Invisible Taiwan: A Spirit-Medium Documentary and the Reconciliation Ritual It Encountered

30-second overview: "Invisible Taiwan" premiered in Taiwan on June 15, 2018, and is screenwriter Lin Ming-chien's (National Taiwan University philosophy graduate, involved in the adaptation of "Killer Ouyang Potted Plant" and co-writer of "Machi") first feature documentary. He originally set out to document spirit mediumship, but on the first day of shooting the deities called "cut!"—he needed to resolve family matters first. The camera eventually follows four spirit-medium women and one heavenly-language interpreter to the mouth of the Deer Ear Stream in Tainan, where they conduct a three-day ritual for Koxinga and the Siraya people. The full film runs 118 minutes, with a Taipei box office of approximately NT$1.1 million.

First Day of Shooting: The Deities Called "Cut"

The entire film begins with a spirit medium: a film review in Today Weekly notes that Lin Ming-chien's acquaintance "Mei-ling" had lost "two and a half" younger brothers, and later became a messenger of Mazu (媽祖娘娘).¹ Science has never crossed into that realm, and temple culture is Taiwan's most widespread form of folk belief, so the director approached the project with a spirit of "getting to the bottom of it."¹

But on the first day of shooting, he was "played" by various deities—called to this temple, then that shrine. The message from the deities was: his ancestors could be traced back to the Tang Dynasty, but later descendants had failed to carry forward the family honor; he needed to cultivate himself and put his household in order before he was qualified to handle divine subject matter. More critically, the deities revealed a family problem he had never disclosed to outsiders—a younger brother in an alcohol-induced coma—which had to be resolved first before he could return to filming.¹ So shooting wrapped on the very first day. The director later said: "I felt a bit sorry to my team—we came to make a movie, and somehow we ended up conducting a ritual."²

Four Spirit-Medium Women Translating "Heavenly Language" into Human Speech

The film mediates that invisible world through several visible people. A BIOS monthly review lists four women: Ah-bao, who can channel the Ninth Prince; Mei-ling, who can channel Mazu (and sometimes the deceased); Aunt Qiu-yan, the representative of the Siraya people's Alizu; and Guan-yu, who translates heavenly language into human speech.² The Open Cinema database supplements this with the mediums' formal names: Lin Bao-gui and Tseng Mei-ling can both channel multiple deities, each speaking different heavenly language, with Guan-yu handling the translation.³

What is heavenly language? The Open Cinema synopsis offers an explanation from the film itself: the invisible world needs no language, because "light" itself is frequency, is message. Heavenly language is the sound that results when light "steps down" into the range of human hearing, translated as objectively and neutrally as possible by the interpreter.³ The BIOS review also captures the everyday side of this mechanism: the deities chat and say trivial things; every time Alizu possesses Aunt Qiu-yan, she drinks rice wine heavily, leaving people wondering whether she's drunk or genuinely channeling.²

A Ritual for the Victims of the Wei-kuan Building: Making the Director a Stakeholder

The director's "path of merit" has a clear starting point. BIOS describes him witnessing a ritual blessing the victims of the Wei-kuan Building (killed in the 2016 Tainan earthquake), watching as flames consumed blessing packages one by one, while a teacher beside him called out that the rising smoke was the spirits ascending to heaven. Everyone looked up and waved goodbye to the sky; in the voiceover, the director says that in that moment he felt unusually calm and peaceful.²

The Open Cinema eweekly review adds another episode: on the way to the coast in Tainan, the vehicle's wheels got stuck in sand and wouldn't budge, until a local elder helped tow them free. Only after seeing the news did they learn that the elder was Lin Chung-min, director of the Deer Ear Gate Zhen-men Temple.⁴

Koxinga's Dream Apology, Yet It First Deepened the Misunderstanding

That same director later became the film's most crucial turning point. According to Open Cinema eweekly, Lin Chung-min organized a reconciliation ritual after Koxinga appeared to him in a dream expressing willingness to apologize to the indigenous people—but the misunderstanding actually deepened the conflict between the two sides. The director and the heavenly-language channelers then stepped in and conducted a three-day, three-night ritual for both parties.⁴

BIOS monthly provides clearer timing and location: in August 2016, the crew conducted a three-day ritual at the mouth of the Deer Ear Stream in Tainan (where Koxinga landed in Taiwan), hoping to facilitate reconciliation between Koxinga and the Siraya people.² The same report also documents the opposition: the Siraya people were strongly dissatisfied, believing the ritual's clothing and ceremonies did not conform to Siraya tradition and amounted to consuming indigenous culture in a charlatan-like manner. The film captures Director Lin's remorse and tears, attempting to show that anger stems from mutual misunderstanding.² The Open Cinema eweekly review notes that the film does not shy away from the historical fact of Koxinga's oppression of indigenous peoples; the channeler conveys Koxinga's willingness to bear responsibility for all events carried out in his name. What the people present truly cared about was whether both sides could now set aside their prejudices and accept the apology.⁴

Two Meanings of "Invisible"

A Today Weekly review quotes the director's explanation: "Invisible Taiwan" has two layers of meaning. The first is the spirit world that ordinary people cannot see. The second is that the documentary process allowed the crew to witness social figures who had never entered their field of vision.¹ Open Cinema eweekly offers a similar observation: the film speaks of invisible deities and spirits, while on another level it brings out the small, unnoticed people in the corners who quietly contribute.⁴

Zooming out, this island has two kinds of "invisibility." One is the invisibility determined by international politics—what "Invisible Nation" documents about Taiwan's sovereignty. The other is the world of deities that most Taiwanese themselves are unfamiliar with, which this film brings into the cinema.¹⁴

118 Minutes, NT$1.1 Million Taipei Box Office: Evaluations Remain Contested

According to the Open Cinema database: 118 minutes in length, produced in Taiwan, produced by Shadow Market, distributed by Catch a Monkey, Taipei box office approximately NT$1.1 million (as of September 7, 2018).³

Post-release evaluations were mixed: the BIOS monthly review felt the production was not flawless—after the midpoint, some choppy editing and lengthy documentary passages made viewers restless—but the film recovered ground with its humorous tone, cinematography, and score, and made a valuable attempt at documenting and preserving Taiwan's traditional folk customs.² The Open Cinema eweekly reviewer admits to being half-skeptical of the heavenly-language content, yet after witnessing divination blocks, the turning point in the director's brother's condition, and spontaneous beach cleanup before the ritual, concedes that "there seems to be some force in the unseen" at work. He emphasizes that regardless of whether viewers are believers, the ability to respect one another is what the film seeks to convey.⁴

Looking back years later, the film's most tangible contribution is that it left a record of Taiwan's folk religion and Han-indigenous relations at that moment in time—including the controversies that were not cut from the final edit.²⁴

Further reading:

• Invisible Nation — Another kind of "invisibility": an American director's documentary on Taiwan's sovereignty.

References