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Taipei 101 - Bringing the World to Taipei
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The slogan on the Taipei 101 website reads ‘Bringing Taipei to the World’. It should read the other way round.
Since Taiwan came into existence, it has fought an ongoing struggle for autonomy and global recognition. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present you with the world’s biggest erection. For a second, or at least until someone builds a bigger building, the whole world turns to you Taipei. Whenever the question hits the lips: ‘which is the tallest building in the world?’ you Taipei, and you Taiwan, rejected by the world, are the object of the mind’s eye. Taiwanese consciousness didn’t exist until the arrival of the Japanese in 1895. The totalitarian colonisers predated television as the first significant shared experience for the mix of Australasian and Chinese tribes that had previously ‘shared’ the island. The mid twentieth century saw the island handed over to the republican Chinese government. What seemed like a small addition to the Chinese empire soon became a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of republican government officials and soldiers. The republican government fleeing from the hot stepping communists took lock, stock and barrel across the Taiwanese Straits and set up home in Taiwan. When the Chinese army takes refuge on your island you can forgive them a little arrogance, but with the Communists in a strong position, the republican army wasn’t going anywhere. Refuge became residence and the army turned this little island into the seat of the government for the Republic of China. The Republic claimed ownership of what the Communists called the People’s Republic. The People’s Republic made an identical claim on Taiwan. In the seventies, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China both pressed the United Nations to accept just one China. The United Nations looked studiously at the People’s Republic, turned to the Republic, laughed and looked to the door. Strange fact: despite its proximity to the Chinese mainland, Taiwan was untouched by the Chinese until the seventeenth Century, actually coming under the provenance of the Dutch before the Chinese had anything to do with it. Another strange fact: Of course, the idea of tiny little Republic of China laying claim to the People's Republic is so chokingly laughable, that is provokes a near death experience. However, thanks to the foresight of the Republican Army, Taiwan does boast China’s most important artifacts and national art treasure, which they took with them when they fled to the island during the forties. The booty is housed in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
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 Threaded into the Taiwanese male psyche is a territorial ownership over the Taiwanese vagina.
"Asian girls will often have one night stands with western men. I dislike that. I used to know this forty-five year old pot belly. He'd say to me Chinese girls are so easy to fuck. He'd always be getting off with Chinese girls and each time the girl would be so young and good looking. Western boys are portrayed as being passionate. Girls like to have a boyfriend from western culture. I hate it. I'm not jealous of western boys. It’s just that the Taiwanese girls don’t appreciate their own culture. They trade their bodies for the prestige of being with a westerner. I can’t agree on the use of the body in this way - these bodies are so lovely - maybe it’s jealousy in a way. I don’t think the westerner really appreciates the experience." The Taiwanese man sees the female form – sees the beauty – and the potential for a pure existence. The American penis is dirty and defiled. The Taiwanese princess buys into the American dream – sells herself for the prestige – for a taste of power. "If the girl who gets off with the westerner is good looking then I’ll feel she’s a slut – that means she goes for a bigger dick to satisfy her ego or self-esteem. It’s like you are really poor – but each time you go out you want to put on some expensive stuff to show people you are superior – but this stuff does not match the situation. The western guy is an achievement to show her friends that she’s got something – or you may call this guy the girl’s glory. I would feel jealous because everyone’s jealous about a guy who’s going out with a girl who is a pretty lady – it's human nature." The jealousy that Taiwanese males feel towards the westerner seems to be part of a wider cultural humiliation. The economic largesse of the United States and Japan has squeezed Taiwan of any self-identity and soaked it in colonial paraphernalia, symbols and systems. Taiwanese people are bought up to seek and lust after a material life whose design, evolution and style is dependent upon the coloniser. To be seen next to the coloniser, to take the coloniser’s penis is to become closer to the coloniser, and closer to the essence that one has been bought up to seek. "Too many Caucasians come to Taiwan. They’ve got no job or education in their own country and they try to fool us, saying they have graduated from college and they tell the girls they are very rich. There are many beautiful arrogant Chinese girls - they feel proud when they stand next to a Caucasian - they think they're superior. They get this way of thinking from the movies. Western people feel confident enough to ask any question to anyone here. If Asian people are abroad they are likely to be afraid