# "Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 79"
The trade winds rustled through the coconut palms of Samoa, where volcanic peaks rose above turquoise lagoons and fale (open-air houses) with thatched roofs lined the shore. Su Yao's boat glided into a village harbor, passing fishermen in outrigger canoes hauling in tuna, until it reached a community clustered around a malae (sacred meeting ground). In the shade of a giant banyan tree, a group of weavers sat on pandanus mats, their hands moving with rhythmic force as they beat bark into thin, fibrous sheets. Their leader, a 60-year-old woman with a tiare flower behind her ear and a lava-lava (wrap skirt) made of handwoven cloth named Mele, looked up as they approached, holding a finished tapa—decorated with geometric patterns and ocean motifs in rich browns and reds that seemed to ripple like water. "You've come for the tapa," she said, her Samoan language melodic like the waves, gesturing to stacks of bark cloth drying on wooden frames.
The Polynesian people of Samoa have crafted tapa (also called siapo) for over 2,000 years, a craft intertwined with their family ties and ceremonial life. The tapa—a cloth made from the inner bark of paper mulberry trees—serves as both practical wrapping and a symbol of identity: it is used in weddings, funerals, and *fono* (village councils), with patterns denoting clan affiliations and social status. Each motif carries meaning: zigzags represent ocean currents, concentric circles symbolize unity, and triangles honor the volcanic mountains. Made by beating bark with wooden mallets (*i'e tufuga*) and decorating with plant-based dyes, each tapa requires up to two weeks of communal work, with women singing *siva* (dance songs) to "infuse the cloth with mana (spiritual power)." Dyes are made from native plants: *'aua* bark for red, *tutu* berries for purple, and *nonu* leaves for yellow, with recipes guarded by *tufuga* (master craftsmen) through family lineages. The process begins with a *tatau* (blessing) by the village matai (chief) and only takes place during certain lunar phases to "ensure the bark yields good fiber." Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this communal craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Samoan traditions while adding durability to the delicate bark fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "cultural mana" and "innovation" was as different as the volcanic soil and the deep ocean.
Mele's granddaughter, Lina, a 25-year-old who taught tapa-making at a cultural center while studying Pacific Island studies, held up a tapa with a pattern of interlocking fish and frangipani flowers. "This is for a *fono* welcoming new matai," she said, tracing the motifs that represent abundance and leadership. "Our women beat the bark during *taualuga* (coming-of-age ceremonies) when the moon is full—too many fish, and it brings greed; too few, and the village lacks prosperity. You don't just make tapa—you weave the strength of our community into bark."
Su Yao's team had brought mechanical bark beaters and synthetic dye blends, intending to mass-produce simplified tapa patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "Polynesian heritage" home decor line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-printed wave motifs, the women froze, their wooden mallets thudding against the stone worktable. Mele's husband, Tupu, a 65-year-old matai with a tattooed *pe'a* (male tattoo) and a walking stick carved from whalebone, stood and gestured to the malae. "You think machines can capture the *va* (sacred space between people) that makes our tapa alive?" he said, his voice deep as the ocean trough. "Tapa carries the laughter of our women and the wisdom of our chiefs. Your metal has no laughter, no wisdom—it's a coral rock, not a living tradition."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Samoan weavers harvest paper mulberry bark during the dry season, offering the first cuttings to the sea god Tagaloa to "thank him for protecting our islands." The bark is soaked in freshwater streams, where women leave shells as offerings to the water spirits, and beaten in communal circles to strengthen village bonds. Dyes are prepared in wooden bowls carved from breadfruit trees, with each color mixed by elder women while reciting genealogies to "bind the dye to our ancestors' stories." The seaweed-metal blend, despite its marine origins, was viewed as an intrusion. "Your thread comes from deep seas that swallow canoes," Mele said, placing the sample on a mat woven from coconut fronds. "It will never hold the mana of our *'aiga* (family)."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the 'aua bark dye, turning it a murky brown and causing the bark fibers to crumble. "It angers Tagaloa," Lina said, holding up a ruined swatch where the fish patterns had disintegrated. "Our tapa grows more sacred with each ceremony, like a *fale* that shelters generations. This will decay like driftwood, breaking our community's connection to the past."
Then disaster struck: a powerful cyclone battered the islands, uprooting the paper mulberry groves and flooding the village's tapa storage fale. The weavers' wooden mallets—some passed down through five generations—were swept away, and their supply of rare *tutu* berry dye was destroyed. With the *Teuila Festival* (Samoan cultural festival) approaching, when new tapa is displayed in traditional dances, the community faced a crisis of both culture and continuity. Tupu, performing a *siva tau* (war dance) to appease the storm gods, blamed the team for disturbing the natural balance. "You brought something cold from foreign seas to our warm islands," he chanted, as the village drum (*lali*) echoed across the lagoon. "Now Tagaloa is angry, and he takes back his trees."
