中文

The Tsou

Alishan’s Old Hoary Head

The Tsou have a deep-rooted love of the mountains and an intimate understanding of the creatures that live in them: the plants and the beasts, the birds and the insects. The elders of the tribe will tell the children the story of the Old Hoary Head, the name of the Chinese bulbul. The Tsou have a very special relationship with this bird.

Living in the Mount Ali (Alishan) area, the Tsou grow their own food and raise their own livestock. Everybody is involved in the farm work, the plowing and the tilling, the sowing and the weeding. When harvest time comes around, one can see the freshly gathered millet and maize hanging from the eaves of the village houses, shimmering in the golden light of the morning sun—a picture of bucolic bliss. When an important festival approaches, the women will get busy husking the millet, and the pounding sound of their pestles echoes throughout the mountain forests and valleys. It reverberates with the same well-paced rhythm as the undulating voices of the singing women. This is the music of the high mountains.

Now one day, as the women were busy husking the millet, there was a naughty little boy who liked to play a game: whenever his mother was raising the pestle for the next pounding stroke, he put his hand in the mortar, only to quickly pull it out again just in time. His mother scolded him and told him to stop being naughty, if he didn’t want to get hurt.

But after a while the boy, whose name was Ahfayee, did the same thing again, and this time he even grabbed some of the white powder that was sticking to the pestle, putting it in his mouth to taste it. This time one of his aunts also gently told Ahfayee that it would be better if he went away and stopped fooling around, but while she was still talking, a pestle hit Ahfayee straight in the forehead. Ahfayee, unable to dodge the accidental blow, fell on the ground with a wail of pain. Dismayed, the mother threw down her pestle and knelt by the side of her son, calling his name again and again, “Ahfayee, Ahfayee!” Her calls were echoed by the other women who were standing in a circle about them, also shouting, “Ahfayee, Ahfayee!”

The sticky white millet powder was covering Ahfayee’s eyebrows and cheeks, and had forced him to shut his eyes tightly. The corners of his mouth were quivering, and he was absolutely incapable of making the slightest sound. But his mother and aunts were shouting all the louder, and their voices were heard all over the mountains and the wild lands.

Yet Ahfayee still wouldn’t move. His mother and aunts were crying in ever greater agony, when suddenly Ahfayee was moving again and opening his eyes. Strangely, though, his body was becoming smaller and smaller, was shrinking right before their eyes! At this his mother and aunts were truly frightened. Terrified, they watched as Ahfayee, now smaller than the palm of a hand, was growing a pair of wings and hopping about on the ground like a little bird—and this was in fact what he had become. The smudge of white powder on his brow was still very much visible as the bird flew out of the house and onto the branch of a tree, from which it quickly moved on to the next. All the while, it was chirping, “Peep, peep, peep!” Ahfayee no longer seemed to hear the voices of his mother and aunts.

To this day, the Tsou do not hunt or kill the “Old Hoary Head”, the Chinese bulbul. They see this bird as one of their children. The white feathers on its forehead are really the millet powder on Ahfayee’s brow.

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