to ask. Our American and British clients think that night markets are dirty. They only go to the best restaurants. When we go abroad we suffer discrimination. When I went to buy a tube ticket in London, the guy at the counter couldn’t understand me. He said 'It's too loud outside - go to the end of the queue. Go and line up again.' Once in France, I took my parents to the airport, we took a bus to get out of a hotel to go downtown - even the Black French guy I spoke to was arrogant and didn’t want to speak to me. We have taught ourselves that English speaking people are superior to ourselves. We feel superior to people from the Phillipines because they are the maids in our home. I don’t know what it is that makes us like westerners. The movies tell us that they have a good life. We are educated to be humble and shy." The western boys love it. They rejoice in it. "Caucasian male foreigners are appreciated, even sought after, and you will see many Taiwanese female/foreign male relationships. Slim, blonde-haired, blue-eyed males will have to beat the girls off with sticks. Taiwanese women prefer tall, thin, men but a stocky guy like me never had any trouble dating here." (See Turton, 2006). It’s rare to see western girls with Taiwanese boys. The male needs to dominate. The male cannot dominate a female coloniser. Similarly the female will not seek an unconfident male. "Unless Taiwanese boys are able to convince the girls that they have a high status in their country, or can convince the girls of their true love, they won’t accept them. The development of a country reflects on the status of the boy and how he is perceived by the girl." "It’s quite rare to see an Asian boy with a western girl. The latter tend to be more independent. I'm not sure why. If I saw a western girl with an Asian boy I would assume that the boy has been educated in a western country and has a strong personality." So the Taiwanese boy feels humiliated next to the American man. The American man, whose tanks and planes roll into Taiwan at will, whose symbols and values dominate the Taiwanese cityscape, and whose penis is bigger. All of a sudden each Taiwanese man feels left out in the cold and feels like he can no longer satisfy a woman. The only option left is to become the woman. Each Taiwanese man becomes obsessed with the American’s penis. It’s constantly on his mind. He wants to be satisfied by it and to satisfy with it. Some Taiwanese men take a stand. The Taiwanese man who lives for the moment – who dares to use violence – who grows bigger than history – and tries to crush his penis anxiety. "Shortly after we'd danced, some men told him that he had to go i.e. leave the club. Some men took him outside and before he knew it there were three men beating him up with a baseball bat and baton. They hit him in the face, on his back, stomach, legs and knees. They told the American that a woman he'd danced with in the club was pressing charges of sexual harrassment; that she had gone crying to security claiming that he'd grabbed her breast. (*Not that that could justify roughing someone up!) It was all mostly blur for him. At some point the police picked the American up and he made it to a police station where he reported the incident and made a statement with the help of a Taiwanese friend who translated for him. He also had to go to a hospital for treatment of his injuries. He was in pretty bad shape, his glasses were broken, face messed up, body bruised, head and body aching." (See Feli’s Blog - Feli wants to make clear that the Taiwanese men mentioned were making false accusations to beat the American up. The American did not sexually harass the woman or any other woman.) But isn’t this whole debate, this whole way of seeing things wrapped up in a sad male’s view of the world? A view of the world which sees women reduced to vaginas and vaginas locked up in little cages? Isn’t this the worldview of a man who imprisons himself as he seeks to imprison women – doesn’t everyone who wants to dominate, fear the influence of others – even if that influence is not really there? Is the Taiwanese man a sad little man? "Men always say that Chinese girls prefer western men. But personally speaking this is not the case for me. To be honest I've never met a Chinese girl who professed a preference for western men. But if there are Chinese girls who do think like that, I imagine it’s because it’s an opportunity for them to speak English and it might open up the prospect of living in a different country. When one of my friends got married to a western boy, another said she is vain and likes the west more than the east." "I think, generally, Taiwanese men are quite chauvinist - but they also admire western men - and they have quite low confidence in relation to western men. This is related to history. Taiwanese people were second class people under the Japanese and the KMT. When the US came over to support the KMT, the same happened and people thought that American men were generally better. For this reason, Taiwanese guys generally have low confidence. When Taiwanese men can't get a girl, and when the girl prefers a westerner, they will call the girl vain - and they'll look down on the girl. They assume the girl is looking for a one night stand. I think in their heart of hearts they would like to have a one night stand too."
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The Black Hole - Being Reeled in By Mafia #1 |
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 One day something great will happen – in fact it’s already happening now.
