The Republic of China Yearbook 2009

CHAPTER 18 Culture

Folk Arts

Popular folk crafts include paper cutting, knotting, dough sculpture, woodcarving, woodblock printing, paper umbrella making, lantern making, embroidery and jade sculpture. Major traditional performing arts include folk opera, music and dance, acrobatics, puppetry, dragon dancing and lion dancing.

Taiwan’s thousands of Taoist temples are rich repositories of folk crafts as well as important venues for folk-art performances and displays. They are treasure troves of traditional brick-and-tile work, paintwork, woodcarving and stone sculpture. In addition, their interiors are often adorned with paintings and embroidered murals of legendary figures, symbolic animals and mythical scenes. Taoist temples frequently play host to festivals and parades, as well as such activities as lantern-making competitions, puppet shows and folk operas.

Indigenous Culture

Facing mainstream assimilation and a loss of traditions, Taiwan’s 14 officially recognized indigenous groups have been working over the last two decades to preserve their cultural heritage and identity. Younger generations of indigenous communities are keeping their culture alive by carrying on the practice of traditional arts, music and dance. Indigenous artists and performers have also been involved in this effort by exploring their cultural heritage in their work.

Arts and Crafts

All 14 indigenous groups commonly practice woodcarving, weaving, basketry, beadwork and ceramics. Of these, the Yami (who call themselves the “Tao”), the Paiwan and the Rukai are master woodcarvers. The Yami, who live on Orchid Island off the southeast coast of Taiwan proper, construct wood canoes without nails or glue. The Paiwan and the Rukai adorn their houses and numerous other artifacts with carvings of the sacred “hundred-pace” snake, ancestor figures and diamond patterns.

The Paiwan, the Rukai and the Atayal are renowned for their weaving. The first two groups use the same motifs found on their woodcarving, and the textile products of the last feature geometric patterns of squares, diamonds and triangles in red, blue, black and white.

The Bunun, the Rukai, the Amis and the Yami all have strong traditions of pottery. The Paiwan associate clay pots with 237 ancestor worship, whereas among other groups, pots are for everyday use.

Dance and Music

Each of Taiwan’s indigenous groups has unique traditions of dance, music and song that in the past were integral to tribal life and that still play an important role for many indigenous people today. Communal dance rituals are performed during important events, such as springtime festivals, religious ceremonies and coming-ofage rites. Indigenous groups have a rich song heritage that is connected to nearly every aspect of traditional tribal life, from daily chores and harvests to love, legends and religious rites. Their music is performed on string, woodwind and percussion instruments.

Hakka Culture

Traditional Song and Drama

Hakka folk songs are called “hill songs” or “tea-picking songs” and evolved from tunes sung by Hakka pioneers as they worked in the tea fields around their hilltop settlements. Hakka grand opera developed from Hakka traditional opera (known by the general term “three-part tea-picking opera”), which prominently featured tea-farming songs.

Both forms of Hakka opera are similar to traditional Chinese opera, but differ in their plot, dialogue and inclusion of beiguan (see “Traditional Chinese Music” section below) musical accompaniment. Tea-picking opera in Taiwan is based on a single Hakka story—the adventures of tea picker Zhang San-lang as he leaves home to sell tea—and has three parts, hence the name. Hakka grand opera, which is unique to Taiwan, removed the three-part limit and used different plots drawn from historical literature. Over time, it incorporated elements of Taiwanese opera and even popular music.

All forms of traditional Hakka performance declined in popularity with the advent of television programming in the 1960s. Today, apart from special occasions (religious and folk festivals, for example), Hakka opera is rarely performed. Hakka folk singing has fared better and is popular among amateur enthusiasts.

There have been efforts under the Folk Arts Preservation and Training Program of the Council for Cultural Affairs to revive Hakka opera and broaden its appeal. Some opera troupes have incorporated modern instruments, elements from Western music genres, and innovative theatrical concepts in attempts to attract a larger audience.

Music

Traditional Chinese Music

There are four main professional groups in Taiwan performing mostly traditional Han Chinese music: The Taipei Chinese Orchestra founded by the Taipei City Government in 1979, the National Chinese Orchestra set up by the Ministry of Education in 1984, the Kaohsiung City Chinese Orchestra and the Ensemble Orientalia of Taipei. All of them offer concerts regularly in Taiwan and perform overseas.

