A not-so-quick note about recent goings-on in Taipei: The Urban Nomad film festival has been underway for the past ten or eleven days. I believe Sunday (April 22nd) was the last day. I went to see The Taiwan Oyster on the opening night of the festival. It was an interesting night. The venue for the festival is one of the huge warehouse-type buildings at Huashan 1914 Creative Park. Huashan isn’t very far from where I work, so it was quite easy to catch dinner and then pop over for the movie. The organizers divided the warehouse into two areas. The smaller area had a drinks bar and a snack bar, plus a varied collection of seats facing a smaller screen. On several nights, the festival hosted a Happy Hour – an hour or so of short films of all types. The Happy Hours took place in this smaller area. I enjoyed those very much. There were a number of films with subtitles that were set in Taiwan. They gave an interesting perspective into life here on the island. The larger area was where the main films were screened.

A warehouse like this can’t provide the same kind of comfort, sound quality, and image quality as one of today’s high-tech digital theaters, but those high-tech digital theaters generally don’t show movies like the ones at Urban Nomad. So it’s a trade-off. And the warehouse setting gave the film festival an underground “hip” kind of feeling. I felt like one of Taipei’s glitterati when I arrived on opening night. I had my picture taken at the front door (as did all the people attending that night), and the director of the movie and some of the crew were on hand to answer questions afterwards. They all came on stage with a beer in hand to field the mainly “softball” questions (as the Urban Nomad website termed them) members of the audience asked.

Huashan 1914 Creative Park

I went back three more times and saw The Greatest Movie Ever Sold and the documentaries We Were Here and Kinshasa Symphony. I was looking forward to Kinshasa Symphony very much, and I wasn’t disappointed. It is the heartwarming and incredible story of a symphony orchestra that has managed to stay together through all the troubles in the Congo. The documentary followed the orchestra and its various members as they prepared for their largest concert yet – an outdoor performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. It was astonishing to learn about the lives of these people and what music had come to mean to them.

This past week, I also went out to a junior high school to serve as a judge for a singing contest. I’ve done this a number of times for my company, and it is always an adventure. This contest took place in Zhongli and I had to take a train from Taipei in the morning. I booked my ticket online very early and even then barely got a seat. I’ve said this before – I think Taiwan could double or even triple the number of trains running and it still wouldn’t be enough. Trains are always sold out and then there are a large number of standing-only tickets sold. That can make things tricky since the people with standing-only tickets will naturally plop down into any empty seat they can find. So when I get on the train, I almost always find someone sitting in my reserved seat. Then I have to go through the awkward process of showing them my ticket and kicking them out. My instinct is to be the nice guy and let them have my seat, but I don’t. I grit my teeth and kick them out. I make quite an effort to buy my ticket in advance, and so I feel I deserve it. In this case, the woman in my seat had unpacked everything in her knapsack and really settled in. I don’t know why she did that seeing as she knew someone was going to kick her out at some point. I had to stand there for a very long time (feeling guilty) while she shut down her laptop and put it away, put away her MP3 player, dug things out of the seat pocket and put them away, put away her bottle of water, rummaged around looking for her glasses (which had fallen onto the floor under her seat), put on her shoes, put on her jacket, and then reached up to get her second bag from the overhead rack. It was a long and difficult process. I felt bad since I was only going as far as Zhongli anyway, but I was tired, and I had a long day ahead of me. I wanted that seat.

Most of my trips lately have been down the east coast of Taiwan or on the HSR. This trip to Zhongli was the first time in a long time that I was on a regular train going down the west coast. That meant that there was a lot of interest outside the window and I passed the time happily just watching the scenery go by. I’m always surprised by how mountainous and scenic it is for the first little while outside of Taipei. I find mountains confusing geographically, and I can never quite picture in my mind the route the train is following. And there is always a lot of interest in the urban landscape the train passes through.

