Culture
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| Girl and Dolls is a 1995 oil on canvas by Wu Hao 吳帘, a painter and woodcut artist renowned for his colorful and nostalgic renditions of the Taiwan countryside. |
Indigenous Arts
Taiwan is enriched by the cultures of 11 indigenous peoples--the Ami 阿美族, Atayal 泰雅族, Bunun 布農族, Kavalan 噶瑪蘭族, Paiwan 排灣族, Puyuma 卑南族, Rukai 魯凱族, Saisiyat 賽夏族, Thao 邵族, Tao 達悟族, and Tsou 鄒族. Arts such as woodcarving, weaving, basketry, as well as ceremonial dances and songs, have long played a central role in indigenous life, with each people developing their own distinct artistic style.
Recent years have seen a growing interest in developing the indigenous arts. Researchers and tribal members have both been involved in a number of projects, such as recording the songs and dances of the indigenous peoples. The government is also making efforts to promote tribal culture. In the last few years, the Council for Cultural Affairs' annual National Festival of Culture and Arts 中華民國全國文藝季 has included performances, exhibitions, and seminars on indigenous arts.
In 1994, the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines 順益臺灣原住民博物館 was established in Taipei as the first museum solely dedicated to Taiwan's native cultures. In addition to its private collection of artifacts, costumes, musical instruments, household utensils, and weapons, the museum provides extensive information on aboriginal history, lifestyles, social relationships, religious beliefs, and customs.
Another museum introducing indigenous civilization is the National Museum of Prehistory 國立臺灣史前博物館, situated adjacent to the Puyuma archeological site in Taitung County. It displays Neolithic artifacts related to the natural history and prehistory of Taiwan, as well as its Austronesian-speaking people, who were closely connected to the island's aboriginal population.
The collections at the Shung Ye Museum, the National Taiwan Museum 國立臺灣博物館, the museum of Academia Sinica's Institute of Ethnology 中央研究院民族學研究所博物館, the National Museum of Prehistory, and the National Museum of Natural Science 國立自然科學博物館 in Taichung all provide good introductions to the artistic traditions of various indigenous peoples.
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| The stylized figures and patterns of this artwork in Sandimen, Pingtung County, is an excellent example of traditional Paiwan art. (Courtesy of Shih Cheng-yang, Tourism Bureau) |
Woodcarving
The Paiwan and Rukai are especially known for their woodcarvings. The homes of important community members, for example, are decorated with relief carvings of stylized human figures, zigzag or triangular patterns, and the hundred-pacer snake with its menacing diamond-shaped head. The snake is particularly prominent in Paiwan and Rukai art, being revered as the incarnation of tribal ancestors.
Woodcarving skills are also highly developed among the Tao, who live primarily on Orchid Island off the southern coast of Taiwan. The Tao are best known for their sturdy hand-built canoes, which can carry ten or more people and are made without nails or glue. Decorated in delicately carved relief designs, the canoes feature a concentric sun-like motif and stylized human figures accented with spiral formations. The canoes are then painted white, red, and black, before undergoing an elaborate launching ceremony.
Weaving
Another art form central to aboriginal culture is weaving, which is especially well-developed among the Atayal. Using simple back-strap looms, Atayal women create rectilinear patterns of squares, diamonds, and triangles, using mostly red, blue, black, and white. Some designs also incorporate strings of thin shell beads or rows of small bronze bells.
Architecture
The indigenous peoples also have unique architectural traditions. Two of the best places to view these traditions are at the privately run Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village 九族文化村 located near Sun Moon Lake 日月潭 in central Taiwan, and the Taiwan Aboriginal Culture Park 臺灣原住民文化園區 in Pingtung County. Although commercialized and intended for tourists, both have sections with careful reproductions of traditional homes of the different aboriginal peoples. Among the most interesting are the Rukai houses, which are traditionally made of stacked slate, and the Tao houses, which are situated partly underground as protection against typhoons.
Dance and Music
Dance and music are perhaps the richest legacies of Taiwan's native peoples. Communal dances, performed at regular ceremonies and rituals, consist mostly of simple but harmonious walking and foot-stomping movements, often performed in unison and accompanied by melodic choruses. The sound of small bells or other metal ornaments attached to either the dancers' colorful costumes or their ankle bracelets add to the celebratory atmosphere.
Indigenous dance rituals usually go on for several days and are performed in connection with specific customs or legends. The Ilisin spring festival of the Ami, for example, involves the annual rite of passage for members of various age groups. The three-day Pastaai ceremony of the Saisiyat (the Ceremony of the Dwarfs 矮人祭), held every other year in the tenth lunar month, is performed to appease the legendary race of dwarfs who are said to have taught the Saisiyat people farming. The Tao perform rituals every year to mark the launching of new boats and to celebrate the season of the flying fish, one of their staple foods. The latter ritual includes an impressive "hair dance," in which women swing their long hair back and forth.
Even more than dance, indigenous music is intimately connected to nearly every aspect of tribal life, from daily chores to religious rites. The songs are divided into four groups, according to theme: harvests, daily work, love, and tribal legends.
There are four types of indigenous musical instruments: drums, simple stringed instruments, woodwind instruments (such as flutes), and other percussion instruments (rattles, wooden mortars and pestles). One interesting instrument is a kind of Jew's harp used by the Atayal, which consists of a piece of bamboo with one or more small metal strips that are played by moving a thread back and forth with the mouth. Another unique instrument is the Paiwan's unique double-piped nose flute.
Many indigenous peoples have been involved in re-enacting their dance and song rituals on stage. The Taipei National University of the Arts 國立臺北藝術大學, working in conjunction with the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica, has already recorded dances of several tribes in Labanotation (an internationally recognized way of depicting dance movements on paper) and has reconstructed these for stage performances. Some private groups, including the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre Foundation 財團法人雲門舞集文教基金會, have produced high-quality cassettes and CD recordings of authentic indigenous singing.
One of the most important developments was the creation of the Formosa Aboriginal Dance Troupe 原舞者 in 1991. The troupe is made up of young people from several different tribes who work directly with elder tribe members to learn the dances and songs of a particular ritual, often doing their fieldwork in conjunction with qualified ethnologists. The troupe has undertaken several overseas tours, including performances in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Folk Arts
While handicrafts such as paper cutting, knotting, and dough sculpture continue to be fairly common in Taiwan, other apprentice-oriented folk arts are struggling to survive. Traditional performing arts--such as puppetry, dragon and lion dances, folk dance, folk opera, and traditional acrobatics--have a tough time competing with TV, movies, and other modern-day activities.
Still, many folk arts have benefited from a revival of interest in the past two decades. In 1980, the Ministry of Education sponsored a survey of the island's folk arts. The survey discovered 70 types of crafts and 56 types of traditional performing arts still being practiced by some 4,000 artists. In 1981, the Council for Cultural Affairs 行政院文化建設委員會 (CCA) was set up to give equal attention to fine arts and folk arts. Since then, it has sponsored numerous folk arts festivals, publications, and other art projects.
In recent years, the Council for Cultural Affairs has vigorously promoted international cultural exchanges and the rejuvenation of local culture. It has helped various counties and cities throughout Taiwan hold international cultural and artistic events in the hope that these activities will take root in communities and become local features. The more important international activities include:
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Preserving Folk Arts
The Cultural Heritage Preservation Law 文化資產保存法, passed in 1982, committed the government to folk arts preservation and promotion. The Folk Art Heritage Awards 民族藝術薪傳獎 were set up in 1985 to honor outstanding folk art masters. The prestigious title of Folk Arts Master 重要民族藝術師, established in 1989, provides leading woodcarvers, puppeteers, traditional musicians, and other craftspeople and performers with a monthly stipend and helps them recruit and subsidize apprentices and training programs to pass on their skills. Other government efforts for preserving folk arts include recording performances on videotape and transcribing dialogues of traditional puppet plays.
One of the most extensive efforts to promote folk arts has been the CCA's National Festival of Culture and Arts. In recent years, the annual festival has focused primarily on traditional arts, working in conjunction with private organizations and county cultural centers to organize folk art exhibitions and performances around the island. Festival events have included everything from paper umbrellas and lanterns, to Hakka yodeling songs, drum dances, and carnival skits. Such activities as temple preservation seminars, tea-picking festivals, and folk operas have also been on the festival agenda.
Private organizations such as the Chinese Folk Art Foundation 中華民俗藝術基金會 have also been promoting traditional crafts and performing arts both at home and abroad. Other private efforts include the Taiwan Folk Arts Museum 臺灣民俗北投文物館 in Taipei, which houses an extensive collection of folk arts, Chinese clothing, and embroidery; and the Zuoyang Art Workshop 左羊藝術工作坊 in Lugang 鹿港, which holds exhibits to increase public appreciation of the island's folk arts.
To further revive and innovate folk arts, the CCA founded the National Center for Traditional Arts 國立傳統藝術中心 (NCTA) in Ilan in 2002. The NCTA promotes, exhibits, and researches various fields of traditional arts, such as traditional drama, music, crafts, dance, and folk acrobatics. It also sponsors several national seminars and works on projects to preserve folk arts.
Temple Arts
Not only have temples been a traditional venue for many folk art displays and performances--particularly lantern-making competitions, puppet shows, and folk operas--but some of the buildings themselves are a repository of some of the most important folk crafts on the island. Examples of traditional stone-carving, colorful ceramic figurines (known as jian nian 剪黏), and embroidered banners of legendary scenes are just some of the many arts that can be viewed at a well-preserved temple.
The most predominant form of temple craftsmanship, however, is woodcarving. From the entranceway to the back altar, nearly every beam, lintel, and other wooden support structure is covered with elaborate carvings of legendary figures and stories from history, literature, and folklore. Also common are symbolic animals, including birds, dragons, and other mythical creatures. The subject matter chosen is often not directly related to the religious function of the temple but tends to promote traditional ethical values such as loyalty, chastity, filial piety, and patriotism.
Like most traditional crafts, exquisite hand-carvings are in danger of being replaced by simpler, machine-tooled decorations. Woodcarving, as well as other temple crafts, have gotten a boost, however, through several temple reconstruction projects. One of the most significant has been the 200-year-old Zushih Temple 祖師廟 in Sansia 三峽, which has been undergoing extensive renovations for 50 years and has employed some of the island's top craftspeople.
Among those who have worked on the Zushih Temple was Huang Guei-li 黃龜理, who died in 1996 at the age of 94. A woodcarver for 75 years and a national Folk Arts Master, he created thousands of carvings for more than 80 temples around the island, with many of his works depicting complex battle scenes from history or literature.
Another woodcarver well known for his temple figurines is Li Song-lin 李松林, who died in 1999 at the age of 93. His works can be seen at the Zushih Temple as well as the Tianhou Temple 天后宮 in Lugang. Among the younger generation of carvers is Chen Jheng-syong 陳正雄, who has worked on the Zushih reconstruction for nearly two decades.
Woodblock Printing
Another folk art that has benefited from renewed interest is woodblock printing 版畫, which is used to make colorful Lunar New Year hangings. Traditional woodcut prints in Taiwan are of a simple, rural style. Common images depicted in such prints include the God of Wealth 財神, the Kitchen God 灶神, and Door Gods 門神, who often appear in the form of elaborately dressed and fierce-looking generals. These images are usually printed on red or orange paper in prominent black outlines and then filled in with several colors.
Among the handful of woodcut artists left is Pan Yuan-shih 潘元石, who has been a key figure in passing on the art form to children, university students, and teachers. Exhibitions and annual competitions sponsored by the CCA also helped to keep the art of Lunar New Year printmaking alive. These events promote both traditional and modern methods--including lithography, silkscreening, and etching--as well as a wider variety of subject matter.
Puppetry
Three styles of puppetry are common in Taiwan--glove puppets 布袋戲, shadow puppets 皮影戲, and marionettes 傀儡戲. In glove puppetry, the stage is covered with intricate carvings that are painted gold, resembling the entrance to a traditional temple. The elaborate setting is ideal for presenting the finely embroidered costumes, exquisite headdresses, and delicately carved faces of the puppets, which stand nearly a foot high. Shadow puppets, which stand one to two feet tall, are expertly cut out of leather, then engraved, dyed, and painted in bright colors. With joints to allow movement, the puppet characters are pressed against a white screen lit from behind, thus creating a colorful and lively performance for audiences. Marionette puppets, about two feet high and manipulated by 11 to 14 strings, are usually presented in front of a simple backdrop. Many of the stories used in puppet shows are adapted from classical literature or ancient legends. Some popular examples are The Tale of the White Serpent 白蛇傳 and Journey to the West 西遊記. Traditional puppet performances are always accompanied by live music.
In the hands of several masters, puppetry in Taiwan developed its own distinct style. This is especially true of glove puppetry. One of the most popular was the late Lee Tien-lu 李天祿, whose life was immortalized in Hou Hsiao-hsien's 侯孝賢 award-winning film The Puppetmaster 戲夢人生 (1993). Lee, a national Folk Arts Master, first became famous in the 1950s and 1960s for his serial dramas based on kung fu novels. He was especially popular for his innovative martial arts sequences, acrobatic stunts, and use of modern slang mixed with classical Chinese. Along with his two sons, Lee helped set up two children's puppet troupes, the Wei Wan Jan 微宛然 and the Cheau Wan Jan 巧宛然, both of which have been highly praised. In addition, Lee's own troupe, I Wan Jan 亦宛然, performed throughout Asia, the United States, and Europe, winning awards at puppetry festivals in New York and France. The puppet master passed away in 1998 at the age of 90.
Another key figure in glove puppetry is Syu Wang 許王, whose Siao Si Yuan 小西園 troupe has toured China, Japan, Canada, and the United States. Syu keeps a busy local schedule, performing about twice a month, and he is often invited by the Chinese Folk Art Foundation to perform at temples and other venues around Taiwan.
