would be done one way or another. Winnie: So, if you chose drinking, then that means you also chose the uncontrollable behavior that follows? Xiao Gao: Yes! Drinking alcohol is a bad behavior. So whenever there’s any accident, it must be related to someone’s drinking alcohol. Well, at least 70% of the time it is because of drunkenness. After drinking, people become uncontrollable. Winnie: Well, it’s okay to drink sometimes. It’s not as if you will kill and rape people every time you drink. It’s also good for social bonding and communication. Xiao Gao: We Muslims just never drink by our nature. Mr. Zhu: Perhaps we have some differences, but if you don’t come here personally, only listen to other people’s experiences, then you will never understand. So you three have come here to our village, and you must come again. Then you will understand more. Winnie: Thank you! We plan to come again during the Lunar New Year. Mr. Zhu: We welcome you! But he [Xiao Gao] is not used to our food. Xiao-Gao: That’s right. I don’t eat pork. Winnie: You also don’t have any choice in the matter. That’s where you were born and you must follow the traditional rules. Xiao-Gao: Yes. I have to respect other people’s requirements. Everyone: Cheers! [in different languages] Since we had tried to find millet wine in Sanya City, but there was none, we asked if they had ever considered selling their homemade millet wine outside. Mr. Zhu replied, This millet wine has no sugar added. It’s naturally sweet. And no water added either. But after a short time it will lose its sweetness and turn spicy and bitter. Then you need only one cup to be drunk! If we sold this millet wine at the market in Sanya, it would be too expensive, so we just make enough for our own needs. 309 Some people just don’t understand this wine anyway, so we wouldn’t feel comfortable to sell it to those people. We basically just follow the traditional method of making our own wine and only drink it ourselves. Mr. Zhu insisted that we all finish all of our rice, then abruptly announced, “I’m 60 years old, and this is my fourth cup of wine. Let’s sing some old songs! I’ll sing after my sister-in-law.” We asked if he knew any songs about betel nut, and Xiao Gao asked if he knew any songs related to drinking. At this point Mr. Zhu went ahead and began singing alone. After he finished, his lyrics were to our surprise translated by Xiao Gao, “The farmer finally picks up all the melon and fruit from the land.” We asked how Xiao Gao could understand the lyrics. He said it was Hainanese language. Then, Mr. Zhu’s sister-in-law sang another verse, “Now the wine and food has been served, but the question is when will you all return again?” Mr. Zhu’s son then contributed a short verse, “We welcome visitors to our village!” Zhu Zhen’s brother added, “Haven’t seen you for a long time.” Then Xiao Gao sang a verse in Mandarin, “The day I left my military battalion, people were waving, saying goodbye.” Winnie and I sang an Amis folk song together. Zhu Zhen then sang one verse of a popular Deng Li-Jun Mandarin song. After our meal was finished the younger generation escorted us to the river. It was indeed as beautiful and pristine as Xiao Gao had described. Of all our interactions with people in Hainan, the encounter at Jiayao Village was among the most significant and unexpected. The recent transitions from hunting to farming, from living in straw huts to cement houses, electricity and running water, were all credited to the government. At the same time the moral value of diligence and hard work was venerated. Mr. Zhu’s narration of the origins of people mentioned that all different 310 people come from the same source, a floating melon that landed on the shore, emphasizing the commonalities we all share. Although clearly our differences were voiced, such as Xiao Gao’s comments about pigs and alcohol, yet his own behavior also accommodated such differences. Perhaps “interethnic” communication may not be part of the usual routine in the village nowadays, but the memory of dealing with salt merchants was still vivid and the lesson it brought about “making friends” for the mutual benefit of all was surely shared by all of us present. Winnie and I returned as promised during the Lunar New Year, and were hosted for a couple of nights by the Zhu family. On the first night after dinner, everyone started singing. We had brought with us a book about Li folk songs, and passed it to Mr. Zhu and asked him to sing a particular song about betel nut. Everyone was surprised to see the book, and some young men asked to borrow it to make a written copy. This indicates the people of Jiayao Village perhaps didn’t have access to published reports about their own folk songs, and while the younger generation refused to sing old songs in front of the elders, once two outsiders came into their village and showed genuine interested in their culture, and they gained access to this book, even the young people demonstrated an interest to learn more about their own cultural heritage. Discussion of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries in Hainan While there are many markers of ethnic group boundaries in Hainan such as language, dress, and geographical location, betel nut chewing alone does not mark or define ethnic boundaries in Hainan since the various “ethnic” groups all chew. 311 However, betel nut chewing habits do indicate socioeconomic status for individuals, since all people in Hainan are equally fond of betel nut chewing. For those who chew, the higher one’s status, the more betel nut one can chew. For example the people living in Jiayao Village have less access to betel nut or resource to acquire it, but still have the same attraction to chewing as Utsat or the Li of Bacun, who happen to also have the resource to acquire as much as they like to chew. Unlike the Li of Bacun who operate their own areca nut plantations, the Utsat sacrificed their own plantations for housing development on limited land resources and focused on commercial activities that enabled them to purchase areca nut outside their villages. Betel nut chewing does mark and define local Hainan residents from outside visitors or recent immigrants from the mainland. But as we have seen throughout the history, as Han immigrated to Hainan, they tended to pick up the habit of chewing first to protect them from “miasma” and later as required for social interaction with local people. Even today, recent Han immigrants, such as Mr. Yu and his family from Jiangxi, once resident in Hainan tend to begin chewing betel nut, and interestingly, he also claims a health related reason to justify his personal choice to chew. At the same time, his chewing marks him as a “local” to residents in Hainan and as a “stranger” to his family back in Jiangxi. From the breadfruit vender who quit chewing for fear of becoming addicted, we see that betel nut chewing remains a personal choice in Hainan. Still she understands the social requirements for her children to chew in order to make friends. Finally, having the choice to chew betel nut or not is what makes living in Hainan different from the mainland. 312 Chapter 9: Symbolic Meanings and Ritual Use of Betel Nut in Hainan Weddings At weddings, as well as in social life generally, betel nut represents fertility, wealth and abundance. For all the local residents of Hainan, whether or not the bride or groom or their families are habitual betel nut chewers, the distribution of betel nut is required during wedding ceremonies, and betel nut is also a required gift for engagements. In Hainan, another way for a woman to indicate she is “engaged to someone” is by saying she is “eating someone’s betel nut.” Significantly, a man could not use this idiom because it is the groom’s family that provides the gift of betel nut to the bride’s family at the wedding ceremony. This chapter explores wedding customs of three ethno-linguistic groups in contemporary Hainan: the Hainanese, Li, and Utsat. Hainanese Weddings During interviews with Hainanese teenage boys from Wanning, we learned how betel nut is specifically used in Hainanese weddings, as follows: Whatever the occasion, you must have betel nut. In the wedding, guests will present a red envelope as a gift, so you have to provide them cigarettes and betel nuts in return. We don’t know how it is in the mainland, but for all Han people in Hainan that’s the way. Also, when you attend a wedding banquet, after the meal, the guests must take a betel nut as a departing gift. If you have a funeral at home, betel nuts are placed on the table along with cigarettes. So, when the guests come and visit, they enter the house and take three incense sticks, do the ritual, and then take a betel nut and cigarette as they leave. Sometimes while playing poker or mahjong, you need to have betel nut and cigarettes too. From interviews conducted in Yacheng, rural Sanya county, we learned further about the significance of betel nut in weddings: 313 During the wedding people don’t want to eat food, but they want to chew betel nut. If you don’t have betel nut, then nobody loves you. You must have betel nut for your guests. They are not here for the meal, only for the betel nut! No matter if it’s a wedding or a funeral, whenever you show up at a friend’s house, there will be betel nut. When you attend a wedding banquet, you will give them a red envelope. After you finish the meal, they will give you a bag of betel nut in return. This is really important for us. It’s about politeness, and it’s important to treat your guests with betel nut. If you don’t give your guests betel nut, then it means you are looking down on them. Seriously, for every family, you can’t have a wedding or funeral without betel nut and cigarettes. The men smoke, and everyone chews. Men chew and smoke, but women usually don’t smoke. And we call the groom “betel nut.” The groom’s mother-in-law calls him “betel nut.” In Mandarin Chinese, “groom” (新郎) is pronounced “xinlang” and “betel nut” (檳榔) is pronounced “binlang.” Calling the groom “betel nut” is not only a reference to the similar sound and the same Chinese character root for “lang,” but perhaps alludes to the fact that the groom’s family must provide betel nut for the bride’s family, who is then described as “eating the groom’s betel nut.” Li Weddings Traditional Li wedding customs are different from Hainanese in many ways, though the betel nut is also required. In recent times, however, Li weddings are becoming more like Hainanese weddings, but still retain certain traditional elements. On our return visit to the Zhu family in Jiayao Village, we learned more about their local wedding customs, as described here by Mr. Zhu: At the engagement, only a little betel nut, around 1 or 2 jin is given from the groom to the bride’s family. To receive betel nut means to accept the proposal. To prepare for a wedding, we have to slaughter all kinds of animals, the more the better, including pigs, cows, chickens, and so on. When the groom arrives to the bride house he should bring a lot of betel nut with him for the bride’s family. The bride 314 goes to the husband’s house without her own family members, but her friends take her over. Then, the bride’s family will boil the areca nut and mix it with sugar to sweeten it, and make dried betel nut out of the wedding gift. For example, if my sister-in-law is the match-maker, she will take betel nut to the girl’s family. If they accept it, then it’s settled. Then, in a few months to a year later, you can take the bride home. And, the groom’s family will have a banquet, drinking millet wine for three nights. All his relatives, brothers, brothers-in-law, will all attend, singing at night, both new and old songs. On the use of betel nut in Li weddings, the Li breadfruit vendor who works in Sanya City First Market told the following story from her own experience: If the husband’s family doesn’t have enough money to have a wedding, it is not a problem. They can first have a baby and even grow old together, and delay payment from the husband’s family to the wife’s family, which includes betel nut, chickens, pigs, and lots of other things. For me, I have three boys, my oldest son is taller than me, but we haven’t yet gotten married. We don’t care about legal marriage or government rules. All we did was, after I was pregnant, his mother took two areca nuts to my house and my mother received them, so now I’m part of his family. He took me to worship his family ancestors, and we’ll just wait and see when he has enough money to hold the wedding ceremony. Only then will his mother have the right to blame me if I make mistakes, or to punish me, or beat me. But, for only two areca nuts as an engagement gift, his mother doesn’t have the right to blame me. The two areca nuts represent that he came to officially ask for my parents’ approval, whether they were willing for their daughter to marry him. And my mother accepted them, which means she agreed. So now I belong to his family. We then asked if a coconut could be given instead of an areca nut, and she replied, No, no, no! It has to be areca nut! That’s the tradition from ancient times to now. Plus, my mother’s family also had to prepare other things for me to get married. For example, I must have three traditional Li women’s dresses. Since her “husband” didn’t have enough money to hold the usual wedding ceremony, he simply presented two areca nuts that expressed his intention to marry. Her parents accepted these two areca nuts, and thereby approved of him to marry their daughter. Although the couple has been living together for over a decade, and has three teenage children, they have not yet held a formal wedding ceremony, nor have they sought 315 to become legally married. The Li woman was happy to point out that because her “husband” had not fulfilled his whole payment of bride-price, and they had not completed a wedding ceremony, technically she was not under the authority of his mother. Therefore, she was not pressing him to complete the payments either. Even with all the influence of modernity, and with their poor financial situation, they still respect the conventions of Li tradition, to present areca nut as expressing the intention to marry. Although the following type of Li traditional marriage is no longer practiced, it was reported within the last decade in Hainan, and certain elements of its structure continue. Traditionally among the Li, public youth houses (liao fang 寮房), straw huts without hearths, were built in every village, one for unmarried men and one for unmarried women. Men would visit the women’s youth house at night and rest in their own youth house in the day when not working. Any man or woman who was interested could pursue sexual relations or propose engagement, but before the final step of the marriage ceremony, the women would still sleep at her family’s or the village public youth house, where she would be free to engage in sexual relations with other men if she wanted. The final step in the Li traditional wedding required the groom’s family to present a wealth of gifts including betel nut to the bride’s parents, who would then hold a wedding ceremony and distribute the areca nuts with their addition of betel leaf and slaked lime to guests at a feast. The new couple could take residence in the husband’s parents’ household for a short time during and after the wedding ceremony, then the wife would usually move back to her family’s household where she would again stay in the public youth house, and be would be free to engage in sexual relations with her husband or any other men from other villages who visited until she became pregnant and gave birth. Upon becoming a mother, 316 regardless of the suspected father, the wife would move with her child to her husband’s parents’ household and work there, where her child was accepted as a member of her husband’s family. She could always return to her own parents’ household during her life, and upon her death, her body and belongings would be returned to her mother’s household (Li Lulu 2003, 267-284). The breadfruit vendor’s story shares some of these elements, but no longer do young people in her community live in “youth houses.” Whether or not they maintain the tradition of free pre-marital, and to a certain extent, post-marital, sexual practices is not known. This line of enquiry would be interesting to pursue in future research among the Li of Hainan. Li post-marital residence and descent patterns are quite flexible, with power and authority of descent following from contribution to subsistence of each spouse, rather than according to any strict set of rules for male or female authority. Political-economic organization and ownership of all resources was traditionally organized at the village level, with several villages organized into a dong, an “inter-village political entity,” with a common leader. Female matriarchs who represent each of the villages would mediate disputes among people of different villages. Gradually, over centuries of contact with Han society, Li people developed notions of private property, and with increased trade in iron, eventually organized patrilineally in smaller kin-based groups (Xing Guang-yin 1990, 28-32). Meanwhile, some Li villages still based on a subsistence economy, not yet fully integrated into Han society, remained flexibly matrilineal. Throughout the period of transition from matrilineal to patrilineal descent systems caused by assimilation to Han 317 society, gifts of areca nut continue to be significant in engagement and wedding ceremonies for the Li. Utsat Weddings When we first inquired about the use of betel nut in Utsat weddings, the elementary school principal replied, We must have betel nut in the wedding. Betel nuts are delivered to the bride as a gift. And betel nut is a requirement when we select the wedding date, or propose a marriage. Betel nuts are offered to the elders and relatives. During the wedding ceremony, all the visitors are given betel nuts to chew. We don’t have candies, but only betel nuts, which is why everyone here has red lips! Fortunately, we had arrived to the Utsat village of Huixin just in time to attend an upcoming “double-wedding” of two brothers, which was originally explained to us as follows by the school principal: The Fu family has posted the wedding invitation in the mosque. His two sons, the oldest one and the forth one, are getting married on the same day, with two brides. Our wedding ceremony usually takes three days. The first day, friends of the bride will take her out for dinner. The second day consists of preparing for the wedding ceremony, killing cows, and holding a banquet for village elders. The third day is the actually wedding ceremony itself. This wedding is among three families: two brides’ families and one family with two grooms. We asked if we could attend and document the wedding, and people were happy to introduce us to the grooms’ and one of the bride’s families, who happened to live next door to each other. As we were talking with the principal, a young woman happened to passed by, and the principal commented, This is one of the brides who are getting married this weekend. On Friday, the first day of the wedding, she will be at her mother’s house. But Sunday, the third day of the wedding, she will move to the groom’s house. 318 So you can also come Friday to see the bride dressing up beautifully. Her friends will take her out for dinner that day. On Sunday, it will start at nine o’clock in the morning. The whole village will eat at the groom’s house. Each guest will be served a bowl of rice and a bowl of beef. Then the bride will offer betel nuts to all the guests. The bride will hold a tray full of betel nut, nothing else. And while she offers betel nut to the guests, she will hold a towel to cover her mouth. Some brides may get emotional and start crying, especially those who have to live far from their families may be sad. Some brides don’t cry if they don’t feel like crying, and that’s also fine. The bride will pass the tray in front of each guest, one by one; the guests will each take one betel nut quid from the tray. Since she is holding the tray in one hand and the towel in the other, she won’t hand the betel nut to the guests. Arrive earlier on Sunday. Come for the meal. No problem. You can both eat with us. It’s just a bowl of rice and a bowl of beef, nothing else. We don’t serve in multiple dishes banquet style, and no alcohol is allowed. The principal’s final summary of the Utsat wedding is an implicit comparison to the Chinese-style wedding with which he assumed we were familiar, which is famous for elaborate banquets, usually including the consumption of alcohol. His comments about the patrilocal post-marital residence pattern confirmed what was reported by Pang (1992) from her research among the Utsat in the same village in the late 1980s. His explanation of the role of betel nut in the three-day wedding ceremony helped us to make sense of what was happening during the actual wedding ceremony we would witness in the coming days. Utsat Women’s “Bridal Credit Association” Before discussing the specifics of the Utsat weddings observed, it is important to understand what Pang (1992) called “bridal credit associations” and what was described to us as “sisterhoods” by Mrs. Pu, a married woman from Huixin Village. On the first day of the three day wedding ceremony, “sisters’ money” is given to the bride by her female friends. This money is kept separately by the bride, not 319 merged with her husband’s or his family’s money. The bride’s friends sit in the courtyard of the bride’s house together, and give their gifts of money directly to the bride. Mrs. Pu then elaborated on the relation of these “sisterhoods,” highlighting women’s economic independence from men. For Utsat women if your friend is getting married, you must go out and work in order to save money to give your friend on her wedding day, or else you’ll get no money on your own wedding day in return. And so, young women in our village are all used to having to go out and work. You just have to work, otherwise, how can you have money? Your mother raised you, and so she is not required to give you money. That must come from female friends. So, when you get married, you bring your own money to your husband’s family, not your mother’s money. For us women here, it is a little tiring. But, we have already gotten used to working, doing business, and supporting our own life. While the Muslim tradition is that women shouldn’t do business, we just have no choice. Our parents had too many children, and had to support them all, so they had to go to work. As a result, Utsat women are more independent. Some say it’s lucky to marry an Utsat woman because she makes money herself. Utsat women are very capable. We take care of the house, children, and make money! We send our children to school, do business, pick them up from school, come home, and cook! If you marry a man who doesn’t cherish you, that’s a very miserable situation. If your husband merely understands your burden, then you feel really sweet and happily work. From conversations with Mrs. Pu and observations of two wedding ceremonies, the continued significance of the Utsat “sisterhood” was clearly shown. In order for an Utsat woman to have a wedding, she and her friends would have to first have a career, and have earned enough money to give each other as gifts at their respective weddings. When a woman gets married, her friends, or “sisterhood,” all give her money that becomes the bride’s personal savings that she brings with her into the marriage, and she retains authority over its use. All the money given by guests of the wedding ceremony hosted by the groom’s family, on the third day of the wedding ceremony, however, remains with the groom and his family. 320 If a woman gets married and has no working female friends, she gets no money upon her marriage. If, however, a woman receives money on her wedding from her “sisterhood,” she is obliged to return the same or more upon the weddings of her “sisters.” This is an incentive for young women to first begin their careers before getting married. It also keeps women from getting married before at least their friends have personal income. Therefore, the usual age for an Utsat woman to marry is in her late 20s or early 30s. Utsat Weddings and Women’s Status While the “bridal credit associations” were operating exactly as described by Pang (1992), the wedding ceremonies observed among the Utsat in 2003 were somewhat different. They shared the same three-day structure as observed by Pang, but we didn’t observe an official “nikah” ceremony on the third day presided over by the Imam, and men were not treated to the banquet dinner before women as reported by Pang, rather just the opposite occurred. Perhaps women’s status in the Utsat community has continued to rise over the past fifteen years since Pang’s fieldwork, such that in 2003 women enjoyed higher social status and were therefore fed first at the wedding, before the men. Or perhaps there is no strict rule about the order of food distribution, but only that men and women must eat separately is important. At any rate, although men continue to dominate spiritual and political life, women clearly dominate economic and social life in the village, and control the distribution of the resources they earn for themselves in the community. On the first day of the Utsat wedding observed in 2003, women of the groom’s family were gathered in the courtyard wrapping betel pepper leaves with lime paste, and cutting areca nuts that were to be distributed during the wedding (see Figure 39). 