Chio-Tian Folk Drums and Art Troupe

Jeremy and I have been taking a Chinese language class at the local Chiayi National University. Our class is small with one other American and one English woman besides ourselves. The biggest difficulty with Chinese lies in the pronunciation. One sound can have 4 different tones and mean vastly different things depending upon your inflection. Learning the Chinese characters is also very time consuming. Our homework is usually to practice writing the characters. I watch my young students at school practice their characters and realize it takes many years of practice to know them all and draw them well. It is said you must know 3000 Chinese characters to read a newspaper! I don't think we'll be getting to that point this year.

Our class teamed up with another campus's Chinese language class to go on a field trip last weekend. We went about 1 1/2 hours north to Taichung to spend the day with an internationally known performing group called the Chio-Tian Folk Drums and Art Troupe. This group performs traditional Taiwanese drumming and dancing. They paint their faces and become gods in ceremonial processions. They hosted us at their temple/practice building up on a hill above the city for about 5 hours on Sunday. There were about 30 of us and they performed for us, had us all playing the drums in unison, gave us lunch and painted our faces. They were generous hosts and very happy to show us something about their culture and answer our questions.

We've been trying to figure out the religions of Taiwan since we've arrived. There are temples everywhere and some are obviously Buddhist with images of the Buddha. Some are Taoist. And some have figures that leave us wanting to know more. Many Taiwanese practice a combination of the "big" religions like Buddhism and Taoism, with their own folk religions which include gods specific to an area or temple or aspect of life. This performance troupe becomes those gods in their performances and are usually asked to attend various temple holidays to perform as the gods of the temple. Once their face is painted and their costumes are put on they are thought to embody the god and they are not supposed to get out of character. They can't talk, smoke a cigarette or laugh. Some of the performers put on elaborate half-bodies where their own head is at about the chest level of the figure making the god figure extra tall.

There are different half bodies associated with the various gods: tall black-faced god, short black-faced god, can-see-far god, can-hearfar god and children's god (above) which looks like a child and playfully dances in the performances. The black-faced gods judge people and pass punishment in the afterlife. The men with the painted faces perform with these costumed figures and they are the warrior gods protecting the others.

Our day began with a fantastic drum performance by 9 of the troupe members. We captured it on video and posted it on youtube. They are more awesome when you see and hear them so please check it out at the link below. (Give it a minute to load before you hit play.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUEN8pDixso

Then it was our turn to try! And we sounded pretty good for a bunch of first time foreigners!

After a great lunch the troupe sat down to paint our faces. They could only paint half the face because to paint all the face meant that we would be the embodiment of the god. And none of us were ready for that kind of responsibility.

I married this guy?

After most people had their faces painted (some of us refrained so we could take pictures), we were treated to a short dance performance by the happy child gods. Maybe there was once some traditional music associated with this dance but now they bop along to some recorded Asian pop music. We were told the Taiwanese love this and the child gods are often asked to perform in holiday parades alongside commercial mascots for stores like 7-11. I was only able to capture a few seconds of the dance before my camera was full but I think it gives enough of the picture.

Click the link below to watch the child gods dance for 7 seconds!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HryoObjuqHo

 

Then is was time to get on the bus and head back to Chiayi. I hope we can see the troupe's full performance sometime. It was amazing to be able to spend the whole day with them.

Semi gods traveling home.