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Article | OUTLOOK
Intertextuality, Filiality, and Residual Authoritarianism in Chen Xue's "Fatherless City"
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.
2024.08.29
Article | OUTLOOK
Self and other in Taiwan Literature: (Re)placing the foreign in the words and worlds of Syaman Rapongan, Liao Hung-Chi, Kao Yi-Feng, and Kaori Lai
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).
2024.08.22
Article | OUTLOOK
Place, Memory, and Perception in Li Zishu's Novel "Land of Mundanity"
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. 
2024.08.08
Article | FOCUS
Documented so Not to be Forgotten
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
2024.07.30
Article | FOCUS
Critics: the Dream Stealers in Theatre
As the house light dims and curtain rises, have you ever noticed in the dark auditorium that someone next to you sneak out a pen and pieces of paper to take fast notes at any given moment which allows a brief distraction from the stage? Or it could be the zealous gaze in the darkness, which is beyond pure appreciation, to absorb the transient scenes in front of the eyes. Although what happens in theatre stays in the theatre, one still keeps the experience safe and sound in the mind and wait until later to reexamine its essence.    They are critics, the dream stealers in theatre. In their race against time, they closely follow the work with an ambitious attempt, if not impossible at all, to pursue the objective significance of the subjective perception. From the perspective of artmaking, critics’ insight is always the hindsight, but they are the pioneers in history swinging between the artwork and its wider cultural context for that criticism is a mixture of sense and sensibility. Even though the making of a critic and their professional function in the industry is still under debate, no one can deny the fact that critics are indispensable in theatre, since “a performance receives no criticism will eventually disappear,” says Chan Hui-ling.1 Supporting independent critics with the greatest resources in Taiwan, the NCAF Grant for Performing Arts Critics encourages critics to voice their observation and publish their critiques on the official website of “Reviewing Performing Arts Taiwan.” Since the grant program initiated in 2014, it has nurtured a long list of professional critics.  Its first years saw a majority of theatre critics, with a few with a specialization on either dance or traditional theatre.2 Both Lin Nai-Wen (2014) and Yeh Ken-Chuan (2014) wrote about theatre and dance as they particularly focused on the development and history of theatre in Taiwan. Lin often gave a vivid description to contextualize adaptations, body, and space in her critiques, while Yeh adopted a clear and well-structured analytical perspective as a conscious dialogue with creators. As a producer and programmer dedicated to the little theatre movement　in Taiwan, Wu Sifong (2014) showed concern for the little theatre, people’s theatre and social issues in his critical writing, revealing criticism as an approach of self-reflection. Huang Pei-Wei (2014) anchored her critiques and writing to the art industry and its publicness, while she later became an active member of IATC Taiwan to focus on the critical practice of public governance. Coming from a dramaturgical background, Wu Cheng-han (2014, 2015, and 2016) turned his attention to the contemporary adaptation, translation, or rewriting of classical works and interdisciplinary creations.Traditional theatre critic Wu Yue-Lin (2014, 2015, and 2016) reveals in his project closure report that his initial purpose of review-writing came from his master’s thesis on Contemporary Legend Theatre, and it gradually extended to the contemporary practices of traditional theatre, with modern-theatre concepts as a comparison in terms of border-crossing.3 Wu’s critiques bridged the legacy of classical Chinese literature studies and contemporary practices of traditional theatre performances, through which he pointed up the problematiques in the making. Later, the border-crossing attempts of traditional theatre had become the main concern of many critics of a background in traditional theatre, including Lin Li-hsiung (2016 and 2017), Lin Hui-Chen (2019 and 2020), Su Heng-I (2021), etc., who had different styles and emphases but followed the same thread. Among them, the Tainan-based Lin Hui-Chen showed a diverse coverage to include a large number of traditional theatre productions taking place in central and southern Taiwan.   With a musical as well as a theatrical training, Siraya Pai4 (2014, 2015 and 2016) based her project on musical theatre in its broadest definition, while her writing of an honest and explanative nature not only touched upon the use of music in theatre but also covered modernized traditional theatre and interdisciplinary works. As a freelance translator, she also wrote about related topics such as “Surtitles in Theatre – An awkward but Necessary Eye-catcher?” Tsai Meng-Kai (2019) was another critic focusing on border-crossing performances between music and theatre, while he took a departure from traditional music and adopted a bright and smooth writing style to illustrate the creative approaches and cultural context of the theatricalization of traditional music.  Fan Xiang-Jun (2014, 2015 and 2016) states in her project closure report about the lack of dance criticism in Taiwan, and her 2015 project thus attempted to establish a critical narrative on the bodily practice of Taiwanese dance via a series of “finding-the-body” critiques. Other dance critics include Wu Meng-Hsuan (2015) who analyzed contemporary choreographic works as social practices, Cheng Yi-Fang (2019) who tried to place the discussed dance pieces within the dance history and a wider cultural context, and Chien Lin-Yi (2021) who showed concern for the continuity of the dance history with revolutions between generations as its entry point.  Chang I-wen (2016 and 2017)’s project centered on the experimental dance performances taking place in contemporary art venues with an attempt to offer a dance criticism based on interdisciplinary art theories; as for Lo Chien (2018 and 2019) of a background in contemporary visual-art theory studies, she anchored her observations on the spectatorial relationship to discuss the interrelation between dance/theatre performances and the use of video and space. Carrying out her project with an impressive dedication and effort, Lo published 25 critiques within one project year between 2018 and 2019, which topped all grant-program critics in number.  Hsieh Chwen-Ching (2019) also adopted contemporary art theories and aesthetic perspective to reexamine dance and theatre works, while she was quick to adapt during the pandemic by writing about online performances such as “A Relationship of Delivery – on Surprise! Delivery” and “A Full Recycle – the Online Museum Trash Time.” The performance’s relation to its space was a much-discussed topic in many theatre critics’ projects, including Chen Yuan-Tang (2015 and 2016) who observed how the “character” of the venue, mostly theatres in central and southern Taiwan, affected the creative works, or Liu Chun-Liang (2016 and 2017) and Yang Li-Jung (2017) with a focus on non-conventional performance spaces to examine how the creative and production process responded to the venue. Meanwhile, Yang Zhi-Xiang (2020) and Yang Mei-ying (2019) turned their attention to creation-in-residence and theatre/art festivals taking place outside Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.  The beginning years of grant program saw a lack of music critics in comparison to dance, theatre, or traditional theatre, until 2017 when Liu Ma-Li (2017 and 2021), Yen Tsai-Teng (2019, 2020, and 2021), and Hsu Yun-Feng (2021) joined with their concentration on classical music. Among them, Yen tried to establish a new and different critical approach to music reviews by integrating a perspective of his background in philosophical theories. Other music critics such as Feng Hsiang-Yu (2017), Liu Shi-Ta (2018) and Lin Che-Yu (2020) also explored the diversity beyond the conventional classical music criticism.  There were critics targeting specific topics and particular kind of works. Hsieh Hung-Wen (2015 and 2016) showed concern for children’s theatre and aesthetic education.  Huang Shin-Yi (2017 and 2018) and Jian Wei-Chiau based their critical writing on the left-wing narrative to follow and touch upon the development of the political situations, community theatre and applied theatre in Taiwan. Lin Yu-Shih (2014) and Lu Hong-Wun (2017) centered their projects on Taiwan’s indigenous dance and theatre, while Hsi Ching-Yi (2020 and 2021) broadened her focus on the indigenous song-and-dance performances taking place in Eastern Taiwan (Hualien and Taitung) to include art festivals, music festivals, performance art and gender issues.  Meanwhile, we also see critics exploring and experimenting different approaches of criticism: Chang Tun-Chih (2017 and 2018) in his project “WTPN (Why This Play Now)” adopted the practice of dramaturgy to discuss the performance and text; Chen Tai-Yueh (2016) explored a participatory criticism approach; Tu Hsiu-Chuan (2018) in her “The Trauma Carrier: On the Intersubjectivity between Performance and Audience” centered on trauma to reverse the subject-object relationship between performance and critique; Zhang You-sheng (2020) proposed “Learning to Write: Starting from the Basic Principle of Criticism” to reveal a desired return to the essence.     NOTES[1] See the transcription of the second talk at the 2019 Inharmonious Talk Series “A Look back on History and the Presence of Critics”（https://pareviews.ncafroc.org.tw/comments/32ec734a-52f3-4179-b533-4146e7c675c6）[2] The number of music critics has increased since 2017, and it is not limited to classical music but also includes jazz or pop music. [3] See Wu Yue-ling, Project Closure Report “The NCAF Grant for Performing Arts Critics -- Border．CrossingⅢ: The Infinite Borders/Limitations and Finite Crossing/Revieing,” the NCAF Online Grant Portfolio Archive (https://archive.ncafroc.org.tw/result?id=2c96c00fa99d42e6a069ef09f0544016)[4] Editor's note：Siraya Pai is also the translator of this article. *Translator: Siraya Pai