321 Figure 39: Utsat women at the groom’s house wrap betel nut in preparation for the wedding day (left), while women at the bride’s house (right) chew betel nut prepared by the groom’s female relatives. The groom’s family hosted a meal consisting of a bowl of beef and a bowl of rice for guests, including the community elders from both the groom’s and bride’s villages. The bride remained at her family’s house and was dressed up in her wedding costume, consisting of an intricate headdress of flowers and long sparkling hairpins. Her “sisterhood” stayed at her house throughout the day and presented their cash gifts to her, and in the evening took her out for dinner. The first of the two weddings which we attended in the Utsat village of Huixin was the “double wedding.” There were two grooms, who were brothers. The elder brother, in his early thirties, worked at a nearby tourist resort on Xidao, and his bride, only 23 years old, lived next door to his family and worked as a vender in the Sanya market along with her female family members. People commented that the bride was much younger than average. The younger brother was currently serving in the military, and his bride was from the other Utsat village, called Yanglan, about ten minutes’ drive west on the highway. The younger brother’s bride also had an entrepreneurial career, though we didn’t find out what 322 specifically she did. Both of these couples followed the traditionally preferred patrilocal post-marital pattern. For the first bride, that translated to moving into the house next door; for the second bride, however, it meant moving to another village. The second Utsat wedding we attended was that of an Utsat bride and a Taiwan-born groom who had met while they both were working on Xidao (West Island) tourist resort (discussed in Chapter 11). The groom in this case had to first convert to Islam before he could propose engagement to the bride’s family. This second wedding was also complicated by the fact that the patrilocal residence pattern theoretically preferred by both the bride and groom’s family heritage, which would entail that the couple moves to Taiwan, was not possible or advisable by either the bride’s or groom’s families. At least for the present, while they both earned their livelihood working in nearby Xidao, both they and their families wished for them to remain in Sanya. Therefore, in this case the post-marital residence practice turned out to be staying near the bride’s family household and community, but not necessarily living in the bride’s household itself. The Utsat adherence to preferred rules and restrictions is flexible, based on local social and economic conditions. An Utsat “Double” Wedding On the first day of the double wedding, we arrived at the grooms’ house to see his family and friends, men and women, working to set up the patio. The elder brother was not present, perhaps working, but the younger brother was there. We talked with his uncle about the wedding and asked what to expect. He confirmed what the school principal had told us about the grooms and brides, and the schedule for the next two days. The guests in 323 attendance waited for the male elders from the second bride’s village to arrive before starting to eat; even some time after everyone had been served, we all respectfully waited while the rice and beef became cold. After the male elders arrived and people finished eating, most guests left the groom’s house, only the women of the groom’s family remained to clean up. At the bride’s family house, her female friends (“sisterhood”) were gathered in her courtyard, while her elder female family members decorated her hair with long elegant colorful hairpins and flowers (see Figure 40). After she was fully dressed, she walked through the village and distributed betel nut to as many neighbors as possible, followed by a procession of her female friends and some children. As evening approached, her “sisterhood” took her out for dinner at the best Muslim restaurant, located just five minutes drive down the highway towards Sanya City, at the edge of the Utsat village. Figure 40: Utsat bride is dressed up by her female family members on the first day of the wedding. 324 The second day began with the slaughter of cows at the grooms’ house. According to Islamic law, the Utsat can eat only animals that have been slaughtered in the Islamic way, which is by Muslims while reciting verses from the Quran. For all practical purposes, therefore, Utsat in Hainan must slaughter all the animals they eat themselves. While it is permitted to purchase live animals, including cows, goats, chickens, ducks, and fish raised by Han or Li people, any already slaughtered meat is strictly forbidden, therefore, Utsat do not purchase meat at Sanya markets or eat in Han or Li restaurants. Of course, pork is strictly forbidden, as elsewhere in the Muslim world. While women sat near the entry door of the grooms’ house folding betel pepper leaves and washing melons, men congregated at the street in front of the house, preparing to conduct the slaughter. It is men’s job to slaughter animals, and this morning, several cows, at least four that we saw, were lined up outside the groom’s home. Pang (1992) notes that only men associated with the mosque are allowed to slaughter cows, but women are allowed to slaughter chickens and ducks. Indeed, the men who performed the slaughter on this day were Abu from the local mosque. Young children who were running around in the street all stopped playing and stood watching as the men brought in the first cow. The men tied the legs of the cow together and brought it to the ground, lying on its left side. They then inserted a long metal pole through its bridle and twisted the cow’s head to expose the neck. One man held the cow’s body while one held its head firm. One man held a metal bucket as near to its neck as possible, and another man placed his left palm on the cow’s neck and evidently uttered the Arabic words as required, though the noise of the crowd made it impossible to hear that part, and then made a cut deep into the 325 cow’s neck. The man with the bucket tried to catch all the blood, though some escaped into the street. As soon as all the blood was out, another man hosed it away down the street into a drain. Children stood around intently watching the whole process. Each cow was slaughtered in the same manner, and immediately butchered. Pieces were brought into the grooms’ family patio and chopped into smaller pieces by around twenty men, constantly working. Women continued folding betel pepper leaves, cutting areca nuts, and now were also chopping melons. The sound of butcher knives hitting wooden chop blocks filled the air. Some men and women chewed betel nut while working, others didn’t. For those men with busy and dirty hands, some men passed them betel nut to chew. Elder men watched as the middle-aged men worked. Elder women continued folding betel pepper leaves, and cutting areca nut into bite-sized wedges. The groom’s family and their helpers worked into the night preparing for the following day, the actual wedding ceremony, when they would host everyone in the whole village to one bowl of rice, one bowl of beef, and betel nut. When we arrived on the morning of the third day, guests were already gathered at the groom’s house, many having already eaten. Children were running around, playing and laughing. Several vendors selling candies and toys had set their mobile kiosks outside the grooms’ house contributed to the festive atmosphere. Guests arrived first to the registration table, and offered their gifts of money to the grooms’ family. As their gifts of money were recorded in a ledger, each guest took a betel nut from the tray displayed on the registration table (see Figure 41) and began chewing. Guests then entered the reception area set in front of the grooms’ house, took a seat at a table, and 326 were served in rotation by women of the grooms’ family, some of whom continued to fold betel pepper leaves and cut areca nuts to keep the trays full as guests arrived. Figure 41: Utsat wedding registration table. Around 11:00 a.m., a group of village elder men arrived together (see Figure 42). Unlike the women who had arrived earlier, they did not present any gifts of money at the registration table, but were shown directly to their seats at the edge of the patio near the street by the grooms’ father. Perhaps the elder men’s wives or female relatives were responsible for providing their gift money, or else they were not required to give a wedding gift. In general, women are the trusted keepers of men’s earnings, since they know how to save and spend money whereas men tend to waste money, in the same way Suzanne Brenner observed that Javanese women “hold the purse strings” (1995, 36). Regardless, the elder men were still treated as the most respected guests. The elder brother groom made a round through the crowd of elders and distributed betel nut to each one, taking it from a tray held in his left hand and placing it with his right hand on the table in front of each man. Another brother of the groom poured tea for the elder men. The elder men began chewing and chatting. Soon 327 after they finished their meal, long before either of the two brides arrived to the grooms’ house, the elder men left the banquet. Figure 42: Utsat elder men arrive to the groom’s house after all the women had finished eating and most had left the premises. Meanwhile at the bride’s house next door, women were congregated in the courtyard. After the bride was fully dressed in a shiny red blouse with her hair done as on the first day, she was given a tray of betel nut and a bright yellow-orange towel folded into a square. Holding the towel over her face with her left hand and the tray of betel nut in her right hand, she knelt down in front of her grandmother and presented the tray of betel nut while keeping her face covered (see Figure 43). She began crying and wailing out with tears. Her grandmother also cried and wailed loudly, and took a betel nut from the tray. Then, the bride stood up and circulated among the gathered guests, her “sisterhood” and female family members and friends, presenting the tray of betel nut to each woman, continuing to cover her mouth, until she reached her mother, at which point she knelt down before her mother and again began wailing out loud with tears flowing. Her mother took a betel nut from her daughter’s tray. 328 Figure 43: Utsat bride covers her face while distributing betel nut to the women of her own family. The bride stood up and continued walking toward the front gate, distributing the betel nut until her tray was empty. She returned to her house, and was given a new tray full of fresh betel nut. Then, she walked through the village streets, making a loop, with her towel still covering her face, and the tray of betel nut, escorted by her sisters, serving whomever she met on the road until the tray was empty (see Figure 44). Figure 44: Utsat bride walks through the village escorted by her sisterhood. Then, she returned to her home where the groom and a few young men were now waiting. She entered her house again and emerged dressed in a black and white shiny 329 blouse with a long black veil (see Figure 45). She was escorted through her front yard, past her groom, and into the street. The groom followed her as she walked through the village once again, this time without betel nut (see Figure 45). Figure 45: Utsat bride with black veil escorted by sisterhood the second time, and then joined by groom. Finally the two arrived to the groom’s house together. Firecrackers were lit as the bride entered the groom’s courtyard. The bride was escorted into her new room in the groom’s house by the groom’s female relatives. In the room with the door closed, she again changed clothes, back into her original shiny red blouse, and her hairpins and flowers were removed from her hair. She covered her head with an orange towel, the same kind (perhaps the same exact one) she had used to cover her face earlier, and the same kind worn by most Utsat adult women (see Figure 46). The groom then entered the room with a tray of betel nut, prepared by his family, and gave it to the bride (see Figure 46). She smiled, rose up from the bed, and walked downstairs, out the front door, and into the patio where some guests, mostly women and children, were congregated. She distributed betel nut to them, this time without a 330 towel covering her face, but now wearing it on her head as most married adult Utsat women do, so she could personally hand the betel nut to each guest this time (see Figure 46). That marked the end of the three-day wedding ceremony. Figure 46: Utsat bride changes headdress for towel (above), and distributes betel nut to guests with her right hand (below). 331 Significance of Betel Nut in Utsat Society Betel nut is used both ritually and habitually in the Utsat wedding, as in daily life. It is the method of betel nut’s distribution that determines its meaning as either a ritual or habitual object. When a betel nut is presented directly from the hand of the giver to the hand of the receiver, when it is moved from the body of the giver to the body of the receiver, then it marks a ritually significant gift. When betel nut is merely left on a tray or basket to be taken by guests, it still represents a gift, but would only be taken by those guests who would like to chew, that is for habitual purposes, but still carries the ritual meaning of gift. Even children are allowed to chew betel nut at wedding ceremonies, and we witnessed several girls around ten years old chewing at the weddings we attended. In the case of young girls chewing, it is first introduced in a ritualized context, the wedding, for example. They may after the ritualized introduction to betel nut chewing develop a chewing habit, or not, depending on the social context of their friends and livelihood. However, by the time they are married, they will already have been chewing betel nut on numerous occasions, both ritual and social, and so will have likely already developed a betel nut chewing habit. Interestingly, the exchange between bride’s and groom’s families in the engagement and wedding ceremonies is primarily expressed with betel nut, and the exchange between the bride and her “sisterhood” is expressed with cash money. This difference between the “generalized” gift of betel nut and the more specific “rotating credit” of cash reflects the more practical and economical relations among the sisterhood compared with the more symbolic and ritual relations between the bride and groom. This in turn reflects the 332 different kinds of relations between men and women as ritualized and the relations among women as more practical. The school principal explained that in the Utsat wedding, the bride must cover her face when she makes her final distribution of betel nut to her mother’s household. Because she is covering her face holding a towel with one hand, and holding the tray of betel nut with the other, she does not personally hand each woman a betel nut, rather each guest must take a betel nut from the bride’s tray. This comment can be interpreted to mean that “ideally” the bride would hand each person a betel nut to represent the highly ritualized presentation in this context. The school principal justifies the bride’s holding a towel over her face because Utsat women usually cry at this point of the ceremony, although crying is not required. If the bride cries, her make-up will run and she will not look beautiful. If she does not cry, then it may indicate that she is not really sad to leave her natal home, which could be insulting to her female relatives gathered around her. Therefore, for the sake of the bride’s beauty at this point of the ritual, she always holds a towel covering her face. The bride is also passing through a liminal phase (Turner 1969) of the ritual process, as she changes identities from a “daughter” to a “bride” and finally a “wife.” Covering her face at this point of the ceremony, from “daughter” to “bride,” may symbolize her temporary “lack” of identity as she proceeds through the transformation. Interestingly, when she emerges from the groom’s house and distributes betel nut to the guests, she no longer covers her face, but wears the Utsat towel head-covering that she was earlier using to cover her face, for the first time on her head, perhaps marking her passage from “bride” to “wife.” It seems that only 333 married women wear the towel head-covering, while unmarried women and girls wear either the full head-covering or none at all. In the Utsat wedding, all of the betel nut (including areca nuts, betel pepper leaves, and lime paste) must be purchased by the groom’s family from the wholesale market, as commodities. When betel nut is bought or sold at markets, it has at first a commodity status, but still retains the potential to be transformed into a gift through ritual distribution, either in a wedding, or in interpersonal interactions when betel nut is given to guests. The method of giving betel nut, whether displayed in a tray or basket, or given directly to a specific person by hand, reveals the level of its ritualized status, and therefore the symbolic power of the betel nut in each context. As we will see in the following chapter, at the markets of Sanya, even the ostensible “commodity transaction” of purchasing betel nut has elements of ritual and symbolic meanings, that is the buyer must approach the seller and lower the body towards the ground in order to make the transaction. So, in even the most “commercial” of transactions, the exchange of betel nut in Hainan continues to have ritualized and symbolic meanings. 334 Chapter 10: Production and Marketing of Betel Nut in Hainan This chapter begins with a description of the areca nut wholesale market in Yacheng, an agricultural market town in western Sanya County, details the areca nut production process, and finally explores the method of retail marketing of betel nut in Sanya City. Yacheng: Agricultural Market Town Many of the retail betel nut vendors in Sanya City, including the Utsat and Li, and even Mainland Chinese from Hunan and sometimes Taiwanese buyers acquire their supplies of areca nut from wholesalers in Yacheng. In this bustling market town trucks full of vegetables line up displaying their produce every day. Near the front entrance, there is a small vending booth selling drinks, snacks, sugarcane, and betel nut (see Figure 47). The following is excerpted from interviews made at the vending booth with five women who work in the market. The five women were all native speakers of the local Yacheng dialect, which they pointed out is different than Hainanese. In their dialect, “Hainanese” language is called a “guest language” because according to one of them, “our language is older than Hainanese.” These women are all bilingual, speaking their local dialect at home and with each other, and Mandarin Chinese (putong hua) will all others. They don’t speak “Hainanese” or “Li” languages, and they say their ancestors are from the Chinese mainland, probably Fujian, though none of them knew how long ago that may have been. In their Yacheng dialect “betel nut” is pronounced “bin-lei” and “chew 335 betel nut” is “kee-bin-lei.” The word “kee” is used for eating, drinking and chewing, more like the Amis (Formosan Austronesian) “koman” than the Mandarin Chinese “chi.” Except for learning the words for “betel nut” and “chewing,” our interviews with the women were conducted in Mandarin Chinese (putong hua). Figure 47: Female betel nut vendors at Yacheng market. The first woman we talked to operates an areca palm and betel pepper leaf plantation, but does not chew betel nut herself because she doesn’t like “that dizzy feeling” that comes with chewing. She told us that most elders and adults chew, and even laborers who have come from the mainland tend to start chewing shortly after their arrival, “Hainan people love to chew betel nut, and other people who come here to work will also start to chew.” When asked if her husband or other family members chew betel nut, she mentioned that she has around two hundred areca palms and also grows betel pepper vine, and since none of her family chews, the whole harvest is sold. She said betel pepper vine is very easy to grow. If planted near an areca palm, it naturally crawls up the trunks. She considers her betel nut plantation to be a good business since it provides her with a monthly income of 20 to 30 RMB ($3 to 4 USD) during the harvesting season, from June to October. 336 Another woman, in her mid-forties, whose lips and teeth were stained red with betel nut juice, admitted that she loves chewing betel nut. When she sees other people chewing, she “just has to chew as well.” She said she had been chewing betel nut for only two or three years. When asked if she feels any different since she started chewing, she replied, Well, I don’t really chew that much. Sometimes I don’t even chew for one whole day. If I don’t want to chew, I don’t feel any different, not like those elders who chew all the time! I can survive without chewing, even for a couple of weeks. So, I haven’t been a daily chewer over the past three years. This sentiment was echoed by other of the women present, none of whom felt addicted to chewing betel nut. One of the women elaborated on the health benefits of betel nut, and saw no problem with her young children chewing. I have two boys and a little girl who all chew betel nut. They see us chewing all the time, and so they also learned to chew. Chewing betel nut isn’t harmful anyway, so it is up to them. If it was harmful, then I wouldn’t allow it. Actually, people use areca nut to make toothpaste, because it protects your teeth and makes them white. So, if it is not harmful to our bodies, then of course we chew. Also, when the weather is cold, chewing warms up your whole body and keeps your head hot. It’s very comfortable, and you don’t feel cold anymore. And so when the weather is colder, there are more people who buy betel nut. This sentiment about the benefits of chewing betel nut is widely shared by chewers in Hainan, none of whom seem concerned about potential mouth cancer. In Yacheng, women and men, and young and old, all chew betel nut. But it was not always that way. We learned from one of the woman that “In the past, only elderly women would chew betel nut. Nowadays, young people and even men chew!” Evidently in Yacheng betel nut chewing is increasing in popularity in recent years. That only elderly women used to chew betel nut may explain why it is only elderly 337 women who sell betel nut at the marketplace. And, most interestingly, it is the exact opposite configuration to that of Taiwan. Method of Areca Nut Propagation, Seedling Production, and Harvest Areca nut farmers in Yacheng pay special attention to the areca palm flower, which is essential to enable the production of areca nuts. After a flower blossoms, nuts will soon appear and grow. When they are large enough, they are harvested one bushel at a time by using a long bamboo pole with a sharp knife attached to the tip. If neighbors need help harvesting, people will always lend a hand. Nobody pays for areca nut harvesting labor unless they are operating a large-scale plantation, in which case they would hire laborers from Mainland China. After the harvest, areca nuts are put into bags weighing around 200 jin each and taken to the wholesale market. The first harvest is usually in April and harvesting continues through January. It is possible to harvest areca nuts when they are not yet fully mature. These are the kind chewed in Taiwan, about the size of a ripe olive. Sometimes farmers harvest smaller nuts since that can be done faster than waiting for them to mature, which can take up to three additional months. However, local Hainan chewers prefer the larger fully mature nuts, so if a farmer harvests immature smaller nuts, it is because a Taiwanese buyer has placed an order. As long as all the areca nuts are sold, however, the farmers will make profit, whether immature or mature. Farmers make their own areca palm seedlings from their own trees by leaving a few areca nuts on the tree and allowing them to fully mature, then harden and naturally fall to the ground. By this time, they are impossible to chew and only useful 338 as seeds. Areca nuts harvested before they naturally fall will never become seeds, so it is important to leave some on the trees if one wants to start a new generation. After a full year, the seed will sprout on its own. It is then put into a special nutrient-rich soil bag. After another year, it can be transplanted anywhere that conditions are appropriate. The first fruiting will occur around three years later. This means that it takes around five years from the seed falling to the ground until the next generation of areca nuts is produced. Farmers sometimes buy or sell seedlings, usually sold in their second year of the special nutrient-rich soil bag treatment, the current price of which was 1 RMB each. Wholesale areca nuts are sold for between 1 and 2 RMB per jin, a weight measurement that equals between 22 to 24 areca nuts, whether they are sold to local retailers, foreign exporters, or the Lingshui factory where Hainan areca nuts are dried for export to Hunan. Each areca palm tree produces six or seven bushels of nuts per year. Each bushel of areca nuts weighs 10 to 20 jin. With a price of 1 to 2 RMB per jin, the annual income per areca palm tree is around 40 RMB. According to one of the farmers, “It’s better to plant areca palms than mango trees because even if no one wants to buy your areca nuts, you can still sell them to the Lingshui factory; but if no one wants to buy your mangoes, they will just go rotten.” Two Kinds of Areca Nuts: Round and Long There are two different “kinds” of areca nuts in Hainan (see Figure 48), both of which are the same species, areca catechu, but have different shapes and supposedly different psychoactive intensities. One is round “like a ping-pong ball,” softer, sweeter 339 to the taste, and according to locals, “won’t make you drunk.” Another is longer, harder, bitterer to the taste, and “will make you drunk.” If a seed from a tree that produces round areca nuts is planted, it will result in a tree that produces only round nuts, and likewise for long seeds. According to the farmers, “Hainan people love to chew the round kind of areca nut” and local people of Yacheng will always try to keep or buy round nuts for their own chewing. Both round and long areca nuts can be sold, so farmers plant and harvest both kinds. The long areca nuts are reportedly sold mostly to local Li people, especially during Lunar New Year when demand is highest, or else to the Lingshui factory for drying. For areca nut farmers in Hainan, there is always enough demand to sell their whole harvest every season, and nothing goes to waste. Figure 48: Two kinds of areca nuts, round (left) and long (right). 