Two more acknowledged masters are Huang Hai-tai 黃海岱, whose melodramatic tales of ancient swordsmen full of action-filled battle scenes are highlighted by elegant and highly literary dialogue, and his son, Huang Jyun-syong 黃俊雄, who was at the forefront of the 1960s trend to modernize puppet theater for television. The young Huang, using his father's chivalry repertoire, has added popular music, fantastic lighting, and other visual effects to create jin guang 金光, or golden light puppetry. The Huangs have a cable TV channel primarily devoted to puppet shows.
The less common forms of shadow and marionette puppetry have had a much harder time surviving than glove puppetry. Among the more prominent representatives of shadow puppetry still performing today is the family of national Folk Arts Master Jhang De-cheng 張德成, who died in 1996. His son, Jhang Fu-guo 張榑國, represents the sixth generation of puppeteer to carry on the family troupe. Another shadow puppeteer Syu Fu-neng 許福能, whose group Fu Sing Ge 復興閣皮影劇團 has earned two Folk Art Heritage Awards and has toured in Asia, Europe, and North America, has been highly active in his efforts to pass on the art, regularly giving lessons and demonstrations to students around the island.
Painting
Only a limited amount of traditional Chinese painting was practiced in 18th- and 19th-century Taiwan. Works produced during this time were mostly amateur paintings of landscapes or flowers by scholars or government officials that would have little influence on later artistic developments.
Western-style Oil Painting and Japanese Era Impressionism
During the Japanese occupation (1895-1945), painters such as Chen Cheng-bo 陳澄波, Li Shih-ciao 李石樵, Li Mei-shu 李梅樹, and Yang San-lang 楊三郎 studied Western oil painting in Japan, mainly at the Tokyo Fine Arts Institute, where they learned fixed perspective and a naturalistic rendering of light and shadow. Strongly influenced by French Impressionism (filtered through Japan), these artists were eager to capture and depict the flavor and hues of the Taiwan landscape. Thus, their subject matter often centered on common, daily scenes of the island's villages, farms, and rural areas. These oil painters had an important influence on Taiwan's artistic developments, as many of them became influential teachers and leading figures in art circles. They also dominated the two most important annual exhibitions at the time, the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition 臺灣美術展覽會 and the Taiyang Arts Show 臺陽美展. Through their influence, the Taiwan impressionists ensured the importance of Western-style painting in the development of Taiwan art.
The works of this group became known as nativist art 鄉土藝術, which also had a parallel development in literature. Characterized by a conscious desire to depict images that evoked Taiwan's unique identity, nativist art had a long-lasting influence. It would surface again in the 1970s, in both art and literature, and subsequently in music and film.
1950s: Traditional Ink Painting
While many of the nativist impressionists were reaching their prime, official backing of traditional ink painters such as Huang Jyun-bi 黃君璧 and Fu Jhuan-fu 傅狷夫 resulted in their genre of painting replacing Western styles at official art exhibitions, competitions and in school curricula in the early 1950s.
The most important figure to emerge from this group of artists was Chang Ta-chien 張大千, who went far beyond the conventional precepts of ink painting. He made a significant contribution to the art world with his more than 200 detailed copies of the ancient Buddhist murals in China's Dunhuang Caves 敦煌石窟, which he painted in the early 1940s. Chang's mature paintings, which earned international recognition, were marked by his unique splash-ink technique. Using broad strokes and deliberate blotches of color--particularly deep greens and blues--he created powerful landscapes that were often monumental in size.
1960s: Abstract Art
By the late 1950s and early 1960s, many younger artists were beginning to feel disillusioned with traditional painting, but were unable to identify with the Japanese-trained impressionists. Social changes of the post-war era were begging for a new vehicle of expression. These younger artists were drawn to contemporary Western trends, especially abstract art. They banded together in private art groups, the most prominent of which were the Eastern Art Group 東方畫會 and the Fifth Moon Group 五月畫會, both formed in the mid-1950s. The most influential of the Taiwan abstract art pioneers was Li Jhong-sheng 李仲生. Once established, some of the more prominent artists of this generation sought to find a synthesis between modern abstraction and traditional painting. Liou Guo-song 劉國松 and Jhuang Jhe 莊哲, for example, sought to create a new, modern form of landscape art.
By the late 1960s, artists were working in a much greater variety of modernist styles as more Western movements filtered into Taiwan. American trends, such as pop art, minimalism, and optical art, all had their local followers. European trends, such as surrealism and especially dada art, also found avid supporters. Many modernist painters of the 1960s immigrated to the United States and Europe in order to fully develop their Western-oriented art skills.
1970s: New Nativist Art
Artists in the late 1960s and 1970s began rejecting the idolization of Western-style art in search of something that was more in touch with their own environment and culture. What emerged was a new nativist movement in Taiwan art.
This new movement found its expression most among those who had been trained in Western-style oil painting and those with backgrounds in traditional ink painting. A number of artists who had left Taiwan to find inspiration in America or Europe returned at this time. Among this group was Si De-jin 席德進, who gave up his earlier devotion to abstraction and in 1966 began sketching and painting local scenery and architecture, exploring the island's folk art traditions. His change in direction had significant influence on younger artists of the time.
Another influential artist of this time was Wu Hao 吳昊 whose folk-like woodblock prints were often colorful and nostalgic renditions of the Taiwan countryside. At the same time, Zeng Shan-si 鄭善禧 provided a new direction to traditional ink painting. He focused on local landscape scenes, seeking a more colorful and down-to-earth vitality. In the calligraphic inscriptions on his works, he replaced classical poetic lines with vernacular descriptions.
Important inspiration was also found in the work of "native" artists like Ju Ming 朱銘 (see section on Sculpture) and Hong Tong 洪通. The latter had no training as a painter, but possessed a rich imagination nurtured on Taiwanese folk traditions. His intriguing, childlike paintings, full of colorful patterns and simplistic figures and animals, became the talk of the art world.
The National Culture and Arts Foundation 財團法人國家文化藝術基金會 is a non-profit organization that provides a locale for cultural-artistic endeavors, encourages cultural-artistic work, and improves cultural-artistic levels. The foundation also grants cultural awards to honor outstanding artists. The 2002 winners for the National Award for Arts 國家文藝獎 were Chen Chien-wu 陳千武 in literature, Siao Cin 蕭勤 in the fine arts, and Huang Hai-tai and Lin Hwai-min 林懷民 in the performing arts. |
Contemporary Trends
During the 1980s and 1990s, artists displayed a much greater variety of styles and subject matter than previously.
The rising of a Taiwan consciousness was an important starting point for the influential 101 Modern Art Group 一○一現代藝術群 founded in 1982. These artists often expressed their sense of local identity with symbolic or metaphorical images. Wu Tian-jhang 吳天章 and Yang Mao-lin 楊茂林, for example, filled their canvases with primitive-looking images that often suggested social events. Often working in monumental scale with a harsh black and white palette, Wu has produced works commemorating the February 28 Incident 二二八事件 and commented on other events and figures from Taiwan's past. By comparison, Yang's Made in Taiwan 臺灣製造 series presents a quieter juxtaposition of subjects native to the island, such as sweet potatoes, sea shells, images of Taiwan's aboriginal peoples, and references to the 17th-century Dutch occupation of Taiwan. His approach presents a more subtle vision of Taiwan history and society.
Other painters have departed from tradition not only in their brushstrokes but in their subject matter. Lo Ching 羅青, for example, in his Palm Tree Boulevard 棕櫚大道, replaces the standard pine or willow trees with palm trees, and mountains or waterfalls with an asphalt road. In his inscriptions, he replaces traditional metaphors with modern-day references. Lo and other ink painters have also embraced the exploration of a Taiwan consciousness, drawing much of their inspiration from local reality.
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| The world-famous sculptor Ju Ming blends modern abstraction with traditional woodcarving in his Living World Series, now on display in the Juming Museum located just north of Taipei. |
Plastic Art
Sculpture
Before the 1920s, temple and folk sculpture were the only sculptural forms thriving in Taiwan, and it was not until the 1970s that sculpture was widely accepted as a fine-art genre.
Taiwan's first fine-art sculptor was Huang Tu-shuei 黃土水, born in 1906. Like many painters of his generation, he studied Western-style techniques at the Tokyo Fine Arts Institute. His most celebrated works are of water buffaloes, animals that symbolize the heart of the Taiwan countryside. The most renowned sculptor after Huang was Chen Sia-yu 陳夏雨, who was also trained in Japan and returned to Taiwan after World War II to create realistic portraits and figures, often of women in pensive poses.
The tide of Western-oriented abstraction that swept through the local art world in the 1960s produced the first Taiwan sculptor to gain worldwide attention. Yuyu Yang (also known as Yang Ying-fong 楊英風), who died in 1997, was most famous for his stainless steel sculptures, which often converted traditional symbols like the phoenix and dragon into fluid abstract forms. His works, which were sometimes monumental in size, have been erected in cities around the world. His East West Gate 東西門 (1973) stands on Wall Street in Manhattan, and the 23-foot Advent of the Phoenix 鳳凰來儀 (1970) can be found in Osaka. In 1996, Yang held a major retrospective of his works in England at the invitation of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.
The back-to-roots movement of the 1970s (see section on Painting) is exemplified by Ju Ming, who was initially trained as a folk sculptor but later studied with Yuyu Yang. Ju was initially admired for his rustic, simple figures carved from wood, especially his monumental Tai Chi Series 太極系列. In recent years, he has explored a variety of materials, including painted bronze and rolled stainless steel sheets, creating abstract figures of athletes, ballerinas, and people in everyday poses. Like Yuyu Yang, Ju has exhibited worldwide, including Hong Kong, England, and New York.
Ceramics
Taiwan is also known for its high-quality ceramic reproduction, an industry that got its start in the late 1940s. Several talented figures, such as Lin De-wun 林德文 and Cai Siao-fang 蔡曉芳, became known for their skill at imitating ancient porcelain. Today, there are a number of kilns in the north-central city of Miaoli 苗栗 and in Yingge 鶯歌鎮, a small town southwest of Taipei, that are known worldwide for their ceramics. In the early 1950s, several ceramists, including primarily Lin Bao-jia 林葆家, Wu Rang-nong 吳讓農, and Wang Siou-gong 王修功, made their first efforts to develop Taiwan's ceramics into a contemporary art form. These men began their careers by working in ceramics factories, helping to revive the industry after its decline during the Japanese occupation. Eventually, they broke away to pursue their own creative ideas and to establish teaching studios. Although they remained within the traditional framework of functional ceramics, making vases, bowls, and pots, their works represented a creative venture into unusual shapes and experimental glaze effects.
It was not until the late 1960s that creative ceramists began to gain widespread recognition, thanks in large part to exhibitions at the National Museum of History 國立歷史博物館, which continues to promote the art form. In 1968, the museum held the island's first major solo ceramics show, featuring Wu Rang-nong. In the following decade, ceramic exhibitions at private galleries gradually became more common. A key figure during this era was Ciou Huan-tang 邱煥堂, who studied ceramics in Hawaii and returned to Taiwan to introduce the contemporary ideas he had learned abroad. Ceramist Sun Chao 孫超 also gained recognition during this time for his crystalline glazes 結晶釉. After a career in the National Palace Museum, Sun began applying his experiments with ancient glazing techniques to his own work. In recent years, he has moved from making decorative crystal patterns on vases and bowls to large, flat glaze "paintings" that combine Chinese ink landscapes with abstract expressionism.
After 1981, ceramic art quickly came into its own, boosted by the 1983 opening of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum 臺北市立美術館, which included ceramics in its opening show. In 1986, the National Museum of History held its first biennial ceramic show. The Chinese Ceramics Association 中華民國陶藝協會 was formed in 1992, and the following year held its first festival, which featured indoor and outdoor exhibitions, demonstrations, and lectures by prominent ceramic artists. Taiwan's first ceramics museum, the Yingko (Yingge) Ceramics Museum 鶯歌陶瓷博物館, opened in 2000. It presents the latest developments in Taiwan's ceramics and promotes cultural exchanges between local and overseas ceramic artists.
Seal Carving
Carving name chops, or Chinese seals, with names or other calligraphic inscriptions was once a necessary skill alongside painting and calligraphy for any well-rounded literati artist. Today, machine-carved name chops are commonly used for most business transactions, and only a handful of artists specialize in the art of engraving name chops by hand. Among them are Wang Bei-yue 王北岳, who teaches seal carving at the art department of National Taiwan Normal University 國立臺灣師範大學, and from the younger generation, Huang Ming-siou 黃明修, who was recognized in the 1994 Provincial Art Contest for his work. Name chops are typically made of wood, jade, or soft precious stones, such as tian huang 田黃, or "field yellow." The body of the chop may be a plain rectangle, or it may be sculpted into a lion, dragon, or other symbolic image. Besides their use in business transactions, name chops are also stamped on traditional paintings and calligraphy works, both to identify the artist and to add an aesthetic touch.
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| A piece of public art on display outside the National Center for Traditional Arts creatively incorporates the center's own logo into its design. |
Public Art
In 1992, the Statute on Encouraging and Rewarding Cultural and Art Enterprises 文化藝術獎助條例 began a new era in the development of Taiwan's public art. Article 9 of the statute stipulates that public buildings must set up artworks and beautify their premises at a cost equivalent to no less than 1 percent of their construction costs, and owners will be rewarded if their public art expenditures exceed this requirement. In accordance with this regulation, the Public Art Establishment Measures 公共藝術設置辦法 were implemented in 1998.
The Taipei City Government sponsors an annual Public Art Festival. It recently completed a public art survey in Taipei and has implemented a comprehensive management plan for the 800-plus artworks currently on display throughout the city.
