Renowned US composer Milton Babbitt (1916-2011) published the article "Who Cares if You Listen?" (originally titled by Babbitt as "The Composer as Specialist") in 1958—a staple piece of literature among the US music circle and must-read for academic composers. In his text, Babbitt meticulously details the difficulties faced by "new" or contemporary music at the time, stating his personal opinions on how composers should respond and solve these issues. From the article, we can first notice the relative conservatism of early US society, where the majority of people were unable to understand or unwilling to accept contemporary music. Post-World War II composers were eager to experiment with novel creative techniques in response to shifts in aesthetics and philosophy, gradually straying away from the familiar language of classical music. In addition to doing away with essential elements of classical music like melody, tonality, tonal harmony, or form, composers were increasingly guided by different values in their creation: instead of focusing on entertainment or other functional purposes, they laid a stronger emphasis on the evolution and development of musical language. The kind of music developed with this mindset would inevitably undergo a harsh period of shun and misunderstanding. Not only is it unintelligible and dull for the regular listener of classical music, but even most performers who have undergone classical training deem this kind of music abstract and puzzling, with overly-complicated rhythms and overdemanding performance techniques. While some say it is simply disagreeable to the ears, others refuse to play this kind of music straightaway out of unexplainable fear or horror, among other reasons. Babbitt expresses his viewpoint in the article that this situation where the general public fails to understand and even despises such music is entirely normal, and this might not even be a bad thing. He further elaborates on the necessity for the existence and nourishing of such music, pointing out that a composer's creative work falls under the scope of professional research. Composers must neither cede to the tastes and habits of laypeople, nor be influenced by the worldly market mechanism. He also gives academic composers some advice on how to survive. His belief is that universities, conservatories, and other higher education institutions have the responsibility and duty to support and shelter these composer's works. In addition to offering them a teaching job, these institutions must serve as an environment for free academic creation and research, shielding their musical language from being contaminated by popular taste or box-office pressure and enabling music to continue evolving and developing robustly, without restraint.The phenomenon voiced in this article is not exclusive to US society: certain European nations began facing the impact and influence of contemporary music earlier than the US did. This is an issue the whole world needs to tackle. By this point, perhaps some readers are wondering if reception of contemporary music has improved over half a century since said article's publication. Is contemporary music still the scorn of our society that neither musicians are willing to perform nor listeners able to enjoy? Or has it gone extinct amidst the disapproval and rejection by performers and listeners alike? Compared to these questions, it might be even more pertinent for us to inquire the current status of contemporary music in Taiwan. Have Taiwanese people experienced the same problems in regards to contemporary music described by Babbitt in his article? Have these problems affected Taiwan's overall music ecosystem and, particularly, the creation and dissemination of works by Taiwanese composers? Before giving answers to the above, let's first turn to several breakthroughs in Europe's contemporary music scene across the past few decades. The observations stated below might serve as a point of reference for us.Firstly, from the earliest festivals dedicated to cultivate contemporary music to those spread out worldwide today, it is evident that such events have become major occasions for musicians and the general public interested in the genre. Other than concert performances, certain festivals also organize forums, academic seminars, workshops, master classes, or other educational activities. For instance, held since 1921 until today, Germany's Donaueschingen Musiktage is often considered the oldest new music festival in the world. It has served to launch the careers of a myriad of major 20th and 21st-century composers. Another contemporary music festival holding equal prestige is the ISCM World Music Days organized by the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), which was originally created in Salzburg, Austria in 1923 as the Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik. This festival has been held uninterruptedly since then, with each ISCM member country taking turns to host the festival annually. Other renowned international new music festivals include the Biennale Musica (1930-) in Italy; Darmstädter Ferienkurse (1946-) in Germany; Ojai Music Festival (1947-) in the US; Gaudeaumus Festival (1951-) in the Netherlands; Warsaw Autumn (1956-) in Poland; Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (1963-) in the US; Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik (1969-) in Germany; Rencontres internationales de musique contemporaine (1972-1992) in France; Festival d'Automne à Paris (1972-) in France; Asian Composers League Conference and Festival (1973-); Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (1978-) in the UK; Festival of New American Music (1978-) in the US; ECLAT Festival Neue Musik (1980-) in Germany; Wien Modern (1988-) in Austria; and ULTIMA Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (1991-) in Norway, among others. This has even prompted a wave of new music festivals emerging across Western educational institutions. Merely in the year 2023-2024 in the US alone, the Indiana State University held its 57th Contemporary Music Festival; Ball State University held its 53rd Annual Pellegrini Festival of New Music; State University of New York at Buffalo held its 46th June in Buffalo Festival; California State University in Sacramento held its 46th Festival of New American Music; Bowling Green State University held its 44th New Music Festival; James Madison University held its 42nd Contemporary Music Festival; California State University in Fullerton held its 23rd Annual New Music Series; Florida State University held its 20th biennial Festival of New Music; Illinois State University held its 16th RED NOTE New Music Festival; and University of Missouri held its 14th Mizzou International Composers Festival, to name a few examples.Secondly, professional music ensembles specializing in contemporary works have been sprouting and growing at an incredible pace worldwide. This surge has thoroughly influenced the development and status of contemporary music in our time, even shifting the overall landscape of serious music. The Ensemble intercontemporain is a prestigious Paris-based ensemble devoted to contemporary music. It is not the first music ensemble focusing on contemporary music performance in the world, but it easily ranks as one of the most important and active ones. With the support of the French Ministry of Culture, it was founded in 1976 by composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, a dominant figure in the contemporary music world. It is currently composed of 31 professional instrumentalists who can be considered the foremost authorities on contemporary music performance. Not only do they hold around 30 contemporary music concerts in Paris every year, but they also tour French cities and frequently perform in major contemporary music festivals worldwide. In addition to their chief duty of playing music, they often collaborate with different musical or educational institutions to cultivate and train young students in contemporary music composition, conducting, and performance. They have, for instance, a long-standing collaborative relationship with the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. Activities they engage in together include performing alongside the student orchestra, holding workshops for student composers and performers, and even performing works written by composition students in the conservatory.As for other contemporary music ensembles in the world, a Wikipedia search currently yields more than 160 results. Below are some of the most renowned ones that also have the longest history (established before 1990): Group for Contemporary Music (1962) in the US; Les Percussions de Strasbourg (1962) in France; Ensemble Ars Nova (1963) in France; Asko|Schönberg (1965) in the Netherlands; London Sinfonietta (1968) in the UK; Da Capo Chamber Players (1970) in the US; Speculum Musicae (1971) in the US; Ensemble 2e2m (1972) in France; Ensemble l'Itinéraire (1973) in France; Arditti String Quartet (1974) in the UK; New York New Music Ensemble (1976) in the US; Concorde Contemporary Music Ensemble (1976) in Ireland; Divertimento Ensemble (1977) in Italy; Ensemble Contrechamps (1977) in Switzerland;  Ensemble Modern (1980) in Germany; Musikfabrik (1980) in Germany; Xenakis Ensemble (1980) and Nieuw Ensemble (1980) in the Netherlands; California EAR Unit (1981) in the US; Ensemble Aleph (1983) in France; Ensemble Recherche (1985) in Germany; ELISION Ensemble (1986) in Australia; Oslo Sinfonietta (1986) in Norway; Continuum (1987) in Canada; Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin (1988) in Germany; Klangforum Wien (1989) in Austria; and Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (1989) in Canada. As for similar ensembles founded after 1990, there are simply too many to name.Thirdly, numerous higher music education institutions around the globe have established ensembles for contemporary music or new music performance courses in their programs, making such training an essential part of their overall music education. Only taking the US as an example, schools with new music ensembles or contemporary music performance courses have perhaps long surpassed those that don’t in number; there is therefore no need to list individual examples here.An even more significant change is the increasing number of schools that have begun to offer academic degrees or programs focusing on contemporary music performance. This enables young students with an interest in contemporary music to hone in on the genre. For instance, Germany's Ensemble Modern has had a long-standing collaboration with the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. The International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA) has been founded to offer one-year training in contemporary music performance, bestowing a master's degree on students upon their graduation from the program. The goal of this program is to teach contemporary music performance techniques, notation and interpretation of new music, enhance students' grasp of musical works' inner aesthetics, and deliver a well-rounded understanding of the 20th- and 21st-century musical repertoire. As for the Manhattan School of Music in the US, it offers similar training via a Contemporary Performance Program. It is a tailor-made program for contemporary music performers that encompasses individual mentoring, ensemble practice, opportunities of collaboration with composers, and participation in concerts with the program's ensemble, Tactus. The City of Basel Music Academy's Hochschule für Musik also has a two-year Master's degree in Contemporary Music Performance. In addition to helping students build performance techniques necessary for playing contemporary music, it also includes courses in theory, dissemination, and marketing, with an emphasis on collaboration and cross-disciplinary practices. Students play alongside Zone Expérimentale Basel, the program's contemporary music ensemble, perform in music festivals in both Switzerland and abroad, and are able to participate in workshops, seminars, master classes, as well as discussions led by contemporary music experts and guest lecturers.Fourthly, many countries have established their own centers for contemporary music to help promote the genre as well as to assist with the building and preservation of contemporary composers’ databases. Needless to say, this involves the collection of contemporary music scores and audio/video recordings. Taking the French organization Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine established in 1977 as an example, it is far more than just a research center for music composition; it is also a bridge between composers, performers, as well as ensembles and other performance institutions. Other than regularly hosting seminars and other conferences to enable exchanges between composers, performers, and other professionals, it is also home to a massive collection of contemporary music documents, including published and unpublished scores, videos, books, periodicals, research papers, dissertations, and other music-related textual records and composer’s biographical documents. It even has a free open area where anyone can access music scores and listen to recordings on collection. They also make available plenty of announcements and other information related to contemporary music via the Internet and e-mail, such as a contemporary music event calendar, composition competitions, calls for scores, contemporary composers' bios, and transcriptions of conferences held at the center.Some higher education institutions have also begun to establish contemporary music centers of their own. Although they can't possibly compare to the scope of national centers, they are nevertheless great contributors to the creation, performance, and research of contemporary music. Turning to the US once again, the State University of New York at Buffalo has the Center for 21st Century Music that stands out for its wealth of resources, including the school's renowned June at Buffalo Festival, the Slee Sinfonietta Concert Series, various guest artist events, coupled with other performances, lectures, and seminars. Founded in 2006, it is dedicated to the composition and production of new musical works, with the goal of fostering and perpetuating awareness, research, and performance of contemporary music. Other educational institutions with comparable organizations include the University of Chicago with its Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition; Columbia University with its Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music; University of Iowa with its Center for New Music; Bowling Green State University with its MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music; Boston University with its Center for New Music; and Mills College at Northeastern University with its Center for Contemporary Music, among others.Fifthly, professional contemporary music ensembles collaborating with higher music education institutions have become quite commonplace, accelerating the transmission of relevant professional skills to the younger generation. This also facilitates more connections between students and external professional ensembles or individual performers, even opening up future opportunities for the former. This is most often done through an invitation extended to a professional ensemble from the hosting institution to perform in their music festivals or concerts, demonstration lectures, workshops for composers or performers, and even readings, rehearsals or performances of student compositions. Contemporary music ensembles of this kind engage in residencies of varying lengths, during which they interact with school students. They can either serve as workshop mentors for an afternoon, act as a week-long ensemble-in-residence for a music festival, or stay for as long as one semester or an entire academic year. The State University of New York at Buffalo is worth mentioning as an example, as it has invited a multitude of renowned contemporary music ensembles for residency, including the French Ensemble InterContemporain, Ensemble Court-Circuit, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Ensemble Linea, and HANATSUmiroir; Ensemble SurPlus from Germany; Nieuw Ensemble from the Netherlands; Arditti Quartet from the UK, ELISION Ensemble from Australia; Nouvel Ensemble Moderne from Canada; and several US ensembles such as Ensemble Signal, Ensemble Mise-En, JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Talujon, Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, New York New Music Ensemble, and Meridian Arts Ensemble.Sixthly, outside of academic institutions mentioned above, there is also a growing trend of contemporary music academies organized and run by non-academic institutions. Their goal is to provide short-term professional training courses as well as rehearsal and performance opportunities of contemporary music for young composers and performers. The Lucerne Festival Academy in Switzerland exemplifies this perfectly. It has taken place for many years, and continues to pride in being a "school of new music and laboratory for the future". Founded since 2004, the academy takes place every summer and sees a team of leading composers and performers in the domain of contemporary music gathering for several weeks to coach and guide nearly 100 talented young musicians in playing and discussing 20th and 21st century musical repertoire through rehearsals and seminars. Another famous example is Austria's Impuls International Ensemble and Composers Academy for Contemporary Music, which is preparing to enter its 14th edition in 2025 after 13 years of history. Young instrumentalists and composers from Austria and other countries participate in two-week courses at the academy to receive instruction and guidance on contemporary music theory and practices. A final example in this category is the Yarn/Wire International Institute organized by the US ensemble Yarn/Wire, composed of two pianists and two percussionists. Every year since 2016, they have hosted numerous instrumentalists and composers from around the world. Led by both invited composition and performance mentors, attending student composers and performers jointly participate in rehearsals, performances, lectures, seminars, and other educational activities, culminating in the premiere of these student composers' works played by peer performance students.Finally, in regards to more recent developments in contemporary music overseas, the author has observed a new trend where an increasing number of individual ensembles are choosing to combine their resources and ensemble forces via joint commissions or joint performances. The aim is to interconnect different institutions to create more opportunities that benefit both composers and performers alike. The establishment of the Ulysses Network is an iconic success story. Founded in 2012, this network currently comprises 11 preeminent contemporary music organizations from 9 European countries: IRCAM (France), Divertimento Ensemble (Italy), Gaudeamus Foundation (Netherlands), Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg (Germany), International Ensemble Modern Academy (Germany), Impuls Festival (Austria), Festival Mixtur (Spain), Royaumont Foundation (France), ULTIMA Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (Norway), Time of Music (Musiikin aika) Festival (Finland), and Warszawska Jesień (Poland). The Ulysses Network project has previously gone through two phases: May 2012 to April 2016 and June 2016 to October 2020. It is currently in its 3rd phase, going from October 2020 to September 2024. The project has yielded numerous commissioned works and collaborative concerts throughout its stages. It has also resulted in the establishment of the Ulysses Platform as well as providing cross-national opportunities for young composers and performers. The Ulysses Ensemble is especially noteworthy. Starting in 2017, the Ulysses Network has chosen European-based young musicians through an open call to form a brand-new contemporary music ensemble every year under the name Ulysses Ensemble, and tour across member institutions and festivals. It not only shines the spotlight on composers, but also channels Ulysses Platform's efforts towards providing instruction and performance opportunities for young instrumentalists.The information above is an attempt to give our readers a general understanding of the development and current state of contemporary music in the West. We can now turn to the status of contemporary music in Taiwan to ponder the questions below regarding creation and performance of works by contemporary Taiwanese composers: 1. Do Taiwanese composers possess a robust and free environment for musical creation? 2. Are there sufficient opportunities and channels for performance of works by Taiwanese composers? 3. What is the attitude of our performers and listeners towards contemporary Taiwanese compositions and other contemporary music? 4. What is our progress in terms of education, training, and dissemination of contemporary music in Taiwan? 5. Is there anything we can learn from the system of education and training in the area of contemporary music in the west? Contemporary music was gradually introduced to Taiwan by Taiwanese composers and performers returning from their studies abroad. Organizations aimed at performing and promoting works by Taiwanese composers have been progressively established by numerous predecessors such as Chang-Hui Hsu, Shui-Long Ma, Mao-Shuen Chen, Mau-Liang Chen, Chin-Tang Shen, Chang-Fa Yu, Deh-Ho Lai, Po-Yun Hsu, Loong-Hsing Wen, and Hwang-Long Pan...etc. These organizations may vary in nature, scope, operating model, and level of activity, but they have brought about certain mitigation to the lack of performance opportunities for composers that had plagued the early Taiwanese composing scene. Some examples are the Music Creation Society (製樂小集) and Society for Debuting New Music (新樂初奏) founded in 1961, Jiang Lang Music Group (江浪樂集) founded in 1962, Sunflower Music Assembly (向日葵樂會) founded in 1965, Asian Composers League (亞洲作曲家聯盟) founded in 1973, FORMUSICA (璇音雅集) founded in 1983, ISCM-Taiwan (現代音樂協會) founded in 1989, and Spring Autumn Music (春秋樂集) founded in 1991. These organizations have often been spearheaded by composers. While some of them have undergone name changes or even disappeared early on, others have remained valuable channels for performances of Taiwanese composers' works, such as the Asian Composers League Taiwan National Committee, ISCM-Taiwan, and FORMUSICA.Reformations in national policies regarding arts and culture have also had a far-reaching influence on the development of contemporary music in Taiwan. Starting from the establishment of the Council for Cultural Affairs, Executive Yuan (CCA) in 1981, then the addition of the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) in 1996, to the elevation of the CCA to the Ministry of Culture in 2012, various policies have been made and fine-tuned over the years to encourage and promote the creation and performance of new music by contemporary Taiwanese composers. Various grant programs have been established as a result to support and encourage grant-seeking performing arts organizations to participate more actively in the commissioning, performance, circulation, and documentation of contemporary Taiwanese works, further ameliorating the environment for the creation and performance of contemporary music in Taiwan.Performing arts organizations in Taiwan that consciously promote contemporary music began to emerge since the CCA period. They have had a major influence in the dissemination and evolution of contemporary music in Taiwan, simultaneously bolstering opportunities for contemporary Taiwanese composers greatly. One such organization is the Chai Found Music Workshop founded in 1991 by renowned Taiwanese huqin (spike fiddle) player Cheng-Ming Huang, who also serves as its artistic director and head. They base their works primarily on traditional Chinese instruments, while extending the actual musical language into the realm of contemporary music. This fosters learning and allows Taiwanese composers to compose for traditional instruments, giving rise to a new form of Guoyue (modernized form of traditional Chinese music). Their core mission of promoting and documenting works by Taiwanese composers is accomplished through concert performances, music score publications, and recording projects. Chai Found Music Workshop has received funding from NCAF ever since the CCA era and has also been selected several times as a Taiwan Outstanding Performing Arts Group by the Ministry of Culture. Other exceptional organization in the developing history of contemporary music in Taiwan is Forum Music, led by percussionist Bor-Nien Hsu. It includes the Forum Music Ensemble founded in 1996 and Forum Music Auditorium established in 1997. They have organized numerous contemporary music concerts, music camps, academic lectures, as well as co-organized multiple international music productions, acting as a major promoter of contemporary music in Taiwan. Their plentiful modern music forums make up some of the most precious shared memories for many Taiwanese composers. Other than stimulating the creation, performance, and discussion of contemporary music, Forum Music has also promoted the conservation and compilation of contemporary Taiwanese musical works in the form of audio recordings as a preparatory step to their ultimate goal: to build a center of documentation of contemporary music in Taiwan. Forum Music Ensemble was a CCA grant recipient several times since its inception, selected as an Outstanding Performing Arts Group by CCA. Nowadays, Forum Music leases its space to other organizations or individuals for concerts or lectures. Myriads of musical activities organized by Forum Music in its heyday now only exist deep in our most cherished memories. The Contemporary Chamber Orchestra Taipei (台北人室內樂團) founded by conductor Chun-Fung Lee also made great contributions to the Taiwanese music scene despite its relatively short existence, championing contemporary music from Taiwan and other countries through concert performances and commissions of new works. Other musical organizations in Taiwan comparable to the ones mentioned above that are equally dedicated to contemporary music have been far and few in between. Yet, judging from current concert scenes and the NCAF Online Grant Portfolio Archive, the number of Taiwanese performers and ensembles interested in performing contemporary music and particularly works by Taiwanese composers seem to be slowly on the rise. Some groups exemplifying this trend include the Counterpoint Ensemble, TimeArt Studio, Studio Acht, Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra, 3 People Music, C-Camerata, PIPA-ensemble, Taipei Chamber Singers, Müller Chamber Choir, and Tabernacle Women's Choir...etc. All of these groups have been NCAF grant recipients over a long period of time.In addition to the aforementioned composer associations and music groups primarily focused on contemporary and Taiwanese musical works, a growing number of classical music ensembles and individuals are also joining the force to promote contemporary music and that by Taiwanese composers through their concert programming, composition competitions, calls for scores, commissions…etc. With more ample financial resources and possibly more visibility than most private organizations, national music performing centers or other music performing organizations funded by the government are often in a more advantageous position to reach a more diverse audience through wider publicity and to have more comprehensive and lasting impact on the society. Therefore, when these organizations decide to back contemporary music and especially that by contemporary Taiwanese composers, the effect could be far-reaching and long-lasting. Below are two known examples of this in recent years. First is the Innovation Series Music organized by the National Theater and Concert Hall (NTCH) for six consecutive years in between 2013-2018. Three curators—composer Fang-Yi Lin, harpist Shannon Shuen Chieh, and composer Ching-Wen Chao—took turns taking charge and brought their own distinctive viewpoints and programming to the table during their term. Their planning and leadership gathered skilled contemporary music performers and renowned new music ensembles from home and abroad, giving local audiences a chance to listen to contemporary master works as well as brand new pieces written by outstanding Taiwanese composer. Even though NTCH decided to merge the Innovation Series Drama, Innovation Series Dance, and Innovation Series Music into the NTCH Ideas Lab in 2019, the impact that the Innovation Series Music has left on Taiwanese melophiles is simply irreversible.The second example is the Weiwuying TIFA Contemporary Music Platform that was initiated in 2019. Under the supervision of Wen-Pin Chien, artistic director of the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), this contemporary music platform was entrusted to composer Fang-Yi Lin as curator, with Studio Acht serving as the production team from 2019 to 2021. Its mission is "maximizing the potential of the national performance venue and promoting contemporary works to create an ongoing, sustainable environment for the music of Taiwan." Starting from 2022, the Contemporary Music Platform officially transformed into the Weiwuying International Music Festival, for which internationally-acclaimed composer Unsuk Chin was hired as artistic director. 2024 has seen the conclusion of the 3rd edition of this annual festival. The Weiwuying Contemporary Music Ensemble was formed especially for this festival, which performs there every year. In reality, the gestation of this ensemble began early on in the Weiwuying Contemporary Music Platform period under the mechanism Weiwuying Contemporary Musical Performance Training Workshop. Musicians enthusiastic about contemporary music playing were recruited and received special training under the guidance of the internationally acclaimed conductor Lin Liao. The goal of such training was to prepare these musicians to become the principal performing force for the Weiwuying Contemporary Music Platform. And these people did successfully turn into the core members of today's Weiwuying Contemporary Music Ensemble. Additionally, the music festival is also aimed at cultivating the next generation of Taiwanese composers. Talented young composers are chosen through a selection process for an opportunity to compose brand-new musical pieces to be premiered in the following year's Weiwuying International Music Festival. In addition to her roles as the artistic director and curator for the music festival, composer Unsuk Chin also shares her personal composition experience with the selected young composers through master classes and workshops.As already mentioned above, government-funded music performing organizations could be more influential due to their status in society. Consequentially it speaks volumes when they initiate music projects with a focus on contemporary composers and their creations. A great example of this is the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra (NTSO), a long-term supporter of Taiwanese composers via a variety of activities. Not only have they organized the Conference on Musical Creation and Development (音樂創作與發展研討會) multiple times across the years, they have also initiated many opportunities for Taiwanese composers including various calls for scores, commissions, score publications, and composition competitions. The most well-known instance among these opportunities is probably their Music Composition Competition for young Taiwanese composers. Since 2008, NTSO has organized many open calls for musical works under CCA's project Musical Creation and Marketing Platform. All the competition finalists selected would have their pieces performed live by NTSO in a concert open to the public before the winning compositions are chosen and prizes awarded. In 2014, this competition was officially renamed to what is known to us today as the Young Composers Music Composition Competition. It is an understatement to say that numerous Taiwanese composers have benefited tremendously from the many events hosted by NTSO over the years.In the hopes of obtaining a better understanding of the current state of contemporary music in Taiwan, the author had interviewed several groups actively engaged in the creation and performance of contemporary music in Taiwan in recent years before started writing this article. The interviewees included the Asian Composers League Taiwan National Committee, International Society for Contemporary Music-Taiwan, Studio Acht, C-Camerata, TimeArt Studio, and 3 People Music. They shared their individual experiences and observations on promoting contemporary music in Taiwan, along with their views and advice. Below is a summary of their insights on such task. The aim for collecting and compiling these opinions and information is to achieve a sort of brainstorming effect, providing some perspectives and references for other individuals and groups interested in promoting contemporary music.First and foremost, the greatest challenge the majority of the interviewees encountered in promoting contemporary music in Taiwan has to do with box office related issues. The general public still feels intimidated by contemporary music, and tends to reject it as a result. The reasons for this could be manifold, and each organization tackles these issues in different way. Some deliberately program pieces that are more accessible to the public. In other words, they try to choose compositions that are not so avant-garde or hard to understand in order to attract more concertgoers. Others simply target professionals and composition students as their chief audience and let go of the laymen all together. These groups take the liberty in choosing their repertoires, which are often more experimental and aim to push boundaries. This latter’s attitude is in line with US composer Milton Babbitt's views mentioned earlier in this article: that music creation shouldn’t be influenced by marketing and ticket sales. Yet other groups deal with empty seats by way of guest invitations and complimentary tickets. While this doesn't reverse the poor sales revenue, at least their effort is seen by a larger audience. Of course, there are still those who choose to ignore or not overthink the box office problems and merely focus on their professional work and artistry. Secondly, limitations in concert programming choices contribute to another difficulty faced by some of these groups interviewed. One such limitation in the choice of repertoires results from a strategic decision that aligns with specific aesthetics based on marketing needs as already mentioned in the last paragraph. Another inherent limitation comes from the set instrumentation of an ensemble with regular participating musicians, which requires them to program pieces within the maximum number of musicians in the group. Yet another concert programming restriction comes directly from available budget. It is rarer to see larger contemporary ensemble pieces in Taiwan due to the difficulty in securing the necessary funding. As a result, Taiwanese composers have little opportunity to write larger ensemble pieces. Another aspect that could affect the programming choice is the relatively small pool of skilled contemporary music performers in Taiwan. For instance, very few brass players in Taiwan are willing to play contemporary music. As a result of this, brass instruments are often not listed as an option in a lot of calls for scores and unfortunately excluded in many concert plannings, which also contributes to the fact that Taiwanese composers rarely have the opportunity to write for brass instruments and such pieces almost never get featured in concert performances. Moreover, whether it’s linked to grant availability or used as an incentive for audience, premieres are favored over repeating existing repertoires in Taiwan's contemporary music scene. The indirect consequence of this leads to a strange phenomenon that a work's debut is often its only performance. The relative value and benefits of commissioning a work are significantly diminished if such piece is only heard once. Think of it: if Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas were only ever played by one or two pianists, would they still