340 Marketing Betel Nut at the Yacheng Rural Nightclub One of the women we talked with had been chewing betel nut for over twenty years, now in her mid-forties. Her family has always had a household areca palm garden, which she confirmed was a common practice in Yacheng, Huangliu, and Ledong. Even if a household doesn’t have much garden space, they could still plant between 12 and 20 areca palms. The only reason a family would not have areca palms is for lack of space, and she noted that her garden has “only 20 trees” for that reason. Most gardens have many more (see Figure 49). Figure 49: Areca palm gardens in Yacheng. 341 In addition to selling her betel nut at the wholesale market, she also sells betel nut at a nightclub, the biggest dance hall in Yacheng, working from eight o’clock to midnight nightly. At the time of our interview, in January, business was slow because people were tired from working in the fields all day long and not in the mood for dancing at night, but would rather go home to rest. The only customers were businessmen who didn’t work on the farms. Even then, she was able to make 20 to 30 RMB per night, buying wholesale and selling retail at the dance club. When one of the women found out we came from Taiwan, she encouraged us to import Hainan areca nut to Taiwan, “You know, betel nut costs 10 RMB per jin in Taiwan, but only 2 RMB here, so the betel nut business must be making lots of money over there in Taiwan. Come here and do business, buy from us. When it’s in season, you’ll make lots of money!” We asked how we could preserve the areca nuts traveling across the many borders to get them to Taiwan in time to be sold and chewed fresh. She said by leaving the cap on the nut and packing it well, keeping it cool, each nut could last for over one week, but if the cap is removed, the nut will quickly spoil. Marketing Betel Nut in Sanya City On Sanya City’s main street, called Jiefang Road (literally, “Liberation Road”), banks, bookstores, the main bus and train station, the post office, restaurants, grocery and hardware stores all give the feeling of a small town. Randomly in shaded spots on the sidewalks, and regularly in front of the main bus and train stations and market gates, elderly women sit with baskets of fruit, vegetables, and betel nuts for sale. 342 It was in this context that we first encountered fresh betel nut in Sanya City, being sold by an elderly woman sitting behind a basket filled with fresh peanuts, green areca nuts, triangularly folded betel leaves, and strings of skewered dried betel nut (see Figure 50). When we purchased betel nut, these elderly women vendors usually asked us how we knew what betel nut was, and were surprised to see that we chewed. We would respond that we had come from Taiwan where people also chew betel nut. Figure 50: Betel nut vendors in Sanya City. 343 The vendors seemed unaware that people in Taiwan also chew betel nut, and were especially shocked that anyone resembling a foreigner, as I do, would even know what betel nut was, much less purchase and chew it. One areca nut sells for 1 RMB (at that time valued at 8 RMB per 1 USD), and is cut into four pieces that provides four chews, so one betel nut chew costs around 0.03 USD (three cents). Betel pepper leaves are included according to how many nuts purchased. So, for every areca nut, four betel pepper leaves are included, each already dusted with lime paste and folded into bite-sized triangles. While the betel pepper leaf and lime paste seemed identical to those in Taiwan, the areca nut in Hainan was not only twice as large (see Figure 51), but also much more fibrous with thicker skin, and very tough to chew. The effects of chewing were also much stronger than in Taiwan. Figure 51: Size difference between Taiwan, Hainan, and Hunan betel nut (left), and the variety of fresh and dried betel nut available in Sanya City (right). Betel nut vendors, all elderly women sitting alone with baskets on the ground in front of them, in the style common throughout Southeast Asia, can be found 344 sporadically along Jiefang Road, selling fresh and dried betel nut. Unlike the Xiangtan, Hunan style packaged dried betel nut, there were no flavors added to the dried betel nut sold by street vendors. Along Jiefang Road, there are two traditional markets, called First Market and Second Market. Sitting directly beneath the Second Market gate were always several elderly women selling betel nut. It is significant that all the betel nut vendors in Sanya are elderly women dressed in long sleeved blouses and slacks usually in muted and plain colors, and especially that they sit low to the ground with their baskets in front of them. The elderly female vendors do not stand up and hand betel nut to customers, instead it is the customers who must either squat down or at the very least bend forward to hand over the money and receive the bag of prepared betel nut. Even without any overt ritual drama consciously attached to the transaction, the result is the customer lowering the head toward the elderly female vendor, who remains seated on a low wooden stool. At most, the vendor extends her arm up to or slightly above their own eye-level while handing the bag of betel nut to the customer. Furthermore, it is the customer who must approach the elder female betel nut vendor, while the vendor remains stationary. Perhaps it is not only a stretch of my own imagination to see a gendered relationship inherent in these transactions where the elder female vendor represents a stationary and grounded femininity (akin to the nurturing power of the earth itself) that is the source of the plant ingredients vis-à-vis the mobile masculinity of the customer. Especially as the customer inevitably lowers the head and bends the body in a partial prostration toward the vendor during the transaction, it seems as if the elder females are momentarily representing the nurturing 345 power of the earth itself, and being appreciated as such by the customer, who gives an offering of money and a certain degree of respect in lowering oneself to receive the “gift” that has grown out of the earth and has been prepared by a female elder. Also, the non-sexual, or perhaps more exactly, “post-sexual” nature of these elder female vendors marks the transaction as one of purity, an exchange of offerings (in this case, money) and respect (in this case, lowering of the head) for the psychoactive plant substance that combines plant and mineral ingredients. As we already know from Chapter 6, the situation in Taiwan is quite different, where a young over-sexualized girl sells betel nut by running out into busy traffic from a glass-enclosed aquarium-like vending station, dressed in sexually provocative and brightly colored outfits, demonstrating her agility and fertility by dancing through traffic and squeezing between passing cars and trucks to deliver a bag of betel nut to an over-masculinized man who remains seated, sheltered from public view, behind the wheel of a large automobile or truck. That betel nut vendors in Taiwan and Hainan are both stereotypically women is also noteworthy. Interestingly, mature women sell mature areca nuts in Hainan, while immature women sell immature nuts in Taiwan. In terms of economics, betel nut is much cheaper in Hainan than Taiwan, and while some communities or families may earn their livelihoods from areca nut plantations, the betel nut industry is nowhere near as lucrative in Hainan. In fact, the most lucrative industry in Hainan is tourism, to which we now turn our attention. 346 Chapter 11: Tourist Development and Betel Nut Chewing in Hainan In 1983 there were no hotels in Hainan. By 2005 there were over 200 star-rated hotels hosting an estimated 12 million tourists per year. Ever since the 1984 designation of Hainan as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and its attainment of provincial status in 1988, the PRC government has encouraged investment in Hainan’s tourist development, promoting it as the “Hawaii of the East.” After the 1980s economic reform in China, a “new elite” class of Mainland Chinese became the first to have a disposable income that could be spent on travel and tourism. For these newly rich Mainlanders, a trip to tropical Hainan Island in the wintertime, especially returning with a photograph of them taken at the “End of the World and Edge of the Sea” (Tianya Haijiao), the southernmost point of the Chinese (PRC) World, gradually became a marker of elite status in post-socialist China. Chinese Mainland investment in Hainan’s tourist development skyrocketed in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, with construction of hotels and resorts along the southern beaches of Sanya County. The sandy beaches in Sanya City, most notably those in Dadonghai, Yalongwan, and Tianya Haijiao were the first targets for development. Fishing and farming villages were displaced without protest as fortunes were expected to be made. By the late 1990s, after a boom and bust in real estate, the tourism infrastructure in Sanya was equipped to handle more tourists than were arriving, and so further construction projects were abandoned. At the turn of the 21 st century foreign investment had become the focus for tourist development in Sanya. An international airport was opened with direct flights from 347 Europe and Russia, and bids to host international conferences and competitions were submitted. Upon our arrival in 2003, Sanya was about to host the “Miss World Beauty Pageant” in the newly constructed Crown of Beauty Theatre (see Figure 52), a bid they again won the following year. The Chinese women’s Olympic volleyball team was practicing on the beach in Sanya. Groups of Mainland Chinese tourists were constantly present. We even witnessed a family of European tourists at Dadonghai, and one American English teacher based in Beijing on winter vacation with her daughter in Xidao (West Island). Figure 52: Sanya tour guide book cover (left), and poster advertising Miss World Beauty Pageant in Sanya in 2003. 348 Very few foreigners, defined as “non-PRC citizens,” however, travel to Hainan. From 2000 through 2005, a mere 3% of visitors were foreigners (Hainan Province Statistics Bureau 2006), of which almost all were from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, with only a negligible percentage from other countries. Although the provincial and local county governments try hard to promote foreign tourism, still it is the annual flow of Mainland Chinese visitors that supports the tourist industry in Hainan. In Sanya, because of a reliable “snow bird” phenomenon of northern Mainlanders taking refuge in tropical Hainan during the coldest months, winter is generally the peak season, especially during the Lunar (Chinese) New Year holiday. Two other peak seasons are the national holidays in the first week of May, and the first week of October. Summer is usually the low season. These short-term visitors to Hainan stay one week on average, while long-term visitors, investors in the tourist industry, and “snow birds” may stay for a few months at a time. This chapter investigates the impact of tourist development on ethnic politics and betel nut chewing practices in Sanya. First, an overview of hotel and guesthouse accommodations is presented. Next, Sanya’s various tourist destinations are explored. The resort at Xidao (West Island) provides a case study in how a local fishing village was impacted by tourism in Sanya. The recent phenomenon of foreign “indigenous” cultural spectacle as found in Xidao and the so-called “Barbarian Valleys” is analyzed as attempts to both create and satisfy Mainland Chinese tourists’ “quests for the exotic” matched up with foreign investors’ and local tour guides’ “quests for profit.” These are in contrast to the ways in which the Utsat utilize their more commercial, entrepreneurial and cosmopolitan orientation in the tourist industry and the 349 comparative lack of involvement among Li and Miao people, even though potential opportunities seem promising. Finally the chapter analyzes the impact of tourism on betel nut chewing in Hainan and observes that instead of ostracizing local culture from the tourism industry, new strategies for its inclusion as one of Hainan’s “local specialties” could benefit local people as well as attract additional tourists. Sanya Tourist Industry Sanya City is located in a bay where a long coastal road, called Binhai Road, marks the edge of the city, the southern side of which is a public sandy beach extending to the South China Sea. The city has largely turned into a tourist attraction itself, especially along Binhai Road where many high-rise hotels and modern apartments have been recently built, and many still under construction (see Figure 53). Figure 53: View of Sanya City Beach in December of 2003. 350 Tourists are offered horse rides on Sanya beach, and are inevitably approached by tricycle-rickshaw drivers who offer to take them to expensive seafood restaurants. However, within walking distance from Sanya City beach there is a large and inexpensive fresh seafood market and dining area where both locals and tourists congregate at night. Our handful of “restaurant” dining experiences in Hainan (in both Haikou and Sanya) were both expensive and uncomfortable, with waitresses assigned to every table monitoring customers’ every move, and refilling tea cups after each sip. While “service” at the tourist spots was overbearing, outside of tourist spots, the lack of service was also extreme. In local restaurants, post offices, banks, and bus stations, active competition with locals was required to get any kind of service, as must be learned painfully through experience. I once waited at the local post office in Sanya to mail a letter, thinking erroneously that I was in a “line” of customers, only to witness countless locals walk right up to the postal clerk’s desk and complete their transactions in front of myself and other people who had been waiting. After realizing that I would have to push my way up to the front, and extend my arm towards the clerk over the heads of people standing in front of me, hoping she would pick my letter next, I still had to wait for another long while, since the clerk was inclined to serve people who pushed their letters directly into her hand first. The perhaps “Western” notion of “waiting in line” was not rewarded in Hainan, and perhaps the same goes for Mainland China as well. If you waited in line, there you would wait, presumably forever; while the largest and strongest people forced their way through the crowd, the courteous were destined to wait. Instead of the “nail that sticks out gets 351 hammered down” (as in Japan, and therefore also in Taiwan), “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” in Hainan. On the streets of Sanya City, small tourist shops promoting “local specialties” can be found on nearly every block. Local specialties in Hainan include tropical agricultural products such as coconuts, coffee, and black pepper as well as oceanic or animal products such as pearls, coral, seashells, and exotic items such as swallow nests (a delicacy, eaten for nutritional enhancement in China) and seahorses (used as traditional medicine to enhance male virility). Nowhere in these shops was betel nut, even the dried packaged kind, available for purchase. In larger supermarket-style tourist shops, the interior is designed into a maze of aisles which forces the flow of customers through the entryway, after the crossing of which the customer cannot turn back until the person completes a full walk through every aisle and out the one and only exit, supposedly maximizing each customer’s purchasing potential. In every aisle are shelves overstocked with row upon row of the same few products, and at least one salesperson per aisle, usually a young woman with heavy make-up and dressed in a uniform including a flower-print shirt or airline stewardess-style suit, waiting there to introduce or promote specific brands of local specialty products. Although some fresh fruits were available, neither fresh nor dried betel nut was sold in these larger “local specialty” shops either. In fact, betel nut was actively concealed from tourists. Going along with the “Hawaii of the East” theme, local specialty shops all sell Hawaiian flower-print shirts and shorts in bright saturated colors. Visitors are encouraged and usually do buy these Hawaiian shirts that they then wear as they tour 352 around Sanya. Therefore, “all good tourists” naturally become easily identifiable targets for locals promoting tour packages or seafood restaurant experiences, marked by their relatively pale skin and bright flower-print clothing (see Figure 54). Figure 54: Sanya tourist attire, flower-print clothing for sale in tourist specialty shop (left), and a tourist wearing the outfit (right). Dadonghai Beach (“Great Eastern Sea”) Tourist Resort Dadonghai Beach (see Figure 55) is one of a few popular tourist destinations offering accommodations in Sanya. All along the beach are brand new luxury hotels and restaurants, each with its own style of (post)modern tropical architecture and landscaped gardens with integrated swimming pools, lounge chairs with umbrellas in bright colors. Some were still under construction during our fieldwork in 2003. Walking along the beach are a majority of tourists, nearly all from mainland China, wearing their tourist uniforms, and several female Utsat vendors, from twenty to fifty years old, selling fruits and sugarcane (but not betel nut) that they carry with them in two baskets hanging on both ends of a bamboo shoulder pole, or younger women 353 selling pearl necklaces or seashell ornaments draped around their necks and arms. No one on the beach, neither locals nor tourists, was selling or chewing betel nut. Figure 55: Dadonghai Beach, view from mountain (left) and seashore (right). The usual water-play activities are available here, including jet-ski rental and parasailing. There is also an area designated for swimming, though the waves are at times quite large and tend to break very close to the beach, thus not ideal for surfing or body-boarding. Mingyue Guesthouse: Budget Accommodations near Sanya Market In Sanya City, a few blocks from the City Beach, there are several budget guesthouses. One called the Mingyue is located in a building adjacent to the Second Market. The daily rent is less than half the price of “budget hotels” at tourist resort beaches such as Dadonghai, but the noise level in the rooms, sounds from the nearby market and busy intersection, is enough to make guests spend most of their time outside. The six rooms were usually filled up with tourists from the Mainland, especially on weekends, perhaps because of its convenient location, in walking 354 distance of the beach, bus and train stations, and traditional and seafood markets. The rooms were kept impeccably clean, and accommodations were minimal though sufficient for sleeping. Each private guest room had its own shower and toilet, although the shower was positioned directly on top of an Asian-style (squatting) toilet. The owner of the guesthouse, born in Heilongjiang, China, had moved to Sanya a couple years ago along with his wife and mother, to operate this guesthouse. He was not a betel nut chewer, and knew very little about betel nut chewing. Unlike most local people involved in the tourist industry, he asked no questions of his guests, and didn’t try to sell anything else. Living above the traditional market, however, meant waking up with the first rooster calls, though in addition to actual roosters, it was the honking horns and roaring engines of motor vehicles that did the loudest calling. Since the market downstairs opens at dawn, vendors arrived in the pre-dawn hours to set up, driving in to the market and unloading produce, honking their horns as they arrived, announcing their crossing of an intersection in a kind of friendly greeting. Only early birds, or else those equipped with earplugs would be able to endure the routine. Beachfront Road Guesthouses Seeking to rent a room with a kitchen for the next three months of our stay, we first explored the hotels designed for “long-term” tourists, those who would stay from a few weeks to a couple months at a time. Similar to the Dadonghai resort area, Sanya’s Beachfront Road also had several large-scale hotel complexes, as well as 355 apartment- style buildings with individually owned rooms for short and long-term lease, and also for sale to investors. One of these hotel complexes, a newly constructed, vast and empty building had a room for rent, so we decided to take a look. We were led into the elevator and to the third floor, where we stepped onto a brand new white polished marble floor, with our footsteps echoing through a hallway that was lined with several identical doors on both sides of the white walls. It felt cold and empty, like a hospital without people. The rooms were organized into modern three bedroom suites with one shared living room, bathroom and kitchen. Guests could rent one or more bedrooms; the master bedroom with a private bath would be more expensive, but still share a kitchen and living room. Guests staying in one of the bedrooms could never be certain when other guests would check in to the bedroom next door, and begin sharing the kitchen, bath, and living room. Evidently these are designed for large groups or families who would rent or lease the whole unit. The Seabird Guesthouse The Seabird Guesthouse, located at the corner of an alley off of Beachfront Road, is an older style two-storey structure, which seemed to have been renovated several years ago. Gardens with dozens of bonsai trees surrounded the house. A spacious suite was available on the second floor, with a balcony, French doors, a private living room with a huge plate glass window facing the ocean, one bedroom, and a spacious bathroom that could easily be made into a simple kitchen. The Seabird is one of a kind in Sanya City because it is operated by local Hainanese people who had simply 356 transformed their family’s old residence, where all the children had grown up and subsequently moved out, into a guesthouse, but did not develop it into a hotel. Unlike the Mingyue or other “family guesthouses” (jiating luguan) which were specifically designed for tourism and usually owned and operated by immigrants from Mainland China, the Seabird still retains the feeling of an actual home in its structure and operation. Grandpa Lu, in his mid-seventies, is the father of three sons aged early forties to fifties, and lives on site. He is a retired agriculture specialist, who used to work for the PRC government to educate local farmers on new technologies, specifically to help the Li people learn basic farming and cash crop plantation techniques in Southern Hainan. We had witnessed some of the results of his work in the Li villages of Bacun and Jiayao (discussed in Chapter 8). After he retired, Grandpa Lu earned his reputation and career in the field of bonsai tree cultivation. His exquisite bonsai collections are displayed in every corner of the Seabird, including the roof. He also owns a bonsai garden across the alley from the Seabird. Grandpa Lu’s youngest son manages the daily business of the guesthouse, and lives in Sanya but not on the premises. The room we rented belonged to the second son who had left for university study in Guangzhou several years earlier, majored in art and photography. He had produced a beautiful photography book on Sanya which shows the most popular images of the tourist attractions. After graduating he had been working and living in Guangzhou most of the time. He was married with a teenage daughter, and now owns a company specializing in interior design, advertising and product design in Guangzhou. 