{"id":"EA-TW-AMIS-001","label":"Amis bnbn toy and bird-scarer bullroarer","people_or_site":"Amis","country_current":"Taiwan","historic_region":"Ciwidiyan / Shuilian, Shoufeng Township, Hualien","macroregion":"East Asia / Taiwan","local_name":"bnbn","source_term":"Bnbn (bullroarer)","source_language":"English","object_description":"Bamboo shaved to a slender oval, holed at the top and strung with cotton. The wooden bnbn kept in the Academia Sinica's ethnology museum is a tapering slat about 17.5 cm long and 2.5 cm wide.","function_summary":"Children's toy or bird-scarer used to protect arable crops.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"cheng2015_taiwan_instruments","source_type":"primary_ethnography","source_url":"https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/5686220.pdf","page_or_plate":"section 1.13, printed p. 78; conclusion | thesis §6.1.13, printed pp. 340-343","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Shuilian village (Ciwidiyan), Shoufeng, Hualien — the sub-tribe named in Cheng's thesis.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"Among the Amis of eastern Taiwan the bullroarer is called bnbn, a name the ethnomusicologist Lancini Jen-hao Cheng records as onomatopoeic. At Ciwidiyan — Shuilian village on the Hualien coast — it was a childhood toy and a crop-guard, swung to scare birds off the fields. When Cheng visited, the sub-tribe's chieftain De-rang Sung, a primary-school teacher, was making bnbn with his pupils so the plaything would pass down: bamboo sawn and shaved to a slender oval, a hole drilled at the top, a cotton string tied through.","pull_quote":"Nowadays, the bnbn is not simply a toy, but it is an indicator of Amis cultural revival. For Amis elders, playing bnbn (the bullroarer) helps invoke childhood memories.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Cheng, Taxonomies of Taiwanese Aboriginal Musical Instruments (PhD thesis, University of Otago, 2015), §6.1.13, p. 341","term_gloss":"bnbn — Amis name for the bullroarer, onomatopoeic","cls":"play_practical","class_label":"Play / practical","color":"#24766D","is_candidate":false,"flags":["toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"etymology":"Cheng treats the Amis form as onomatopoeic.","literal_gloss":"onomatopoeic / sound-imitative","semantic_cluster":"sound_imitation","etymology_confidence":"medium","sources":[{"citation":"Lancini Jen-hao Cheng, 'Native Terminology and Classification of Taiwanese Musical Instruments,' Ensayos 19(28) (2015), section 1.13, p. 78; Cheng, Taxonomies of Taiwanese Aboriginal Musical Instruments (PhD thesis, University of Otago, 2015), §6.1.13, pp. 340-343","url":"https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/5686220.pdf","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20260730051134/https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/5686220.pdf"}],"source_citations":"Lancini Jen-hao Cheng, 'Native Terminology and Classification of Taiwanese Musical Instruments,' Ensayos 19(28) (2015), section 1.13, p. 78; Cheng, Taxonomies of Taiwanese Aboriginal Musical Instruments (PhD thesis, University of Otago, 2015), §6.1.13, pp. 340-343","source_display":"Lancini Jen-hao Cheng, 'Native Terminology and Classification of Taiwanese Musical Instruments,' Ensayos 19(28) (2015), section 1.13, p. 78; Cheng, Taxonomies of Taiwanese Aboriginal Musical Instruments (PhD thesis, University of Otago, 2015), §6.1.13, pp. 340-343","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Bamboo shaved to a slender oval, holed at the top and strung with cotton. The wooden bnbn kept in the Academia Sinica's ethnology museum is a tapering slat about 17.5 cm long and 2.5 cm wide.","function_display":"Children's toy or bird-scarer used to protect arable crops.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"amis","display_name":"Amis bnbn toy and bird-scarer bullroarer","image":{"full":"assets/objects/EA-TW-TSOU-001.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/EA-TW-TSOU-001_thumb.jpg","alt":"Cheng’s photograph of a Tsou euvuvu: a pale flat wooden bullroarer with a cord attached at its rounded end, tapering to a point; the printed label reads “Euvuvu (bull-roarer).”","credit":"Lancini Jen-hao Cheng, 'Native Terminology and Classification of Taiwanese Musical Instruments', Ensayos XIX(28), 2015, Fig. 54","license":"Scholarly figure; non-commercial research use","source_page":"https://www.uv.mx/ensayos/","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Cheng's photograph of the Tsou euvuvu.","additional":[{"full":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_03/EA-TW-AMIS-001_cheng2015_fig6-1-13-1.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_03/thumbs/EA-TW-AMIS-001_cheng2015_fig6-1-13-1_thumb.jpg","credit":"Jen-hao Cheng, doctoral thesis on Taiwanese Indigenous musical instruments (2015), fig. 6.1.13.1, p. 340","license":"Scholarly figure; non-commercial research use","source_page":"https://www.uv.mx/ensayos/","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Cheng's pencil sketch of the bnbn in the Academia Sinica museum: a tapering slat with a hole at its narrow squared end, in centimetres."}]},"slug":"ea-tw-amis-001-amis"}