新作坊 Humanity Innovation and Social Practice

Fanpo-Gui—known as Maxa-daxedaxe in the Pazeh and Kaxabu Indigenous languages—are wandering spirits believed to roam the human world. Unique to Puli Township in central Taiwan, Fanpo-Gui are not only localized spiritual entities but also a form of intangible cultural heritage deeply embedded in everyday social practices. More recently, Fanpo-Gui have largely vanished from public discourse due to broader socio-historical transformations and survive today only in fragmented oral traditions. Nonetheless, the diverse narratives surrounding Fanpo-Gui hold the potential to reconstruct a collective life history of these spirits that reflects Indigenous cosmologies and localized responses to colonial and developmental pressures.

To contribute to the preservation of vernacular knowledge, this research collects and categorizes Fanpo-Gui folk narratives, while also exploring the historical conditions—both structural and symbolic—under which Fanpo-Gui emerged in Puli. Central to this inquiry is the embeddedness of Fanpo-Gui within a shamanic cultural system,where ritual knowledge and local belief intersect. By weaving together oral traditions and historical analysis,this study aims to reconstruct a situated life history of Fanpo-Gui that speaks to the survival strategies of Plains Indigenous communities during their relocation to Puli.

At the level of cultural praxis, this paper further explores how Fanpo-Gui narratives are being reinvigorated through creative reinterpretation.Specifically, it documents how ethnographic materials were transformed into an animated movie as a means of local knowledge production and intergenerational transmission. This cultural intervention not only revives marginalized Indigenous cosmologies but also creates a visual manifestation of the affective and ethical dimensions of local memory while respecting the distance that early Puli residents maintained from these spectral presences.Finally, the paper reflects on how shamanic practices have been reconfiguredin more opaque and symbolic forms in contemporary daily life.