Dashiye Aflame

When I chanced upon a used bookstore hidden in a back alley, an illustrated book caught my attention. It consisted of many folktales from Kaohsiung, and one about Dashiye left a haunting impression on me. The story is set against the backdrop of the White Terror. During the Dashiye ceremony, a papier-mâché statue of Dashiye suddenly appears, its face aflame, who tells a woman “I am your son,” and that she is not to live her life consumed by hatred. The son, along with many other victims, lost his life during the political repression.After paying for the book, I went to Siaogang to attend the Dashiye ceremony hosted by a local temple. It was the day of the Ghost Festival. The ceremony was nothing short of spectacular, and the experience brought to mind Chung Chao-cheng’s short story The Composition of the Ghost Festival. I realized that the traces of those wandering ghosts of Taiwanese history—the unsung heroes who suffered untimely deaths—still resonate in the local temple. Though their presence is invisible, one can feel it in the heat rising from the combustion of papier-mâché.