“In 2000, during the Taiwan Straits Crisis - one of my Taiwanese friends was proposed to by her American boyfriend. He said ‘if China attacked how could I protect you?’ So they got married fast. It’s a threat which hangs in the air - you can’t see or touch it. Like SARS - how many people do you meet who have got SARS? Very few - the rumour spreads and it creates fear. Taiwanese society cannot resist being frightened. People use the fear to make people group together and to form more powerful units.” “The threat of a Chinese invasion doesn’t stress me out. The most stressful period came after the first presidential election (which was won by the KMT) - because during this time the Chinese government fired missiles (the missiles went over Taiwan, over Taipei, and into the Ilan coast). We felt very stressed on the eve of the election. I spent all my money. At that time the Chinese government did not recognise the Taiwanese president. There would be no bigger event than us declaring independence. Now the Chinese government does not mind so much that we have elections, instead it makes comments about who it thinks we should elect.” And what of the bravery of the independently minded Taiwanese? Truth, history and will, will wilt pathetically in the heat of the monster’s rage. "It would happen in two or three days and then it would be over. They'd use missiles and take over the airports and government. In 1996 there was a joke that the morning after they had invaded you would hear the mainland anthem on the radio - and that everyone would be hanging a mainland Chinese flag outside their window to show their loyalty and friendliness to the Chinese government." "China thinks we belong to it. I think we are all Chinese. I hope Taiwan becomes like Hong Kong, a special economic trading zone, with a separate political system." A few puritans will take a stand – and be decimated. But world – when Taipei falls – that will not be the end – it will just be the beginning. First we take Taiwan then we take New York. China’s peaceful rise.
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Buying Identities on Borrowed Money |
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 The film Rebels of the Neon God refers to a new generation drowning in the imported values of the modern metropolis and American style individualism, and hence in conflict with the old values, the old Gods. (Cinema Matters)
"Nowadays seventy per cent of the population are consumer orientated. But it wasn’t always like that. In the old days, people tended to resist this kind of a lifestyle. They worked so hard to make a living through farming or low quality manufacturing. They hated the rich people who had luxury goods. As long as they had enough money to raise their children they were happy." "I read a book which said you have to feel you belong to some group - in this society one is persuaded that one wants to join the rich people - not because they are the best group or because they have the nicest things - but because they dominate the surroundings. The advertisements around you are constantly telling you this is the group to join. The rich people present the good side of life, e.g. when you watch TV programmes and adverts it gives the impression of rich people living happy lives, e.g. car adverts; so we aspire to be like them." Taiwanese society has been unified by the global capitalist marketing message. Join us. Join the rich. You can never spend too much. You can never show us how much you want to be us. And who from this new generation, finding themselves extricated from traditional constraints, and by the same token lacking a sense of purpose and value, can resist this pervasive message? "The advertisements are able to influence people because Taiwanese people don’t think independently. The advertisements tell them the products they sell are symbols of success. Furthermore, the technical classes have a lot of spare cash to spend. They can save all the money they need within five to ten years - the rest they spend on luxury goods." "I want to be different. Even though I resist I care about how other people think about me. I buy goods because they're high quality, because if you have a 200 year old brand it represents good quality. For example, the other day I bought an Adidas cap. I might feel happy when I buy something such as this, but it doesn’t last that long." And the great thing is that ‘money is free!’ which means we can all be richer and richer and richer until. Each purchase brings us closer to heaven, brings us closer to the realisation that we have fucked ourselves. "Nowadays, younger people spend all their money. It is much easier to borrow money through the ATM. Some companies advertise their card saying there is zero interest on whatever you borrow. However, they will introduce astronomical withdrawal and handling fees, which are usually calculated as a percentage of your withdrawal, and will make sure the minimum possible withdrawal is quite high. Added to this is the fact that there are too many things that young people want to get. The marketing has changed. For example one cash card showed a person riding on a Harley Davidson, this dream came too late - so the message was catch the moment - you can do this earlier." Do people resist? Can people resist Big Brother, the big marketing brother, this colonisation of the public space through which people relate? Can people resist free money and all its curses? "Some highly educated people try to fight for their freedom inside. They read more things about philosophy, religion and nature." "This kind of advertisement doesn’t work on me because I suffered from borrowing before. I had credit card debts and spent a lot of effort trying to clear them. Credit card debts cause suffering but people learn from it. I understand the reality now. But the students don’t know what their future will be like. The government has to do something to educate young people. Older people had a different approach because they knew their limits. Personally, I have to give a proportion of my money to my parents, who save it for me, and I spend the rest."
