9 - Conclusion

Summary

In the late afternoon, people in Beicun often sit along the sea-wall which was built to protect their community from typhoons. Elderly men and women sometimes gather there, facing the calm water, their fingers and lips stained red with betel-nut juice. From the sea-wall they look across the Pacific, watching fishing boats pull in and out of the harbour to the south of the village. Below them, on the coral reef, children splash in small pools of water, playing with bits of seaweed, or gathering rocks and shells. Sometimes the children take up sticks in order to engage in a kind of dramatic warfare on the beach. A woman appears on the sea-wall, surveying the scene below her, and calls her children to dinner: ciaq png!

As evening sets in, the breeze from the ocean becomes cooler. Looking back at Beicun from the sea-wall, the narrow rows of grey houses begin to merge with the steep hill behind them. The roof of the Ma Co temple, with its auspicious dragons curling up towards the sky, is the most colourful thing in sight, but this is also soon lost in shadow. Then the sounds of evening begin to filter through: villagers laugh as they share food and wine; a woman sings a Taiwanese folk-song through a scratchy-sounding amplifier; a melodramatic opera booms out from a television; a tou su pounds on an altar as he chants an invitation to a god; a motor-scooter arrives with a roar from the next village.