be the iconic classics we know today? A repertoire is built only through repeated performances of a work. It is even necessary for different musicians to play the same work in multiple concerts before the piece is considered truly established. Finally, some groups expressed the desire to commission works from overseas composers. On one hand, this would provide avenues of healthy competition between Taiwanese and foreign composers, accelerating growth. On the other hand, this can give Taiwanese ensembles more grounds for bartering with musicians from other countries when negotiating additional exchange opportunities for themselves, further deriving mutual benefits. However, this is impossible under current grant mechanisms in Taiwan.Each interviewee also shared their views and advice regarding different ways to promote contemporary music in Taiwan. Below is general summary. Firstly, certain interviewees recommended starting by fostering more interest in playing contemporary music, especially among younger performers. More specific game plans could involve forming youth ensembles under existing professional contemporary music ensembles, letting the veteran contemporary music players pass down their expertise to the young ones with an aim to cultivate the next generation of contemporary music experts. These contemporary music specialists could also take the lead in working with the youths in short-term workshops or summer music camps that are specifically designed for contemporary music, which could also accumulate to some significant results. Other groups also proposed establishing contemporary music performance competitions and awards to attract more young musicians to engage in the genre.Secondly, some groups suggested using essay writing as a means to stimulate greater discussions on contemporary music, offering an entry point for those who don’t know how to listen to contemporary music. With the assistance of text and conceptual elaborations, listeners who are usually fearful of the abstractness of contemporary music could slowly develop understanding or even fondness of this type of music. This practice is reflected in many contemporary music centers or other institutions abroad which publish articles and other academic discussions on contemporary music through music journals, online posts, or newsletters, and may serve as a model for us. Thirdly, aside from direct government funding, a couple of groups also expressed their wish for the government to step in to offer assistance in connecting our local ensembles or organizations to the global network, helping them to establish connections with other international institutions. Private ensembles or groups are eager to develop an overseas presence and play Taiwanese composers’ work abroad, yet this is impeded by their own lack of connections outside of Taiwan. If our government can act as a platform that helps recommend or match them with overseas contemporary music festivals or other exchange opportunities, this can perhaps accelerate the progress and growth of domestic contemporary music ensembles as well as increase performances of works by Taiwanese composers on the international stage, thus enhancing Taiwanese contemporary music's visibility and influence.Fourthly, another recommendation brought forth by several groups is to enhance the efficiency of information updates in the national composer databases and to increase their usage rate. The Online Database of Taiwanese Musicians and the NCAF Taiwan Composers Database are the two major databases relevant to Taiwanese composers and their works. The Online Database of Taiwanese Musicians was established earlier and contains information beyond art music and composers. The composers in this database belong to a slightly older generation, ranging from Pao-Chen Lee, Er-Hua Xiao, Pei-Lin Wang, Chuan-Sheng Lu, and Wen-Yeh Chiang to those born in the 1960s like Wen-Tze Lu, Tzyy-Sheng Lee, and Ching-Yu Hsiau, without inclusion of younger composers. The NCAF Taiwan Composers Database was built later and offers more comprehensive information about Taiwanese composers, comprising chiefly those who have been NCAF grantees over the years. Some composers are included in both databases above, but the NCAF Taiwan Composers Database does not include composers who have never received a NCAF grants. Regardless, it offers information on a large number of young composers, including each individual’s complete catalogue of works and partial music scores and audio/visual files, which can be more useful to the database users. In facing these two databases, the first task at hand would be to spread awareness of their existence, encouraging more people to make good use of these resources. Some groups also suggested building a mechanism that links these two existing databases, making it easier for ensembles and researchers interested in Taiwanese composers and their music to search for related information. Some also put forth ideas to streamline the process of updating individual composers’ information on the NCAF Taiwan Composers Database by allowing composers themselves to modify their own information any time to ensure their personal data is up to date.Fifthly, some groups believe that contemporary music must be integrated into our overall music training and curriculum, so it exerts more all-encompassing influence and changes. The author simply couldn’t side with this more. Contemporary music training must simultaneously include courses in musical composition and performance, music theory and analysis, and aesthetic discourse. It is preferable to start planting the seed of contemporary music in one’s early music education so that these trainings could gradually be expanded and deepened. If the curriculum planning in higher education in Taiwan today excludes any instruction in contemporary music, performers and musicologists who are open to and willingly embrace contemporary music will always be the minority in our society, let alone listeners enthusiastic of the genre. This situation will just put us more and more behind the western world in terms of the development of contemporary music. Therefore, this is an urgent call for Taiwanese music educators to address the issue by making relevant course adjustments or engaging in necessary curriculum reform. The dramatic changes taking place in our times must also be taken into account, such as the ever-growing trends in technology, multimedia and interdisciplinary arts. Our educational plans and courses must reflect these changes and target the increasingly diversified needs of musical composition and performance, equipping the next generation of professionals with the necessary skills to stay aligned with the world and our era.To summarize, the author will hereby offer some responses to the questions posted earlier regarding current development of contemporary music in Taiwan. First of all, performance opportunities for Taiwanese composers are increasing by the day. In addition to the soaring number of commissions through various music organizations in Taiwan every year, great strides have been made particularly in the amount of opportunities specifically designed for young composers. Other than the NTSO Young Composers Music Composition Competition and the calls for scores by Weiwuying mentioned earlier, many other music organizations have also started to offer similar opportunities for young composers in recent years. Such progress is demonstrated by Music Taipei Composition Competition for Young Composers organized by CCA in the earlier time to the more recent Taipei Chinese Orchestra (TCO) International Composition Competition, TimeArt Studio's Young Composer's Project, NTSO's One-Minute Symphony Project, and Counterpoint Ensemble's Call for Young Composer's Works...etc. Yet in terms of the overall environment for music composition, we still have much room for improvement. The main problem lies in the relatively small number of skilled performers dedicated to the performance and promotion of contemporary music. The lack of research and discussion on contemporary music leads to very poor understanding and little enthusiasm for this kind of music, greatly hindering the cultivation of a listener base. Faced with these countless pressures and obstacles, composers are often forced to either make concessions in their musical style to make their music more accessible, lower their composition’s level of difficulty to make it easier to play, purchase a proportion of the concert tickets themselves or persuade their students to do so to remediate poor ticket sales...etc. These are jarring and frustrating situations lurking behind promises of distinction and honor composers often have to face. The chances to have absolute respect and creative freedom for music writing and to be able to collaborate with musicians or ensembles specialized in contemporary music are still comparatively low for composers in Taiwan. The root cause of this problem has a lot to do with another previously raised question in this article, that is the current status of contemporary music education in Taiwan. A quick glance at the curriculum design of Taiwan's major higher music education institutions promptly reveals a deficiency of contemporary music training courses. Composition majors are the only group of students to receive slightly more training in the composition and analysis of contemporary music, while those majoring in performance or musicology rarely ever have analysis of contemporary music, 20th and 21st century music history, or contemporary music aesthetics in their curricula, not to mention that courses in contemporary music performance barely exists. It thus comes as no surprise that the majority of performers in Taiwan loathe or fail to understand contemporary music, and often feel lost about the interpretation of this kind of music.To wrap up this article, I would like to share the background and intent of its writing. Once, when chatting with a Taiwanese student getting her master’s degree in composition in the US, she first commented, "I feel so fortunate to be studying in the US, professor." She then continued: "When I was still in Taiwan, there were so many restrictions when composing music, and it was often challenging to receive good performances of my pieces. Most instrumentalists preferred tonal works with melodies pleasing to the ear, and they were unfamiliar with unconventional performance techniques and thus incapable of executing them. One had to beg for performers’ help, and some performers even thought it's unnecessary to practice this kind of music as no one understands it anyway. It's quite the contrary in the US: no one interferes with how I write my music, and no instrumentalists are ignorant of the extended techniques on the scores. Sometimes they even demonstrate more special techniques for me to try. There's no need to run around searching for performers to play my pieces either, as they often take the initiative in asking me instead, hoping that I would write music for them to play. So, it is quite a pleasure to be a composer there." This conversation made an everlasting impression on me. Even after spending many years living abroad myself and being completely aware of the composer-friendly environment overseas she was talking about, her words still struck me pretty hard, leaving me feeling quite emotional and troubled. As a matter of fact, the resources and opportunities available to composers in Taiwan are richer and more diverse than ever before, and it is clear that the creation of Taiwanese composers' works has long been a focus of NCAF's grants for music. Yet the ample resources for music composition in Taiwan seem to be out of proportion to the generally weak response of most performers and listeners towards new creations. On the surface, it seems that composers enjoy plenty of opportunities for composition and performance of their works. But in reality, they often have to cope with these unpleasant situations usually unknown to the general public, that is to have their creative freedom limited or taken away, to have their painstaking work developed over a long time receive only one performance, or to face lukewarm reactions from the audience or even the performers themselves…etc. For this very reason, we are immensely grateful to the organizations and musicians dedicated to the promotion of contemporary music. They have chosen a road that is challenging and fraught with practical difficulties, yet they firmly believe this is the choice they have to make. Whether that choice was made out of love for contemporary music or simply out of a sense of mission, they are determined to forge ahead at all costs. We must also thank the efforts of our predecessors, who have paved the way and left a strong foundation for contemporary music to take roots and develop in Taiwan. Going forward, we must continue to rely on the endeavor of all organizations, institutions, and individuals to put forth more effective and sustainable solutions to the current dilemmas we face in the promotion of contemporary music. Together, we will build a friendlier environment for Taiwanese composers and take contemporary music in Taiwan to the next level, in the hope that one day our contemporary music scene will stand on par with the rest of the world.*Translator: Linguitronics 

The National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) supports music composition by Taiwanese composers, and has accumulated many works through its regular grants for "Original" and "Commissioned Compositions" over the years. In addition, under the Music categories of "Performance", "Curatorial", "International Cultural Exchange", and even the newly-established "Art Advances", there are many grant recipients that focus on the creation of distinctly-Taiwanese works. Although the overall arts and cultural environment remains challenging, it is gratifying to see that, thanks to the hard work of many parties, local creativity and performances continue to blossom.In the past, except for  instrumentation, length, and deadlines, commissioning institutions seldom made any demands on the composers when it came to subject-matters. However, the author observes that in recent years, greater importance is attached to planning concepts in the preparation stage of concerts to drive ticket sales, while program selection is also aimed at fitting specific themes. Therefore, when inquiring about composers' willingness to collaborate for certain productions, commissioning institutions will discuss the theme of the commissioned work with composers beforehand in the hope that the music can match the theme of the concert. The commissioned work will then be included as a centerpiece in the concert's publicity.To attract local audiences, among the various innovative and diversified concert themes, the number of applications under the Music category with concepts derived from Taiwan's local customs, culture, history, and landscapes is gradually increasing. It can also be seen that the composers applying for Commissioned Composition grants are also given the task of responding to the concepts of the program and composing music under the framework of the concert theme. For example, for Tainan Chinese Orchestra's 2020 "Our Island, From Sky to Earth" "Yangqin Concert", composers were commissioned to create works inspired by Taiwan's endemic animal species. It included the composition of Wan-Yu Chang, inspired by the Formosan clouded leopard: Clouded Leopard's Thoughts; and the work by Chung Jen composed for the butterflies and moths of Taiwan: Teasing fire In 2021, the theme of Müller Chamber Choir's concert was "Our Land, Our Songs", premiering the composition of Chen-Hui Jen, inspired by the sceneries of the subtropical island of Taiwan: Voices from the Twilight Islands. In Taipei Percussion's 2022 concert "City lights Taipei", they played Ya-Wen Lien's work Rhapsody - Taipei, a piece portraying the agitated uneasiness of Taipei City during the pandemic. In Formusica's concert series titled "Piano Music from FORMUSICA", the theme of 2022 was "The Sound of Taiwan", which was presented alongside projected illustrations. The concert included a work by Chin-Yow Lin, in turn inspired by Yaw-Chien Fang's Taiwanese Hokkien poem The Golden Zengwen River, the unaccompanied violin piece Memories of My Beautiful Hometown - The Golden Zengwen River.Tainan Chinese Orchestra's "Our Island, From Sky to Earth Yangqin Concert" program coverOf course, in addition to commission requirements, composers will also spontaneously choose creative materials that are related to local culture or traditions. Some of the applications that have received grants under the Original Composition category in recent years include: Hsien-Sheng Lien, inspired by traditional worship rituals, created Nankunshen, a piece for triple-woodwind symphony orchestra to depict the carnival-like atmosphere of the Wangye Ceremony held at the Nankunshen Temple in Tainan during the fourth lunar month. In Nanguan music, the gongche notation only shows the main or "skeletal" melody—the unique heterophonic feature of filling in the melodic space and rhythm during performances inspired Yu-Hsin Chang to compose Amaryllidaceae for six female voices, violin, viola, cello, and piano. Fang-Wei Luo, inspired by the poem Listening to Winter in A Spring Night by Taiwanese poet Li Chen, incorporated the concept of "Song without Words" and created Songs of Desolation for classical guitar, reciters, and interactive electronic music. Shiuan Chang's family ran a martial arts school, and his childhood memories of watching his grandfather practicing the moves were combined with Laozi's Tao Te Ching, which expresses the idea of "lingering as if having a solid existence, allowing for inexhaustible use". This became the source of inspiration for his percussion solo work GU SHEN.As can be seen from the above examples for "Original" and "Commissioned Compositions" related to Taiwan, the pieces are inspired by a wide range of subjects, from traditional ceremonies and theater, to nature and the environment, literary works, family memories, and even contemporary urban landscapes. The instrumentations included solo instruments, ensembles, chamber works with voice, percussions, choir, and symphony orchestra, as well as Chinese and Western instruments and electronic music. The composers belong to different generations, and there are also composers who have been living abroad for a long time.In response to the recent increase in the number of applications for creative grants based on the concepts of traditional music or local cultural and historical heritage, this study utilizes the Taiwan Composers Database in the NCAF Online Grant Portfolio Archive to compile a list of composers who have received project grants in recent years for Original or Commissioned Compositions with themes related to traditional culture, as well as Taiwan's local customs and traditions. To understand the philosophies of composers of different generations, seven composers were interviewed: Chiu-Yu Chou, Shih-Hui Chen, Heng Chen, Yun Lu, Ching-Yu Hsiau, Shan-Hua Chien, and Tsung-Jen Hsieh. The ages of the interviewees spanned a wide range, with the most senior being Shan-Hua Chien, who was born in the 1950s, and the youngest being Heng Chen, who was born in the 1990s. All seven composers have studied abroad, with five of them returning to Taiwan after their studies, while Shih-Hui Chen and Heng Chen settled down in the United States and France, respectively. Through this interview, we examine the influence of these composers' upbringing and life experiences on their creative endeavors. We also focus on the projects supported by the NCAF grants, inviting the composers to share their perspectives and specific details of their creative process.Each composer has their own unique listening experience due to the differences in family education, generational background, or school environment. What non-Western musical influences left a deep impression on you when you were growing up?The family of Shih-Hui Chen's grandmother ran a hotel in Badu, Keelung. As a child, she watched the noontime Taiwanese opera and Taiwanese hand puppetry shows on TV almost every day. Her father, who loved Peking opera, would often take her to the National Army Hero House and the National Kuo Kuang Academy of Arts (now the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts) in Muzha to watch performances. Although she couldn't fully appreciate the artistry at the time, it left an indelible mark on her memories. When she was studying at the National Taiwan College of Arts (now the National Taiwan University of Arts), even though Chen was a student in the Western Music program, the room where she practiced was next door to practice rooms belonging to the Chinese Music program, and she often heard the students majoring in pipa (Chinese lute) practicing the ancient pipa piece Ambush from All Sides repeatedly. By chance, when she heard the pipa virtuoso Man Wu play the same piece at a concert in the U.S. many years later, it unexpectedly evoked a sense of homesickness in her. In 1999, she wrote her first solo work for a traditional instrument—the pipa composition Fu I.Shan-Hua Chien responded that when he was studying at the National Taiwan Normal University in the 1970s, as music education was still completely Western-centric and there were almost no classes on traditional music, there was only one course on non-Western music, "Introduction to Chinese Music". Despite this, he decided to go teach in Orchid Island after graduation. At that time, Orchid Island's traditional culture had not yet been influenced by the outside world and still retained its original pristine form. When he first heard the traditional music of the Tao people, it made a great impact on him, as if he had discovered a world of music that was completely different from what he had learned in the past, and he was deeply attracted to it. So he used his spare time to visit the various indigenous communities on Orchid Island to collect material. This experience had a great influence on his future creative career. He then went to the U.S. for further studies, and after returning to Taiwan, he continued to visit the indigenous peoples around Taiwan to conduct relevant fieldwork in order to preserve and document their music to this day. He also actively participates in activities of the Asian Composers League, which further broadens his horizons. The league takes turns to organize annual conferences in each member country, and in addition to concerts and seminars, the host country also introduces its unique music traditions through special demonstrations and lectures.Currently residing in France, Heng Chen’s parents are avid lovers of traditional arts and culture. From a young age, he regularly attended Peking opera and Kun opera performances, which enriched his cultural and aural experience. When he was a student at the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University, he took on erhu (Chinese two-stringed fiddle) as an elective. This also helped him to appreciate the unique charm of traditional musical instruments that differed from that of Western instruments.Chiu-Yu Chou was deeply impressed by the music program curriculum of her school, the Kaohsiung Municipal Hsin Hsing High School. At the time, the head of the music program, Ms. Chin-Ai Hung, once designed a homework assignment that required her students to listen to a recording of a Kun opera performance, transcribe it, and mimic the singing voice during the exam. Ms. Hung also recommended traditional opera performances to her students and encouraged them to appreciate the music. Although Chou only had a superficial exposure to this genre, it broadened her musical horizons, and when she entered the Taipei National University of the Arts, she actively tried to learn more about traditional music. In her second year of high school, she participated in a composition camp organized by the Provincial Symphony Orchestra (now the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra), which made her consider incorporating traditional elements into her music compositions.Growing up in Taichung, Ching-Yu Hsiau believes that the cultural environment of her hometown has had a natural influence on her music, but it’s hard to put into words. She mentioned that after studying in France, she realized that the spatial design of her compositions was influenced by her mother tongue, and gradually began to emphasize rhythm and breathing in her music. At that time, she was taught by the Japanese composer Yoshihisa Taira. Influenced by her teacher, Hsiau began to explore musical meanings with an Asian mindset, focusing on the delicate mixing of timbre and paying close attention to the overall sense of flow in her works. In addition, the experience of taking erhu as an elective in Taiwan was the starting point for her increasing intimacy with traditional music. When she was in her second year at National Taiwan Normal University, Professor Tsang-Houei Hsu, the instructor of "Introduction to Traditional Music" at the time, set the guqin (Chinese zither) composition Youlan (or Solitary Orchid) as a piece for her final exam analysis. The inward-looking and exquisite inflections of this classic piece were unforgettable to Hsiau. Many years later, when she composed her solo piano work Le Phénomène de la ligne V, she incorporated the melody of Youlan and used it as the core of the pitch structure.Tsung-Jen Hsieh recalls that when he was studying at the National Academy of Fine Arts (now the Taipei National University of the Arts), in the "Harmonics" class for composition students, Professor Nan-Chang Chien used to ask students to think about whether or not their compositions should incorporate local elements. This question planted a seed in his mind and he continued to search for his own answers while studying in Germany. In addition, he still maintains the habit of playing the guqin because studying the guqin in university was a very special experience for him. He recalls that when he first came into contact with the guqin, he was just casually plucking the strings, but the vibrations from his fingertips felt like they were flowing down his bloodstream and going straight to his heart, something that he had never experienced before when playing any other Western musical instruments.Among the people interviewed by the author, Yun Lu has quite a unique background. She started playing erhu from a young age, and since she was eight years old, she would go to China with her parents to receive training in traditional music during summer vacations. However, when she was studying in Taiwan, the music education was more westernized, so it seemed to Lu that Asian traditional music and Western classical music were two parallel lines. It wasn't until she went to university and studied composition with Professor Chung-Kun Hung that she began to apply composition techniques of Western academic music to traditional instrumental music, and felt that the two worlds had finally intersected. Traditional music has a deep cultural heritage that fascinates Lu, but although she appreciates the soundscape works that utilize a lot of extended techniques and defamiliarized timbres, she doesn't follow this route in her own compositions. She prefers to preserve the idiomatic practice of traditional instruments and to explore their unique textures, expressiveness, and emotionality.Tell us about your past compositions related to traditional music or elements of Taiwanese culture, and whether you have encountered any special requests from a commissioning institution in terms of the theme?The Taiwan Youth Band, based in Taichung commissioned composer Tsung-Jen Hsieh to create music with Taichung City as the theme for two consecutive years. The first time, he used Taichung's literary scholars and works as his source material, choosing Kui Yang, a writer who lived in Taichung for half a century, and his work The Uncrushable Rose. Through the music, Hsieh conveyed the unique sense of time that he experienced while reading Yang's writings, and composed an orchestral piece that does not follow the traditional strategy of a linear progression. The second time was in 2019, when the Taiwan Youth Band moved the administration office to a new location near the intersection of Ziyou Road and Zhongshan Road. It happened that Hsieh had also moved somewhere in the vicinity of the Taichung Second Market, not too far away from the office. The Central District of Taichung City used to be the heart of the city's thriving business center during the Japanese colonial era because of its location as a transportation hub. However, with the decline of the business district and the population, a large number of the buildings in the area have been left empty. Hsieh mentioned that after he moved to Central District, he often observed the old houses brimming with stories during his walks. The lack of maintenance has made the building facades dull and faded, leaving behind traces carved by the passage of time. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Taiwan Youth Band in 2019, the orchestra filmed the old city district and interviewed several shopkeepers in the neighborhood. The footage was edited into a short film and screened before the premiere of the composition to further heighten people's experience of the work. According to the theme of the concert, Hsieh composed The New Sound of City, weaving historical melodies into a new soundscape to evoke the old city's unique, leisurely atmosphere and collective memories. It was very well-received by the audience.Performance poster of the Old City Splendors, New Voice Rises Literary Concert by Taiwan Youth BandIn 2019, Ching-Yu Hsiau was commissioned by viola maestro Jui-Se Yang to compose music based on a new arrangement of Taiwanese folk songs. The concert Taiwan Images, Yang Jui-Se and her Friends was to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1999 Jiji Earthquake. As Hsiau hoped to provide comfort to the people through her work, Origin, she chose to base her composition on a more tonal vocabulary, as well as used the contours of the 1970s Taiwanese pop hit Love Trip and the Bunun hymn Kipahpah Ima. She hoped to create a piece that would fulfill the artistry threshold of contemporary music, yet didn't stray far from the easy accessibility of pop music, so that it could resonate with a wider audience. The soprano solo Three Poems by Lin Cheng-Mou, completed in 2014, is a very special work. Ching-Yu Hsiau chose three poems in Taiwanese Hokkien with bird themes from the works of poet Cheng-Mou Lin. These are Ba-Hioh (Eagle), Night Heron, and Sparrows from the Mountaintop, as well as excerpts of works by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. Messiaen was a bird enthusiast. He roamed the fields and forests for many years and recorded a large number of bird songs, composing many works with bird songs as core elements. "Ba-Hio̍h" means "eagle" in Taiwanese Hokkien. Hsiau extracted a fragment of "Milan noir" (the French word for "eagle") from Messiaen's La Fauvette des jardins, and transformed it for use in the piano part of "Ba-Hioh". The soprano's voice imitates traditional Taiwanese opera tonal elements, with a slight pentatonic coloration in its pitch structure. Ching-Yu Hsiau's ingenious design allows for the interweaving of the two very different pitch elements, resulting in a work of great dramatic expressiveness.Poster for the "Taiwan Images, Yang Jui-Se and her Friends" concert by the Taiwan Viola Chamber OrchestraIn 2022, when the Yung Yue Chi music ensemble commissioned Shan-Hua Chien to compose a vocal piece, they requested that the poetry of Taiwanese poet Han-Shiou Lu be used as the source material. Chien read Lu's collections of poems over and over again, and after much deliberation, he decided to use two Taiwanese Hokkien poems, Budai Xi Suite and Taiwan to compose the music. One of the reasons he chose the Budai Xi Suite was because the Affiliated Elementary School of the Hsinchu College of Education was quite a distance away from Chien's childhood home, and he had to take the bus to school every day. There happened to be a temple right by the school, where Taiwanese opera troupes and traditional hand puppetry troupes used to stage performances for temple celebrations. Although he could only watch fragments of the shows while waiting for the bus, he always gave his utmost attention during that quarter-of-an-hour waiting time. Over the years he learned the performances by heart, and they have become precious memories of his childhood. Therefore, in the Budai Xi Suite, he used the elements of the Luogu percussion ensemble to emphasize and echo the tradition of Taoist music in traditional musical theater. In addition, Chien has devoted himself to the study of indigenous music since his youth, with a particular focus on Austronesian music. He has visited many indigenous communities over the years. As soon as he read the lines of the poem Taiwan, many creative ideas immediately sprang to mind. Instead of literal quotations, he used some musical concepts from the Austronesian peoples, such as cyclic repetition and layering, to transform the imagery of the poem through music.Chiu-Yu Chou wrote Wild Graffiti during her first year of PhD studies in Manchester, England. As a major city in the development of the modern industrial revolution, Manchester is home to a variety of contrasting architectural styles, including Victorian-era buildings with refined and elegant facades, post-modernist skyscrapers soaring into the clouds, and historical red-brick textile factories, all intertwined with colorful graffiti seemingly painted at random in the streets, but which convey subcultural connotations. Chou uses the title "Wild Graffiti" as a metaphor for the cultural shock she experienced as an outsider during her stay in the UK. It was only after four years in the UK that she finally integrated into local life. However, when she returned to Taiwan in 2013, she realized that she had to adjust her frame of mind to Taiwan's mindset and culture. In 2020, when Chou received a commission from the Taiwan Music Institute for a project titled "Taiwan Music Image", she recalled this shift in his perspective and composed Wild Graffiti III. This is a mixed Chinese and Western composition for dizi (transverse bamboo flute)/xiao (vertical bamboo flute), erhu, pipa, guzheng (Chinese plucked zither), and cello, depicting the reverse culture shock that she underwent when she returned to Taiwan after her graduation. Each section of the piece has a different texture, reflecting evolving mindsets. Beginning with the sea voyage, the outline of the island of Taiwan gradually emerges from the clouds and mist. Then, Chou uses the heterophony technique of Beiguan music, depicting the sounds of temple celebrations that can be faintly heard from the shore as we approach land. She borrows the concept of the Bunun eight-part chorus as we move towards the verdantly-forested inland, symbolizing the continuous unfurling of the mountainous terrain. This is akin to the long history of Taiwan, which contains the wisdom of the ancestors and the diversity of cultures.What are the concepts and experiences of composing for traditional instruments or ensembles including both Chinese and Western instruments?Traditional music and Western classical music have different development paths and distinct cultural connotations. In the first half of the 20th century, Western art music was characterized by many innovations in terms of compositional structure, expansion of musical concepts, and pitch and rhythmic design. Composers also attempted to explore new sonorities through the use of extended techniques and special instrumentation, which became even more prevalent after the end of World War II. In contrast, Asian traditional music has had a late start in this area. However, after studying in Europe and the United States, Taiwanese composers such as Tsang-Houei Hsu, Shui-Long Ma, Hwang-Long Pan, and Deh-Ho Lai began to integrate Eastern and Western musical elements and philosophical thinking into their traditional instrumental works, and also started to write for ensembles mixing Chinese and Western instruments. Hwang-Long Pan's East and West series is a representative work, and Shui-Long Ma's Pipa and String Quartet set a model for the future "Spring Autumn Music" concert series.Traditional and Western musical instruments carry their own profound