357 In addition to Grandpa Lu, there were three young Hainanese women from Haikou, aged early twenties, who lived on site, but in a small dormitory in the back of the Seabird estate, a room next to the kitchen across the central garden plaza from the main building. They operated the front desk, and did housekeeping and cooking for Grandpa Lu. None of the Lu family nor the young women chewed betel nut, but they all knew about the practice. Generally, the Lu family could be considered the “local elite,” those who had all successfully embarked on careers in art and commerce, itself a rarity in Hainan. For example, there were no museums of contemporary art in Sanya, or other artistic or cultural centers that promoted such endeavors, which is evidently why Mr. Lu had to travel to Guangzhou to launch his career in photography and advertising. A few days after we checked in to the Seabird, a family from Northeastern China, a middle-aged couple with a three year-old boy and his grandmother checked in to another room in the Seabird. They had (amazingly) driven their van all the way from Heilongjiang to Sanya, finally taking it on a ferry from Guangdong’s Leizhou Peninsula to Haikou, and then driving south to the very edge of the Chinese world, Sanya. The young women who worked at the Seabird told us this family had stayed there the previous year for three months during the wintertime, and were part of the Mainland “snow bird” phenomenon. 358 Tianya Haijiao 1 : Beyond the “End of the World and Edge of the Sea” The most famous beach in southern Hainan is called Tianya Haijiao (literally, “the end of the sky and edge of the sea”) and features prominently in all tourist propaganda on Hainan. This site itself has a history extending back to the Song Dynasty when the four Chinese characters were carved into boulders on the edge of the seashore. Today’s Tianya Haijiao (see Figure 56) is a bustling tourist spot with an extensive curios market selling all of the “local specialty” products, which of course excludes betel nut. The parking lot is combed by Utsat women selling jewelry and other vendors selling sunglasses and various trinkets. We got as close as the front gate to peer onto the exclusive beach. If we wished to cross the gate we would have to pay the equivalent of two nights rent at the Seabird, 140 RMB each, so we decided to pass on the visit. Just walking through the parking lot filled with tourist busses and vending booths was sufficient to confirm the general idea. A visit to Tianya Haijiao beach, however, is a “must” for every Chinese tourist to Hainan. As mentioned above, this is the spot that first made Hainan famous in the Chinese imagination, owing to the presence of the large stones into which the four Chinese characters are carved. 1 The first two characters of Tianya Haijiao (天涯海角), “tianya” literally means “end of the sky.” In the Chinese worldview, “sky” implies the meaning of “world” or “universe,” covering the entire existential landscape. For English readers, I have chosen to translate as “end of the world” to emphasize the location of Tianya Haijiao as the “end of the Chinese World.” 359 Figure 56: Tianya Haijiao tourist beach in Sanya. Unless one is determined to set foot on that particular beach, the surrounding beaches are more inviting, since they are all free to access and also strikingly beautiful with sections of white sandy beach nestled in between piles of rock formations. Best of all, they still remain secluded. Instead of joining hundreds of tourists on a small stretch of sandy beach, we rode the motorcycle borrowed from Mr. Lu further west along a dirt road and explored every possible route to the ocean until we came upon one that finally led to an ocean view, and walked down a steep hill to the rocky shore and spotted a stretch of pristine sandy beach with no one else around (see Figure 57). After a couple of hours, finally two men walked toward us from the other direction. 360 Figure 57: One of many secluded beaches near Tianya Haijiao. The two men were Mainlanders who had been living in Hainan for several years, working as laborers. We told them we had found this place after passing up Tianya Haijiao. They replied, “We locals don’t have to pay. We can just walk right into Tianya Haijiao. For you two, you could just walk around the fence and enter from the beachside. No one would notice.” It is not surprising that they presumed we would want to visit Tianya Haijiao, yet most interesting is that these two Mainland laborers, along with the general tourist development planners in Hainan, not to mention the 97% Mainland Chinese tourists, all had no idea that “foreign tourists” would much rather find recreation through “privacy” on a secluded beach, and consider that kind of experience much more precious than squeezing into overcrowded tourist destinations. These men also warned us to be careful wandering out on our own because there are many thieves and robbers. They told us that once when they were taking a nap at a nearby construction site, they awoke to find their shoes and some clothing stolen by 361 “local Li people.” And sure enough, when we returned to our motorcycle, we found our motorcycle helmets were missing! Elusive Luobi Cave Luobi means literally “dripping brush” in reference to the action of writing with a Chinese calligraphy brush. 2 Luobi Cave is identified as a “point of interest” in Sanya County in several Chinese language travel guidebooks, where it is described as a limestone grotto where water drips down from long stalactites. It is said that if a writer (or calligrapher) stands in the cavern and catches a drop of water falling down from a stalactite into the palm of his or her hand, then the writer will be blessed with unlimited inspiration. The cave is described as “the writing room of giants” and features a long stalactite resembling a huge calligraphy brush descending from the ceiling directly above an indentation on the floor that could be interpreted as a giant ink grinding basin (Wang, Yang, and Yi 2000, 88). It wasn’t for inspiration that we went searching for Luobi Cave, but rather to see its state of preservation as a tourist destination. In 1992, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Paleoanthropology Center, the Hainan Museum, and the Sanya City Museum had reportedly collaborated on an archaeological excavation for three weeks. The team found dozens of animal bones, stone and bone tools, and also human teeth that dated to 10,000 BP, the end of the Paleolithic Period (Wang Tian-Jing 1996, 112). 2 Historically, Chinese calligraphers mixed their own ink by grinding soft black stones and adding water in an ink basin. 362 For several hundred years Luobi Cave had been a kind of “tourist” destination for travelers (exiles, refugees, immigrants, etc.) from the north who made the long journey to Hainan, perhaps on their way to Tianya Haijiao, which also served as an inspiration point from as early as the Tang Dynasty. Both of these locations are remembered as places for Mainland Chinese exiles to poetically express their feelings of loneliness and solitude. Figure 58: Luobi Cave (above), with detail of wall engravings (below). 363 In 2003, however, Luobi Cave, unlike its counterpart Tianya Haijiao, was no longer a tourist destination, nor was it even referenced on any road signs. In fact, we had a very difficult time finding it, riding our borrowed motorcycle north of Sanya City into dirt roads through agricultural fields and asking farmers for directions. Finally, we did find the cave, on the side of a high hill in an otherwise flat wide valley near a river, with nobody else around. The site would definitely be considered inspirational, perhaps even sacred, to people living there at any time. Inside the cave are numerous inscriptions that visitors have carved into the walls, including some Ming poetry and etchings of human figures (see Figure 58). It was not clear when each of the inscriptions was made. The fact that there are no signs, and no effort to either promote or protect Luobi Cave, shows the untapped potential a prehistoric and cultural heritage site in the contemporary tourist development program in Hainan, although it is perhaps for the best that the tourism industry has not appropriated Luobi Cave to its interests, or else who knows what could happen to the site as a result. It is hoped that the site will, however, be protected at least until serious archaeological excavations can be conducted. Xidao: Extreme of Tourism Development in Sanya Perhaps the most extreme example of tourist development in Hainan is found on the small off-shore island called Xidao, (literally “West Island”). Development of “Xidao Marine Play-garden” began in 1996, while the resort officially opened for business in 1999. Xidao has been continuously surrounded by controversy ever since 364 local fishing village members held protests shortly after its opening in 2000. Xidao is divided into three exclusive districts – a fishing village, a military base, and a tourist resort – in the same way that Hainan has these three primary internal regions. In this way Xidao is a kind of microcosm of contemporary Hainan sociopolitical organization. Ever since arriving in Sanya, we had been encouraged to visit Xidao from many people for different reasons. We first leaned about Xidao from local Sanya television broadcasts promoting it as a beach resort for water sports. In conversation with local people at the Sanya markets, when we introduced ourselves as coming from Taiwan, local people told us that a Taiwan investor had recently opened the “Xidao Marine Play-garden,” and that we should visit there to meet him. Upon meeting friends in the Utsat community of Huixin, we learned that several of them, including two of the grooms and one of the brides in the weddings we witnessed, worked there. During our fieldwork with the Utsat, we also learned that the most esteemed betel pepper leaves (in their opinion) come from Xidao. For all these reasons, we planned a visit, and if possible hoped to speak with the Taiwanese boss and visit the local fishing village to learn about their betel pepper leaf plantations. Xidao Marine Play-garden We arrived to the official Xidao Departure Port located between the Utsat village of Huixin and Tianya Haijiao, toting along our own snorkeling gear since the advertisements noted the underwater beauty of the place. At the port, we paid 120 365 RMB each for a round-trip speedboat ride to the island. As we boarded the boat, we met one of our Utsat friends, the elder brother groom in the “double wedding,” who was bringing a tour group to visit the island. We chatted with him on the way, and upon arrival he guided his group of Mainland Chinese tourists to the few activity spots in the small resort area, which included “underwater walking,” jet-ski rental, parasailing, or golf-cart rental for a short trip to the tip of the island. Of all these activities, the only one that is included in the entry fee is access to a white sand beach. We walked to the beach, hoping we could put on our snorkeling gear and take a look at the underwater scenery. However, once we set up and got into the water, we noticed a string of buoys marking out the area. Whenever anyone set foot across the buoys on the land or swam outside the buoys, lifeguards would blow their whistles and instruct the transgressor to return to inside the buoys. By early afternoon, the entire demarcated area was so full of people that even lying down on the sand or floating unobstructed in the ocean became impossible (see Figure 59). Upon asking the lifeguard where was the best place to go snorkeling, he replied, “No snorkeling is allowed on the island.” The only way to see underwater was to take an “underwater walk” where guests are fitted with an airtight metal helmet and iron shoes, and descend down cement stairs into the ocean while breathing through a hose. This sounded like a prison sentence to me, just the opposite of the free floating feeling of scuba diving, plus the fee for such a “walk” would be several days rent. We left the beach area to explore what other “activities” were available to tourists. 366 Figure 59: Demarcated swimming area on beach at Xidao resort. As we walked away from the sandy beach along a paved pathway towards the restaurant-bar and toilets, we noticed the “Xidao Entertainment Center” and a sign advertising yet another activity, “European Female Mud-Wrestling and Ethnic Thailand Folk Performance” (see Figure 57). At first, the connection between these two activities escaped my imagination. Moreover, the connection of either of these activities to Xidao, or even Hainan, and especially to China, was difficult to guess. Thankfully, below the sign was the following description, which helped to clarify: In some contemporary Eastern European countries, people celebrate the harvest by wrestling in the corn kernels to enhance their entertainment. They also do so during important festivals or holidays. Usually they voluntarily organize large-scale mud or chocolate wrestling competitions as a method of celebration and self-entertainment. Among all the activities, mud-wrestling became the most 367 popular one. It provides not only exciting and stimulating scenes, but also exemplifies the Eastern European women’s pursuit and longing for health and independent livelihoods. The description left me wondering about the relation of Eastern European mud-wrestling to Thailand Folk Performance or Hainan culture, but still it did explain the reason for showing mud-wrestling. Evidently, tourists would be interested to celebrate “Eastern European women’s pursuit of healthy and independent livelihoods.” At this point, I thought it best to visit the fishing village and look for the famous Xidao betel pepper leaves, since the idea of the “play-garden” was clear enough. We asked some local workers for directions to the village, and were told firmly, “No tourists are allowed to leave the resort.” We asked if we could schedule an interview with the Taiwanese boss. The employee told us that he is not on the island, and his schedule is too busy to hold interviews anyway. Though we did try, we finally were not able to talk with him. On the ground near the employee dormitory area, there was one chewed betel nut quid on the ground, the only evidence of chewing in the whole resort area. Disappointed on every single front, we waited patiently at the dock for the speedboat to take us back to Sanya. The tourists, however, were happy to pay outrageously high prices for what seemed to us incredibly contrived experiences. Yet, the resort is successful because it targets the desires of its clientele, wealthy Mainland Chinese who are escaping freezing winter weather for a chance to be tropical tourists. They are not surprisingly very happy to spend extravagantly while on tour, because it represents their great fortune. The mere fact of being able to get to Sanya is already an indicator 368 of their great success in Chinese society. Once there, it is only appropriate to spend freely. Xidao Fishing Village Determined to get to Xidao fishing village, not only to find out about the famous betel pepper leaves, but also learn the villagers’ feelings about the resort, the following morning we returned to the port, and asked for a boat that went to the fishing village. There were no signs posted, the only evidence we were in the right place was several local people standing on a cement slab at the edge of the shore with several boxes of goods, and dozens of live ducks. The fee for the one-way journey was 5 RMB, and we were the only foreigners on the old wooden fishing boat. The motor was so loud as to almost preclude communication with anyone, though one young man who lives in the fishing village cuddled up next to us to chat on the boat with these two curious foreigners. From him we learned the population of the fishing village was around 4,000, most of whom supported their own subsistence by fishing and small-scale gardening. There is no market on the island, so whatever supplies were needed had to be transported from Sanya on these daily cargo boats. The young man then invited us to join his family for lunch. As we exited the boat, villagers waiting at the wooden dock, mostly children, stared at us in a quandary. On both sides of the narrow winding alley that connected the village to the port were old one and two storey houses, built with coral and reinforced with cement (see Figure 60). In less than five minutes, we arrived with the young man to his home 369 where both of his parents hospitably invited us for lunch. We offered betel nut, but they refused, happy to announce that their family was “free from the three bad habits” – chewing betel nut, smoking tobacco, and drinking liquor. They treated us with smoked and fresh fish and rice wine. The young man’s father, Mr. K, did most of the talking. After we began eating, Mr. K proudly showed us drawings he had made of the PRC leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou En-Lai. Figure 60: Houses in Xidao fishing village with walls made of coral. Mr. K was born on Xidao. His great-grandfather was a fisherman in Sanya, who moved there for the convenient fishing location, about one hundred years ago. When Mr. K was young, he left the island “to travel the outside world for a few decades,” and only returned home in the later years of his life. We asked if most villagers had to 370 leave the island to work. He said only a few left, the majority stayed on the island and made their living by fishing, just as their ancestors. He was the oldest of eleven children. Both of his parents passed away several years ago, so he became the head of his family. We asked Mr. K if the people of Xidao use betel nut in their wedding ceremonies. He said he remembered betel nut was given to the bride’s family when he was a child, but not anymore. Nowadays, the groom’s family still gives gifts, but that no longer includes betel nut. We noticed a lavish plantation of betel pepper leaves in the neighbor’s yard and asked about that. Mr. K said someone brought betel pepper seeds to the island over ten years ago and started the plantation, which had been through some very severe bug damage recently (see Figure 61). Figure 61: Betel pepper leaf garden (left), and betel pepper leaves growing up the trunk of an areca palm tree (right) in Xidao fishing village. When we mentioned some of our experiences at the resort, and asked how the villagers feel about the operation, Mr. K suggested that we first finish our meal and 371 talk more as we walk along the beach. As we arrived to the rocky seashore, Mr. K’s son was collecting sea cucumbers in the tide pools, while his father began to recount his story of the Xidao Marine Play-garden. According to Mr. K, most villagers, including himself, work at the resort. He works at night guarding the speed boats. So it was not safe to talk about this “delicate situation” in the village, because other people might hear it. Even when journalists wanted to interview the villagers, it was not allowed. We noticed a couple of pools made of cement combined with a natural rocky structure on the shore and asked what they were. Mr. K told us these pools were first built by the Taiwanese boss before the construction of the main resort on the other side of the island. Young girls, usually prostitutes, were taken here from Sanya, to bathe in the water during the day, while visitors watched or joined them in the water. Then the prostitutes would be taken back to Sanya to work at night. Mr. K confirmed that the Taiwanese boss started the operation of the Xidao in 1999, with a “lease” of the land from the government for fifty years. In 2000, the villagers protested the operation of the resort by occupying the speedboats, thereby blocking visitors already at the resort from returning to Sanya. Soon enough the military arrived and used tear gas to stop the protest. Four villagers were badly beaten, arrested, and were still imprisoned at that time in 2003. Mr. K reported that unfortunately, it was fellow villagers who turned them in. After this incident, no villagers dare to openly criticize what he called the “unfair operation” of the resort, since they fear their fellow villagers could report them to the authorities and have them arrested. 372 According to Mr. K, when the villagers first found out about this Taiwanese business investment for building a resort on their island, they were excitedly anticipating that their life would change for the better. But it turned out the Xidao resort was merely a product of the corrupt collaboration between foreign investment and the local government of Sanya. There was nothing in it for the villagers, no compensation for the loss of their land and fishing territory, only low paying jobs as security guards or janitors at the resort. Furthermore, the villagers who worked at the resort couldn’t even enter the resort without an identification card. If they left the resort and went home without prior permission, even briefly or for an emergency, they would have to pay fines that would essentially usurp their already meager wages. The reason that no tourist-visitors were allowed to enter the village from the resort was, according to Mr. K, because the resort wanted to make all the money from tourists, and not face any competition with locals selling food, soft drinks, beer or fruits. When our ancestors arrived here hundreds of years ago, there was no one living on the island. Besides fishing, we also cleared land to do farming and built our houses. Then the military came, took part of the island and reserved it for military use, but they didn’t build a military base or use the land in any way. Then the tourist development came in and took another part of the island and set up this resort. Our space is getting smaller and smaller, so that now even just to walk around on the island, there are gates and checkpoints when crossing the many boundaries. Later, as we walked around the island, we came upon a military checkpoint, where some soldiers in uniform were relaxing in hammocks in the shade. It seemed as if the military also had their own “tourist development” on the island. Just past the checkpoint and through a gate was a building complex that looked like a recreational center, but still seemed to be unfinished. 373 We asked Mr. K if there were many people like us visiting the village. He said only people who work in the resort could enter the village from there. The “Russian female mud-wrestlers,” for instance, rent houses in the village. And so, there had not been any outsiders who took the fishing boat directly to the village, we were the first. He elaborated that although there is a lot of animosity between the villagers and the Taiwanese boss, there is also the potential for resolution. Mr. K noted that two days before our arrival, the father of the Taiwanese boss of the resort was in the village barbershop having a haircut. One villager about thirty years old, who had recently lost his arm because of an accident while using explosives for fishing, approached the boss’ father, and indicated he would like to meet the boss of the resort. When asked why, the villager replied, “To try to find a job, since I lost my arm, and can’t continue my fishing work anymore.” After hearing this, the Taiwanese elder gave the villager 200 RMB. Mr. K concluded, “So, of course, there are nice people who sympathize with the poor. But they just don’t treat us employees that well.” Even if the investors were purely generous and wanted to share profits with the people of the fishing village, they would be hard-pressed to overcome the corruption of government officials that underwrote and influenced the whole process. Sanya government officials first encouraged foreign, in this case Taiwanese, investors to enter a “lease agreement” and then precluded any direct interaction or involvement with the fishing villagers, the very people whose land was leased to the Taiwanese business venture. Furthermore, whenever the fishing villagers attempted to protest the unfair treatment and the theft of their ancestral land and fishing areas, the Sanya 374 government had the villagers arrested. The real grievance is not with the foreign (Taiwanese) investors but with the government. 3 While it is true that the villagers are being paid for their labor in the tourist resort, it is not commensurate with what they have given, approximately two-thirds of their original land, one-third to the military and one-third to the tourist development industry. They realize that their rights were violated, and when they stood up to ask for a fair remedy, they were quickly and totally stopped by military and governmental force. Even individual villagers were usurped into the power-mongering corruption. In one sense this situation is to be expected in Hainan, with its long history of corruption, extending back to the first establishment of ports on Hainan Island in the Han Dynasty. In another sense, it points out the farce of “Special Economic Zones” as so-called free enterprise regions. If enterprise based on foreign investment was truly open in Hainan, then investors could deal directly with locals. Clearly that is not the case. Corrupt government officials remain at the central axis of economic life. In this way, any kind of sustainable “economic development” would be unlikely, especially any kind that would benefit the local people. Barbarian Valley Tours: Authentic Commoditized Tourist Experience The extreme of unregulated tourist development in Hainan has made possible a phenomenon known as “Barbarian Valleys” (ye ren gu). Although we did not experience or even hear about the tour while in Hainan, upon returning to California in 3 For an update on the Xidao situation, see the report by the China Information Center (2006). 