Indigenous singer Panai's path to defending the land

Text/Lan Lijuan  Photography/You Yuankeng

In early spring, fleeing the pouring rain of Taipei, I headed east on the Tzu-Chiang Express. When it stopped at Luodong Station, a fine drizzle was still drifting through the air. The train continued south, passing through the hazy tunnels of the East Coast into Hualien. When the train stopped at Fuli Station and I opened my eyes, the sky was just faintly bright, and the dark clouds overhead had already scattered; the night had gone and the day had come, much like the life of singing under Taipei's neon lights, heavily made up, lights on and lights off, day after day.

I drifted off to sleep, and when I opened my bleary eyes again it was already morning. The train pulled into the station, and a sign stood on the platform reading "Taitung."

Panai rose from her seat, slung her guitar over her back, picked up her luggage, and slowly stepped out into Taitung's blazing sunlight. She stood still and looked down at the ground beneath her feet; the sunlight had already drawn a dark shadow from her onto the ground behind her.

She was home!

(Photography by Lan Lijuan)

Drifting in the City, Longing for Mainstream Approval

Every time she boarded a train in Taipei, Panai always had to ride a 7-hour night train before she could set foot on the soil of her hometown.

And yet, 7 hours is not long at all, because Panai, who left Taitung at 17, discovered only after more than 20 years of drifting in a foreign place that only the soil of her hometown let her recover the weight of life.

Panai was born in Tainan. Her father is Puyuma from Chulu in Taitung, and her mother is Amis from Yuli in Hualien. Her parents belonged to different ethnic groups, which destined a cultural gap; Panai admits that when she was little, her mother left home, leaving her to live with her father, who drove a large truck. Her father worked hard to earn money but had no time to care for her, so she learned to sing to herself and play by herself. Her first impression of her hometown was that whenever the time for ritual came, "my father would tell me to go back and pay my respects," Panai said.

When Panai was studying at Taitung Girls' Senior High School, she had her first bitter taste of heartbreak. When she heard "Fei" from the album Echo by the late writer Sanmao, she deeply projected herself onto the lyrics, and so, "I took a bag, borrowed a guitar from a friend, and drifted to Kaohsiung." Panai once said in an interview.

From then on, Panai began her life of wandering. She moved from place to place singing in folk-music restaurants and bars in major cities such as Kaohsiung, Taipei, and Taichung. The pay was not much, but at least she could keep doing what she loved: singing. Soon, at 22, the young Panai won a contract with Rock Records with her deep, low voice.

"In the future I'm going to fulfill a dream I've been chasing!" At the time, Panai felt she had finally received mainstream approval.

And yet, signing a contract is like buying a lottery ticket; it does not mean you will win. Like a dream, she spent as long as 6 years waiting to release an album, deliberately studying how other singers dressed, her mood often rising and falling like the tide with other people's opinions.

Life Brings Forth Life

Fortunately, a friend invited her to join "Formosa Aboriginal Song and Dance Troupe."

She came to know songs in her mother tongue and learned dance. From early morning to late at night, she chanted with the troupe members the cultural lifeline of the Indigenous peoples, dancing out the fresh fragrance of the land, streams, and mountains and forests. Through performance after performance at home and abroad, she received generous praise from audiences; her voice remained distinctive, but the content of her singing grew richer. When she sang softly, the soul of her people seemed to speak through her voice; she still performed on stage, but she sang out the pride and confidence of her people, rather than flattering and imitating mainstream values.

"When I was young, I was very vague about my own life, my identification with the land, and my feelings about my hometown. It was only after becoming a 'Formosa Aboriginal Song and Dance Troupe' member that I began to think about ethnic identity," Panai said.

Another spring that filled the content of her singing was life itself.

In spring at this time, Panai, who had been away performing, returned to her home in Dulan, Taitung. Her 12-year-old daughter ran out of the house to greet her, round-faced, with a childlike face, and a clear, bright voice the moment she opened her mouth.