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Queens Becoming Dogs: We Don't Speak Taiwanese |
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"I feel I am Taiwanese when I go abroad but I am sometimes not so sure when I’m in Taiwan. I don’t speak Taiwanese. A minority of people cannot speak Taiwanese. I used to work as a journalist and when people spoke it, I didn’t understand. Also when you go to the shop, and they hear I don’t speak it, they say 'you drink Taiwanese water, eat Taiwanese rice, why can't you speak Taiwanese?’" Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries there was a mass migration of people from the mainland Chinese southern province of Fujian to Taiwan. The language of the migrant population, Fujianese, evolved and became what is known today as Taiwanese. Language is, as anyone who’s been abroad will know, a key determinant of whether you can identify with the dominant group in an area. It’s all about noises. Do you make the same noises as me? Do your noises refer to the same things? Do you have the same intonation and cadence when you make your noises? In 1949, the Chinese government army, fleeing from the Communists, arrived in Taiwan with their Mandarin tongue. This tongue is significantly different from Taiwanese. The Chinese government, which installed itself as the dictatorial power on the island, banned the use of Taiwanese in schools and limited its use in the mass media. The sons and daughters of the Chinese government, schooled in the noises of Mandarin, knew nothing of the Taiwanese noises. "Why can't you speak Taiwanese?" "The KMT (the ruling party) banned it. They saw the Taiwanese language as a lower class language. When I was young in elementary school - teachers banned us from speaking Taiwanese - my friends didn’t use it at school - my mother married my father whose family is very big and which has its own dialect (from Hunan) - because they speak this dialect they all spoke in Mandarin. She didn’t speak Taiwanese because married women live with and speak the language of their father's family." Taiwanese was and is considered as a lower-class and masculine language, something women needed to avoid if they don't want to be identified as a tomboy (Baran, 2006). However, when a king or coloniser from a minority group, which spends most of its time trying to impose a common language on the people, meets its end, the question of language is rather like building a matchstick tower and seeing if it will hold. When Taiwan evolved from dictatorship to democracy, and the DPP, the main political representative of the Taiwanese speaking population came to power, the predominance of Mandarin was undone. The noises of the old days returned. "When I was doing my BA ten years ago - Taiwan's political situation opened up. The leading political party is now the DPP which advocates for and actively promotes the Taiwanese identity. Indeed the party’s ultimate aim is to declare independence for Taiwan. At the same time the KMT had to adopt Taiwanese culture to get votes, so their candidates started to speak Taiwanese and adopt a Taiwanese identity. Taiwanese members of the KMT, who had previously backed the censorship of the Taiwanese language, started to change their colours. Under democracy and the rule of the DPP, people have found a new found confidence to express their Taiwanese identity. This has been accompanied by hatred towards those who came with the KMT in the 1950s, and those who could not speak Taiwanese. Some of my classmates would call me a Chinese Dog or Pig - this is part of the new Taiwanese political ideology. There are various reasons for resentment towards the KMT and their ancestors. The Chinese came over to control the island - and after the bloodshed of 22/8 people called my father 'old tarot' (tarot is a root vegetable), which means old Chinese person. Whenever the discussion amongst Taiwanese people switches to politics, I find my identity being challenged. I think I'm Taiwanese, but other people don’t, and sometimes I get quite confused." All of a sudden those who felt they had been oppressed, take their turn to oppress. Pain, hurt and a wanting to injure seep from hearts. You fucked us big time, didn’t you? We ought to kick your asses. What did you do to protect us? Nothing, you simply sat there in your government jobs, taking home the dough and making a comfortable living by being part of the machinery that kept us down. "In 2003, there was a controversy when parts of the civil service examination for judges were written in characters used only in Taiwanese. After strong objections, these questions were not used in scoring. As with the official-language controversy, objections to the use of Taiwanese came not only from Mainlander groups, but also Hakka and aborigines." (See Encylopedia, Labor Law Talk, 2006). The language issue is complex. As well as Mandarin and Taiwanese, there are a host of other languages spoken by other tribes who were present on the island long before the Chinese influx began in the seventeenth Century. Will there ever be a dominant language in Taiwan (before it gets either taken over or destroyed by China)? What does a daughter of a KMT father do? "I think I should learn Taiwanese, and sometimes I try to do it by listening to Taiwanese television shows. However whilst supporters of the DPP advocate Taiwanese culture, and look down on you if you don’t speak the language, the DPP does not offer free classes. People tell me you should learn it by yourself. For this reason, I resist, because I don’t like people forcing me to do it."