375 2005 we noticed a report published in the Epoch Times that detailed the situation. The following description of Barbarian Valley is taken from that report (Epoch Times 2005, August 24, available, http://www.epochtimes.com/bt/5/8/24/n1029251.htm). Allegedly upwards of 80% of Mainland Chinese tourists to Hainan are taken to Barbarian Valleys by private tour guides. The “barbarians” are actually Wazu people from the Laos and Cambodian border areas who have been recruited to live in Hainan and perform as barbarians for tourists, for which they are paid 1,100 RMB per month, and a bonus 200 RMB if they are willing to shave their pubic hair and wear loin cloths. There are currently seven Barbarian Valleys, and as long as tourists continue paying to visit them, more could develop. From the (unnamed) author’s description of the performance, “dark-skinned barbarians dressed in loin cloths with their faces painted” greet tourists as they exit the tour bus, dancing wildly around them, then “juggle fire sticks and catch them with their crotches” for the climax of the show. There is intentionally no explanation offered as to the meaning of the performance. Barbarian Valleys have been operating since 2004 and attracted over one million visitors in the first year, with up to 1,800 visitors per day. Tour guides negotiate prices with tourists, ranging from 180 to 280 RMB, and then pay a nominal fee of 1 to 7 RMB per visitor to the management of the Barbarian Valley, which still produces great profits for both parties. According to the author, to operate a profitable tourist business, a higher percentage of “kickbacks to the tour guides” is necessary. Once one can hook the tour guides, the tourists’ money will come in return. All the tourist attractions in Hainan give tour guides kickbacks, except for Tianya Haijiao. The Barbarian Valleys, along with a few Li and Miao Folk Villages, and pearl or jewelry shopping centers reportedly give the highest percentage of kickbacks, so tour guides prefer to bring 376 tourists there. For example, a tourist pays 50 RMB per person to visit a Li or Miao Folk Village, or 250 RMB to visit the Sanya Diving Center, but the total sum is given back to the tour guides. Sometimes the tour attractions even have to pay the tour guides 3 to 5 RMB per visitor for bringing them in. These tourist attractions have a very low operating cost and rely on the rents collected from on-site vendors or extra fees charged for taking underwater photography for divers. In operations like these, tour guides have an incentive to take tourists in, and tourists might even enjoy their experience. Even though the author of the article and several fellow tourists felt the tour was not worth the amount spent, evidently the tourists found the experience enjoyable, and so tend not to question the authenticity of it. 4 The author of the Epoch Times article interviewed a tour guide who admitted that the Barbarian Valley experience was totally fabricated, but still insisted that he needs to make a living for himself and support his family. He asked rhetorically, “Who doesn’t want to show the real authentic Hainan flavor and take visitors to high quality sites?” During the fieldwork in Hainan, I found the most “authentic flavor” in agricultural rural and urban markets, which almost always included betel nut chewing. From my perspective, that “authentic flavor” is most present in the traditional markets in “authentic conversation” with local people, sitting with a group of Utsat in the 4 The Barbarian V alley phenomenon recalls to me the performance art of Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Pena (Fusco & Gomez-Pena 1992, Fusco 1995). In their “The Last Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit …” performed in New York City and around the world, the artists dressed in mock-Indian garb dancing to music pumped out of a boom-box in a cage. While the performance was designed and meant as a critique of stereotypes of American Indians, to the surprise of the artists, the majority of audience members interpreted it as “authentic.” This phenomenon in Hainan is of course not even meant as a critique, but is an actual claim to authenticity. 377 evenings, chatting and joking, or perhaps more in line with the “adventure tour,” in the journey we took with an Utsat friend into the mountains to find a pristine waterfall and our encounters with the people of the remote Li village of Jiayao. In other words, “authentic flavor” comes out of “authentic” social interaction with real local people. Moreover, from my perspective of course, the real “authentic flavor” of Hainan is actually the flavor of “betel nut,” which so far is not “tasted” in any of the tourism developments, but is in fact actively denied to tourists. Betel Nut Banned in Sanya On our frequent visits to Sanya’s “Second Market” from September 2003, there were always one or two betel nut vendors at the front gate, and more inside the vegetable market alley. We had been purchasing betel nut from them regularly, but one day in early November 2003, we couldn’t find any betel nut for sale. We walked further into the alley and asked a female vegetable vendor where we could find betel nut. She said the government had recently banned betel nut selling on the streets and in the markets, so our familiar betel nut vending grandmothers were no longer allowed to sell here anymore. We asked where we could find betel nut. She replied that she had some for sale. Then she reached underneath her vending table into a Styrofoam box and pulled out some betel nuts in a small black plastic bag. We asked why the government had banned selling betel nut. The vendor told us it was because of the upcoming “Miss World Beauty Pageant” to be held in Sanya in December 2003. She added that just a few days earlier, two jin of her betel nuts were confiscated, and she was told to not sell them in the market or on the streets. We asked 378 her why she continues to sell them, and she replied that customers continue to come to buy betel nut from her anyway, so she keeps a supply ready, but cannot display them in public view. In addition to selling betel nut in public, spitting betel nut juice was also now punishable with a fine. We asked if chewing betel nut was also prohibited. She said that chewing was not listed as prohibited, but only spitting juice or selling betel nut would be fined. So, we asked if we could chew with her and talk more. She welcomed us to stay, chew betel nut, and talk. After we sat down, another female vegetable vendor around sixty years old with more energy than a young child joined us. We offered her a chew, and then a Hainanese man from Dongfang in his mid-thirties, who was in Sanya visiting friends and looking for a job, noticed us chewing, chatting, and laughing, and joined as well. When we asked about the relation between the “Miss World Beauty Pageant” and the ban on betel nut, the vendor explained that selling and spitting was banned because “betel nut juice stains look like blood,” especially to foreigners, and therefore are considered “dirty.” Furthermore, the ban was in effect not only in Sanya City, but “everywhere” throughout Hainan. She continues to sell betel nut because her customers continue to demand it, but just keeps in hidden, literally “under the table.” The Hainanese man who had joined us announced that since the ban, he had been chewing betel nut without spitting the juice at all, and gave the following rationale, Non-chewers feel disgusted to see chewers spit. But, if we chew without spitting, then nobody will feel disgusted to see us spit! It might make you feel a little bit dizzier at first, but after a few times, you’ll get used to it. Some people say the first juice is the best part, so why should we spit it out? Not to mention, we keep the environment clean by not spitting. 379 Our impromptu betel nut chewing party in the center of the market, at the height of the ban on betel nut selling and spitting, reflects the light-hearted and practical philosophy of local Sanya betel nut chewers. They will obey the law whenever possible, and still find creative ways to continue their own chewing habit, even if it means selling betel nut from “under the table” or swallowing betel nut juice. First Market attracts both tourists and local people, especially at night because most of the packaged tours only include daytime events. The market extends down one long alley that connects Jiefang Road with a river, and has several smaller side alleys extending in both directions. Merchant shops line the alleys and street vendors set up in the middle of the alleys, selling all kinds of vegetables and fruits, and also merchandise such as clothing, toys, watches, and mobile phones. As soon as the ban on betel nut selling and spitting was in effect, two large red banners with white-painted print announcing the new restrictions on betel nut were hung in the market. One was hanging on the front of the main building in the center of the market, which should have read, “The uncivilized behaviors of selling and spitting betel nut are strictly prohibited,” but the words “strictly prohibited” (yan jing 嚴禁) had been removed. In another location, a banner strung across the main market alley read, “The penalty for spitting phlegm and betel nut juice is from 5 to 50 RMB,” but the words “penalty from 5 to 50 RMB” are obscured by another bigger banner hung across it which read, “New Year’s Sale, ladies dresses 30% off.” While the first banner had obviously been intentionally modified by vandals, and still the remnants of the original white paint made reading possible, the second banner was covered by the 380 work of a local merchant’s advertising. Directly beneath the first banner in the central intersection sat an elderly Utsat woman with a basket of betel nut for sale. People we interviewed at First Market all agreed that spitting betel nut juice on the ground was “dirty,” were aware of the ban, and had found various ways to continue chewing in spite of it. The four Hainanese teenage boys from Wanning shared their views as follows. Spitting betel nut juice definitely effects our environment, but solving the problem should rely on everyone’s self-awareness, not on a restriction or regulation. I’m the most self-aware one of us. These guys all spit wherever they like, but I always spit in the trash can. After the ban, we had also noticed small red plastic bags suddenly available on the city buses, so asked the boys if those bags were provided for spitting betel nut juice. They confirmed they were, but mentioned that they personally rarely chew on the bus, and if they do, they make sure to spit first. They further elaborated how they deal with the regulations and enforcement at the First Market. If you spit betel nut juice here at the First Market, you will be fined 5 RMB, so if you are about to spit, and you see someone is going to catch you, then you can quickly stick out your hand and catch your spit before it hits the ground! We asked who was enforcing the penalties, and they said it was the “market police.” They don’t wear uniforms, just a badge. There’s one over there, with the red sash on his arm, he’s the market security guard. They will fine you and you have to pay them right then. Actually, the fines probably don’t go to the government, but they just make some money for themselves, same as those guys who tow the cars away. He will ask you to pay him on the spot. If you don’t, he will tow your car away and you’ll have to pay more. You can pay him 300 RMB or pay the impound yard 500 RMB or more. They are real traffic police, but they just want to make more money. It’s all like this in our society. All the officers are greedy. They are not like me, who is like me? If that was my job, I would do it for my country, not just for my self-interest. 381 The boys understand the flexible social rules that are negotiated in each interaction with authority. It is generally best to accept whatever punishment is proposed the first time than to argue and try to get out of the punishment, which will inevitably bring on more. Moreover, they seem to value personal responsibility for the cleanliness of the environment in which they live. Even though they continue to chew betel nut, they do so responsibly. The boys’ understandings were corroborated by the watch vendor, Mr. Yu from Jiangxi. When we asked him if he had ever been fined for spitting betel nut juice, he replied, At the beginning of the ban, they tried to fine me, but finally just gave me a warning not to spit on the ground. So now I only spit in the trash can. But many people have been fined; it’s for real, yes. Some get fined 5 RMB and some get fined 50 RMB. If you don’t accept the initial fine, then it will rise up more and could become severe. The penalties are enforced by a special committee in the Sanya Hexi District that is trying to stop the spitting of betel juice during the Miss World Beauty Pageant. Because of this, the city has become very clean. I wish our environment could stay this clean, because it’s good for public health. Discussion of Tourism in Hainan The development of tourism has had a definite impact on betel nut chewing and ethnic relations in Hainan. At the same time, local people continue with their lives despite the development and regulations it has brought. As Mr. Yu noted, one result of the ban on spitting betel nut juice is a cleaner environment for all, and despite the ban on selling betel nut, it is still available everywhere for local people. The potential of keeping the “authentic flavor” of Hainan, which I submit is represented by betel nut chewing, through a transition into some as yet undefined local modernity is still there. 382 As one of the Hainanese boys noted, self-awareness is the key. There is nothing wrong or harmful that results from selling and chewing betel nut, but only the result of spitting betel nut juice indiscriminately that tarnishes the sense of aesthetic cleanliness and can present real public health issues, but is actually no different than spitting saliva, and not as potentially harmful as spitting phlegm, which is done perhaps more frequently in Beijing. Only after these issues are consciously addressed by chewers themselves could betel nut be presented as what it really is, a “local specialty.” Then it would not have to be hidden from tourists, but could be celebrated as the symbol of “genuine interaction” as it in daily life, and was in our fieldwork experiences, in exchange with local people. Insofar as tourist development has ostracized betel nut chewing, it has similarly impacted ethnic relations in Hainan, to the effect of heightening differences between outsiders (tourists and foreign investors) and local residents of Hainan. What we see in the few attempts at cultural tourism in Hainan, if “Barbarian Valley” could even be considered as such, indicate that Mainland Chinese tourists are not really interested in meeting local people in their villages, but come to Hainan for what is advertised to them, “sun, sea, sand, and sex” (Xie 2003). The Mainland Chinese tourists looking for cultural tourism would travel to Tibet, Yunnan, Guizhou, or perhaps Southeast Asia, but not Hainan. Why? If the “authentic flavor” of Hainan is presented as it is, there is not enough distance from Mainland Chinese historically to present it as “exotic” but rather it would seem simply “primitive Chinese,” which is perhaps why Hainan has developed its tourist industry first highlighting its natural tropical beauty, not cultural difference or diversity. Moreover, even if all the elites in Mainland China came to 383 Hainan for merely a short vacation only once in their lives, Hainan’s tourist industry would still thrive. Finally, it seems there is no incentive for Hainan to develop cultural tourism. From the perspective of the reigning notion of a “Great China ideology” (da zhongguo zhuyi), no local cultural expressions are encouraged or even tolerated anyway, unless they contribute directly to economic development for the whole “nation.” That is why there are “Chinese minorities” (shaoshu minzu) but not “indigenous people” (yuanzhumin) in the PRC. In Hainan, since the tourists are more than 96% from Mainland China, showing them what can only translate into “local Chinese” people’s “culture” just doesn’t have enough exotic attraction. From perspectives inside Hainan’s local cultures, for example, the people of Jiayao Village don’t even notice their own potential symbolic capital, that they indeed do have something “special” to offer outsiders, not only their homemade millet wine but their folk songs, stories, and the beautiful natural environment in which they live. On the other hand, Utsat merchants and entrepreneurs, mostly women, use the tourist resorts and hotspots as places to sell their items, neither they nor other local people are involved with planning development, though they are more aware that their own village is a potential tourist destination. The Utsat village is indeed visually rich, a high contrast of old and new, and the people are among the most beautifully and colorfully dressed, welcoming and friendly, at least to foreigners. Sustainable eco-cultural tourism could develop in these kinds of communities, and perhaps it will in the future. Instead of importing and creating ostensibly “exotic” experiences, there are opportunities for cultivating self-determined cultural expression. 384 If the natural environment is the primary draw for tourists, then instead of encroaching on the natural resources with hotel and resort development as has been going on so far, at least the natural environment should be well-preserved and available for tourists to experience, such as in national parks. For now, however, the economic realities of supply and demand simply do not promote sustainable ecological nor cultural tourist development. Hainan’s tourist development continues to cater to wealthy Mainland Chinese who come to Hainan primarily to escape the freezing winters and stay in air-conditioned luxury hotels where they meet a tour guide who will take them to the several well-trodden hotspots, where they can take photographs of themselves to bring back home and prove they are among the new elite who can afford to travel to “The End of the World and Edge of the Sea.” 385 SECTION 5: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS The historical and ethnographic research on the particular ways in which betel nut is habitually consumed and ritually significant in Taiwan and Hainan presented above has demonstrated that attention to this one psychoactive substance across different cultural articulations through time and space unveils insights into the changing dynamics of social and political life and the various cultural expressions which employ betel nut as a “natural symbol” (Douglas 1970) in the two islands. There are three primary categories or classificatory systems that can be invoked when discussing betel nut: as a medicine, as a commodity, and as a cultural symbol. The medicinal value of betel nut, especially the areca catechu nut, was noted over a thousand years ago in Chinese medical texts, and was also noticed by non-literate chewers throughout the region. Like most psychoactive substances, betel nut has become commoditized, though unlike many other modern psychoactives, betel nut retains a powerful symbolic power as it is employed in shamanic rituals and wedding ceremonies. Even in its commoditized and secularized form, as when it is sold by “betel nut beauties” in Taiwan, it still retains a powerful symbolic force which articulates gender boundaries and sexuality along with ethnic and socioeconomic statuses. Here focus is less on the medicinal and physiological effects of betel nut chewing (see Chapter 1), but will place betel nut within an anthropology of psychoactive substances, examine how “appetites” for chewing have been socially constructed, and strive to understand how betel nut functions as a “natural symbol.” 386 Chapter 12: Comparative Analysis of Betel Nut Chewing in Taiwan and Hainan The consumption of psychoactive substances is as ancient as human societies themselves and characteristic of most cultures (Goodman et al. 1995), and betel nut is among the most ancient of all psychoactive substances, having a history of human consumption that extends back at least thousands of years. First comparing betel nut with other psychoactive substances consumed in other parts of the world prepares us for the more specific comparisons between betel nut chewing cultures in Taiwan and Hainan that follow. Betel Nut as Psychoactive Substance The anthropological study of psychoactive substances has been thwarted by the unfortunate labeling of particular substances as either “licit” or “illicit,” making the study of so-called illicit substances almost unwelcome in the scholarly community. This is unfortunate because people around the world continue to use so-called “illicit” substances at perhaps increasing rates, while serious research on illicit substance use is not readily available because the political agendas of particular state governments effectively limit funding for such research. For instance, there is not yet one high quality ethnography on marijuana use in the United States, but obviously marijuana is a significant natural psychoactive substance which has greatly influenced American, and indeed global, culture over the past century. Yet the only published studies of marijuana are framed as “medical studies” that have no choice but to finally claim its 387 use is either detrimental or beneficial for people with certain health conditions. However, for anyone who has used marijuana in a social setting without any particular medical “need” can attest, there are social (and even “spiritual”) benefits for the physically “healthy” as well. The fact that marijuana is “illicit” in most nation-states is the primary reason why it has not been acknowledged with the significance that it has actually had in the development of contemporary global culture. As for the “licit” psychoactive substances, such as coffee, tea, tobacco, and alcohol, academic studies abound. Yet, these studies have been for the most part conducted by medical researchers who aim to analyze the health risks or benefits of consuming these substances. Only on occasion is a truly cultural anthropological study undertaken. This being the case, it is no wonder that no anthropological study of betel nut has yet been attempted. Still we can learn some from the efforts of a (small and marginal) group of scholars who has contributed research on various psychoactive substances in a volume titled Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology (1995), edited by Jordan Goodman, Paul E. Lovejoy, and Andrew Sherratt, and also from the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which has recently succeeded in securing funding for experimental research on various psychoactive substances including LSD, MDMA, psilocybin (the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”), and marijuana. However, in the contemporary American cultural climate, even the MAPS research must be conceptualized in “medical” (neither social, psychological, nor spiritual) terms, with specific aims to verify the usefulness of these substances for people with health problems including post-traumatic stress disorder, cluster headaches and other “non-normal” conditions. 388 Similarly, efforts to allow the “medical” use of marijuana in California have been successful as long as the user/patient can demonstrate some “abnormal” condition and thereby qualify for a prescription of “medical marijuana.” From this vantage point, it seems ludicrous to imagine being prescribed with “medical betel nut,” though evidently anything is possible depending on the mania of the leaders of nation-states and the political-economic climates that could emerge. Thankfully, in this study of betel nut we are not required to take such an approach. We need not search for how chewing betel nut could possibly “remedy” some abnormal physical, psychological, social or spiritual condition. Yet, interestingly, betel nut chewing does indeed remedy certain “abnormal” conditions within the cultural context of its consumption, as demonstrated in the introductory chapter and throughout this dissertation. Physically it aides with digestion and increases blood circulation, psychologically it helps with concentration, socially it smoothes over communication and secures bonds of friendship and alliance, and spiritually it provides a bridge of communication to the world of the supernatural. Since betel nut is not illegal, it is more aptly compared to psychoactive substances such as coffee, tea, alcohol, and tobacco, the only four substances which are more commonly used than betel nut in the contemporary world. 1 1 Of course it is not known what percentage of people in which parts of the world commonly use marijuana or its derivatives, whether in “recreational” or “ritual” ways, but it could perhaps be a contender with the other “licit” substances in terms of popularity of use. We will only know the reality of actual marijuana use patterns after anthropologists and other academics can freely make serious studies on the subject, which hopefully will be within our generation. 