Panai looked back, "In my twenties, I was very vague about many states of life. I drifted up and down. Fortunately, I could still get happiness from singing, but apart from that, I felt life was very meaningless."

At the time, she could not find the weight of life, and agonized over all kinds of ways to confirm her sense of existence. In the end, she found the antidote: "Have a child!"

She said it and did it, and she was not afraid of worldly eyes or gossip. Even when she was pregnant, she still took part in the Formosa Aboriginal Song and Dance Troupe performances with her big belly.

Why?

Because in the past, singing on stages in the big cities and in every day spent waiting to release an album, she cared too much about how others saw her. She was too proud, too focused on personal self-esteem, and in the end, what did she get? If she was merely alive but not happy, then she would rather seek an absolute sense of existence.

After ten months of pregnancy, her daughter came crying into the world. Panai held this little life that depended on her as if holding her own heart. Her chest became broader and more generous, the love in her eyes deeper, gushing forth like an endless spring. Holding new life in her arms, she learned to see life anew, to see people anew, to see her own people anew, to imagine what her parents had borne in their time, and to ponder the value of home and land.

She lived out a different face.

(Photography by Lan Lijuan)

A Confident Work Wins Recognition

While she was pregnant, Panai changed. She instead accepted an invitation from Guts Records and released her first album of her own lyrics and compositions, Mud Doll. She sang of how society and the city bully people, how urban life suppresses the individual, and how people strive to please others yet lose their own sense of self-worth. She wrote one of the songs, "Wandering Tale," and the true state of mind it portrays is this:

The first time I went to Ximending in Taipei alone to find a senior schoolmate, I took the Chu-Kuang Express from Taitung to Taipei for eight hours. After getting off, I took a taxi from Taipei Main Station to Ximending. It arrived very quickly. When I got out, I asked the driver how much it was. He said, four hundred. At the time I was not yet eighteen. I thought, how could it be so expensive? Luckily I had money on me, otherwise I really would not have known what to do. Only later did I find out he had cheated me.

In 1994, I wrote this "Wandering Tale" with a feeling of "holding a grudge in my heart." Why is it that when you see a country bumpkin from the countryside, you not only do not help him, but cheat him?

While recording this album, Panai was still pregnant. And yet, the new life growing inside her made her stronger, made her tough, made her more confident. Her singing grew more assertive and more dignified, singing out her own style, blending the hardships she had witnessed into her voice, striking every listener, leaving no one unstung.

The first album resonated with people and also won many awards. Mud Doll earned Panai recognition as one of China Times Entertainment Weekly's Top Ten Mandarin Albums of 2000. In 2001, she also released the live album Warrior and Rice Ear together with Golden Melody Award Best Male Vocalist Chen Jiannian.

A Promise to the Land

Her child saved Panai and let her find the weight of life; but it was only by returning to Taitung and making a promise to the land that Panai could truly settle in body and mind.

Enter Panai's home in Dulan, Taitung. Open the kitchen window: a few months earlier, through this very window, she could see her intimate partner Nabu planting vegetables in the field. Whenever friends came to visit, she would put on slippers and walk into the vegetable garden, bend down to pick a few vegetables, and bring them back to cook, fresh to the table. "I really like being a farmer's wife," she said. She likes practicing a self-sufficient way of life together with her partner; it is a simple kind of satisfaction.

"Practice is the greatest wealth!" In the years since returning to Dulan, Taitung, Panai has used the Dulan Sugar Factory as a creative base. She held creative camps, taking students to the beach to experience life and learn to write lyrics and songs. Later these lyrics and songs were gathered together, sung by Panai, and released as the album Stop in That Blue.

"I really feel that being able to teach a group of people who could not compose or write lyrics at all is a very fulfilling thing!" Panai said.

