Chi Wei-jan (紀蔚然) was 30 when he first considered writing a play about four friends playing mahjong. But an over-reliance on the game's technical terms meant Chi focused too much on the game at the expense of characterization. It was a case of a young playwright getting bogged down in an abstract subject that requires a tremendous amount of knowledge — one that would confuse rather than edify the audience. Six years and seven drafts later, Chi was fed up.
"I said screw it. Forget about the mahjong — the image [on the stage] itself is powerful enough," he said. "Instead, I talk about [the character's] lives."
As mahjong lessened in importance, Chi said, the character's personalities became clearer, enabling him to finish the eighth and final version. This was over a decade ago.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF CHI WEI-JAN
First performed in 1997, The Mahjong Game (夜夜夜麻) caused a sensation because of the language employed and the play's music, which features iconic music of the 1970s such as Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming. It also caused a stir because the themes investigated by Chi — the lives of men in middle age and the nostalgia they feel for their college days — had never been covered before.
The first in a series of three thematically related plays written by Chi, The Mahjong Game is a situational piece that investigates the disenchantment four men in their fifties have towards their lives. The second play, Deja vu (驚異派對), is similar to the first in that the game is a pretext for a gathering of men, but this time in their forties. The third and final play will be staged sometime in the fall and will examine the lives of those in their thirties.
The first two plays are currently running at the Metropolitan Theater.
Chi calls The Mahjong Game semi-autobiographical because the lives of the characters along with their concerns mirror his own.
"It is about their frustrations, about what they are right now, their present situation and the nostalgia about the past back when they were college students. They were so idealistic [then], but now it's gone."
Plays that explore generational differences have been done before, but rarely is a play written and performed that deals with contemporary concerns of Taiwanese adults using a language that could be found in the office or over a game of mahjong.
"It will be challenging for the audience and exciting because the actors will use vulgarity on the stage," said Li Huan-hsiung (黎煥雄), director of The Mahjong Game.
Li embellishes the play with music from the era. "I use almost the whole song of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven, which is mentioned by one of the characters in the play and I make it a six-minute long opening," Li said. "It was a wild idea 10 years ago," he added.
Deja vu, directed by Katherine H. Chou (周慧玲), follows the lives of four forty-something men, a generation that Chi says is radically different than his own.
"This group of people [enjoyed] success very young. They enjoy political success, economic success ... all kinds of success that when I was their age there was no way I could make it," he said.
Chi says that if members of the first generation are nostalgic about the past, those of the second generation are confident about their position in society.
"The first group of people are just really disappointed about their lives and in the second play, these guys are just complacent about what they have achieved," Chi said.
But for Chi, there is a downside to their confidence and complacency.
"They also feel frustrated because they know their lives ... are not doing well spiritually."
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby