Taiwan.com.au Portal Newsletter

This quarterly newsletter is produced by Taiwan.com.au Portal. For subscription and editorial details, please email: news@taiwan.com.au. Our mailing address: P.O. Box 218, Belgrave, Victoria 3160, Australia.

[Issue in Australia] [Issue in Taiwan] [Book Review] [About Taiwan.com.au Portal]

Issue in Australia

The Wiggles is the most successful pre-school children's band in Australia. Its four members (Anthony, Greg, Murray and Jeff) and their friends (Dorothy the Dinosaur, Wags the Dog, Henry the Octopus and Captain Feathersword the friendly pirate) have been entertaining Australian children with their song and dance since 1991. The Sydney-based band is also popular in other English-speaking countries such as New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Even in South America and Europe, there are Wiggles songs sung in Spanish and Portuguese.

Now the Wiggles have arrived in Asia. Through a deal with the Walt Disney Channel, the band has authorized various Asian clones that perform its hit song "Hot Potato" in different local languages. The first Taiwanese Wiggles debuted in March this year, closely followed by a Japanese version.

In time, there will be also South Korean Wiggles, Thai Wiggles and Mainland Chinese Wiggles entertaining pre-school children in their respective countries. This is despite the fact that the Taiwanese Wiggles are already enjoying fame and success in Hong Kong, Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries.

There is something particularly significant about the Taiwanese Wiggles. In fact, the group boasts the first-ever female Wiggle.

"The addition of a female Wiggle gives Taiwanese children something homely and motherly to relate to," says Anni, the Red Wiggle, in a media report. "Traditionally it is the mother, or female relative at any rate, who spends more time with the child in Taiwan."

Along with the introduction of the world's first female Wiggle, the Taiwanese group has also adapted several of the original Wiggles songs into Mandarin - something that seems to have further contributed to the group's increasing popularity around the island.

"We obviously couldn't sing about hot potatoes, as children here wouldn't understand," the Red Wiggle says. "Western food has been replaced by noodles and glutinous rice balls."

Whether children in Taiwan much prefer traditional Chinese food than Western food is beside the point. The point is that the Taiwanese Wiggles are tremendously successful around the island with their numerous television shows, DVDs, CDs and live performances.

According to Taiwan's Taipei Times, recent television ratings show that "a staggering 3.2 percent of the island's population tune into the evening Wiggles show on a daily basis. Ratings for the show's morning and afternoon slots are somewhat lower, and presently stand at 0.69 and 1.04 percent of the population respectively".

The success of the Taiwanese Wiggles suggests the amazing power of popular media products across geo-political boundaries. Yet, it also indicates the extent to which these products need to be localized in order to cross various cultural barriers successfully. [back to top]

Issue in Taiwan

Literature functions as the root of a nation's culture. Indeed, other art forms such as music, dance, film and theater also serve to highlight the characteristics of a culture and to showcase the spirit of its people. But these art forms require a written text as a start point and thus can be viewed broadly as branches of literature.

In this sense, the establishment and official opening of Taiwan's National Museum of Taiwanese Literature this year is historically significant. It indicates that the people in Taiwan now have a channel through which to review and further solidify their own special historical character and position. This is important because Taiwan's history and literature have long been interpreted from Western and Chinese points of view.

The National Museum of Taiwanese Literature was opened on October 17. In 2001, the government in Taiwan declared the day to be "Taiwan Culture Day" - an official step to affirm Taiwan's native cultural rooting in today's increasingly globalized world.

The location of the museum is also notable. It was an old, disused building in Taiwan's Tainan County that used to be the Tainan Prefecture Hall during Japan's colonial rule of the island from 1895 to 1945. The decision to use the building symbolizes the transformation of the old landmark from a center of politics to one of culture.

Most significantly, the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature does not focus only on literature written in the Taiwanese language. It also emphasizes on literature written in or about Taiwan.

In the words of Lin Juei-ming, the museum's director: "No matter what race, ethnicity or nationality is involved, and no matter what language in which the literature is written - any work originating from people living on this island or on topics related to Taiwan should be entitled to be called Taiwanese literature."

Based on this definition, literary works created during the Japanese colonial rule in either Japanese or Taiwanese language can be considered as Taiwanese literature. Similarly, works written in Dutch language during the Dutch colonial rule of Taiwan from 1624 to 1662 can be viewed as Taiwanese literature.

Currently, the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature holds various exhibitions that feature Taiwan's literary development over the past 100 years. Taiwanese literary magazines and films adapted from Taiwanese literary works are highlighted through archival written, audio and video materials.

These exhibitions examine the intimate relationship between literature and social change in Taiwan. They also present the defining characteristics of Taiwanese literature throughout its evolution from imitation of classical Chinese literature to postwar writings that give emphasis to the lives and experiences of Taiwanese people.