(Photography by Lan Lijuan)

She not only teaches, but also devotes herself wholeheartedly to various social movements protecting the East Coast: anti-nuclear, return our land, anti-Mei Li Wan, and others.

At a concert she softly sang "Formosa," and the very first line made one feel ashamed before the land. She sang "Beautiful Mother Dawu Mountain," and her tone was not one of lament but of distant longing and remembrance, as if the road home were so far away that she could never return. When she sang:

One day I will surely go back, for the great chorus in the valley.
I will surely sing out loud and never leave again...
Oh! The Pacific is the most beautiful mother,
Oh! Dulan Mountain is a beautiful mother.

The singing conveyed a kind of regret, a remorse for not having stayed on the soil of her hometown, so that the lush mountains and forests were no longer as they once were, and everything could never go back.

Living on the land of Dulan, besides actively expressing in social movements her position of defending the land, Panai also devoted herself to collecting tribal songs, gathering local history and culture, and personally surveying the tribal houses that were taken away by the government back then. These heartfelt voices are all presented in another album she produced, Message, which conveys this message:

Are the mountains still there? Are the hunting peoples in the mountains still there? Is the sea still there? Are the fishing and hunting peoples by the sea still there? Are the songs still there? Should we keep singing them? And how should we sing them? That era when people believed that trees, insects, and flowing water could understand human speech, that era when we could communicate with the souls of mountains, oceans, forests, soil, and ancestors, do you remember it?

On the soil of her hometown, Panai chose to stand with her people and with the natural environment. "These things, if we do not do them now, who will?" she asked in return.

(Photography by Lan Lijuan)

The Field Dug Up by the Bulldozer

And yet, while Panai's heart was set on saving the broader environment, her own small happiness was destroyed.

Not long before, a bulldozer drove up to the field that Panai and Nabu cultivated together. Ignoring the crops in the field, it turned them into a pile of earth and stones in an instant.

"How can they do this!" Panai and Nabu came to the edge of the field, unable to believe it.

The truth was that the landowner decided to take back this field and, without notifying Panai and Nabu in advance, directly hired workers to level the land.

"The crops in the field are all life. The reason the workers could drive the bulldozer over them without regard for these lives is that they have no promise to the land," Nabu believed.

The destruction of the field made Panai understand even more clearly what "promise" means.

Because in these past few years, it was the land that changed Panai; it was the land that connected Panai to the history and lifeline behind her people; and it was also the land that made Panai a farmer's wife, with the strength to resist the improper exploitation of land by the state and consortiums. Now, it was also the land that made Panai feel the fragility of the natural environment; only by shouting herself hoarse could she defend the legacy left by her ancestors.

"What our ancestors left us, we should leave to our children!" Panai said.

When she was young, land, hometown, or ethnic group were all illusory words to Panai.

At the age of 40, land, hometown, or ethnic group are all the realities of life to Panai. She is not only a mother, but also wants to become a mother to the land; she is not only a partner, but also wants to become the soulmate of the land; she is not only an Indigenous person, but also wants to stand among mountains, forests, and streams to defend ethnic consciousness.

She creates for the land, she sings for the land.

She is Panai. Dulan Mountain, Dawu Mountain, and the Pacific Ocean are all her beautiful mothers.

※On 4/21 from 14:40-15:20, Panai will perform live at the Yilan Green Expo concert "Listen to the Rice Ears Shout! Writing Songs with a Hoe!" You are welcome to come and listen!

The performance teams and times are as follows:
‎4/21 10:30 Gan-a-dian Band, 11:10 Hu Tianguo and Liu Jinjiao. 14:00 Matthew Lien. 14:40 Panai. 15:20 Yan Zhiwen and Shan Gou Da Hou Sheng Band.
4/22 10:30 Ilid Kaolo. 11:10 Lin Shengxiang. 14:00 Chen Mingzhang. 14:40 Rural Armed Youth. 15:10 Yan Yongneng and Dagou Luan Ge Tuan.