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Taishan celebrates Barbie history with show

Taipei County’s Taishan Township (泰山), once a major production site for Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls, yesterday began a two-day festival to celebrate Barbie’s 50th birthday, with a total of 1,000 Barbie dolls displayed for the first time in Taiwan.

The 1,000 Barbie dolls, dressed in different outfits, were displayed at the Taishan High School.

The dolls had never been shown in Taiwan since they were first produced in the town’s ­Meining Workshop.

NOSTALGIA

A group of nostalgic workers at the workshop in Taishan created various Taiwanese-style costumes for the Barbie dolls.

Lin Mei-lin, project manager at the Meining Workshop, said the dolls were returned to Taiwan last month after being featured at a Taiwanese cultural festival in Vancouver, Canada.

“They have been away for overseas exhibitions since 2005, so this is the first time for them to appear in Taiwan,” Lin said.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) said the Meining Workshop had transformed Barbie dolls from ordinary dolls into artistic dolls, evoking many people’s memory of Taishan’s culture and history.

The Meining Workshop dressed the Barbie dolls in Chinese qipao, Aboriginal costumes and Hakka-style clothing that it had created for the event.

ENVIRONMENTAL

In order to reflect the need for environmental protection, Lin also introduced a Barbie doll wearing a fancy dress made purely from vegetable sponge, or luffa.

According to the Taipei County Government’s Cultural Affairs Bureau, US toy maker Mattel Inc set up its flagship factory in Taishan in 1966.

HISTORY

About one-third of Taishan’s populace was making Barbies at the time, the bureau said.

Although Mattel shut down its operations in Taishan and relocated its assembly lines to other places in 1987, Taishan still considers Barbie a close part of its history, the bureau said.
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