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A joy to the eye and the mind — and a reminder

This year, Kaohsiung hosted the World Games and Taipei hosted the 21st Summer Deaflympics. The mayor of Taipei is a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), while Kaohsiung’s mayor is a member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

In strongly polarized Taiwan, it is unavoidable for each side to have a team of cheerleaders, and there has been a lot of talk on the Internet about how the World Games came across as provincial and lacked an international outlook, while the Deaflympics came under attack for resembling an activity for schoolchildren.

The theme of the Deaflympics’ closing ceremony was provincial enough — a traditional outdoor banquet. With this, artistic director Stan Lai (賴聲川) grabbed the chance to make fun of both sides.

The pan-blue and pan-green camps may be deeply divided over the issue of independence, but the World Games and the Deaflympics — which both enjoyed artistic leadership of international caliber — catered to local culture, as international athletic events frequently do.

The opening ceremonies for both reflected this, though there were obvious differences. The World Games dealt with the traditional adult world of the everyman. It included the popular Pili Puppet show (霹靂布袋戲), confidently employing modern elements filled with the tensions of the adult world. By contrast, the Deaflympics focused on the world of proper and upright children’s stories, adding color from the world of teenagers.

Lai’s Deaflympics program was interesting because his adult world appeared to be the deeply imprinted experience of life in exile for a Taiwanese Mainlander intellectual. He stressed that the most formative years of his life — from 14 to 24 — were spent in Taiwan and that Taiwan is in his blood. Because his father was a diplomat, however, he was born overseas, and his Taiwan experience was narrow because he was not immersed in traditional culture.

His work starts at a narrow point of departure from which he expands to span the modern world and the past, moving back and forth between Taiwan and China and the world, and between tradition and modernity. He universalizes this experience of life in exile as civilizational change, and expresses the tragedy of one who is constantly moving in time and space. The depth of his work is felt by academics and lay people alike in Taiwan, China and elsewhere.

Although exile is the most touching theme in his work, this could not have been the main theme of the Deaflympics, so he wanted the show to be less “Chinese” and to avoid the pretentious military marches that opened the Beijing Olympics.

Because he is unfamiliar with traditional Taiwanese life, this was the Taiwan we were left with: the Taipei streets of his youth and childhood dreams of his ancestral home.

The hip-hop dances were dynamic and his childhood imagination surprised us thanks to the dreamlike, top-notch depiction of oceans, rice paddies and (of course) water buffalo. At the closing ceremony, he enlightened us by sealing the Games with a traditional outdoor banquet.

There was always going to be competition between the opening and closing ceremonies of the World Games and the Deaflympics, but this also made the events more creative and produced a more diverse and rich image of Taiwan. They were a joy to the eye and mind, displaying both wealth and coarseness.

In doing so, they offered a stark contrast to the stiffness of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics by setting Taiwan and China out as two spiritually different worlds. This is something the supporters of the World Games and the Deaflympics should bear in mind as they continue their tussle.



Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.

TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
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