Meet A-whai Pan, a crackerjack aboriginal rattan braiding artist who lives in Penglai Village (蓬萊村), Nanzhuang Township (南庄鄉) Miaoli County (苗栗縣).

A-whai's "Penglai Workshop" (蓬萊工作坊) is located right behind Penglai Elementary School (蓬萊國小). The workshop doubles as her home and office. This is where we meet her for a little chat:
"Your name works like a charm – it's a lot more effective than the doorplate!"
"Oh sure, just about everyone in the tribe knows who I am."

The Saisiyat people are one of the smallest groups of indigenous peoples in Taiwan, and naturally it makes A-whai, who's an old hand at rattan handicraft, a local celebrity in the area.

A-whai won the second place with her work, "The Dragon and Snake Kettle" in the first Mitsubishi Motors Aboriginal Craft Award (中華汽車原住民工藝獎). In 1997, she garnered a special honor with the traditional Saisiyat piece, the rattan "tabangasang" (a connective, decorative string of small bells to be worn below the hips) in "The 4th Braiding Crafts Award." A-whai's exquisite works have been surefire prizewinners in various handicraft competitions for years. She takes great pride in her art, and her masterly handiworks have never failed to wow spectators.

Born in 1952, A-whai, whose Chinese name is Pan Sanmei (潘三妹), was born a tribeswoman of Taiwan's southern Saisiyat group of indigenous peoples. Her full name is A-whai Ya Dayen Sawan. As is customary practice, A-whai shares the same name as her aunt. Ya Dayen is the name of her father, and Sawan is her last name. Her Chinese name, "Sanmei," literally meaning "third sister" actually has nothing to do with her position in the family, she says. In reality, A-whai has five elder sisters, two elder brothers, and a younger brother and sister. The tribe elders are the only people who call Sanmei by her aboriginal name, "A-whai". Others address her respectfully as 'Ms. Pan".  

Before she settled into the life of a married woman, A-whai grew up working in the farms and growing China fir seedlings in the Daping (大坪山) mountain areas. During her leisure time, she made herself useful by helping her father making bamboo and rattan farm tools; this activity eventually went as far as becoming the family's main source of income.

"For as long as I can remember, all the everyday utensils in the household were made by my father," she said. During her girlhood, A-whai successfully acquired the traditional art of Saisiyat bamboo and rattan handicraft. This skill paved the way for her career, and from there she developed a genuine love for this métier. 

Her married life kept her busy for a long while, so A-whai took a sabbatical from rattan and bamboo art. She finally breathed a sigh of relief after her kids were grown, when she again turned her attention to her life's passion. In 1984, the Town Hall of Nanzhuang (南庄鄉公所) organized a class on traditional bamboo and rattan textile art and craft, and retained Zhang Xianping (a famous ethnic Han rattan artist, also the winner of the 6th Cultural Legacy Award) as the instructor. A-whai signed up to join the class, and after 3 years of tutelage under Zhang - a craftsman held in the highest esteem by the nation – she began to attempt her own creative work.

In her 14 years of rattan braiding, A-whai's creations have experienced dramatic transformations from conservative and low key to bold and unconventional. She is adept at both single-string spiral twirls and regular spiral braids. A-whai is now one of the most frequent award winners at various competitions. She even has to dedicate a room specifically for all her certificates of merit and trophies.

All her award-winning pieces from over the years are kept carefully in display cases at home. The intricate pine leaf patterns of the "rattan-woven flower vase" are natural charmers. The leaf patterned rattan piece is also equally winsome; the fern-like designs at the mouth of the container are breathtakingly beautiful. One can contribute the disarmingly appeal of A-whai's conifer and fern rattan articles to her life experience - a great part of which was spent in the mountains and the woods. What is obvious is that before A-whai took lessons from rattan artist Zhang, she was nurtured and trained by the best instructor of all – Mother Nature, who taught her that the essence of life can be found in the smallest of things.

In recent years, A-whai's creation took a more traditional turn towards the Saisiyat traditions. She effortlessly makes the most ingenious Saisiyat toys with rattan piths and skins. And she advanced to new grounds by unleashing her creativity to a deeper cultural level, constructing the rattan "tabangasang."

A-whai's devotion to the Saisiyat traditions and her homeland has never wavered in spite of all her laurels and awards, things she considers to be external. She applies all her energies to reviving and universalizing the Saisiyat culture. During her tenure of more than 20 years as the chairwoman of Saisiyat Culture and Art Corps (賽夏文化藝術團團長), she set to work with gusto to promote the Saisiyat ritual song and dance performances and handicrafts, and founded the "Penglai Workshop" in a Saisiyat neighborhood. Showcased at the workshop are collections of bamboo containers for rice, baskets to hold seeds, knapsacks, hand carry containers, sewing kits, food containers, storage boxes, hats, and the small scared baskets for keeping the spirits of the ancestors and memorabilia and tribal tokens, all of which are common Saisiyat textile items. 

Some of A-whai's works are replicates of conventional Saisiyat articles. Their construction is extremely taxing, and price tags are unusually high. From the quest for suitable materials to the structuring, the finished products often take more than a month to complete. A good many of them are the artist's own designs. Her rattan kettle, for example, one of many prize winners, is a highly challenging piece to make.

Rattan kettles are the typical wine container of the Saisiyat people; the base is a bottle gourd, and the body is made with aboriginal spiral twirl braids. Traditional braiding techniques are applied to bring out the patterns seen on the surface of the gourds. The finished products are decorated with the wild pearl barley seeds collected in the mountains.

Before A-whai begins her work, she spends a painfully long time hunting for appropriate materials; next, she proceeds to conceive a design. And finally she braids relief-like flower and plant patterns on the surface that leave spectators gasping in admiration. Upon winning the award for her kettle piece, A-whai promptly made a duplicate. Art connoisseurs unanimously agree that this piece is worth well over NT$100,000.

A-whai also gives a lot of weight to practical rattan utensils, such as wall ornaments and flower holders favored by interior decorators and floral designers. She often applies the most ingenious ideas to traditional knapsacks, bamboo baskets and the likes. Even though all the articles may serve the same purpose, A-whai always manages to come up with a whole range of styles and patterns.
 
A-whai's rattan and bamboo items are mostly inspired by Saisiyat household utensils, while incorporating some traditional decorative elements and totem designs (such as Thunder Woman (雷女), and Sea Dragon Woman (海龍女) from the traditional Saisiyat folktales). The articles are rendered with contemporary designs to bespeak the artist's distinctive craftsmanship. 

The connective, decorative string of small bells made of rattan an worn on the hips with traditional Saisiyat dress, is called "tabangasang" in Saisiyat language. This rhythmic instrument is used during the ritual ceremony of "Pas-ta'ai" – the annual harvest festival to appease the now extinct dark-skinned dwarves, who were at one point in time neighbors to the Saisiyat. The belled string is tied around the back of the buttocks, and it would chime pleasantly when the dancers swing their hips.  

The modern version of tabangasang used in contemporary ritual ceremonies are manufactured with colorful fabrics, whose materials include: metal sequins, small bells, plastic beads and bullet casings (the tube-like parts of the casing are hung around the hem). The traditional tabangasang is made with a large piece of woven ramie as the main body, the surface of which is sewn with sequins and ornaments, with wild pearl barley seeds and grains stitched in the spaces between the sequins. Hung around the hem are 40 to 50 bamboo arrow tubes to give off a whooshing sound.

If one is to make a comparison between the two versions, A-whai's rattan tabangasang is noticeably more elaborate yet more faithful to the Saisiyat tradition than the regular modern ones– it is as close as it can be to the all-natural tabangasang used in the old days. A-whai uses rattan skins and seadheads for the instrument, and adds pearl barley seeds, bay tree tubes and  rattan bells (hinged with metal clappers). 

Despite her persistence in passing on the legacy of her people and a faithful following her students, A-whai is still faced with tremendous pressure. Due to the staggering price of the materials she uses and time-consuming construction process, every rattan art piece could easily run up to NT$60,000 to NT$70,000; understandably some collectors would have second thoughts.

In contrast, a lot of the textile handiworks made in Southeast Asia are considerably less expensive, and one cannot help but get the feeling that perhaps A-whai's artworks are strictly a privilege of the rich. On the other hand, you might not feel so discouraged if you look at her art in perspective: these are, after all, the babies of Taiwan's finest rattan braiding artist, this fact alone renders them the finest collector's items, and their value may appreciate over time – what a prospect to look forward to! 

In the quiet mountain community in Nanzhuang of Miaoli County A-whai's life is anything but leisurely. In addition to her career, she is also a respected mother, and a widely loved grandmother of the family.

She handles household chores, teaching, creative works, choreography, and songwriting with fluid, effortless grace. She is considered a very unique matron in the Saisiyat patriarchal community, and one of the key figures in passing on the rattan braiding tradition of the tribe. Lastly, she is one of the rare rattan and bamboo braiding masters who remains creatively active.
 
"At present Taiwan's bamboo and rattan braiding market is quickly being phased out by works imported from the Southeast Asia and China. The labor and materials abroad are relatively cheap, compared to those in Taiwan; and naturally Taiwan's rattan and bamboo braiding artists are being forced out of the market," A-whai said with a heavy heart. This worrisome development is going to cause a gap in Taiwan's rattan and bamboo braiding art circle that cannot be remedied if no one steps up to nurture new generations of artists. A-whai feels more duty-bound than ever as she encourages Saisiyat youths to learn, inspiring them to discover the delights in the art. Her daughter-in-law can now make sophisticated small pieces, under her patient guidance.
 
Many of the prize-winning works A-whai has made are now in the possession of competition organizers. But she plans to look for suitable materials and duplicate them and keep them as family heirlooms. A fine piece demands at least a month of her time to complete.
 
History has it that the Saisiyat people were called Saisett, or Bouiok in ancient times and consisted of two tribes: the north and the south. The southern tribesmen were scattered about in Donghe (東河), Penglai (蓬萊), and Shitan (獅潭) areas around Nanzhuang (南庄) of Miaoli County (苗栗縣). The northern branch settled at higher altitudes between 500 to 1,500 meters at Wufeng Township (五峰鄉) in Xinzhu (新竹).
 
Due to geographical proximity, the Saisiyat customs are now taking on a cultural tinge of the Atayal and Hakka people in their neighborhood. This explains why A-whai also sets up a shrine in her main hall, in much the same way as Taiwan's ethnic Han people. Hung on the walls are two black-and-white portraits. "These are my father- and mother-in-law. They have passed away," she says. This way of honoring deceased family members is very unusual for an aboriginal family.

"My house is a typical Hakka three-section compound she says. In 1979, A-whai moved here from her former residence up the mountains in Erping (二坪). "Erping is where my in-laws live. My own family lives in Daping (大坪). It's a short distance up from Erping, at an attitude of 700 meters," she says.

Written by Perry Hsieh for culture.tw
Translated by Shannon Hu