Beiguan and Nanguan

Beiguan and nanguan are two distinct styles of traditional Chinese music that have taken root in Taiwan. Nanguan was likely brought to the island from Fujian Province on the Chinese mainland as early as the 15th century, while beiguan arrived via Quanzhou in Fujian nearly two centuries later. Beiguan music, performed in ensemble with a wide array of instruments, remains integral to religious processions, celebrations and traditional drama performances (especially Hakka tea-picking opera) in Taiwan today. Sharing a number of musical features and sequences with the musical theater of northern China that evolved into Peking Opera, it is played as accompaniment at a variety of dramatic performances as well as religious processions and performances.

Nanguan, like other musical traditions originating south of the Yangtze River on the Chinese mainland, comprises emotive melodic progressions suited to introspective, emotive arias and figures prominently in Taiwanese opera. A major performer in Taiwan of nanguan music is the Han Tang Yuefu Music Ensemble founded in 1983. Its most recent production, “Luo Shen Fu—the Tale of the Luo River Goddess,” premiered in 2006. The group regularly performs in Taiwan and overseas.

Western Classical Music

Taiwan’s three major professional orchestras are the Taichung-based National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra founded in 1945, the Taipei-based National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) established in 1986, and the Taipei Symphony Orchestra (TSO) set up in 1969. They often work with international performers and conductors to perform works of Western composers and regularly travel abroad. The Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1985, is the largest private orchestra in Taiwan. Its 2008 concert schedule included guest conductor Jorma Panula directing an all Sibelius program in June, and guest conductor Andreas Delfs directing all Beethoven, Mozart and Mahler programs in October and November.

The Taipei Opera Theater and the National Theater present Western grand opera performances frequently. Taipei Opera Theater has staged many productions since its founding in 1976, including Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana”; Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” “The Abduction from the Seraglio” and “The Marriage of Figaro”; Verdi’s “Rigoletto”; Gounod’s “Faust”; Donizetti’s “The Elixir of Love”; and Bellini’s “La Sonnambula.” The NSO and the TSO regularly support major opera productions. Construction began in 2008 of the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House designed by Japanese architect Toyo Ito. It will seat just over 2,000 in the main auditorium, 800 in a playhouse and 200 in a black-box experimental theater.

Popular Music

The 1990s were the heyday of popular music in Taiwan, which was at one point Asia’s second-largest market behind only Japan. Since reaching a zenith in 1997, however, the industry has seen revenue fall by more than 50 percent because of illegal downloading and a diversification of entertainment channels, among other reasons. Nevertheless, pop music is still the most dynamic sector of the entertainment business, and with 80 percent of popular Chinese music being produced in Taiwan, the nation continues to be the most prolific producer of this music genre. Taiwanese acts (such as pop stars Jay Chou, Jolin Tsai and the girl group S.H.E) still dominate charts throughout the Chinese-speaking world.

Taiwanese Holo Popular Music

Although popular music sung in Mandarin dominates the radio airwaves and selection palettes in most karaoke establishments, modern and contemporary popular music sung in Taiwanese Holo is now ubiquitous. Modern Taiwanese popular music dates back to the early decades of the 20th century, when it was chiefly composed of Japanese popular songs of the 1930s and 1940s with the lyrics translated into Taiwanese.

Modern Taiwanese popular music encountered censorship in the 1970s, reducing its media exposure briefly, but underwent an underground revival in the 1980s. After martial law was lifted in 1987, recordings of modern Taiwanese popular music returned to the airwaves and remain popular with older people to day in Taiwan because of the worldview it expresses, the moving and artistic Taiwanese language in which it is sung and the high degree of craftsmanship evident in its marriage of poetry with lyrical melody. Younger audiences have been attracted to this genre recently through the singing artistry of Chiang Huei who rose to stardom in the 1980s.

