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- Panel 3-4 Food and Reverence: The Sacred–Profane Multiplicity of the Tao (Yami) Flying-Fish Season (rayon) /Chiru Chien
Panel 3-4 Food and Reverence: The Sacred–Profane Multiplicity of the Tao (Yami) Flying-Fish Season (rayon) /Chiru Chien
Chiru Chien
Chair, Department of Chinese Language & Literature, National Taitung University, Taiwan
This paper is based on the author’s long-term ethnographic research on the flying-fish season (rayon) of Lanyu (Orchid Island) and argues that the rayon is not a linear religious festival but a dynamic network in which food and reverence are interwoven. On one hand, fishing, distribution, and cooking constitute an everyday ethics of “edible things”; on the other, boats, songs, taboos, and launching rituals bind the sea and the ancestors within a sacred framework of “venerable things.” The paper proposes an analytical perspective of “seeing through the boat’s eye,” treating the plank boat (Cinedkeran) as an agentive cultural confluence that weaves lunar calendars, tides, bodily techniques, and social relations into a navigable vessel of knowledge.
Theoretically, the study combines the sacred–profane distinction, the classification of purity and pollution, the principle of reciprocity and gift exchange, and the notions of liminality and communitas, while engaging with the “social life” and “cultural biography” of things to explore the recontextualization of fish, boats, and songs under tourism and market mechanisms. The discussion suggests that when “eating” is placed within the framework of “reverence,” food transforms into a gift; and when “reverence” permeates everyday life, taboos are reconstituted as embodied techniques and rhythms through which the community continues to navigate the sacred and the profane. These let songs lead, boats teach, sharing govern, and local seasonality recalibrate the tension between the sacred and the profane.
Keywords: Tao (Yami), Flying-fish season, Plank boat (Cinedkeran), Sacred–profane, Ritual & taboo, Gift circulation, Recontextualization, Embodied skills
Chair, Department of Chinese Language & Literature, National Taitung University, Taiwan
This paper is based on the author’s long-term ethnographic research on the flying-fish season (rayon) of Lanyu (Orchid Island) and argues that the rayon is not a linear religious festival but a dynamic network in which food and reverence are interwoven. On one hand, fishing, distribution, and cooking constitute an everyday ethics of “edible things”; on the other, boats, songs, taboos, and launching rituals bind the sea and the ancestors within a sacred framework of “venerable things.” The paper proposes an analytical perspective of “seeing through the boat’s eye,” treating the plank boat (Cinedkeran) as an agentive cultural confluence that weaves lunar calendars, tides, bodily techniques, and social relations into a navigable vessel of knowledge.
Theoretically, the study combines the sacred–profane distinction, the classification of purity and pollution, the principle of reciprocity and gift exchange, and the notions of liminality and communitas, while engaging with the “social life” and “cultural biography” of things to explore the recontextualization of fish, boats, and songs under tourism and market mechanisms. The discussion suggests that when “eating” is placed within the framework of “reverence,” food transforms into a gift; and when “reverence” permeates everyday life, taboos are reconstituted as embodied techniques and rhythms through which the community continues to navigate the sacred and the profane. These let songs lead, boats teach, sharing govern, and local seasonality recalibrate the tension between the sacred and the profane.
Keywords: Tao (Yami), Flying-fish season, Plank boat (Cinedkeran), Sacred–profane, Ritual & taboo, Gift circulation, Recontextualization, Embodied skills