Before I knew it, I was in Zhongli. I had been there before, and I remember it as a pleasant and interesting town. I always like the areas around train stations. They tend to be among the older parts of any city. I got there a bit early (a teacher from the school was going to pick me up), and I popped across the street to grab a coffee at a 7-11. The 7-11 had some nice chairs and tables outside, and with some time to kill, I settled in with my coffee for a bit of people- and traffic-watching. I wasn’t there for long though before my cell phone went off. I answered it and the person calling me quickly hung up. You might think it was a wrong number, but I had gone through this process many times and I looked around for the teacher. What happens is that the teacher or a sales rep for my company – whoever is picking me up and taking me to the school – will see me but not be sure that I am the foreigner they’re looking for. This always makes me smile because I am always the only foreigner for miles around. I have to be the right one. But just to make sure, the sales rep or teacher will call me on my cell phone. When they see me answering the phone, then they know I’m the right foreigner. They hang up and then come over and get me. They’ve done this in the past even when they were standing literally just five feet away from me. I’ve even made eye contact with them and made it clear with my body language that I’m there waiting to be picked up. Still, they won’t approach me. So – just like in a spy movie or a cop show – they call my phone to identify me.

Eager Audience and Participants in the Singing Contest

The school wasn’t far from the train station, and we drove there in just a few minutes and I was led into a huge empty auditorium. Another foreigner was already seated at the long judge’s table and we chatted for a bit before the contest started. The stage and the sound system were set up, but none of the students had arrived yet.

Singing contests, I’ve found, can go one of two ways. They can be somewhat casual or they can be full-on. This one fell into the full-on category. There were 28 groups competing, with each group generally representing one class. They had clearly been preparing for some time and most of the classes had gone so far as to design brightly-colored T-shirts for themselves complete with elaborate logos and slogans like “Class 14 is the BEST!”

A Class Performing Their Song

A bunch of the students gathered around me and we talked for a while. I think the teachers at the school got a bit worried about me as the crowd grew and grew until I seemed to be in the middle of an English-chattering mob. They eventually had to come and rescue me by shooing the students away. There was no seating in the auditorium, but large squares on the floor had been marked out for each of the classes. The students all sat on the floor, and, considering the contest was going to run for a solid 3 hours, my back ached in sympathy. However, the kids seemed absolutely fine with it. Even when I was a teenager, I couldn’t sit on a floor without a backrest for ten minutes without feeling a lot of pain and discomfort. These kids take three hours of it in their stride.

As I said to my fellow judge, these singing contests in Taiwan are impossible to fully describe to someone who hasn’t experienced one. The kids are full of energy and everyone is simply delighted to have a couple of foreigners there as guest judges. They couldn’t be nicer and friendlier and more hospitable. The performances generally go like clockwork with class after class getting on stage, belting one out, and then filing off to make room for the next. There are usually hosts who introduce each group, often with a set patter of jokes. There are a bunch of people running the sound system. There are official timers. And there are lots of organizers running around collecting scoring sheets and then adding them all up on computers. It’s a production. The students have costumes, props, sets, elaborate choreography, and even skits to go along with the songs. There is almost always some poor boy in drag to elicit some cheers and laughs. There is generally a class leader who marshals the students like soldiers with loud commands such as, “Bow!” and “Turn right!” Thrown in an opening monologue from Billy Crystal, and it would be the Academy Awards.

Air Guitar During “It’s My Life”

I had heard many of the songs before at other contests. I don’t know how it comes about, but schools often choose the exact same songs. For the rest of my life, whenever I hear Bad Day or Anyone of Us or The Show or It’s My Life or I Want It That Way or a dozen other songs, I will think of singing contests in Taiwan. The quality of most of the performances is usually about the same and these classes get roughly the same marks. Then there will be two or three standouts. These classes will generally have put in far more work and will be head and shoulders above the others. In this case, it seemed almost as if the first-place winners were a foregone conclusion. I got this impression when, during a welcome 10-minute intermission, I got up to go to the bathroom at the back of the auditorium. On the way, I exchanged smiles and greetings with dozens of kids. I stopped to chuck the chin of a toddler and wave “hello” and “bye bye”. (Good training if I wanted to go into politics.) Then, near the back, I saw a group of about twenty pretty girls elaborately costumed somewhat like cheerleaders.

The Winning Class Performing “Lollilop” (Click on picture to watch video)

Class Performing “Seasons in the Sun” (Click on picture to watch video)

Another Performance (Click on picture to watch video)

Class Performing “Knock Three Times” (Click on picture to watch video)

Class Performing “The Show” (Click on picture to watch video)

Class Performing Justin Bieber’s “Eenie Meenie” (Click on picture to watch video)

Class Performing “Forever Young” (Click on picture to watch video)

This, I learned later, was the school’s dance class. Rather than just a motley assortment of regular kids thrown into one class, these were all the top dancers in the school – essentially a performing group. They were the 19th group to perform and even their arrival on the stage was a sensation. Rather than just trailing up there in one big group like ants on the way to a picnic, they came up in lines of five or six. The first line walked onto the stage, faced the audience and then performed an elaborate full-body dance move. The audience went crazy. Each line of dancers came up and did something different. They sang a very upbeat and energetic song called “Lollipop”, and their choreography was far more elaborate and controlled than any other group. They seemed to be in a different competition from the others.

“Judge” Doug – My Place Card at the Judge’s Table

Even so, I didn’t give this group the highest score. I knew that they would win the contest, but personally I didn’t feel they were the best. They were clearly the most professional and the most organized, but this was an English singing contest in which creativity was a factor. I felt other groups had actually sung much better, had better English pronunciation, and put on a more creative performance. So though my score placed this group in the top three, I actually had other groups ahead of them. But they did win first prize.

To be honest, judging these contests isn’t easy, and it may not end up being fair. After 28 classes have performed, it’s very difficult to remember them all and keep the scores relative. In this case, my score sheet was taken away after the first four groups had performed. Therefore, those first four scores set the range for all the groups to come. If you get the range wrong in that first set, you’re in trouble and there is no way to go back and adjust anything. In this case, I didn’t do too badly. Luckily, one of the very first groups was very good and one of them was not that good. Therefore I had a wide range of scores to work with. Even so, I found that in order to keep my scores accurate relative to one another, I had to give low scores to lots of groups. I felt bad about that, but there was nothing I could do to go back and adjust them.

Entrance Gate to the Zhongli Junior High School

When the performances were over, I was asked to stand up and give some comments and feedback. I do my best with these comments, and I hope I do okay. I can’t help suspect afterward, though, that I was babbling like a maniac the entire time. I often turn my comments into a quick lesson in English pronunciation. After all, I’m there as an “English expert”, so I talk about that a little bit. During the performances, I listen for patterns in the way they pronounce certain English sounds, and I keep a list of the words and sounds that cause the most trouble. The kids can’t help themselves and they all repeat these words after me and we end up doing a quick call and response in English pronunciation.

These contests can be physically and emotionally draining, but I do end up enjoying them. They’re a nice break from sitting at a desk and staring at a computer – something that I am becoming rather tired of. At least you’re out in the world meeting new people and having new experiences.

On Saturday, I set off pretty early in the morning to check out new exhibits at MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. It turned out that the new main exhibit at MOCA (The 10th Taishan Arts Award Exhibition) won’t open until April 28th. They were still getting set up and doing the installation. However, there was a smaller exhibit open, and I enjoyed it very much. It was a video installation called “Arctic Diary – The Wrong Ice”. It was a solo exhibition by Taiwanese artist Kuang –Yu Tsui. He had been part of an actual expedition to the Arctic. While there (and then while back in Taipei) he shot some short videos that explored his reaction to being in the world of ice and snow. They’re small, unambitious stories, but I enjoyed them very much. They were also very funny. I don’t want to describe them in any detail, because the pleasure in watching them comes largely from not knowing what is going to happen next. They each contain a surprise that made me laugh. These videos reminded me of university days when you have lots of free time to incorporate small bits of art in your life. You don’t tend to have that time once you start working for a living. And I like that type of art – the type that just explores how you feel about your environment. It’s not a huge big deal. You’re not trying to create art to live through the ages or transform the human condition. You’re just having fun because the world is an awesome place and you have some time to do something creative.

