Taiwan in Time: Sept. 7 to Sept. 13
Less than a year after he ignited Taiwan’s campus nativist folk song movement by proclaiming “sing our own songs” (唱自己的歌) on stage during a Western folk music event, Lee Shuang-tze (李雙澤) drowned on Sept. 10, 1977 at the age of 28 attempting to save a fellow swimmer.
After Lee’s death, his friends and fellow folk singers Yang Tzu-chun (楊祖珺) and Ara Kimbo, commonly known as Kimbo Hu (胡德夫), premiered an unreleased song, Formosa (美麗島), at his funeral.
Photo courtesy of Tamkang Time
Lee wrote the melody, but the lyrics were adapted by Liang Ching-fong (梁景峰) from an earlier poem, depicting the beauty of Taiwan. However, the song became forever politicized and was even banned by the KMT due to its name being used for Formosa Magazine (美麗島雜誌), a magazine created by the opposition to Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) one-party rule.
The 1979 raid on the magazine’s headquarters and arrest of opposition politicians would become known as the Kaohsiung Incident, also known as the Formosa Incident (美麗島事件), but that is another story.
In the 1970s, Western folk music was popular in Taipei coffeehouses, but there was also a nationalist and nativist sentiment brewing as Taiwan was gradually losing its international political status to China while opposition grew against the KMT regime. Part of this sentiment included many young Taiwanese involving themselves in the “Safeguard the Diaoyutais Movement” (保釣運動). Back then, even though Lee would often sing in Hoklo (commonly know as Taiwanese), he still used “Chinese” (中國人) to describe the people of Taiwan because of the political climate.
Author Ma Shi-fang (馬世芳) retells the incident in his book Subterranean Homesick Blues (地下鄉愁藍調). Lee reportedly took the stage with a guitar and bottle of Coca-Cola during a folk music festival in 1976 at Tamkang University (淡江大學), where mostly Western songs were performed. He wasn’t even originally invited — he came as Ara Kimbo’s replacement, who was unable to sing due to a broken tooth.
There were no recordings or photos of what happened next, and the performance gained legendary status in campus circles, and became immortalized as the “Tamkang Incident” (淡江事件).
When Lee took the stage, he allegedly criticized the previous performer for playing English songs. He had just returned to Taiwan after spending time in the US, Spain and Philippines. Why can’t we sing in our own language, he wondered.
“Before we are able to write our own songs, we should sing the songs of our predecessors,” Lee said, and proceeded to smash the Coca-Cola bottle, a symbol of Western globalization, on the floor.
He then sang the then-banned Hoklo song Mending the Net (補破網) and other classics of that time. The crowd mostly booed him. He switched to English, sang Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind, and reportedly proclaimed, “We should sing our own songs!” before storming off the stage.
The performance was not exactly successful. Many people, Ma included, say that the story is likely to have been embellished as it spread. And whether Lee smashed the bottle remains a point of contention.
But the impact of the incident was significant, as it sparked discussion in campus publications about the lack of and potential for Hoklo-language folk songs. It also inspired college students around the nation to pick up a guitar and start writing their own songs.
Taiwan in Time, a column about Taiwan’s history that is published every Sunday, spotlights important or interesting events around the nation that have anniversaries this week.
May 18 to May 24 Pastor Yang Hsu’s (楊煦) congregation was shocked upon seeing the land he chose to build his orphanage. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the only way to access it was to cross a river by foot. The soil was poor due to runoff, and large rocks strewn across the plot prevented much from growing. In addition, there was no running water or electricity. But it was all Yang could afford. He and his Indigenous Atayal wife Lin Feng-ying (林鳳英) had already been caring for 24 orphans in their home, and they were in
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
RSS