cultural heritage, with different idiomatic practices, timbral characteristics, and temperaments, as well as different logics and aesthetic connotations in the development of the classical repertoire. Therefore, when composing for traditional instruments, composers have to have different considerations than when using Western instruments. When creating mixed compositions of Chinese and Western instruments, bridging the gap between Chinese and Western instruments in the work, or the opposite, highlighting the heterogeneity of each instrument are issues that need to be considered. No matter what strategy the composer chooses, they will face the peculiar challenges when using both Chinese and Western instruments.The theme of guzheng player  Jing-Mu Kuo's concert in 2020 was "Not Equal to". He commissioned Chiu-Yu Chou to compose a duet for guzheng and cello, The Emergence of Adhyāśaya. Inspired by the phenomenon of emergence in biological systems, Chou combines the experience of meditation with the exploration of the diverse possibilities of musical element development. She attempts to start from tiny, fragmentary musical motifs that interact with each other over time to reveal a new appearance, a phenomenon that echoes the theme of the concert, "Not Equal to". In this piece, the guzheng uses an alternative tuning, while Chou uses the placement of foreign objects to expand the range of timbral expression. However, due to her fondness of the tonal qualities of traditional guzheng music, she mostly retains familiar guzheng techniques except for some passages in which she draws metal cups or a violin bow against the strings of the guzheng to produce sound. Not too many extended techniques are applied to the cello except for the concluding section. Through the dialog between guzheng and cello, Chiu-Yu Chou’s delicate mixing of acoustic layers leverages juxtaposition and contrast to demonstrate the uniqueness of each instrument.Heng Chen's works are subtle and brimming with vitality. When discussing the idea of composing pieces combining Chinese and Western music. He believes that it is not necessary to pursue uniform compatibility, but rather to objectively use Western and traditional instruments as a medium of expression in line with the context of the piece. Different compositional strategies can be flexibly applied for individual passages. For example, in some passages, Western instruments mimic the unique vocabulary of traditional instruments, even disguising their original characteristics to certain extent. In certain passages, traditional instruments adopt the performance techniques of Western instruments, breaking free from established concepts to reveal new yet unfamiliar timbres. In other passages, one can try to blur the line between Western and Eastern instruments and use syntax as a bridge to explore the possibilities of intertwined timbres and to showcase homogeneity and heterogeneity between the two instruments.Although Yun Lu grew up in the highly-urbanized Taipei City, the percussion and wind ensembles that parade through the alleys and streets during temple festivals left a vivid impression on her, and have provided her with many inspirations for her future musical creations. As a student, she majored in erhu, which has led her to becoming fascinated by traditional opera, and she has used elements of Beiguan music in her compositions on many occasions. This practice reveals her areas of interest and her close connection to traditional culture. At first, Lu did not study Beiguan music systematically, but simply wanted another method to introduce her music to the audience. Therefore, she borrowed a few lines of Beiguan tunes as motifs for the suona concerto Lang Sai (Dancing Lions). However, during the composition of Lang Sai, she began to understand the distinctive charm of Beiguan, which inspired her to properly study the features and functionality of the various qupai (fixed melodies), exploring how to use different combinations to apply to her own creations. In her 2015 Golden Melody Awards-winning piece for Chinese orchestra, The Folk Parade, with tradition as the foundation, she not only utilized the unique syntax of Beiguan music, but also borrowed large portions of the Beiguan qupai repertoire. The following year, when the Golden Melody Awards commissioned Lu to compose The Calling for the award ceremony, she took the challenge of presenting it in the form of musical theatre, echoing the dramatic elements embedded in the piece and strengthening the layers of musical expression to reveal a more intense, more powerful display. Lu's aforementioned suona concerto, Lang Sai, has not only been highly acclaimed by the Taiwanese Guoyue (modernized form of traditional Chinese music) sphere, but has also been performed many times by orchestras abroad, such as in Singapore, China, and Hong Kong. In Lang Sai, there is a passage that portrays the unique custom of setting off beehive firecrackers in Yanshui, Tainan, during the Lunar New Year's Eve every year. Lu said that when performing in Taiwan, Taiwan's Chinese orchestras have always been able to convey a stunning scene of the beehive firecrackers going off, allowing the audience to experience the frenzied excitement of the night sky lit up by the flames of thousands of fireworks whilst in the concert hall. Intriguingly, when Lu shared her experience of listening to Lang Sai performed by overseas orchestras, these orchestras seemed to have difficulty in mimicking the excitement of the beehive firecrackers being set off and lacked that "Taiwan flavor" that so exhilarated the local audience.After penning several compositions with traditional instruments in the United States, Shih-Hui Chen wanted to find a more authentic Taiwanese sound. In 2010, with the support of the Fulbright Program, she came to Taiwan for research, spending nearly two years learning from masters at Nanguan centers. The first work she practiced was A Plea to Lady Chang'e, a three-minute piece that took her three months of continuous study before she was able to sing and play it herself. The experience of learning Nanguan songs had a great influence on her subsequent compositions. Although she had already been using traditional elements in her works, in retrospect, she believes that researching audio data or music scores at that time was still a rather indirect way to achieve her composition goals and it was still within the framework of Western training. However, after learning to play Nanguan music, Chen was finally able to internalize the traditional elements, and realized that the method of notation that she was accustomed to before was no longer sufficient for her to express the meaning she wanted to convey. Thus, in 2013, she adapted a more free and flexible notation method when she wrote A Plea to Lady Chang'e for String Quartet and Nanguan Pipa. It was nearly a decade ago that Chen returned to Taiwan to study Nanguan, and at present, she has changed her mindset once again. She is of the opinion that instead of denying her long-term training in Western music and pursuing "pure" Taiwanese music, she should now incorporate diversified elements into her works and break through the monocultural framework. Her aim is to deliver the message that "Taiwan is a part of the world" through her music. Her current work, Kimchi, Pickle and Wine, is an attempt to interpret the commonalities of global cultures through music, inspired by the fermentation process that is part of the everyday diets of ordinary people across various regions.In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of grant applications for compositions based on traditional music or local cultural and historical elements. What are your thoughts on this phenomenon?Most of the interviewed composers are optimistic about this phenomenon because they believe that music can reflect musicians' interest in traditional culture and Taiwan's contemporary society. However, some composers are concerned that if NCAF puts too much resources on this type of applications, it may lead to a situation where cultural policies would start to affect the development of the arts.Shan-Hua Chien believes that for composers living in Taiwan, finding inspiration and materials from everyday experience comes quite naturally. He cites his own work as an example. When he was commissioned by ISCM-Taiwan to compose the cello piece Retrospect for Cello Solo in 2021, he used the school anthem of the Affiliated Elementary School of the Hsinchu College of Education (now the Affiliated Experimental Elementary School of National Tsing Hua University), which he attended as a child, as pitch materials. But he didn't regard it as a Taiwanese or traditional element, but simply utilize the musical materials he came across while growing up in his works.Tsung-Jen Hsieh believes that the elements incorporated by composers in their compositions often undergo several transformations. After being processed to show a personal style, the original material is often not easily recognizable to the listener. However, he believes that the audience's understanding of a work is not based solely on the referentiality of the music, but rather on the overall aesthetic expression and accessibility of the piece. So even if one cannot fully capture the composer's hidden message in the music, it does not detract from listeners' appreciation of the work. Therefore, to certain extent, the origin of the material or inspiration used by a composer in a work does not have the same significance for the composer as it does for the listener. Hsieh holds an open-minded attitude towards how listeners interpret his works, believing that the abstract nature of musical expression gives the audience more room for imagination and allows for unique understandings by individual listeners.Currently teaching in the U.S., Shih-Hui Chen talks about how she encourages her students to proactively draw from the musical traditions of their own cultures of origin during composition class when she meets students from Taiwan or other Asian countries. She believes that some of the young composers in Taiwan today grew up in an environment where it was difficult for them to naturally come into contact with traditional arts, and that the lack of relevant training in their upbringing may have caused them to feel unfamiliar with traditional music and indirectly discouraged them from incorporating traditional elements in their compositions. Chen understands this hesitation, but she believes that since we can speak and understand Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin, even if we had fewer opportunities to get close to traditional music in the past, as long as we are willing to try, we should be able to gradually build up the relevant skills in the future. She uses her own experience as an example. Although she was exposed to traditional theatre when growing up, she didn't think about how to apply it to her own works when she was younger and her knowledge was limited. However, after nearly 40 years in the United States, her mindset has gradually changed as she identifies more and more with Taiwan. She has come to realize the importance of learning about traditional culture. She is happy about the trend of an increasing number of works focusing on local cultural traditions. She believes that starting from one's own cultural traditions is a vital contribution that Taiwanese composers can make to the development of contemporary music around the world.ConclusionWhen the first generation of Taiwanese composers used traditional and local elements in their works, their motivation was not only to draw from their own culture and pursue Eastern aesthetic concepts and thinking, but also to create music that could represent Taiwan across national boundaries because of their own devotion and sense of mission for their homeland. Through the efforts of their predecessors, today's Taiwanese composers no longer need to shoulder the heavy responsibility of vying for the international stage with their music. Instead, they focus on the local customs, culture, history, and traditions of the different ethnic groups in Taiwan from a purely personal standpoint, showcasing diverse musical perspectives and allowing for the fusion of the traditional with the contemporary, East and West. Many traditional cultures have gradually vanished with the transformation of society, and through music creation, composers do not aim to reproduce or preserve their heritage, but rather to reimagine traditions and explore new possibilities, sharing with audiences the richness and diversity of Taiwanese music.*Translator: Linguitronics 

The recipient of the 2nd Chi Po-Lin Documentary Award in 2023 was The Elimination, which also won second place at the New Taipei City Documentary Film Award in the same year. It was a short documentary film produced by Ching-Yao Liao, once again in the role of a director, 8 years after his last directorial work, Life on the Rooftop.Cinematography has been an intrinsic part of Liao's life since he was in college. He has worked as a cameraman for many outstanding works, including Days We Stared at the Sun, Heaven on the 4th Floor, Salli, Hunter Brothers, Panay, Irritable Boy, The Walkers, The Good Daughter, The Man Who Couldn't Leave, and more. He has been involved in almost every kind of filming work, from TV series and feature films, short films and documentaries, to VR, and his role as a cinematographer is naturally what comes to mind first for most people when discussing him."I'm actually a middle-aged emerging director", Liao described himself with a self-deprecating smile.I was curious to know how Liao decided on the division of his work as both a cinematographer and a director. He replied that even he was still not sure. At this stage, he does not want to define himself as a documentary director or a feature film cinematographer because he still enjoys the process of gaining insights through different fields. He also feels that he still needs those insights to become a better film creator."There's a quote that I heard in an interview for a biographical documentary years ago that I've kept in the back of my mind until now. It says that the director is the one who builds the bonfire, and the cinematographer is the one who adds the wood to the fire. I really think I'd very much like to be the one who adds the firewood."Maybe that's how you can describe him: adding wood to the fire is a virtue, but building the fire for yourself is the crux of the matter.The Elimination won the 2023 New Taipei City Documentary Film Award and the 2nd Chi Po-Lin Documentary Award (courtesy of the Department of Information, New Taipei City Government)Frogs Croaking in the DrawerChing-Yao Liao's first-ever directorial work was The Dreamer, his graduation project. The story is set in an apocalyptic world, where the protagonist escapes from a laboratory and is chased by people along the way. Without any assistance, the protagonist can only keep on running away endlessly. Liao both directed and starred in this experimental sci-fi film, which was shortlisted for the Non-Commercial Short Film category in the 2nd Taipei Film Awards."Let me be frank, The Dreamer was shortlisted at the Taipei Film Festival because no one else was making short films at that time. I was asked to help shoot several of the short films that were selected, including Layover by Ko-Shang Shen and Still Water Peace Die by Yi-Chen Wu."When I found out that the interview was with Ching-Yao Liao, the first question I jotted down for the interview script was to ask him whether his work as a professional cinematographer has affected his work as a director. From an outsider's point of view, one would think that it would be an advantageous skill to have, but after asking Liao, he told me that although being a cinematographer has brought him a lot of hard-earned experience in life, it is also the reason why he feels the need to re-examine the relationship between himself and cinematography.When compared to documentaries, Liao has actually spent more time as a cameraman for TV series and films over the years. He said that since feature films have scripts, beyond the text, not only does the director have his own ideas on how to film, but even the crew in the other departments, such as cinematography, lighting, art, and so on, can have some space to consider how to present each scene. In the early years of his career, he was always trying to offer suggestions during work where possible. Whenever he found that the director was hesitant or backing off on a filming decision, he would immediately present his own ideas to fill the gap, which he thought demonstrated responsibility and diligence. That was until a senior cameraman gave a kind reminder to Liao during a phone call, letting him know that some people in his circle felt that he was overly subjective and that it was bit difficult to work together with him."At that time, I didn't understand that when a director hesitates or pulls back, it's not necessarily because he needs advice, what he needs is maybe just companionship. This was something that I overlooked." Here, Liao frowns a little, as if he was still bothered by the shortcomings of his younger self.This seems to be the case with conscientious people—they know more about how to do things than how to behave around others."It's just that I still could not be sure: when a director or producer comes to you to work on a project, do they need your ideas or for you to serve their ideas? I was very confused."To make a living, Liao could only continue to take on projects and shoot movies with this question in mind. During that time, he would complete a TV film and then shoot a feature film. After the feature film was finished, he would shoot a short film, and every day was filled with work. Financially speaking, it was good to have projects coming in all the time, but this intensive workload soon brought the first bottleneck in his career as a cinematographer."I realized that no matter what subject-matter or story I was shooting, I would always produce the same thing. I had no idea what I was doing. It was all just rubbish!"It was after a year or two of reviewing his work that Liao suddenly realized he had shot all the stories in the same way because his filming skills had become kind of second nature,—he could do it even without thinking about it. This realization terrified him because he had no idea what he was going through at the time, except that for a while he couldn't answer any of the questions when people came to discuss work and asked him about his ideas on the film as the cinematographer."I think that was the first time I opened that drawer of mine, but I didn't realize it yet."The drawer analogy is a story that Liao often quotes these days.At the time of our interview, he was filming an art-related show for Taiwan Public Television Service with photographer Chao-Liang Shen as his subject. One time on a break from filming, he and Shen started chatting. Shen suddenly mentioned that he had a drawer where he kept some of his first works of photography. Every once in a while, he would open that drawer to see if his relationship with photography was still filled with passion and fun as it was in the beginning."When I heard those words, I was on the verge of tears, because I remembered that I hadn't opened that drawer between me and film creation in a long time, and maybe I wouldn't even be able to open it anymore."Fortunately, after the conversation with Shen, Ching-Yao Liao confirmed that his drawer was not stuck. It was at least halfway open, and the faint sound of frogs croaking could be heard coming out of the drawer every now and then.Photograph of the shooting work for the film Salli (Photography by: Hsin-Che Lee, courtesy of Bole Film)Origin of the Frogs"Frogs, class Amphibia, order Anura, they lay eggs in water that hatch into tadpoles, which use gills for respiration. After metamorphosis, they grows four limbs, and the adult begins to breathe through its lungs and skin before it can live away from water."This description is the biology of frogs that every child most likely learns in elementary school. It never occurred to me that it would be such an apt analogy to the production process of a documentary film.The motive of creation is like an egg, the fieldwork and filming are the incubation period, and the large amount of material are the tadpoles hatched after a lot of time and effort, while the editing process is strikingly similar to the metamorphosis stage, not only growing front and back limbs that can swim and jump in the right places, but also selectively getting rid of the unnecessary long tail.In this way, to certain extent, I observed the complete life cycle of The Elimination.The first time I heard Ching-Yao Liao mention the shooting schedule of The Elimination was in 2020, when the story was still a fragile translucent egg. Even the title of the film was not decided yet. The only certain thing was that the main characters would be frogs. At that time, I asked Liao why he wanted to film frogs. His answer was simple and straightforward: "Because I don't want to film people. I need to film something other than people."Although I felt that there were probably many stories hidden behind this answer, I didn't ask beyond, out of courtesy, because I didn't know him very well at that time.But I can remember that I often heard that he and the pre-production team had traveled to different cities to look for traces of frogs. I couldn't help but suggest that he should quickly go apply for funding, otherwise just the travel expenses alone would be a huge cost. However, Liao said that he was in no hurry, and that he was using his free time from other shooting projects to do the fieldwork and film at his own pace. More importantly, he felt he needed time to think about the core message of this film.Looking for spot-legged tree frogs (Photography by Howard Yu, courtesy of Director Ching-Yao Liao)During the initial stage, Liao focused on the coexistence of humans and frogs, and even attempted to look at humans from frogs' point of view, delivering an ecological spectacle. But this idea didn't last too long and he soon did away with it."I think I was kind of forcing the situation with my idea when I first started with the fieldwork. What I mean by 'forcing the situation' is that I didn't understand the topic at all, but since I was a cinematographer, I was highly aware of imagery and I knew what kind of images would captivate the audience. However, all that I could present was just on the surface level. It's like I'm filming a cup: I can judge whether it looks good or not, or how to make it look better, but I have no clue what's inside the cup."From Frog Coexistence to RemovalIt was in early 2021 that I crossed paths again with Ching-Yao Liao and his project. He was the proposal applicant and I was one of the judges that year at the National Culture and Arts Foundation's (NCAF) Creative Documentary Film grant selection meeting for documentary works. At that time, The Elimination wasn't called that yet. The title of his production project was just one word: "Frogs", while the main theme of the film had already changed to the invasion of spot-legged tree frogs (Polypedates megacephalus), an exotic species. One of the key reasons for this change was that he learned from the annual frog survey report of the Society for Taiwan Amphibian Conservation (STAC) that among the 30-odd frog species in Taiwan, the invasive spot-legged tree frog had shockingly become the most observed frog species in the wild [1]. Faced with the spreading invasion of spot-legged tree frogs, STAC designated 2021 as the year for the removal of the invasive species, and has been actively leading volunteers to carry out the removal work.Set photo of The Elimination, spot-legged tree frog (Photography by: Ching-Yao Liao, courtesy of Director Ching-Yao Liao)What was particularly impressive about Liao's proposal that year was that he chose a format radically different from the usual ecological films. He created a minimalistic trailer, eliminating colors, clear language, flash cards, and subtitles, leaving only pure images, human voices, and the croaking of frogs.Such a choice can perhaps be interpreted as a question thrown out by Liao: Does a documentary on an ecological issue only have one way to tell a story, in the form of narration or reportage? But nobody could answer his question at the time.It was a pity that Liao did not receive a grant for that year's creative project, but he said it was a good thing."I think it was because I didn't express myself clearly when I made the proposal. I've never been good at speaking on such occasions. But my lack of clarity may also reflect that I have not thought it through clearly enough. So since I didn't get the grant, I will go back and think about it more thoroughly. It is better this way." Ching-Yao Liao said at that time.He said that although he quickly decided to change the topic of his film from human-frog coexistence to the removal of exotic species because of STAC's survey report, it was only after he came into contact with the researchers and volunteers of STAC that he began to realize the complexity of exotic species removal and human-frog relationships.In the era of globalization, in addition to the cross-border trade of goods and commercial activities, human travel activities have also become increasingly frequent, and people may inadvertently act as carriers of plant seeds, or eggs and pupae of insects across borders. Moreover, to satisfy their own desires to own exotic pets, human beings have never ceased to import all kinds of rare animals into their own country by means of legal or even illegal channels. This is how all kinds of exotic creatures are brought to a new environment in a foreign land.Survival and reproduction are the nature of all living things, regardless of whether they are native or exotic; all living things follow their instincts and try their best to live and reproduce in order to perpetuate life. However, when exotic species try to survive, they may compete with native species for resources, including food and habitat, or even directly prey on native species, leading to the crisis of declining ecological diversity. To prevent this from happening, removal becomes the last resort.But should all alien species be removed? When and how should they be removed? What should be done after removal? This involves scientific investigation, bioethics, and animal welfare planning and thinking, each of which is extremely complicated, so it is no wonder that Ching-Yao Liao felt the need to spend more time to clarify his ideas.Set photo of The Elimination, the soon-to-be-removed spot-legged tree frog (Photography by: Howard Yu, courtesy of Director Ching-Yao Liao)For Liao, there was another reason he was glad he didn't get the grant for his creative project back then.A Director Who Uses Filming as a Mask"It is often said that the cinematographer is the director's eyes, and I have been doing this for years. And because I'm so used to doing it, it's a bit of an obstacle for me to shift my role and become a director, because I have to start to be my own eyes. I remember that during the review session, Director Ming-Chuan Huang asked me something like: 'Are you ready to be a director?' I couldn't answer the question at the moment. The reason I couldn't answer was simple: I really wasn't ready. I felt as like a wolf in sheep's clothing, that I was hiding my role as a director under the guise of a cinematographer. I was using my expertise in filming to make a proposal, trying to fool everyone. So I'm very grateful to Director Huang for forcing me to admit this."In his sophomore year of university, Liao went to Director Ming-Chuan Huang's studio for an internship, and the experience of helping to shoot Flat Tyre with Director Huang was his introduction to filming. Perhaps because of this familiarity, Director Huang was able to tell at a glance how he was doing even though he hadn't seen Liao for a long time.Liao knows that he should have taken up the responsibility of directing earlier, but he had been trying to hide behind his cameraman self. There was a hurdle in the back of his mind that only he understood and was able to overcome, but it was hard to voice it to others. It's like a tadpole that seems to be swimming around carefree, but only the tadpole itself can shoulder that vulnerable moment where all internal organs and tissues are re-structured before turning into a frog.Protagonist +1, +1As autumn of 2021 set in, the temperature began to drop and various frogs gradually settled into a slower pace, but it was still the breeding season of the spot-legged tree frogs. Spot-legged tree frogs are native to South China and India, and their appearance is almost identical to that of Taiwan's endemic white-lipped tree frogs (Polypedates braueri), with very similar living habits, too. However, spot-legged tree frogs' breeding season is earlier and longer, and in addition to laying eggs more frequently, they also lay a greater number of eggs than white-lipped tree frogs. Spot-legged tree frogs are able to lay an average of 600 eggs at a time, which is twice as many as the number of eggs laid by white-lipped tree frogs.After coming into the habitat of white-lipped tree frogs, spot-legged tree frogs will quickly dominate the area and consume food rapidly due to their larger numbers. In addition, adult spot-legged tree frogs and their tadpoles prey on the tadpoles of Taiwan's native species, which puts the white-lipped tree frog and other endemic species under great pressure to survive. Although snakes and birds prey on spot-legged tree frogs, the population is now too large to be affected by natural predators, and the damage to the ecosystem can only be mitigated through manual removal.Liao, who continued to document STAC's campaign against the spot-legged tree frogs, adjusted the shooting schedule again, and this time, The Elimination successfully won a place in the list of NCAF Regular Grants. With this production budget, he was able to travel to Caotun, Nantou to shoot another new protagonist of the story: cane toads (Rhinella marina).Set photo of The Elimination, cane toad (Photography by: Ching-Yao Liao, courtesy of Director Ching-Yao Liao)The cane toad is native to the American tropics and can grow to over 30 cm in length and weigh up to 2 kg. With its formidable size, the cane toad naturally eats a large amount of food. It will prey on any small creatures it can catch and even eat dog food. In the past, the cane toad had never been found in the wild in Taiwan, until it was first sighted in a private garden in Caotun, Nantou in November 2021.In the early years, some places introduced the cane toad into their countries in order to serve as pest control for commercial crops, but this resulted in an ecological hazard. The cane toad has venom glands on its body, and it can squirt the venom up to a distance of more than 1 m, which is a threat to wildlife and may even cause the deaths of dogs and cats by accidental ingestion. In addition, it has an impressive reproductive capacity, laying from 8,000 to 30,000 eggs at a time, which will have a serious impact on the ecosystem if the population spreads. Therefore, the removal of cane toads immediately became a priority for STAC. They have worked with local residents, citizen scientists, and volunteers to carry out intensive removal operations and more than 7,500 individuals have been removed as of June 2023.As the filming progressed, the cast of The Elimination grew, and in addition to the spot-legged tree frog and the cane toad, there was also a new human character: Yi-Ju Yang. She has a PhD in Zoology from National Taiwan University and currently works in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, National Dong Hwa University. She is also the president of STAC. For many years, she has engaged in the ecological research of frogs and promoting their conservation. She is even known as the "Frog Princess" in academic circles.Although Liao already knew Dr. Yi-Ju Yang since the beginning of filming, the decision to make her a part of the narrative was only made later. Liao, who originally said he didn't want to film people, had once again undergone a transformation, and The Elimination story was getting closer and closer to the stage of becoming a frog.Dr. Yang Yi-Ju during the removal work (Photography by: Howard Yu, courtesy of Director Ching-Yao Liao)Becoming a Frog with an Artistic Spirit, but Also Relatable"On the first day we met, Po-Wen Chen told me that after a film is produced, out of ten people, seven may like it and three may not. Or it could be the other way around, only three may like it and seven may not. And then he asked: 'Who do you want to show your film to? Is it for those seven people or those three people?'I think at the beginning I thought it would be good enough if only three people could understand the film, but after the baptism of the workshop over the past one or two weeks, I hope to work towards the direction of seven people watching it."The "workshop", as Ching-Yao Liao calls it, is planned by NCAF for documentaries that have received NCAF grants, where three experienced editors, Ching-Sung Liao, Cheng-Ching Lei, and Po-Wen Chen, accompany the creative team through the final stage of editing.Po-Wen Chen, who was mainly responsible for mentoring The Elimination, worked with Ching-Yao Liao for two days, during which they spent a lot of time chatting instead of working on the editing. They were not chattering aimlessly, however, but building a process—getting to know each other and being known, because only when they know each other well enough can the editor help guide the film back to the director's original vision, instead of straying away.Documentary Creation: 2023 Mentoring Project - Editing Workshop, one-on-one discussion between veteran editor Po-Wen Chen and director Ching-Yao Liao Looking back at the history of The Elimination, from the ecological visual spectacle to the invasion and removal of foreign species, some decisions kept on shifting, but there were also some ideas that remained unchanged. Those shifts and unchanged parts together shaped the story into a frog and its proper habitat."To put it plainly, I still like works that are both commercial and artistic, that is to say, they must have an artistic spirit yet people must be willing to watch them. This is very difficult, but very important, because you can't make a film just for yourself to watch."Liao, who originally said he didn't want to make a film about people, eventually couldn’t avoid pondering on human beings.The story of The Elimination is all about the tug of war between two opposing forces. Whether it is the seemingly peaceful coexistence of humans and frogs at the beginning or the invasive species that continues to multiply and fight against human's ongoing removal efforts, Liao believes that this endless cycle can be used as a metaphor for any sector of human society, and it even subtly reflects his beliefs in art."If we set aside good and bad, I would consider myself like a spot-legged tree frog, wanting to keep fighting back and resisting through art, so that my original intention for film will not be removed and destroyed.I'm not sure if Ching-Yao Liao realized himself that the drawer between him and his film creation is completely open and the young frog that was originally hiding and croaking inside has already jumped out. So now, he should be able to close the drawer again without any concerns and continue shooting.On-set photo of The Elimination (Photography by: Howard Yu, courtesy of Director Ching-Yao Liao)Postscript:It's a tough job trying to make a draft from the interviews with Ching-Yao Liao, because it's not easy to interview him. The problem is not that he doesn't want to talk or express himself well. On the contrary, he talks a lot, but he's always thinking about others more than himself. He prefers to keep it all back and not using it to make himself look better. Or whenever we met up, rather than talking about himself, he is always more interested in discussing ideas of whom he can work with and what he should film next."There's not really anything about me to write about. Why don't you just write an invitation for people to come make films with me?"Although this sounded like a joke, I believed him because of the way his eyes lit up when he said it. At the last minute before the deadline, I decided to announce it here: You are welcome to ask Ching-Yao Liao to make a film together.Annotations[1] According to the 2020 survey report of STAC, that year was the first time that the exotic spot-legged tree frogs had crowded out the common native species, the La Touche's frog, to become the most populous frog species observed in a single year. Spot-legged tree frogs were first discovered in Changhua in 2006, and have proliferated throughout Taiwan in just 15 years.*Translator: Linguitronics 