Museums and the Art Market
Art Museums
Taiwan's best-known museum is the National Palace Museum 國立故宮博物院 in Taipei, which is recognized as having the world's best collection of Chinese art, including ancient bronze castings, calligraphy, scroll paintings, porcelains, jade, and rare books. The museum's current collection numbers over 640,000 items, a collection so large that only about 1 percent can be accommodated for display at any one time, while the rest is kept in storage.
The National Museum of History 國立歷史博物館, also located in Taipei, is best known for its impressive collection of ancient bronzes, pottery, and ceramic burial figurines. The museum regularly exhibits the works of major artists of the 20th century.
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum 臺北市立美術館 has been a major catalyst for the development of modern art. It features many local artists and important foreign exhibitions. The museum has also been commissioned to promote exhibits for the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennial since 1995.
The Taipei Institute of Contemporary Arts 臺北當代藝術館, located in the refurbished old city hall, officially opened in 2001. As the second fine arts museum in Taipei, it promises to further invigorate the city with new cultural energy while keeping step with a quickly changing society.
The Taiwan Museum of Art 國立臺灣美術館 in Taichung also concentrates on Taiwan's artistic developments. The museum hosts both research and planned exhibitions. Besides presenting the works of local artists, the museum also introduces works by foreign artists of worldwide fame and hosts international exchange exhibitions.
The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts 高雄市立美術館, which opened in 1993, is one of the largest fine arts museums in Asia and boasts a culture park for displaying sculptures outdoors.
The Chang Foundation 鴻禧美術館 is Taiwan's first private traditional art museum. Although relatively small, it has an impressive collection that features traditional painting, exquisite porcelain, and other ceramics.
The Juming Museum 朱銘美術館 in suburban Taipei boasts a full collection of Ju Ming's works done at different stages in his life, including around 500 pieces of sculpture in wood, mud, stone, bronze, and stainless steel, as well as 500 paintings in oil, ink, pastel, and multimedia.
Galleries
The number of galleries in Taiwan has grown tremendously from a single enterprise, the Lungmen Gallery 龍門畫廊 in 1975, to about 150 galleries today. Lungmen Gallery has managed to retain its prominence among Taiwan's galleries, however, and shows works by artists from both Taiwan and overseas. The Hanart Gallery 漢雅軒, which has a home gallery in Hong Kong, has also played an important role in promoting Taiwan's younger generation of artists.
Other prominent galleries include the Galerie Elegance 愛力根畫廊; the Eslite Gallery 誠品畫廊; the Taiwan Gallery 臺灣畫廊 and Home Gallery 家畫廊, both of which focus on contemporary art; and the Caves Art Center 敦煌藝術中心 and the Pristine Harmony Art Center 清韻藝術中心, which focus on ink paintings by both traditional and contemporary artists. IT Park 伊通公園 is an alternative gallery for non-commercial artists and provides a much-needed venue for installation and performing artists.
Several galleries in central and southern Taiwan have established themselves in the art market. Some of the best known include Gallery Pierre 臻品藝術中心, East Gallery 東之畫廊, and Modern Art Gallery 現代藝術空間 in Taichung; New Phase Art Space 新生態藝術環境 in Tainan; the Up Gallery 阿普畫廊 and Duchamp Gallery 杜象藝術中心 in Kaohsiung; and Gallery Venus 維納斯藝廊 in Hualien 花蓮.
The increase in art galleries around the island has been partly due to the great expansion of art collecting in the 1980s. Sotheby's and Christie's both began holding art auctions in Taiwan in the early 1990s, with varying degrees of success, focusing primarily on traditional painting and works by Taiwan's Japanese-trained impressionists.
Another major development has been the annual Taipei Art Fair International 臺北國際藝術博覽會, which promotes the local art market both regionally and internationally. The event gives local art collectors a chance to appreciate and bid for masterpieces by world-renowned artists, drawing around 70,000 to 80,000 visitors each year.
Music
Traditional Chinese Music
The four primary groups performing Chinese music professionally in Taiwan are the Taipei Municipal Chinese Classical Orchestra 臺北市立國樂團 (TMCCO), the National Chinese Orchestra 國立實驗國樂團, the Kaohsiung Chinese Orchestra 高雄市國樂團, and the Chinese Orchestra of the Broadcasting Corporation of China 中國廣播公司國樂團. In addition, ten smaller ensembles perform regularly around the island. The Ensemble Orientalia of Taipei 臺北民族樂團 conducts fieldwork, including researching and transcribing traditional music from throughout Taiwan.
While the musicians in these groups play mostly traditional Chinese instruments, they sometimes perform Western compositions or Chinese works that incorporate Western-style rhythms or harmonies.
Bei guan and Nan guan
While many traditional musicians are drawing on Western influences, others have shown a renewed interest in preserving the traditional quality of several types of ancient music--including bei guan 北管, a fast-tempo music that commonly accompanies operas and traditional puppet shows, and nan guan 南管, which has a more delicate and soothing sound. The interest in nan guan music has been especially prominent. The Han Tang Classical Music Institute 漢唐樂府, which was founded in 1983 by Chen Mei-o 陳美娥, has performed nan guan in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and released a number of CDs. The group later established the Liyuan Dance Studio 梨園舞坊, which was inspired by "The Musical Theater of the Pear Orchard" 梨園戲, a form that flourished during the eighth century and was introduced to Taiwan in the 18th century. The two groups often perform together at Han Tang's own theater in Taipei, which offers a small, traditional teahouse-like setting.
Other main figures in nan guan music are singer Wu Su-cing 吳素慶 and musician Li Syang-shih 李祥石. Li was awarded the title of Folk Arts Master for his work, and both Wu and Li were invited to teach in a special Nan Guan Performance Program set up in 1988 at the Taipei National University of the Arts. The Changhua County Cultural Center 彰化縣立文化中心 is also the home of the Nan Guan and Bei Guan Center 南北管音樂劇曲館.
Western Classical Music
While traditional Chinese music has an important position in Taiwan, Western classical music still predominates, and Taiwan has many young classical musicians who have succeeded in international music circles. Violinists Lin Cho-liang 林昭亮, Hu Nai-yuan 胡乃元, and Edith Chen 陳毓襄 are among the many internationally prominent Taiwan-born musicians. Conductor Lyu Shao-jia 呂紹嘉, a graduate of the Vienna Conservatory, is now the music director of Germany's leading opera house, Niedersachsische Staatstheater Hannover (NSH), the highest post ever held by an ethnic Chinese conductor. While many young musicians often have successful careers abroad, many more are now returning to Taiwan, both as visiting musicians and as regular members of orchestras and chamber groups.
Taiwan's main Western-style orchestras are the National Symphony Orchestra, now under the direction of Jian Wun-bin 簡文彬, and the Taipei Symphony Orchestra 臺北市立交響樂團, which is directed by Chen Ciou-sheng 陳秋盛. The National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra 國立臺灣交響樂團, based in Taichung, is conducted by Chen Cheng-syong 陳澄雄. The Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra 高雄市交響樂團 is a semi-professional group.
The largest private orchestra in Taiwan is the Taipei Sinfonietta and Philharmonic Orchestra 臺北愛樂室內及管弦樂團, founded in 1985 by conductor Henry Mazer. With some of the island's most talented musicians among its members, the group has toured the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Perhaps the busiest ensemble on the island is the Ju Percussion Group, directed by Ju Tzong-ching 朱宗慶. The group's music is often a hybrid of Western and Chinese, and its instruments are both traditional and experimental, ranging from drums, gongs, and xylophones to empty beer bottles, sawed-off steel pipes, and even bursting balloons. The affiliated Ju Percussion Foundation 財團法人擊樂文教基金會 oversees a research center for traditional Chinese percussion music and operates educational centers for children around Taiwan. The group has performed in major cities throughout the United States, France, South Korea, and China.
Western Opera
The Taipei Opera Theater 臺北歌劇劇場, under Tseng Tao-hsiung 曾道雄, and the Taiwan Metropolitan Opera 首都歌劇團, directed by internationally known tenor William Wu 吳文修, have both performed Western opera in Taiwan, including such works as Gounod's Faust, Mozart's Magic Flute, and Verdi's Rigoletto. The Taiwan Metropolitan Opera has also presented Puccini's Madame Butterfly; Leoncavallo's Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci; and The Great Wall 萬里長城, a Western-style opera sung in Chinese that narrates a Chinese story. Another active opera promoter is the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, which presented Verdi's Aida in 1995, Wagner's The Flying Dutchman in January 1997, and Puccini's Turandot in 2000, with the first two featuring international casts.
Composers
Taiwan hosted the annual conference and festival of the Asian Composers' League (ACL) most recently in 1998. Syu Chang-huei 許常惠, considered by many to be the pioneer local composer, was one of the founders of the ACL in 1973. Syu, who studied in France, founded the Music Creative Group 製樂小集, which promoted the development of local music composition in the 1960s. He also introduced new, experimental developments from the West, such as Arnold Schoenberg's serialism. For many years, Syu conducted extensive research of Taiwan folk music. His passing away in 2001 is considered a great loss to the local music scene.
Other composers known regionally and internationally include Ma Shui-long 馬水龍, whose works have been performed in Europe, the United States, South Africa, and Southeast Asia; and Pan Hwang-long 潘皇龍, who has introduced avant-garde composition to local audiences.
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| Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian merges traditional dialogue and singing arts with modern Western theater in his opera production August Snow 八月雪. (Courtesy of the Council for Cultural Affairs) |
Drama
Taiwanese Opera
Taiwanese opera 歌仔戲 was once performed on nearly every auspicious occasion, including weddings, birthdays, and temple festivals. By tradition, the form is said to have its origin in short songs from Ilan County 宜蘭縣. These songs were purportedly influenced by the narrative music of Taiwan's aboriginal peoples and later evolved into a more powerful musical form. These "Ilan folk songs" are accompanied by an orchestra consisting of the san sian 三絃, a three-stringed banjo; the pi pa 琵琶, a four-stringed vertical lute; the dong siao 洞簫, a vertical flute; the shao na 哨吶, a trumpet-belled, double-reeded horn; and various percussion instruments, including gongs and drums. Many music theater forms, particularly the bei guan and nan guan music theater, have clearly influenced Taiwanese opera. This is evident from the colorful makeup and costumes, stage props, and stylized gestures used in Taiwanese opera, which had become a complete musical genre of its own by the 1930s.
The role of Ilan in the development of Taiwanese opera continues to be important today. Several major troupes are based there, including one sponsored by the Ilan County Cultural Center 宜蘭縣立文化中心, which also houses a Taiwanese opera museum. Today, there are nearly 200 troupes performing around the island, but only a few of professional caliber. The best-known is the Ming Hwa Yuan Theater Troupe 明華園歌劇團, established in 1929. Like other Taiwanese opera troupes, it began by performing on outdoor stages, often set up in front of temples. Today, it also performs at such prestigious venues as the National Theater and has toured overseas, performing in Paris and China. Other important companies include the Ho Lo Taiwanese Opera Troupe 河洛歌仔戲團, the Han Yang Troupe 漢陽歌劇團, and the Lan Yang Troupe 蘭陽戲劇團.
Taiwanese opera's most celebrated actress is Yang Li-hua 楊麗花. With a career spanning over 30 years, she continues to periodically present her own productions. Like many Taiwanese opera actresses, Yang is known for playing only male roles.
Television performances of Taiwanese opera have also been important to its development since the 1960s. Although many TV troupes have a soap opera mentality, with electronic music and pop songs, the Ye Cing Taiwanese Opera Troupe 葉青歌仔戲團 is one of the few that has managed to retain its basic traditional forms. Its founder, actress Ye Cing, has developed an islandwide following through her TV performances and has won numerous awards.
Other Opera Forms
Taiwan audiences have been introduced to Hakka opera, which incorporates traditional tea-farming folk songs, through the Rom-shing Hakka Teapicker Opera Troupe 榮興客家採茶劇團. In keeping with tradition, the majority of its productions are presented outdoors, although it also performs at major venues such as the National Theater.
Another opera form found in Taiwan is bei guan opera. The Sin Mei Yuan Troupe 新美園劇團 is the only professional bei guan opera group on the island to ever win a Heritage Award.
An opera form that has been regaining attention in recent years is Kun opera 崑曲, which features more delicate and complex music and singing, as well as employing more poetic language. There are currently only two amateur groups performing Kun opera in Taiwan.
The Contemporary Legend Theater 當代傳奇劇場, founded by Beijing opera actor Wu Hsing-kuo 吳興國, is an internationally acclaimed group best known for its Beijing opera adaptations of Western classics, such as Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear and Euripides' Medea. These adaptations incorporate elements of Western drama, including dramatic stage and costume designs, as well as greater psychological character development than is generally found in traditional Beijing opera. Using tragic stories to raise moral questions rather than providing conventional answers is also a distinct departure from tradition. Wu Hsing-kuo himself played the leading role in Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian's 高行健 opera production of August Snow 八月雪 in 2002.
Spoken Drama
Taiwan's theater scene began in the 1960s, with what is known as the Little Theater Movement 小劇場運動. Thanks to the enthusiasm and talent of several new dramatists, including Li Man-guei 李曼瑰 and Yao Yi-wei 姚一葦, the repertoire of locally written plays expanded in a more creative direction. Li, alone, wrote more than 50 plays, including full-length dramas, one-act plays, and children's performances, which have been compiled into a volume entitled Collection of Chinese Plays 中華戲劇集.
The first professional stage play produced by an independent (rather than government-sponsored) troupe was Yao Yi-wei's Red Nose 紅鼻子, which became a classic among local plays. The 1970 debut of Red Nose initiated the prolific era of the 1970s, when private mini-theaters proliferated and directors began experimenting more freely with stage techniques and imaginative interpretations of both local and Western plays.
The Lan-ling Drama Workshop 蘭陵劇坊, founded in 1977 by Wu Jing-jyi 吳靜吉, was the first theater group to recast a Chinese opera into modern colloquial language. This involved an experimental approach that emphasized strong physical movement and the importance of body language. Although Lan-ling is no longer active, it continues to have an influence on theater in Taiwan.
Another theater pioneer was the New Aspect Art Center 新象藝術中心, established in 1978. Although New Aspect never maintained an actual theater group, it has produced a number of major plays and presented some new dramatic forms to the local theater world. In 1982, it introduced a new multimedia approach associated with epic theater in the landmark production of Wandering in the Garden and Waking from a Dream 遊園驚夢. Taiwan's first locally produced musical, The Chess King 棋王, was also a New Aspect production. Today, New Aspect is an arts agency, bringing a wide variety of performing arts to Taiwan from abroad.
The early efforts of Lan-ling and New Aspect helped set the stage for the mid-1980s, when several leading theater companies were established. Most prominent is the Performance Workshop 表演工作坊, set up in 1984 by Stan Lai 賴聲川. This theater introduces collective improvisational theater, which is heavily influenced by Shireen Strooker's Amsterdam Werkteater. The group's first production to attract more than just a student audience was The Night We Became Hsiang-sheng Comedians 那一夜我們說相聲. This play marked the first time that the highly stylized siang sheng 相聲, a traditional form of fast-paced comic dialogue (cross-talk), was expanded into a full-length play.
Performance Workshop's other productions are a reflection of modern Taiwan society. In Red Sky 紅色的天空, the troupe revealed the experiences of Taiwan's elderly population. The two-week performance of The Complete History of Chinese Thought--Cross-Talk Version 又一夜,他們說相聲 in 1997 at the National Theater again ran to capacity audiences. Performance Workshop's founder and director Stan Lai has also ventured into filmmaking, with one of his movies based on his play The Peach Blossom Land 暗戀桃花源 (see section on Cinema, Second New Wave). The workshop's latest productions include The Comedy of Sex and Politics 一婦五夫 and Waiting for Godot 等待狗頭 in 2001, and Who's Calling Eileen Chang 張愛玲請留言, Love on a Two Way Street 他和他的兩個老婆, and She Is Walking, She Is Smiling 永遠的微笑 in 2002.
The Ping Fong Acting Troupe 屏風表演班, organized in 1986, has also become popular among local audiences. Directed by Li Guo-siou 李國修, who formerly worked with both the Lan-ling Drama Workshop and the Performance Workshop, the troupe often presents slapstick comedies. Underneath the pranks and wisecracks, however, are satirical comments on Taiwan society.
The Godot Theater Company 果陀劇場, set up in 1988, often combines theater, music, and dance. The company has staged local adaptations of such works as Our Town and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. In 1996, Godot produced a martial arts drama called Ciao Fong, the End of Destiny 天龍八部之喬峰, adapted from a Chinese novel written by Jin Yong 金庸 about a beggar king. Godot's 1998 musical The Angel Never Sleeps 天使不夜城, about a prostitute in search for real love, was a big success. In 2001, the company presented two plays by Peter Shaffer, Black Comedy 黑色喜劇, 白色幽默 and Amadeus 莫札特謀殺案, as well as a new musical, Looking Up the Golden Sun 看見太陽.
Another unusual group is the U Theater 優劇場, founded by Liou Jing-min 劉靜敏 and dedicated to creating a form of contemporary theater that expresses a unique Taiwanese identity. To absorb the traditions of Taiwanese culture, the actors and actresses participate in a strict physical training program that includes martial arts. They also work with a variety of folk artists, Taiwanese opera performers, and traditional drummers.
Theater companies based in central and southern Taiwan include the Tainan Jen Theater Troupe 臺南人劇團 in Tainan, the Taitung Theater Troupe 臺東劇團 in Taitung, and the Nan Fong Theater Troupe 南風劇團 in Kaohsiung.
Dance
Dance in Taiwan has become especially diverse since the late 1960s. Early pioneers of modern dance in Taiwan include Cai Ruei-yue 蔡瑞月 and Li Cai-e 李彩娥, who studied European-influenced modern dance in Japan and began performing in the 1940s. Though temporarily sidetracked by Chinese folk dance in the 1950s, modern dance was revived in the 1960s when local dancers and audiences were exposed to new styles following tours by American companies such as Alvin Ailey and Paul Taylor.
One of the first to introduce modern dance to Taiwan was Liu Feng-shueh 劉鳳學, whom many today consider the matriarch of Taiwan dance. With dancers from her own studio, which was established in 1967, as well as students from the Department of Physical Education at National Taiwan Normal University, Liu presented modern choreography. In 1976, she formed the Neo-Classic Dance Company 新古典舞團, which continues to perform today. Her choreographic style has been heavily influenced by Rudolf Laban, whose famous system of dance notation she studied in Germany in the 1970s. As a result, many of her works, such as Carmina Burana 布蘭詩歌 (1993), emphasize structural concepts of space and group formation.
The Cloud Gate Dance Theatre
In the early 1970s, Lin Hwai-min 林懷民 formed the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre 雲門舞集, which later became Taiwan's premier dance company, gaining a devoted local audience as well as an international reputation in numerous overseas tours. After studying under Martha Graham, Lin returned to Taiwan in 1973 and began using modern techniques along with Chinese opera concepts. His early works had strong traditional themes, as in The Tale of the White Serpent, an updated version of a classic story.
Like the nativist artists and writers (see sections on Painting and Literature) of the 1970s, Lin was eager to express a local identity. Cloud Gate's signature work, Legacy 薪傳 (1978), told the dramatic story of the first pioneers in Taiwan. Later works featured more contemporary concerns. The Rite of Spring 春之祭 (1983), for example, examined the plight of urban existence, while the 1984 Dreamscape 夢土, and its 1995 reproduction, explored the conflict between modern life and traditional culture.
The 90-minute Nine Songs 九歌 (1993), which was re-staged at New York's Kennedy Center in 1995, draws on the works of ancient poet Chu Yuan 屈原 and contains many references to gods and goddesses, as well as movements from Indian and Javanese dance and Chinese opera. Songs of the Wanderers 流浪者之歌 (1994) depicts the pilgrimage of the spirit for peace and harmony. The work is deeply rooted in the religions, mysticism, meditation, and philosophies of Asia, especially Hinduism, Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism.
Portrait of the Families 家族合唱 (1997) is an epic saga of Taiwanese under Japanese colonial rule and the martial law era of the Nationalist government. The work portrays the universal theme of human suffering and hardship at the hands of oppressors, and the fortitude to survive and heal.
Moon Water 水月 (1998), hailed as one of Cloud Gate's best works so far, integrates movements of tai chi and meditative philosophy into dances that portray themes of "nothingness."
Cloud Gate's more recent works include the millennium production Burning the Juniper Branches 焚松 (2000), based on Tibetan religious rituals, and Green 年輕 (2000), which incorporates dynamic movements and dazzling street dance. Bamboo Dream 竹夢 (2001) uses the poetic image of bamboo groves to evoke serene Buddhist meditations and lofty classical ink paintings. Cursive 行草 (2001) incorporates masterpieces of classical Chinese calligraphy. Smoke 煙, Cloud Gate's latest work, premiered in 2002 as a visually stunning piece with dancers performing beside a withering old tree by a floodlit pool on the stage.
Cloud Gate has made dozens of overseas tours throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, and South America. It has also been invited to give the opening performance at Australia's Melbourne Festival in 2003.
Diverse Dance Styles
Since the 1980s, a number of smaller dance companies have started up, many of them founded by former Cloud Gate members. The most prominent among them is Lin Siou-wei's 林秀偉 Taigu Tales Dance Theater 太古踏舞團, known for its meditative dances based on Asian philosophy. With an emphasis on poetic expression and soul-searching, her works are stirring and cathartic, often with a primitive quality similar to the modern Japanese dance form Butoh.
Another former Cloud Gate dancer, Liou Shao-lu 劉紹爐, also studied with Liu Feng-shueh early in his career and started his own group, the Taipei Dance Circle 光環舞集. Liou's best known work, Olympics 奧林匹克, is based on an innovative technique in which dancers with oiled bodies spin and slide on an oiled floor to create a surprisingly poetic display of motion. In 1996, the play received the Ludwig Foundation's innovative choreography award for the performing arts.
The Dance Forum Taipei 舞蹈空間, founded in 1989 by Ping Heng 平珩, presents a wide mixture of styles, but is best known for works that combine postmodernism with a Chinese or Asian frame of reference.
Although ballet has held a less prominent position in Taiwan, there are several ballet schools and small companies. One of the better known is the Taipei Chamber Ballet 臺北室內芭蕾舞團, which presents annual summer performances choreographed by Yu Neng-sheng 余能盛, the artistic director of Landestheater Coburg in Germany.
The works of Legend Lin Dance Theater 無垢舞蹈劇場, founded and directed by Lin Li-jhen 林麗珍, are inspired by Taiwanese folk traditions. Its Mirrors of Life 醮, performed at France's Avignon Art Festival in 1998, has a strong local flavor and features the vivacity of Taiwan's folk culture while brilliantly demonstrating Taiwan's originality in choreography. Inspired by Taiwan's folk rituals, especially the sacrificial feasts of the Ghost Festival, the highly stylistic Mirrors of Life transcends the limits of culture and convention and attains universality through its enticing quietude, harmony, mystery, and wildness. Lin's latest work, Anthem for Fading Flowers 花神祭 (2000), is slow moving but measured as it equates the four seasons with the life cycle.
For the first time, Taiwan was invited to perform at the 2000 French Lyon Biennial Dance Festival. Besides Cloud Gate and the Legend Lin Dance Theater, other performing groups that were invited include the Han Tang Classical Music Institute, the U Theater, and the performance troupe of the National Taiwan Junior College of Performing Arts 臺灣戲曲專科學校綜藝團, as well as artists Chen Jie-ren 陳界仁 and Mei Ding-yan 梅丁衍.
The Challenge 2008 National Development Plan 挑戰二○○八國家發展重點計畫 calls for the creation of a high-quality living environment. To this end, Taiwan is making investments in cultivating its human resources, cultural arts industry, traditional folk arts, performing and visual arts, audiovisual arts, and community development. In order to cultivate the human resources that such an endeavor would require, plans are underway to hold a greater number of cultural workshops and seminars, invite foreign art professionals to teach in universities, send talented individuals on art programs overseas, increase international cultural exchanges, and expand participation in international art and design organizations. Efforts to establish an environment conducive to the development of the cultural arts industry include the creation of cultural parks in five closed-down wineries around Taiwan; assistance for artists in business creation; and stronger protection of intellectual property rights. For the development of traditional arts, steps will be taken to revitalize the local handicrafts industry, encourage contemporary artistic creation, and enhance the cultural lives of the people. For performing and visual arts, plans will be made to raise funds, cultivate local talent and audiences, develop global markets, and find more suitable sites for performances. For audiovisual arts, television and motion picture productions will be improved and their distribution industries integrated; the music industry, which already plays a leading role in the global Chinese-language market, will be further developed; and steps will be taken to encourage animation productions with a style unique to Taiwan. For community development, efforts will be made to promote local cultural activities and industries; establish local theme museums through community participation; preserve traditional residences, Japanese-style structures, and other special architectures; provide assistance to local communities in developing unique handicraft industries; and give guidance to townships for setting up theme museums in history, culture, science, natural ecology, or local industry. Local resources will also be used to accommodate cultural activities, such as art festivals and reading clubs. |
Cinema
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Taiwan's film industry was one of the strongest in Asia, but the scene was dominated by syrupy romances, grade-B kung fu movies, and moralistic or propaganda-oriented dramas. In time, the public grew weary of the limited variety of domestically produced films. At the same time, they began to be exposed to high-quality foreign movies through film festivals held by the National Film Archives 國家電影資料館 and through the increasing availability of movies on videotape.
New Wave Cinema
The real breakthrough for Taiwan cinema came in 1982 with In Our Time 光陰的故事, a four-part film produced by the Central Motion Picture Corporation 中央電影公司 that featured four talented young directors: Edward Yang 楊德昌, Tao De-chen 陶德辰, Ke I-jheng 柯一正, and Jhang Yi 張毅. The film won over audiences by replacing melodrama and escapism with a realistic look at life in Taiwan.
This new approach paved the way for New Cinema, or New Wave Cinema, which has been compared stylistically to the Italian neo-realism. Initially inspired by Taiwan's nativist literature of the 1960s and 1970s (see section on Literature), New Wave directors, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien 侯孝賢, Edward Yang, and Wang Tong 王童, created a cinema with a unique Taiwanese flavor by focusing on realistic and sympathetic portrayals of both rural and urban life.
Many New Cinema films were actually based on famous nativist novels. This was in fact the continuation of an established tradition of adapting literary works to the screen. From 1965 to 1983, for example, a total of 50 films were adapted from the romance novels of Cyong Yao 瓊瑤. However, the New Wave directors were not only interested in the plots of these novels, but also in their realistic, down-to-earth style and spirit. They wanted to give a genuine local flavor to their films. Like the nativist writers, they also critically reviewed some of the central issues facing Taiwan society, such as the struggle against poverty, conflicts with political authority, and the growing pains of urbanization and industrialization.
One of the first films in this mode was The Sandwich Man 兒子的大玩偶 (1983), a three-part movie by directors Hou Hsiao-hsien, Zeng Jhuang-siang 曾壯祥, and Wan Ren 萬仁. Adapted from several short stories by the famous writer Huang Chunming 黃春明, this film dealt with the struggles of working class people in the 1960s.
New Cinema directors took a highly introspective approach in examining the effects of the political, social, and economic changes that Taiwan had experienced over the past five decades. Their works thus offer a fascinating chronicle of the island's social transformation in modern times. For example, Wang Tong's The Strawman 稻草人 (1987) and Hill of No Return 無言的山丘 (1992) portray the tragic, work-burdened lives of rural Taiwanese during the Japanese occupation. Wang's latest work, The Red Persimmon 紅柿子 (1996), tells the story of a mainland family that escaped to Taiwan in 1949. Hou Hsiao-hsien's The City of Sadness 悲情城巿 takes place just after the Japanese occupation and focuses on the conflicts between the local Taiwanese and the newly arrived Nationalist government, which came to a climax in the February 28 Incident of 1947 (for historical details, see Chapter 3, History). Another of Hou's films, A Time to Live and a Time to Die 童年往事 (1985), examines life in rural Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s. His more recent Good Men, Good Women 好男好女 covers political developments from the end of World War II to the present day. In contrast, the works of Edward Yang, such as Taipei Story 青梅竹馬 (1985), The Terrorizers 恐怖份子 (1986), and Confucian Confusion 獨立時代 (1994), reflect the clash of traditional values and modern materialism among young urbanites of the 1980s and 1990s.
Second New Wave
While New Wave films have continued to win critical acclaim, the initial enthusiasm of local audiences began to wear off in the late 1980s. The genre soon gave rise to many low-quality imitations, and viewers, growing tired of New Wave seriousness, were drawn to the escapist, entertainment-oriented films from Hong Kong, which soon began to dominate the market. Local directors found it increasingly difficult to secure financing for their films, which were not big box-office draws.
Nevertheless, during the lean years of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a number of talented new filmmakers began to create a "Second New Wave" for Taiwan cinema. Compared with the older generation, these new directors offered a much greater variety, in both content and style, although they were still strongly committed to portraying a uniquely Taiwan perspective. They also tended to reject the nostalgic, historical approach of older filmmakers, being drawn instead to explore the pain and absurdities of contemporary life.
One of the major figures of the Second New Wave is Tsai Ming-liang 蔡明亮, whose films Rebels of the Neon God 青少年哪吒 (1992) and the 1994 Venice Film Festival award winner Vive l'Amour 愛情萬歲 take an existentialist approach to the plight of urban teenagers and young adults who are on the margins of today's affluent society. The latter also won praise for its unique style of filmmaking: it has no music or soundtrack, only the background noises of the city, and a minimal amount of dialogue, relying instead on the power of simple but ambiguous images.
Second New Wave director Stan Lai, a key figure in Taiwan's stage theater, has also brought an experimental and light-hearted touch to his films. The Peach Blossom Land 暗戀桃花源 (1992), which won prizes at the Tokyo and Berlin film festivals, is an adaptation of one of Lai's stage productions. It is a tragic comedy involving two groups of actors who take turns rehearsing two very different plays on the same stage. His 1994 film, The Red Lotus Society 飛俠阿達, juxtaposes a fantastic story about a young man who is determined to fly like the martial arts masters of ancient times against the realistic setting of modern-day Taipei.
The films of Ang Lee, another Second New Wave director, take a more realistic approach to contemporary life. Pushing Hands 推手 (1991), The Wedding Banquet 囍宴 (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman 飲食男女 (1994) look at the generational and cultural conflicts confronting modern families.
In 1994, Wu Nien-chen 吳念真, who already had a solid reputation as one of the island's top screenwriters before making his debut as a director, produced A Borrowed Life 多桑, which was awarded best film at the Turin International Film Festival, and Buddha Bless America 太平天國 (1996), which was shown at the Venice Film Festival. Chen Yu-hsun 陳玉勳 was awarded the Blue Leopard Prize at Switzerland's Locarno Film Festival for Tropical Fish 熱帶魚 (1995). Hsu Hsiao-ming 徐小明, Steve Wang 王獻箎, and Lin Cheng-sheng 林正盛 are also among Taiwan's new directors whose works have been shown at prestigious film festivals around the world.
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| Pedestrians in downtown Taipei can read about the history of Taiwan and biographies of well-known authors from the pavement by Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. |
Literature
Indigenous Traditions
In the past, the indigenous peoples on Taiwan were marginalized in the expression of Taiwanese culture. Since 1980, however, aboriginal intellectuals have tried to recreate their own past by reexpressing their peoples' oral traditions. Thus, a large body of oral narratives about creaion myths and tribal heroes have been transcribed and circulated in the form of parallel texts, in which the original aboriginal languages are spelled out in romanization and accompanied by Chinese translation. For many aboriginal intellectuals, such texts literally constitute the last utopian hope for their language and traditions to be transmitted in the struggle for cultural survival, for even their children are resisting the use of the native tongue. As a result, many indigenous languages and literatures are on the verge of disappearing.
Early Taiwanese Literature
During the mid-19th century, several Taiwanese poets began to make a name for themselves, including Cai Ting-lan 蔡廷蘭, Chen Jhao 陳肇, Huang Jing 黃敬, Zeng Yong-si 鄭用錫, and Lin Jhan-mei 林占梅. These poets were the literati and cultural elites writing in the classical lyric mode, and as intellectuals who played important roles in Taiwan's history, their influence on local culture remains strong. Over the next two decades, other Taiwanese poets such as Chen Wei-ying 陳維英 and Wang Kai-tai 王凱泰 would become more devoted to everyday subjects, often committing themselves to expressing nationalist sentiments. Tang Jing-song 唐景崧 and Ciou Fong-jia 丘逢甲 were two prominent officials and poets who got deeply involved in establishing the Taiwan Democratic Republic 臺灣民主國 in May 1895, upon hearing the news that Taiwan had been ceded to Japan.
During the colonial period, the local elite tried to preserve their cultural heritage and develop distinctive arts of improvisation. Hong Ci-sheng 洪棄生 was probably the most famous writer of the period. In his poetical and prose works, Hong constantly referred to the society and culture of Taiwan at that time to reveal his patriotism and nationalism. However, the most important literary event in the first 20 years under Japanese occupation was the establishment of the Li Poetry Society 櫟社, whose key members included Lian Ya-tang 連雅堂, Lin Chih-sian 林痴仙, and Lin Sian-tang 林獻堂. The society supported nationalist movements and published an influential journal on poetry and poetics entitled Taiwan Wun Yi Jiou Jhih 臺灣文藝舊誌. Lian's monumental work on Taiwan's history, A Comprehensive History of Taiwan 臺灣通史, remains a classic in the field.
In 1911, Liang Ci-chao 梁啟超 introduced ideas of Western enlightenment and experimental literature to Taiwan. Even though Taiwanese writers of the time were versed in the classical tradition, they were forced to confront the colonial reality and to work in more realistic modes of literary expression. This made a shift toward modern literature inevitable.
Taiwanese New Literature
During the 1920s, the Taiwanese New Literature 臺灣新文學運動 (TNL) movement began as part of a larger cultural reform movement driven by a sociopolitical resistance against Japanese colonial rule. The first events of the Taiwanese New Culture movement 臺灣新文化運動 took place in 1920, when some Taiwanese expatriates in Tokyo organized the New People Association 新民會, followed by a student-based Taiwanese Youth Association 臺灣青年會. The two organizations published a journal called Taiwanese Youth 臺灣青年 to propagate progressive ideas and voice opinions about the current state of affairs in Taiwan.
The zeal for cultural reform soon spread to Taiwan and was carried on by the Taiwanese Cultural Association 臺灣文化協會 (1921-1931). First, inspired by democratic ideals of modern Western society, intellectuals sought to transform the masses through popular education and cultural enlightenment 文化啟蒙. Lai He 賴和 (1893-1943), regarded as the "father of Taiwanese New Literature," Chen Syu-gu 陳虛谷, and Cai Ciou-tong 蔡秋桐 were active members of the association and participated in lecture tours around Taiwan. Not surprisingly, nationalist sentiments were expressed through their literary works. Second, the new intellectuals were influenced by the dynamics of progressive discourse on national emancipation and socialist revolution in the years following the First World War. Thus, a patriotic discourse combining sociocultural modernization (cultural enlightenment) and anti-imperialism (national salvation and anti-colonialism) was developed in the 1920s.
Although the first two issues of Taiwanese Youth carried articles on language reform and the need for rejuvenating contemporary Taiwanese literature, it was not until the heated New Versus Old Literary Debate 新舊文學論戰, which began with Jhang Wo-jyun's 張我軍 attack on traditional poets in 1924 and lasted until 1926, that the TNL movement was formally launched. In this debate, new literary concepts--mainly those centering around the advantage of adopting the vernacular as a new literary medium and the social functions of literature in a modern age--were introduced, criticized, and defended. Traditional poets were castigated for using literature to incur social gains and political favor, while advocates of new literature were branded as shallow and ignorant charlatans. After the debate, traditional literary activities were increasingly confined to poetry clubs, while New Literature was legitimized as a powerful social institution. Through this institution, the new intellectuals endorsed a vision of "modern civilization."
Consciousness of this new reality manifested itself in two consecutive literary debates in 1931 and 1932--the Nativist Literary Debate 鄉土文學論戰 and the Taiwanese Language Debate 臺灣語文論戰--and represented a turning point in the TNL movement.
The Nativist Literature Debate testified to the prominent leftist presence in Taiwan's literary circles, with its chief advocate, Huang Shih-huei 黃石輝, suggesting that writers target their creative works at the masses in the working class. The Taiwanese Cultural Association split in 1927 because of disagreements in resistance strategies between the nationalist right wing and the socialist left wing. After the split, the association was controlled by the left-wing members Lian Wun-cing 連溫卿 and Wang Min-chuan 王敏川, while the more moderate members formed the Taiwanese People's Party 臺灣民眾黨 and continued their fight for greater constitutional rights for the Taiwanese people. However, the political climate in the colony was so disillusioning by that time that even the Taiwanese People's Party began to display leftward leaning tendencies. It was forced to dissolve by the colonial government in 1931.
Initially, the Taiwanese New Culture movement focused on cultural enlightenment to address the society's internal needs to modernize. As Taiwan proceeded along the course of modernization, however, the worldwide economic depression of the late 1920s exacerbated social problems, such as unemployment and class exploitation, thus leading to a rise in support for socialist ideology and Taiwan nativism.
Primarily concerned with internal social problems and conflicts between classes, leftist intellectuals called for a Taiwan-centered view in literary creation. Aside from his class-oriented literary view, Huang Shih-huei was also known for forcefully arguing that Taiwanese writers should only write in their own language about things on their own homeland. Advocates of the nativist literature envisioned a distinctive "Taiwanese consciousness."
This Taiwanese consciousness was the core spirit of Guo Ciou-sheng's 郭秋生 campaign for the Taiwanese language. The Taiwanese Language Debate, which used the literary journal Nan Yin 南音 as its major forum, revealed the anxieties and ambivalent feelings of a colonized people in their attempts to develop a national language. They favored the adoption of Chinese vernacular as the medium for TNL. One popular argument was that since most of the Taiwanese gentry class were tutored in classical Chinese in their childhood, minimal additional efforts would be needed to enable them to use the Chinese vernacular as a literary medium.
However, despite the goodwill on the part of most TNL writers, the disadvantages were by no means negligible. It is said that Lai He had to write his works in classical Chinese first, then translate it into the Chinese vernacular, and finally revise it with more lifelike Taiwanese colloquialisms. Yang Shou-yu 楊守愚, a writer well-versed in the Chinese vernacular because of his background, also had to regularly rewrite works submitted for publication when he served as the editor for the literary section of the Taiwanese People's Newspaper 臺灣民報. Such a cumbersome and laborious process worked against the fundamental principle of realistic literary writing, which explains why the kind of reevaluation offered by the Taiwanese Language movement was well-received even by Lai He, a writer with ostensible Chinese consciousness.
However, the fact that many words in the Taiwanese spoken language were not believed to have corresponding Chinese characters made the development of a new writing system an enormous project beyond the reach of private groups. It is said that Lai He, after extensively using the Taiwanese language to write his short story "A Letter of Criticism from a Comrade" 一個同志的批評信 (1935), was so frustrated with the experiment that he completely stopped writing fiction in the New Literature style. Despite failure, however, the Taiwanese Language movement must be regarded as a significant turning point in the TNL movement. There was a marked decline in the number of works by Chinese New Literature writers reprinted in Taiwanese journals after 1931. From this point on, the development of TNL began to consciously embark on a path of its own.
Maturation and Growth
A crackdown on leftist organizations and the general suppression of sociopolitical movements in 1931 ironically heralded a period of maturation and growth for TNL, which lasted for over a decade. Various literary organizations were formed and new literary journals mushroomed. The new literary form made impressive progress during this period: In addition to having a first generation of TNL writers who continued to be productive, a group of young talents also joined the ranks. There was, however, a notable gap between the two generations of TNL writers in such respects as cultural outlook, aesthetic preference, and vocational orientation. This apparent disjuncture in the relatively brief history of TNL is particularly noteworthy, as it points to a rapidly changing cultural landscape in the second half of Taiwan's Japanese colonial period.
When the New Literature movement began, the cultural identity of Taiwanese intellectuals was still predominantly Chinese, despite the fact that Taiwan had already been colonized by the Japanese for more than two decades. This generation of Taiwanese writers was struggling to break away from the past and to usher in progressive social visions. The past, however, was still very much with them. Many of their works criticized a "spiritual disease" of Taiwanese society that directly reflected the Neo-Confucian moralist world view. The formal dimension of literary works by writers of this generation also displayed a characteristically transitional character, with the omniscient narrative point of view and episodic plot structure obvious traits inherited from Chinese vernacular fiction. Since the modern short story, the novel, and free verse were essentially forms imported from the West, this generation of Taiwanese writers' assimilation of Western literary techniques and artistic conceptions was largely superficial.
The situation, however, was very different for writers born at later dates (Yang Kuei 楊逵was born in 1906; Wong Nao 翁鬧, 1908; Jhang Wun-hua 張文環, 1909; Long Ying-zong 龍瑛宗, 1911; and Lyu He-ruo 呂赫若, 1914). In their formative years, the colonial cultural institutions were increasingly consolidated, and there was consequently a marked decrease in the value of Chinese learning as cultural capital. The generation of Taiwanese writers active in the 1930s and 1940s demonstrated a more hybrid cultural identity. (Syu Jyun-ya 許俊雅, a researcher from the Taiwanese Literature Studies workshop, points out that the use of Japanese in literary creation gradually began to increase around 1933, and by around 1936 to 1937, there were actually very few works written in Chinese.)
The gap between the social visions of the two generations of writers was remarkable, as the younger writers were raised in a society at a considerably more advanced stage of modernization than their predecessors. Several critics have pointed out that Lai He seemed to be obsessed with the abusive power of laws and regulations enforced by the colonial government and its agents. The younger writers tended to present both the evil and the benign sides of the law, indicating that they held a more realistic view of the modern judicial system, despite discriminatory practices in the colonial context. Thus, in many ways these two generations of Taiwanese writers perceived the relationship between the individual and society quite differently.
The younger generation of writers was oriented to the literary profession in an entirely different manner from their predecessors as well. The 1930s saw the emergence of a new cohort of writers who had studied in Japan, a group that constituted the majority of second-generation TNL writers. While in Japan, these aspiring young Taiwanese writers found themselves on the periphery of an entirely different system of cultural production, and many of them enrolled in university literary classes, attended salons revolving around famous writers, and, above all, joined literary contests, which seemed to be an effective way of earning recognition from mainstream Japanese literary circles (often referred to as Jhong Yang Wun Tan 中央文壇). Yang Kuei, Lyu He-ruo, and Long Ying-zong were all winners of literary prizes in the mid-1930s.
Apparently, the younger writers also enjoyed access to a wide range of literary models, mainly from the West, as evidenced by the remarkable diversity their works have shown in both artistic mode and ideological outlook. To give a few better known examples: Yang Kuei adhered to a more orthodox leftism and dedicated his literary works to humanitarian criticisms of class exploitation, imperialism, and general evils in a capitalist society. Jhang Wun-huan's approach was more humanistic in a liberal vein. His interest in the mystic power of the individual's inner self, projected onto Nature, resulted in some beautifully written lyrical pieces. Lyu He-ruo successfully emulated naturalism, offering realistic portraits of Taiwan's degenerated gentry class through "typical characters." Long Ying-zong's works showed influences of symbolism: delicately aesthetic, but with visible touches of decadence.
Whereas early advocates of the TNL movement insisted on using the Chinese vernacular to ensure a place in the literary world, two of the three Taiwanese stories first collected in anthologies published in China--"The Newspaper Man" 送報夫 by Yang Kuei and "The Ox Cart" 牛車 by Lyu He-ruo (the third story selected was the Chinese language "The Ill-fated" 薄命, by Yang Hua 楊華)--were translated from Japanese. Hu Fong 胡風, the editor of the Chinese collections in which these stories were found, Mountain Spirit: Short Stories from Korea and Taiwan 山靈: 朝鮮臺灣短篇小說集 and Anthology of Stories from Weak and Small Nations in the World 世界弱小民族小說選, was a renowned leftist literary theorist. The fact that Hu selected Yang's and Lyu's stories in recognition of their anti-imperialist spirit points to an extremely complex relationship between the Taiwanese authors and their Japanese colonizers, who were simultaneously oppressors and bestowers of cultural prestige. Such facts speak eloquently of the profoundly ambivalent cultural positions in which the second-generation TNL writers found themselves in the 1930s.
End of an Era
After the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the colonial government in Taiwan started an intensive Japanization program and banned the Chinese-language sections in newspapers and magazines. The year 1937, for example, still saw the publication of the literary magazine Wind and Moon 風月報, the only Chinese-language magazine of this period. Wind and Moon featured popular types of literati writings, such as pulp romance, familiar essays, and occasional pieces of traditional scholarship, and enjoyed wide circulation.
In 1940, a literary organization comprising mainly Japanese writers published the aesthetically-oriented journal Literary Taiwan 文藝臺灣. When the Japanese launched the Pacific War in 1941, Literary Taiwan chimed in with the colonial government's call for arms and published such stories as Jhou Jin-bo's 周金波 "Volunteer Conscript" 志願兵 and other unabashedly propagandist poems and plays. Several well-known second-generation writers of TNL, disapproving of both the political stance and artistic orientation of Literary Taiwan, formed their own literary organization and began to publish Taiwanese Literature 臺灣文學 in 1941. Before the two journals were forced to merge by the government under the new name of Taiwanese Literature and Art 臺灣文藝 in 1944, Taiwanese Literature published perhaps the most important works of second-generation TNL writers: "Capon" 閹雞 and "Night Monkeys" 夜猿 by Jhang Wun-huan; "Wealth, Offspring, and Longevity" 財子壽, "Peace for the Entire Family" 閤家平安, and "Guava" 石榴 by Lyu He-ruo; "A Village Without Doctors" 無醫村 by Yang Kuei; and "Rapid Torrents" 奔流 by Wang Chang-syong 王昶雄.
The contention between Literary Taiwan and Taiwanese Literature between 1941 and 1944 represented a significant turn of events, as second-generation TNL writers began to directly confront oppressive relationships within the colonial structure. For these writers, who had been partially nourished by Japanese culture in their formative years and to which they held various degrees of allegiance, this experience must have been simultaneously disillusioning and educating. Above all, it became clear to them that artistic approaches were not ideologically innocent.
The Taiwanese writers objected to the Japan-centered, typically colonist point of view of Literary Taiwan. They championed realism, and consciously shifted to more detailed depictions of local customs, rural life, and folk traditions of Taiwanese origin in order to register their resentment of the Japanization program.
The nationalistic orientation of Taiwanese Literature, however, failed to attract some of the ardent writers of an even younger generation, such as Ye Shih-tao 葉石濤 and Jhou Jin-bo, who published their works in Literary Taiwan and expressed either aestheticism or political loyalty to the Japanese colonizers. Ye even wrote the controversial essay "Shit Realism" 糞寫實主義, which provoked a heated response from colleagues at Taiwanese Literature. However, it was not until the next period that some of the younger generation of writers began to deeply reflect upon the complicated issues surrounding colonial subjectivity.
The unusually convoluted trajectory traveled by TNL writers may also be illuminated by a brief examination of their intriguingly different attitudes toward the issue of modernity. The wholehearted embrace by many first-generation writers of modernity as an advanced stage of civilization was expressed in vacant terms, for essentially they had never had any real experiences with a truly modernized society. Most of the second generation, under pressure from wartime literary policies, engaged in indirect resistance through such means as asserting nativism, to the effect of notably decreasing their criticism of traditional, feudalistic traits in Taiwanese society. However, if some of them consciously denigrated modern urban civilization, symbolically represented by the Japanese metropolises, still others held the exact opposite stance. In the works of Chen Huo-cyuan 陳火泉 and the younger writer Jhou Jin-bo, both of whom opted to side with progress, a prominent theme was the urgency to modernize in view of the obvious benefits that modernity could bring to the Taiwanese people. As Japan was equated with civilization, they ardently supported Japanization, albeit not without doubts from time to time.
In artistic terms, the modern literary form of the TNL movement significantly departed from the classical tradition, but its evolution was brought to an abrupt cessation at the end of the Second World War when Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China. Several years later, the Nationalists relocated to Taiwan and started an entirely new era. The drastic changes such historical events brought to Taiwanese society caused most of the TNL writers to halt their creative activities. Thus, many artists were never allowed to develop to their fullest potential, and the movement ended before any genuinely masterful works of art could ever appear.
The legacy of the TNL movement was suppressed in the postwar years. However, there were still some significant works written and published under the TNL movement, and the exploration of colonial subjectivity continued to be the dominant theme of works written by writers directly nourished by the TNL of the Japanese colonial period, such as The Orphan of Asia 亞細亞孤兒 by Wu Zuo-liou 吳濁流, The Oleander Flowers 夾竹桃 by Jhong Li-he 鍾理和, The Man Who Rolls On the Ground 滾地郎 by Jhang Wun-huan, and later works by Ye Shih-tao. Despite their largely marginal position, these writers played a crucial role in Taiwan's postwar literary history by offering alternative visions to the dominant culture, and their impact was increasingly felt in the nativist 本土化 movement of the last two to three decades.
Post-1949 Literature in Taiwan
Mainland Emigre Literature: 1950s
After Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China in 1945, Mandarin replaced both the Taiwanese dialect and Japanese as the official language of the island. The creative activities of middle-aged native Taiwanese writers were greatly hampered by this language barrier. Political fear was another factor that silenced native Taiwanese writers, as many Taiwanese intellectuals were persecuted during and after the February 28 Incident in 1947 (see Chapter 3, History). The literary scene in Taiwan during the 1950s was therefore virtually dominated by mainland writers who followed the Nationalists to Taiwan around 1949. These emigre writers were frequently mobilized in state-sponsored cultural programs and produced literature that has often been characterized as anticommunist.
In addition to writing political propaganda, writers of the 1950s were frequently faulted for their amateurism, which was partly the product of a special institution in Taiwan, the fu kan 副刊, or literary supplement to newspapers. The fu kan was undeniably the most significant sponsor of literary activities in Taiwan before the new millennium; nevertheless, with its large demand for works of immediate popular appeal, it also fostered casual, lightweight writing and pandered to middlebrow literary tastes.
Although the general climate of the 1950s was not conducive to the production of serious art, works of considerable artistic merit by a number of writers deserve greater critical attention than is usually given to them. Two broad categories of writings, traditionalist prose 散文 and realistic fiction, are considered to be representative of the literature in this decade.
The prose style tended to be more literary, retaining a great many more archaic expressions and allusions to classical literature. The proliferation of traditionalist prose in Taiwan during the 1950s, in the form of familiar essays and the hybrid genre of essay-fiction, was apparently a continuation of an earlier trend on the mainland during and following the Sino-Japanese war. The decade's best-known essayists--Jhang Siou-ya 張秀亞, Jhong Mei-yin 鍾梅音, Syu Jhong-pei 徐鍾珮, Liang Syuan 亮軒, and Ci jyun 琦君--were therefore all mainland emigre writers.
Having been exposed to the works of Lu Xun 魯迅, Mao Dun 茅盾, Ba Jin 巴金, and Lao She 老舍 in their formative years, mainland emigre writers active in the 1950s and 1960s by and large carried on the Chinese "realist" traditiona somewhat atrophied version of 19th-century European realism. For political reasons, however, they modified those realistic conventions that might have been offensive to the dominant culture of post-1949 Taiwan: revolutionary and proletarian themes were taboo, and references to class consciousness were avoided.
The 1960s saw the publication of several well-written, "anticommunist" realistic novels, such as Rice-sprout Song 秧歌, The Whirlwind 旋風, and The Di Village 荻村傳. Although important in their own right, these stories were set exclusively in pre-Revolutionary China, and their authors either never resided in Taiwan (e.g., Eileen Chang 張愛玲, 1921-95), or were marginal to Taiwan's literary scene (e.g., Jiang Guei 姜貴 and Chen Ji-ying 陳紀瀅), thus diminishing their significance in Taiwan's post-1949 literary history. Far more relevant were such writers as Wang Lan 王藍, Meng Yao 孟瑤, Pan Ren-mu 潘人木, Lin Hai-yin 林海音, Nie Hua-ling 聶華苓, Peng Ge 彭歌, Jhu Si-ning 朱西寧, Duan Cai-hua 段彩華, Sih-ma Jhong-yuan 司馬中原, and Chung Chau-cheng 鍾肇政, who had established their literary reputations around the mid-1950s and who continued to play prominent roles in Taiwan's literary scene for some time.
All of these works were unique products of the contemporary cultural and political environment. Thus, it was only natural that they were set in the past on such subjects as the oppression of women, the repressive nature of the traditional family system, and the conditions of working-class people and domestic servants. In addition, rightist political convictions and active government support frequently caused these writers to shift the thematic focus from the sociohistorical to private domains. The rise of the young modernists, with their liberalism and new aesthetic conceptions, challenged not only these older writers' artistic visions, but also the dominant culture's ideological control over creative writers. These changes brought forth by the modernists in the artistic realm formed the basis for more radical cultural critiques found in later decades.
Modernist Literary Movement: 1960s
The modernist literary movement was an expression of the predilection by Taiwanese intellectuals of the time to emulate Western high culture. It is readily observable that important literary figures of post-1949 Taiwansuch as Liang Shih-ciou 梁實秋, former member of the Crescent Moon Society 新月社; Sia Ji-an 夏濟安, mentor of a core group of modernists; and Yan Yuan-shu 顏元叔, leading critic of the 1960s who introduced New Criticism to Taiwan--had ideas that were fundamentally rooted in Western liberal-humanist traditions.
Taiwan's modernists especially stressed the principle of artistic autonomy. In terms of theme and subject matter, they explored new spheres of human experience, favoring rationalism, scientism, and serious, if at times immature, philosophical contemplation. For example, apparently influenced by popular versions of Freudian psychoanalysis, young writers at the early stage of the modernist literary movement were particularly fascinated with nontraditional or even abnormal interpersonal relationships. These writers included Wang Wun-sing 王文興, Bai Sian-yong 白先勇, Ou-yang Zih 歐陽子, Chen Ruo-si 陳若曦, Shuei Jing 水晶, and Chen Ying-jhen 陳映真, to name just a few. Their sincerity and bold, honest self-analysis broke new ground in Taiwan's cultural context and redefined the boundaries of normality in human behavior, thus presenting challenges to the conservative middle-class mentality that had originally been the backbone of the dominant culture in post-1949 Taiwan.
Some truly radical cultural examinations are found in the movement's later more mature stages. For example, with a common theme of father-son conflict, two of Taiwan's most significant modernist novels, Bai Sian-yong's Crystal Boys 孽子 (1983) and Wang Wun-sing's Family Catastrophe 家變 (1973), offer bitter protests against the traditional ethical norms that are crystallized in the Confucianist notions of loyalty 忠 and filial piety 孝, and thus call into question fundamental underpinnings of the superstructure of contemporary Taiwan society. Notably, in both works, the battle against the social retention of traditional values is waged with the aid of Western conceptual frames.
Particularly eye-catching in the initial stages of the modernist literary movement was the temporary surge of an avant-garde trend and the writers' infatuation with the intellectual current of existentialism. As Franz Kafka was introduced early in the movement, the use of obscure plots and bizarre language quickly became a fad, and the basic tenor of works by many young writers--Ci-deng Sheng 七等生, Cong Su 叢甦, and Shih Shu-cing 施叔青 among them--seemed to be dominated by nihilism, agonism, and an anxiety over the absurdity of existence.
The upsurge of aesthetic iconoclasm in the 1960s represented a significant moment in postwar Taiwan's literary history. The vigorous dynamics of newly introduced artistic conceptions associated with modernism called into question conventional forms and criteria of literary excellence. The more enduring efforts generated by this initial enthusiasm eventually ushered in a new era of Taiwan's modern literary history.
Most modernist fiction writers in Taiwan stayed within the general confines of realism, but their conscious explorations of language and voice brought forth fundamental changes in rhetorical conventions of modern narrative. Since the attempts of earlier modern writers to offer realistic portraits of life were frequently hampered by the dominance of the subjective voice in the work's rhetorical structure, the modernists tried to redress this deficiency by introducing a new "objective form." They strove to present an "impartial" picture of reality so that readers could be given the privilege of forming their own opinions and moral judgments. To be sure, these ideas are more reminiscent of the realists' concept of literary representation than the modernist view of literature as self-referential discursive practice. Throughout the 1960s, in fact, the majority of critical writings introducing Western literary concepts focused on basic technical rules and critical criteria that have long been naturalized and taken for granted in the West. Authoritative US-trained scholars and critics, such as Yan Yuan-shu, Jhu Li-min 朱立民, and Wai-lim Yip 葉維廉, systematically expounded the fundamentals of a whole set of Western literary codes, and their influence on creative writing and practical criticism in Taiwan was immeasurable. Such a phenomenon is actually not very difficult to understand, given that the literary genres of the short story and the novel (in the strict sense) were both imported from the West during this century.
It is also true, however, that the appropriation of foreign literary codes necessarily involved larger, more complicated networks of artistic and ideological systems. Given that the most noteworthy formal feature popularized by the modernists was the widened distance between author and text, their efforts may be seen as having continued the general trend in modern Chinese literary history away from the traditional expressive view toward the mimetic or imitative means of representation. With their denunciation of sentimentalism and express interest in the hidden complexities of the human psyche, personal emotions were no longer treated as the source or origin of literature, but rather as objects for detached observation.
It is arguable that, despite the fact that Taiwan's modernist literary movement took place in a "postmodern" period from the standpoint of the West--in the 1960s and 1970s--and despite the fact that many newer artistic trends and techniques were incorporated by the modernist writers into their work, the dominant tendency of this movement nevertheless was closest to the early phase of Western modernism in the late 19th century and early 20th century. In other words, in the extremely compressed timetable of Taiwan's modernist literary movement, one nevertheless discerns features such as the reversal of the conventional content-form hierarchy and the radical rejection of traditional writing techniques that could only be the result of a burgeoning skepticism about language and meaning. Most of the modernists' explorations of language unmistakably reflect Western influences. However, more original experiments were also made, which resulted from a new awareness of the unstable relationship between language and its referents, as well as of a reawakened sensitivity toward the ideographic nature of the Chinese language. These experiments--especially those found in Wang Wun-sing's two novels Family Catastrophe and Backed Against the Sea 背海的人 (1981), and Li Yong-ping's 李永平 story series Chronicle of Ji Ling 吉陵春秋 (1986)--marked the apex of the development of modernist aestheticism in contemporary literature.
Nativist Literary Debate: 1970s
As the modernist fiction writers began to mature artistically in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so too did the resistance to modernism's dominance of Taiwan's literary scene begin. The precursor to a large-scale denunciation of the modernist literary movement was the 1972 Modern Poetry Debate 現代詩論戰, which involved a number of academic critics and modernist poets who discussed specific Western-influenced features in contemporary Taiwan poetry. The consensus reached in this debate seemed to be that, despite its other merits, the currently practiced modern poetry suffered from such unhealthy qualities as semantic obscurity, excessive use of foreign imagery and Europeanized syntax, and evasion of contemporary social reality. These features, furthermore, were considered symptomatic of the faulty style generally promoted in Taiwan's modernist literary movement.
While it may not be unusual in literary history for critics and writers to periodically reexamine and revolt against the current dominant style, the Modern Poetry Debate bore a special social implication in that it was closely tied to the Taiwan intellectuals' growing consciousness of their endangered cultural identity. In what was later known as the "return to native roots" 回歸鄉土 trend around the 1970s, progressive intellectuals criticized the blind admiration and slavish imitation of Western cultural models, and exhorted their compatriots to show more respect for their indigenous cultural heritage, as well as greater concern for domestic social issues. Many liberal scholars, especially those who had just returned from the United States, played important roles in igniting this new trend, which at first revolved around several universities and intellectual magazines.
Shortly after the Modern Poetry Debate, a group of critics began to publicly renounce the foreign-influenced modernist work and to advocate a nativist, socially responsible literature. This trend reached its apex with the outbreak of two virulent Nativist Literary Debates in 1977 and 1978, and suddenly declined when, in 1979, several key figures of the nativist camp exited from the literary scene and became directly involved in political protests. The tradition of nativist literature as a creative genre--of which the main features were the use of the Taiwanese dialect, depiction of the plight of country folk or small-town dwellers caught up in economic difficulty, and resistance to the imperialist presence in Taiwan--can be traced back to the nativist literary trend during the Japanese colonial period. While inheriting the dominant nationalist spirit from this earlier trend, the nativist literature champions of the 1970s had their own political agenda as well.
Viewed retrospectively, the nativist camp was the first oppositional formation at a critical juncture in Taiwan's post-1949 history. After two decades of political stability and steady economic growth, the country suffered a series of diplomatic setbacks at the turn of the decade, causing not only international isolation, but also a confidence crisis among Taiwan intellectuals.
Unlike the majority of the country's liberal intellectuals, who demanded democratization while supporting capitalist-style economic modernization, the nativists believed that the socioeconomic system of Taiwan must be changed. They fiercely attacked the government's economic dependence on Western countries (especially the United States), deplored the infiltration of "decadent" capitalist culture into the ordinary lives of Taiwan's people, expressed indignation on behalf of Taiwan's farmers and workers who paid a high economic price for the nation's urban expansion, and attempted to draw public attention to the adverse effects of the country's overall economic development.
The regionalist sentiment implied in the nativist project immediately touched on an extremely sensitive issue, the "provincial heritage problem" 省籍問題. Tensions between native Taiwanese and mainlanders had always existed, especially given the perceptions of an unbalanced distribution of political power at the time. As a consequence, even though some of the leading nativist critics were socialists or nationalists rather than separatists promoting Taiwan independence, the nativist critical discourse as a whole could not help but be a part of the ongoing political strife.
It is therefore undeniable that literary nativism was used by a special group of people at a particular period in history to challenge the existing sociopolitical order. The attacks launched by the nativists on the modernist writers, whose literary ideology was conspicuously apolitical, largely centered on the latter's default of their social responsibilities as members of the intelligentsia.
The home base for the anti-modernist critics was the journal Literary Quarterly 文季, founded in 1966. With Yu Tian-cong 尉天聰 as the central mover, the journal's founding members included several writers already known for their modernist works, such as Chen Ying-jhen, Liou Da-ren 劉大任, Shih Shu-cing, and Ci-deng Sheng. Furthermore, the journal had discovered two important writers, Huang Chunming 黃春明 and Wang Jhen-he 王禎和, whose fiction significantly departed from the current modernist fads and depicted rural life with unaffected realism. Although both writers refused to label their works as "nativist," the literary reformers on the journal's editorial board were ready to use them as weapons in their fight against the modernist hegemony.
In 1973, Tang Wun-biao 唐文標, a visiting math professor closely associated with the Literary Quarterly, criticized the modernists' elitist tendencies and neglect of the masses. The straightforward accusations so startled the liberal critics that Yan Yuan-shu referred to this critical attack as the "Tang Wun-biao Incident." However, even more vehement militancy was to be seen when the nativist critics chose individual writers as targets. Almost simultaneously with the Tang Wun-biao Incident, the Literary Quarterly organized a series of seminars to examine the thematic implications of Ou-yang Zih's fiction, and branded it "corrupt and immoral." By the mid-1970s, Taiwan's literary writers were already deeply split into opposing camps.
The literary climate in this decade became truly unpleasant with the increasing politicization of critical discourse. With the founding of the radical magazine Summer Tide 夏潮 in 1976 and its provocative use of such taboo terms as "proletarian literature" and "class consciousness," the deep-seated anticommunist sentiments of the liberals were incited. In the summer of 1977, the country's leading modernist poet Yu Guang-jhong 余光中 wrote a short essay entitled "The Wolf Is Here" 狼來了 openly accusing the nativists of being leftists. This fatal charge ignited highly emotional responses and retaliations from all sides, and polemical writings about literature and politics began to flood the country's newspapers and literary magazines. This so-called Nativist Literary Debate was finally brought to an end in the middle of 1978 as a result of threatened government intervention.
Placed within a larger historical context, the modernist-nativist split was part of the continual struggle in modern Chinese history between liberal and radical intellectuals with different reform programs and different views of literature's social function. The new paradigm of ideological writing as established in the mid-1970s moved in a direction diametrically opposed to that of the introspective, humanist, and universalist approach of the modernists and deliberately focused on the historical specificity of contemporary Taiwan society. In addition to later works by Huang Chunming on imperialism, such writers as Yang Cing-chu 楊青矗 and Wang Tuoh 王拓 explored capitalist exploitation as it affected urban factory workers and fishermen. These literary efforts were also backed by some serious theoretical thinking, although most of the Nativist Literary Debate itself was virtually divorced from contemporary literary practice.
Wang Tuoh's 1977 essay, "It Should Be 'Literature of the Here and Now,' Not 'Nativist Literature'" 是現實主義文學,不是鄉土文學 stood out among numerous polemical writings precisely because of its accurate representation of the reality of recent literary practice. The main argument that Wang proposed in this essay was that, instead of writing about rural regions and country people, nativist literature should be concerned with the "here and now" of Taiwan society, which embraces a wide range of social environments and people. Thus, nativist literature should be defined as a literature rooted in the land of Taiwan, one that reflects the social reality and the material and psychological aspirations of its people. By using the term sian shih 現實 (contemporary reality, the "here and now" rather than sie shih 寫實 (realism), and by enlarging the scope of nativist literature to include all levels of social reality in Taiwan, Wang stressed high-priority nativist issues. The essay, therefore, represented an important step in the nativists' process of self-definition.
The critical evaluation of nativist works produced in the 1970s, however, was in general not very positive. Although the change in thematic conventions met the approval of most critics, excessive ideological concern was considered to have detracted from their literary achievement. Even Huang Chunming, who was often regarded as an exception, was criticized by many who felt that his art, too, deteriorated in direct proportion to the increase in social commentary in his later works. However, just as modernist literature continued to evolve after the rise of nativist literature, the practice of nativist literature did not come to an end even though the Nativist Literary Debate folded toward the end of the 1970s. In the continuing efforts made by such nativist ideological writers as Chen Ying-jhen, Sung Ze-lai 宋澤萊, Li Ciao 李喬, and Wu Jin-fa 吳錦發 in the 1980s, one can discern a sharp increase in formal consciousness, as well as attempts to experiment with innovative techniques.
Pluralism: 1980s
In a sense, the articulation of dissident views during the Nativist Literary Debate paved the way for more intense struggles toward democratization, which rapidly gained momentum in the early 1980s. Eventually, with the formation in 1987 of an opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party, literature was largely relieved of its function as a pretext for political contestation. At the same time, however, it became even more inextricably involved in the country's booming mass media. Most notably, the two competing media giants, the United Daily News 聯合報 and China Times 中國時報--with each claiming the loyalty of a group of writers--invested heavily in their literary pages for marketing purposes. The annual fiction contests sponsored between the two from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s gave creative writing a solid boost, with an overwhelming majority of the writers of the baby-boom generation rising to literary prominence by winning one of these contests.
The nativist theorists may have felt both frustrated and vindicated in the 1980s, as the "spiritual corruption" of capitalist society, which they had predicted, appeared along with the ascendancy of materialism and a sharp rise in the crime rate. The overall cultural environment also became heavily consumer-oriented. Not without a touch of irony, even the nativist literature itself was largely co-opted by the cultural establishment, especially between the late 1970s and early 1980s. Newspaper supplements and literary magazines were inundated by pseudo-nativist works, which displayed an abundance of Taiwanese local color but contained little ideological content.
As public fervor for both the modernist and the nativist causes subsided, the literary scene of the 1980s became largely dominated by the baby-boom generation, whose vocational visions were drastically different from those of their predecessors. Rather than treating creative writing as an intellectual project or a political quest, they were more concerned with popularity and with various problems affecting Taiwan's middle-class urbanites, especially the new social affluence and the relaxation of moral standards. Some writers with a cynical intellectual pose, such as Huang Fan 黃凡 and Li Ang 李昂, offered critiques of materialism and the cultural impoverishment that it caused; while others with down-to-earth pragmatism, such as Siao Sa 蕭颯 and Liao Huei-ying 廖輝英, examined the new social factors that had changed ordinary people's way of life, showing particular interest in liberated sexual views and the problem of extramarital relationships; and still others, such as Yuan Cyong-cyong 袁瓊瓊, Jhu Tian-wun 朱天文, and Su Wei-jhen 蘇偉貞, fell back on the sentimental-lyrical tradition and focused their attention on subjective, private sentiment with a posture of complacency regarding sociopolitical issues.
Whether progressively or conservatively inclined, the new generation of writers seemed to share a common response to the emergence of new political situations. With public debate over Taiwan-China relations intensifying on a daily basis, many writers from the baby-boom generation tended to deliberately stress their unique cultural identity, rooted in the specific sociohistorical realities of Taiwan's post-1949 era.
Writers' approaches to literature in this decade were certainly pluralist. Although writers of the modernist generation published their more mature works during this decade, the literary products of the younger generation were marked by a rich diversity--jyuan cun 眷村 (residential military community) literature, works about life in business corporations, political fiction (with a special sub-genre on the February 28 Incident), neo-nativist literature, resistance literature, feminist works, and science fiction--a phenomenon that may be aptly characterized as the orchestration of a multitude of discordant "voices."
The broadly defined trend of "returning to one's native roots" was carried over into the early 1980s beyond the modernist-nativist contention. After the Nativist Literary Debate, new interest in an indigenous literary heritage fostered a trend of cultural nostalgia. Several former modernist writers made notable contributions to this trend, including Shih Shu-cing and Li Ang, consciously turned to folk traditions and native subject matter in their writing. Lin Hwai-min 林懷民 incorporated both classical Chinese and folk Taiwanese elements in his choreography for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (see section on Dance). All of these accomplishments set the tone for creative endeavors in the new decade, even while encouraging commercial exploitation of traditional and native cultural signs.
After the mid-1980s, as the indigenous began to replace the foreign as the primary source of exotic imagination and cultural identity began to occupy a more prominent place in the public consciousness, "postmodernism" became vogue again, raising issues about Western influences on contemporary Taiwanese literature. In a pattern closely resembling that by which such earlier Western literary trends as romanticism, realism, and modernism were appropriated by writers of Taiwan, the postmodern mode of writing became a new fad and its surface markers, such as double endings, juxtaposition of the factual and the fictional, and the technique of pastiche, among others, appeared profusely in works by both greater and lesser writers. Such imitative literary products cannot but recall works written during the earliest phase of the modernist literary movement, and not surprisingly, are considered to be of dubious value by some veteran modernists.
The younger writers of the 1990s consciously subscribed to the more cynical, "postmodern" ideology--as evidenced by their emphasis on difference, tolerance of pluralistic coexistence of the incommensurable, and, above all, their appetite for the indeterminacy that is uncongenial to the modernist temperament. However, there were also similarities between the two generations of writers: their intellectual disposition, their globalism, and the way they looked to the West--or Western-influenced literary traditions, such as those of Eastern Europe and Latin America--for literary models. As prescribed by "postmodern" ideology, however, the younger writers were more keenly aware of the self/other dichotomy, and thus did not endorse universalism the way modernists did.
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| Huang Chunming, author of The Sandwich Man (left), and Wang Jhen-he, author of An Ox Cart for Dowry (right), write about rural life with unaffected realism in a departure from modernist fads. |
Multiculturalism and Postidentity Politics: 1990s
Taiwan has undergone an interpretive turn in terms of national identity and critical multiculturalism in the 1990s. Taiwanese literature of the 1990s tends to use mixed genres and multilingual devices, drawing on a wide range of both global and local cultural codes, idioms, and traditions, to express the fluid, albeit disoriented, structure of feelings.
In the 1990s, Jhu Tian-wun and Chang Ta-chun 張大春 were still prominent figures in the field of political fiction, especially for their nostalgic narratives on the dissolution of a certain culture within government housing compounds. Chang was reputed for his technique of intermixing various genres--including history, dream text, diary, and news reports--and voices. As a writer appropriating all news and media events, Chang gradually moved from writing cynical diaries and "factual fiction" based on the tragic death of a navy officer to producing public TV programs and increasingly becoming a media person. Jhu's Notes of a Desolate Man 荒人手記 won the 1994 China Times best fiction award. Although the second-generation mainlanders who serve as the subjects of this novel reappear repeatedly, Jhu's sensitivity to the ethnic tensions, rupture of traditions, and societal psychopathologies is nicely matched by her literary style and narrative coherence.
In between Jhu and Chang was Yang Jhao 楊照, a young talent who successfully blended romance with saga, collapsing the distinctions between both public and private and personal and social. Yang is currently a cultural critic, political activist, and novelist. His multiple roles in the public and contemporary Taiwanese culture, as well as his impressive talent in fusing personal and interpersonal histories, are self-evident in one of his trilogies, A Dark Alley on a Confusing Night 暗巷迷夜.
In contrast to Li Ang, who severely criticized the patriarchal system of domination, younger women writers emerging in the 1990s, such as Luo Yi-jyun 駱以軍 or Cheng Ying-shu 成英姝, were more playful in their treatment of sexual liaisons in bars (often gay or lesbian), of the object-choice "medial woman," and of the fantasies and frustrations of the so-called generation x 新新人類 in relation to the new, unsettling social milieu that had thus far failed to take shape. Writers like Cheng were on their way to expressing postidentity politics, celebrating postmodern flexibility and unpredictability in the global cyberspace of easy accessibility. Their counterpart in the field of poetry was the late Lin Yao-te 林燿德, who employed the language of the fax machine and computer terminal to describe the fluid human relations in a transnational capitalistic society. Lin was very active in the 1980s in promoting postmodern poetry about urban culture and cityscapes, following poets like Luo Men 羅門, Lo Ching 羅青, and others. These poets differed greatly from the humanist traditions set up by Luo Fu 洛夫, Wai-lim Yip, and Ya Syuan 亞弦, as well as from the traditions revised by Jian Jheng-jhen 簡政珍, Syu Huei-jhih 許悔之, and Jiao Tong 焦侗, who added phenomenological, psychoanalytical, and even poststructuralist twists.
Quite a few writers tried to highlight issues associated with the Taiwan independence movement, minority discourse, political feminism, and environmental protection. Reportage, science fiction, and biography were the most popular modes of literary expression and ethnographic exploration of everyday political subjects among these writers. Ku Ling 苦苓 was a most celebrated political satirist who never failed to make fun of statesmen, as Yu Fu 魚夫 did in his political cartoons. A prolific poet who also wrote on such subjects was Li Min-yong 李敏勇. However, it was in the mini theater 小劇場 that serious political satires truly intermingled with comic relief. The stages for mini plays took on many forms, and could be found in the theater, on the street, in city hall, or even in front of the Legislature. Some differing and milder versions of post-avant-garde theater, on the other hand, were offered by playwrights such as Stan Lai and Li Guo-siou, who drew their inspiration from a range of Chinese and Western dramas--both ancient and modern (see section on Spoken Drama).
An important trend in the 1990s was the revival of the local vernacular tradition. As the localization process took root, Taiwanese and Hakka came to be looked upon as the preferred linguistic mediums for literary expression. In this regard, Jhang Chun-huang 張春凰 was hailed, since the publication of her pioneering prose work Paths to Youth 青春ê路途 in 1995 made her the first prose writer to write in Taiwanese. The work represents a crucial step in rearticulating one's literary tradition toward a more promising future, in which linguistic nuances and cultural differences are appreciated and cherished. After all, it is the diversity of languages and customs on the island that has enriched the literary expressions of the people of Taiwan.
Online Literature
The proliferation and dissemination of information technology in Taiwan has led to the emergence of new literary vehicles unique to the computer era. Electronic bulletin boards (BBS), the Internet, and electronic mail (e-mail) have not only diversified the means by which literary works are circulated, but also created a new aesthetic dimension for literature arising from the manipulation of online techniques, such as animation, multimedia, hyperlinking, and interactive writing. Works probing into the virtual reality of cyberspace, categorized as hypertext literature, are distinguished by their creative form from those appearing in traditional print-based media (and from those works going online without hypertextual elements). They illustrate an "organized stream of consciousness," as one of the supportive statements for hypertext literature goes. The Garden of Forking Paths 歧路花園 is one of the sites devoted to the creation and promotion of hypertext literature.
The recent developments of online literature in Taiwan include the establishment of online bookstores, professional literary sites, and intermediate media sites (e.g., the literary supplements of newspapers, such as the China Times and the Central Daily News, are now online). Another phenomenon is the appearance of organizational and personal literary sites on the Internet, which has changed the scene of online literature formerly dominated by the BBS.
One of the most significant characteristics of online literature is its immediacy, as well as its expansion across social, racial, sexual, and other hierarchical boundaries. For one thing, the writer can bypass both publishers and editors to reach readers directly through the ideally indiscriminate world of cyberspace, without joining in the marketing system of popular culture. According to some literary theorists, the free flow and easy access of online literary resources have vigorously challenged the "cultural hegemony" of traditional media.
While there are still considerable controversies and even anxieties over the would-be paradise of cyber literature (the overflow of online works, the infringement of copyrights, and the intervention of commercialism have posed problems or complications), the function of digital archives on the Internet makes an indisputable contribution, as the availability of literary materials will surely aid in literary research and appreciation. One such effort is the Contemporary Authors Full-Text & Image System 當代文學史料影像全文系統 established by the National Central Library 國家圖書館, which collects personal information, brief biographies, manuscripts, photos, chronicles of works, critical sources, translation sources, famous words, and records of literary awards of around 1,000 modern writers in Taiwan. Another example is the "Way of Poetry" 詩路 project by the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) and the Online Alliance of Taiwan's Modern Poetry 臺灣現代詩網路聯盟, which gathers the works, translations, and multimedia materials of Taiwan's most important modern poets.
The New Millennium
At the end of the 20th century, literature was reaching readers not only from newspaper supplements but also the Internet. In June 2001, Taiwan's two major Internet bookstores, Book4u 華文網 and Silkbook.com 新絲路, announced their merger. A "print on demand" service has been made available to readers worldwide as part of its goal to dominate the Chinese-language publication markets, including Taiwan, China, Singapore, and Malaysia. The intense competition in the publishing industry is not only for market share, but also for cultural influence, and is expected to become even more severe now that both sides of the Taiwan Strait have entered the WTO.
The nativist literary movement of the 1970s continued after the Nativist Literary Debate ended and became well established in the 1990s, with many tertiary education institutes forming new departments specializing in Taiwanese literature. An international seminar on Taiwanese literature was held in November 2002 to strengthen related research and preservation. Preparations are underway to establish the Taiwanese Literature Museum 國立臺灣文學館 in Tainan in 2003, to compile related historical data and research papers, document and record narratives by writers about historical events, and translate literary works from the colonial period.
The nativist sentiment was enhanced by Hakka writers in the 1990s. The Hakka Magazine 客家雜誌 was launched in 1990, followed by many works and events that focused on Hakka ethnic awareness, such as the Taiwanese Literature of Hakka 客家臺灣文學論 in 1993, the first Hakka film Regretless Youth 青春無悔 in that same year, An Anthology of Taiwanese Literature 臺灣文學選 in 1994 (focusing on Hakka writers), a collection of Hakka language poetry in 1995, and the history of Hakka Taiwanese literature in 1998.
The history of local literature compiled during this period recorded the experiences of the people. Moreover, National Hualien Teachers' College 國立花蓮師範大學 established the first Graduate School of Folk Literature in 1998, and National Penghu Institute of Technology 國立澎湖技術學院 held a conference on folk literature and oral narratives in May 2001. All these efforts enhanced and consolidated community spirit and preserved local history through literature.
Taiwanese Literature in Translation
In November 2000, the CCA and the Institute de France jointly presented the ROC-France Cultural Award to French Sinologist and translator Andre Levy, who had translated such classics as Journey to the West 西遊記, Golden Lotus 金瓶梅, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio 聊齋誌異, and The Peony Pavilion 牡丹亭. His translation of Crystal Boys and Tales of Taipei Characters 臺北人 by contemporary writer Bai Sian-yong were also later translated into Spanish and Portuguese. Moreover, the Institut Francais de Taipei and the CCA cosponsored the "Taiwan Literature in Translation" project in 2001 to promote cultural exchanges for better world recognition and to sustain cultural traditions in second and third generation overseas Taiwanese. The CCA has also funded the translation into Western languages of the "Modern Taiwanese Fiction" series as well as the three-year project entitled "Japanese Translations of Modern Taiwanese Literature." The Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange has also subsidized many translation projects of Chinese classics and reference books into English, Russian, Czech, and Polish.
A conference on five Taiwanese poets was held in New York in July 2001 to promote the English translation of Modern Poets of Taiwan 臺灣現代詩人, which includes "Drifting" 漂泊 by Jhang Cuo 張錯, "Across the Darkness of the River" 在黑暗的河流上 by Si Mu-rong 席慕蓉, "Erotic Recipes: A Complete Menu for Male Enhancement" 完全壯陽食譜 by Jiao Tong, "The Mysterious Hualien" 神祕的花蓮 by Chen Yi-jhih 陳義芝, and "Book of Reincarnation" 轉世之書 by Syu Huei-jhih. Poems were recited at the conference in both Chinese and English to show different temperaments and highlight cultural contrasts. Another similar publication was Frontier Taiwan: An Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry 二十世紀臺灣詩選, which contains works from 50 contemporary Taiwanese poets published by the Columbia University Press. In 2001, the CCA sponsored a literary translation contest to raise the translation standards in Taiwanese literature.
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