Seaside summer school
A sun-drenched summer’s day is a great time to process banana-silk fiber.
Bright and early, Chen Shu-yen and Tuwak Tuyaw lead students from the banana-silk workshop they teach up the mountain to select suitable banana plants—ones that have not yet produced any fruit. In accordance with Kavalan traditions, they perform a simple ceremony to honor their ancestors before bringing the entire plants back to their studio.
The Kavalan people of Hualien’s Paterungan indigenous community practice a unique form of banana-silk weaving. They take leaf sheathes from the pseudostem of the Latundan—or “silk”—banana, scrape out the unwanted pith, dry the remaining material under the sun, and then separate and prepare the fiber before finally weaving it into fabric for clothing and other products. Chen demonstrates how to pull out the leaf sheaths from the bark. Then, while securing them with her feet and one hand, she scrapes out the starchy pith with a knife until it becomes partially transparent and the silky fibers become clearly visible. The banana silk is then dried in sheets under the sun, before being separated into silky strands that are connected and wound into balls of yarn. At that point, the weaving process can begin.
Tuwak Tuyaw had borrowed some century-old warping machines and ground looms from tribal grandmothers to show the students in their weaving workshop. Chen even invited some of the grandmothers to put on a demonstration. The eyesight of 100-year-old Zhu Aju is failing, but once the tools are in her hands, they move without her seeming to give them any thought. Fan Tianli, who is in her 80s, guides her students’ hands as she teaches them how to put the banana-silk thread in the warping machine. When the students lose their way, she sets them straight.
In truth, banana-silk weaving can also be found in places such as Okinawa and the Philippines. Yet Chen emphasizes: “The Kavalan directly scrape the pith from the raw banana fiber, whereas in other places the fiber is typically cooked before scraping. The method is different. Thus the banana-silk weavings of Paterungan are quite unusual.”
Every year PateRongan holds classes on topics such as bamboo and rattan weaving, shell ginger leaf weaving, natural plant-based dyeing, and bark cloth making. Starting by having the class experience the feel of the raw materials as they gather and process them, she leads the students to reconsider the relationship between people and the environment.
It is only by gaining real world experience—such as by going to a banana grove, gathering banana leaf sheaths, peeling off their outer layers, scraping out the pith, drying them under the sun, and gathering the silk to wind into a ball—that one can understand the ethos of coexistence with the natural world.