Arctic Diary – The Wrong Ice at MOCA

“Arctic Diary – The Wrong Ice” is a free exhibit and open to the public. It will run until May 20th. It’s not a huge exhibit or anything, so you don’t need a lot of time to enjoy it. It’s worth checking out though, and will be a great way to end your visit to MOCA if you go there to see the Taishan Arts Award Exhibition when it opens on April 28th. And if you’re in the neighborhood, drop in and check it out. My advice, though, is to just watch one of the videos at a time and watch them from beginning to end. They are all playing in the same room, and you can see the other videos out of the corner of your eyes. Just focus on the one you’re watching and then wait until the other videos start from the beginning to start watching them.

After MOCA, I set off on foot to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. I had my new Nikon D7000 with me, and I snapped some pictures along the way. I’m still very much just learning how to use this camera. I’m finding it has a steep learning curve. I love it though. It’s by far the most sophisticated piece of technology I’ve ever owned.

I was going to TFAM to check out a new exhibit. It’s a video and photography exhibit by German artist Julian Rosefeldt. It’s called “World-Making: Film and Photo Works 2001-2011” and it runs from April 14th to June 3rd. It’s in the basement of TFAM, and it’s free and open to the public. You don’t need to buy a ticket to see it.

Work by Julian Rosefeldt at TFAM

I won’t even try to describe what Julian Rosefeldt’s work is like. It’s something you really have to see for yourself. I’ve certainly never seen anything remotely like it. Most of it is way outside my artistic field of reference. I don’t have the vocabulary to talk about it or appreciate it. My favorite piece, by far, was called “Lonely Planet.” It’s a 16-minute film set in India and features the experiences of a backpacker travelling through India and the reactions of the local people to him. I got the impression that Rosefeldt was heavily criticizing the whole backpacker in India thing. At one point, we even get a close-up of this backpacker with all his retro hippie-style clothing and jewelry with Green Day’s “American Idiot” playing. I think it’s pretty clear what he’s trying to say with that. However, if that’s the point of the piece, it totally backfires for me. All I see are the awesome shots of street life in India. I don’t even notice the backpacker. All I’m thinking about is how much I want to go to India and see all of that for myself. I don’t care if I look like an idiot with my backpack and Lonely Planet guidebook. I just want to go.

A Still from the video “Lonely Planet” by Julian Rosefeldt

There are a lot more pieces in the exhibition – photographs and multi-channel video – and you can easily spend a couple of hours taking them all in. Combine it with the other exhibits, and you can pass an afternoon at TFAM comfortably. Regular admission to the museum is only NT$30, so it’s a no-brainer to drop by. There is even a new section of TFAM devoted to modern design and technology. It is down the short hallway to the right after you hand over your ticket. There is a lot of fun stuff down there and it’s worth checking out.

For Saturday night, I had a ticket to see “Return to Olympus” at the National Theater. It was part of Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra’s Forever Tales series. It was a joint production between the NSO and the Puppet & Its Double Theater. Tickets cost from NT$400 to NT$1,500, and my NT$600 ticket got me a seat in the middle of the balcony on the third floor. It looked like the fourth floor hadn’t been opened up for this performance.

The National Theater in Taipei

I only had the vaguest of ideas of what “Return to Olympus” was about, so everything was a complete – and pleasant – surprise. It began with a set of three actors pushing a mobile light source onto the stage. It was like one of the old overhead projectors from my high school days except that it appeared to be powered by several car batteries. The three actors were playing children, but I got the impression they were children of the gods of Olympus. In any event, they turned on the light and cast hand shadows onto a large screen. They made rabbits and swans and other creatures. Their parents (also gods of Olympus, I believe) came out, and there was a lot of discussion. This was all in Chinese, and I didn’t know what they were talking about, but it didn’t really affect my enjoyment of the piece. The story as it unfolded was quite simple, and it was presented in a multitude of ingenious ways, mostly involving the projection of shadows onto two large square screens and one large round screen.

A young boy is very ill in his bed – feverish and perhaps delusional – and he spends his time gazing at the stars with a telescope and dreaming about what is up there. By chance, an arrow of the god Apollo falls to earth and into the boy’s bedroom. From the program: “When a curious boy accidentally finds Apollo’s arrow, the magic of the arrow takes him through the planets in the wonderland of gods. The friendship between the boy and Apollo is tested by the war between nature and civilization, mythical fantasy and an adventurous legend that inspires life.”

