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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, December 22, 2002

OUR HONOLULU
Rafts may offer clue to origins

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

DONGSHAN, China — The differences between a Chinese bamboo raft and Hawaiian outrigger canoe are obvious. Yet their similarities may provide a clue to the origins of Pacific Polynesian cultures.

That is the hope of archaeologists who have found artifacts on the China coast that appear to link modern Polynesians with a 6,000-year-old seafaring culture on the Chinese mainland, across the strait from Taiwan. The next step is to discover how people of old made the journey.

The outrigger canoe has been central to dispersal of Polynesians throughout the Pacific. But the vessel is unknown on Dongshan Island, where Barry Rolett, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai'i, and TienLong Jiao, Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University, have found adzes much like those used in the Marquesas, and pottery similar to that found on Taiwan.

Without a canoe, how did people cross 160 miles of open ocean between Dongshan and Taiwan?

Chan Liqun, director of the Dongshan County Museum, examines old bamboo rafts, a possible relative of the Polynesian outrigger canoe.

Bob Krauss • The Honolulu Advertiser

Chan Liqun, director of the small Dongshan County Museum, may have the answer. His father was a fisherman, and he worked as a fisherman in his youth. They fished from bamboo rafts, he said over lunch.

Dubious, I asked how a bamboo raft performs in rough water. He said it handles well in seas up to 10 feet and can be landed on a rocky shore. It can be righted when upset, can be sailed or sculled and is very maneuverable. In his father's day, Chan said, people sailed bamboo rafts all the way to Taiwan.

The ears of the archaeologists perked up. Do people still use bamboo rafts, they asked. Chan said he would show us some and take us to a bamboo raft factory.

The vessels we saw on the waterfront that afternoon were crudely constructed, with sheets of styrofoam used for floatation. The only function served by the bamboo was to provide a frame. The rafts must be seaworthy, however, because I saw one holding three men sculling across the bay.

Some rafts were flat and sled-shaped; others had bows slanting up like toboggans. The largest was about 16 feet long and 4 feet across, with wooden uprights to support the sculls.

Chan said the use of styrofoam began less than 10 years ago. In his boyhood, rafts were made entirely of bamboo. We hiked all over in search of the bamboo raft factory, only to learn that it had gone out of business for lack of customers.

If the disappearance of bamboo rafts proved a disappointment, the waterfront did not. We saw people making and mending enormous nets. Chan took us to the oldest street in the city, a lane so narrow that I could reach across it in places, which led from the waterfront to the main street, a sailor's alley.

We stopped at a little workshop where an old man made sculls and carrying poles with shipwright tools that belonged in a museum. Two doors down, a shop sold caulking for the decks of ships.

A small temple contained a niche for burning incense, piled with plastic bags of human and animal fossils collected by fishermen from the sea floor. Chan said fishermen believe the spirits of animals remain in their bones. They call the fossils "brothers" and bring them to the temple to be blessed. On festival days, they make offerings to their brothers of the sea.

The jetties were chock-a-block with locally constructed fishing boats about 60 feet long, heavy and seaworthy. I asked how many were in the fleet. TienLong relayed the answer, 300. He said the waters off Dongshan are noted fishing grounds.

The next day, I counted nine boats in a row offshore, headed out to fish. Two boats were under construction in a shipyard, with not a power tool in sight. One of the hull planks must have been more than 30 feet long. TienLong said he did not know of another shipyard like it in China.

Such a rich maritime tradition speaks to long association with the sea. Good fishing grounds attracted early settlement by Polynesian voyagers. Why shouldn't the same be true in China?

Later, we talked again about bamboo rafts. The archaeologists said the area had seen severe deforestation about 3,500 years ago. If fishermen were using canoes then, and logs became scarce, they would have needed to find a substitute.

The bamboo raft might have served that function, because it has characteristics similar to the canoe: It is light and maneuverable, can be made of local materials, and apparently is seaworthy.

Or it could be that the bamboo raft came first, and the canoe evolved later.

Chan said he wanted to make an old-fashioned bamboo raft at the museum and sail it to Taiwan as an experiment. Such a voyage has not been made in a generation because of the tense relationship between Taiwan and mainland China.

However, fishermen from Taiwan put in to Dongshan ports regularly without incident, so Chan said he thought such an experimental voyage might be allowed, the Chinese version of Hokule'a's maiden voyage to Tahiti.

It is easier to sail from the mainland to Taiwan than the reverse, he said. The most dangerous part of the voyage is between Taiwan and its offshore Tenghu Islands, where one meets boisterous seas and a current carries boats toward the Philippines.

Rolett and TienLong were cautious about speculating on the role that bamboo rafts might have played in cultural contact between the mainland and Taiwan. But, Rolett added, "bamboo rafts will definitely be part of our report."

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-0873.