2024.07.15
Article | FOCUS
Shining Light of Faith
What is faith? How closely can place, people, and religion be interconnected? In Cultural Anthropology[1], Conrad Phillip Kottak states that religion transcends experience and cannot be explained in ordinary words, and can only be accepted on a foundation of faith. These beliefs are based on the supernatural. Gods, ghosts, souls, and the like exist outside our material world, and people believe in their intangible powers. In Faith and Culture[2], Yih-Yuan Li writes that some people think gods and spirits are loving, while others think they are terrifying and unreliable. He looked at the differences in people's attitudes toward faith from a psychological perspective and found that religious beliefs have to do with people's education and experiences. He also explains how religious beliefs deeply influence human social systems.Kuan-Hsiang Liu combined his own experience with the stories of Hindu deity Shiva, using the various personalities and aspects of Shiva to present a period of his life. In mythology, Shiva mostly appears as male, but it is also said that his gender is fluid due to his manifold aspects. The project's resulting piece, SH0VA, was performed by three dancers. Looking back on it, the display of biologically-male and -female bodies reflected Shiva's enigmatic and undetermined appearance, thick-bodied and slender, bald and long-haired, and so forth. In addition to external images, the performance is more than a one-sided narrative presentation—it also includes Kuan-Hsiang Liu's narration and incomprehensible yells interspersed with contemporary music, creating a sense of intrigue between fiction and reality.What happens if, in addition to a symbolic existence, gods actually enter one's physical body? Che-Li Lin applied for a publishing grant in the Literature category for her book Spirit Medium (附神). The book mainly tells the story of her father who has the special gifts needed to be a jitong (乩童; Chinese folk spirit medium). She writes her perspective of different moments of her father's experience as a jitong and how she witnessed different facets of life through these experiences. In an exclusive interview by Yun-Yan Wang, Che-Li Lin said: "When he is mortal, my father helps people just like when he is possessed by a god. The only difference is, when he is possessed by a god, people will try to thank the god, perhaps by burning more paper money, bringing offerings to pray with, or donating money to the gods on their birthdays. When he is mortal, however, the people he helps seem to take him for granted, and things sometimes even devolve into conflicts and discord over whether he actually helped or not." [3] The novel describes changes undergone by the jitong himself and the surrounding environment.Elvis A-Liang Lu's A Holy Family also recounts the coexistence of humans and gods. The original plan was to record his brother, who can be possessed, but after focusing on his family, it turned into a documentary about "home". This film presents the twisted-yet-closely-intertwined fates of different members of the family while adding feedback from believers, telling the story of everything that happened in this family regarding faith from a sympathetic yet cruel perspective.In his exclusive interview with BIOS Monthly, Elvis A-Liang Lu said, "... every night, people would gather at the altar on the top floor of my home to ask questions. Groups of adults gathered around my brother to pray for good health and prosperous careers. He had witnessed miracles, but more often than not, it was just a bunch of gamblers who wanted to him to predict lottery numbers or interpret their divinatory poems." [4] His brother's psychic ability and his father's habits gave Elvis A-Liang Lu a different outlook on family and religion. In Place[5], Tim Cresswell believes that the private space of "home" contains a series of memories and conceptions of its own, and that from this space, we begin to develop a better understanding of other external spaces. However, "home" is not always an ideal space, and can sometimes be stifling. Nonetheless, the experience of existing in a place remains a way for us to understand the world.What happens when the public still believes that faith and people are inseparable, and that people can be liberated by faith? Che-Li Lin and Elvis A-Liang Lu show us the stories of their families from their own perspective, even raising questions about gods and spirits. Their works give us a better understanding of the more unknown aspects of traditional faith, and provide reflections on something people usually find solace in. As Feng-Yi Chu stated in an article describing the outcomes of his project titled "The Endless Pursuit of Local Traditions to Universal Spirituality: the Significance of Religion and Mysticism in the Development of Taiwan's Contemporary Art", which explores mysticism's place in Taiwan's contemporary art: "... In everyday life, we always practice poem divination to ask about the 'future'... why do people always ask gods about the future, but not the past?" [6] Regardless of restrictions such as race and religion, questioning these habits of ordinary people is also a re-examination of faith. When something becomes a habit, we don't question its significance, but once someone challenges our assumptions, it becomes an interesting debate.Religious belief has real attachments in different aspects, but is it worth becoming the only source of spiritual sustenance? Or is it just a big gamble? Whether you are a believer or not, I would like to close this article by wishing all readers good health and happiness. Notes[1]     Kottak, Conrad Phillip (2014). Cultural Anthropology: Appreciating Cultural Diversity (Hsu, Yu-Tsun, Trans.). Taipei Chuliu Books.[2]     Li, Yih-Yuan (2010). Faith and Culture. Airiti Press.[3]     Wang, Yun-Yan. "As the daughter of a spirit medium, she wants to 'change her father's fortune' through writing—Exclusive interview with Che-Li Lin, Spirit Medium: My Father Who Lends His Body to the God." OKAPI Reading Life Journal. URL: https://okapi.books.com.tw/article/14888[4]     Bios Monthly. "Gambler Father, Religious Mother, Psychic Brother, and I, the Director—Exclusive interview with Elvis A-Liang Lu, A Holy Family". Bios Monthly. URL: https://www.biosmonthly.com/article/11158[5]     Cresswell, Tim (2006). Place: A Short Introduction (Wang, Chih-Hong & Hsu, Tai-Ling, Trans.). New Taipei City: Socio Publishing.[6]     Chu, Feng-Yi. "Technical Questions about the Apparition of Ghosts and Gods in Taiwanese Contemporary Art". Islands. URL: https://www.heath.tw/nml-article/concerning-technologies-of-reappearing-mystical-experience-in-taiwanese-contemporary-art/*Translator: Linguitronics
2024.06.28
Article | FOCUS
Beyond Chinese Orchestras: the Diverse Perspectives of Contemporary Guoyue in Taiwan
