Sakizaya berber bullroarer, Guo Fu Community

berber / ber ber

Source term: bullroarer; distinct from same-named whirring disc

berber / ber ber = Sakizaya name shared by the bullroarer and a separate whirring disc.

For more than a century after Qing troops crushed them in the 1878 Takobowan battle, the Sakizaya survived by hiding in plain sight — living as Amis, keeping their language indoors, until Taiwan recognized them as its thirteenth indigenous people in 2007. Out of that guarded childhood world the elder Jin-wen Huang remembered the ber ber: a thin slice of stone tied to a long string and spun until it sounded. 'The thinnest stone made the loudest sound.' A toy, nothing more — and today elders teach schoolchildren to make it again.

Children played it just for amusement.

Jin-wen Huang, in Cheng, Taxonomies of Taiwanese Aboriginal Musical Instruments (2015), p. 942.

Particulars

Object

Slender oval bullroarer; in practice a thin stone slice tied to a long string and spun. The same name also covers a separate two-hole whirring disc.

Function

Children's toy; revived by elders as a plaything in schools and cultural associations.