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Organic is Putting it Politely: Finding an Adjective for Taiwanese Urban Sprawl |
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Taiwanese architecture has been described as organic. That's a pretty good description. Taiwanese towns are dirty, messy, unordered places. Huge populations in crowded cities result in a need to maximise small spaces and overpriced real estate. There's no time for central planning - instead each family creates whatever is necessary for their survival and development. The result is a mishmash of dirty old rickety houses and flats. This shot shows a home with a gigantic addition on the roof. I’m not sure, but this one might be for use as a birdhouse. Apparently, it’s illegal to put these on the tops of houses, though I estimate at least a 1/3 of all homes in Taiwan have them, so it’s obvious enforcement of building regulations isn’t a high priority here. (See Antipixel, 2002). Houses look like sheds or garages. For the untrained eye, it’s sometimes difficult to work out whether any given building is a mechanic's shop front or someone's front room. Taipei attains the decrepit ambience of a city under siege, composed of fatigued concrete, grimy walls, peeling wallpaper and hazy skies filled with fumes - by day the city is crumbling and congested, at night seedy and desperate. Fluoresecent lights, endless rain and decaying architecture are its visual motifs. (Cinema Matters, 2006). Here are some pictures taken on an afternoon stroll around the small southern Taiwan town of Taliao. Prosaic, uninteresting, ugly, relentlessly working class and dull, Taliao could be almost any small town on the plain south of Taichung.. (See Turton, 2005). But Taiwan and Taipei in particular bustles. There are motorbikes everywhere, carrying couples, the occasional family and countless individuals, for ten to twenty minutes, disconnected from the rest of the world - with just them, a sea of machinery, pollution, recollections, anxieties and a destination in their mind. And if the motorbikes aren’t moving, then they’re parked on the pavements, making walking nigh on impossible.
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Finding New Aches and Pains: Sacrificing the Ultimate Sacrifice |
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Taiwan pop sensation Jay Chou is being investigated on suspicion of faking a spinal ailment to avoid serving his obligatory two years of military service, a prosecutor said on Friday. If convicted of faking a health report to avoid military service, Chou could face a maximum five years in jail. (See Xiahuanet News, 2006). With the military might of China drooling saliva all over your naked body, you’d want to grab whatever you could to defend yourself – no matter how futile. Taiwan does it with a conscripted army which is half a million strong, some five percent of the male population. A spell in the army traditionally marked the passage from boyhood into manhood. I did two years military service (but its getting shorter now). People of my generation think military service is a moral obligation. We have been educated to believe that due to the sacrifices others have made, we have been able to lead a peaceful happy life. Therefore, when the time comes, we should make a sacrifice too. The older Taiwanese generations think a spell in the armed forces is a good chance to turn a boy into a man. When you're in the military you meet many people from different backgrounds and with different personalities. You have to learn to cope with all this. You live independently and you have to learn to get help from your friends. Finally, you often get bored, so you have a lot of time to think about your future. Like weather to the English, one’s army experience is a conversational starter for Taiwanese ‘men’. Most people who did military didn’t enjoy it but they always talk about 'their time in the army'. It helps start conversations. It’s a common link. For those that didn’t serve - they would feel slightly embarrassed because it would imply they had some kind of disability. Whilst it’s not such an issue these days, in the old days companies would review your CV to see if you had served in the army to see if you had a disability. However, with a move from the more traditional and honour based culture to a culture based on consumerism and fast living, its only ‘suckers’ who end up in the army. Army means two years down the drain. The younger generation want to avoid going into the army, because they want to spend more time earning money. I'm not happy that I spent two years of my life in the Taiwanese army. It was a waste of my time doing something that I don’t like to do. I couldn’t play music. I play basketball with a group of friends every Sunday. Eighty percent of us are not in the army - we have all tried to find a problem stopping us from going in. It’s not just us. These days, parents don’t want their children going into the army because they see it as a waste of two years. When you go into the army you do administrative and simple manual tasks - maybe only five percent will actually receive any kind of military training. The problem with my generation is that they don’t think they'll receive a decent experience. If I could get two years real military experience where I could learn to protect myself, for example, I would go.