A lot of Western music was introduced to China in the early 20th century, after which the concept and self-identity of Guoyue (國樂; literally "national music") gradually took shape. Additionally, the May Fourth Movement was in full swing at the time, and many intellectuals like Xiao Youmei and Liu Tianhua began advocating for a reform of traditional music, introducing Western composition techniques and orchestration, which drove the modernization of traditional Chinese music in the form of Guoyue. Some of the achievements from that time have now developed into Chinese orchestras and Guoyue educational programs found across Taiwan, becoming the most widely known form of modernized traditional Chinese music.However, modernized traditional Chinese music takes more than one form. The original definition of the term Guoyue actually included a wide range of traditional music genres, including opera, folk songs, and sizhu (絲竹; literally "silk and bamboo", traditional string and wind ensembles) music. Thanks to the efforts of different musicians, composers, and creators, these other types of traditional/Chinese music have also evolved into different modern forms that deserve attention. This article will approach this issue from three aspects, namely: (1) avant-garde experiments in traditional instrumental music, (2) cross-genre and interdisciplinary creation, and (3) international exchanges, to demonstrate the diverse perspectives of modern Guoyue in Taiwan.The first aspect I'd like to discuss is the integration of avant-garde and experimental music and Chinese instruments to create or perform new works. Performers play a central role in this genre. They commission various works from composers and assemble them into one or more concerts, presenting them as a music show. Zheng (箏; Chinese plucked zither) musician Jing-Mu Kuo held a series of recitals titled "Zheng: New Horizon" in recent years (2017, 2019, and 2020), inviting over a dozen composers (including himself) to create a total of fifteen new zheng compositions. In a milestone moment of contemporary zheng music, these compositions were subsequently compiled and published as Zheng: New Horizon—Collection of Contemporary Zheng Music.In addition to instrumental solos, many performers also form chamber music ensembles, creating a new ensemble format that differs from traditional sizhu music. 3PEOPLEMUSIC is an ensemble composed of Jing-Mu Kuo on the zheng, I-Tung Pan on the zhongruan (中阮; Chinese plucked string instrument), and Chung Jen on the dizi (笛子; transverse bamboo flute) and xiao (簫; vertical bamboo flute). They have attracted much attention recently and were invited to hold concerts like 3x3 Project, Misreading, and Catalysis: Fusion of Senses at the National Theater and Concert Hall. These concerts featured dizi and zheng played with bows, with sounds occasionally produced using objects in the environment, mesmerizing and startling listeners. PIPA-ensemble, on the other hand, embraces both old and new styles. Their concerts Lead, Nong, and Folk Song, combined ancient traditional music, contemporary classics, and newly-commissioned compositions, a marriage of traditional music and forward-thinking ideas. They also recently held a series of lectures and concerts called "Pipa Small Muscle Group" to give the audience a closer view of contemporary pipa (琵琶; Chinese lute) perspectives.The second aspect I'd like to talk about is the sparks created when artists cross over into different music genres and performing art forms. An example of genre crossover is C-Camerata Taipei, an ensemble that plays a mix of Chinese and Western music, founded by Chao-Ming Tung, Yin Chiang, and Hui-Kuan Lin. Their repertoire is a mix of Western classical and Eastern traditional pieces, and they actively commission new compositions to promote in-depth discourse and exploration regarding Chinese and Western music. For example, Chih-Liang Lin's Parallelism is one of the commissioned compositions. Inspired by physical movements involved in instrument playing, the composer observed the similarities and differences in hand movements used to play the zheng, pipa, percussions, and the cello to construct a dual combination of visual and audio experiences. Embodying both classic and novel ideas, the concert DongXi-DongXi: Exploration between the West and the East featured renowned pieces by Western avant-garde composers Luciano Berio and John Cage, as well as the world premiere of two compositions by Chao-Ming Tung and Klaus Ager, President of the European Composers' Forum, respectively.As for interdisciplinary collaboration, some think of it in terms of "addition"—adding elements of other performing arts into concerts to create a sort of musical theater. Others dive deeper into self-analysis and reconstruction, creating more organic integrations with other art forms. For instance, Gu-Fang Contemporary Art of Zheng and Goodoo Puppet Troupe teamed up to create Bloom of Zai Tun, a zheng music theater show with a vivid storyline that combines puppetry and iconic zheng music. XinXin Nanguan Ensemble's Contemporary Nanguan Land Project II—Encountering Childhood in Lize and Nanguan & A Cappella are performances created by integrating shadow puppetry and a cappella singing, respectively, injecting new energy into Nanguan (南管; a style of Chinese classical music from the southern Chinese province of Fujian) music through profound crossover exchanges and solid field research. In Eat Dirt, performed by Bare Feet Dance Theatre, music creator Tzi-Mei Li fully dismantles Beiguan (北管; a type of traditional music, melody and theatrical performance dating to the Qing dynasty) music, composing pieces through repeated deconstruction, reorganization, and transformation. The music, together with the fluid movements of the dancers, reshapes people's experience of the land.It is also worth noting that a lot of organizations, both in contemporary Guoyue and inter-disciplinary arts, have devoted efforts to cultivate young composers' ability to compose Guoyue music. TimeArt Studio's Forgotten Voices workshop invited young composers from China, South Korea, Taiwan, and the U.S. to revisit their own cultural traditions, find inspiration for contemporary composition, and co-create with performers to develop ideas into complete musical works. Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra's Cross-Culture Chamber Music Creative Workshop invited well-known Taiwanese and foreign composers such as Hwang-Long Pan, Shih-Hui Chen, Ching-Wen Chao, and Kurt Stallmann as lecturers to teach students how to compose music for traditional Chinese instruments and enhance their interdisciplinary creativity.The last aspect I wish to tackle in this article is the presentation of Guoyue on the international stage. This usually manifests as individuals or groups being invited to perform at music festivals or attend research and creative events organized by prominent music institutions. The former allows performers to express their own voices more freely and completely, while the latter incorporates different views, forming transnational cultural conversations. There are many instances of these two types of international exchanges. Here are a few interesting examples:Sheng (笙; Chinese free reed wind instrument) player Li-Chin Li has been very active in the European music scene in recent years. In 2022, she became the guest musician of the French contemporary orchestra Ensemble Linea and performed with the orchestra at the Ruhrtriennale music festival in Germany. She also participated in Tout Pour la Musique Contemporaine's research project SHENG! 2018-2023, in which she made demonstrations of improvisation, premiered new works, and assisted in IRCAM's acoustic research to enhance the visibility of the sheng in the West. Dizi and xiao player Hsiao-Feng Lin explores the traditional and avant-garde, national and world music, blurring the boundaries between different types of music and expanding the scope of traditional music. He participated in the Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival (KLEX) with pianist Shih-Yang Lee and visual artist Yun-Yen Chuang, where they had in-depth exchanges with local artists and students and did improvised performances together. After returning to Taiwan, they held the Pearls of the Southern Island, Gazing at the Moment concert to share their experiences and insights from the festival with melophiles. In this example, Guoyue and experimental art blended seamlessly, showing its most grassroots side.Whether central or peripheral, avant-garde experimental or popular, genre-exclusive or crossover art, domestic or international, regardless of whether the artists mentioned above incorporate Guoyue or traditional music into their self-identity, they are all unsatisfied with the status quo and strive to break through the framework of the genre, delighted to explore boundaries. Such diverse musical practices infinitely expand the future possibilities of Guoyue.*Translator: Linguitronics
2024.06.14
Article | FOCUS
Starting with the Senses
