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Straight outta Taichung

By Ron Brownlow
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, May 04, 2007, Page 13

This year's TK Rock Concert lineup includes A-mei, right, as well as, clockwise from top: Sodagreen; A-yue; Bobby Chen; F.I.R.; and Wu Bai. PHOTOS: NEURON INNOVATIONS

Taike (台客) returns to Taichung this weekend when Wu Bai (伍佰), A-mei (張惠妹) and a legion of other performers shake the stages at the TK Rock Concert (2007台客搖滾嘉年華) and show Taiwan just how tai they really are. Now in its third year, TK Rock has helped change terms like taike, and hen tai (很台), or "very tai," from ethnic slurs into badges that young Taiwanese wear with pride.

Many of the headliners who made the first two TK Rock shows a hit are returning for this weekend's fest, including rapper MC Hotdog, rock and hip-hop singer Chang Chen-yue (張震嶽) and his backing band Free Night, old-skool crooner Bobby Chen (陳昇), and alt-rock bands like WonFu (旺福) and The Chairman (董事長樂團). Also returning are the poll-dancing girls, who will be joined by cheerleaders, an extreme sports squad and temple dancers. There will be a street market offering a new season of taike fashions, stalls serving Taiwanese food and smaller stages for up-and-coming bands and the finalists of a rap contest. "TK Rock is a carnival of Taiwanese culture," said Ma Tien-tsung, (馬天宗), one of the festival's producers. "There's a lot more going on in Taiwan than just Taipei 101 or Warner Village, and this is the chance to see it."

The term taike was coined by immigrants who accompanied the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as it fled China and reestablished itself in Taiwan. With China as their cultural touchstone, they saw Taiwan as "an island with no history" and looked down on native-born Taiwanese as low-class and uncultured.

Referring to someone as taike, which literally means a "Taiwanese character," was the rough equivalent of calling someone a redneck, and the adjective tai was used to denigrate someone as low-class and provincial.

Taiwan's alternative music scene has long been home to bands like the Clippers (夾子) and LTK Commune (濁水溪公社) who embraced a kind of raw, unpolished Taiwanese identity and translated it into street credibility.

But it wasn't until 2005 that trendsetters gave the phenomena a name, taike, and began aggressively promoting it in the media, fashion and music.

That year saw the publication of a book, Call Me Tai Ke (Call Me 台客), and the devotion of an entire issue of the Eslite Reader (誠品好讀雜誌) to the subject. At a press conference promoting the first TK Rock Concert in Taipei, bad-boy rocker cum DJ cum rapper Chang Chen-yue was declared to be the "most" taike, while Wu Bai was declared the "craziest" taike. Fashion magazines said that taike meant embracing elements of Taiwan's working-class culture, such as chewing betel nuts, wearing flip-flops and gloriously tacky clothing and talking bluntly. In music, the standards were MC Hotdog and his hit song I Love TW Girls (我愛台妹), and a renewed appreciation of the quintessential Taiwanese rockers Wu Bai and Bobby Chen.

It was the perfect message for a youth audience that was increasingly proud of its Taiwanese identity. A recent survey by National Chengchi University, for example, found that 60 percent of the population identified themselves as "Taiwanese," compared to 20 percent in surveys conducted a decade ago.

MC Hotdog and Chang Chen-yue have been riding the taike wave ever since. Last year, the pair fronted a well-orchestrated media blitz in advance of the second TK Rock Concert. They appeared on talk shows and a co-released album titled Wake Up. The lyrics expounded on the beauty of taimei (台妹), meaning Taiwanese hot chicks, and ranked them — Shu Qi (舒淇) was No 1. and A-mei cracked the top five because of her colorful skirts. The buzz drew an estimated 30,000 people to the second TK Rock Concert, which was held in Taichung and featured an expanded lineup and added attractions like pole dancers.

Now everyone wants to be taike. This weekend's TK Rock Concert lineup includes artists like F.I.R., a group that was previously known as a copycat of a Japanese band, and the Australian-educated singer Faith Yang (楊乃文).

One of the trendsetters behind all of this, youth culture mogul Landy Chang (張培仁) of Neuron Innovations (中子創新), says taike is like the punk movement of the late 1970s. "It's like the early days of punk," Chang said in a phone interview Tuesday. "The word used to have a negative connotation, but now it's positive and is like a new passion."

Festival Notes:

What: 2007 TK Rock Concert
(2007台客搖滾嘉年華)
When: Tomorrow and Sunday from 6pm to 10pm
Where: Taichung Metropolitan Opera House (台中大都會歌劇院), which is behind the Mitsukoshi (新光三越) building and a block from the Tiger City (老虎城) mall
Tickets: NT$499 one-day and NT$950 two-day advance tickets can be purchased at 7-Eleven through iPhone and online at www.books.com.tw. One-day tickets will be available at the door for NT$699
On the Net: taik.streetvoice.com

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