For those of you with an interest in Taiwan Aboriginal stuff

[KuKulzA28]

As some of you may have noticed I have a passion for and have been researching Taiwanese Aboriginal (yuanzhumin) blades for some time now. I'm Taiwanese which makes this very close to my heart. I've been trying to get a laraw and saving up ever since I knew about them. Get yourself some food & drink, cause this post is a long one..... and riddled with Chinese and Atayal terms and names, so beware...

On my last trip to Taiwan...

me and my father found one vendor who sells aboriginal blades. The maker and his sons are from 銅門, 花蓮 (Tong-men, Hualien). They make a wide-variety of traditional aboriginal blades and a Han Chinese partner of his sells a select range, and mails within Taiwan.
They are often referred to as 番刀 (fan-dao, savage knife), or 山刀 (shan-dao, mountain knife). The second common name is there because many of the surviving tribes are ones that live in the mountainous areas... the ones on the plains have long since been assimilated, inter-married with, or killed off. I am part Hoklo, part Siraya, part Hunanese, and part Hubeinese.



This dao is the one I got from that vendor while I was in Taiwan. As my reviews have said, it's a decent blade... but doesn't hold an edge well enough and feels like a chunk of metal, not too well balanced. Just to let ya'll know, 原住民 (yuan zhu min - original people) is a term for Taiwanese aborigines. Some call them Ping-pu, meaning from the flatlands/plains, but that comes from a time when Chinese categorized aborigines based on whether they lived on the plains or in the mountains. Many people who have aboriginal blades now use them like machetes. In Taiwan the traditional machete-blade of the Chinese is the 開山刀 (Opening Mountain Knife). It is a sickle-like billhook-type blade. Very useful - but not quite as versatile or hefty as a yuanzhumin blade. They are often sold side-by-side by street vendors who sell outdoors tools and cutlery. In the okd days it is said that an Aboriginal hunter could survive in the mountains for months with just his knife and some salt.



Towards the end of the Taiwan-trip, my father and I went to 烏來鄉 (Wulai). It is the southernmost part of the Taipei County, but the northernmost Atayal village. We visited the Atayal museum there, which was very good, though the collection was small. An Atayal/Tayal woman called MeiLu gave us a tour. She's a weaver. After a VERY informative tour, we asked about blades and she said that Atayal blades were made privately by local smiths for family, close-friends, and tribesmen. Outsiders rarely get close to having one... I did learn some things about the blades though. The open scabbard of course, allows the man to check his blade for rust, and lets water out easily (tropics rain a lot). The big flare on the dao-chiao or butt-end of the sheath has a two-fold purpose. If you are an aboriginal huntsman out in the mountains and you need some dry material to start your fire but all the ground and the local wood is wet, you can use it to help start the fire. Still, it'll be a wet, smoky one - but better than none. Secondly, they'd drill a little hole on the bottom edge of the flare and put the hair of their fallen enemy in it. As if headhunting (mgaga) wasn't enough, now you have a visual mark of how many this warrior killed. I have a feeling that once he's out of space he'll either get a bigger sheath, or just stop... after-all if you've killed more than 10 people, you're doin' pretty good. One sheath there showed 9... a pretty accomplished headhunter must have owned it. Many blades have a chisel-grind which works well with open scabbards and is easy to maintain. Many also have hollow-metal handles which allow for hafting on a shaft to make a spear. The straight laraw would make good thrusting spears, the curved ones would make decent hewing spears. Wooden handles tend to be more comfortable, but in the tropics will eventually rot away and need to be replaced.

The story could end there...

but it didn't. I got back to the USA and after some time, decided to do research to try to find these "local smiths". I knew it wasn't going to be easy since I don't read/write much Mandarin Chinese, I don't remember much Taiwanese, and I don't know Hakka, Toisan/Cantonese, and squliq Atayal. On top of that, it'd normally take some connections to know of these things. After surfing the web for what seemed to be several days I came across two promising leads... An old KuoMingTang Nationalist veteran and a Serbian-American living in Wulai. I'm going to leave names out of this but if I accidentally let it slip once, o well...

After some discussion in typed Mandarin, the veteran referred me to his aboriginal friend who said that's he wouldn't mind showing me, but that I'd have to go with him to the place. That sounded a lot like the smiths in Tong-men (meaning copper-gate). I saw pictures of his blades, and yes, they were of the same style as the Copper-gate blades. So that lead led me right back to Hualien...

The Serbian-American proved much more helpful. Since he also spoke english it was very helpful. He taught me that in squliq Atayal language, the term for the big blade was laraw, la-row, where ow is like in cow. The small blades are known as puli, pronounced boo-lee. He told me one smith is in 新店 (Shing-dian) and another in 桃園 大溪 (DaSi, Tao-yuan).... maybe one in San-xhia. The one is DaSi may be Hakka but seems to have been making Atayal blades for the tribesmen for some time now. Today they use spring steel and nails to make blades and arrowheads (and fishing spears). Seems like there's a very limited amount of hunting still going on... and that the blades are not illegal, but not entirely legal... We talked about a lot of things, one of the biggest was of course Atayal culture and their blades. Eventually this led me to his friend Watan Kahat.

Now that's his Atayal name but he's actually a Hakka (Kejia). He's a professor/scholar and very close to the Atayal. Infact, he is so learned in that culture, and such a good craftsman, that many Atayal youths go to him to fix their wording. He also makes Jew's harps, traditional baskets, sheaths for knives, etc. The Hakka people are "guest-people", sort of like the Gypsies/Roma of China. Many of them went to Taiwan in search of new land to settle and fortify. However the Hoklo (Fujianese-origin) were a lot more numerous and many of the Hakka were driven towards the mountains. Many of them live in Taoyuan, Hualien, and Ilan. After some discussion he finally agreed to sell me a Laraw and I was sent pictures. Eventually the deal went through and it was mailed to me. All in all, I spent $四四四, must be lucky. In anycase, here's some photos of people and their laraw...



It's just one kind of aboriginal big blade in Taiwan, but all follow two basic patterns, curved and straight. But there are fat bellied ones for butchery, slightly curved straight ones, occasional straight ones that resemble the curved ones but are good for stabbing, short straight ones for chopping... etc.etc.

Here's some old ones from the Yang-Grevot collection

Now I have the laraw...

I must have looked like a dumb-happy kid when I first held it. It came with a nice traditionally woven bag, and a traditionally woven but modern dyed rammie (a type of plant fiber) sling on the sheath. Watan made the sheath... I don't know the maker of the blade. It's pretty curved, like a bengkulu, so I imagine saber-cuts will come out of this guy like smoke out of a car. It's pretty hefty, but very well balanced. The edge is scary-sharp. It slices through paper like a swordfish cuts through the sea. I'll probably use it for outdoors stuff, but I have no doubts it can slash through necks. When I have tested it out more, I'll post a review in this thread. The big-ass sheath might be an issue, and the sling isn't good for running through the woods... so I might make a new sheath sometime.

Have any questions? Ask away!