Since the pandemic began, masks seem to have become people’s second layer of skin, and some may even feel strange when breathing in unfiltered air when they take off their masks. Alain Corbin, a prominent figure in the history of sensibilities, mentioned in The Foul and the Fragrant that when sanitation began to improve in France by the late 18th century, people’s perceptions and interpretations of scents and smells also started to change, and different scents and smells also began to hold various social implications. Our senses are how we learn about the world, and from wearing an alluring perfume, impressing on the skin a meaningful tattoo, or exploring tantalizing foods, humans conjure up an image of the world through the various gestures and actions we take.  Writings about scents and smells are peculiarly rare, and this is perhaps due to the unique challenges that come with describing them. Taiwanese writer, Lin Wei-Chen, published her second collection of prose at the end of 2022, and in this book titled Lemon Age (青檸色時代), the smell of mixed spices on a Thai restaurant server is described as “being covered in dazzling jewels from head to toe”; and the nonstop sneezes caused by allergy during the change of season are interpreted as prophetic for being the first to sense the changes in the environment. Captivating words are used to depict the moments when various senses, memories, and fantasies manifest themselves.Compared to scents and smells, writings about sound are more ubiquitous, as suggested by the different onomatopoeia words available, such as “gurgling river,” “chirping birds,” or “rustling leaves.” Sound seems to have formed a unique class of its own in the realm of words. Fushan & Taipingshan by French sound artist, Yannick Dauby, presents a sound narrative comprised of sounds collected throughout many years from the mountains and forests in northeastern Taiwan and also interviews with people who are familiar with the local ecosystem. The medley of sounds from that particular space-time are gathered into this collaborative work co-published with Atelier Hui-Kan, and it brings nature and life’s vitality into our ears.Some critiques have linked Cézanne’s influence on the development of Modern Art to his change in vision. In the present day, the human race’s dependence or trust on the sense of sight seems to have amplified. Chen Kuan-Yu, a critic who has focused extensively on visual images, is the author behind a project that examines the research and writings of photography criticism, with Chen re-critiquing and writing about other critical essays on photography, which he refers to as “dialogical art criticism.” The project covers various styles of photography, including war photography, street photography, animal photography, and ruins photography, and using a variety of perspectives to discuss and analyze photography, the project puts this art form that relies solely on visual experiences back under the spotlight of art criticism.  Each Modern Gallery has also long been dedicated to the research, exhibition, and promotion of photography. The gallery presented a solo exhibition of the prominent photographer, Ishiuchi Miyako, last year (2022). Born in post-war Japan, Ishiuchi Miyako’s photography focuses on the human body, documenting marks on people’s skin caused by time or war (wrinkles and scars) or remnants of things that were once attached to someone’s skin (lipsticks and clothes). The tactile sensations triggered by the sense of sight and the accompanying emotions and pain that envelop one’s body re-elucidate that photography is an art of space and time.People’s sense of taste is pervaded by socialization, as we choose to gather over meals for celebrations and make food offerings to show faith and devotion. In the exhibition, DisOrder Exhibition／in Order, the curator Hsu Fong-Ray ingeniously transformed the Hong-gah Museum and a store of the Order System Furniture Company, two completely different spaces, into the exhibition’s sites. Included in the exhibition were the lemon liquor made by Huang Po-Chih for his project, Five Hundred Lemon Trees, and other artworks, such as Snail Dishes Interview Program: Highway No. 9. by Chang En-Man. With people’s taste buds at the center of focus, audience members were invited to savor the stories of different food cultures. As we now see pandemic-related restrictions lifting and mask mandates being eased, have the human senses and perceptions remained the same as before the pandemic? Complex external stimuli allow for life’s features and substance to accrue, and if we are sensitive and attentive enough, each sensory encounter may become the next novel phenomenon. *Translator: Hui-Fen Anna Liao
2024.05.30
Article | FOCUS
Gazing at Landscapes: Visual Map of Ethnic and Cultural History
Taiwan is an island nation located at the intersection between the Pacific Ocean and the Eurasian Plate. Ethnic migration, trade and commerce, and strategic importance endow it with a unique, irreplaceable value. Combined with pleasant climate, a geography that ranges from high mountains to plains, ocean to rivers, abundant crops and aquatic foods, and historical twists and turns, these make Taiwan an excellent place for human habitation. Various regimes have ruled Taiwan at different times since the beginning of its recorded history, with different ethnic groups farming and developing the land, leaving behind a heterogeneous landscape across the island nation."Landscapes" are the product of interactions between peoples and the environment, a sensory feast amidst everyday life. Ruins and objects unearthed in different places since prehistory tell stories forgotten by texts. For instance, Modern Poetry Creation Project of Local Archaeological Remains and Cultural History in Taiwan by Kai-Wen Tsai uses modern poems to incorporate and transmit several discoveries of cultural significance in Taiwan's literary tradition: the Liangdao Man found in the Matsu Islands, which subverted our conception of the Austronesian peoples' antiquity; the Chuping Archaeological Site in Nantou, evocative of myth and legend; and the ancient pottery and stoneware excavated in Changhua's Niupu Site.Other than Austronesian culture buried underground, the Tao (Yami) people stand out among the 16 officially recognized indigenous peoples in Taiwan for their close relation to the sea. The Survey Project of Traditional Cultural Landmarks in Pongso no Tao (Orchid Island) by Ching-Hsien Wang and Tao (Yami) Traditional Residence Survey and Research by the Ding-Zi-Ku Culture Arts and Humanities Studio studied the Iraraley and Ivalino indigenous communities in Pongso no Tao (Orchid Island), respectively. Their work consisted mainly of compiling traditional place names, surveying traditional ceremonies and residence construction materials and techniques, and interviewing traditional residence craftsmen. The goal is to document the island's culture in detail to help it gain more attention. In addition to the ocean, in History Written by Forests and Mountains—'Taipingshan Literary Periodical' Research Writing Project, Yi-Fen Chung goes through every branch and leaf in Taipingshan's forests, comprehensively and meticulously piecing together the literary landscape of the forestry industry and forest resources through literary creation.Prehistory and the journey of the Austronesian peoples overlap in historical memories, lingering amidst the sea and mountains. The river of history widened its banks after Han Chinese people began to cross the "Black Ditch" to settle Taiwan in the Qing era. 'Kong-Tshu' Buildings in the Daofeng Inner Sea and Taikang Inner Sea Area by Song-Di Huang, Study Exploring the Hakka Map and Cultural Formation in the Greater Tainan Area by Shiu-Chao Lin, and Development History of Hakka People in the Laonong River Basin—Using Liugui and Taoyuan as Examples by Shiu-Chao Lin describe how after migrating from their ancestral homes, the Hoklo and Hakka peoples brought their religious beliefs and daily habits to Taiwan, adapting them to local conditions. The hard work of later immigrants to Taiwan is also an inextricable part of this land's history.Taiwan grew in diversity in the Japanese colonial era and even after World War II due to different political and economic reasons. Shared Spaces, Diverse Memories: Exploring the Cultural Landscape of the Nanjing Sugar Refinery by Yun-Ju Chen and Lost Underground Memories: Oral History Survey and Geographic Inventory of Miners in Houtong's Mining Industry by Yi-Ni Lee examine abandoned industrial sites and complexes to gather the stories of diligent blue-collar workers, whose arduous work propelled Taiwan's economic development and gradually built the progressive zeitgeist. In Urban Imagination and Reconception: Representation of 'Cities' in Taiwan's 1960s Films, Yen-Hsuan Huang shows a different perspective, reflecting on urban imagery in cinema: is it as beautiful as most imagine, or is it merely a financial report representing the power struggle of capitalists?Whenever you admire a sight in a corner—a tapestry of Taiwan's history, try to imagine the sweat and tears that went behind the interaction of ethnic groups and nature. Every moment, keep in mind the sustenance that the land of Taiwan provides us.*Translator: Linguitronics
2024.05.15
Video | Platform for Arts Project
Case Profile of Blend - 2023 Ensemble Hall Jazz Music Series
Ensemble Hall is Yunlin County Shine Arts Foundation's chief venue for events. It is a platform that fosters mutual stimulation and respect among performers and audience members, as to enable two-way listening and deeper conversations. The Jazz Music Series has been implemented for two years. Centered on instrumental music, the project invites jazz pianists to serve as each concert's curator. A number of relevant educational activities are derived therefrom, such as lectures, workshops, artist residencies, and composition commissions.