That night, Su Yao sat with Mele in her fale, where a *umu* (underground oven) cooked taro and palusami (coconut cream with spinach), filling the air with the scent of coconut and smoke. The thatched walls were hung with tapa cloths and family photos, and a small shrine held a coconut shell filled with seawater and a frangipani lei. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping *kava* (ceremonial drink) from a wooden bowl. "We came here thinking we could honor your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Mele smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of *pua'a fa'ausi* (pork with coconut caramel). "The cyclone is not your fault," she said. "The ocean tests us to remind us to stand together, like the *fale* walls that shelter us. My grandmother used to say that even broken bark can be mended, like a broken *'aiga* can be healed. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that tapa can tell new stories, without losing our island heart. Young people buy clothes from New Zealand. We need to show them our beating still speaks to our ancestors."
Su Yao nodded, hope rising like the tide over the reef. "What if we start over? We'll help replant the paper mulberry trees with cyclone-resistant varieties, recover the lost mallets, and make new dye from surviving plants. We'll learn to beat tapa by hand, singing your *siva* songs. We won't copy your clan patterns. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your fish with our ocean waves, honoring both your islands and the sea. And we'll let Tupu bless the metal thread with a *kava* ceremony, so it carries Tagaloa's favor."
Lina, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her lava-lava rustling like palm fronds. "You'd really learn to beat bark for eight hours a day? Your arms will ache, your hands will blister from the mallet."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the genealogies you recite while working. Respect means knowing your family stories."
Over the next three months, the team immersed themselves in Samoan life. They helped build stone windbreaks around the new mulberry groves, their hands scraped by coral, and joined the women in communal bark-beating circles, their muscles burning from the rhythmic motion. They traveled with Tupu to a remote valley to collect wild 'aua bark, learning to identify the trees by their connection to ancestral stories. They sat cross-legged on pandanus mats, painting patterns with dye-stained fingers, as the village women sang *siva* songs about their island's creation. "Each beat must land with the same force as your heart," Mele said, demonstrating the mallet technique. "Too soft, and the fiber stays tough; too hard, and it breaks. Like community—strength in unity."
They learned to mix dyes in wooden bowls, their clothes stained red and purple as Lina taught them to add coconut oil to the 'aua bark dye to "make the color last like our love for the islands." "You have to paint the patterns in the order of our genealogy," she said, her brush moving in precise strokes. "Skip an ancestor, and the mana fades." They practiced the *tatau*-inspired patterns that make Samoan tapa distinctive, their progress slow but steady as Mele's 85-year-old mother, Sina, who had beaten tapa for three generations, corrected their work with a sharp eye. "The waves must curve like our lagoon's edge," she said, her gnarled fingers tracing a line. "A straight wave brings bad luck to fishermen."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and 'aua dye, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of *coconut wax* and *nonu* leaf extract, a mixture Samoans use to preserve *fale* thatch. The wax sealed the metal, preventing discoloration, while the extract let it bond with bark fibers—a combination Tupu declared "holds the scent of our islands" after the *kava* ceremony. "It's like giving the thread a Samoan soul," she said, showing Mele a swatch where the red now glowed against the metal's subtle shimmer.
Fiona, inspired by the way Samoa's currents connect to the wider Pacific, designed a new pattern called "Reef and Tide," merging fish motifs with wave patterns in seaweed-metal thread. The fish gradually swim into ocean swells, symbolizing how Polynesian voyagers once navigated the vast seas. "It honors your sailors and our ocean guardians," she said, and Tupu nodded, pressing his forehead to the fabric in a traditional *sa'o* (blessing). "Tagaloa's ocean connects all islands," he said. "This cloth understands our place in it."
As the mulberry trees sprouted new leaves and the village fale were rebuilt, the community held a *Teuila Festival* with traditional dances, fire knife performances, and a *kava* ceremony. They unveiled their first collaborative tapa at the malae, where it hung between two coconut palms catching the sunlight. The cloth featured the "Reef and Tide" pattern, its bark fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that glowed like sunlight on water, and traditional geometric borders that seemed to pulse with communal energy.
Mele draped the tapa over Su Yao's shoulders, as the village sang a *fa'afetai* (thank you) song. "This cloth has two hearts," she said, her voice mingling with the waves. "One from our Samoa, one from your sea. But both beat for the ocean that connects us."
As the team's boat pulled away from the harbor, Lina stood on the shore, waving a small package. Su Yao caught it as the wind lifted it into the air: a scrap of tapa dyed red with 'aua bark, stitched with a tiny fish and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in frangipani petals. "To remember us by," read a note in Samoan and English. "Remember that all islands are connected—like your thread and our bark."
Su Yao clutched the package as Samoa's coastline faded into the distance, the sunset painting the lagoon in hues of pink and gold. She thought of the hours spent beating bark in the communal circle, the *siva* songs that seemed to carry the voices of Polynesian voyagers, the way the metal thread had finally learned to move with the bark fibers. The Samoans had taught her that tradition isn't about preserving isolation—it's about honoring the connections that bind communities, letting old patterns evolve while staying rooted in the *va* between people and place.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Rajput team: photos of Meera holding their collaborative *Bandhani* at a desert festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new fish—Samoan islands and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, the *lali* drum echoed across the water, a rhythm as old as the islands themselves. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless island communities to honor, countless stories of ocean connection to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—listening to the waves, honoring the weavers—the tapestry would only grow more harmonious, a testament to the beauty of all things bound by the sea.