Museum administrators plan to work with other cultural institutions in Taiwan to provide an educational tour around the island. A specially designed bookroom for children has also been launched.

In short, via its active collection and research of Taiwanese literary works and other historical data on Taiwanese literature, the museum seeks to "enable all people to explore Taiwanese literature and inspire their interest, knowledge, imagination and creativity".

More information about the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature can be found on the "Museums of Taiwan" web site (http://museum.cca.gov.tw/) [back to top]

Book Review

Philippines-born Chinese Australian writer Arlene J. Chai's "Eating Fire and Drinking Water" is perhaps her best work so far. Although the writer has produced four novels since 1995, all of them exploring complex and often bittersweet relationships between generations of families and individuals, it is "Eating Fire and Drinking Water", her second book, that is most compelling and absorbing.

The book begins with the orphaned heroine, journalist Clara Perez, launching her journey of searching for an identity. It is a time when the people in the Philippines begin to call for their government's political reform. As Clara's involvement in the increasingly violent student demonstrations deepens, she discovers that her own history is closely connected to that of her country. The demand of the students that the government return what belongs to the people - the right to rule their own country - may be seen as Clara's desire to get hold of a personal identity that has been denied her by whoever left her in the orphanage many years ago.

In addition to Clara, two other important characters in "Eating Fire and Drinking Water" are Bayani, the student leader, and Colonel Aure, an "artist of suffering whose canvas was the human body" appointed by the government to arrest, torture and eventually murder Bayani. These two individuals are portrayed in the book as symbols of two extreme value systems - Bayani the good, and Aure the evil. It is between these two value systems that the people in the Philippines struggle for their freedom and democracy. It is further with her observations on the impacts of these two value systems upon individual lives in the Philippines that Clara unveils the story of her own life.

In "Eating Fire and Drinking Water", each of the characters is inexplicably linked to the others. The book presents a story that is at the same time tender and violent. It captures its readers with a kind of raw but poetic beauty.

For example, there are delicate moments that speak of the metaphysical links between the characters and their link to the unseen entity that shapes each individual's destiny. But in more brutal moments the graphic description of Colonel Aure's violent handiwork also expresses the injustice that the military have repeatedly done to their own people in order to silence them.

In the words of one reviewer: "In a fast paced, racy, bold and visual dirge, Chai's words bleed and spill cathartically onto the page and into the imagination. She summons the stench of poverty, the aroma and corruption of political narcissism and the purity of spirit into the nostrils and nuances of our imaginative realms."

Arlene J. Chai's "Eating Fire and Drinking Water" was published by Random House Australia in 1996. [back to top]

About Taiwan.com.au Portal

On October 2 and 3 this year, Monash University's School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics organized an international symposium that attracted speakers from all over the world. Its theme was "Border Crossings - Popular, Mass and Global Culture".

The aim of this symposium was to bring people within the Humanities and Social Sciences together to explore concepts of popular, mass and global culture within the context of their disciplines, and to create a forum for interdisciplinary discussion among those working within this area.

The editor of the Taiwan.com.au Portal newsletter, Ms Christine Sun, presented a paper at this symposium. Ms Sun's paper was titled "'Noodles, Not Potatoes' - Media Localization in Taiwan". It featured the arrival of Australia's The Wiggles in Asia, as well as the birth of the Taiwanese Wiggles and similar clones in other countries.

In her paper, Ms Sun discussed the extent to which global media products need to be localized in order to break into and further expand in various domestic markets. She suggested that, at least in Taiwan, there are four levels of localization involved in the introduction of Western films and television programs to local audiences. Their aim is to create a sense of familiarity and to boost popularity among the Taiwanese.

Participants of the symposium praised Ms Sun's investigation findings, even though they are rather preliminary. Yet, they also pointed out that recent academic research has shifted its attention from cultural and capital flows between Asia and the world to those among Asian countries.

For example, Alison Tokita of Monash University's Japanese Studies program suggested that Ms Sun would benefit much from a reading of Koichi Iwabuchi's paper "Taking Popular Cultural Connections Seriously: Issues in the Study of Regional Cultural Flows in South/East Asia". The paper was presented at the "Cultural Flows With(in) a Globalizing Asia" conference in the university on November 30, 2002.

Mr Iwabuchi spoke at the conference on the theme of "cultural (re)production, appropriation and transformation", with a focus on information and technology flows via media, film and internet. His paper, an investigation of how Japanese popular culture circulates in Asia, is a valuable addition to the growing area of transnational cultural studies.

Ms Sun gratefully accepted the valuable suggestions provided by Ms Tokita and other participants of the symposium.

More information about the "Border Crossings" symposium and the "Cultural Flows" conference can be found at the web site of Monash University's School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics (http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/schools/lcl/index.html). [back to top]