In the 16th century, Basilica San Marco had its platform and two organs in symmetry while the musicians and choirs occupied different lofts and the sounds they created scattered, which eventually resulted in the “polychoral style” of a surround sound featuring successive and contrasting musical lines. In the 19th Century, Friedrich Nietzsche received his writing ball, a globular typewriter, on which he wrote his Also sprach Zarathustra, known for its subversive writing style distinguished from all his previous works as it gathers a myriad of short and fragmented paragraphs as well as lyrical maxims. Artistic practices, no matter what specific field we are discussing, are never pure spiritual activities, but closely related to the physical situation they inhabit and the development of media technology such as the use of different tools and techniques. “The medium is the message,” says Marshall McLuhan, and how media can be seen as the extension of human organs or consciousness has become a popular topic in the art and cultural studies of Taiwan.   In Taiwan, the vigorous contemporary music scenes also see multiple influences coming from the development of media technology – often in the forms of electronic media, new technologies, or scientific research achievements – to encourage and stimulate new and interesting creations. However, a short article like this is far from sufficient to provide a comprehensive and detailed description of all its developments and current practices. Instead, I would like to select several interesting cases from the NCAF Granted Project Database and to re-explore these contemporary music projects from the media perspective as an alternative approach.   Let us begin with “electroacoustic techniques,” the most important media technology in contemporary practices. The technique has a lineage from John Cage’s experiments with turntables, Pierre Schaeffer’s recorded materials for synthesis sounds, to Iannis Xenakis’ promotion of electronic music, and now it has eventually become a common scene in contemporary music. Indeed, its genealogy is complex with multiple entry points including serious music in academia, sound scores in theatre, to sound art in its broader definition (which can also be divided into academic, performance-based, and underground practices).[1] If we put aside its genealogy for a moment, there are two media-oriented lineages which deserve our attention.  The first is how the electronic device has been given increasing creative subjectivity from a passive carrier as it used to be to become equivalent to the artist. In conventional music writing, the composer conceives the work in one’s brain before it is written as sheet music or played on instruments. It is a unidirectional approach from “conception/imagination” to “realization.” However, with the advancement of digital technologies, electronic programs or devices now have the abilities to detect, receive, and analyze the sound/music produced by performers, before it reacts immediately and aptly in its response and re-creation. The creative process is like a dialogue with another clever artist, presenting a two-way communication between the “composer/performer” and “electronic program/device.” Sandra Tavali (Wuan-chin Li)’s Duet in Autumn and In a Soundscape No.2 are two examples combining conventional instrumental music and electroacoustic feedback. The former, presented at the 2018 NYCEMF (New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival), is a music piece with a piano interacting with computer-generated sound, while the latter is for an oboe and the interactive electroacoustic system. Similar approaches can be found in Cheng Chien-Wen’s and Cheng Nai Chuan’s compositions commissioned by Taiwan Computer Music Association for the event "Electro- Pop" – The Experimental Pop Presentation. Meanwhile, Chi Po-hao in his Elevator Music Generator reconstructs the composition method to depend on algorithm and daily automatically adjusted parameters to create music which never repeats itself. By doing so, the creation is independent from a preset composition framework, which is no longer necessary. These experimental creations fundamentally challenge the authoritative status which used to belong to composers and open up a co-creation model for contemporary practices.  The other lineage is closer to the approach adopted by the great composer Alvin Lucier, the author of I Am Sitting in a Room, and it involves the artist creating unique sound installation for performance or exhibition. Examples in this category include sound artist Wang Chung-Kun, who is known for his sound and kinetic installations to transform abstract sound into concrete movement. In his earlier solo exhibition [+-*/] Wang Chung-Kun Solo Installation, the electromagnetic air valves click open to simultaneously create sounds and air vibration, juxtaposing what one hears (the sound) with what one’s skin feels (the air). His recent exhibition Sensational Flow employs the aerodynamic installation, which makes sound as triggered by visitors’ every movement to create a unique and interesting “human-and-device” interaction. Dedicated to live performance, composer Cheng Ily turns installations into instruments in her creations, usually with a careful attention to the trivial variations and interaction in its expressive nuances. In May I Control You?, Cheng uses the computer to control the fake heart, fake blood, and pump motor, while the performer delivers a soliloquy to invite the audience to listen to the heartbeats, musically demonstrating the dialectical relation between freedom and control. As for her Touché Nature for four percussionists/water installations, the speakers produce sound to vibrate the water while performers use different ways to stir the water in the basin. The signals interact with each other to form a multi-subject network between humans and devices.In addition to the abovementioned practices using new techniques to make sounds, media can reach the spiritual mind and consciousness to inspire artists.  To be more specific, the invention of gramophones liberated sound from symbol-based notations to be recorded in its purer form. The concept to “keep the sound as it is” has inspired many artists to adopt a more direct approach to reproduce the sound as it is, acoustically imitating what is heard via composition, instrumental techniques, or installations. Lin Wei-Chieh’s BLOOP is a trio for bass flute, microtonal accordion, cello, in which he imitates the “blooper” sound of guitar (a looper pedal effect) to make variations of the repeated melody, creating special effects of changing timbre, articulation, and collage. In Lily Chen’s creation and promotion project Shimmering in the Air: for haegeum, viola, and live electronics, the composer uses instruments to imitate the sound of the air, while the real-time response from the resonator transforms the sound materials produced by the air flow into fine and beautiful moments of life.  Sometimes, the use of media allows the artist to reexamine how “instruments” function as intermediary devices to make musical sounds and to challenge the conventional ways of playing certain instruments to rediscover new and different possibilities. As for academic research, we see projects such as “Notation in Contemporary Pipa Music” by Su Yun-han and “A Composition for Sheng Solo and the Development of Instrumental Diagram” by Lin Chia-ying, which respectively document and analyze the new instrumental techniques, notations, and lineage of pipa and sheng as a tool book for the promotion of and creation for traditional instruments. Another example is Lin Wei-chieh’s “A Transnational Research Project on Viola d’amore,” in which he works with an international musician of viola d’amore to study its instrumental techniques and to set up a database listing all the modern techniques and repertoire they have gathered. Under his project “Resonance of viola d’amore,” he also completed the experimental music piece Fusione Riverberata for solo amplified Viola d’amore and Effects Pedals as a perfect integration of the early musical instrument and contemporary music.The aforementioned artists and creative approaches, though great in number and diverse in practice, are just the tip of the iceberg in comparison to Taiwan’s vigorous contemporary music scene as a whole. For those who are interested in this topic, the NCAF Granted Project Database is always ready for service with its “Composition” section (especially in the category of “electroacoustic music”) to offer an in-depth knowledge concerning the composer’s background, their creations, and the current trends of Taiwan’s contemporary music/sound art.    References: [1] Muching, Wu. “聲音場景－台灣：2000–2010聲音藝術／音樂的「分立』與「返照」” [The Sound Scenes of Taiwan between 2000 and 2010: The Division and Reflection of Sound Art and Music]. ITPARK. (http://www.itpark.com.tw/people/essays_data/683/1011)*Translator: Siraya Pai

Through her, the spirits of the ancestral skulls said “Thank you” in English to the people from Taiwan and the U.K. for their help in bringing them home, but the ancestral spirit sent by the Sun God then complained, “Have you forgotten our tribal language? Why didn’t you thank them in our language?” -- Chen Yun-Lu (Central News Agency, November 5th, 2023)[1]The news article, “University of Edinburgh Returns Taiwanese Indigenous Skulls Taken 150 Years Ago, Marking Taiwan’s First Such International Repatriation,”[2] featured the story of Paiwan Indigenous people of the Mudan community bringing back from overseas remains of their ancestors who died during the Mudan Incident (牡丹社事件). The repatriation marked a starting point for rethinking the history of colonialism and representing indigenous peoples’ histories. A Paiwan pulingaw, or spirit medium, was arranged at the event to communicate with the ancestral spirits, with the following details provided, “These ancestors were originally reluctant to return home because they did not die of natural causes and were worried about the misfortune that they would bring to their tribe; however, after repeated persuasion and with great sincerity shown by their tribespeople emphasizing that welcoming them back to their homeland would help to pass down their historical memories, in the end, the ancestors finally agreed.”[3] An exploration of contemporary sensing technologies was opened by this, with history or memories that were concealed or forgotten explored through psychic powers, wizardry, divination, or other such means, presenting an attempt at forming an alternative understanding and interpretation of such events. The origin behind the project that led to two of the artworks on view in Tsai Pou-Ching’s 2021 exhibition Laboratory 207 began when a friend of a professor who’s a custodian of a university’s research specimens engaged in “spirit channeling” with some human bone specimens that were put away for a long time and learned of their wish to return to the Yujing District of Tainan, Taiwan. The physical conditions of the bones, combined with the “personal recounts” given the human skeletal remains, unveiled the possibility that they could be the remains of Pingpu people, or plains indigenous people, who were involved in the Tapani Incident (噍吧哖事件). Could such speculation lead to opportunities to be closer to history and the truth behind the origin of those remains?Hsu Chia-Wei was invited to show his work at the 2019 Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, and under the theme, “Immortality,” the biennial presented attempts that were intuitively carried out using various technological engineering means to explore the notion of eternal life for the contemporary body, proposing historical, political, and philosophical points of entry to respond to and reflect on the humanistic spirit that may be touched upon when considering “immortality.”[4] Spirit-writing (2016) by Hsu featured a record of the artist in conversation with the Frog God, Marshal Tie Jia, by way of a ritual involving a divination chair, with a model of the temple in the Wuyi Mountains which the Marshal was housed at a millennium ago recreated based on the oral recounts given by the god. Since the clues given about the past (such as the temple was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution) were untraceable, the divine discourse which was essentially sacred became the only approach to narrative. On the other hand, in the 2019 exhibition, Necropolis, Necro, The Red Soil, Liang Ting-Yu explored the geology-driven co-competitive narrative of the five ethnic groups, the Hakka, the Atayal, the Ketagalan, the Taukat, and the Hoklo, in a shallow mountain juncture area between Taoyuan’s Daxi, Longtan, and Fuxing and Hsinchu’s Guanxi. Divination blocks (擲筊) were used to communicate with local deities to examine the “authenticity” of written documents and oral recounts given by local residents on decapitations carried out by indigenous people in the area and the locations of unmarked graves. Between the deities’ responses and the historical records, reflections were given on how historical events can be constructed.How is history written? The saying that claims it is always “written by the victor” still rings true but perhaps also doesn’t fully apply in today’s time. In a time when the channels of cognition have become more complicated, art projects are seen exploring personal memories to patch the gaps found in historical events or experiences, allowing multifaceted personal life experiences that were previously latent to lead to the formation of historical narratives and identifications that are more diverse. (In)visible Visitor (2020) by Lin Yi-Chi documented Amerasian elderlies in Taiwan with fathers who were in the U.S. military. Filmed while under hypnosis, they were guided to tap into their subconscious/memories. The artwork delicately opened up the invisible and unspeakable past of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group’s time in Taiwan, seeking to put historical bodies into issues of history and identity beyond the scope of family history. Comprised of fieldwork and nonfiction narrative video, Taboos of Three Mountains (2020) presented the interim progress of Kao Jun-Honn’s long-term project, “Topa,” which involved investigating forests and interacting with people of the Atayal tribe. In the area that is documented as the traditional area of the Ncaq tribe (or Topashe, Topa community), the artist invited foreign actors to play the role of war prisoners and to retrace the trail of the Japanese’s invasion of the Ncaq tribe, with interviews conducted with war prisoners from that time to describe the situation at the Oka Prisoner-of-war Camp in Sanxia (三峽, a district in the southwestern part of New Taipei City). Oral recounts given by several tribal elders were referenced, with portraits of their ancestors drawn according to their memories. Through physically walking through the area, geographical exploration, and interviews, records of ethnic activities at different stages of history were represented, including collective memories of the region.History is long, but memories are short, and there have been numerous projects and artworks presenting manifestations of ghosts/gods that seek to find certain answers through different sensory modalities. These creative works, through sensorial inspirations and memory-oriented revelations, put the relationship between individuals and history into a more expansive, more human, and to a certain extent, more political field of vision.In conclusion, which references the research project and the Podcast series—" “From Local Traditions to the Endless Search for Universal Spirituality: The Contemporary Significance of Religion and Mysticism in the Development of Contemporary Art in Taiwan” (2020) and “Superspiritual Connections and Hopes: A Technical Inquiry into Contemporary Art Creations and Mysticism Practices in Taiwan” (2021)—on the applications and expressions of mysticism in Taiwanese modern and contemporary art written and produced by Chu Feng-Yi under the support of NCAF’s Visual Arts Criticism Grant Program: “There are still so many things that are unknown, so let’s keep asking questions.”[5]References: [1] Chen, Yun-Lu. “特派在現場／台灣原民遺骨返還 巫師揭儀式有淚有笑「祖靈很想回家」” [On location / Indigenous ancestral bones returned to Taiwan, tribal spirit medium explained ceremony was filled with tears and laughter, “The ancestral spirits really wanted to go home”]. Central News Agency. Nov. 5th, 2023. https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acul/202311050061.aspx[2] Akoy, Hsu, Bo-Song. “愛丁堡大學返還台灣原住民族頭骨，流落在外150年創國際首例 [University of Edinburgh returns Taiwanese indigenous skulls taken 150 years ago, marking Taiwan’s first such international repatriation]. Initium Media. Nov. 18th, 2023. https://theinitium.com/article/20231118-whatsnew-taiwan-indigenous-people-skeleton[3] Chen (n 1). [4] ARTouch Editorial Department. “以「永生」為題，第五屆俄羅斯「烏拉爾當代藝術工業雙年展」” [5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art under the theme, “Immortality” ]. ARTouch. July 18th, 2019. https://artouch.com/art-views/art-exhibition/content-11434.html[5] Chu, Feng-Yi. “Questions Concerning Technologies of Reappearing Mystical Experience in Taiwanese Contemporary Art”. https://archive.ncafroc.org.tw/upload/result/18513-CR1001/07%20台灣當代藝術裡鬼神顯現的技術追問_1661237452372.pdf*Translator: Hui-Fen Anna Liao

2021 was a difficult year for the 13th Young Star New Vision in Performing Arts grant program (hereinafter referred to as "Young Star New Vision"). In the opening week of the performance in the theater, the national COVID-19 epidemic alert was raised to level 3. As soon as the closed-door premiere ended, the production team had to immediately vacate the venue and the scheduled tour for central and southern Taiwan was canceled. Rolling adjustments had to be made to salvage the productions, which had taken a long time to plan and produce. Yi-Chu Li, one of the creators selected for the 13th Young Star New Vision, recalled those days with a laugh, "Is the number 13 cursed?"What happened to Mother Marici, which was supposed to be performed in theater? Jumping off from her 2021 theater production Mother Marici, this exclusive interview will follow Yi-Chu's creative work in theater over recent years. If every creative project is regarded as the germination of an idea, what fruits have her creative ideas borne after Young Star New Vision?Winner of the 2021 13th Young Star New Vision in Performing Arts—Yi-Chu Li (Photography by: Mu-Yun Ho)Breaking the CurseLooking back on Yi-Chu's theater projects over the years, it's clear that she has tried to collaborate with different types of performing arts, such as music ensembles, beatboxing, rakugo, and puppetry, bravely exploring inter-disciplinary paths. The content of her productions often incorporates mythology, maximizing the magical realism of theater. Mother Marici is a "contemporary family mythological performance project" inspired by Yi-Chu's own family situation and her mother's years-long hoarding habit, combined with elements of Indian mythology. In response to the level 3 epidemic alert, Yi-Chu—the show's playwright and director—and the actors began by isolating conceptual elements from the production: hoarding, object theater, and myth adaptation. These elements were developed into a series of three online workshops, The Things I Can't Bear to Throw Away, each tackling a different aspect: Hoarding Soul: a Healing Workshop; The Body of Objects: Performance Workshop; and New Mythology: Guide to Scriptwriting. Within the limitations of social distancing, the online workshops attempted to facilitate contactless interactions through digital technology, opening opportunities to foster collective, empathetic dialogue.The original performance, on the other hand, was adjusted from a play that emphasized performance in the moment to Marici Appears, Organize Now, an actual on-site home performance project with more authentic interactions. There seems to be some force in the universe telling Yi-Chu that her exploration of family will eventually lead her back home."The gods I saw didn't come from stars in the sky, but dwell in the ceiling of my home." From another perspective, the dysfunctional spaces in her home look like an untamed natural environment. (Photo courtesy of: Yi-Chu Li)1.     Mother Marici in Real LifeMy mother's hoarding habit gradually developed as our family underwent different events and various interpersonal struggles. It started with just a section of the house, then an entire side, entire rooms, and the entire house was eventually filled with things. Yi-Chu said that going home was like stepping into a wild forest, "For my brother and I, going home was no different than hiking in the dark. We had to use our hands and feet to climb and dodge things, crossing collapsed walls or slippery slopes just to get some water. If we weren't careful, we could cause things to fall over like a landslide. My mother just told us to 'adapt and go with the flow'. Amazingly, my mother could move freely around the house with almost no lights on." The dysfunctional spaces caused by piles of objects may reflect the difficulty of mutual communication among family members, but Yi-Chu found a different perspective on the strange physical sensations arising from the wilderness of her home."You need special skills to survive in this house!" Yi-Chu ascribed super powers to her mother for spending every day in a cluttered space, like the goddess Marici who can freely traverse the sky and earth. The theater version of Mother Marici includes an aerial silks performance in which the performer becomes one with two pieces of hanging red silk, twisting, stretching, and rolling their body into irregular poses. "The aerial silks stunts show the audience how difficult aerial silks are as well as how the performer enjoys these extremes. The winding, furling, and unfurling fabric is like an umbilical cord, a bond and a source. It's what gave me my blood and body." The aerial silks performance connects the imagery of "human-object-non-human", and attempts to tackle indescribably complex family dynamics with its flowing forms.After settling down for a few months post-premiere, Yi-Chu invited her younger brother, who works in television, to persuade their mother to let them bring Mother Marici to their home: Three actors (Yu-Jheng Yang, Hsuan-Fang Yin, and Nien-Tzu Wu), who had already memorized their lines, participated in a two-day recording and live broadcast in which they improvised in an actual hoarding scene. If the theater version is a fictional outlet for real events, then the at-home version Marici Appears, Organize Now leverages the fictionality of "text and myth" to create another channel for communication and understanding in a real space, an entrance into her mother's world. "Does mom really need to be rescued? Is hoarding a disease? Hidden behind these objects are not only my mother's emotions, but also my feelings." Yi-Chu uses the video recording as an opportunity to tell everyone, "Contemporary myths are real! The scenes in the show (such as stepping on a needle in needle hell) are also real!"Does a goddess that can freely traverse the sky and earth really need to be rescued? "All this accumulation and storage is to prepare for the future.” Yi-Chu mentioned that the goddess Marici is a deity that will not let you go into debt. Looking back on this production, though it weathered many hardships, it was also a gift from the heavens: "It showed me that things were not actually that hard." (Photo courtesy of: Yi-Chu Li)2.     I Want to Enter Mom's MindNow that I'm back home, is it possible to tidy up the wilderness and carve some trails?It was difficult for my mother to adapt to the house with the lights on, and she was worried that a lot of things would be cleared away during filming. My mother always believed that all the things she brought home will have some use in the future. Yi-Chu confessed that shooting the performance at home was hard on herself, her brother, and her mother. But though they were forced to directly confront the strong impact of hoarding, the experience also made them try to better understand one another. The closing statement for the project written a few months later read, "The solution to clutter is not to throw away, but to organize. We organized things to make more room for me and my mother to spend time together. I thought I did it to find space, but once the story was over, I realized what I was actually trying to find was those sparkling moments I shared with my mother."Setting BoundariesAs they accumulate creative experience, creators often get a better understanding of the creative themes and consistent intentions behind their art. Looking back on their works every once in a while, they can often discover feelings they couldn't identify during the creative process, gaining sudden clarity now that the fog has dispersed. Looking through the theater productions Yi-Chu has written/directed: debut production Aye Aye, Captain (2011) for the Taipei Fringe Festival; Ocean (2015), which won first prize in the theater script category of the 17th Taipei Literature Award; National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF)'s Literature Grant recipient Contemporary Family Mythology Project——Mother Marici (2020); and in the same year, the Young Star New Vision show of Mother Marici, it's clear that her works, spanning a decade, all revolved around her family. Art has always been Yi-Chu's way of understanding the world. "After working on these projects, I realized that I seem to take my family dynamics and present them in my own way, but those don't seem to be the real me. It wasn't until the end of Mother Marici that a part of me, buried under the clutter all along, finally emerged. I've always been looking for myself and where my boundaries are."Regarding artistic boundaries, it would be amiss not to mention the inspiration and practice that Yi-Chu has gained from the art of rakugo (落語).1.     Boundary Training Through RakugoA form of stand-up comedy, rakugo originated in Japan during the Edo period. In the seiza sitting position, the performer depicts stories through vivid body language. The monologue always comes to a surprising and sudden end with a punch line known as "ochi" (落下).Yi-Chu first learned about rakugo in a university screenwriting class, in which the professor Yi-Kang Feng introduced Kankuro Kudo's Tiger and Dragon. The blurry footage unexpectedly sparked her interest in rakugo. Later, in 2019, Yi-Chu participated in Our Theatre's Script Farm Project and completed the play Nobody's Voice, which also became the subject of her master's thesis. She then began a long-term collaboration with Taiwanese rakugo master Kai-Cheng Dai, with works including The Blind Swordsman—in/visible (2019), Kai-Cheng Dai Rakugo: Treasure Ship in a Floating World (2021), You Have No Time (2023), and other shows of various scales. These works boldly experiment with creators from different fields, such as illustrators, puppeteers, beatbox performers, and musicians. In most of these, Yi-Chu is the playwright and director, remaking traditional stories with the techniques that she has always excelled at.In 2021, Yi-Chu Li and Hua-Hsu Tai founded Grassing Theatre. The description of Grassing Theatre closely reflects their views on the creative process: "The performance must be repeatable, but life cannot be repeated—life is just a draft. So, we can draft whatever we want at any time." Like its name implies, Grassing Theatre is operated with a casual and free atmosphere, with no rigid direction. Its performances can include rakugo, stand-up comedy, solo performance, or black box theater—what matters is to play and create through inter-disciplinary co-creation.As she engaged more deeply with rakugo, Yi-Chu found that rakugo helped her identify boundaries. Unlike her past works, which still had a lot of ambiguous space, the minimalist elements of rakugo performance—sitting in the seiza position on a cushion, using an only fan and small cloth to represent all the objects in the story, and playing multiple characters alone—all require a clear distinction of characters, performance aspects, and symbols. "You cannot perform rakugo well without clearly distinguishing these things, so by appreciating and understanding rakugo, a lot of things seem to become clearer," Yi-Chu said affirmatively before adding, "Later on, I also started practicing rakugo."While performing rakugo on stage, Yi-Chu realized that, in her work as a playwright and director, she was used to stepping back and responding to the needs of the team or the audience. As a director, she was the glue holding things together, always thinking about different ways to arrange and combine the script, actors, and design while considering everyone's emotional state. But it turns out that "putting yourself first" is not necessarily a bad thing. It wasn't until she began telling stories by herself on stage and expressing her thoughts in her own voice that she finally discovered herself.As a playwright and director, you need to distinguish the boundaries. Yi-Chu said, "You cannot perform rakugo well without clearly distinguishing these things, so by appreciating and understanding rakugo, a lot of things seem to become clearer." (Photography by: Pin-Chen Ho)2.     Sights from BoundariesWith the existence and language of "self" in mind came the reveal of Souvenirs Entomologiques: Playing Dead, a NTCH Ideas Lab production, in 2023. Departing from the innermost influence of her family, Yi-Chu turned her love and research on insects since childhood into a situational comedy with dark humor, using insects' defense mechanism of playing dead as a metaphor for how humans disassociate from feeling in the face of overwhelming pain in life. "Playing dead is to survive, it's how life gives us time to rest." Yi-Chu believes that, as playwright and director, this production is one that truly comes from herself, re-establishing her inner balance and helping her better grasp her personal creative vocabulary.2023 was a year of overwork, with excessive output as the pandemic ebbed and flowed. But the intensive creative labor also showed her the evasive meaning of "relaxation". As a creator who can write, direct, and act, Yi-Chu sometimes has trouble distinguishing the boundaries between the three, but she found her footing as the director of Journey to the West Battle Royale at the end of the year. "Simply being the director requires a certain degree of spectatorship, and sometimes the show might get better if you slack off a little." In addition to the distinction of creative roles, distinguishing the boundaries between "work-creation-rest" is also necessary to maintain a healthy creative model as a freelance worker.The Body's Voice, Their VoicesIt's also important to know how to switch between roles. Whether in life or in art, it's important to open up moderately and interact with different people and things. These interactions will end up giving you more steady strength.1.     Return to Body TrainingWhile pursuing her M.A. in Drama and Theatre at National Taiwan University (NTU), Yi-Chu joined the nature conservation club NTU Conserve and took many courses in different departments, including Jacques Rancière's philosophical theories, Kojin Karatani's ethics, James Clifford's anthropology, as well as open courses like Dendrology and general courses like Literature, Animals and Society. These courses greatly broadened her knowledge and creativeness. In her undergraduate days, the colleges of Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA) were busy with professional training, development, and networking with people in the industry. In contrast, the atmosphere of NTU graduate programs is full of initiative for active learning, and it's easier for people to communicate with others outside their circles.Interestingly, while coursing graduate school, Yi-Chu frequently returned to audit courses at TNUA. In his courses, Professor Mingder Chung invites professionals in areas like nanguan and masque neutre, with lots of theater training that returns the focus to the body and the feeling of one's inner energy. In addition, Professor Chung spent over 20 years studying the performance training of Russian theater master Konstantin Stanislavski and Polish director Jerzy Grotowski’s research of "Art as a vehicle". He also personally experienced Taiwanese folk rituals and cultural practices like Taichi Dowing, the Pas-ta'ai ritual of the indigenous Saisiyat people, and the Baishatun Mazu Pilgrimage, developing a set of practices called "Method of Physical Actions" (MPA) to help performers achieve perfection and harmonize their body and mind.Inspired deeply by Professor Mingder Chung, Grassing Theatre has participated in the Baishatun Mazu Pilgrimage as a part of its group training every spring since its founding. Yi-Chu experienced the fast-paced march of the Mazu Pilgrimage for the first time five years ago. The relentless march overwhelmed her capacity to think and challenged the extent of her physical capability, allowing her to experience the meaning of "movement is stillness" in the MPA theory. She was used to relying on her brain in her work as playwright and director, inundating herself with too much analysis and abstract concepts, but the focus and diversion of physical training and rituals brings a different kind of awareness.2.     Living Springs HomeYi-Chu's personal profile reflects someone who is versatile and prolific: "Also known as Yi Chu, she is interested in exploring different ways of storytelling. A freelance playwright, teacher, and fortune teller, she is also a theater director."Her many years of freelance experience include teaching creative classes at Eden Foundation's Living Springs Home, which she does in tandem with her creative career. The students who attend classes at Living Springs Home are people with mental disabilities and their caregivers. Recalling when she was first invited to Living Springs by a college classmate in 2019, Yi-Chu said, "I see myself in them. Everyone here is someone who has been hurt inside, so there's a feeling of mutual understanding." She started out with writing classes, then started adding oral expression and script reading. Then, since the students were already reading scripts, they started to perform. In the end, her class evolved into a "speaking, reading, acting, and writing class". In the process of speaking, reading, acting, and writing, each student found things they were interested in. Yi-Chu is proud to have a dedicated student who "majors" in her class, and to see the changes that these classes brought out in her. That student gradually became more willing to address her inner wounds and find a balance.For Yi-Chu, teaching at Living Springs Home redefined the standards and meaning of art. She stressed that this process is not necessarily "teaching", but giving students space to express themselves and encouraging them to open up through creativity. She is satisfied to see students reacting faster, becoming more willing to express themselves, and even making friends.Creation is more than a one-way output. In the process of interacting with the students of Living Springs Home, she has received a lot of feedback and precious experiences. (Photo courtesy of: Yi-Chu Li)Getting Rid of Demons: You Are Your Own HomeDue to factors like grant deadlines, emphasis on efficiency, and the industry's subpar earnings, those in the overall arts and cultural environment have always been plagued by instability and anxiety. After working for more than a decade in theater, Yi-Chu has come to realized many things: "Art seems to be closely tied to my life, but isn't that the case for everyone? You're trying to share your perspective with others. Ever since I encountered Living Springs Home and the MPA practice, everything seems like art to me. I also rethink what I want to do and find the appropriate method for whatever goals I have instead of exhausting my physical and mental energy in the creative process."Will there will be a follow-up of Mother Marici? It seems that she has passed this stage of her life and opened a new chapter. After the project was over, Yi-Chu moved to a rented home in 2022 and had her own graduation ceremony with the house she grew up in—taking away the mattress from her old room. The conflicted feeling inside disappeared: "That's where my mother lives. She's free to do whatever she wants!" Yi-Chu continued, "These have always been things coming out of my room and everything about home, like a birth process. Taking away the mattress is an intangible ritual. I gave birth to myself, and after that, I can be pragmatic about leaving home."33 is a special age, thinks Yi-Chu. Life has become increasingly stable, and painful or dark experiences of the past can turn into strength. Having worked on so many productions in the past few years, Yi-Chu said both jokingly and seriously that the title of each play should be chosen carefully, as the name will reflect the working conditions of each production. For example, the 2023 production of You Have No Time seemed cursed. At the end of the last performance, Yi-Chu walked outside the theater alone and looked up at the sky when a flock of birds suddenly flew past. "I suddenly felt as if the ghost was a teacher saying goodbye to me."Now, she has released herself from the shadow of her mother’s hoarding habit and freed herself of the demons in her art, "You have to take good care of yourself when you are creating. You are your own home."Yi-Chu used three items to present the current state of her life. From left to right, these items are: (1) Moon guitar: Realizing the importance of life and happy creation, (2) Rakugo model: Integrating rakugo and current creative endeavors, (3) Exorcism bell: The inspiration borrowed from ghosts will eventually be returned. There is also Dawei (Yi-Chu's cat), a feline that exudes positive energy. (Photography by: Mu-Yun Ho)*Translator: Linguitronics

The year 2022 was an explosive year for Lin Ting-Syu and the group, Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi.  In the span of a year, they had presented three productions in southern and northern Taiwan, with The Golden Crow that Does Not Exist showcased in early April at the Kaohsiung Spring Arts Festival, which integrated the culture and rituals of Taiwan's Taoist Zengyi School with contemporary dance and sound art, presenting a spiritual world that's rich with Taoist cultural elements. Then by the end of the same month, Voyage through Mountains and Seas was presented as a part of the 14th Young Stars New Vision, which saw the spiritual world of folk beliefs explored by Lin in his past works transformed by the mountains and seas of Lanyu (Orchid Island), with an energy manifested. In November, Picking the Corpus was performed at the 2022 Taiwan Dance Platform organized by the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, which departed from the perspectives of the group’s long-term collaborators, dancers Chen Hsin-Yu and Wen Yun-Chu, to explore the life history of individuals that are intertwined with the development of the island.The explosive year was also fruitful. Two of these three productions, The Golden Crow that Does Not Exist and Voyage through Mountains and Seas, were nominated for the 21st Taishin Arts Award, and The Golden Crow that Does Not Exist advanced into the intensely competitive final round. Luck might have played a role in the heightened exposure and fruitful outcome, but it was certainly not a fluke. As shared by Lin, since renaming the Lin Ting-Syu Studio to Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi in 2022, he and the group members became quite busy pitching project proposals and undertaking projects. The tightly-scheduled performances and accolades received then prompted Lin to ponder on art, everyday living, and life.         During a visit to the Big Event Theater, a rehearsal space where the group is based in Kaohsiung, Lin was interviewed at the Dual mu Café on the theater's second floor. This article shares the transition Lin has gradually made with his creative practice and how he balances running a performance group with his personal life.    Big Event Theater in Kaohsiung (Photo: Fan Xiang -Jan)Leaving Yourself Behind but Growing Closer to Your Creative Journey  Voyage through Mountains and Seas marked a transition in Lin's focus on folk beliefs, but this observation is perhaps not entirely accurate. Thematically, Voyage through Mountains and Seas was the first work by Lin created out of the transition made from his three-year examination of folk beliefs between 2017 and 2019. The highly acclaimed Deluge (shortlisted for the 18th Taishin Arts Award), The Invincible Swiftness of the Golden Crow in 2019, and the also shortlisted The Golden Crow that Does Not Exist in 2022 were the productive outcomes generated from the energy accumulated from those three years of survey and research. However, in reviewing Lin's earlier works, we can see that he has always focused on humanity's state of existence and the spiritual world, and a visible body is where light can shine on the unseen. Voyage through Mountains and Seas can be considered a return to the roots of compassion.An artist's creative theme is the external manifestation of their expression, which is connected to the audience's initial perception of the artist's work, their knowledge of the artist, and how the artist is positioned. However, for some artists (Lin Ting-Syu included), the actual core of their creative practice lies in the propelling force that generates creative kinetic energy, and this force is about people, about life. As mentioned by Lin, after a particular curtain call with the dancers, he suddenly felt numbed towards applauses. This sense of impassiveness was not a loss of enthusiasm for theater, dance, or performance; rather, he realized that what was more important to him was the daily routine of rehearsing with the dancers and working with the team and the design group. For Lin, “it is the warmth of human relationships that drives the direction of my creative work.” Although this realization occurred at a particular moment, traces of it can be spotted throughout his creative journey. Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi, Voyage through Mountains and Seas (Photo: Wu Po-Yuan) One of the most touching moments in Voyage through Mountains and Seas was when the dancer Chen Hsin-Yu, surrounded by several cardboard boxes, reenacted a scene from when her mother passed away; wholeheartedly dedicated and exerting her whole might, it felt like the dancer's consciousness and soul were pouring out of her body. While working on this segment in the performance, Lin's creative direction gradually shifted. In the past, the focus of Lin's work was solely based on the spiritual world that he sought to explore, with him shaping and visualizing a worldview through a first-person perspective. Then, during rehearsals, it was through Lin's aesthetic perspective that bodies were adjusted, movements sculpted, and scenes illustrated. However, Lin's past approach hit a wall in this solo dance number on the story of Chen's mother. In the words of Lin, “[Chen Hsin-Yu's] section was a spiritual world that I couldn't interfere in; it's unshakable. I had to take several steps back to work with her on this solo dance number.” He then realized that he should listen to the dancers more and give general advice during rehearsals rather than provide specific instructions that are oriented around his own aesthetic preferences.Moreover, Lin's previous customary way of working was to survey and study temples alone. In recent years, with more subsidies made available and the prize money received for his Tashin Arts Award nominations, he has become more capable of conducting fieldwork with a team. Voyage through Mountains and Seas was created by spending time with his team members on Orchid Island. Through being on the island, the dancers benefited both physically and mentally by being out in nature, which Lin thought was quite moving and invaluable, and the experience was also quite personal. The movement development for the number with the three dancers, Hsieh Chih-Ying, Wen Yun-Chu, and Chao Yi-Ying, saw them moving their bodies like leaping waves and also incorporated a great deal of the dancers' personal physical and mental experiences from when they were out by the mountains and the seas. Lin's shift in his creative approach gradually started with these two numbers in Voyage through Mountains and Seas. For him, it was vital for a new creative practice to emerge.  Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi, Voyage through Mountains and Seas (Photo: Chen Chang-Chih)From the Spiritual World of Taoist Culture to the “Human” World With this shift in creative practice, Lin also began to show a shift in the creative subject matters that he works with. Picking the Corpus, created after Voyage through Mountains and Seas, is called “採身” in Chinese, which means to gather one's identity or body. As the name suggests, Lin joined the project's dancers in revisiting their childhood homes, where they used physical expressions to gather their past identities. The identity of Lin, the choreographer, wasn't what was gathered. The focus was on the identities of the two dancers, Chen Hsin-Yu and Wen Yun-Chu, whom Lin has collaborated with extensively. Born in Erlin Township of Changhua County, Chen's family owned a suitcase factory during a time when Taiwan saw an economic boom. With the decline of Taiwan's processing industry, their factory in Changhua eventually had to shut down. Following the creative development of Picking the Corpus, Chen recalled the factory of her childhood and the memories of the countryside that are a part of her. Wen Yun-Chu, a girl from a noble family of the indigenous Paiwan Valjulu Tribe who moved to the city in northern Taiwan in her youth with her father, has long felt that her roots are foreign and distant to her, but in the course of the creative development of Picking the Corpus, she was able to return to her unfamiliar tribal village in southern Taiwan's Pingtung to try to connect with her past and future.Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi, Picking the Corpus (Photo: Lin Ting-Syu) Although the two dancers have very different life journeys, they are both part of this island's destiny. From Voyage through Mountains and Seas to Picking the Corpus, we can see Lin's gradual shift from the spiritual world of Taoist culture toward more visual, tangible bodies and also closer to the invisible, intangible state of existence of one's heart. On the other hand, we also see the artist's move from a personal and religious family history to the intertwined destinies of the people on the island of Taiwan. This shift in approach and theme appeared “to be leaving the self behind, but in fact, it is about growing closer to yourself,” said Lin, pensively. Perhaps, this sense of self is not a closed and inward exploration of one's own life and the spiritual world, but rather, it is a self that is connected to the outside, where the internal and the external are interconnected and mutually refractive and reflective. New Work in Progress: ‘Guardians on a Glazed Tile Roof’ Maybe it was a period of calm that followed the explosively intense and busy 2022, so the year 2023 appeared comparatively quieter for Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi in terms of showcasing their work; nevertheless, Lin and the team have remained active and kept working on their creative endeavors. Guardians on a Glazed Tile Roof is the work they are currently developing. The work's Chinese title, “大吻琉璃,” refers to zhengwen (正吻) or dawen (大吻), which are mythical beast-shaped ornaments placed on the roofs of temples and appear to be biting onto the two ends of the roof ridge, and “琉璃” means colored glaze, referring to the glazed tiles seen on temples. This particular mythical beast is related to the element of water and is said to be one of the nine sons of the Dragon. It has a dragon head and the body of a fish and is a fierce biter and swallower. It's seen with water oozing from its mouth, which moistens its vocal cords. Since most of the ancient buildings were made of wood, placing this mythical beast on the buildings was believed to have the effect of protecting them from fire and evil spirits. Moreover, the roofs of temples are typically covered with glazed tiles. The title of this dance piece suggests Lin's focus is not only on the Taoist culture and the spiritual world but also extends to the sentient beings that are closely related to this culture, which in Guardians on a Glazed Tile Roof are the workers responsible for laying the glazed tiles.  Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi, Guardians on a Glazed Tile Roof (Photo: Lin Ting-Syu) In an image shared by Lin to explain this creative work, a worker is seen standing on the roof of a temple, with two pails in his hands. Lin then used a pen to point at the actual temple building and commented, “My previous focus would have been on this,” and he then shifted his pen to the glazed tile worker and said, “My focus is now here.” This reminded me of a past interview in which Lin vividly talked about the different postures of the gods of literature and martial arts seen in temples.[1]  Now, he has shifted his focus to the workers who are encumbered by the realities of life, who may be facing problems with their children and have other family issues, and who have to deal with work-related injuries and possibly even fatal accidents. Lin has always had close ties to temples. His uncle was a member of a tiling crew, and because of him, Lin was able to follow the crew to visit various temples. Unfortunately, his uncle passed away in July last year. Following a project undertaken by the crew, Lin visited the Fudingjin Baoan Temple in Kaohsiung in June of the same year, and in July, together with the sound designer, Hsu Yen-Ting, they visited the Dazhong Temple in Sicao, Tainan, where they made sound recordings; a trip to the Mazu Temple in Yizhu, Chiayi then followed. Just a month before our interview, Lin had followed the crew to Erlin Township in Changhua to carry out a construction project. In Lin's eyes, the workers live a nomadic life, bouncing from place to place, moving from one tiling project to the next. The cost of building a temple can range from tens of millions of New Taiwan Dollars to hundreds of millions. If the project owner is generous, the workers would be able to stay in hotels or guesthouses, but if the owner is financially constrained, or when the project's location is remote, and accommodation is not available, the workers would have to set up tents and spend the night inside the temple.Involving Dance in Labor Situations Lin's original intention for using dance to get involved in the work and everyday life of the tiling crew was “to bring dance into temples and to document with art to feel the blood and sweat of these grassroots workers and to use bodies to replicate the value of their labor.” On the one hand, through Guardians on a Glazed Tile Roof, Lin's intention is to share the stories of the crew with the public, but on the other hand, what has been driving Lin in this direction is a connection that cannot yet be put into words. He senses that the tiling workers and modern dancers seem to share a certain similarity, and it's not about the physical conditions they endure, such as the environments that they work in, but has to do with an intangible dimension that is both physical and psychological. “They are both contributing a great deal of physical exertion; tiling workers are working on the rooftop of temples, and through performing, contemporary dancers are seeking to reach the peak of their career,” explained Lin. “But I also know that there's a great disparity between them, and perhaps it is this gap that drives me to want to further explore it using art,” he added. While following the construction crew on their temple projects, the “realness” of those workers was particularly memorable to Lin. “It is a realness that's open and exposed. It is raw and unpackaged.” For Lin, who has been paying attention to the physical and mental depletion of laborers since Voyage through Mountains and Seas, there is an inexplicable closeness that he holds deep inside. The struggles of survival and the realities of life, which the workers have to endure, are topics that come up repeatedly in Lin's conversations with his friends from the construction crew. As shared by Lin, “Someone on the tiling crew may have pulled his back in the morning, but you would still see him at the construction site in the afternoon. Or someone who had almost fallen on the job the other day and luckily escaped being injured or killed because he was able to grab onto the scaffolding would still show up on the rooftop of the temple the next day. They have to keep working to make ends meet for their families.” To carry on with life, they have to endure injuries and also put up with inhumane conditions at work. It is perhaps far-fetched to compare the working conditions of contemporary dancers in air-conditioned rooms with smooth mat floors with the highly exhaustive and dangerous conditions faced by the tiling workers. However, on the other hand, what's that sense of “peak” that contemporary dancers strive for when they also endure similar physically and mentally straining conditions when they work? What is the driving force behind them?Supported by the National Theater and Concert Hall, Guardians on a Glazed Tile Roof completed its initial research and development and presented its preliminary progress internally in September 2023. It then received a commission for the 2024 NTCH IDEAS Lab, with performances scheduled for June 2024. However, Lin's imagination and vision for Guardians on a Glazed Tile Roof are not confined to just theater and dance. He meekly revealed that in addition to the June theater performances, plans are being made to present Guardians on a Glazed Tile Roof in a way that differs from the theater version. Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi, Guardians on a Glazed Tile Roof (Photo: Lin Ting-Syu) Journey from Independent Artist to Running a Group As aforementioned, Lin Ting-Syu Studio was renamed Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi in early 2022, and Lin has gone from an independent artist to an art director leading his group to work and perform in various places. Anyone in the performing arts circle would know that becoming a group leader or art director does not make the work more “artistic” nor does it bump the work to a more “advanced” level; on the contrary, because of the pressure from running a group, the workload tends to grow heavier, and the group would become busier, but this doesn't mean that their income would also go up. The survival of a group tends to depend heavily on grants and performances held at venues; subsidies and grants are crucial for supporting the group members, and they need to put on a lot of performances to gain exposure so that more opportunities can follow. Unfortunately, an abundance of performance opportunities does not mean that the group can become completely self-sufficient, and more often than not, it can lead to a great deal of physical and mental exhaustion on its members. Like an overworked machine that can't afford to stop, this is a conundrum that those in the contemporary performing arts field are still struggling with. From 2020 to 2023, Autumn Cedar Sóo-Tsāi pitched and took on many projects. Many would probably say that it's good to be busy, but it also caused Lin great physical and mental exhaustion. What made him even more mentally drained was that despite the excessive amount of work done, he was still not in a position to pay the dancers reasonably. Lin shared with a sigh, “Although our group has received many opportunities to perform on many platforms and received a lot of subsidies and grants, the dancers are still underpaid, which is something that really saddens me.” He further asserted, “Even though I've been paying the dancers a relatively high fee for every single performance and rehearsal from 2022 until now, on average, the pay received by the dancers in this industry is still too low.” In recent years, facing this phenomenon at large, Lin has also thought about referencing the management approaches of other groups and marketing and brand-building tactics. However, through further reflection, he realized that this would go against his original intention of making art, and he has also seen many others in the same field, including his contemporaries and those before him, suffering from physical harm and mental exhaustion from overworking, even to the point of endangering their lives. He repeatedly asked himself if that was the life he wanted and reflected on his relationship with his art.Lin has been diligently working on creating dance for six years, a period that is neither too short nor too long. Lin reflectively sees that if he has been fortunate enough to be noticed by people and for others to look forward to seeing his work, it is not because of his group's good marketing or branding strategies, but rather because of his and his group members' dedication and the continual refinement they make toward their creative work. In light of this realization, he is now clear about what to do and that is “to make good art.” Under this premise, he has learned to pace how he works, which entails doing administrative work in the morning, and the afternoons are reserved for creative work and rehearsals. Weekends are for resting. He also doesn't force himself or the group to pitch or take on too many projects. There is a time for work, and there is also a time for rest. This is the principle he goes by right now to achieve a work-life balance. “In the past, I would say that creating dance was my life's mission, but I no longer say that now. However, for the remainder of my life, dance is something that I will always hold a fondness for,” Lin said with a smile.  “A fondness for” sounds quite lighthearted, but it reflects Lin's profound earnestness toward making art. In particular, from Voyage through Mountains and Seas, Picking the Corpus to Guardians on a Glazed Tile Roof, by shifting from a first-person to a second-person point of view, his creative subject has also shifted from the relatively intangible spiritual world to the living beings in this tangible sentient world. For Lin, art is now an important medium for him to reach out to others and try to empathize with them. To feel the warmth of others through art also enriches Lin, physically and mentally. This process of going back and forth, of seemingly moving away from oneself but actually getting closer to oneself, is an insight that Lin has now realized when it comes to art: “This sense of getting closer is actually not a pleasant feeling; it is really a bit cruel, but after observing and reflecting on it for a while, it’s also quite healing.” Lin, who was in a specialized art class in high school, showed a piece of artwork about the gods in his graduation exhibition, and upon completing his master's degree, he created a number of dance pieces related to the Taoist culture and the spiritual world. Just as people have started to associate his creative work with religion, he then pivoted to the world of sentient beings, telling the stories of indigenous identity and childhood factory of his fellow dancers and also of the tiling crew. However, from the creative insights shared by him on the transformation of his creative approach and this drive that propels him to get closer to others, we can see that it is not that Lin no longer cares about spiritual faith and belief, but rather, it has been internalized into his mindset and actions. Now, Lin continues to “use his body to document the paths he has traveled, to explore the universal spirit of various humanistic and cultural issues, and to use contemporary art to demonstrate the social value of dance.” Annotations[1]Fan, Shung-Jan.《乩身、亡者、法師，精與體的考察：林廷緒與他的舞蹈探索》 [Medium, the deceased, Taoist priest, an examination of spirit and body: Lin Ting-Syu and his exploration of dance] https://mag.ncafroc.org.tw/article_detail.html?id=297ef72270ca70160170e1407a750001*Translator: Hui-Fen Anna Liao

ForewordIn 2019, Ping-Jung Chen's The Rest was selected for the 12th Young Star New Vision in Performing Arts grant. The performance was supposed to premiere in 2020 in Taipei, followed by a tour in central and southern Taiwan. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Taiwan, forcing the premiere to be presented as three exclusive performances at the Experimental Theater of the National Theater and Concert Hall (NTCH) in Taipei with video recordings by PTS Arts. Then in 2021, Ping-Jung Chen scheduled for the play to return at Wellspring Theater, but a sudden worsening of the pandemic put Taiwan under level-3 alert and Taipei under lockdown. The rerun plan was forced to move the performance online, The Rest Under the Pandemic. It wasn't until 2022, when the pandemic gradually eased, that the play finally made its successful return at Wellspring Theater. The new iteration integrated content from the Experimental Theater and online stagings, becoming a new version of The Rest.In the span of three years, The Rest experienced three major changes in time and space—an experience other theater productions are unlikely to have—and developed a unique production life cycle. This incredible journey must have brought considerable tumult to Ping-Jung's life and taught her a lot of lessons and insights, in turn affecting her creative attitude towards theater work. But when I (Shang-Ling Kuei) contacted Ping-Jung on behalf of the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) to talk about the content of this interview, Ping-Jung's first reaction was: "To be honest, I feel so empty, like I have nothing to say."This answer piqued my curiosity, and after a long phone call clarifying Pin-Jung's inner thoughts, I sat down with her at her studio in Dadaocheng, ready to explore her ideas about working on The Rest over these years, and the production's subsequent impact on her. The interview started with Ping-Jung's statement that she has "nothing to say".Wordless EmptinessA cup of freshly-brewed tea in her hands, Ping-Jung slowly opened up about how one of the reasons she felt she had "nothing to say" was that creators are usually interviewed because of an upcoming show, and the purpose of these interviews is very clear: to talk about the production. But after completing three versions of The Rest, she currently has no plans to reprise it. As the main creator behind the play, she worries that attempting to talk about the show under these circumstances will cause her to say things that stray too far from the content of the work. "I have always felt that, rather than being 'the' creator, serving as the director of a production feels more like being a direct audience, one who understands the work best. So, I can respond from an audience's perspective, what this work and the team may have experienced, but it's hard to say what kind of person I have become as a result."On the other hand, this "nothing-to-say-ness" is directly related to all the things Ping-Jung experienced during the three years of working on The Rest. After completing the Wellspring Theater version of The Rest with no incident, Ping-Jung felt a huge sense of "emptiness". This feeling of "emptiness" is akin to a child afraid of getting shots at clinics, who has waited in line until they are sitting in front the doctor, looking at the needle going into their skin. The needle only went in for a brief moment, and it was not painful at all, but this child has spent a much longer time resisting the idea of getting the shot, thereby undergoing much greater inner turmoil than the actual pain of the shot itself. The child goes from intense tension before the shot to relief after the shot in such a short period of time that they do not know how to describe their own feelings. Though there are many voices in their head, they are simply speechless. Ping-Jung said, "I can't define what happened (over these years), but at the same time, I feel safe because I completed these things. Everything that needed to be done was done." But once it's done, what next? Hidden behind this question is a deeper inquiry for her inner self that sucked Ping-Jung into a black hole of inner musings. Without a way to sort out the answer, the black hole remains in a state of chaos that she could only describe as “emptiness”.But when, through this interview, Ping-Jung paused this inquiry into the depth of her inner self and looked back on all the things she experienced and achieved over the past three years, the chaos brought about by that “emptiness” started to clear gradually as she recalled the growth of The Rest.The Twists and Turns of a Pilgrim's Journey1.    The Beginning of The RestThe creation of The Rest began in 2019. Based on how contemporary society is awash with waves of capitalism, the play established six characters representing people who are commonly found in all corners of Taiwan but are often forgotten, outlining the things they encounter as they try to find a job as well as their inner thoughts and emotions. The six characters are: an older middle-aged man who has trouble finding purpose in life after retirement, a Vietnamese migrant bride who works in a nail salon, a young man who has returned from studying abroad and wants to find a job in Taiwan, an office girl living a monotonous life, and a nightclub hostess past her prime. The play features diverse forms of performance that include drama, sound, objects, music, and dance.The Rest premiered at the Experimental Theater in 2020. Because a level-2 pandemic alert was in place, the production could not go on tour, and the audience could only view it through a 53-minute recorded version on PTS Arts. Afterwards, the production team prepared to re-stage the show at Wellspring Theater in 2021. Unfortunately, even the best laid plans go astray. The COVID-19 pandemic worsened until a level-3 alert was issued, all theaters were closed, and all performances had to be canceled or postponed.The Rest was performed at NTCH's Experimental Theater in 2020. (Photo courtesy of: Ping-Jung Chen)“It was a difficult and stressful time for everyone working in theater. We were all stuck at home without work, waiting to receive stimulus payments and for theaters to reopen, hoping for things to go ‘back to normal’. My mentality back then was that I had to fight. I was constantly thinking about how to break out of the situation. Surely we couldn’t just sit and wait for theaters to reopen?” Ping-Jung said, "I was deeply immersed in the play. When I couldn't sleep at night, I thought about how the characters in the play must also be suffering as the pandemic raged on. I didn't want to stop working on it. I constantly thought about how to break through the limitations of live theater. Since everyone was using virtual meetings to meet, I thought the format could reflect the reality of the moment." So, the production team began discussing how to create an online version of The Rest, marking the start of The Rest Under the Pandemic.2. Out the Theater, Go OnlineIn The Rest Under the Pandemic, Ping-Jung and the rest of the team wove reality and fiction together as they strove to explore the possibilities of theater performance through online communication software. The structure of the story is this: Guided by a flight attendant, the audience boards a flight with the destination of "back to normal". The seven-day flight takes the audience to seven different spaces (the actual living environments of the actors), giving the audience a look at what the people in these spaces are going through. After seven days, the flight lands in the ending of "back to normal". Each day's flight revealed a different location. For example, on the fourth day, the audience was divided into different meeting rooms to watch the actors performing inside. If they wished to switch rooms, the audience could simply press a button to raise their hand and a member of the crew would provide assistance. On the sixth day, all the actors acted out the story of The Rest online. On the seventh day, the show came to a "back to normal" ending. While the flight attendant addresses the audience, the actors seize their chance to run outdoors, set up cameras on the street, and dance in front of the cameras. In the end, with footage of the actors dancing on screen interspersed with pre-recorded footage of them actually dancing in Dadaocheng Square, the plane lands at its destination. The whole process is like riding a plane. The audience could make themselves a drink, get some snacks, or cuddle with their pets as they experienced this magical, two-and-a-half-hour flight. The Rest Under the Pandemic, 2021. (Photo courtesy of: Pin-Rong Chen)Unlike the first version of The Rest, the actors in The Rest Under the Pandemic play themselves—a group of actors who lost their jobs during the pandemic—instead of their characters in The Rest. Interestingly, it was established that the character of the student who studied abroad flew overseas to escape COVID-19, disappearing from the original cast of The Rest. Instead, the character of a director is added, played not by Ping-Jung but another actor. The director would occasionally make unreasonable demands of the actors, such as asking the Vietnamese migrant worker Chiu Hung to reach through the screen to do a manicure for nightclub hostess Kiki, highlighting the limitations of online performances in a humorous, absurd, and satirical way.Seven actors, seven locations, fourteen cameras, and fourteen microphones. The versatile online performance required tremendous expertise and all kinds of costs. One can only imagine the hard work that the production team must have put into the show. To record all these details, Ping-Jung built an additional set outside the official performance to record the entire performance process. In the end, the footage and other records of their work were edited into a documentary.After the team spent all that effort to complete The Rest Under the Pandemic, the pandemic gradually eased and the world truly went "back to normal". Ping-Jung suddenly realized that, from the audience's perspective, watching this performance seems no different from watching a movie on Netflix. Could the essence of "live performance" she cared so much about really be conveyed through video recordings? And how would the painstakingly-crafted The Rest Under the Pandemic be defined by the world after the pandemic subsides? Was it a work of theater or video art? Before the answers of these questions could be found, 2022 rolled around and the world continued to move on, returning to the way things were before the pandemic. In line with this trend, The Rest continued to walk ahead.3. Return to TheaterIn 2022, Pin-Rong returned to Wellspring Theater with The Rest. After the remake of The Rest Under the Pandemic, the Wellspring Theater version kept the flight attendant character. But unlike The Rest Under the Pandemic, in which she was the only character with a job, the universe of The Rest saw her as another one of "the rest", who was laid off after being left physically and mentally drained from flying long hours.In addition to character changes, this version included a new scene that wasn't in the original. In the scene, a piece of cloth is hung up as all the characters, under the direction of a character, grab an instrument to play, using all their strength to make sounds as if to tell the world "I am here". Regarding this new scene, Ping-Jung explained, "This scene can be summed up in one sentence: 'I can't feel the pain of this piano in front of me'. It means that if people want to live well, it is best not to have too much empathy, because if I have to empathize with other people's emotions and thoughts every day, I won't have time to deal with my own survival. I must objectify the person before me, alienate all their feelings, and expel them from myself in order to survive. This then becomes a situation in which everyone is making noise. The whole world is deafening and everyone longs for someone to listen. These people who are 'the rest', these misfits, will eventually be drowned in this noise. "The Rest performed at Wellspring Theater in 2022. (Photo courtesy of: Ping-Jung Chen)After two years, The Rest returned to the theater. Although venues reopened, the pandemic had yet to subside completely, and there was still the occasional news that a show had to be canceled because a crew member tested positive. At first, Ping-Jung found herself paralyzed by anxiety in this panic-filled atmosphere, worried that fate would throw another curve ball at The Rest and ruin her plans once more. But then, she suddenly realized that the pandemic seemed to be teaching her about the impermanence of life. After accepting that "everything happens for a reason", she gradually allowed herself to relax and accept all the possibilities of fate. With this shift in mindset, everything and everyone gradually fell into place. The Rest finally found light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, emerging from its cocoon as a butterfly at Wellspring Theater.After recalling the process of producing The Rest, Ping-Jung brought up something that happened while they worked on the show: "When I first started working on The Rest, I often passed by a building under construction near my home. The unfinished building still had exposed steel bars. I saw a guard sitting there with only a somber mosquito lamp beside him. During the run of The Rest Under the Pandemic, the interior and exterior of the building were completed. The brand-new facade indicated that it would become an office building. The guard was still there at the time. After completing the production of The Rest at Wellspring Theater, I passed the site again, but the guard was nowhere to be found. I knew that soon there would be a lot of well-dressed people coming and going for work. On a day just like any other, the guard was gone. Where did the guard go? He must have gone somewhere he needed to be, but no one remembers how he once looked after an entire building in the night, submerged by the monotony of life." To Ping-Jung, this small incident felt like the universe was speaking to her, enabling her to use art to reflect reality while also using reality to reflect upon her work. The whereabouts of the guard are unknown, but he is no doubt tumbling like the characters in The Rest, continuing to live his day-to-day life.Ping-Jung After the PilgrimageAfter the performance, Ping-Jung was finally able to stop and rest. It was then that the sense of "emptiness" buried deep within started seeping out. The tired ruminations after the performance dragged Ping-Jung into a swirl of inner musings, prompting her to think about how she changed with this production.1. "I'm more accepting of fate now"Ping-Jung said with a smile, "I used to be someone who, when told to accept fate, would snap back and say, 'I won't leave myself to the hands of fate'." But after the experience of The Rest, seeing how it was supposed to end at the Experimental Theater, only to develop into The Rest Under the Pandemic because of COVID-19, then integrated into the Wellspring Theater version with the original runtime of 53 minutes expanded to over 80 minutes and constant reorganizing and switching of characters, Ping-Jung said the production was like a biomimetic, organic structure, growing wherever needed, breaking away from the path the creator intended time and time again from the get-go. This shifted her mindset on the spectrum of "accepting fate": "I no longer think about what 'I' want to do. I am just the vessel of the production, but the production will find its own path. I am responsible for its final presentation, but there are too many fateful developments throughout the process that have nothing to do with me."The Rest performed at Wellspring Theater in 2022. (Photo courtesy of: Ping-Jung Chen)2. The Aftermath (Aftershock)The three-year journey of The Rest has also made Ping-Jung more aware of how she is very concerned about the "aftermath" of society. The Rest was already intended to discuss how people need to find self-worth in work and achievement under waves of capitalism. Like a twist of magical reality, this "aftermath" seeped into the real world when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The characters and the actors playing them fell into the same predicament, and they all had to find ways to overcome the great changes brought about by the pandemic.In addition to the impact of capitalism and the pandemic, Ping-Jung also mentioned how the production was impacted by Walter Benjamin's essay on the "vanishing of the aura". After the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the concept of the production line spread to all levels of society, creating a large volume of reproductions, from canned food in supermarkets to the manpower required across different occupations in society. There is nothing and no one that cannot be replaced.Going back to the creative process of The Rest, the actors who played the roles were as afraid as the characters in the play that the pandemic would make the "liveness" of theater disappear, leading to the end of theater and turning them into "the rest" left behind by the times. When such a coincidence occurred, Ping-Jung realized clearly that her passion for art lies in exploring how people handle the impact of drastic societal changes. In an era when the aura is fading, what value of mankind is left? How do we resist, accept, or ponder such a fate?How do we approach art now?After finishing The Rest, Ping-Jung went on to produce more works, including The Paid Off—which was part of the 2021 Green Island Human Rights Art Festival; the 2022 production of the Taiwan International Festival of Arts (TIFA)'s Artificial Hells, for which she was the playwright; and the 2023 R&J and Others commissioned by the National Taichung Theater. Careful observation into the core ideas of these works will show that Ping-Jung is, step by step, establishing a perspective she excels at in the performing arts. When asked what gave her a clearer understanding of her own creative style, Ping-Jung said that the Young Star New Vision grant was a key factor.Winner of the 2019 12th Young Star New Vision in Performing Arts grant—Pin-Rong Chen. (Photo courtesy of: Ping-Jung Chen)The Impact of the Young Star New Vision GrantPing-Jung said, "There are all kinds of creators in this world, and each creator has a different path of growth. Some people may know what they want from the beginning, while others take time to explore, to slowly discover their possibilities through creative processes. I am very grateful that the entire process of the Young Star New Vision grant never set restrictions on creators. This process of allowing creators to experiment freely is quite important. I think that creators, at the start, are like random Pokémon, unsure what type they are, whether they are a Psyduck or Blastoise. It takes a long time, after one, two, or even three works, for them to gradually grasp their own creative qualities and understand which type they might belong to. I am lucky to have three runs of The Rest, a single work that allowed me to constantly explore what kind of creator I am."Another thing about the Young Star New Vision grant that Ping-Jung is grateful for is the feedback system they provide. The production unit will invite critics to watch the performance and write reviews. Although these reviews may not necessarily represent the thoughts of the general audience, they are an opportunity for the creator to examine the work from a different perspective and also help the creator to understand their own creative style.Also, something about the Young Star New Vision grant that made Ping-Jung grow a lot is the fact that the production must stand the test of the market. Back in school, direction and performance was all she needed to worry about, but on the platform provided by Young Star New Vision, these two things are only a part of the work. While producing content, she also needed to balance budgeting, marketing, and box office income.Regarding the budget, Ping-Jung reminisced about how budget was rarely a concern at her alma mater, Taipei National University of the Arts: "For a script with six characters, I might have hired twelve actors. At that time, we were all students, so we could run on passion alone. I'll owe them a favor today and pay them back by participating in their next production. Producing a play outside of school, it wasn't until I saw the actual budget form for the first time that I realized I had no idea how much things cost, that a production could easily cost hundreds of thousands. However, theater productions must rely on group effort to stand a chance, and the budget directly determines how far a work can go. Sometimes no one will buy a ticket even if you scrimp and save to put on a show. This is an industry with extremely low chances of breaking even, and even lower chances of making big money. As a result, most theater creators have to rely on the goodwill of the world to survive and keep creating. In addition to government grants, the 'goodwill' also includes the way industry players measure financial return, which is different from the general public's standards. If that's the case, would you keep at it? Yes? Well, that means being ready and having to fight for the goodwill of the world."Observations on the Creative EnvironmentThe things she learned about budgeting also allowed Ping-Jung to observe the characteristics of Taiwan's creative environment when it comes to the performing arts: "The characteristic of this island nation is that there are no limits and many possibilities. You can see a diverse variety of artistic creations, all blooming and vying for attention at the same time. On the flip side, this makes it hard to consolidate creative energy, and there are too many people for the amount of resources available. I recently read an article in which the writer stated that we have now entered the so-called 'amateur era'. Creators in the amateur era usually have a day job, some waitressing, some serving coffee, some working as teachers. But when creators have to worry about making a living, will they become artists with rich life experiences, or someone who sacrifices the quality of their work for the sake of daily necessities? The answer depends on the person."So, how should we deal with such an environment? Ping-Jung smiled and said, "It will be like the guard who disappeared after the financial building was completed. The guard went to his next stop, and the people who are supposed to go into the building will go in. I am like a small coin in this building, passing from one person's hand to another, seeing different life stories through their perspectives. In short, I will definitely find a way to keep rolling."After The Rest?When asked about her plans for future projects, Ping-Jung seemed at ease as she replied: "After finishing The Rest, I felt that this could be the end of my creative career. But when I returned to the theater to watch and direct plays, I felt that I still love this place. I now feel that, when it's time to create, the flow of life will naturally bring you to the surface, and now I am on the surface, telling others, 'Hey, I'm here'. As long as I continue to love theater, my life will take me back to this place again and again."Perhaps like how The Rest was born in the theater, forced out of the theater due to the pandemic, but returned to theater in the end, Ping-Jung's pilgrimage in theater will always take her back to her favorite place: a theater full of infinite possibilities.The Rest was performed at NTCH's Experimental Theater in 2020. (Photo courtesy of: Ping-JungChen)*Translator: Linguitronics

“The majority of the population in Alor Archipelago, Indonesia, make their living from the sea, and it includes two types of fishing: one is more about waiting, and the other tends to search and attack.”   When I first interviewed Wang Yeu-Kwn in 2020, he had just returned from his Indonesia trip funded by Cloud Gate Culture and Arts Foundation “Wanderer Project,” and the beginning quote was what he told me then. During the interview, Wang talked much about time, about waiting, about nature, and human-nature relations. Four years later, “relation” remains the main tone of his practice, while time still plays a major role when he deals with and reflects on his artistic creations. Wang loves fishing. If we try to compare his artistic creation to the types of fishing he mentioned before, he is probably the waiting type, I guess.Beings' International TourThe interview in 2020 was for his short piece Beings, one of the three pieces selected by NACF's Young Star New Vision project and presented under the same program title. The duet choreographed by Wang explores relationship as it features Wang and Lee Yin-Ying as performers. After its premiere, Beings received several awards and traveled to multiple cities around the world. It thus made us forget about the fact that the short piece created and presented during the pandemic, hence for an exclusive audience, has never been officially and publicly introduced to the Taiwanese audience yet.   However, the dance piece without a “decent” appearance in Taiwan has already given Wang numerous new and different experiences as it has also opened up exciting future projects. In 2021, the following year after Beings premiered at “Young Star New Vision,” its video recording was presented at Yokohama Dance Collection due to the pandemic situations and won the Jury Prize and Encouragement Prize, which made Wang the first Taiwanese choreographer to win two awards at Yokohama Dance Collection. Beings in Yokohama (photo credit: Yokohama Dance Collection; Photographer: Sugawara Kota）In 2022, through the recommendation of the independent curator Gwen Hsin-Yi Chang, Beings was presented at Spring Forward, a Europe-based cross-border dance performance network organized by Aerowaves and taking place in Greece that year. Later in the same year, it was invited to Tanzkongress in Germany as well. A large and diverse platform like Aerowaves opened up the opportunities for Wang to meet more people, followed by more invitations and its international tour: Germany and Japan in 2023 (at Staatstheater Darmstadt as part of the program “Fokus Taiwan”), followed by Spain, and Portugal in 2024.  At Tanzkongress, Beings was described by Marcus Hladek on Frankfurt Rundschau as “a duo characterized by artistic simplicity…It reveals a subtlety which did not harm the evocative and sensual nature of it, just as the dancers play with the rice paper by folding and unfolding it with a retrained metaphorical implication to maintain its pure beauty.“The first stop of Beings' international tour was Greece. Wang still remembered how he spent the night in his hotel room by the Aegean Sea: it was his first journey to faraway Europe, first time touring with his team and his work, first time to work remotely with his lighting designer Joanne Shyueand to work out all the technical demands with in-house technicians in Greece he had never met before, not to mention the pandemic situations. Slightly anxious and jetlagged, he woke up before dawn. “There was a small balcony of our hotel room, and I just sat there, looking up at the starry night. I heard the sound of the waves washing up on the beaches, as the sky gradually and slowly changed its hues. The Sun dyed the sky before it emerged from the horizon against a background of constantly changing colors. I sat there and told myself: how lucky you are! By dancing, you even get to see a beautiful scene like this?!” Touring with the work allowed Wang to witness an extraordinary scene at a particular moment, to meet particular people, and to have a particular experience. He thus felt particularly lucky about all these things, realizing that he now carried a greater responsibility and should work harder to deserve it. Greece at dawn (photographer: Wang Yeu-Kwn)Re-exploring the Meaning of Performance Wang's first international tour with his own work began with a lesson. At Tanzkongress in Germany, the venue for Beings was the space in front of an abandoned war-ruined church. Wang asked himself: if we are going to present our work in front of a church loaded with history, what is the best way to do it?  How should we deal with the people coming and going all the time? How should we move the work to an outdoor space? How can we find the best location with the best lighting and tree shadows at the hour of our performances?  What should we do with the paper on stage, as a major object in Beings, when the low humidity in Europe might have an unexpected effect on its quality?  Beings at Tanzkongress, Germany (Photo credit: Tanzkongress 2022; Photographer: Andreas Etter)Since it was presented outdoors, there were passersby attracted and stopped by it apart from the audience who intentionally came for the dance piece. After the performance, some scattered in groups and talked to each other.  Wang noticed an old lady standing aside and waiting quietly. When Wang and his team were left alone and began to pack up the stuffs, the old lady walked toward Wang and kept thanking him and his team for performing at this place because it meant so much to her.   Wang has kept the old lady's words of appreciation in mind, which changes the way he defines the creation or performance. He now sees the location of an outdoor performance, its adjacent buildings, people's relation with the place, its past stories and historical contexts, and all the variable factors of site-specific creations all important elements to link the performance and its audience.“Can we find a way for more people to see our works?  It does not have to be in a theatre, but maybe we can allow the work some flexibility, to have different shapes, so it can happen at different places and reach different people. At the same time, can our work have enough publicness so the audience can place themselves within it?“  He expects his future works to be flexible and movable – to have at least two versions, one for theatre and the other for non-theatre venues.     So what is such a “publicness” in Wang's mind? “When creating a work, I often begin with many questions in mind. It is the curiosity in creation motivates my creation, and the publicness I refer to is…there may be some people who share the same questions with me. There may be some people who have the same insecurity, the same sense of the unknown and the same curiosity, so it turns out that we are all the same. Perhaps at the certain moment of the work, I am also the same with the old lady.” “Asking questions in your artistic exploration may either lead you to the answers or to more questions, or for you to realize that everyone shares similar questions and there will be no answer – I guess that knowing it is simply enough.“Paper – the Most Important Dance Partner Following the challenge concerning the change of space, here comes another problem: how did he deal with the paper as its texture was changed and affected by the low humidity in Europe?  Xuan paper, the one and only object on stage, can be defined as the third dancer in the dance piece apart from the two human dancers. However, this “third dancer” in Europe became brittle and sharp, making it extremely difficult and dangerous to dance with.  Its stiffness made it easier to crack and its sharpness cut. Wang said jokingly: “it is a sudden realization that your dance partner has been changed to a totally different person!” The large sheet on stage is designed and made by the scenographer Chen Kuang-Lin, who mixed white glue and water to stick two thin pieces of xuan paper together, and assembled 12 pieces of doubled xuan paper of the same size to make a larger 4m x 4m one. During the abovementioned procedure, every step took time and they had to wait for it to be ready. Even the temperatures and humidity would more or less affect the making of the paper and the final work.  “It is a business on the mercies of the elements,” said Wang. When they arrived in Greece, the first stop of their international tour, there was no time for them to fix the paper so they could only perform with what it had become at that time. After the performance, they started to work on solutions with the technical director Lan Chin-Ting testing every possibility by spraying water on it to see how much water it needed, how to control the sprays, how early (before the performance) to spray it, and how to maintain its best condition during the performance, etc. Meanwhile, they also talked about the necessary compromise due to the condition of the paper to make sure that the dancers were safe on stage and everything was at its best.  During the tour, every time when they arrived at a new place, they needed to spread out the paper. Sometimes, a longer period of storage might change the glue's quality and cause some part of the paper to fall off, so it was necessary to go through the details and mend it.    As the paper's texture changed unexpectedly in Europe, the sound it created somehow became more fascinating.  There was not much music used in Beings, and most of the sound you heard during the dance piece came from this large sheet of paper. It thus became an interesting fact that the physical changes of the paper's quality due to the different weather condition led to a paradoxical beauty, where dancers danced with a difficult paper partner and beautiful paper sound.  Wang has admitted that the sheet of paper on stage is still less stable than it should be, but the instability is the most beautiful part. Every subtle change, such as the weight or angle, has its impact on the dance performance. When arriving at a new place, they will begin their “paper-tending ceremony” and fathom how they should build a relationship this time. During the performance, they experience “a less perfect but we-have-been-through-it-together journey” with the audience.    Until now, the team of Beings has continued collecting information about paper and conducting physical experiments on paper to search for the link between its variable factors and consequences. “Paper is living,” said Wang when he was going to tell me the story about paper. Although paper is generally seen as a non-living object, does their interaction not also define how one builds and explores a relationship?The “Relation” Trilogy“Relation” as a major theme throughout Wang's recent creations first appeared in Beings, followed by two more works expected to premiere in 2024 and 2025 respectively to form the “Relation” trilogy, which explores interpersonal relations, the relation between humans and the environment, and eventually the relation among all human beings.    Although Beings sets up the framework of the “Relation” trilogy, the idea for the second piece actually came before Beings.  Looking back on his Tame first presented at the 2019 Songyan New Points On Stage, Wang said: “after Tame I had been through a serious depression – it was the first time I really confronted my creation, my helplessness, and the fact that there were so many I wanted to do but so little I could do.” Receiving a funding from Cloud Gate Culture and Arts Foundation's “Wanderer Project” at that time, he soon departed for Indonesia two days after the performance of Tame.     “I wanted to look for a fish that weighs as much as me. There was a folklore in pongso no tao that every big fish has a fisher's name engraved on its back, so I wanted to look for it, to find out where my name was.”Impressed by the rich and profound Indonesia culture and tradition, Wang began to ask himself:  What is Taiwan? What is the island where I grew up? What do we represent?  What is the tradition of my body? He wondered, “do I lack confidence in Taiwan and my own body?” When he was in Indonesia, he contacted and visited Danang Pamungkas, his former colleague in Cloud Gate 2. He traveled to Surakarta City, Danang's hometown, and Danang's family showed him around the area. It was a trip without particular purposes except for visiting an old friend, but later in 2022 when Wang received an invitation from Taiwan Dance Platform, hosted by the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (also known as Weiwuying), he decided to ask Danang to join him in the creation A Quest for Relationship: Island of _________.“There was a moment in one of our performances, when we had a plastic cloth on stage, and we both should gather the cloth from the air and lay it flat. Seeing the cloth floating in the air for some time and finally descending, I suddenly had a feeling that Taiwan, a small island as it was, was pretty nice. There was probably no other island as small as Taiwan in the world that could accommodate so many different ethnic groups and religions, and celebrate gender equality. Things like this were shapeless. It was plastic and inclusive.” At that moment, Wang felt that the island had a shapeless shape and existed in its own way. Later, he discussed it with his dramaturg Wang Shih-Wei about how they could continue with the idea, which became what the second piece of the trilogy departed from.   With the support of the National Theater & Concert Hall and Weiwuying in co-production, A Quest for Relationship: Island of _________ is scheduled to premiere in the autumn of 2024.  Rehearsal of A Quest for Relationship: Island of _________ at Weiwuying (Photo credit: Shimmering Production; photographer: Chen Wei-Sheng)Wang told me frankly that the big fish he caught during his Wanderer Project did not weigh as much as him. “But in one of our rehearsals, I carried Danang and thought: maybe Danang was the fish I was looking for which weighed as much as me, and the creation process was a journey to find my name.” For him, A Quest for Relationship: Island of _________ was an enlargement of an intimate relationship. “If interpersonal relationship works this way, how about the relation between islands?” In his journey, sometimes loaded with a confusion of self-identity, Wang hoped to search for different possibilities together with the Indonesia dancer Danang who was different from Wang in every possible way. “Do we share similar difficulties or ongoing experiences, or the lack of confidence in our body, our ethnicity, and ourselves? Perhaps we are as different as how we are both the same.”Why are islands called “islands?”  How do resources and cultures flow between islands? How do islands connect with each other? A Quest for Relationship: Island of _________ is such a work about two dance artists from different islands exploring the abovementioned questions. Meanwhile, Wang shares his thought that the island has marks carved by nature or time, so is our body. “Perhaps everyone’s body is an island,” and he hoped to create mirrored metaphors between islands and bodies.    About People, with People The third piece of the trilogy can be traced back to the first Europe tour in 2022, again. There was a one-month gap between the performances in Greece and Germany, so Wang decided to go to Spain for a pilgrimage tour before Beings' next stop.  The famous Camino de Santiago in Spain contained several routes, and Wang chose the challenging “Camino del Norte” which ran through the coastal cliffs. Its rugged and steep mountainous terrains, climate changes, and much fewer supply stations made the pilgrimage extremely difficult for travelers. As for Wang, he carried his backpack and tent to take on the road without planning ahead.    The first stop was to get a Credential Del Peregrino (Pilgrim Passport), with which the pilgrims were allowed to stay in albergues (pilgrim hostels) and to have discount for hostels and restaurants. He still remembered a conversation with the staff member at the counter: “Where are you from?” “Taiwan.” “Is it China?” When Wang tried to explain it, a European replied in Spanish: “He is from Taiwan, not China.”  That moment was a realization to Wang that his journey had really begun.  During the month, Wang had been through sunny days and heavy rains. Sometimes he camped in the mountain, while sometimes he stayed in albergues. Walking with a heavy load of more than 10kg, Wang felt the physical and spiritual torture which surfaced with the question being asked everyday: how to give up? However, he did not give up but persisted. He even finished the route in 30 days, quicker than the average pilgrims for that carrying his own tent made it easier to find a spot to rest.In 2023, when Beings toured to Germany again, Wang visited the memorial site of Terezin Concentration Camp in Czech. The camp was used as a propaganda to “show” (a show indeed) the “healthy and joyful life” inside.  The memorial site of Terezin Concentration Camp in Czech (Photographer: Wang Yeu-Kwn)Standing there, Wang felt how the design of the buildings and its walls conveyed the suffocating stress: “If I had been here at that time, knowing that it was the last stop of my life, how scared I would have been?” He continued to walk and entered an underground passage. It was extremely narrow with some windows to the outside, but the windows were just small holes on the thick walls which separated the passage from the outside world, and there was water inside the walls. Then, he reached a different space guarded by barbed wires, and the route led him to a stairway. He walked up. There was a large wall full of bullet holes in front of him and a cross next to the wall. It was the final path taken by the prisoners before they were executed.   Wang thought to himself: “Why did people have the heart to treat othes like this?  What caused it to happen?  What was the purpose of such a cruelty?” In the first week of his pilgrimage trip, he also passed through the Basque Country in northern Spain and saw many flags and slogans along the road which demanded the Spanish government to recognize them as an independent nation. He had the similar feeling at that time: “I do not know how much time, effort, or blood it should take for a nation to prove that it is free and independent, how many people or things you own should be sacrificed to prove that you are free.” During these trips abroad, Wang gradually developed the many questions he wished to explore in the third piece of the trilogy – about people, about how people have become what they are throughout the long evolution journey, and about the unsolved puzzles between people. Why Do We Need Theatre?After the global outbreak of COVID-19, Wang began to feel dispirited and unsure about the purpose of theatre in our contemporary life. People in today's world could easily find what they wanted for entertainment or knowledge on all kinds of media and platforms, but it took much more effort, in every aspect, to go to the theatre. So why do we still need to go to the theatre? “If I cannot find the reason I agree, I do not know why I am still doing it.”    In the same trip he visited Czech, Wang also went to Vienna and watched a performance at Wiener Konzerthaus. He sat beside the wall: “the person who sat in front of me might have some mental illness, and his body would move with the dance, something like he would keep tiptoeing all the time. He knew every music piece very well, because his movement always happened before the music. He was a natural dancer. It was just so beautiful that he did not do anything but only enjoy the music.”“At that moment, I felt like I found the purpose of theatre in our contemporary life – we needed these experiences, physical experiences.” Just like the physical experiences in Terezin Concentration Camp, these are not things which could be felt via smartphone or computer. It is why people still want to dine in a restaurant or go to the night market. “I want to find such a connection for my future works,” said Wang.  Take Beings for example: the physical experiences contain how paper creates sounds on stage or the different paper quality when they perform in different places. Imperfection is a physical experience too, so are the sound of the drip of sweat on paper and how the sweat slowly spreads. “Those physical experiences are for the audience to freely choose and to settle down with.  It is what I am looking for.” It does not have to be a strong vibration. It can be subtle.  Wang hopes that he could find these physical experiences in a more sensitive and nuanced way.   Apart from theatre, Wang's Shimmering Production, co-founded with Lee Yin-Ying in 2019, has continued its “Hand in Hand, We Dance Project.” As the project title suggests, every time when they visit a different place for the purpose of artist residency or touring, they will organize workshops for non-professionals as long as they can, inviting ordinary people to co-create or to enjoy the fun of pure body-moving. The idea started with Wang and Lee's past experiences of artist residencies in different schools and cities when they were both dancers of Cloud Gate 2, where they got a chance to dance with non-professionals or for non-theatregoers. “Their feedback was straightforward, so I found the communication precious.” Wang and Lee thus began to wonder: apart from theatre, was there different ways to share their dance with more people.  “Hand in Hand, We Dance Project” by Shimmering Production (Photo credit: Hearhere World Music Festival; Photographer: Chiu Chia-Hua)Every sharing and experience are motivation for Wang to carry on. Despite the lack of immediate effect or contribution, seeing them dancing free like children and knowing that you may bring them something different can be the best reward to keep going. At the same time, it allows Wang to reexamine his profession as a dancer: “Dance can be such a happy thing, so I should cherish the time when I still can dance.” Waiting Is a Beautiful Thing After Beings in 2020, Wang began to develop A Quest for Relationship: Island of _________ in 2022, with its scheduled premiere in 2024, and according to his plan, Wang will work on the third piece of the trilogy in 2025. Meanwhile, Beings has toured to many different countries and Wang also have different ongoing creations and projects.  However, he confessed that as a slow creator, he was probably “ineffective” from a business perspective.  When creating Beings, Wang consulted a paper master about the use of paper, and the master told him: papermakers often said that paper was waiting for the right “heat,” and you needed to wait for the “heat” to be stabilized to use it. Sometimes it took years. Wang found it beautiful.  Waiting can be such a romantic, capricious, but beautiful thing.   No matter it was during the pilgrimage trip or wanderer project, in which Wang wished to catch a big fish that weighed as much as him, he thought about giving up and even had the exit plan ready. He told me: “If you need to give up, you have to give up flawlessly and accurately.” But if you really wanted him to give up, he would tell you “if you give up now, you lose it.” For him, he did not have the luxury to give up. The fact is, Wang has never planned to give up. During the journey of his artistic practice, he has always allowed the confusion, self-doubt, and all kinds of questions to happen, while he will try to solve one after another on the way. He goes with the flow of time and cherishes the state of life as given: creating slowly, you will find your own questions or the questions of the questions via the work; touring is the way to create many different experiences; and his dance projects offer the best opportunity not only to recharge himself but to know more people. There is a folklore in pongso no tao that every big fish has a fisher's name engraved on its back. Perhaps Wang Yeu-Kwn is still on the road in search of the big fish, but he is thriving during the journey, where he has solved riddle after riddle at a slow but steady pace to search for his own name.  *Translator: Siraya Pai

The Complicated Fixation with the Quest for the Father in Post-Martial Law Taiwanese NarrativeThe literary scene is becoming more and more complex in Taiwan with each passing day. It seems difficult to imagine that in 1987, when Martial Law was finally lifted, society in Taiwan would develop in the way that it has, moving farther and farther away from mainland China, in part due to the different political and social situations, but at the same time still feeling the effects of some age-old themes in Chinese cultural and literary history. Contemporary Taiwan has moved forward in unprecedented ways to work toward securing the rights of the LGBTQ community in ways that very few states in Asia have. Taiwan is setting the tone for tolerance of Gay Rights for the rest of Asia and for other places in the world. The contemporary author Chen Xue (陳雪) is one of the most vibrant and creative voices in the LGBTQ movement. Her work has been pathbreaking and has opened up a space in which others feel safe to speak. Her novel Fatherless City (無父之城, 2019) is a complicated, sophisticated, and fascinating intervention into the world in which conventional familial and kinship relationships can be reconsidered or, more precisely, reimagined. Her work also intersects with some themes, such as filial piety and the search for the father, that have existed in Chinese writing since at least the Ming dynasty and perhaps even longer.In this essay, I set out to place Chen Xue's novel in the larger context of Chinese/Sinophone narrative, illustrating how the search for the father and the anxiety over the absent father is a recurring theme in Chinese literature dating at least to the Ming dynasty. The intertextual links between Chen Xue's work and earlier works not only help us better understand her work, they also enable us to see some of the truly creative aspects of her own novel. Among the most important themes in Chinese literature, philosophy, and historical writing is that of filiality: the powerful connection between fathers and sons in Chinese society but also the governing discursive logic that legitimates the patriarchal social structure, networks of kinship, and a system of belief that privileges the bond between humans in the terrestrial world and ancestors in the celestial realm. The powerful historical context of filiality tends to haunt even the most radical works of fiction in the contemporary Sinosphere, both within mainland China and outside its borders. Also haunting this particular work, and distinguishing it from works from mainland China per se, is the legacy of the White Terror in Taiwan that raged from the late 1940s until the mid-1980s. The White Terror, extrajudicial executions and imprisonments, authoritarian rule, and the fear engendered by martial law together conspire to contaminate virtually all aspects of Taiwanese society and all relationships. Its effects can be seen in many literary works, such as those of Chen Yingzhen (陳映真) and others, and cinematic representations, such as those of Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) and Yang Dechang (楊德昌). Fatherless City joins in this collective ritual remembering of the White Terror period and displays the way in which its tentacles dig into and latch themselves onto the consciousness of Taiwanese people even long after the lifting of Martial Law in 1987.In Fatherless City, as Carlos Rojas has summarized in the only English-language study of the novel that I know of, Wang Menglan, the female protagonist, seeks refuge from the stresses of urban Taipei and from her own anxious feelings stemming from writer's block. While there, she engages in several assignments wherein she essentially ghost-writes or attempts to ghost-write the stories of other people, a practice that proves liberating and enlightening for her. Among these narratives there is one that she creates for a man named Lin Yongfeng who would like an imagined narrative to be attached to the prison years his father endured during the White Terror. In the process of creating a fictional account of Lin's father's years of detention, Wang Menglan's feelings toward her own father and the consciousness of his suicide infiltrate her thoughts. She later discovers that the presumptions on which she based her fictional account of Lin's father's life were completely false, a point I will return to at the end of this essay. For now, it is important to note that in Chinese narrative there is no easy escape from the bonds of intergenerational relations, perhaps a universal fact but certainly one that is accentuated in Chinese and East Asian societies. Examining some of the other texts in which the search for the father dominate the narrative will help to contextualize Chen Xue's novel.  Fatherless City (無父之城) by Chen Xue.Late Imperial Narratives of Filial Quest and the Story of Wang YuanTales of filial exemplars populate traditional Chinese narrative of all eras in abundant numbers. What we do not see, according to Maria Franca Sibau, is instances of the filial quest (尋父故事,  also known as 萬里尋親): stories where a son scours the countryside for his father. This changes with two vernacular stories of Wang Yuan entitled "Fleeing from the Local Tyrant the Coward Runs Far Away, Through a Premonitory Dream the Filial Son Meets His Parent" (避豪惡懦夫遠竄, 感夢兆孝子逢親) and "Wang Benli Searches for His Father at the Far End of the Empire" (王本立天涯求父). The first appears in Exemplary Words for the World (型世言, published in 1645); the second is collected in Rocks Not Their Heads (石點頭, c. 1627). Although these two narratives of Wang Yuan's story share the basic plot and many of the details, crucially, the overall emphasis of each story is radically different from the other. There are several extraordinary features that the stories share. For example, Wang Yuan or Wang Benli, as he is familiarly known, drops everything including his own wife and child to go to the ends of the earth to find his father. He eventually finds his father, who it turns out is an irresponsible lout. The father abandoned his son. When Wang Yuan finds him, he is met with hostility and indifference from the father. The father refuses to return home with Wang Yuan. But the point is not that the father is a decent man, that there was some kind of misunderstanding, or that things can be patched together. The father will not acquiesce and follow the son home willingly. The point is that no matter how contemptible the father is, no matter how unworthy of love and respect he seems, the son is compelled to restore and maintain the relationship. The filial relationship is not transactional. It is not an earned right on the part of the father. It is implicitly as solid as adamantine. Sibau suggests that this peculiar level of obeisance to the father is not simply the necessary extension of Confucian values. It is particularly pronounced in works of the late imperial era. In the Exemplary Words for the World version, incredible detail is devoted to all the ways in which Wang Yuan methodically searches for the father and his determination to continue on his journey unabated until the father is found. The two stories make for fascinating yarns and detailed excursions through the human geography of late Imperial China. This elaborate description sets the stage for a modern work, Wang Wenxing's classic novel of the breakdown in filiality and the intergenerational bond, Family Catastrophe (家變, 1971).The Radical Critique of Filiality and the Redemptive ImpulseWang Wenxing's (王文興) novel Family Catastrophe (家變) has largely been read as an extension to the May Fourth critique of patriarchy, an evisceration of the poisoned father-son kinship relationship as it was depicted in the early 20th century. What is often overlooked, except in the article that I wrote, is that a significant amount of the narrative focuses on the search for the father after he has fled the home, a search that takes place in the narrative present. This narrative is organized from A to O. Like the Ming tale of Wang Yuan, there is an obsessive quality to the search for the father and a complete elision of all the conflicts and differences between father and son. Those intergenerational antagonisms that highlight the fiction of such May Fourth Era writers as Ba Jin (巴金) are simply all pushed aside in the enterprise to find the father and restore the family to its original and proper form.But this is only a portion of Family Catastrophe, and the most overlooked aspect of the novel at that. Interspersed in between the lettered sections is the narrative of the history of the father and son relationship beginning when the protagonist Fan Ye (范曄) is very young and just beginning to read. This narrative is organized by number, is narrated in the past tense, and charts the devolution of the relationship and disintegration of the family. Together, the two sections constitute competing narrative and moral tones, with one hostile and the other redemptive. When considered as part of a single overall novel, the conclusion the reader can draw is that there is a profound ambivalence with regard to filiality.The narrative structure of Family Catastrophe is like no other book: it is radical and calls into question the conventional structure of narrative itself. But if we search beneath the structural fact of the interspersed bifurcated narrative per se and ask the question of why would Wang Wenxing structure the narrative in this manner, the true import of the novel is unveiled to us: Wang wanted us to think of the two drives—the drive to oust the father, the conflict, the anti-filial passion on the one hand, and the redemptive urge, the compulsion to restore the family, the contrite, filial sentiment on the other—as being commingled. They are intertwined. They are two sides of the same coin. The novel is, in short, an internal contestation, a narrative at war with itself. Considered in this light, Family Catastrophe is not merely a novel that attacks the moral notion of filiality; it is a novel that equally valorizes filiality as an indispensable ethic, a constitutive element of the Chinese psyche itself. The two conflicting sentiments are enmeshed and not easily torn asunder. Thus, the upshot is that Wang Wenxing's novel illustrates that no matter how radical the critique of filiality is, there is no real getting rid of filiality. This point helps us make sense of Chen Xue's novel.Luo Yijun's Father-Son-Father QuandaryLuo Yijun's (駱以軍) novel Far Away (遠方) appears as though it could be a semi-autobiographical novel that depicts the first-person narrator as someone caught between the two conflicting poles of kinship obligation: on the one hand, being a filial son and, on the other hand, being a responsible parent and partner to his wife. The novel narrates a situation in which the narrator has just taken his wife, at a very advanced stage of pregnancy, and young son on a vacation to Hualian. He was not there very long when they received a call from his wife’s sister that his father, on a trip to mainland China, had had a stroke. The narrator and his mother had to drop everything and rush to Jiujiang (九江) in Mainland China to see after the father. Much of the frustration and conflict of the novel revolves around the corrupt bureaucracy in mainland China, both on the governmental level and in the hospital where his father was being treated. The main problem was that the government would not issue a travel permit that would enable the father to return to Taiwan. The experiences in the novel—dealing with the doctors and hospital bureaucrats, dealing with the government, thinking about his strained relationship with his father, and thinking about his own young family—cause the first-person narrator to contemplate his place in the world, the meaning of his life, and the necessary fulfillment of obligations that he constantly confronts. The novel depicts a modern situation that is quite plausible, but within the modern condition of two separate governments and political systems at two different stages of economic development, as well as the demands of modern economics that, for instance, foster a desire in many people to reduce the size of the family, to nuclearize, the novel provides a format in which the reader can revisit the classic theme of filiality.How does filiality work in the specific, material conditions of contemporary China and Taiwan, with many cultural differences between the two societies owing to totally separate historical trajectories over a seventy-year period? How does one deal with being caught between two very different generations—the older one represented by the father, who was still very strict, raised his son using traditional punitive methods, and was not a warm and loving father; the younger one represented by his pregnant wife and their toddler son? He has pressures from both ends. In a spiritual way, the novel could be related to Chen Xue's work. Although the father was physically present in the narrator's life while he was growing up, he was not emotionally available. In other words, it still was a bit like not having a father at all. At the same time, toward the end of the novel the narrator shutters to imagine what life would be like with his father gone, when, albeit at a later age, the narrator would "become an orphan." Another complicating factor of the impact of the sociopolitical situation on the narrator and his family is the fact that in mainland China he has a half-brother who was the offspring of his father and his first wife. This actually was a common phenomenon in Cold War era Taiwan, and it also was a factor in Wang Wenxing's novel. What does this mean for kinship? This is a complicating element of the story. Far Away (遠方) by Lou Yijun.The Fixation on Intergenerational Relations and the Redemptive UrgeUndoubtedly, in all societies intergenerational relations are important. Their centrality, socially speaking, is reflected in the literature of societies all over the world. However, in the Chinese society specifically and East Asian societies more generally, intergenerational relations are particularly important. The literary examples discussed in this brief essay represent a range of narratives that deal with the obsession over the father figure and the fear and anxiety over the loss of the father. Interestingly, each one of the novels discussed above is inflected with its own specific historical circumstances. These circumstances add to the tapestry of the description of human relationships. The historical circumstances are not totally determinative of the way in which these relationships are structured or the way they unfold; however, in every case the historical circumstances complicate these relationships.Returning to Chen Xue's unusual novel, we can see that the stress placed on the protagonist Wang Menglan due to the traumatic loss of her father has led to the development of several different narrative strands. Works like Wang Wenxing's innovative novel Family Catastrophe paved the way for further innovation exhibited in later novels such as Fatherless City. Wang Menglan, Chen Xue's fictional heroine, is herself a writer. Her initial impetus to move to the village of Haishan (海山鎮), where most of the action occurs, was to assist in the writing of the biography of an elderly artist. But the artist dies not long after her arrival, closing that chapter of the story. Coincidentally, a new opportunity arises as a local resident asks her to write the history of his father. As I said near the beginning of this essay, Chen Xue's fictional reconstruction of the biography of Lin Yongfeng's father, a political dissident, did not uncover the real reason for his imprisonment. Writing has a way both of revealing and concealing, frequently at the same time. What is narrative if not the assembly of a number of individual facts and incidents arranged in such a way as to tell a story. The way they are assembled and the fact that sometimes crucial details are left out or diminished while others are accentuated together contribute to the fashioning of the story, which can be contrary to the truth. In fact, the persuasiveness of the story often has more to do with its rhetorical quality than to its adherence to reality. In Chen Xue's book, the protagonist Wang Menglan begins to view herself and her own family differently while in the process of helping write the narratives of other people and their families. As this happens, she also regains her ability to write her own work. In her experiences in the seaside town of Haishan, Wang Menglan not only rewrites the story of Lin Yongfeng's father, she also helps solve the mystery of a young woman, a daughter, who has been murdered. These stories, plus the dismissed plan to write the artist's biography, are what eventually bring Wang Menglan back around to her own story and her own confrontation with the presence of her father in her consciousness. Like many Chinese narratives, no matter how radical the structure and how subversive the subject matter, in the end there is an attempt at redemption. As Carlos Rojas has emphasized, at the end of the novel tears come to the eyes of Wang Menglan, tears not of sadness but of cleansing and absolution. Wang Menglan leaves the reader at the conclusion of the novel with a feeling of redemption, that she has come to terms with the loss of her father and that she has learned to accept it. Chen Xue teaches us that narrative can be a means of confronting the terrible things in our lives, working through them, and developing the ability to accept them and move on.*About Christopher LupkeChristopher Lupke (Ph. D. Cornell University) is Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta. A scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese literature and cinema, his books include The Sinophone Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien: Culture, Style, Voice, and Motion and a translation of Ye Shitao's monumental work, A History of Taiwan Literature, which one the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for the translation of a scholarly book from the Modern Language Association. Lupke’s current research project is a book-length study of the Confucian notion of “filiality” in contemporary Chinese and Sinophone fiction.

PrefaceTaiwan's identity crisis is nearly a cliché at this point—it polls itself on its national identity more than any other country in the world. The identity work of Taiwanese writers unpacks this cliché, showing how identity emerges at the seams and borders with the world outside. This can seen through the narration of their own personal histories and the lives of their characters. Taiwan's production of subjectivity has long been a co-production with international and transnational actors and spaces, and literature is a major mode of its narration. Thus it should come as little surprise that many of its most celebrated writers—both domestically, if national prizes are any indication, and, internationally, thanks to masterly translations—take especial concern with encounters of de- and re-bordering as a mode of being and becoming Taiwanese, whatever that becoming Taiwanese might mean. This essay discusses encounters with four such writers—Syaman Rapongan, Liao Hung-Chi, Kao Yi-feng, and Kaori Lai, based on personal interviews and readings of their award-winning works.Syaman Rapongan (夏曼·藍波安)Take Syaman Rapongan as a first case. Now by far Taiwan’s most recognizable ocean-facing indigenous writer, several of Syaman's more than fifteen books since the 1990s have been translated into Japanese, French, and soon English. Though Syaman's publications include a wide range of genres—from essays, mythological (oral) tales to short stories and novels—all his creative works are presented as expressions of indigenous Tao culture and their connections to a broader oceanic world. And yet, his work is rife with ambiguity and ambivalence about where he belongs—his oeuvre, like any cultural production of Taiwan, is always a work in progress, a work that expresses his own progress at a particular time and place. It is a corpus concerned with the place of the foreign in the fashioning of the self, or, as it were, the foreignness of the place of the self. Distinct from the other writers I will touch on in this brief essay, pivots on the proposition of a radical alterity of indigeneity.Like many other indigenous writers and activists in Taiwan, Syaman embarked on a circuitous path before finding his way back home. His romps through urban national and oceanic transnational spaces gave him the empirical and conceptual resources to narrate his (re)becoming a Tao man as a rite of homecoming. During his youth, Syaman studied in Taipei and worked as a manual labourer. Spending more than two decades on "mainland Taiwan", and later traveling much of the Austronesian Pacific beyond Taiwan, he eventually made up his mind to return to his home island and relearn, reinvent, and represent ancestral practices. His books recount this life and journey at sea and home, often staging his thresholds of becoming as repeated instances of an encounter with the transnational.The literature scholar Chiu Kuei-fen has concisely identified the core structure of Syaman's writing as one that "dramatizes the process of his journey home". And yet, as she insightfully argues, this is an unfinishable process—thresholds that can sometimes be crossed, but doors cannot be closed. Chiu strikes a Derridean note when she observes, "Paradoxically, it is the 'homing' movement in his writing that turns [Syaman] Rapongan into a figure of ambivalence and his writing a site of split identity positions. For, in spite of his self-positioning as a guardian and translator of his tribal culture, the pronounced thematic emphasis on his struggle to become a Tao man suggests that he is not yet a Tao man" (1082).In his writing and maybe even more in his verbal performance of self, as when we met in person in October 2023, Syaman strikes a pose of radical alterity and resistance. Da Hai Fu Meng (大海浮夢), his work supported by the National Culture and Arts Foundation, begins by refuting the geographical ideology imposed on him by his teachers, whose state-crafted exams would penalize students who didn't agree that the sun sets over the mountains, a geography foreign and baffling to Syaman and his fellow islanders from Pongso no Tao, also known as Orchid Island or Lanyu (蘭嶼). His bildungsroman, The Eyes of the Ocean (大海之眼Mata Nu Wawa), likewise begins by placing himself in opposition, this time not only to Han Chinese authorities and teachers, but Western Catholic priests, who he suggests are twinned, if different, forces of colonization. Da Hai Fu Meng (大海浮夢) and The Eyes of the Ocean (大海之眼Mata Nu Wawa) by Syaman Rapongan.In person, Syaman Rapongan emphasized this point by citing the title of a recent Taipei Fine Arts Museum exhibition co-curated by Bruno Latour: "We don't live on the same planet". He insisted that Tao, Taiwanese of whatever type, and anyone and everyone else, are not on the same worlds. For Syaman, Tao and Taiwanese are not even in the same sea, and the latter are a 'continental' people. As he writes at the end of The Eyes of the Ocean, "The island to the west [Taiwan] is too big, and is inhabited by a continental people who write continental tales. It turns out that our oceans are different. Our ocean, the one to the east, is free from "national boundaries," while the one to the west is fenced in." To further make the point beyond the human, Syaman Rapongan employs an oceanic epistemology—in which fish and trees are teachers—to assert a radically different ontology. It is perhaps telling that such a claim itself cites Euro-American scholarship, consonant with the 'ontological turn' within anthropology, which has been championed particularly by scholars of Amerindian indigeneity. Syaman expressed nothing but admiration for what he knows of the traditional knowledge of such indigenes, which he presumed dwarfs that of his or his people's knowledge. At the same time, as a writer who has crafted a unique persona through the crafting and promotion of so many books, Syaman has adopted a certain flexibility with his presentation of self as an insider or outsider. He told me how, when taking trips to China, he would simply stand and smile silently if he was introduced as a compatriot. When he toured northern Europe, he sometimes introduced himself as a Catholic in order to receive warmer welcomes, nevermind his own self-professed animism, and the lingering resentment against the condescending priests of his childhood that carries the narrative momentum of several his books.Syaman Rapongan does not consider his work to be "pure literature". He has called it oceanic literature, or Pacific literature, and finally in summary as at the end of The Eyes of the Ocean, 'colonial island ocean literature', because he will "think in Tao and translate into Chinese, and because my spirit, my flesh, and my knowledge are nurtured by the sea". But as he says in person, what it boils down to in the end is "Syaman Rapongan Literature". Yet, even this eponymous style may give way and be subsumed by a name change yet to come—following Tao tradition, he will likely change his legal name from Syaman to Syapen (Grandfather, of whatever the child is named) in the near future when his son and daughter-in-law give him a grandchild. As a joking aside, I asked him if this means the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, with whom I'm collaborating to commission the publication of his work in translation [the above translated quotes of The Eyes of the Ocean are courtesy of Darryl Sterk], will need to produce a new contract and design a different book cover for the upcoming release of Mata Nu Wawa. So as not to unsettle his international market, he just twinkled his eyes and said we could simply mention his newer name in a footnote, if need be.Syaman's academic training was constituted as an encounter with the foreign: He studied French Literature at Tamkang University and anthropology at National Tsinghua University. In his telling, undertaking the French literature major was not a carefully considered decision. Rather, it was no more consciously chosen than the number on a lottery ticket—the major and the university were easier to test into than many others. Yet, early through the baosong (保送) system, in which indigenous Taiwanese could be exempted from national testing requirements, he had rejected an opportunity to study at National Taiwan Normal University or Kaohsiung Normal University, reasoning that these were ideological indoctrination centers that would force him to be guai (乖) and docile and destroy his spirit. Had he accepted these offers, he would never have become a writer, nor fashioned the extraordinary world he now lives in (when we met for dinner in the fall of 2023, he was in transit in Taipei, negotiating rights for film adaptations of his books, preparing to deliver a keynote for an international conference at Arizona State University, and contemplating an upcoming appearance with a leading Taiwanese politician). All of these achievements came through daily writing practice and recognition and financial support from Taiwan government agencies and private foundations (themselves driven by their own internal dynamics of identity and alterity, which Syaman both troubles and exploits). This success was subtended by deep engagements with the Austronesian world that later led to his acclaim. Indeed, it took a trip to the Pacific Island of Rarotonga for him to see a map that centered the Pacific and finally made him feel at home in the sea that he says is his true country, as he relates at the end of The Eyes of the Ocean. In this sense, a stable sense of self and its physical home could only be forged through a foray into the foreign.Liao Hung-chi (廖鴻基)Let's turn now to Liao Hung-chi. Once a fisherman, Liao also found his home in the sea, yet he is a very different sort of oceanic writer than Syaman Rapongan, and, perhaps owing to his Hoklo ancestry, one far less concerned with cultural alterity. Hailing from Hualien, where he briefly dabbled in local politics, Liao is extraordinarily prolific, having published more than 25 single-authored works since the late 1990s. Most of them are collections of essays which document his journeys on the ocean or at shores. From his early celebrated work, Beggars of the Sea (討海人, 1996) the first of his highly- regarded "The Oceanic Quartet海洋四部曲", to his most recent novel The Last Hunter of The Sea (最後的海上獵人). Complementing his identity as an oceanic writer, Liao is also an experienced whale tracker and a key figure who has raised awareness about challenges to the well-being of marine ecosystems. For decades, he has documented a variety of cetacean species on Taiwan's Pacific coast, having organised the Taiwan Cetacean Survey Group in 1996. In 1998, he founded the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation (黑潮基金會) and the Hualien Formosa Association (花蓮福爾摩沙協會) in 2020. He also collaborated with filmmakers and photographers to produce an eco-documentary, Whale Island (男人與他的海) in 2020. His advocacy is exemplary and propels his personal project beyond words and into action. The Last Hunter of The Sea (最後的海上獵人) by Liao Hung-chi. Rooted in his hometown of Hualien, Liao has spent little time abroad, apart from taking a few trips to Tonga and Hawaii and other ocean-based destinations to share his work. While the ocean, for some writers, may seem foreign, for Liao it is more home than the terrestrial world. And yet, his brief experiences living and traveling overseas have brought him closer to this liquid sense of home. Decades ago, Liao worked in the shrimp industry in Gilimanuk, Indonesia, whose crystal-clear waters gave him hope for the eventual ecological recovery of Taiwan. Going to Tonga and seeing how locals there managed touristic encounters with dolphins likewise led him to relax his earlier fears that similar such interactions would necessarily be destructive to Taiwanese cetaceans. Going to highly-urbanized Singapore, where he gave talks at schools of all levels, made him understand that an island drastically smaller than Taiwan could be even more socially cut off from its oceanic surrounds. That said, Liao's oceanic orbit is largely a Taiwanese one—if he has any hopes for foreign readership of his works in translation, it's that they appreciate that Taiwan has a "world-class sea" and that they can come here and experience it.Kao Yi-feng (高翊峰)Kao Yi-feng cuts a very different character than Liao. For Kao, "the foreign" has informed the literary production, in as much as it consolidated his sense of Taiwaneseness and his commitment to write a microcosmic story of Taiwan's transformations into his work. For Kao, a sense of the foreign was most acutely felt when he lived in China, which years studying under Taiwan's Chinese nationalist educational regime had led him to believe was the cultural origin of Taiwan. Yet growing up as a Hakka in Miaoli County, and not learning Mandarin until enrolling in grade school, he already had a sense of cultural diversity and boundaries even within the boundaries of Taiwan, troubling received notions of national homogeneity or purity.The only significant time spent abroad by Kao Yi-feng was in Beijing, where he served as editor-in-chief of Maxim Magazine, having been hired by its parent company, a Hong Kong-based media conglomerate. It was, he told me, a sense of being foreign there, of being an expat in what he'd been taught was his cultural homeland, that accentuated his Taiwanese identity and committed him to imbue it into his speculative fiction. Bubble War (泡沫戰爭), published in 2014, tells of youth overthrowing the adults in a residential community following their mismanagement of its basic needs. The book contains obvious nods to classics like the work of JG Ballard and William Golding's Lord of the Flies—in fact, a protagonist is named after a transliterated version of Golding (Gaoding). Yet, Kao's interprets his own novel as being deeply rooted in Taiwan's successive waves of political reform, which were led by youth, the achievements of which he only began to truly appreciate after living in Beijing. Bubble War (泡沫戰爭) by Kao Yi-feng.Bubble War went to press at the same time as university students occupied the Legislative Yuan in what soon became known as the Sunflower Movement, a protest against a trade bill with China that many feared would erode Taiwan’s autonomy. (Confession: I joined this movement too, initially as a curious graduate student researching relations between China and Taiwan, and later wrote about it for a variety of venues). For Kao, as well as for the author of the introduction to Bubble War, National Chengchi University Taiwan literature Professor Chen Fang-ming, it looked as if the novel had somehow prophesied the political moment, even if it had been composed several years prior. Whether or not Kao saw the future is beside the point—what is clear enough is that, at least for him in retrospect, it was his time abroad in China that propelled him not so much to anticipate or allegorize a later Taiwanese national eruption against domestic collusion with the regime in Beijing, but to valorize the spirit of revolution he so admired in Taiwanese youth. Kaori Lai (賴香吟)Finally, of the four authors surveyed here, Kaori Lai has spent the most time abroad. This makes the historical depth and description of her award-winning trilogy of novellas, Portraits in White, which illuminates everyday life during Taiwan’s White Terror period, all the more remarkable in its quotidian detail. In fact, Lai precisely attributes her attention to such details—and the unremarkable, or rather, universal aspects of everyday experience, to her time abroad. Studying for a PhD in Japan, she encountered Japanese scholars who presented a much more realistic portrait of Taiwanese history and of China than what she had learned in the so-called "Free China" of the ROC on Taiwan. Portraits in White by Kaori Lai.Two of the three main characters in Portraits in White come into their Taiwanese-ness through encounters with the foreign other. For teacher Ching-chih, it is coming across the Bible, the peculiar Western and Chinese amalgam that is Sun Yat-Sen's Three Principles of the People, and Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. For the singer and translator from Bangka, Casey, freedom is felt as she walks the Paris streets festooned with communist imagery, and the sentiment spreads and multiplies when she hears that Tokyo university has likewise been taken over by protestors. As Lai observed in our interview, "People's Taiwanese consciousness was raised overseas." This was true to some extent for Lai, who, while aware of Taiwan's distinction from China despite her martial law-era schooling, began thinking about Taiwan's place in East Asia in earnest during her studies in Japan. She later returned to Taiwan to work briefly in cultural agencies such as the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature. Such a path has been common enough for many Taiwanese intellectuals, but what sets Lai apart from most local writers—with the curious counter-example of Lung Ying-tai, who also spent significant time in Germany—is how her time in Europe further shaped her perception of Taiwan. Living in Berlin for seven years, and interacting with East Germans and other Europeans who had lived under ostensibly socialist or communist regimes, she began to see how much of the paranoia and authoritarianism of life under KMT dictatorship—which mendaciously presented itself as "Free China" operating ideologically and administratively in line with Western democratic practice—actually had more in common with life behind the Iron Curtain. Still, after all these years, Lai expresses little interest in recapitulating the heartache and pathos of Taiwan's tragedies, even as such tragic histories serve as the backdrop for the goings-on of her books. The final novella of Portraits in White ends with two elderly Taiwanese, a long-exiled male political activist and a woman contemplating a long-overdue visit home, saying goodbye in Germany by sharing a European-style hug. This brief gesture of intimacy would be unlikely enough in Taiwan, where their age and gender and marital status would at most allow them to share a spot of tea, but the scene is set in Europe—a site of displacement and reinvention. Here, their shared yet isolated Taiwaneseness, and all the years that went into its cultivation are allowed to seep and stew and settle and conclude in an embrace. What a fine way to end a book, and as fitting a point as any to end an essay about the role of the other in the production of the self.*About Ian RowenIan Rowen (伊恩) is associate professor in the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages, and Literature at National Taiwan Normal University. Trained as a geographer, he has published original research about social movements, tourism, geopolitics, and literature in East Asia. He is the author of One China, Many Taiwans: The Geopolitics of Cross-Strait Tourism (Cornell University Press, 2023) the editor of Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror (Cambria Press, 2021), lead translator of Tibetan Environmentalists in China: The King of Dzi (Lexington Press, 2016), and co-editor (with Ti-han Chang and Darryl Sterk) of A Taiwanese Eco-literature Reader (forthcoming with Columbia University Press).