Relevant Links The Family Mind: How to Think in Groups |
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Chinese and Taiwanese culture has long favoured the cowardly value of loyalty over fairness and honesty. The prime loyalty is to the family. The Taiwanese mind is not an individual mind, it is a family mind. People work and live - and find solace in their family. Taiwanese people sometimes feel overburdened by their parents. Some will look for jobs in different towns and cities, citing spurious reasons for having to leave the nest. But it doesn’t matter where they are – Taipei, Kaohsiung, mainland China, Japan – they share a family mind. They think as a family - and see themselves as family actors. They are not, as many are in Britain, actors operating in an unstable but highly flexible system of relationships. The family mind gives Taiwanese people a sense of security and strength - that many western people do not have. People need to belong to something or someone - even if it is just one person. Personal responsibility and thinking for oneself creates an anxiety, stress and uncertainty that some Taiwanese people seem not to face. The Ethnopolitical mind As the individual is nurtured into the family mind so the family mind is enmeshed into the ethno-political mind. In 1949 the Chinese government army, fleeing from the Communists during the civil war, installed itself in Taiwan, an island that it had ruled since 1945. This was the beginning of the Mainlander-Islander Rivalry. On February 28th 1947 the indigenous populations of Taiwan protested against the KMT government. The government responded with a military crackdown, which lasted for months. The mainland army cut into the indigenous population like a knife through butter. According to the Taipei Times (2003) some 30,000 perished. "I saw military police armed with machine guns and deployed on top of the police headquarters building. They started to fire shots at the crowd. I can still remember the smoke coming out of the machine guns and the panic of the crowd." (See Taipei Times, 2003). Others see it differently, the local crowds were unruly, violent and threatening the stability of the country. Those behind the protests were drug dealers and fraudsters. The event split the country down ethnic lines. With each group being opposed to the other, and with little space for dialogue or compromise, under the military rule of the imposing army, loyalty to the family unit meant loyalty to the ethno-political mind of the family. Each family unit passed down its own set of stories, events, emotions, perspectives and concerns. The family bond helped recreate the conditions for a divided society. My grandfather fought against the communists with the KMT - he was a leader and won lots of medals. He also had his picture taken with the President of the KMT. In my grandfather's eyes, 228 was the fault of the Taiwanese. He thought the general of the army did the right thing to crack down on the smugglers. Families, mostly descendants of the Chinese military, side with the KMT, whilst the indigenous Taiwanese population sides with the DPP, who gained power in 2000. Three or four times a week, Lee visits victims' families across the nation to show them how the DPP-led government identifies with their pain and how it cares about the loss of their loved ones. (Taipei Times, 2003). The party fans the fire of hatred towards people who cannot speak Taiwanese. When Lee Jian went to China to talk to the President, of course he was doing it to enhance his personal standings (he wants to be the President and it does him no harm to be stood next to the President of China) but in the end he was doing something constructive and positive. However, the DPP says he has betrayed Taiwan and they called him a pig. The DPP followers don’t think about whether these claims are true - they are fuelled by aggression and want to die for their party. At one time, one of the members of the Taiwanese Association Party - which has strong links with the DPP - told all the Chinese to go back to China. One of the TAP candidates, during recent elections said to the electorate, 'if I can be a law maker then I will send the Chinese back to China'. One bureaucrat working in Kaohsiung, at the time of a flood, said, 'we had a flood because there are too many Chinese people living here'. Only the bold and independent minded try to transgress the ethno-political boundaries of their family’s mind. I don’t really support the KMT - my father was angry because he said the KMT raised me up. During the elections people will ask you who you will vote for. My family tried to push me to vote for the KMT. When I was in university my father said to me you were polluted by those people in the university. My father's relatives would phone me and discuss with me who I was going to vote for. Some of my father's relatives serve in the army - when we meet they try to tell me 'the truth'. I didn’t want to talk to them on the phone about politics because it creates tension. My father thinks that as his daughter, I should adopt his opinion. When he was young, my father would sleep and eat with my grandfather and other soldiers. My father was born in China too. I don’t think he really considered how the KMT were treating others. He just appreciated how they treated him - he wanted to belong to them.