389 There are many interesting parallels between betel nut and tobacco in terms of psychoactive effects, traditional and modern consumption patterns, as well as social and spiritual uses, which can help contextualize our findings on betel nut use in Taiwan and Hainan. From anthropological studies conducted by Alexander von Gernet (1995) and Jordan Goodman (1993 and 2005) we can discern that both betel nut and tobacco are natural psychoactives which produce calming and excitatory effects at the same time and both tend to be consumed addictively when available, even in prehistoric times. The consumption of both also has come to symbolize sexual availability or maturity among men and women in “traditional” and “modern” cultural settings, and both have been used as means for communication between the mundane material world and the supernatural world. The greatest difference between these two substances is that tobacco consumption has colonized the whole world while betel nut use has remained limited to the region of its “pre-modern” distribution. Indeed, in some parts of Indonesia, tobacco use has reportedly even usurped betel nut use (Reid 1985). In order to explain why betel nut use remained localized we need to understand not only the ecological conditions of its production and the climatic factors limiting its distribution, which were given in the introduction, but also the social construction of “appetites” for chewing betel nut. Appetites for Chewing Betel Nut Judith Farquhar’s (2002) innovative study of popular culture in “post-Maoist China” considers how individual appetites for food and sex are socially constructed. Some of her conceptual analysis is applicable to our study of betel nut on the borders 390 of the Chinese and Austronesian language-speaking regions. Farquhar’s focus is on the generation gap between those raised during and after the end of the Maoist period in the Peoples’ Republic of China. She notes how two different social, cultural, and political- economic contexts have produced two very different “appetites” for food and sex: Only a few decades ago it was not acceptable to introduce individual appetites, or their indulgence, into discourse. Within the culture of Maoism, which became well established in the 1950s and reached its greatest degree of ideological ambition in the late 1960s and 1970s, it was much more proper to speak of past suffering (in the old society), future utopia (when communism is achieved), and, in the present, work, production, and service. … Although the everyday lives of quite material bodies persisted, of course, and wishes and discomforts could be spoken of casually and privately, the existence and indulgence of non-collective appetites were almost an embarrassment. [Farquhar 2002, 3] The triumph of the “culture of Maoism” with its attendant sublimation of individual desire is correlated in time with the vanishing of betel nut chewing from the Southern Chinese mainland. Whether or not there is a causal relation is not clear. Suffice to say that the totalitarian collective consciousness now referred to as Maoism would not approve of betel nut chewing if undertaken merely for purposes of personal recreation or pleasure, which were all to be sublimated to the “collective good.” Furthermore, insofar as individual appetites for betel nut chewing were not demonstrated to be adaptive to the “collective good,” the practice was presumably prohibited. If in the Maoist period the only appropriate “appetites” were collective in nature, if “collective” was meant to include all people living in the modern nation-state of the People’s Republic of China, which included as many northerners as southerners, and since “the nation” was under a northern influence where betel nut was not chewed, 391 perhaps the consumption of fresh betel nut would not continue in mainland Guangdong and the southern coastal areas of Fujian because of the extinguishing of an appetite, which has remained suppressed into the present. For the historian of betel nut in Southern China, the question remains, why and how did betel nut chewing vanish from Southern China, and could it possibly return? Our data shows that in Hainan attempts to allow the production of the ingredients of betel nut were allowed only insofar as they were demonstrated to be beneficial to the economic prosperity of “farmers” in the communes of the area, and as a result of the medicinal value of areca nut and to some extent the “non-Han” Li people’s traditional esteem of betel nut such that it was a required element of wedding ceremonies. Although betel nut chewing did continue in Hainan through the Maoist period, as referenced in the history section above, it was only allowed insofar as it could be justified for communal interests. Two reasons were offered to justify continued production of areca nut and betel pepper leaf in Hainan: one to do with the medicinal value of the areca nut as a “southern Chinese herb” and the other to do with the value of economic production for particular communes in Hainan, both of which would benefit the collective nation. Reference was also made to the requirement of presenting areca nut at wedding ceremonies of the (non-Han) Li language-speaking people, but since allowing superstitious beliefs and practices of “minority” peoples would not benefit collective interest, it must have been the former reasons that justified continued production of betel nut in Hainan. In the historical research, no similar claims to perpetuate production of betel nut in (mainland) Guangdong or elsewhere throughout the PRC were found, however, it was indeed through these 392 appeals to the medicinal value of chewing betel nut that people in Hunan were able to continue the practice through the Maoist period and into the present, although in dried form. Exactly when and why betel nut chewing vanished from (mainland) Guangdong province is a subject for future research. Somehow, local “appetites” for fresh betel nut were either replaced with other appetites, such as for tobacco as in Indonesia, or else were eliminated by force, such as in Taiwan under the Japanese Colonial Administration. More likely, however, environmental factors combined with political-economic concerns and socio-cultural practices created a situation in mainland Guangdong that no longer favored the widespread chewing of betel nut. Unlike subtropical but non-coastal Hunan, there was not any tradition of chewing dried betel nut, and unlike the large tropical island of Hainan, there was not enough land available to grow areca palms (and betel pepper leaves) in the more northern latitudes of Guangdong, while agricultural land in the southern lowlands would likely be deemed better suited for production of primary food crops. Perhaps the import of fresh areca nut and betel pepper leaf from Hainan island to mainland Guangdong would not be highly prioritized in such a context where higher profits could be made on other crops, or perhaps betel nut was imported frequently from Hainan, but not at levels high enough to support a continuing appetite. Likely locals continued to plant and harvest their own ingredients, but the climate of mainland Guangdong is not ideal for areca nut production, and so yields could not possibly match those of Hainan. In other words, the incorporation of the betel nut and its ingredients into the local wedding customs in mainland Guangdong reported from the Qing Dynasty were likely specific to certain 393 communities living along the southern coasts where the ingredients could be grown, while the majority of mainland Guangdong residents who lived away from the sea and in higher (subtropical) latitudes may not have had “appetites” for chewing betel nut in their socio-cultural traditions. Another of Farquhar’s conceptual understandings that is shared with the present study of betel nut is paying attention to “bodily dispositions and everyday practices that … usually go unnoticed in contemporary … [China’s] public debates” (2002, 9). Betel nut has often gone unnoticed by government policy-makers and academics alike, yet it has been identified by merchants as a potential, and in Taiwan actualized, source of wealth through commerce. The tourist industry in both islands also noticed betel nut chewing, though as something to be concealed from outsiders. In practice as well as ideology, for example, in the Hainan tourist industry, the fact that local people chew betel nut is actively concealed, especially when international gatherings such as the Miss World Beauty Pageant or other conferences are held. On these occasions, local Hainan people’s appetites for chewing are acknowledged, but then are denied. Whether these kinds of state-sponsored and private-commercial behaviors such as banning (temporarily) the sale of betel nut and spitting betel nut juice in Sanya, Hainan, during international conferences, or the more extreme Japanese Colonial suppression of areca nut production, sales, and consumption in Taiwan, will actually suppress appetites for chewing (or not) is an interesting question for future research on other psychoactive substances. From the present research, it appears that continued suppression of betel nut chewing for over one generation (around 25 years, from the late 1910s through 1945 in Taiwan) is still not likely to permanently eliminate its 394 future consumption in a population with an earlier appetite, but even then the “appetite” is always likely to reappear, such as in Taiwan two generations later (in the 1970s and 1980s), and become even more vital to social and economic life, supporting livelihoods and lives of countless people. Betel Nut and Boundaries: Literal and Metaphoric Fredrik Barth’s (1969) seminal work on ethnic groups and boundaries directs our attention to “the ethnic boundary that defines the group, not the cultural stuff that it encloses” (p. 15), applying an “instrumentalist” approach to the study of ethnicity, rather than a “primordialist” approach that assumes essential ethnic or racial characteristics. In more recent theoretical writings on ethnicity, a “cognitive” approach, espoused by Brubaker et al. (2004) has emerged. Based on Barth’s original focus on boundaries and their negotiation and maintenance, the “cognitive” approach re-frames earlier opposition between “primordialist” and “instrumentalist” approaches, such that “primordialist” considerations that emanate from within individual group members’ own cognitive apparatus can become one of many “instruments” of ethnic identity assertion. Cognitive research also invites us to revisit and reframe the classic, though too often hackneyed, debate between primordialist and circumstantialist or instrumentalist approaches. This debate pits an understanding of ethnicity as rooted in deep-seated or ‘‘primordial’’ attachments and sentiments against an understanding of it as an instrumental adaptation to shifting economic and political circumstances. Cognitive perspectives allow us to recast both positions and to see them as complementary rather than mutually exclusive. [Brubaker et al. 2004, 49] Cognitive perspectives can help realize the constructivist aspiration to capture the relational and dynamic nature of race, ethnicity, and nation as fluid and 395 contingent products of reiterative and cumulative processes of categorizing, coding, framing, and interpreting. Instead of asking “what is race?”, “what is an ethnic group?”, “what is a nation?”, a cognitive approach encourages us to ask how, when, and why people interpret social experience in racial, ethnic, or national terms. [Brubaker et al. 2004, 53] Betel nut chewing is a social practice that marks boundaries between groups in Taiwan and Hainan. Through examining how betel nut chewing differently articulates gender, age, socioeconomic, ethnic, local, and national identity statuses in Taiwan and Hainan, we clarify how state-defined primordialist interpretations of identity are constructed (as instruments) in the social practices of individuals, according to the changing political-economic realities in which they live. Chewing betel nut is an individual’s choice, one that is repeatedly presented in each (potential) encounter with betel nut. However, the choice to chew (or not) is presented differently according to changing socio-cultural and political-economic conditions. Upon examining particular situations of men and women of different socioeconomic and ethnic statuses in Taiwan and Hainan, some tend to have either more or less opportunity to even make a “choice” to chew, and so we find that “choice” or “appetite” itself is socially constructed (Farquhar 2002). The different ways that betel nut chewing is restricted and stigmatized, or promoted and prescribed, reflects the different ways that modernity was introduced and is currently expressed in Taiwan and Hainan. In Taiwan, betel nut chewing has become sexualized as an exotic, indigenous, male habit. In Hainan, betel nut remains an important element in traditional social rituals, but has become “primitivized” with the advance of modernity through tourist development, where it is restricted. In this way, betel nut is itself an indigenous symbolic commodity in both islands. Chewing 396 betel nut embodies and articulates boundaries, which in turn define ever-changing ethnic identity statuses in the face of modernity. Here we shall review the ways that betel nut chewing differently articulates boundaries in Taiwan and Hainan and note how betel nut become incorporated in cultural expressions, in other words, the ways in which betel nut has become a “natural symbol” (Douglas 1970) in the two islands. Beginning with the physical and chemical properties of betel nut and its ingredients, and extending to its social significance in rites of passage and (ethnic and otherwise) group boundary maintenance and negotiation, we presently note the myriad ways betel nut marks boundaries in Taiwan and Hainan. The experience of chewing betel nut produces a (psychoactive) chemical reaction that temporarily alters the consciousness of the chewer, which is also manifest in a material transformation of the betel nut itself. The skin of the areca nut is green with internal white flesh, the betel pepper leaf is dark green, and lime paste is white, however, upon chewing a betel nut for a short time (even within one minute), the resulting juice is bright red. This mysterious transformation of material consistency (from hard to soft) and color (from green to red) unleashes the psychoactive chemical effects of betel nut, which are directly responsible for inspiring the symbolic meanings of betel nut chewing as transformative, or “boundary crossing.” Betel nut juice, the “magical” material product of chewing, looks like “blood” in material appearance and carries the same symbolic power, as it is the life-force of the betel nut and a key to consciousness transformation. 397 For chewers in both islands, the transformation of consciousness is considered as a kind of “prosperity.” Among the Taiwan Indigenous chewing cultures (Amis, Puyuma, Paiwan, and the Yami of Orchid Island), betel nut represents “children” as reproductive prosperity. For the Amis “betel nut” is called “vagina” (icep) in symbolic reference to the literal place of origin of all people, the site of reproductive sexual intercourse. Among the Taiwan Han cultures, even though betel nut is stigmatized by (modern) non-chewers, it still represents a commoditized form of material wealth and provides energy for chewers, which is devoted to furthering modern industrial and post-industrial cultural development through their labor as truck drivers, construction workers, and their vision and artistic expression as musicians or designers. For all chewers at a symbolic (even if subconscious) level, areca nut represents the original (and therefore, feminine) essence of fruit, fertility, the womb, roundness, and the mother’s breast. It also represents the human body or any individual conscious entity, or even disembodied pure intention, such as in shamanic rituals. The source of the areca nut, the areca palm tree, represents masculine qualities, such as determination of will, durability, straightness and hardness, and a literal boundary marker, which is for shamans conceptualized as the axis-mundi, the conduit or path linking the material or bodily world with the spiritual world of transformation, growth, and regeneration. The medical-physiological power of the areca nut has also been found useful in Chinese medicine where it is prescribed as a means to move the qi (vital energy) within the human body in a downward direction. Interestingly, it is always along a vertical axis (the axis-mundi) that areca nut works. In Chinese medicine it is noted to 398 aide with digestion, while in indigenous shamanic use (in Taiwan) it enables contact between the material and spiritual (including ancestral) worlds. Whether or not individual chewers are at all conscious of these symbolic meanings, they still are already present in the material of the betel nut itself, and therefore are always already available for reference in jokes, myths, or other cultural expressions such as the “betel nut beauty” phenomenon. The betel pepper vine, in complementary gendered status to the areca catechu palm tree—sometimes male and sometimes female depending on the cultural expression, but always complementarily gendered—represents wildness, meandering, clinging, and crawling. The betel pepper leaf, as the complement of the areca nut, represents (usually masculine) qualities of sharpness, spiciness, pointedness, and triangularity. Everywhere the betel nut is chewed in both islands, among diverse populations, the complementary gendered status of areca nut and betel leaf is acknowledge, among truck drivers as well as shamans. Slaked mineral lime, the only non-plant material ingredient in betel nut, represents bonding, attraction, affection, integration, and coming together, which is to say “love.” Whether it is analyzed in a physical-chemical sense or in a socio-cultural one, the basic effect of slaked mineral lime in betel nut is to bond together and activate the union of the areca nut and betel pepper leaf in the mouth of the chewer. When wrapping a betel nut quid, the (feminine) areca nut and the (masculine) betel leaf are bonded together with slaked lime, thus unleashing the psychoactive properties of betel nut. Without all three ingredients, there is no psychoactive effect. 399 At the moment of chewing, another level of gendered complementarity emerges wherein the betel nut as a whole takes on a masculine role relative to the mouth of the chewer. At this point the betel nut is finally “embodied” in the mouth of the chewer and produces the psychoactive juice that has the power of transformation of consciousness. This most basic observation by chewers has likely propelled the symbolic significance of betel nut into a kind of sacred object wherever it is chewed. Yet betel nut remains open to interpretation according to cultural values and particular historical contingencies in every novel context of chewing. This is the symbolic power of betel nut, and how it has become what Mary Douglas calls a “natural symbol.” In its pure form, as in Taiwan and Hainan where only the three primary ingredients are combined to produce a chew, betel nut symbolically represents gender complementarity, and so “naturally” (which is, of course, through cultural expression) extends to represent fertility, prosperity, health, wealth, abundance, and wholeness among chewers. Chewing betel nut is thus an embodiment of communion of complementarily gendered ingredients and their product within the chewer, as betel nut juice is absorbed through the membranes in the mouth and the chemicals it produces travel to the brain and thus temporarily transform the chewer’s consciousness from an everyday mundane waking consciousness into an energized, concentrated, and potentially profane one. The two byproducts of chewing betel nut, betel nut juice and betel nut quid, which are interestingly both red in color, are therefore also ripe with symbolic meaning. Betel nut juice represents both the life-force of betel nut and a key to 400 consciousness transformation, while the chewed up betel nut quid that is spit out at the end of a chew represents the result of the transformation, alteration, or integration of one’s consciousness. Wrapping Betel Nut Quid In Taiwan and Hainan, only the three primary and essential ingredients are used to wrap betel nut, unlike elsewhere such as in India or other parts of Southeast Asia where additional spices or tobacco are frequently added. Methods of wrapping betel nut differ slightly within Taiwan but are consistent throughout Hainan. In every case, the complementarity of feminine and masculine in reproductive union are clear. In Hainan, areca nuts are larger than in (modern) Taiwan, but they are the same species of areca catechu that grows in Taiwan. The reason areca nuts are smaller in contemporary Taiwan is because they have been harvested early as well as selectively bred for smaller size ever since the 1980s. Traditionally, among the Taiwan Indigenous betel nut chewing cultures, including present-day Orchid Island (Lanyu), areca nuts were allowed to grow to the same size as they do in contemporary Hainan, which is about the size of a small lemon. Wrapping a betel nut quid in Hainan is done by first selecting a fresh betel pepper leaf, cutting off the edges, tip and base of the leaf, and then lightly applying white lime paste on one side, usually the dull underside. The leaf is then folded into a small triangle, about the size of a postage stamp with the shiny surface outwards. An areca nut is then sliced lengthwise into three or four wedges. One wedge of areca nut is 401 coupled with one whole betel leaf that has been dusted with lime paste, and that makes a whole “betel nut” ready to chew. There are two essentially different ways to wrap a betel nut quid in Taiwan, one is the “traditional” way used among Indigenous cultures called baoye in Chinese, literally “leaf wrapped,” and the other is a “modern” way invented in the 1980s among Han Taiwanese, called qinya, literally, “green nut.” The baoye method, used among present-day Indigenous cultures as well as among Taiwanese chewers, begins with dusting one side of a whole betel pepper leaf, usually the shiny side, with slacked lime paste and then folding it once lengthwise with the lime-dusted side in, and then once again folding lengthwise to form a long strip. The strip of leaf is then wrapped around the finger and the tip is folded into itself to form a ring. Finally a whole (olive-sized) areca nut is inserted into the leaf ring with the cap still intact. When chewed, the cap must first be taken off. The reason the cap is left on is to preserve the freshness of the areca nut until the time it is chewed. The qinya method of wrapping involves first taking off the cap and slicing an areca nut lengthwise, but not all the way through, so that it can be pried open. Instead of using white lime paste, qinya is wrapped using red lime paste (honghui), which is merely conventional mineral lime paste with an added herbal mix including ercha for flavoring. Red lime paste is applied inside the opening of the areca nut, and then a sliver of the florescence (flower) of the betel pepper vine, called laohua is inserted. Owing to the red lime paste and perhaps the laohua, the taste of qinya is distinctively sweeter than baoye. 402 There is another distinctive way betel nut is wrapped in Taiwan called “twin star” (shuangzi xing). This method involves selecting two very small and tender areca nuts that have had their caps removed and perhaps even cut smooth on one side to fit together more closely, and then wrapped together in a betel pepper leaf that has been dusted with red lime paste (honghui), containing the Chinese herb ercha. For “twin star” betel nuts, the shiny part of the betel pepper leaf is folded to the outside of the wrap in contrast to the dull side of the leaf that is folded outside in the traditional “leaf wrapped” (baoye) style of wrapping. In all these methods of wrapping betel nut, the areca nut is considered to be female, the betel pepper leaf or flower is male, and the mineral lime paste binds them together. Metaphorically, the Taiwan Indigenous method of wrapping (baoye) brings the areca nut and betel leaf into opposite complementary gendered relations, with the originally female areca nut taking on a masculine role as it is inserted into the formerly male betel leaf which has transformed into a feminine receptacle, in a kind of doubly complementary sexual union. The other two methods become metaphorically more violent (as they involve using a knife to cut the areca nut), which is perhaps why Amis say that “areca nuts should never be cut with knives.” Even when chewing large areca nuts, Amis would use their teeth to separate areca nuts into bite-sized wedges. The “twin star” method of wrapping betel nut brings together two areca nuts with one betel pepper leaf. As was pointed out to me by a Taiwanese friend, the two areca nuts appear like two female breasts. This interpretation is supported by the general feminine symbolic status of the areca nut in different semantic contexts for betel nut chewers in both Taiwan and Hainan. 403 The “qinya” method of wrapping betel nut is symbolically more violent, since it involves the slicing of an areca nut lengthwise. It also interestingly reverses the usual order of relations between nut and leaf in the quid, where in this method the leaf is sometimes replaced with the efflorescence (flower) of the betel pepper plant, and either a rolled up sliver of leaf or a cutting of the efflorescence is then inserted into the sliced-opened areca nut, which has itself been dusted with red lime paste (the ercha-containing “honghui”). Symbolically, this could represent the masculine leaf or flower of the betel pepper as re-entering the female body (areca nut) that has been violently opened, in a different kind of sexual union. Interestingly, the qinya method preferred by Taiwanese betel nut chewers is the usual method of preparation at the “betel nut beauties” style shops in Taiwan where male truck drivers are the primary patrons. I am not suggesting that any of these symbolic meanings of betel nut and its ingredients are forefront in the minds of chewers. Instead, these meanings are self-evident to anyone who observes and pays attention to the relations among material, socio-cultural, and political-economic realities surrounding betel nut chewing culture, as has been attempted in this dissertation. I am convinced that the betel nut and its three primary ingredients are “natural symbols” in Taiwan and Hainan, and perhaps elsewhere. Furthermore, these same symbolic meanings for the ingredients and the whole “betel nut” itself are found to be consistent across various cultural traditions in the two islands. The following symbolic analysis clarifies and expands upon this finding. 