Contemporary Taiwanese popular music appeals mostly to a younger, primarily post martial-law generation that is receptive to a broader range of overseas (mostly Western) popular culture sources for inspiration. It features a raw, energetic style that is perhaps best personified by Wu Bai and Lim Giong, two of the most successful singers in the genre, and draws on many types of Western popular music for its melody, tempo and mood—rock, rap, reggae and blues all figure prominently.

Bands and Independent Acts

Underground bands began to be formed in Taiwan in the late 1980s and 1990s, and won followings because of their support of the pro-democracy movement and association with political subversion and social commentary. These groups include veteran punk act LTK Commune (the so-called progenitor of Taiwan’s indie scene), rock band Blacklist Workshop, heavy-metal group ChthoniC and feminist punk band Ladybug.

As the 1990s progressed, non-pop genres began to achieve a mainstream following, blurring the gap between alternative and mainstream in Taiwan. Mayday and Luan Tan are rock acts popular in the mid-to-late 1990s. With contraction of the market for pop music in the last decade, an increasing number of independent labels have emerged featuring alternative bands and artists, such as student folk-rock band Sodagreen and Deserts Chang (also known as Chang Xuan), a female urban folk singer-songwriter.

Chinese Music Theater

Theatrical or televised performances of traditional Chinese music theater are not as commonly seen today in Taiwan as was the case two decades ago, yet opera schools, community theaters and temples, as well as the National Theater, do offer strictly traditional presentations and modern re-interpretations of the form. The most common varieties of Chinese music theater performed in Taiwan today are Peking Opera, which first reached maturity on the Chinese mainland during the Ching dynasty; Taiwanese Opera, which spawned from several dramatic traditions and types of music brought from southern regions of mainland China; and Kun Opera, which is being “reinvented” through cross-strait collaboration.

Peking Opera

Taiwan’s major Peking opera troupes are the National Guo Guang Opera Company and the National Fu Hsing Chinese Opera Theater. The Guo Guang company was established in 1995 following the shutdown of three major military-sponsored opera troupes. Performers from those groups merged into the new one, which maintains a highly traditional repertoire.

Fu Hsing is affiliated with the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts, formerly the National Fu Hsing Dramatic Arts Academy that in 1999 merged with the National Guo Guang Dramatic Arts Academy to become the island’s main training school for Chinese opera. Fu Hsing is known for being more adventuresome than Guo Guang in its productions, which tend to be new scripts that combine traditional and modern ideas.

Like Fu Hsing, other opera groups have tried to modernize Peking opera. One of the first to begin experimenting on a more modest scale was Kuo Hsiao-chuang, who founded the Ya-yin Ensemble in 1979. Kuo sought younger audiences by bringing a strong visual dimension to her productions, adding more stage props, dramatic lighting effects and revolving platforms. Another innovator was the Contemporary Legend Theater founded by opera actor Wu Hsing-kuo in 1984, which staged Peking opera adaptations of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and “King Lear,” Euripides’ “Medea” and Aeschylus’ “The Oresteia.”

Taiwanese Opera

The crucible for Taiwanese Opera is Yilan County in eastern Taiwan a century ago, where the love story plots and slapstick of cheguxi (cart drum plays) music theater were combined with folk songs, jinge (a traditional musical form originating in Fujian Province) and nanguan music to provide entertainment during religious processions and special festivals. This form of music theater was originally performed on outdoor stages for special occasions, such as weddings and temple festivals, although it has found a formal theatrical setting in recent decades.

The role of Yilan in the development of Taiwanese opera continues to this very day. Its County Cultural Center sponsors a performing troupe and houses a Taiwanese opera museum. There are few performing troupes of professional caliber around the island, but the most prominent is the Ming Hwa Yuan Theater Troupe established in 1929. Its productions combine the form’s traditional folk theater heritage with modern cinematic and theatrical techniques, particularly in lighting and scenery.

The genre’s most celebrated actress is Yang Li-hua, with a career now spanning 45 years. She last presented a new production, “A Life for the Master,” at the National Theater in 2007, in which she played three different roles. Like many Taiwanese opera actresses, Yang made her reputation playing male roles. Early on, male performers dominated Taiwanese opera, but today women play most of the major roles.

Kun Opera

The form of traditional Chinese drama with the highest literary cachet, Kun Opera is undergoing a creative revival of sorts. Many of the authentic traditional performance skills of Kun Opera requiring musical, physical and artistic skills of a substantively higher level than those required for any other form of traditional opera are presumably already lost. However, Peking Opera absorbed some of its music in the 19th century as that originally regional form sought to gain greater literary status in imperial eyes. This, along with the survival of written chuanqi scripts and the artistic judgment of Peking opera performers and producers in Taiwan and mainland China, has led to collaborative experiments on both sides of the Taiwan Strait with mounting Kun opera “revival” performances.

The Lanting Kun Opera Troupe, founded in 1994 by Gao Hui-lan, has been very active since 2005, with a production of Wang Ting-na’s Ming-era chuanqi play, “The Lioness Roars,” in 2006; “Seeking the Peony Pavilion” in 2007; and a six-play anthology of 10 selected scenes in 2008.

Performers from Lanting and the Guo Guang Opera Company (see the “Peking Opera” section) collaborated in 2009 for a 12-week run of Kun opera performances at Taipei’s National Palace Museum based on an adaptation of Hong Sheng’s 17th-century chuanqi play, “The Palace of Eternal Youth.” Much too complex a work to perform in its entirety of 50 acts even over several sittings, the plot was revised into a 90-minute production for afternoon sessions at the museum. The revision draws connections between the plot and the Tang-era painting “Emperor Minghuang’s Flight to Szechwan,” which was on display at the museum.

Attaining sustainability of a re-invented Kun opera form will require training a new generation of performers. The Taiwan Kunqu Opera Theater, established in 1999, continues to bring performers from mainland China to Taiwan for training sessions with students and holds regular performances excerpted from chuanqi plays.

Taiwan author Kenneth Hsien-yung Pai (see the “Literature” section below) is also championing revival of the form. He successfully staged adaptations of Kun opera classics “Peony Pavilion” in 2006 and “The Jade Hairpin” in 2009.

Puppetry

Puppet shows were one of the primary forms of entertainment in Taiwan until television arrived during the 1960s. Nearly any festive occasion, such as a wedding, holiday or temple celebration, called for a puppet performance. Numerous troupes were active throughout the island, traveling village to village on foot in the early days, with stage, musical instruments and trunks full of puppets on poles in tow.

In the hands of several masters, puppetry in Taiwan, especially glove puppetry, developed along its own lines into a regional style distinct from puppetry on the Chinese mainland. However, only a few puppeteers are known for having continued to work in the traditional style. The most prominent of them was Lee Tien-lu, whose life provided inspiration for Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1993 award-winning motion picture, “The Puppetmaster.” Lee lived long enough to see a museum of his puppetry artifacts open in Sanzhi Township, Taipei County before he died in 1998. A children’s puppet troupe he helped set up, I Wan Jan, celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2007. Another key figure is Hsu Tianfu, whose Hsiao Hsi Yuan Puppet Theater staged performances in northern and eastern Taiwan during 2009.

Another acknowledged master is Huang Hai-tai, whose melodramatic tales of ancient swordsmen full of action-filled battle scenes were highlighted by elegant and highly literary dialogue. His son, Huang Chun-hsiung, adapted puppet theater to television and helped spawn the jinguang (“glint”) approach to puppetry performances by adding video special effects. Huang’s sons have also established a cable TV channel. And yet another traditional hand-puppet practitioner, Chen Xi-huang, has teamed up with Dutchman Robin Ruizendaal of the Taiyuan Puppet Theater Company to realize a fusion of Western and traditional Taiwanese puppet art that is also performed overseas.

Spoken Drama

The beginnings of what Taiwan’s spoken theater has become today can be ascribed to the Little Theater Movement of the 1960s with works by several new dramatists, including Li Man-kuei and Yao Yi-wei. The first professional stage play produced by an independent (rather than government-sponsored) troupe was Yao’s “Red Nose,” which was later staged in mainland China and Japan. It also heralded the arrival of the 1970s, when private mini-theaters proliferated and directors began experimenting more freely with staging techniques and imaginative interpretations of local and Western plays.

Early Innovators

The Lan-ling Drama Workshop, founded in 1977 by Wu Ching-chi, was the first theater group to recast a traditional Chinese opera in modern colloquial language. Focusing on physical movement and body language, Lan-ling’s ground-breaking 1977 production “Ho-chu’s New Match,” adapted from a well-known Peking opera story, proved to be a contemporary social satire on Taiwan’s new middle class. This play paved the way for a new theatrical genre in Taiwan, with future theater groups staging contemporary adaptations of other Peking operas.

Lan-ling remained influential on the development of spoken theater in Taiwan long after the troupe’s 1991 demise. During the company’s heyday, hundreds of students underwent its unique training program and some of the major figures in theater today were at one time connected with the group. In May 2009, Lan-ling presented a 30th-anniversary production of “Ho-chu’s New Match.” Some of the original cast appeared alongside new recruits, and topical jokes were recast to spoof contemporary life in Taipei.

Another pioneer in the theater world was the New Aspect Art Center 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.

Later Luminaries

The early efforts of Lan-ling and New Aspect helped set the stage for the establishment of some leading theater companies in the mid-1980s. Several of these are still active today. Most prominent is the Performance Workshop set up in 1984 by Stan Lai, who introduced collective improvisational theater to Taiwan. The group’s first production to attract more than just a student audience was “The Night We Became Cross-talk Comedians.” The production marked the first time that highly stylized cross-talk (hsiangsheng) was expanded into a full-length play. Performance Workshop continued during the 1990s to attempt a revitalization of the genre.

The Ping Fong Acting Troupe set up in 1986 presents mainly comedies directed by Li Kuo-hsiu, who formerly worked with Lan-ling as well as the Performance Workshop. Many of the pranks and wisecracks in its productions are satirical comments on Taiwan’s society.

Fusions of spoken and musical theater can also be found in Taiwan. The Godot Theater Company, founded in 1988, often uses a combination of theater, music and dance. It frequently stages Taiwan-oriented adaptations of classic foreign works such as Shakespeare’s “Othello” (August 2008) and “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams (March 2009). In April 2009, it put up a rendition of the Huangmei Diao opera, “Butterfly Lovers.” This opera was particularly popular in Taiwan during the 1960s, when a film version was produced to great acclaim. Another example of mixed theatrical traditions was staged in February 2009, when Robert Wilson directed a Chinese-language adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s semi- biography, “Orlando,” giving veteran Taiwan-based Peking opera performer Wei Hai-min a new one-woman stage performance vehicle to connect with Taipei’s theatergoers.

Dance

The dance world in Taiwan today is surprisingly diverse, considering that it really got its start only in the late 1960s, when performances by American dance companies such as Alvin Ailey and Paul Taylor exposed local dancers and audiences to new styles of dance, and appreciation of modern dance gained momentum.

Mother of Modern Dance

One of the first to introduce modern dance to Taiwan was Liu Feng-hsueh, whom many today consider the matriarch of the dance world. In 1976, she formed the Neo-Classic Dance Company. In 2009, it staged the multimedia musical “Land of the Clouded Leopard” under the creative direction of cinematographer Deng Wen-bing, combining aboriginal singing and dancing with modern dance in a narrative framework.

Cloud Gate Dance Theater

At the same time that Liu was beginning to make her mark in the early 1970s, Lin Hwai-min was forming the Cloud Gate Dance Theater, which would go on to become Taiwan’s premier dance company, gaining a devoted local audience as well as an international reputation. After studying under Martha Graham, Lin returned to Taiwan in 1973 and began combining modern techniques with Chinese opera movements. Lin’s recent works blend the aesthetics of calligraphy and martial arts with elements of Western ballet and modern dance.

The company’s rehearsal studio and storage area for costumes, props and archives were destroyed by fire on February 11, 2008. A subsequent fund drive raised a reported US$12 million, while the Taipei County Government donated a site in Danshui to serve as the troupe’s new home. Cloud Gate’s 35th anniversary performances during 2008 included the September world premiere of “Whisper of Flowers” in Chiayi. In May 2009, Lin received the lifetime achievement award at the prestigious International Movimentos Dance Festival in Wolfsburg, Germany.

Diverse Dance Styles

A number of smaller dance companies have started up since the 1980s, many of which founded by former Cloud Gate members. Among the most prominent early on was Lin Hsiu-wei’s Tai Gu Tales Dance Theater, known for its meditative dances based on Asian philosophical thought. Other choreographers with a meditative or ritualistic style of dance include Tao Fu-lan and Lin Li-chen. Tao fused theater and dance in her earlier works and developed modern dances based on beiguan luantan opera. Lin’s most recent domestic offering of her two full-length productions, “Mirrors of Life” and “Anthem to the Fading Flowers,” took place in 2006 and 2007, respectively, while performances of the former were given overseas in 2007 and 2008.

The Dance Forum Taipei, founded in 1989 by Ping Heng, presents a wide mixture of styles, but is best known for works that combine a postmodern sensibility with a Chinese or Asian frame of reference. In May 2009, it offered the “Peculiar Journey of Leonce and Lena,” a combination of Georg Buchner’s “Leonce und Lena” with children’s tales by Eugène Ionesco.

Folk Dance

Tsai Li-hua’s Taipei Folk Dance Theater bills itself as Taiwan’s first professional ethnic dance company. Founded in 1988, the group aims to preserve ethnic dances from Taiwan and mainland China and to create new dances based on folk dance techniques. It has generally managed to stage a new production per year in recent years, with 2008’s “Crazy Taiwan” being its latest effort. Among children’s folk dance troupes is the Lan Yang Dancers. In 2007, it revived its “Flower Listeners” production of 2002, inviting Swiss composer Michel Rochat to write music to accompany the stage action and direct the performance with the beating of gongs.

Cinema

The turn of the 20th century saw the advent of cinema in Taiwan in the form of imported Japanese films. The first local productions using local actors began to be made in the mid-1920s. Government-controlled and heavily influenced by Japanese convention and style, they included the use of live narration. In the 1920s and 1930s, films from China were also widely available.

The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) proved a major interruption to filmmaking as all non-Japanese entertainment was banned. No productions were shot in Taiwan again until after the ROC government took over in 1945.

The domestic film industry began to thrive in the 1960s and 1970s. It became the strongest in Asia and was at one time the third largest in the world. Its main fare was popular genre pictures such as melodramas, romantic dramas, crime flicks, and kung fu and action movies watched by audiences domestically and throughout Southeast Asia. Films focusing on economic growth and social change were common, and government-sponsored propaganda films abounded. Small companies began filming productions in Taiwanese Holo during this time.

At its peak, the industry was putting out 200 to 300 films per year, but it started to decline in the late 1970s. Foreign movies, especially those from Hong Kong, began to dominate on both the silver screen and in homes, aided by the rise of affordable home video and the rejection of local cinema by audiences.

New Wave Cinema

Even as the death knell rang for mainstream domestic film during the 1980s, a few young Taiwanese directors began to make experimental, independent productions in reaction to the overblown and artistically exhausted nature of local cinema. At the start of the decade, four young directors made “In Our Time” (1982). A surprise success, it is said by many to have launched the film movement known as New Wave Cinema. Works in this genre often depicted the lives of ordinary people and were noted for their social realism. New Wave directors employed introspective and idiosyncratic cinematic techniques, such as slow-paced plot development, long takes, framing and repeated motifs. The use of little-known actors added to the documentary-like style of these films.

The two great auteurs of the movement were Edward Yang (one of the directors of “In Our Time”) and Hou Hsiao-hsien. Yang’s detached portrayals of urban lives and urban spaces, in, for example, “Taipei Story” (1985) and “The Terrorizers” (1986), contrasted with Hou’s warmer, pastoral style and exploration of generational shifts as seen in “A Time to Live and A Time to Die” (1985) and “Dust in the Wind” (1986).

New Wave Cinema was never a mainstream draw, accounting for a small fraction of box office even at its peak, and was criticized for being irrelevant to the majority of people in Taiwan. Appealing only to the cultural elite, New Wave directors rarely sought local popular audiences and rejected commercialism, even while winning praise and fame internationally.

Second New Wave

In the late 1980s, New Wave Cinema began to taper off as a movement. A “second new wave” of young directors emerged, making films that were still dedicated to exploring the pain and absurdities of contemporary life but less serious and more appealing to general audiences.

Perhaps the most famous Second New Wave director is Ang Lee. His movies such as “Pushing Hands” (1991), “The Wedding Banquet” (1993) and “Eat Drink Man Woman” (1994) explore generational and cultural conflicts in modern Taiwan. Lee has since moved on from Taiwanese cinema and is now an internationally acclaimed, Oscar-winning director. Tsai Ming-liang is another Second New Wave director. His “Vive L’Amour” (1994) won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival. Second New Wave Cinema peaked as a movement during the 1990s.

New Wave directors of both generations have continued to make films and win awards up to the present. In 2005, Tsai’s “The Wayward Cloud” (2005) won a Silver Bear, the Alfred-Bauer Prize and the FIPRSCI Prize at the 55th Berlin Film Festival. New Wave Cinema remains a large influence on today’s crop of independent filmmakers.

Commercially, Taiwanese film continued to flounder throughout the 1980s. A number of profitable but uninspiring films during the early 1990s turned audiences off for good. The situation was not helped by the increasing universality of video and TV, rampant piracy, and the loosening of restrictions on the import of foreign productions during the last decade of the 20th century.

At the turn of the new millennium, only 20 films were being produced per year, accounting for a mere 1 percent of total box-office receipts. However, a number of surprise hits have been made by young directors dubbed the “7-Up Generation” for their drive to succeed. These include “Blue Gate Crossing” (2002), “Formula 17” (2004), “Double Vision” (2002) and “The Heirloom” (2005).

Taiwanese movies continue to gain box-office share and critical momentum. In 2008, about 40 local films were made, and total market share rose to 12 percent. The most sensational success in recent memory has been Wei Te-sheng’s “Cape No. 7” (2008), a romantic comedy with a multi-ethnic cast of small-town characters and a plot depicting two parallel love stories while gently poking fun at what it means to be Taiwanese.

The film was a smash in Taiwan, garnering the second-highest box-office gross ever behind “Titanic.” Seen as faithfully depicting the island, it featured dialogue in Taiwanese Holo, the Hengchun peninsula as a scenic background, accomplished musicians, Hengchun natives as movie characters and a depiction of the interaction between Japanese and Taiwanese culture.

Documentaries have also become popular with film audiences in Taiwan. “Life” (2004), about the September 21, 1999 earthquake that devastated central Taiwan, for example, was the highest-grossing domestic film of the year. Other recent successes include “Jump! Boys” (2005), “Let It Be” (2005) and “Do Over” (2006).

Literature

Before 1945

Ching Rule (1683-1895)

Regulated verse poetry in the classical Chinese tradition was the main form of literature in Taiwan during the Ching period. In the mid-1800s, Taiwanese poets began to express a native identity in their poems, writing about social realities and culture on the island—a trend that would continue under the Japanese.

Japanese Colonial Rule (1895-1945)

Driven by sociopolitical resistance to the Japanese colonizers, literature during this period was characterized by displays of patriotism and nationalism, as well as frequent references to Taiwan’s contemporary social and cultural conditions. In the early years of colonization, Taiwanese intellectual elites attempted to maintain a Chinese cultural milieu and continued to produce works in the classical Chinese tradition. Ideas rooted in the Western enlightenment and experimental writing were introduced in the 1910s, and in the following decade, a full-fledged native literature movement emerged.

Called the “Taiwanese New Literature Movement,” it was marked by a struggle to break away from the past, with writers, such as Lai Ho, advocating progressive social visions and “Taiwanese consciousness” in literature by writing in Taiwanese Holo about Taiwan. Works of this movement, written in both Chinese and Japanese, also took on a political bent, sometimes even explicitly criticizing the colonizers. In the early 1930s, the movement was damped by the colonial government’s crackdown on subversive writing.

A new generation of less anti-Japanese Taiwanese writers began to emerge during this time. Born after Taiwan became a Japanese colony, many were educated in Japan and wrote in Japanese. They displayed a hybrid cultural identity (as opposed to previous writers who were still culturally Chinese) and held a firmer grasp of Western concepts.

The use of the Chinese language was banned in 1937 after the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, engendering a split among pro-Japanese writers, who participated in propaganda activities, and anti-Japanese writers, who increased allusions to local folk culture in their work as a form of protest at the ban.

After 1945

Mainland Émigré Literature: 1945-1959

Following the end of Japanese rule, the work of émigré writers came to dominate the literary scene as political repression of local intellectuals and a policy that made Mandarin Chinese the official language brought the Taiwanese New Literature Movement to an abrupt halt. Émigré writing consisted broadly of anti-communist propaganda and works in the realist style of the May Fourth Movement (see Chapter 3, “History”) in the form of essays and a hybrid genre of essay-fiction. It was typified by the use of traditional literary prose, archaic expressions and allusions to classical literature.

Modernist Literary Movement: 1960s

Some writers, such as Kenneth Hsien-yung Pai, began to challenge the prevailing conservative mentality during the 1960s. They incorporated elements of Western liberal-humanist tradition into their writing. Thematically, they tended to focus on philosophical contemplation and non-traditional relationships. There was a conscious exploration of language and voice, and a radical rejection of conventional literary techniques.

Nativist Literary Debate: 1970s

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, some intellectuals, including Huang Chun-ming, began to criticize what they saw as the modernists’ slavish imitation of Western cultural models. They were concerned for what they saw as Taiwan’s endangered cultural identity. The nativists became highly politicized and focused on contemporary Taiwanese society in their work, exploring, among other themes, imperialism and capitalist exploitation of factory workers and fishermen.

Pluralism, Multiculturalism and Post-identity Politics: 1980-2000

With the rise of the democracy movement, nativist writing began to lose significance. Rising levels of income and freedom, along with the increasing commercialization of literature, engendered a shift in focus for a new generation of writers, whose literary works were marked by a diversity of styles and genres.

These writers, who include Li Ang, explored topics such as the lives of young urbanites, female empowerment, alternative lifestyles and social change. Several highlighted issues associated with the Taiwan independence movement, minorities, feminism and environmentalism. Others wrote critiques of what they saw as the materialistic, impoverished cultural environment.

This period saw the rise of neo-nativist literature. Largely a stylistic exploitation of nativist motifs, this pseudo-genre had little ideological connection to the literary style from which it borrowed. Toward the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s, postmodernist writing came into vogue. A revival of local vernacular traditions was another important trend in the 1990s.

Since 2000

The proliferation of information technology in Taiwan in recent years has led to a burgeoning of new literary vehicles. Everything from online forums and blogs to e-mail and e-books has diversified the means by which literary works are circulated. Interactive writing and the use of animation, multimedia and hyperlinks continue to expand the dimensions of literary creation. Giddens Ko and Tsai Jih-heng are young fiction writers who first gained a following online. (See the “Books” section of Chapter 16, “Mass Media.”)

Indigenous Literature

In the 1980s, indigenous intellectuals became increasingly active in recreating their histories and recording their peoples’ oral traditions. In this way, a large body of oral narratives including creation myths and stories about tribal heroes have been transcribed and circulated. Today, one publishing house in Taichung, Morning Star Publishing, specializes in indigenous-related literature, and one magazine, Taiwan Indigenous Voice Bimonthly, which started up in the 1990s, publishes indigenous writing.

Indigenous writing chronicles an experience of Taiwan not reflected in mainstream literature—that of the mountain-living, seafaring and close-to-nature lives of indigenous Taiwanese. It is also noteworthy for its innovations with Mandarin and literary style. Established indigenous writers include literary award winner Norbas Tamapima of the Bunun, who has several published novels, some of which have been translated into English.

Taiwanese Literature in Translation

Since the 1990s, the government has been making a major push to get more literature from Taiwan translated into foreign languages. In 1996, the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) began a project with Columbia University Press to publish English translations of the works of major novelists from Taiwan. So far, 17 novels and collections of short stories have been published, including a collection of works by Taiwan’s established indigenous writers.

As of 2008, over 230 volumes of prose, poetry and scholarly works had been translated into seven languages under CCA-sponsored programs. Several have won critical praise and one, “Three-Legged Horse” by Cheng Ching-wen, won a major U.S. book award.