New York City can be a brash, unwelcoming place to live. Just ask Meghan Dixon, a New York transplant who got off the subway early Sunday afternoon with her sister, Kate, and friend Brandon Wasserman and had to push their way through a thicket of pedestrians to get to the Passport to Taiwan festival, held annually in Manhattan’s Union Square for the last 13 years.
But once she made it into the gauntlet of canopies that stretched across one avenue block, she felt a sense of relief and a return to what was once so familiar.
“I like the fact that even though we’re not in Taiwan, it still feels like we are,” said Dixon, who lived in Yilan for a year.
Photo: Chris Fuchs
Aided by the clear skies and scintillating sunshine of a late spring day, hundreds of New Yorkers came out on Sunday to attend this year’s Passport to Taiwan festival, which gives Taiwanese-Americans living overseas a chance to reconnect with their roots and provides New Yorkers who have never visited Taiwan with an opportunity to learn about the country’s unique and diverse culture.
“We know Taiwan doesn’t get recognized a lot,” said Hsu Bo-cheng (許伯丞), one of the festival organizers. “In terms of Asian Americans, we don’t get recognized a lot either. So we can take this event and use it to represent ourselves.”
OUTDOOR FESTIVAL
Photo: Chris Fuchs
Passport to Taiwan coincides with Taiwanese-American Heritage Week in May, passed in 1999 by the United States Congress to honor the contributions of Taiwanese-Americans. Since its inception in 2002, Passport to Taiwan has grown to become the largest outdoor Taiwanese festival in the US, according to its Web site, with performances this year in other New York locales including Long Island and Albany, the state capital.
Support from Taiwan’s government as well as fundraising efforts and donations from private organizations have kept the festival going these last 13 years, Hsu said, to say nothing of the nearly 200 volunteers who help out with everything from Web site design to trash removal.
This year’s event, which began at noon and ended at 5pm, featured around 60 booths, many of them selling classic Taiwanese dishes like steamed buns stuffed with pork (卦包), oyster omelets (蚵仔煎) and spring wraps (潤餅). An intricate fruit carving featuring miniature happy Buddhas and “Taiwan” etched into a watermelon showed off the range of talents of the Taiwan Chefs Association (台灣廚藝美食協會), while an exhibit showcasing bicycles made in Taiwan greeted visitors as they entered the festival.
Photo: Chris Fuchs
David Lam, the owner of bfold, a store on East 13th Street that sells folding bikes, sung the praises of one Taiwanese folding bicycle company, Pacific Cycles, based in Taoyuan City. The bikes, which collapse and can be carried onto public transportation, are particularly popular in big cities like New York.
“Over 80 percent of the quality bike market is manufactured now in Taiwan,” Lam said. “The cheaper lines are made in China.”
As if at a night market, festival-goers leisurely strolled through Union Square while tucking into their Taiwanese eats, a host of entertainers took the stage and treated the audience to performances that wove together incongruent aspects of Taiwan’s traditional and modern culture and created something uniquely Taiwanese.
Photo: Chris Fuchs
Kicking off the festival was the Taiwanese American Association of New York (大紐約區台灣同鄉會) Santaizi (三太子) Troupe, whose members donned colorful head-to-toe costumes of various gods and deities and performed Taiwanese temple dances — with a twist New Yorkers could appreciate. One god wearing a New York Mets uniform gyrating to the sounds of Gangnam Style was enough to stop even the most jaded New Yorkers dead in their tracks.
SUCCESSFUL PROMOTION
Allen Yen (嚴詠能), of the Greater Kaohsiung-based Takao Run (打狗亂歌團), which went on soon after, told the Taipei Times that novel performances like those of the Santaizi Troupe are the key to Taiwan’s government successfully promoting the country and its culture to foreign audiences, who he said often confuse Taiwan with Thailand.
Photo: Chris Fuchs
“To spread Taiwanese culture, besides through traditional means, we need to capture the authentic lifestyle of today’s Taiwanese youth and present the audience with the real face of Taiwan,” Yen said.
Yen, whose group fuses traditional Taiwanese music with contemporary pop, said that Taiwanese fans would often be moved to tears at the end of past performances. But for New Yorkers unfamiliar with the meaning behind their music, it’s quite a different story.
“Here, we have only a short period of time to get Westerners curious and to quickly convey an impression of Taiwan,” he said.
Takao Run’s performance was followed by an eclectic mix of Taiwanese entertainers, including Patas (巴達思), a dance group from Taiwan’s aboriginal Atayal people; Sun of the Morning (晨曦光廊), a Taiwanese alternative rock band and OVDS, a Taiwanese drum-and-bass electro-house act.
Botu Kwesi, a Patas performer, said in an interview that one of the dances his group performed on Sunday was the Atayal Muqing (泰雅幕情), an elaborate courting ritual. During the dance, a young man blows a small flute he wears around his neck to signify his love for a young woman. Listening intently for the tune, the woman, toward the end of the dance, will hook her feet around her suitor’s to symbolize her love for him.
Overall, Hsu said he was happy with attendance at this year’s festival, despite its coinciding with the Memorial Day weekend, when New Yorkers typically flee the city for nearby beaches to mark the unofficial start of summer.
New Yorkers and out-of-towners who did not follow the masses to Long Beach or the Jersey Shore said they were happy they stuck around. “It really is amazing how friendly everyone is,” said Kate Dixon, who lives in Arizona.
Wasserman, who learned about Passport to Taiwan from Meghan Dixon just an hour before showing up, said he found the entire experience “overwhelming” — strictly in a positive sense.
“I dig it,” said Wasserman, who has never been to Taiwan and tried bubble-milk tea for the first time.
“Now I feel pressured. I feel like I have to go and visit.”
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