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Where is the Taiwanese Public Energy? |
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According to Tsai and other new wave filmmakers there is nothing else to do in 'modern Taiwan' except eat, shit, sleep and fuck - a deep-rooted ambivalence and pessimism. (Cinema Matters, 2006) Taipei is a grey dirty city – there’s lots going on – but it is far too orderly. There are no places of frenzy. No places which give you a sense of anticipation. Sometimes I feel like there must be some secret places were people spend their money. I read somewhere that many Taiwanese people spend their spare money on travelling. Tsai Ming’s latest film The Hole also connotes an absence at the heart of Taiwanese life - a fundamental lack of communication and humanity that renders nationalist ideals of wealth, progress and unity absurd. "This is my thought: Modern man does not know how to communicate, indeed, they don't know how to learn how to communicate ... the biggest hope of my characters is that there will be someone who will extend a hand to them or offer them a glass of water." -- Tsai Ming-Liang in the Production Notes to The Hole. (Cinema Matters, 2006). Taiwanese society revolves around the family unit. Families plan their lives together - taking each other into consideration. The business families plan the careers and social ascent of their children - so that the family can amass as much social resource and look down on as many other families as possible, and to consume more and more. This creates what seems like a social vacuum in the public sphere. Taiwanese people don’t seem full of aggression and excitement. Let us contrast this for a second with the nervous energy in Britain - everybody is waiting for the next revolution. In Taiwan, the strength of the family unit – ‘family thought’ controls the individual impulse - and calms the people. The motorcycle becomes fetishised for its potential for movement - the feeling it imparts to the riders that they are going somewhere, even if its aimlessly. They seek escape from the oppressive metropolis - a desolate architectural nightmare where the nights seem endless and consumerism has become as monotonous as everything else. For Taipei's youth only on a scooter does there seem to be any hope, a possibility for growth, for escape. (Cinema Matters, 2006).
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Modesty, a Great Value |
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Whilst the Taiwanese business classes may love western fashion brands, in general, Taiwanese people dress modestly. Even the urban trendies don’t dress extravagantly or try to show off their figures. The cars, whilst expensive are rarely flashy. Instead they are stately and grand.
The Taiwanese people love cars - partly because that's the only way to get around but also because they function as discrete status symbols - and Taiwanese people love being able to reflect back to themselves and others how succesful they have been. Taiwanese women are generally smaller than European women, often quite pretty, and whilst often slender, have less bumps and smaller assets. It’s quite hard to find a physical form that would excite you. There's a slim girl whose wearing a thin grey top, neck bent with mobile wedged between right ear and shoulder, with a small pink bag from what is possibly a designer shop (apparently everyone in Taiwan wants a Louis Vutton bag - genuine or fake - it doesn’t matter). The girl walks in small steps, watching out for the puddles and traffic and talking on the phone at the same time.
Relevant Links On the Periphery: Politics, Alcohol and Anger |
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 Taiwan’s history began not 5,000 years ago on the mainland but with the Australasian tribes that already inhabited Taiwan when Chinese migrants began arriving 400 years ago, said the president. (CIDCM, 2004). Before the Han Chinese immigration began in the mid-1600s, Taiwan was inhabited by people belonging to the Austrolesian race. Taiwan's aborigines are believed to have come from the Malay archipelago in different waves about 6,000 years ago at the earliest and less than 1,000 years ago at the latest. (Vost) One Taiwanese person told me that Taiwanese people do not like to speak about politics in public, they are not used to it. Well this may be the Taipei classes. In Lanyu, one inhabitant, who was angry from the moment he walked through the door of this old kitchen - turned around and told me with some gusto that 'the Taiwanese President gave nothing to the inhabitants of the island - save some beautiful names'. He dropped a piece of fish on the floor and stamped on it several times with his foot. Small islands with a couple of hundred defenceless people are a great place to store nuclear waste. The Taiwanese government have been storing nuclear waster on Lanyu since 1980. According to campaigners, the leakage of nuclear waste from over 30,000 rusty barrels that are stored on the island is thought to be the main cause of both a high cancer death rate and the birth of over 50 physically handicapped children.
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Published - 2006 |