I had the feeling that the most interesting aspects of the performance were all taking place backstage and behind these large screens. How, I wondered, were all those shadows created? I spent half my time wondering about that. Then, to my pleasant surprise, the performers brought many of the special lights and other apparatuses out onto the main stage and we could see how all of this was created. There was, for example, a large drum with dozens of cut-out shapes on it – shapes of houses and trees and other objects. One person spun the drum while another shone a light and a third manipulated a small puppet. The image projected onto the screen was an elaborate shadow image of a person running at full speed through forests and buildings. Then they turned the drum so that it faced the light end on. The image changed completely and now was of a planet. At other times, the performers each had a special light on their chest built into an elaborate harness. With this unique chest harness light (think Ironman) and puppets and their hands and even their entire bodies they could create any image they wanted on the screens. At times, the creatures we saw on the screen would come to life, culminating in the appearance from behind the screens of a giant robot-like creature with many waving claws and spewing out clouds of white smoke and attacking our heroes, who appeared to be protecting planets from drought, floods, and other disasters.

NSO Forever Tales – Returning to Olympus

The young boy who had found Apollo’s arrow teamed up with the gods to fight and defeat the evil robot and save the planets. And in true heroic fashion, the boy took pity on the god who had created the evil robot. Rather than let the other gods kill him, he helped him to his feet and brought them all together.

I forgot to mention that all of this fantastic story was underscored by music from the National Symphony Orchestra and the incredible voices of a number of singers. So in the end, the performance was almost impossible to classify. It was drama. It was a puppet show. It was a shadow and light performance. It was an opera.

When the performance was over, I was told by my seatmate that there was a free concert underway in the square outside the theater, and the two of us went to check it out. It was a concert by the amazing Chai Found Music Workshop. My new friend led me to a couple of empty plastic stools in the middle very near the front, and I got to enjoy the last three or four songs and the encore. The group consisted of as many as 15 members. Some in the back played drums and electric guitars. The rest played traditional Chinese instruments, such as the erhu, the pipa, the suona and many others. The music was upbeat and pop-oriented but with a unique traditional sound courtesy of those Chinese instruments. My seatmate informed me that these traditional instruments had recently become very popular among the young people of Taiwan. I was very impressed with this group. They were skilled performers and great entertainers.

I ended the week with a quick visit on Sunday to the Puppetry Art Center of Taipei. I’d learned about this place after my visit to the Lin Liu-Hsin Puppet Museum last weekend. The Puppetry Art Center of Taipei is housed in a large building at 99 Civic Boulevard Section 5, next to the CP City Living Mall. That’s the mall that looks like the Death Star from Star Wars. The closest MRT station is Sun Yat-Sen Memorial. Take exit 5 from Sun Yat-Sen Memorial MRT station and head north along Guangfu until you reach Civic. Cross at the lights and then turn right. It’s about a ten- or fifteen-minute walk.

The Puppetry Art Center of Taipei

I got the impression that there is a lot going on at the Puppetry Art Center – courses and performances and that sort of thing. The museum itself, though, is not that large and is located entirely on the second or third floor (I can’t remember which). Entrance costs NT$50. The museum isn’t extensive, but it is interesting and gives a lot of the history of puppetry in Taiwan. I found most interesting the shoulder-mounted puppet stage. I hadn’t seen this before. Apparently, one can wear this stage like a set of clothing. It rests on your shoulders and your head and body are inside the stage. It is a convenient way for one person to travel and put on a puppet show.

Portable Shoulder-Mounted Puppet Stage

The museum also had a number of items on display that were used to create the music that accompanied puppet shows. They had examples of all the traditional instruments and they had more modern equipment – mixing boards, amplifiers, and that sort of thing. There were also a number of TV monitors located around the museum showing video of puppet performances. All-in-all, it’s worth visiting if you have an in interest in puppetry.

And that’s it for the week. Back to the office on Monday.

 

Tags: Kinshasa Symphony, Puppetry Art Center, Taipei, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, train, Urban Nomad