Doris Chiu 朵力的手

15+1

“16” is a meaningful number for the teenagers of Tainan city. Those who are turning 16 have to attend the “Tainan Coming-of-age Ceremony” It is a very important traditional custom in Tainan. From teenagers’ point of view, it’s maybe more important than Chinese New Year, but the problem is people have lost interest and patience for the old customs, and furthermore, some of the customs may will be forgotten and disappear forever.

Julia is always very interested in all the traditional customs, so she has been looking forward to attending the “Coming-of-age Ceremony” when she was turning 16. She was very excited when she learned from the newspaper that the city’s mayor was planning to host the ceremony for the teenagers, so she couldn’t wait to announce this good news to her classmates.

“Good morning, everyone,” Julia announced while she ran into the classroom energetically.

“Our big day is coming. The city’s mayor plans to host the Coming-of-age Ceremony this year for us. Is there anyone wants to join the ceremony with me?” Julia asked, but sadly no one answered.

“Alice, are you interesting in attending the coming-of-age ceremony?” Julia didn’t give up of asking people. “Ben, will you go to the coming-of-age ceremony?” She kept asking the same question to everyone in class. “Vicky, how about you?” Still, she got no answer but only silence.

The Bunun 

I used to be the first one who arrivein class every morning. But, there was a guy earlier than me this morning, and he was sitting on my seat when I entered the classroom. His skin was so dark and you can tell he is very tall even he was sitting on the seat. He made me feel very uncomfortable because of his abnormal looking, so I sat far away from him waiting for someone else to come.At the moment, the classroom was filled up with nothing but dead silence. Eventually, my classmates started to arrive. They were all very curious and felt uncomfortable about the new comer, and no one wanted to sit near to him. It was definitely a very rare face to be spotted in the middle of Kaohsiung.

The teacher came in, and asked him to introduce himself.

“Hello everybody, my name is Biung Istanda Qaganup, or just call me Biung.” Everyone started to snigger because they had never heard a name like that. Our names are usually made up with two or three syllables, like my name is Wu Jia Hao, but his name was so long and strange.

“I like to exercise…”he continued. Students started to snigger again because of his strange accent.

“I like swimming, running ...” students kept laughing, “......and HUNTING.” All at a sudden, students stop laughing when they heard the word - hunting. I think everyone had the same questions in their mindthat I had,‘Is he a Cannibal? Does he kill people for fun, and eat people for living?’ We had watched a movie in the classroom a few weeks ago, it’s about a group of people, preparing for a journey into the rain forest, to record the daily life of the Cannibals there. All of them were killed by the Cannibals. Our new classmate looked like the Cannibal chief that we saw in the movie.

While we were still in the shock, the teacher said, “Ok, from now on, Biung is one of our class members, please be nice to him.” She continued, “Jia Hao, can you give Biung a tour around the school during break time?”