by Sean Huang
How much do you know about betel nuts, or bin-laung, as the locals call it? It’s a carcinogen, a main factor of landslides in Taiwan, and it carries the stigma of lower-class society. Actually, there are many interesting stories about it besides health, environment, and societal issues. Aboriginals, for example, are affected by betel nuts in their daily life, culture, and religions. In most people’s perceptions, aboriginal people really like betel nuts. In their tradition, the betel is a kind of snack, something like chewing gum: aboriginal children used to cut betel nuts into pieces and eat them during class breaks. Besides northern tribes such as the Tsou (鄒族), Bunu (布農族) and Atayal (泰雅族), other aboriginal tribes regard it as a gift for friends, a sign of affection and even a magical agent. For example, the Yami (雅美族), a tribe that esteems strong men, a host may give visitors harder nuts to test if that visitor could easily chip it with a knife, and then decide to treat him well or despise him. Betel nuts are also used to show a guest’s purpose. Traditionally, the host will give the guest betel nuts to show welcome, and then depend on the guest’s reaction (by enjoying or refusing it) to judge whether it’s a friendly visit or not. Amis (阿美族), a matriarchal tribe, view betel nuts as the symbol of life and a token of love. Since betel nut is pronounced the same as female genitals in their language, and they believe its sweet juice is like mother’s breast-milk, betel nuts represent the image of the mother. A popular method to eat the nut is to wrap it with betel-leaf and add some lime, and the betel-leaf and lime represent the father and children; so包葉仔 (the processed betel nut, with nut, leaf and lime) is the symbol of family and life. Therefore, on the first night of the Amis’ harvest festival when young men dance all night and wait for girls to woo them, a woman will give their Mr. Right betel nuts with lime and betel-leaf, which is to tell the man “I want you.” If the boy accepts her love, he will chew the betel nut immediately, or just keep it. If a boy gets no betel nuts all night, it will be viewed as a great humiliation. Similarly, in the Yami tribe, people regard the nut as female and the betel-leaf as male. So, if a would-be father dreams of himself growing betel, he’ll have a baby girl, and he will have a boy if he dreams of himself growing piper betel (荖藤), whose leaves people use to wrap nuts in. Betel nuts are also used in ceremonies and represent supernatural forces. In the Ami tribe, when people catch unknown diseases, the witch doctor uses betel nuts as sacrificial offerings to ask gods’ power to drive away the devil, which makes people sick. Furthermore, witches of the Puyuma (排灣族), a tribe that is considered to have the most powerful sorcery, take the betel as a symbol of humans (the stem is like human’s head and fruit is like the human body). As traditional Chinese make dolls to control people, Puyama witches put pebbles or red beads inside the fruit or use needles to pierce it, in order to make people uncomfortable or for other bad purposes. Fearing and revering this powerful witchcraft, neighbor tribes such as Bunu and Yami have learned this skill from Puyuma witches and even now, some tribes still use this voodoo-like craft. So, next time you find a betel nut on the ground, you had better recall this story. Aboriginals have different languages, customs, and attitudes toward betel nuts, and hopefully, after reading this article, you may know a bit more about some different points of view. If your want to know more about betel nuts and aboriginals, here are some useful webpages: 1. 屏東赤山萬金庄的代誌 http://start.at/peterpan (A website with the most systematic and positive betel nut information) 2. 台灣檳榔四季青 王蜀桂 published in 1999 (A book discussing betel nut culture without value judgment) 3. Taiwan Aboriginal Culture Park http://www.tacp.gov.tw/english/home.htm (A governmental aboriginal culture website with an English version) #Volume 7 Issue 2 a
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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