2024.04.24
Video | Art Advances
Case Profile of “2022 DQ Creative Program by Our Theatre”
For many years, Our Theatre has been actively engaged in building up creative resources through the Farm of Plays project and developing talent through the actors’ experimental school. The DQ Creative Program was held for the first time in 2022. Two creators under the age of 30 in different creative fields were selected, and Our Theatre provided them with rehearsal space, funding, and creative mentors (a creative consultant, a joint creator, and an art administrator), thereby serving as an incubator for young creators’ initial conceptual experiments and creations! Yung-Chen Yeh and Yi-Ching Chang were selected for this program, and after eight months of development, they held two public performances in the Sinkagitso theatre in February 2023 to showcase the tangible results of their creative concepts.
2024.02.21
Video | Platform for Arts Project
Case Profile of Interdisciplinary Experimentation Collaborative Platform - Community Co-Creation Artistic and Cultural Sustainable Three-Year Project
The Interdisciplinary Experimentation Collaborative Platform of Nan-Yi Musical Theater is based in Fengshan, Kaohsiung. It offers support for the exchange, practice, creation, and performance/exhibition organization of artists of all sorts. A total of 21 interdisciplinary pieces have been created across these four years. The platform also acts as a matchmaker for arts professionals to enter communities and to link different local industries, fostering change in people's community life and culture. It has also aided artists to launch their personal brand and enhance recognition through creative output and creativity. The result is an artistic and cultural ecosystem that operates locally and develops sustainably, formed between industry, artists, the people, and the environment.
2024.02.07
Video | Art Advances
Case Profile of “Tengu Is Coming” by Sheng Ping Puppet Troupe”
The Sheng Ping Puppet Troupe is a troupe that is centered around blending the traditional and the innovative and diverse, thereby promoting the elevation and legacy of traditional puppet show culture. The production of “Tengu Is Coming” is based on the legend of the mysterious Tengu. The puppet troupe collaborated with professional dancers and Tai-Jih Percussion Group, a local percussion group in Yunlin, to transcend the classical framework of puppet show performances on stage. Instead, this production combines the elements of sounds, bodily movements, and traditional culture to create sparks where tradition meets modernity. By presenting classic dramatic performances in new ways, the audience can be brought into a brand-new and fantastic puppet journey!
2024.01.17
Video | Art Advances
Case Profile of “The Rat, Y2K x Jun-Yu Chen–2023”
The Rat is a collaborative project between the art group Y2K and the performance artist Jun-Yu Chen. It is a joint bio-hybrid creation, in which the artistic project was ultimately presented in the form of a performance. The performer’s vital signs are tracked to influence physiological changes, and through this the conflicts between the natural body and numerical data as well as between perception and expression are explored. The focus of the performance is not just on the performer himself, it also examines how data from the human body can be quantified and interpreted. How does the performance manifest this monitored life form? Are new ways of understanding a performance opened up when a hybrid installation is transformed into a performance? This project once again displaces performances and installation art, creating a debate that allows the performance artist and the hybrid artist to struggle against each other for control of the body’s functions.
2023.12.29
Video | Platform for Arts Project
Case Profile of Goodunderground Art Space's Contemporary Photography Professional Service Platform 3rd Year Operational Project
Founded in 2016, Goodunderground Art Space serves as a platform for local contemporary artistic experimentation, exchange, and learning. They promote photography art and bring professional photography resources to Hualien. This project expands on the Contemporary Photography Professional Service Platform Operational Project from two years ago. They organize exhibitions by photographers/artists, exhibitions of photography books, international artist residencies, workshops, lectures, weekend art lessons, creative symposiums, and group tours, among other activities. Continuing the focus on photography, they seek artists and professionals who use photography as a chief method for contemporary art production. The aim is to uphold photography professionalism while emphasizing observation and promotion of contemporary art, serving as a way for the general public to become educated in photography/art.
2023.11.24
Video | Platform for Arts Project
Case Profile of 2022 2nd Thinkers' Partner Project
Thinkers' Studio is an independent and private artistic and cultural platform in Taiwan. It has continuously organized the Thinkers' Partner Project to enable artists to have enough time and venues for discussion, attempting, learning, assimilation, and renewed creation in the preliminary creative stage. Through close and highly-flexible creative coaching, artists and collectives are provided with consulting and guidance in the preliminary creative stage, so they don't have to define their backdrop and consolidate their strategy alone in such period. They connect Taiwanese and foreign cultural and artistic professionals and organizations on behalf of project partners, accumulating a larger pool of soft resources and helping preliminary artistic attempts to develop into complete pieces. The project serves to build a bridge with the performing arts industry.
2023.09.27
Article | FOCUS
Light Hidden in the Cracks
"The wind blew her down a crack in the city. There are soil and dust inside the crack. Outside though, one has to endure rain and snow. She makes this tiny crack her home, laying down roots and shooting forth branches. The water of desire nourishes her. A flower then emerges through the crack." —From Desire, Taipei Prose Creation Project by Ping-Gui LiangThis group of women hide behind veils of shadow, only appearing faintly in the dim light, tending lonely souls lost in the darkness. Light the Night brought a large audience's attention to Japanese-style hostess clubs and projected people's fantasies about the adult service sector onto the TV screen. Surrounded by lavish settings and exquisitely dressed women, merry customers raise their cups as they indulge in make-believe love. Viewers also sink into the illusory and transient pleasure of hostess club culture.Harsh Reality Behind a Veil of NeonWearing dazzling outfits, some hostesses even adopt a "no touch" policy, confident in their looks and talents. Earning a high income by working only a few hours appears possible. In reality, most hostesses choose this job due to difficulties encountered in life or unfortunate events from the past. The documentary The Lost Days was shortlisted at the Women Make Waves International Film Festival. It relates the childhood of director Kawah Umei, the separation of her parents, and her relationship with her mother, who left by herself to work at a Japanese-style hostess club in Taipei. Perhaps it was nearly taboo to discuss the occupation of one's mother in society of the time. No one dared to touch on the topic. That's why at the age of 30, Kawah Umei began to use filmmaking as a way to dialogue with her former self and her mother, a kind of self-confessional journey.Most workers in the host and hostess entertainment industry are women. Nonetheless, there are still a few host clubs and gay bars, and drag shows have risen in popularity in recent years. Television presenter Chia-Chia Peng was invited to perform the role of the female protagonist Li-Ching in the musical The Last Night of Beauty Karaoke written by Jie Zhan. Despite the actor is biologically male, the script centers on a woman. Thanks to Peng's profound grasp of the female psyche, he manages to portray Li-Ching as a charming, gentle mama-san (a woman in charge of a hostess club) well-versed in the ways of the world. He also brings some comic relief and allure to the play. Li-Ching divorces her husband upon discovering he has an affair and sets out to the northern city of Keelung, where she works as a hostess to make a living. She eventually starts her own business, the Li-Ching Karaoke. As a woman, she acts as the emotional pillar of many people, casting away her loneliness to support her friends and customers. She is a kind and steadfast motherly figure. Even when complaining, her words might seem rude or vulgar at first, but are spoken in a nonchalant voice and concluded with a giggle.Desire, a Side Effect of Urban HistoryThe hostess clubs on Linsen North Road and teahouses in Wanhua District are the most well-known venues for adult services in modern-day Taipei. Li-Ling Yang grew up in Wanhua District, known historically as Bangka. Yang turned her memories from Bangka into the novel Cha-Cha-Cha of Lovely Flowers in Bangka (艋舺戀花恰恰恰). Fact and fiction dance together in this story of murder—who is that prostitute, the most mysterious and gorgeous in all of Bangka? As shrouds of mist clear up, grief and injury are revealed. History, power, and desire intertwine to build the novel's fantasy world, but this intricate web also tells the truth of Bangka's past.It was around the reign of the Daoguang Emperor in the Qing era that first Bangka and then Twatutia became the largest commercial hubs in northern Taiwan. As a matter of course, taverns and brothels came to abound in these areas. Geisha culture was imported from Japan to Taiwan in the Japanese colonial era, leading to the birth of Taiwanese-born geisha entertainers. The Korean war erupted soon after the retreat of the Republic of China's Nationalist government to Taiwan. Taiwan then signed a mutual assistance treaty with the United States and U.S. troops began to be stationed in Taiwan. Thanks to preferential treatment by local governments and the abundant financial resources available to U.S. soldiers, adult-rated clubs and bars sprouted up like weeds in Taipei. Fang-Yu Shih's Sedan Chairs, Ox Carts and Vespas: Four Centuries of Love in Taiwan traces the changes in romantic views across four centuries of Taiwan's history, from Dutch Formosa to the Internet era, including the evolution of prostitution in Taiwan.Women who provide sexual services have went by many names in the past, "yujos", "geishas", "comfort women", "attendants", "waitresses", "tea girls", "liquor house girls", "bar girls", "licensed sex workers", and so forth. Their identity and social position has also varied with each era. Artist Orlando Mengwen Huang has long been interested in gender equality studies. In her solo exhibition and research project Herstory under the flying flag, she explored the role of women who served their nation by offering their bodies, from the Japanese colonial era to the post-Cold War period in Taiwan. We might never know their real names; their pseudonyms are all that's left. Their trade was associated with moral dirtiness and lechery in the past. Their true identities and contributions have been forgotten by history despite their sacrifices for their country.Female Body as Political CapitalA survey across history will easily show us that subduing the female body has often been a means for the "other" to reach their goal, beyond the social or political sphere. Comfort women easily come to mind when discussing women's historical sexual exploitation. This was a form of sexual slavery instituted to provide Japanese soldiers with a sexual outlet. Most comfort women came from Japan or Japan's colonies across Asia. Inred Liang wrote the script The Dress of Queen Mary inspired on the Japanese comfort woman Yokohama Mary. Fictional and real-life Mary only wished to be a regular girl, a plain Jane who would marry and have children like every other woman. Never did she imagine that history would scar her for life. She would wear a white dress and puff her face with a thick layer of white every day, nonetheless, pining for her lover from the past. Silence was her means of resisting such cruel, cold-blooded reality.World War II also gave rise to an incident dubbed "Tokyo Rose": Japan hired female English-speaking radio broadcasters to make propaganda that would demoralize U.S. troops in the Pacific. In sweet, sultry voices, these women would narrate wartime incidents, tell stories, and play popular music, all to glorify the Japanese government. Ting-Jung Chen's solo exhibition Harmonielehre is based on this historical happening. The piece If She Is Not Sitting in the Room assembled popular songs sung by women in 1930-70 that served as political propaganda and turned them into an immersive visual and aural space. The Chinese title of the exhibition, "諧波失真" (xiebo shizhen), means "harmonic distortion" and refers to the physical phenomenon where audio waves are rendered inaccurately due to incomplete transformation of a signal in the process of sound amplification. The most astonishing thing is that such shortcomings and distortion make listeners feel a sense of warmth and ease when manifested in the vocalization of women, creating false contentment through alteration and deviation.Back to the Present to Contemplate the FutureTeahouses in Wanhua District were at the center of heated discussion during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. In June 2022, the last legal brothel in Taiwan, Tientienle, closed its doors due to waning business in face of the pandemic. Taiwan's sex industry can now be said to be entirely underground and illegal. Located in Datong District, Taipei City, Wenmenglou is a city-designated historic site with great historical significance to Taiwan's sex industry. It began operating as a museum in May of the same year. According to Reminiscence: 2021 Guidebook for Wenmenglou, Old Brothel and City-Designated Historic Site on Guisui Street, Wenmenglou was built in the 1930s during the Japanese colonial period and eventually became a bordello around 1941. It is most iconic for its role in the movement against the illegalization of sex work in 1997—it served as the base for those fighting to protect the rights of sex workers. Guisui Street, where Wenmenglou still stands today, used to house a large number of brothels. The recognition of Wenmenglou's historical value also shines a hope that in the future, widespread prejudice against sex and sex workers can be dispelled, thus promoting gender equality and sex education.Many traditional adult service venues have fallen prey to natural selection and perished in recent years. Yet this should not be misunderstood: sexual desire will not vanish alongside legal restrictions imposed. This type of behavior will continue to take place under the radar. Ping-Gui Liang's Desire, Taipei Prose Creation Project describes the five most popular divisions of Taiwan's sex industry from a second-person perspective. The writer takes readers into the dark alleys of the city from the perspective of a male customer and a procurer, not shying away from that dimmest of lights. The male protagonist in the story seeks information and contacts relevant people through social media sites and platforms. Business owners and sex workers have also developed unique online jargon in order to dodge law enforcement officers, and their workplaces have attack and defense strategies to deal with police searches. The forms of sex work evolve constantly with the times. What hasn't changed is its enduring position as something out of public sight, unable to be faced positively. The absence of clear labor laws in the sex industry also places workers at greater risk of unreasonable treatment and exploitation. Even if the law stipulates that prostitution is permitted in "special zones", implementation has been bumpy, to put it mildly.The fight for gender equality in present-day Taiwan is not a clamorous struggle as before. It seeks peaceful and rational communication instead. This is highlighted by our exploration of more complex modes of gender, sexual preference, and gender identity. It teaches us that our conceptions will very likely shift with the passing of time. People's way of satisfying their sexual desire is also transforming, yielding all sorts of new methods and tools, such as social media, dating apps, and so forth. These are already a matter of personal choice, an extension of one's free will, as we seek to maintain a balance between daily life, emotions, and desire. The differences between people sometimes give rise to stereotypes inadvertently. It cannot be helped. Our duty is to contemplate how to avoid the distortion of facts that leads to radical, prejudiced views, either in our day-to-day or inside the digital world. Understanding will enable us to accept the diversity and complexity of life in this world.Further Readings"Questioning Ideal and Reality Amidst Distortion and Deviation: Harmonielehre Ting Jung Chen Solo Exhibition", NCAF Online Magazinehttps://mag.ncafroc.org.tw/article_detail.html?id=297ef7227cc60ebf017cdebdbda50001A Cliché Play Tailor-Made for Actor Chia-Chia Peng—Revisiting Nostalgia in The Last Night of Beauty Karaoke, NCAF Online Magazinehttps://pareviews.ncafroc.org.tw/?p=74274*Translator: Linguitronics
2023.09.08
Article | CASE STUDY
From a Muggle in Documentary Making to An Experienced Fighter in International Pitching: A study on the NCAF’s Creative Documentary Film Project in the Case of XiXi
In the beginning of 2022, I received a message from the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) inviting me, along with other professionals, as observers on their grant project, the Creative Documentary Film Project, and asking us to write down our observations on each case as assigned from a different and non-institutionalized perspective reflecting on the artists and the ecosystem they inhabit. The invitation was certainly a rare and interesting opportunity for a writer like me, not only with an academic training in anthropology but a lasting curiosity about the production of documentary and filmmaking. Since long time ago, my work had been mostly about selecting films for festivals or writing film reviews, while the intersection between filmmakers and me only took place in the final stage of its production process or after its completion when the films were ready to be submitted to festivals. Consequently, I was less familiar with all the possible difficulties in its making. The mission to write about it thus becomes a precious practice which does not expect an one-sided analysis and observation but encourages a dialogue between the observers and documentary makers.  I was paired up with Fan WU, a documentary maker around my age. We had met before, and the first time was in a documentary workshop organized by Taiwan Women’s Film Association, where we were in different groups and working on different documentary subjects, so we did not have a chance to know each other more. After that, we took on different journeys in life and career – Wu went to Europe to study documentary making while I joined the teams of Taiwan International Documentary Festival and Taipei Film Festival as a film selector and critic. Although we both remained in the film circles, but certainly in different positions and indifferent stages of filmmaking. When Wu finished her studies and returned to Taiwan, I was about to move to Holland, and our paths crossed again in some casual occasion with our common friends. We had a brief conversation, asking about what happened in life and about the future plans which were still in a vague shape.  After that, I knew her mostly through her work, such as how she founded Svemirko Film with her graduate school friends, produced the documentary Last Days at Sea (2021) which I liked very much, wrote a solid article “Walking with the Unknown – A Realization on the Road from a Muggle in the Documentary World” for the NCAF Online Magazine, and many more. When she was not making documentaries, she was still doing documentary-related job, and her concerns extended to include how we could improve the environment for documentary making. Perhaps it was her sociologist background which had broadened her vision to investigate the whole production ecosystem, while her experience in Europe had given her access to introducing international resources to Taiwanese documentary making.  The fact is: most of the Taiwanese documentary makers are the lone warrior in their own battlefield, taking on multiple roles from production to public screening without the necessary teamwork especially in its breeding stage, the most crucial among all. Their sources of funds are often limited, mainly from the government support, and strictly regulated to avoid the overlap between the Ministry of Culture, the NCAF, Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) and Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation (PTS Foundation) in one single project — not to mention these four major institutions in terms of the government financial support have their respective rules. In an immature industry in lack of investment or sponsorship from the private sectors (or they may have a specific interest when it comes to investing a documentary), independent documentary makers are not left with many choices when looking for sufficient resources and support domestically. What matters the most is the lack of experience sharing – on the one hand, there are not enough platforms of openness, transparency and stability for documentary makers to exchange their ideas; on the other hand, the TV and filmmaking industry in today’s Taiwan pressures the documentary makers to learn to survive before really thinking about how to find a balance between the commissioned commercial documentary projects and their own creations. None of it is easy.  XiXi, the documentary feature project in production, is such an adventure of the director WU, starting from her experience as a Taiwanese documentary maker to challenge the limitations of the domestic documentary production system, to extend the international documentary-making network and to connect with the resources of the global documentary scenes. My observations, meanwhile, started when WU finished most of the shooting and focused on her another trip to France in the summer of 2022 for some pick-ups, and the article was completed when she was still editing the documentary.    The main subject in the documentary is an improvisation artist from China, the free and untamed XiXi, who travels from one European city to another like a nomad, performing improvisationally in the streets. The documentary continues to depict how she deals with a failed transnational marriage, the loss of visitation rights, her immigrant status and many other real-life problems, while it also touches upon the unsolved family issue with her mom and its lingering impact on her relationship with her daughter Nina like a Karma passed down. As the director as well as a friend being part of XiXi’s life journey, WU saw XiXi, a female artist from the same generation, as her “window to freedom” – it was in 2018, when WU finished her studies and returned to Taiwan, trying to set free from the conflict between her real life and the dream in art/filmmaking. XiXi had a soul of an artist living fully in the moment with total abandon, which was something WU had been longing for but did not have the courage to follow.   However, when WU started the documentary project and used it as an “excuse” to pursue a life of freedom in France, she found XiXi suffocated by the bitter reality.  XiXi is a documentary on the Chinese improvisation artist XiXi and how her untamed artistic soul has a clash with the social reality. (Courtesy of Fan WU) From the first draft we have of XiXi, we not only see the story of the nomad artist but also how WU, another artist with the same defiance and abandon running in her blood, tries to find an answer. In her eyes, XiXi is the embodiment of both her dream and fear, but just like that the Moon has two sides, and its light and dark sides coexist to manifest each other. Through her documentary project, WU seems to join in the journey of XiXi to search for the answers for all the troubles in life.  Since 2018, WU has presented her documentary project XiXi to different international film festival pitch events, forums and workshops to physically experience and experiment how an independent documentary maker can find a way to deal with the limitations in practice. She finds the strength from the global documentary-making communities as she finds her own voice, making it clear that the act of documentary making may create a space to more extensively connect the individuals scattered around the world.  Fortunately, WU has relatively more experience in international pitch events and workshops with her XiXi than most of the Taiwanese documentaries, including Docs Port Incheon Asian Documentary Project Market in Korea, Doc Edge Kolkata in India,  the workshop AsiaDoc with an emphasis on documentary script-writing, the incubative CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator for female documentary makers, DOK Leipzig Co-pro Market in Germany for co-production, DOCS-IN-PROGRESS (Cannes Doc) in France, the art-in-residence workshop at Yamagata Documentary Dojo in Japan, and Rotterdam Lab in the Netherlands again in early 2023. Other pitch events in Taiwan include Taipei Film Academy–Filmmakers Workshop organized by Taipei Film Commission where she attended as a film producer and the editing workshop under the NCAF’s Documentary Partnership Project where she participated as the director of XiXi. Fan WU in the editing workshop under the NCAF’s Documentary Partnership Project. For WU, all these domestic or international pitch events and workshops provided different kinds of support to the production of XiXi in their respective ways. The exchange with the professionals in the industry brought new and exciting ideas to the content, contributed to the establishment of a functional work model and network, optimized the résumé of the project to make it more attractive, as it might also lead to the practical financial support. It is how you find resources and discover different possibilities for your project.  However, it does not mean that if you attend more international pitch events, you will get better reward. Quite on the contrary, it can be very time-consuming as it requires a lot of preparation from submitting your application to really attending it, and you often receive a huge amount of unfiltered advice about your project. If you fail to find a balance between external opinions and internal needs, you may easily suffer a blow to your confidence and get confused about which direction you should be going. Therefore, the documentary makers need to figure out what they really need in each stage and which pitch events or workshops provide it, asking questions about the mentor list (what network can you develop from it?), format (does it have a more intensive or looser schedule? Who are the other participants you expect to see in the same event?), and its role in the industry (what it emphasizes? Is it about script-writing, pitch and development, editing, post-production, or market fit?), which can help you to make a useful decision to select the right events.  Up till 2019, WU had accumulated a significant amount of footage for XiXi, including the video diary made by XiXi of her relationship with the daughter taken since 2011 apart from the shots of XiXi by WU. At that point, she had already made the decision to turn XiXi’s story into a documentary feature and brought the project to several international pitch events, but it was a battle “out of her league,” said WU, for that she was not sure about the best way of its storytelling. Therefore, AsiaDoc Creative Documentary Storytelling Workshop could be what she needed, as it certainly did. At AsiaDoc, WU went through the process of organization and composition together with the guest mentors from teasing out the materials she had, developing a timeline, and to constructing a possible storyline built on the materials. The footage for XiXi includes the video diary made by XiXi since 2011 of her relationship with the daughter Nina and their growth. (Courtesy of Fan WU)     Her experience at AsiaDoc greatly inspired her to reidentify her position in the film, such as the relation between the camera and the subject, between the documentary and its director, or her relationship with XiXi. In the initial stage of her shooting, she refused to be filmed and took on the role as an objective outsider instead to document XiXi’s life, but the mentors at AsiaDoc asked the crucial question concerning the problematiques of her work: “why do you always put XiXi and her daugher on the frontier (of shooting) whereas you cowardly hide behind a camera? You do have your questions in mind and try to investigate by making a documentary, right?” In documentary making, the camera is not only the “fly on the wall” while the director has to futher think about their relatioship with the story and subject (person), asking questions such as “why they story needs me to tell it.” From this perspective, documentary indeed requires a dramaturgical training and thinking. After AsiaDoc, WU began to conceive several scenes and invited XiXi to join in the process together, where their interaction in front of the camera was filmed. She also tried to script her first-person narration as a voice-over of the video. In spite of her lack of courage/intention to make such atemtps before, they did work very well when she gave it a try as if finding the missing piece to make the documentary more alive. Stepping out of the comfort zone was not as difficult as she had expected – with a smile on her face, WU shared with us this recent realization and her newfound courage which she had gradually learned in pitch events and workshops. From a director hiding behind the camera, she now also becomes the subject in front of it. XiXi is not just about XiXi’s story, but a journey of both WU and XiXi to explore the meaning of life and to make inquiries.  From the first draft we have of XiXi, the documentary is not just about the story of XiXi but how WU, another artist of an untamed spirit, makes inquiries. (Courtesy of Fan WU) International pitch events and workshops are not only the places to creatively inspire documentary makers and to give advice on developing a production model, they are also the impotant means to look for possible international collaboration and financial support. Apart from prive investment and sponsorship, the sources of funds for documentary making in Taiwan mainly comes from the four major public institutions — the Ministry of Culture, the NCAF, TAICCA, and PTS Foundation – with strict regulations that there cannot be an overlap to fund the same project, while each institution has its own rules and the amount of money is never enough. Reasonably, WU has her eye on international funds to make her XiXi happen.  The problem is, being a Taiwanese usually means that you will not have many opportunities to apply for the funding and grants in Europe (see “Walking with the Unknown – A Realization on the Road from a Muggle in the Documentary World” by WU), while being an emerging director without a convincing résumé also makes it more difficult, if not impossible, to directly jump into the market and seek investors. If you are thinking about international co-production, you should make sure that a certain percentage of your funding comes from domestic resources, otherwise you may get yourself into trouble with the negotiation with international producers who usually have deeper pockets. The political situation of Taiwan is another issue since some countries and regions do not include Taiwanese artists in their “co-production treaty” concerning the collaboration between local and international artists. With the Filipino producer joining in the co-production of XiXi, WU was looking for another producer from Europe to make its financial structure more stable. Despite her effort from 2019 to 2021, French producers seemed to show little interest in her story taking place in France, while many other European producers backed out after learning the fact that several major film funds in continental Europe (such as IDFA Bertha Fund, Hubert Bals Fund and World Cinema Fund) were not applicable to Taiwanese directors. Eventually, it was a Korean producer whom WU had met at Docs Port Incheon completing the team and stabilizing the financial structure. As a result, XiXi would have its post-production in Korea, and team welcomed the film composer and colourist recommended by the Korean producer. By doing so, WU also expanded her collaboration network to work with different people.   The Importance of Documentary-Making CommunityLooking back on the international pitch events and workshops WU has participated in with her project XiXi, WU does not only have practical reward in production but also in the establishment of artist communities. Her experience in CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator in 2020, a newly formed workshop centering on the training and development of female documentary makers, proves the significance of having fellow artists as companions with mutual support. Documentary making is a long and lonely journey, while most of the documentary makers fight alone in the battlefield built on their materials, gradually and unavoidably struggling with confusion and self-questioning, not to mention the possible blind spots in one’s thinking. It is the advantage of communities, like a safety valve to function and to get the artists out of the crisis when needed. CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator divides its courses into three stages, in which you can share your project with mentors and colleagues (fellow artists in the same annually-held workshop) throughout the year and mutually push the discussion on each project forward.   In documentary making, the camera is not just the “fly on the wall,” while the director has to further think about their relationship with the story and subject (person), asking questions such as “why they story needs me to tell it.” (Courtesy of Fan WU) The experience in Yamagata Documentary Dojo also provided WU a safe and undisturbed environment for documentary making. Although it switched to online activity in 2022 due to the pandemic, the organizer’s careful arrangement still provided a positive space for WU to receive useful feedbacks for editing, where she was at. The guest mentors at Yamagata Documentary Dojo mostly had a background in editing, so they could effectively help the production team to deal with their materials and gave practical advice on the content. The composition (both the members and mentors) and atmosphere of the workshop were also key factors to create a positive environment, as it avoided a teacher-student hierarchy and tried to encourage all kinds of dialogue between different production teams, rather than close-door group discussion or mass lecturing. Yamagata Documentary Dojo develops a delicate small-scale community and offers a safe and open space for all participants to exchange ideas.  In 2021, WU was selected by the NCAF in its Documentary Partnership Project, where she worked with the assigned editor Lei Chen Ching, having her project to be “taken care of” and her messy ideas put in order. The purpose of the partnership project was to provide an environment for documentary makers to return to the essentials, which were the materials, footage, subject (person) and story, rather than being disturbed by the marketing concerns, which should have come much later. Meanwhile, her experience in DOCS-IN-PROGRESS in 2021 was a different example. It did not really bring inspiration for the content but increased the visibility of XiXi in the market since the project was selected in Marché du film de Cannes.  Director Fan WU attending the online discussion of the NCAF’s Documentary Partnership Project.Film Proposal Writing Has Its Unique Universal FormatWU has once mentioned that “film proposal writing has a unique universal format in the industry.” With all these international pitch events and workshops she has attended with her project XiXi, and the numerous funds and grants she has applied for, she laughed and said that she did not even remember how many proposals she had to write. For WU, proposal writing is a useful process to restructure your thoughts and work. On the one hand, she really depends on writing to develop her cinematic language; on the other hand, proposal writing demands a kind of structure that can facilitate the creative process to prioritize the materials and to give a functional narrative in documentary making. If the documentary makers can give their project a clear outline, and to help others to better imagine “something” which is still in its incubation stage, they will have more chances to target the specific support they need when they pitch. It is like a preproduction on paper before the creative idea is made into a movie.   Such a strategy, admittedly, is the result of today’s TV and film production mechanism, but if the artists need its resources, it is necessary to learn the mindset of the industry, to know how it operates, and to speak its language. XiXi is in the editing stage now, which started in the spring of 2022 as WU and the Columbian editor Anna, her graduate school friend, worked remotely. WU first selected the most important materials based on her judgment, translated the subtitles, and sent the footage to Anna for editing, followed by their daily update and discussion via emails. Usually, since they were in different time zones, WU would send the notes to Anna and receive her reply on the next day. Their remote collaboration had continued in this way for a while, until last summer when WU took a trip to France for more footage of XiXi and soon went to Columbia to work with Anna closely. At that time, the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund came in as an immediate help which they urgently needed it for the editing of XiXi. Speaking of which, WU recommends “Sundance Documentary Fund Proposal Checklist” to any documentary maker troubled by how to write a good proposal, where they can find all the information a proposal requires, concerning the sections it should include, as well as the detailed description and the appropriate length of each section. The structure it suggests is a great help to documentary makers to continuously polish their project.   The following year is a crucial one to XiXi.  WU plans to attend a couple of rough-cut workshops which may help her to bring the cinema language closer to her ideal, as a preparation for the post-production stage. If everything goes well, she will submit XiXi to international film festivals next year. As she spoke about the long journey she had with XiXi, WU admitted that she would not have made it by herself if without the support of her team. To have a documentary community is very important, especially when documentary makers usually work by themselves, so she hopes that the case of  XiXi can offer her fellow Taiwanese artists a different strategy to make it work, with a confidence that a non-issue-oriented project like the one she has, which touches upon very personal experiences and thus risks of being rejected by the mainstream, still has the possibility to grow and develop. This is what the story of WU and XiXi tries to explore and make us to see – can we have such an unrestrained freedom and courage to live as we are and create as we live in spite of the unescapable social reality? The project of XiXi, tenacious as it is, claims a collective effort to open up a space for arts and its multiple different faces. *Translator: Siraya Pai
2023.08.11