404 Shamanic Ritual Use of Betel Nut Of all the contemporary cultures in Taiwan and Hainan, only the Taiwan Indigenous chewing cultures continue to use betel nut and its ingredients in shamanic rituals. The details of shamanic use of areca nut, betel leaf, and slaked lime were given above (see Chapter 3). Here we will merely summarize the overall symbolic meanings that contribute to their usefulness in shamanic rituals and show how these contribute and confirm the primary symbolic meanings. Areca nut is used in shamanic rituals in Taiwan among the Amis, Puyuma, and Paiwan and the leaves of the areca palm are referenced in Yami myths as having the power to re-animate the bones of the dead and infuse them with renewed life, while slaked lime paste (or powder) is said to cure open wounds. 2 For Taiwan Indigenous shamans, areca nuts represent individual entities (including people, ancestors, and spirits) which in a ritual context are manipulated by shamans for whatever ends, including healing or harming others. When using areca nut in rituals, shamans keep the cap on the areca nut, which represents the head of the entity, and usually bind it with fishing line (formerly plant-derived threads) which is threaded through small red beads (originally obtained in trade relations with pirates and merchants) and tied around the nuts. Sometimes beads are inserted inside the areca nut. This ritual marks 2 Other than among these few cultures, we find no other present-day use of betel nut or its ingredients in shamanic rituals in either Taiwan or Hainan. Perhaps the Miao or Li of Hainan traditionally used betel nut or its ingredients in shamanic rituals, but neither during fieldwork in Hainan nor in any historical references was there any mention made of areca nut, betel leaf, or lime paste used in Miao or Li shamanic rituals, either traditionally or nowadays. It could very well be that even if there was a traditional shamanic use of betel nut by the Li or Miao in Hainan, those so-called “superstitious” practices would have been thoroughly eliminated during the Cultural Revolution. The Miao are, however, reported to chew betel nut in contemporary Southeast Asia, and to use the betel nut in shamanic rituals, but were not observed to do so in Hainan. 405 an areca nut as a pure ritual object and it would not be chewed, unless by an unsuspecting “target.” Areca nut ritual objects are activated by chanting over them, and once activated can be used for myriad purposes. A particular areca nut can be made to represent any spirit or living person, and then be manipulated by the shaman’s intention. Areca nuts are used because they represent a “pure conduit of intention.” This is explained in that areca nuts are both the fruit (result) and seed (origin) of the areca catechu palm tree, which as explained above, because of its long, thin, and straight trunk, is a symbol of the axis-mundi, the bridge between the natural material and supernatural non-material worlds, which are conceived of as existing one on top of the other. The leaves of the areca catechu palm are referenced in Yami myths as having supernatural powers that can bring dead bodies back to life by reintegrating their bones. By wrapping a dead person’s bones in an areca palm leaf and fanning them, the physical body of the dead person can be brought back to life. In this context, the areca palm’s power as the axis-mundi is again invoked as it enables communication between the material and supernatural worlds. The Yami of Orchid Island also traditionally used lime powder to heal skin infections, owing to the integrative power of lime in the betel nut quid. Here we see the integrative power of the lime paste. Betel Nut Juice Betel nut chewers in Taiwan and Hainan usually spit out the first accumulation of juice, and then swallow (embody) subsequent accumulations. For uninitiated or 406 unsuspecting “outsiders,” betel nut juice, whether held within the mouths of chewers, being spit onto the ground, or stained into the ground, is easily mistaken for human blood, and can appear grotesque, precisely because of its “dangerous” symbolic power. A red stain results from spitting out betel nut juice, whether on dirt, rock, wood, plastic, cloth, or any surface, a literal mark of the moment of transformation in consciousness of the chewer. Modern drivers who purchase betel nut at Taiwan’s roadside betel nut stands are thus provided a plastic cup to catch their spit when driving, while people who chew at home (indoors) usually use newspaper-wrapped trash cans or other similar means as spittoons. When chewing outdoors, betel nut juice is conveniently spat into the (pre-modern) dirt or grass where it will eventually reabsorb into the ground, but if spat onto (modern) pavement, it leaves a permanent stain. The fact that betel nut juice “stains modern surfaces” hints at why it might be stigmatized or restricted in such modern settings as cities, which we will explore in more depth below. Like blood, betel nut juice is among the most intimate of fluids. Among the present-day Amis, after elders have lost their teeth, and still desire to chew betel nut, sometimes their children or grandchildren are given the responsibility of chewing the first few crunches of betel nut to activate the juice, and then transplant the quid into their elder family member’s mouth where additional juice will be produced and imbibed. In 17 th century Taiwan, Siraya girls were reported to spit betel nut juice on the white shirts of boys of whom they were fond, in a kind of courting ritual. Other than these examples, betel nut juice, like human blood, is not usually shared or transferred from person to person, and also like human blood, it is restricted for its symbolic power. 407 As mentioned above, during the “2003 Miss World Beauty Pageant” in Sanya, the selling of betel nut and the spitting of betel nut juice were prohibited in the local markets, though the chewing of betel nut was not. Still vendors had betel nut for sale, but kept it out of sight, literally “under the table” unless specifically requested. People were chewing betel nut in the market, yet no one could be seen spitting the juice. One man explained that, because of the new law, he began to swallow even the first accumulation of juice, and after a while he preferred to not spit the first accumulation because it brought on a more powerful effect. Similarly in the Taipei Metropolitan Rapid Transit system, in 2003, an announcement that ran on the electronic marquee that initially stated “no spitting betel nut juice” had to be changed to “no chewing betel nut” because people would continue to chew on the subway trains, but not spit, inspiring complaints from non-chewers. In these examples, the advance of modernity has actually not really “restricted” betel nut chewing at all—people continue to chew—but has only further intensified its “embodiment” among chewers or the total containment of the betel nut juice within the body of the chewer. In other words, people begin to chew without spitting, absorbing all the juice produced with each chew in their own bodies and leaving no evidence of their chewing on the modern streets and sidewalks. Betel nut juice temporarily stains the mouth, teeth, and lips bright red. Habitual chewers who do not brush their teeth (with toothpaste) consequently develop dark red and eventually black stains on their teeth that can appear as severe tooth decay. Yet studies have shown that the stains themselves may have the physiological effect of protecting the teeth from decay by coating them with a film, while the development of tooth cavities 408 (called “caries”) are also less frequent in betel nut chewers because over time their teeth become more smooth and flattened (Trivedy et al. 2002, 116). The stained teeth of betel nut chewers traditionally represented adulthood or maturity. Nowadays, however, habitual (modern) chewers are usually ashamed of having red or black stained teeth, since the aesthetics of modernity promote white teeth through visual advertising in magazines, billboards, television, and the Internet. One of the main reasons for not chewing betel nut reported among young people in Taiwan and Hainan, therefore, is to keep their teeth white. Traditionally among Taiwan’s Indigenous chewing cultures, the practice of teeth-blackening was conducted not for its protective value, but for its aesthetic value. Those with blackened teeth were considered mature adults, while only children and animals had white teeth. For example, Mrs. Zhen, a female Puyuma elder in Taiwan, relates how her grandmother (who lived during the Qing Dynasty in southeastern Taiwan) cared for her teeth before the use of toothpaste: Besides chewing betel nut, the elders in the past collected wild plants, called I-zan, and wiped their teeth into a shining black on both sides. My grandmother used to start chewing betel nut as soon as she woke up, and used that first quid to rub her teeth clean, then would rinse out her mouth with water. During the Qing Dynasty, blackened teeth held high aesthetic value among the Indigenous Taiwan chewing cultures (Jiang 2002, 40). For traditional betel nut chewers, blackened teeth represented cleanliness, protection from decay, along with physical and social maturity. Nowadays, teeth-blackening practices have faded away. Mrs. Zhen further noted that nowadays, “since all the elders still have black teeth, they feel embarrassed to open their 409 mouths when they laugh.” She therefore discourages her granddaughters from chewing too much betel nut, warning that their teeth would eventually turn black. But one of her granddaughters, a famous Puyuma folk singer named Samingad (Ji Xiao-jun), “chews constantly” when she visits her grandmother, and keeps her teeth white by merely brushing after each chew. Even though modern aesthetics of white teeth have taken precedence for the younger generation, with a minimum of effort, betel nut can still be chewed nowadays without worry of teeth staining, thus avoiding a physical marker of “primitiveness” while still enjoying the psychoactive effects and continuing the tradition of betel nut chewing while still complying with modern aesthetics. Another high-contrast difference between traditional and modern aesthetics concerns the aroma of betel nut. Before modern Western style toothpaste was widely available in Hainan and Taiwan, the breath of a betel nut chewer was much fresher than that of a non-chewer. Nowadays the aroma of betel nut is itself considered “foul” among non-chewers in contemporary urban Taiwan, but in the countryside, among the Taiwan Indigenous chewing cultures, and among Hainan Han and non-Han alike, the aroma of fresh betel nut being chewed is still considered pleasant, and the fresh-grassy scent can often be detected in the passing breeze. The fresh aroma of betel nut on the breath is so common among habitual chewers that it signifies “normality” and “healthiness” more than anything else. Mrs. Zhen mentioned that she has tasted modern candy before, but still prefers to chew betel nut because candy, and by extension “modernity,” invariably leaves a “sour aftertaste” in her mouth. In traditional betel nut chewing cultures, betel nut marks the transitions through various stages within an individual’s lifespan, from infancy to childhood to adulthood and 410 elder status. After being weaned from their mother’s breast milk, children use the areca nut as a pacifier. As adults, gifts of betel nut to potential mates and at engagement and wedding ceremonies mark the social maturity of men and women. Throughout adulthood, betel nut is given to strengthen group membership and also to extend invitations to outsiders to join in alliance. Economically, betel nut is primarily a gift that bonds people and families together. All of the traditional betel nut chewing cultures in both Taiwan and Hainan had at one time well-developed practices of giving betel nut to guests, friends, and lovers, although over the last century Taiwanese Han stopped the practice because of the impact of Japanese colonialism. In contemporary Hainan and among the Taiwan Indigenous chewing cultures, however, the gifting of betel nut is still imbued with the symbolic meaning of social bonding, and betel nuts are given during courtship, engagements, weddings, and to ask for forgiveness. For the Han Taiwanese cultures, betel nut traditionally was given at all these same occasions during the Qing Dynasty, before the Japanese prohibited production and chewing, but after the resurgence in betel nut chewing in modern Han Taiwanese culture in the 1980s, the former (traditional) social and symbolic meaning of betel nut in weddings has not returned because Han Taiwanese women did not become betel nut chewers after the initial prohibition period (for reasons discussed in depth in Chapter 3). Perhaps the highest contrast in betel nut chewing cultures of Taiwan and Hainan is in terms of marketing strategies, but even here there are significant symbolic similarities. In Hainan, betel nut is sold by elderly women in traditional markets, dressed in muted colored long-sleeved blouses and slacks, squatting on low wooden 411 stools with a basket of betel nut in front of them on the ground. Customers approach them and make purchases by either squatting down themselves, or at least leaning over, lowering their heads to hand their money to the elder woman-vendor and receive a bag of betel nut. In Taiwan, betel nut is sold by young women, provocatively dressed in brightly colored sexy outfits, standing in aquarium-like glass booths decorated with flashing neon lights. While customers can and do approach them, these young women are also adept at reading sign language signals from male drivers who so much as stop their cars (or trucks) in the road, and the young women called “betel nut beauties” (binlang xishi) run out into traffic dodging passing cars and motorscooters, even while wearing high heels, to make deliveries. Finally the young woman-vendor leans into the car window (providing a close view of her breasts) while she hands the betel nuts to the male customer, then upon receiving the money, turns around and runs back to her aquarium-like structure providing a view of her back-side. Interestingly, betel nut vendors in both Hainan and Taiwan are stereotypically women, and both are extremes of femininity, the “mature grandmother/nurturer” in Hainan and the “young sexy girl” in Taiwan. Hainan betel nut vendors are stereotypically elderly, stationary, and post-sexual. Taiwan “betel nut beauties” are young, mobile, and overly-sexualized. While not all betel nut vendors in Taiwan are “betel nut beauties,” the trend has burgeoned in the recent decade to typecast the whole betel nut industry, and has become one of the most concentrated articulations of contemporary Taiwanese culture as expressed to outsiders, such that tourist groups from Mainland China are taken specifically to witness the phenomenon, and people within Taiwan have variously celebrated it as a “national treasure” or condemned it as 412 a disgrace. In fact, whenever I began to introduce my betel nut research project to people in Taiwan, they immediately interrupted me with a wide grin on their faces to ask if I am researching “betel nut beauties.” One needs only to say “betel nut” (binlang) in Taiwan and most people will immediately connect it with “beauty” (xishi), as if the word “binlang” was not complete on its own. Betel Nut Chewing as Personal Choice and Social Appetite In contemporary urban Taiwan, and increasingly throughout the betel nut chewing cultures of both islands, betel nut has developed a commodity status as a cash crop. Where in Taiwan small fortunes can be made, especially in betel nut retailing, in Hainan areca nut production or retailing remains a less lucrative though still thriving business. Although production of areca nut has been increasing in Hainan over the past two decades, it has not developed into a commercial industry in the same way as in Taiwan. The reasons for this difference are likely related to the difference in the two islands’ economies, where Taiwan’s tends to emphasize extreme commercialization of any and every possible commodity and Hainan retains a primarily agricultural economy with a newly developing domestic tourist industry. In both Taiwan and Hainan as betel nut has been increasingly commoditized, chewing has become more of an individual choice, mediated by personal preferences as much as cultural values. Nowadays, people chew for their health, for energy while working, for relaxation during breaks from work, some as a habit and some according to tradition. When chewing becomes a habit for a sizable majority of a population, it likewise becomes incorporated in cultural tradition, and then again perpetuates itself as a 413 “tradition” in the following generations. Socially constructed “appetites” for chewing are manifest in cultural phenomena such as weddings, regardless of individual guests’ or hosts’ personal appetites. For example, upon entering the groom’s house for the first time, the Utsat bride (in Hainan) is given a tray of betel nut by her husband, which she must distribute to the guests in attendance, who must also accept the betel nut from her, whether or not any of them personally wants to chew. Among the Li, a friend still offers a betel nut in a gesture of apology. To accept and chew is to grant forgiveness, to decline is to deny forgiveness. In other words, often times what seems a simple “choice” of chewing or not is infused with much greater symbolic significance among “betel nut chewing cultures.” Betel nut chewing cultures in Taiwan include the Indigenous cultures of Amis, Puyuma, Paiwan, Yami, and historically, all the Han immigrants in Taiwan during the Qing Dynasty. The Indigenous cultures of the highest central mountains and in northern Taiwan, however, did not traditionally chew betel nut, owing to the relatively colder sub-tropical environment and high altitudes in the mountains where areca nut does not grow. In Hainan generally and in Taiwan among the Indigenous chewing cultures, there is a continuous and unbroken cultural history of betel nut chewing, such that social situations arise where the gift of betel nut, and chewing betel nut, is required to maintain harmonious relations. In Taiwan among the “non-chewing cultures” of KMT Mainland Chinese, and also among the modern Han Taiwanese and Hakka where there was a severe break in the continuity of betel nut chewing (during the Japanese colonial occupation), chewing betel nut has become more of an individual choice (appetite) than a traditionally culturally sanctioned phenomenon, since it either never had any social significance (as among the KMT Mainland Chinese 414 culture), or had lost its social meanings (as among the Han Taiwanese and Hakka). For people in these situations, betel nut chewing was (re)introduced in the 1980s when it re-emerged in Taiwan as a pure commodity. The ecological difference between the islands thus correlates with different articulations of betel nut chewing culture. Taiwan has thus always been and continues to be divided between “chewing” and “non-chewing” cultural adaptations, which also impact the “choices” that individuals encounter as members of particular “ethnic” groups. In other words, an Atayal language-speaker living in the high mountains of northern Taiwan during the Qing Dynasty had no choice (and therefore, no appetite) to chew, since betel nut was simply not available. Similarly, nowadays, for descendants of the KMT Mainland Chinese, especially women, who were born and raised in urban Taipei without interaction with betel nut chewers, even though there is an ostensible “choice” to purchase betel nut from vendors on the streets, without the social situation of fellow family members or friends chewing betel nut, there is not much chance to encounter a socially approved situation where chewing becomes even a choice. Among the Amis of the southeastern coastal area of Taiwan, however, children who witness all of their elders chewing betel nut and are even given fresh areca nuts to chew on as pacifiers while their teeth are growing in, and required to harvest nuts as part of their duties, the “choice” of chewing and its positive valuation is constantly presented. Similarly in Hainan where areca nut was cultivated continuously and given as tribute to Chinese dynasties for centuries, and even nowadays when the PRC authorities fund house construction projects, areca palm seedlings are included as part of each house’s garden (for example, in the Li Village of Jiayao), or among the Utsat 415 or the Hainanese people of Yacheng where almost every elder chews betel nut daily, there is much more opportunity for individual “choice.” In all these circumstances, children come to value chewing betel nut as much as they respect their elders’ “choice” to chew. Among these “chewing cultures,” of course there are individuals who do not habitually chew betel nut, but there are not many who have never chewed betel nut. As we have seen, there are also people who have “quit chewing betel nut,” but even for these individuals under certain circumstances, such as being presented with betel nut from a friend, or as a guest, they must either “choose” to chew betel nut, or else “choose” to potentially offend their host. One Dulan Amis man, who had quit chewing betel nut for five years because it was “too expensive,” expressed this sentiment as follows: Of course I must chew if I am a guest, otherwise it is rude. Whenever people offer me betel nut, I must chew. Just like if people make a toast to you, if you don’t accept and drink, it means you look down on them. Another Dulan Amis man explained how and why he started chewing betel nut, demonstrating the “choice” he made to follow the elders’ (traditional) habits, and then justified his continued chewing habit for (modern) occupational demands. When I was a child, I saw the elders chewing, so I started chewing. At first, I only chewed areca nut, without lime and betel leaf. When I was in junior high, I started chewing betel nut [with leaf and lime] occasionally. Now that I am a truck driver, I chew daily; otherwise I wouldn’t have enough energy to drive. Reasons for and social meanings of betel nut chewing differ according to whether one is a member of a “traditional chewing culture” or not, and are informed by the valuation of betel nut within particular articulations of modernity, not only as 416 differently expressed in the two islands, but also within more localized “ethnic” domains. With the advances of different modernities in both islands, boundaries between chewers and non-chewers have tended to be equated with “primitive” and “civilized” statuses. Modern Restrictions on and Stigmatization of Betel Nut Chewing Modern industrial development arrived to Taiwan as if overnight, delivered by the intrusion of a foreign colonial empire that suppressed betel nut chewing and made colonial subjects of the people of Taiwan. In Hainan, however, “modernity” is only recently and slowly creeping in, after economic reforms and efforts at increasing tourist development in recent years. How have these two very different articulations of “modernity” impacted the social practice and significance of betel nut chewing in the two islands? The legacy of the Japanese ban on betel nut chewing among the Han of the western plains of Taiwan, but the continuity of the practice in small-scale among the Indigenous cultures of the southeastern coast and in Orchid Island meant that when the KMT arrived, they found no betel nut chewing culture among the Han Taiwanese. In this second chapter of Taiwan’s experience of modernity, a new political economy focused on industrialization developed, and owing to KMT neglect, Han Taiwanese were again allowed to chew and many took up the habit, re-introduced by the southeastern coastal Indigenous cultures. As demand for betel nut among Han Taiwanese increased, many began farming areca palm and betel leaf as cash crops to sell in the newly established betel nut industry, which would become a “shadow 417 economy” unregulated by the KMT government. Under the KMT, Taiwan’s industrialization project required construction projects and increased transportation of manufactured goods from factories to ports. Truck drivers discovered that chewing betel nut could keep them energetic on long hauls, and construction workers picked up the chewing habit also for its physical effect. Betel nut was from the beginning already a commodity among these new chewers, devoid of its traditional symbolic meanings. In this way, chewing betel nut became stigmatized as the practice of low socioeconomic status Han Taiwanese men. The Han elites in Taiwan by that time included the newly arrived KMT Mainlanders along with the former colonial elites of Han Taiwanese and Hakka descent, who remained non-chewers, as were their ancestors during the previous generation in the Japanese colonial period. The “drivers” of modernity in Taiwan were therefore all “non-chewers,” but the actual truck drivers and laborers whose energies were harnessed by the directors were mostly all betel nut chewers. Among the chewers in Taiwan, as the betel nut industry began to boom as a “shadow economy,” marketing strategies developed into the phenomenon of “betel nut beauties” which have only recently introduced a potential “choice” for chewing betel nut to men of upper socioeconomic status, called “high-tech nobles.” Because of the social stigmatization of betel nut chewers that developed in the 1980s, these contemporary “high-tech nobles” do not identify as betel nut chewers, and they keep their teeth clean and white to avoid identification by others, while still purchasing betel nut from “betel nut beauties.” 418 As explained in Chapters 3 and 4, lower socioeconomic status Han (Taiwanese and Hakka) women in Taiwan did not become betel nut chewers at first because they had no physical need to chew, unlike their husbands and sons who worked as truck drivers or construction laborers. High socioeconomic status Han women, just like their husbands and sons, also did not take up the habit of chewing since it had been socially stigmatized as a low-class behavior. The result is that in present-day Taiwan, only 1.2% of women are betel nut chewers, whereas 16.8% of men are betel nut chewers, and 40% of people with at least one Indigenous parent chew, while only 8.5% of people with no Indigenous parents chew (Investigation of Taiwan Residents Health Knowledge and Behavior, National Health Department, Executive Yuan, ROC, 2002). In Taiwan, betel nut chewing is therefore associated with (stigmatized) Indigenous identity and Han working class male laborers. Within the Indigenous populations of southeastern Taiwan and Orchid Island, however, no such social stigma was ever associated with betel nut chewing; in fact, the only potential social stigma associated with betel nut would result from not chewing when offered by hosts or friends. In this way, betel nut chewing marks boundaries of socioeconomic, gender status, and ethnic affiliation in present-day Taiwan. In Hainan, however, betel nut chewing marks not an ethnic or socioeconomic status so much as a “local islander” identity. The only non-chewing culture in present day Hainan is that of temporary tourists from Mainland China. Even for Mainland Han Chinese who have taken residence in Hainan, such as the watch vendor from Jiangxi, or the Mainland Chinese laborers who work in Hainan, they developed betel nut chewing habits soon after taking residence in the island, as all the Han immigrants to 419 Hainan have been doing for centuries. In fact, in considering the native cultures of Hainan, which excludes only temporary tourists, the only people who cannot become habitual betel nut chewers are the very lowest socioeconomic class, for the reason that they cannot afford to buy betel nut, and their own production is not sufficient to chew, yet. This is the situation for people in the Li mountain village of Jiayao. Although as soon as their areca palm seedlings (interestingly, provided by the PRC state government) are sufficiently mature, within five years, they will perhaps also be able to chew daily based on their own production. Conversely, the Utsat are among the most avid betel nut chewers in Hainan, owing to their relative wealth. Even after cutting down their own areca palm plantations to make space for further housing development, they continue to chew, but now purchase betel nut from the commercial markets. Thus, for native residents of Hainan, in the exact opposite configuration of Taiwan, the higher one’s socioeconomic status, the more likely one is to chew. Of course, the identity of “betel nut chewer” still does not signify a “modern” identity in Hainan, and for those who strive for such an identity, they would obviously hide or restrict their own betel nut chewing habit to become acceptable among the highest socio-economic status, which means the tourist industry in Hainan. For example, an Utsat man who chews betel nut at home but works in the tourist industry restricts his chewing to the village context and does not chew on the job, whereas Utsat women who work in the traditional market continue chewing betel nut all day long. Ethnic identities emerge and become salient in all complex societies where people speak different native languages or have divergent cultural histories, and they are likewise differently articulated in Taiwan and Hainan. In Taiwan, ethnicity is 420 much more salient, and finer divisions and sub-divisions of ethnic groups have become more politicized. Hainan is within a “Great Chinese” political society that has worked to minimize internal difference. Because Hainan is on the geographical and political periphery of Chinese society, and because it is the only tropical island within the PRC, it has maintained some cultural differences from the Mainland, such as betel nut chewing, which mark it as outside the mainstream “Han Chinese” cultural milieu. While Hainan’s internal cultural and linguistic variation indeed factor into daily interactions, its unquestionable inclusion within the political boundaries of the PRC tend toward minimization of internal cultural difference relative to Taiwan. Betel nut chewing in Hainan therefore does not mark internal ethnic differences as much as it marks a local Hainan identity vis-à-vis Mainland Han identities. In Taiwan, on the other hand, everything is questionable and actively challenged, owing to its political history of abrupt and unforeseeable drastic change in political authority on the island (first the Japanese, and then the KMT, what is next is anyone’s guess). As Siki the Dulan Amis woodcarver mentioned of his father’s generation, no one could be certain who one is or who one should be. For the current generation in Taiwan, however, the freedom of choice regarding one’s own ethnic identification has become almost extreme, even as it is becoming more and more certain “who one should claim to be,” which is, according to current (DPP) state rhetoric and growing sentiment among Taiwanese, perhaps surprisingly to outsiders, “non-Han.” In Taiwan, political conflict (KMT vs. local elite) has come to be considered as ethnic conflict (Han vs. Taiwanese). Taiwanese national, political and ethnic identities were first defined by the Japanese colonial government and then, fifty years later, were 421 radically re-defined under KMT martial law, which further complicated local identity politics. Under Japanese occupation, Han (Chinese) ethnic identity was officially applied to all speakers of Taiwanese (Min-nan) and Hakka languages along with any tax-paying “Aborigines,” who had been trying their best to pass as assimilated Han, even to the extreme of fabricating ancestral lineages to prove their ancestors came from Fukien province under the Qing (Faure 2000). By the late Qing, the only “non-Han” (non-tax paying Aborigines) were the Austronesian language-speaking peoples of the central mountains and eastern coast. By the late Japanese colonial period, ethnic status in Taiwan was only salient in daily life in the same way it is in present day Hainan, there was no need to assert internal divisions among so-called Han identities. All non-Japanese were simply “colonial subjects” and Japanese language was used to communicate across ethno-linguistic boundaries. By the end of Japanese occupation in 1945, the most successful Han Chinese in Taiwan, those who became the “local elites,” were those who adopted an instrumental Japanese cultural identity while perhaps maintaining a particular Han Chinese (Hakka or Taiwanese) identity at home. How shocked these local elites must have been when all the Japanese authorities abruptly left the island in 1945, the KMT arrived and imposed martial law in 1947, the speaking of Japanese and all local languages were banned in official public discourse and replaced with Mandarin Chinese. Their efforts at adapting to Japanese cultural identity had to be recast under a supposedly familiar, but somehow distant, Han Chinese regime. For the Taiwan local elite, new networks and relations with the KMT political elite would have to be established. In identifying itself as “Han Chinese,” the 422 KMT eventually brought about latent “Taiwanese” resentment and finally resistance to this newly defined “Han Chinese” identity, which could not be openly expressed until after the end of martial law in 1987 and the subsequent turn to “democratic” elections. In the late 1990s the KMT state proposed a “New Taiwanese” ideology that ostensibly included all people born in Taiwan as a way to side-step the problematic ethnic issues with Han Chinese identity in Taiwan vs. Han Chinese identity in the PRC. The effect of the proposal, however, was even further intensification and politicization of the issue. “Taiwanese” identity was then claimed as exclusive by (Min-nan) Taiwanese language-speakers in opposition to Han Chinese (political, but not cultural) identity (as “zhongguo ren”), whether in Taiwan or elsewhere, and as a result became framed as a “national” identity, which it had never been before. This tendency has been increasing especially since the 2000 election of the first representative from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as president, Chen Shui-bian. Even before that time, there were many attempts among Taiwanese to assert “We are all ping-pu!” (so-called “plains Indigenous”) based on academic historical research which simply noted that many if not all contemporary “Taiwanese” people have at least one “ping-pu” ancestor. This has become the basis for primordialist interpretations of ethnicity in Taiwan, or more specifically, racial identity, to suggest that not “sinicization” but rather “indigenization” has occurred (Faure 2000). However far-fetched this idea seems to academics or historians both in and outside of Taiwan, it continues to muster significant support within Taiwan. The sociopolitical climate eventually created an unprecedented situation for now “ethnic Taiwanese,” who had consistently identified as merely “Han Chinese” through 423 the Qing Dynasty and vis-à-vis their former Japanese colonial masters, but by the late 1990s not only strived to minimize the relevance of any Han Chinese political or even “ethnic or cultural” identity, but also actively asserted a “non-Han” identity as Siraya or “ping-pu.” Formerly “Han,” but now trying harder for non-Han status, some Taiwanese claim Siraya ethnic identity, since if they can be considered “ping-pu,” then they can “legitimately” distance themselves from Han Chinese identity, while promoting a cultural history of Taiwan as independent and separate from that of Mainland China. Of course, as we have clearly shown in the history section, this is preposterous since all of the “ethnic Taiwanese” in contemporary Taiwan have ancestors from the Chinese Mainland. It seems even more ludicrous for the fact that the whole sinicization process of the plains “Aborigines” during the Qing Dynasty was celebrated by Han and non-Han alike. To now change one’s ethnic identification on a political whim shows both the instability of “ethnicity” as well as the “unrootedness” of those who make such claims. One would expect betel nut chewing to be involved in marking this newly claimed “Siraya” or “ping-pu” identity, but in fact it is not, owing to the continued social stigma against chewers among “Taiwanese” elites. If, however, there were claims forwarded such that “true Taiwanese” are the betel nut chewers of Taiwan, at least that would hold much more historical validity, though it would exclude the rightful place of the indigenous peoples who lived in the high mountains among the “Taiwanese.” At present, identity politics in Taiwan are sufficiently complicated to elude any easy categorization, nor would I argue that any is needed. After all, Taiwan 424 cannot legitimately claim national status anyway, so for the present perhaps the best solution is for those people who live in Taiwan to consider themselves Taiwan islanders and celebrate rather than condemn the variety of their ancestral origins. Of course, that would be impossible without balanced historical understanding, which has been so far lacking from either the KMT or DPP educational agendas. In Hainan, while there is also a potential incentive for people to claim “shaoshu minzu” (“national minority” but not “Indigenous” identity) status, which would allow them to have more than one child, and perhaps gain some kinds of governmental support not available to Han Chinese, there is no evidence of people making such claims. Why? The national political philosophy of the PRC is to acculturate all those people living within its borders as “children of one big Chinese family,” to minimize internal differences of all sorts, and promote a single unifying national identity. While regional or provincial specialization and differences are encouraged toward the pursuit of common national economic development, overall cultural semblance is essential for the maintenance of the imagined community that is “The People’s Republic of China,” which at present owes more to the common experience of Maoism than to any earlier historical commonalities. 3 In Hainan, Han Chinese cultural and political identity includes local ethnic identities of Hainanese, Hakka, and ever more specific local identities based on language dialects, such as the Yacheng dialect spoken in southwestern Hainan, or the Junhua dialect spoken in northeastern Hainan (by descendants of soldiers who 3 See Farquhar (2002) for extended discussion of the current generation gap between Maoist and Postsocialist generations in the PRC. 425 immigrated to Hainan two thousand years ago in the Qin-Han Dynasties). Also salient in Hainan are state-defined non-Han ethnic identities of Li, Miao, or Hui (Utsat), which are officially accorded “national minority” (shaoshu minzu) status. Among those identified as Li (the actual “Indigenous peoples” of Hainan), there are at least three sub-identities claimed, according to regional language dialects. Utsat identity is articulated not only by distinct language and dress, but primarily through Islamic religious practice. Ethnic group boundaries in Hainan are defined primarily through interactions with others of different language-speaking communities. For example, when any two people in Hainan meet, if there is reason to assume they are from the same ethno-linguistic community, they will speak with each other in the local language dialect. If it turns out that one of them is not conversant in that dialect, perhaps Hainanese language will be tried, and if that doesn’t work, then they must shift to speaking in Mandarin Chinese (putong hua). Therefore, in Hainan (unlike Taiwan), the use of Mandarin Chinese thus indicates that the two people in conversation are from different ethnic communities. Furthermore, people in Hainan, including the Utsat, are all comfortable with a Han Chinese national-political identity, and will begin sentences in Mandarin Chinese with the subject, “We Chinese people …” (women zhongguo ren …). The situation in Hainan is perhaps similar to that of most other provinces throughout Mainland China, where people naturally speak first in their native dialect and only switch to Mandarin Chinese when one of them is not conversant in the native dialect. (The only exception would be in parts of northeastern China where there is no 426 local dialect other than Mandarin remaining.) Throughout the PRC, including Hainan, for Han and non-Han (shaoshu minzu) alike, all share a common national political identity as Chinese (zhongguo ren). Mainland China is not a country of immigrants; instead, it has historically “sinicized” non-Han over the centuries as it encountered and incorporated them first through tribute and taxes, and after 1949 with a de facto Chinese national-political identity based on inclusion within the political borders of the PRC. At the same time, “China” remains a homeland, even if imagined, to Han Chinese people (hua ren) who have immigrated around the world, such as Overseas Chinese (hua qiao), and those in Taiwan daring enough to make such claims. Exactly what betel nut chewing marks and which kinds of identity boundaries it articulates is specific to each island, and emerges from within each novel cultural and political context. Betel nut chewing has potential as both an instrumental and primordial marker of ethnic, cultural, national, and local identity in Taiwan and Hainan. In Taiwan, betel nut chewing remains a local marker of southeastern Indigenousness and lower socioeconomic status for Han men. With the recent influx of tourists from Mainland China, and their fascination with “betel nut beauties,” however, it is possible that betel nut chewing could emerge as a more inclusive marker of local Taiwan identity, at least in the Chinese imagination, though unless a new generation of Han women begins adopting the habit, which from this vantage point seems unlikely, betel nut chewing in Taiwan remains a localized ethnic and gender-divisive identity marker within the island itself. Betel nut chewing in Hainan, in almost exact contrast to Taiwan, currently shows consistent inclusiveness across all ethnic identity statuses, and most explicitly marks 427 the boundary between local islanders and temporary visitors or “outsiders” which is explained by the adoption of the chewing habit by a steady and continuous flow of Chinese Mainlanders (dalu ren) to Hainan over the past few centuries, who have all eventually taken up the habit of chewing betel nut as they integrated themselves into local island society. The only situation where chewing betel nut is currently restricted in Hainan is in the presence of tourists, which means that local tour guides do not chew betel nut while working. Although no current social stigma against chewing betel nut is discernable in Hainan within local culture, it could become pronounced with the encroachment of modernity if for instance the tourist industry develops such that the socioeconomic status of local tour guides rises significantly above that of other local occupations and they tend to equate their non-chewing with their rise in socioeconomic status. Or perhaps Hainan tour guides could be sought from “outsiders,” Mainland Chinese populations of non-chewers, which could contribute to a situation of internal stigma against chewers. Equally possible, however, would be the inclusion of betel nut chewing as part of the tourist experience, as a “local specialty” of Hainan. For now, however, Hainan remains an island of betel nut chewing cultures, and the question of how encroaching modernity will impact betel nut chewing remains open. So far the only direct link between the people of Taiwan and Hainan is purely commercial, for instance, Taiwan investors in Hainan’s tourism industry or Taiwan buyers of Hainan areca nuts who smuggle them back into Taiwan in the low season. Very few tourists from Taiwan visit Hainan, presumably even fewer tourists from Hainan have visited Taiwan, not only for lack of resource but for the unresolved 428 political conflict between the ROC and the PRC. However, the future prospects for further connections between the islands in terms of cultural exchange are promising. People of each island could learn something from the other. In terms of betel nut chewing culture, Taiwan could understand their own past by observing how betel nut is invested with social significance in Hainan (as it was in pre-Japanese Taiwan), and perhaps come to appreciate its own betel nut chewing culture instead of stigmatizing it. For instance, “Chinese people” do indeed chew betel nut in Hainan. Hainan could observe how Taiwan cultivates its internal cultural capital for economic development, and perhaps come to appreciate and celebrate its own internal diversity, whether in the promotion of (eco-cultural) tourism or the development of other specializations, any of which would naturally bolster its economic growth. A Renaissance of Betel Nut Chewing Culture? Throughout this research, I have come to see two basic ways in which betel nut chewing is viewed. The most obvious and significant way is as a “bad habit.” The more subtle and perhaps enlightening way is as a “means for consciousness transformation” which is not only readily available, but also “legal” and “natural.” Of course betel nut chewing, and the production of its ingredients, is going to continue in Taiwan and Hainan for the foreseeable future. Exactly what betel nut and chewing betel nut mean in each interpersonal encounter or solitary situation, however, will change according to social, economic, cultural, and political factors. The material qualities of betel nut and its ingredients, however, will not change according to any human intervention, nor will the root symbolic meaning of betel nut as the 429 reproductive outcome of complementary gendered union, and the gift of betel nut among chewers as the expression of “social bonding.” Perhaps the betel nut will cease to be used in “traditional” rituals, yet it will most likely continue to be significant in “secular” rituals, even if commercialized. Most significantly in my opinion, is that the same symbolic meaning persists in whatever novel context, such as is the case with “betel nut beauties” in Taiwan. This research has made clear that a seemingly inconsequential material object can have a profound effect on cultural life, and even take on a social and symbolic life of its own. Paying attention to the material elements of cultural expression, especially the ones which are “taken for granted” can unveil insights into the nature of cultural expression and change, especially when the material object has a history of use in various cultural settings, such as is the case with betel nut. The interesting question of whether betel nut chewing could become popular outside its current regional area, such as in the Americas or Africa, deserves some serious thought. As people tend to move around the world faster and more frequently in every generation, it would seem that those exposed to the essence of betel nut chewing would indeed bring the material, cultural, and symbolic technology with them wherever they live around the world. And so it is not inconceivable that plantations of areca catechu and betel pepper vine would manifest in the tropics around the world in the coming generations, especially once people realize the difference of chewing fresh betel nut verses the dried variety. There are of course formidable constraints on the spread of betel nut chewing outside of its current region, but nonetheless we cannot underestimate the power of 430 human yearning for ever new and inspiring experiences, of which chewing betel nut is definitely one. Nor can we underestimate the power of human creativity in supplying these experiences as far and wide as possible. As such, it is not inconceivable that younger generations will take to the “habit” of chewing betel nut, and thereby end up creating novel cultural situations and meanings for chewing. And it is also likely that those meanings will resonate with the earliest meanings applied to betel nut by humans throughout history. Only time will tell the “future history” of betel nut chewing. If only this dissertation has succeeded in developing some interest among scholars in betel nut and other natural psychoactive substances, whether currently labeled “legal” or “illegal,” and the relevance of these materials to cultural production in the largest (“global”) and also most culturally specific (“local”) senses, then it has been a success. It is hoped that future researchers will be able to penetrate deeper into specific cases and varieties of betel nut use, and also apply various analytical tools to unveil the meaning of the cultural use of not only betel nut, but also the perhaps unlimited diversity of natural and chemically produced psychoactive substances around the world. 431 Bibliography Ahern, Emily Martin and Hill Gates (eds.) 1981 The Anthropology of Taiwanese Society. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd. 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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Betel nut chewing is a social practice that articulates boundaries. The history of betel nut chewing in Southern China indexes the ways in which non-Han minorities were sinicized, demonstrating how betel nut chewing culture was appropriated by Han nobles, and variously incorporated into Han cultural expressions in the southern region.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Anderson, Christian Alan (author)

Core Title Betel nut chewing culture: the social and symbolic life of an indigenous commodity in Taiwan and Hainan

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Anthropology

Degree Conferral Date 2007-05

Publication Date 04/19/2007

Defense Date 09/06/2006

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag consumption habits,ethnic identity,gender,nationalism,OAI-PMH Harvest,psychoactive substances,tourism

Language English

Advisor Hoskins, Janet (committee chair), Cooper, Eugene (committee member), Goldstein, Joshua (committee member)

Creator Email christian.alan.anderson@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m410

Unique identifier UC148840

Identifier etd-Anderson-20070419 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-483551 (legacy record id),usctheses-m410 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Anderson-20070419.pdf

Dmrecord 483551

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Anderson, Christian Alan

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu