The Olympic decathlete who became a shaman: C. K. Yang and the masculine body in modern Taiwan

Abstract

In the year 2000, the Taiwan media prepared for that summer’s blitz of Olympic coverage. Some reporters, hungry for an original angle, went to interview Taiwan’s first great Olympic sportsman, C. K. Yang (Yang Chuanguang 楊傳廣). Yang, an Ami Aborigine from Taidong County in eastern Taiwan, won a silver medal in the decathlon at the Rome Olympics in 1960. To this day, his epic battle there with close friend and UCLA track and field teammate Rafer Johnson is known as one of the most touching and memorable moments in Olympic history. Forty years later, many of these reporters were shocked to find that the elderly Yang, the UCLA Bruin Hall of Famer once known around the world as “The Asian Iron Man,” was using his body in a different way. Yang now was serving as a Daoist oracle or shaman (Taiwanese tang-ki 童乩, Mandarin jitong 乩童) at the Temple of the Imperial Seal (Yuxigong 玉璽宮) in Taidong, a jarring fact which seemed curious at least and, too many, even shameful. The sense of pity for a fallen hero was soon heightened even further when, on January 1, 2001, Taiwan’s Liberty Times (Ziyou shibao 自由時報) announced that Yang was seriously ill and in need of a