PlaceLi Zishu's (黎紫書) novel Land of Mundanity (流俗地, 麥田出版/Rye Field Publishing Co., 2020) begins with a tantalizing mystery: a character named Dahui (大輝), long presumed dead, shows up on a main thoroughfare of a town called Xidu (錫都, Tin Capital). After reading this novel's very short opening paragraph about a "dead" character's strange reappearance in broad daylight, questions quickly arise in readers' minds. Who is this man? Is he the same person as the one thought dead? What did he do, and where has he been? Why has he returned?Contrary to what might be expected, the next paragraph does not elaborate Dahui's backstory or the circumstances surrounding his arrival. Instead, it launches into a detailed description of "Tin Capital" itself. The street on which Dahui returns leads to a part of the city that features some of its most remarkable features, namely, limestone hills and precipitous cliffs, which house historic cave temples: Sam Poh Tong Temple (三寶洞), Nam Thean Tong Temple (南天洞), Ling Sen Kuan Yin Tong (仙岩觀音洞). It seems Dahui's appearance, strange and intriguing though it may be, is in fact a red herring, its significance diminished amid rich descriptions of the dramatic landscape. What these opening paragraphs efficiently make apparent is that the more important character here is the city of Xidu itself; the reference to tin, coupled with the novel's early thick descriptions of cave temples, certainly bring to mind Li Zishu's hometown of Ipoh. Ipoh is the capital of the state of Perak, which stretches between Selangor and Penang on peninsular Malaysia's west coast and is situated at the heart of the Kinta Valley. Long revered for its limestone cliffs and extraordinary cave temples, it also became one of the richest tin mining regions in the world. Ipoh's modern development originates in the late nineteenth-century Kinta Tin Rush, which first attracted a wave of immigration from China's southern provinces and then the British colonizers. As tin mining spurred the development of infrastructure, Ipoh grew into one of the largest cities in the Federated Malay states. Modern Ipoh consists roughly of two districts, separated by the Kinta River: Old Town, known for government buildings and impressive colonial architecture, and New Town, the development of which was started in 1905 by a Hakka miner and entrepreneur named Yau Tet Shin (姚德勝, 1859-1913).Much of the literary pleasure I initially derived from Land of Mundanity stemmed from the fact that its myriad "real-life" references allowed me to experience Ipoh and absorb its history and culture as an "armchair" or virtual tourist. Not long after the cave temples, for example, we encounter Hugh Low Street (修羅街)—now known as Jalan Sultan Iskandar—one of the oldest streets in Ipoh named after Sir Hugh Low (1824-1905), the third British Resident of Perak (1877-1889)１. Later, we come across "Concubine Lane" (二奶巷), reputedly purchased by Yau Tet Shin for his multiple wives, Ipoh's own "Salted Fish Lane"(鹹魚街), and signature drink, "white coffee" (白咖啡). Some of these Ipoh landmarks and cultural features I recognized from my own travels; others I enjoyed learning about from an array of travel bloggers and Youtubers (two examples: Concubine Lane video; and Ipoh Old Town walking tour, narrated in Mandarin). I took similar pleasure reading Li Zishu's first novel Age of Farewell, (告別的年代, 聯經出版/Linking Publishing Co., 2010)２, which was also set in a fictional town called Xibu (錫埠), but which, again, frequently referred to distinctive Ipoh landmarks like the Night Light Cup (夜光杯, the  fountain at the Sultan Yussuf roundabout, for pictures and more information, do your own Google search or visit this site in particular: https://traveltrain.blogspot.com/2016/08/blog-post_84.html). Still, the insistence in the Land of Mundanity on the alternative name of Xidu continually reminds readers that we are exploring a world that may be strongly informed by Li Zishu's hometown of Ipoh yet remains a fabrication. Xidu is not a reflection of Ipoh, it is a refraction, having been altered by its course through Li Zishu's literary imagination onto the page. The more time I spend in Li Zishu's literary worlds, the greater my interest in how she approaches and thinks about the construction of place in her writing. I was fortunate to be granted an interview with Li Zishu while drafting this essay (generously facilitated by NCAF)3 and among my first questions was about her decision to use the name "Xidu" for Ipoh in her novels: why not just identify her settings as "Ipoh"? Her response shed light on why her narratives take pains to integrate more clearly identifiable landmarks and well-known historical features with invented names, why they strive to situate readers in a place that is simultaneously recognizable as Ipoh and yet not able to be reduced to Ipoh as an actual place. On one hand, being able to draw upon her knowledge of and experience in Ipoh is essential to her craft and feeling self-assured in her writing: "Because I feel that the details required by novels, those background details, are so numerous, I feel I want a place I am personally familiar with, so that when I start to write I have relatively more certainty, otherwise I'm the kind of person who will feel very lacking in confidence".4 Yet this same familiarity presents a challenge as well, because "there is also the problem that I am too familiar with the place of Ipoh. I don't want to be writing a 'documentary' when I write about Ipoh, [or] for the writing to be only in order to document [the city], I am not writing to document it". The fabricated names become a way for her to remind herself of her freedom to be creative, to create her own literary version of Ipoh rather than simply recreate the city she knows so well: "While writing, I constantly talk to and remind myself that 'this is a novel, is fiction, perhaps there is fabrication, you can make things up, you can absolutely make things up, even considering the place you are writing about comes from this place. It is not that this place may not be made up'". As we continue to talk, it becomes clear that, for Li Zishu, Ipoh is just a jumping-off point for a larger ambition: "But although my novel takes Ipoh as its background, in the end what I want to write about is Malaysian Chinese  society … in most of the novel the Chinese society is based in Ipoh, but it reflects the history and situation of the whole of Malaysian Chinese society".This takes us to an even more important and distinctive location in the novel: Upstairs Tower (樓上樓), a twenty-story public housing development near the Kinta River in a corner of Old Town that was once the tallest building in Xidu, hence the name Upstairs Tower (34). Before delving deeper into this location's special qualities and significance, let's first talk about how the novel leads us there; for this we must return to the novel's human characters and underlying structure. The person who first registers the "strange return of a dead man," mentioned at the start of this essay, turns out to be a blind woman named Yinxia (銀霞), who works as a dispatcher for Xidu Wireless Taxi (錫都無線德士); she fields a request for a taxi from a man whose voice and unique accent when speaking Cantonese she immediately recognizes as that of Dahui, who disappeared roughly ten years prior, having been driven from his home after an incident of domestic violence. And while Dahui's situation may continue to pique readers' interest, we have now become acquainted with the character who is the heart and soul of the novel: Yinxia. Yinxia is able to so quickly identify the owner of the voice on the phone in part because of her acute hearing and memory, but also because she knows the voice so well; Dahui is the older brother of one of her best friends growing up in the public housing development known as Upstairs Tower.Thus does a deceptively straightforward set-up of Yinxia fielding a taxi request from a long-disappeared, presumed dead, notorious former neighbor result in readers being guided through the lives of the diverse community of ordinary, working-class Malaysians who call Upstairs Tower their home. Though ultimately Yinxia is the novel's main character, both she and Dahui can be seen as complementary nodes in a social network that grows from Upstairs Tower, the members of which we get to know through their connections with Yinxia and presumed interest in Dahui's fate. True, by the time of the novel's present most of the characters have moved on from Upstairs Tower, having improved their economic circumstances and climbed up a rung or two on the economic ladder. But we are granted access to this community largely through Yinxia's memories of having grown up in Upstairs Tower, which have been triggered by her recognition of Dahui's voice. First, we meet Xihui (細輝), Dahui's younger brother and one of Yinxia's best friends growing up: he is the first person Yinxia calls upon suspecting that it is Dahui who has suddenly returned, and she reaches him while he and his wife are working at the convenience store he owns. As the novel proceeds, Yinxia's recollections of childhood lead readers to become acquainted with Xihui and a host of other fascinating characters and their life-stories. For example, we learn about Dahui's father, nicknamed Entsai (奀仔), a truck driver whose death—his truck went off the side of a cliff while he was driving through the Cameron Highlands (金馬崙) on a rainy night—suddenly turned Dahui, still a teenager at the time, into the head of the family; and Dahui's paternal aunt, Lianzhu (蓮珠姑姑), who comes to the city from a fishing village and ends up as the mistress (or concubine) to a wealthy politician. We also come to know Yinxia's other best childhood friend: a Malaysian Indian boy named Lazu (拉祖), whose father owns a barbershop on the first floor of Upstairs Tower, with whom she and Xihui play chess and other games, and who instructs her in the beliefs related to the Hindu god Ganesha/Ganesh (迦尼薩); Lazu grows up to be a lawyer, following in the footsteps of his idol, Karpal Singh (卡巴星), a famous Malaysian politician and lawyer dubbed "the Tiger of Jelutong" (日落洞之虎) for his fierceness and willingness to take on controversial cases and oppositional stances over the course of his career. I also found myself captivated by the life-story of a woman known as Mapiao Sao (馬票嫂, Horse-racing Lottery Sister), idolized by Yinxia for her mastery of the mammoth Tua Pek Kong's Thousand Pictorial Dictionary (大伯公千字圖) and her ability to befriend everyone in Upstairs Tower; having escaped hunger and poverty in her first marriage only to then have to contend with disdain and abuse from her husband's family, Mapiao Sao manages to eventually find stability and happiness in her second marriage to an aging triad member who proves fiercely loyal to her. This is just a sample; by the novel's end, readers have encountered a vast array of intriguing, richly drawn characters representing all walks of working-class life in Malaysia as well as myriad facets of the human experience.As Li Zishu observed, upon being asked about her decision to use locations like the Mayflower Hotel in Age of Farewell and Upstairs Tower in Land of Mundanity, "Many Malaysian Chinese authors, like those Malaysian Chinese authors based in Taiwan, when they are writing a Malaysian background, they all like and are accustomed to writing about tropical rainforests and rubber forests, these types of places" (16:14-16:27). For Li Zishu, this can create the impression in the minds of non-Malaysian readers that, in Malaysia, "everything is forest, rainforest, or kampung (a rural village in Malay) countryside" (16:30-16:41). It also falls outside her own experiences living in Malaysia: "I myself did not grow up in those kinds of places, actually I have never been to the rainforest", and while she has some familiarity with rubber forests on her mother's side, she herself grew up in Ipoh's urban environment (16:41-17:04). Li Zishu also explained that she was working as a journalist while writing Age of Farewell, and that her portrayal of the Mayflower Hotel, its residents and environment, captured her feelings toward Ipoh at that time, its continued existence amid declining fortunes: "My sense of a place like Ipoh is actually closely connected to my description of the Mayflower Hotel: it is on the wane and has been abandoned, but it continues to eke out an existence. Many of the people who come to the hotel are down on their luck and live there in their declining years, and I also think that this environment was like the feeling I got from Ipoh at that time." As a reader, I found myself equally moved by the Mayflower Hotel and Upstairs Tower, and how both locations focus attention on—thereby assigning value to—the lives of people grappling with economic and other forms of marginalization. But I have also been struck by how the Upstairs Tower location in Land of Mundanity facilitates an exploration not just of economic hardship, but also of community formation and coming of age within Malaysia's profoundly multicultural society. Here let me return to Li Zishu's illuminating reflections on her decision to center her novel around this sort of public housing complex:While writing Land of Mundanity, I wanted to write Ipoh. I knew that what I wanted to write was not just Ipoh, what I wanted to write was Malaysian Chinese society as a whole. So I thought if I want to write about this society, I wanted to find a concentrated place that could present the atmosphere and feeling of this society. So, I thought of this Upstairs Tower, this public housing complex, where people from the major ethnic groups (in Malaysia, i.e., Malays, Chinese, and Indian) all live together. But they have been forced [to live there], they have no choice, because it is only (because of) poverty that they live in a place like Upstairs Tower, and no one has a choice but to live in that kind of place, moreover, every major ethnicity, every cultural element is there …. (And also) because the place where I went to school when I was young was very close to this kind of public housing complex, Kinta Heights, it was very close, I frequently had the chance to see it and run around there … as a result it made a very deep impression on me, and I am very familiar with it. So I thought, eh, I could compress all of Malaysian society into this public housing complex and write about it from there.MemoryAs important as place is for Land of Mundanity, equally important is memory and the temporal elasticity that goes with it; I have long been interested in the use of memory in Li Zishu's fiction, for example, in early stories like "State Capital Chronicles" (州府紀略) "Night Journey" (夜行) and "Mountain Plague" (山瘟) (discussed in Chapter 7 of my book, Sinophone Malaysian Literature: Not Made in China [Cambria Press, 2013]). While the contours of the distinct community evoked in Land of Mundanity come, narrowly, from Upstairs Tower, and Xidu, more broadly, its substance manifests in characters' memories, and via the "memory organ" itself. By facilitating rapid trips back and forth through time, particular memories create intimacy between readers and characters and provide insights into characters' personalities and lives. The novel's opening chapter trains its readers to grow comfortable with temporal shifts spurred by the act of remembering. Above I talked about how the peculiarity of Dahui's supposed return fades into the background of the detailed descriptions of the location from which he calls the taxi company. Closely following this are equally detailed descriptions of the timing of his return: in September, coinciding with the Hungry Ghost Festival (中元節) and at the beginning of a month that feels terribly long because of its unusually high number of public holidays, starting with National Independence/Merdeka Day (國家獨立日) on August 31, followed by Eid al-Adha (哈芝節), and then "Malaysia Day" (馬來西亞日). It is during this five-day public holiday that Yinxia recognizes the voice and unique accent of the person who has called in requesting a taxi—and is subsequently transported by that voice back in time to her childhood and to where she grew up, Upstairs Tower. When Yinxia clarifies that the caller wishes a taxi to take him to "Old Town" (舊街場), he replies in Cantonese in such a way that makes Jie (街) sound like Ji (雞), triggering Yinxia's memory of Dahui's distinctive accent: how she and Xihui would make fun of Dahui behind his back, especially when Xihui was upset after having been punished by Dahui, who had to take on the father's role after their father's death. Thus has the narrative meticulously established both the geographical and temporal setting while simultaneously making clear that Dahui is important less for his own sake than for the community he came from. Readers also finish the opening chapter having been trained to expect rapid shifts back and forth in time as the narrative presents its characters, fills in the substance of their personalities and memories, and characterizes its community as a whole. And while the novel's closing chapter takes as its backdrop the momentous 2018 national election, which ended over sixty years of Barisan Nasional rule and brought down the government of Najib Razak, it yet maintains the strict focus on the ordinary, yet rich and full lives of Yinxia and the working-class community of which she is a part.PerceptionAnother of my longstanding interests in Li Zishu's fiction is her tendency to construct her evocations of Malaysian communities around powerful female characters, and Land of Mundanity is no exception. I've already touched upon the structural importance of the Yinxia character for introducing readers to her community, but what about her blindness? What does it mean that our means of entry into the setting and community of Land of Mundanity is from the perspective and through the memories of a taxi dispatcher who happens to have been born without sight—and yet possesses an extraordinary knowledge of the city? When I asked Li Zishu about this character, I was interested to learn, first of all, that the character is rooted in Li Zishu's experience of daily life: returning to Ipoh for visits while living abroad, she did not have her own means of transportation so became accustomed to calling for taxis. After a while she realized she was always hearing the same woman's voice when she called, and "After I had called for a car many times, she became very familiar with my voice, as soon as she heard my voice she knew my address and what I wanted … it was as if there was a strange connection there". These ordinary, mundane encounters then sparked Li Zishu's literary imagination, causing her to wonder about the woman herself—"I started having many fantasies, thinking about this woman, how she made a living, what her job was like" —and her relations with the taxi drivers—"I couldn't help asking those taxi drivers about this character, this woman-on-the-wire, what is she like, how do you normally communicate, have you seen her face? Chatting with them like this". Li Zishu was also struck by the woman's impressive knowledge of the city: "The extent of her familiarity with the city was such that, even if it was a very small place, [she would say] 'how about you go to that 7-Eleven to wait,' it was as if she knew all the landmarks of that place that she had probably never been to [herself]". Eventually she began to realize the value such a character would have for writing about the city: "To take this city, Ipoh, as a background, I think this character would be highly effective, she could really express my intentions".I was also struck by Li Zishu's comments on the broader effect or value of a blind character like Yinxia who cannot see the differences in people that can seem to perplex—or distract—those of us with sight:This character of blind woman in reality truly cannot see this city. She truly cannot see all the people, cannot see difference, cannot see east-south-west-north, cannot see the self-proclaimed differences of people like skin color or religion or these things, she cannot see these things, all that which most befuddle us: the various prejudices of people—these have no effect on her because she does not see, she has no visual perception, her way of judging the world, her way of identifying people, are perhaps different from those of us who can see.Above I mentioned the pleasure I derived from how the novel escorts me through an entrancing fictional version of Ipoh, and then guides me to the even more captivating location of Upstairs Tower, its vibrant community, and the life-stories of its members. It would be very remiss of me not to stress as well how much I enjoyed experiencing these places and people in the company of Yinxia, and I am confident I am not alone in this. So much can be said about Yinxia as a character, and her embodiment of qualities such as strength, kindness, and resolve—particularly in the face of challenges that, as we learn over the course of Land of Mundanity, extend well beyond having been born blind into a hard-working, but still impoverished, family. I do not want to tell other readers how to feel about Yinxia, or how to think or feel about any other character or aspect of the novel, for that matter. I just want to close this essay with a note of gratitude: I feel fortunate to have spent time exploring the streets and people of Xidu, and the community of Upstairs Tower, in the company of Yinxia and her cohort. They have broadened my horizons and enriched my world immeasurably, and I am all the better for it.NOTE[1] Lau Sook Mei, & Law Siak Hong (2010). From Hugh Low to Sultan Iskandar. PHS blog. https://perakheritage.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/from-hugh-low-to-sultan-iskandar/[2] Available in English translation as The Age of Goodbyes, translated by YZ Chin (Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2022).[3] The interview is conducted in Chinese, the English text is translated by the author. For the original Chinese transcription, please see the Chinese translation of this essay：https://archive.ncafroc.org.tw/novel/paper/4028b7828fc95ede0190c8ce5ef87d21.[4] This quote and those that follow are from a personal interview with Li Zishu conducted on Zoom on Aug 1, 2023 MYT (Malaysia time zone) and have been lightly edited for clarity and as part of being integrated into this opinion piece.*About Alison GroppeAlison Groppe is an Associate Professor of Chinese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures in the School of Global Studies and Languages at the University of Oregon, where she teaches courses in modern Chinese and Taiwanese literature and film. She specializes in literary and cinematic representations of identity, Sinophone Malaysian and Singaporean literature and film, world literature, and is currently working on a book manuscript about Sinophone Malaysian women writers, including Li Zishu, and literary infrastructure. 

In The Tree Remembers, a documentary on Malaysia's May 13 race riots in 1969, the director Lau Kek-Huat references the proverb, “What the axe forgets, the trees remember.” He uses those words to imply that even though the government has banned the discussion of this violent and racially discriminatory incident, the memories and experiences of what happened continue to remain in those who were involved. Subsequently, the documentary serves as a way to explore and validate history.  In facing the different histories of contemporary times, “to record” has become one of the most fundamental but also most radical functions of documentary film. The act of recording and documenting suggests that memories are preserved so that they may be passed on. In contrast to the “big histories/grand narratives” of nations or masses, documentary films often depart from individual perspectives to tell overlooked but extremely important little histories.Leading renowned Chilean documentary film director, Patricio Guzmán, has made many films on Chile's complex historical and social issues through the perspective of the people. He once said, “A country without documentary films is like a family without a photo album.” And he also pointed out in one of his films, “Those who don't remember don't exist anywhere.”Perhaps, we can also say that history comes from being documented. See You White House, a film that took director Lee Chien-Cheng years to complete, is about the secrets behind a white building that was constructed in the 1960s in Shuilin, a rural township in Yunlin County, Taiwan. With interviews conducted with Taiwanese people who were employed by the United States military to work in this building that's dubbed the “White House” and by combing through the history, the film tells a widely forgotten story from the period when Taiwan received aid from the U.S. Documentaries often play a critical role in turning points in history.Filmmaker Kevin H.J. Lee, known for his investigative reporting work, has personal experiences with how the Chinese communist government limits freedom of expression in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Chinese title of his film, Self-Censorship is “并：控制,” which reverses the character “共” (gong, this character can be used to mean “together; with,” and it is also the first character of “共産,” or communism) to  turn it into “并” (bing, which can mean “to merge; to annex”). The film uses a meticulous step-by-step approach to review and investigate several incidents in Taiwan and Hong Kong (including Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement) and the structural causes behind them, analyzing the reasons for the loss of freedom of speech and press, as well as the potential political threats to the societies of Taiwan and Hong Kong. Three years after the release of this film told through first-person narration, the documentary now feels like a testimonial prophecy that foretells the political changes in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Our Youth in Taiwan directed by Fu Yue follows a star of the Taiwanese student movement protesting against the Chinese regime and a widely-known Chinese student who loves Taiwan. The filmmaker also puts herself in the film to create a three-way dialogue with them. After the Sunflower Student Movement in 2014, they've been through nearly reaching the apex of success to gradually falling into the valley of disappointment, and their once-idealistic dreams have since become bewildered. On the other hand, The Edge of Night by Chiang Wei-Hua started documenting young people with demands on society during Taiwan's Wild Strawberries Movement, and it leads to the year 2014, when young people are seen coming out of the occupied Legislative Yuan, and on the sixth night of the Sunflower Movement, they climbed over fences into the Executive Yuan with thousands of people, attempting to heighten the intensity of the resistance, but all that was waiting for them were police batons, shields, and water cannons, making it a story of young people's journey through failures, decisions, and the affirmation of their identity.When the Dawn Comes directed by Zhang Hong-Jie focuses on Taiwanese gay rights activist, Chi Chia-Wei, and uses a biographical approach to follow this first openly gay man in Taiwan’s unyielding challenge against social values. Following Taiwan's legalization of same-sex marriage in 2017, the film’s title also shows that it has been a long, hard journey of perseverance. Documented, so we won't forget, should not forget, will not forget, and must not forget. To document is a literal practice of refusal to forget. *Translator: Hui-Fen Anna Liao