SPOTLIGHT TAIWAN PROJECT 2016 Experiences of Migration Taiwan Contemporary Arts Research Day, 24.10.2016 Migration and new questions of identity Felix Schöber, Ph.D. The topic of migration is a very current one, however it can show different aspects, according to the temporal and geographical circumstances in which it took place. The migration of people from Mainland China to Taiwan was one of the important experiences of the 20 th century, yet it seems that the forms of mass migration of the 21 st century from the PRC have become an altogether different, and more radical phenomenon. Among the intellectuals of the 20 th century, travel and migration were considered as an intellectual and artistic endeavor: at some stage, any daring avant-garde artist desired to travel abroad, to the centres of the artistic avant-garde, to seek exchange and inspiration, or simply dialogue with his peers. Yet the modernity in art, or rather the new idea of painting and representing local identity, had a rather ambiguous side to it, as the very idea of a local (and thus modern) identity also created new patterns of inclusion and exclusion. This phenomenon was highlighted by the lecture given by Dr. Yang Chia-ling on the Taiwanese painter Chen Cheng-po (1895-1947), with special focus on Chen Cheng-po (1895-1947) Street of Chiayi 1926 Oil on canvas, 64 53cm Selected for the Seventh Japan Imperial Art Exhibition https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/chen_chengpo#/media/file:chen_chengpo_nd.jpg the time he spent in Shanghai. Chen was born in the same year the Qing dynasty ceded the island to Japan, therefore he received a Japanese education, studied Western-style watercolor painting and finally earned his degree from the then Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he was academically trained in oil painting. Soon after his graduation, he moved to Shanghai where he taught so-called western art for four years (1929-1933). Here he began to experience strong identity issues: in order to be more easily accepted, he pretended to be from Fujian (as many han Chinese who had migrated to Taiwan), but for most Chinese people he was not Chinese, having been born in a Japanese colony
and having studied in Japan, and after Shanghai began to be air-raided by the Japanese, he was even looked at with suspicion. But he was not Japanese either. Chen Cheng-po (1895-1947) Nostalgia 1941 Oil on canvas, 72.5 91 cm https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/chen_cheng-po#/media/file:chen_chengpo_1941.jpg Today the painter Chen Cheng-po is recognized as one of the most important exponents of the creation and representation of the Taiwanese identity through art. What is usually ignored is that he was only very recently rediscovered as an important painter of Taiwanese identity. In the years he spent in Shanghai, he was a very active follower and participant of numerous events in the art scene and his paintings were often selected for exhibitions, yet, unlike his peers born on the mainland, images of himself or of his works of art very seldom appeared in newspaper reports. At best his name was listed, but his paintings were somehow ignored. Upon his return to Taiwan, this pattern of exclusion from any recognition as an important artist repeated itself, and according to Dr. Yang, with the arrival of Chiang Kai-shek s army on the island, Chen Cheng-po s identity was once again questioned: as Chiayi city councilor, Chen tried to negotiate during the February 28th Incident, but was publicly shot dead by the Kuomintang troops, who considered him a traitor and as such, his body was left exposed by Chiayi s train station. The newly established government was suspicious of him because of his cosmopolitan background and his simply too good Japanese. Chen Chengpo s name has been cleared recently, and he is now regarded as an important Taiwanese artist, but he spent his life without a certain identity: he was neither Taiwanese, nor Japanese, nor Chinese. The take-over of Taiwan by the Republic of China in 1945 (and following events) leads to the phenomenon of migration as forced mass migration, which shaped much of the ambiguities of the cultural history of the Taiwanese 20 th century. This form of migration was chiefly war-related, over time it turned into a crucial national trauma, and it is partly responsible for the way the nation narrated itself. The displacement of huge numbers of people was not a merely local phenomenon, but part of the end of WWII and in the case of Taiwan, also part of the end of the Chinese civil war. After WWII, huge numbers of (Japanese) people were forced to leave the island they had colonized and inhabited for half a century, and in 1949 huge numbers of Chiang Kai-shek s defeated soldiers
arrived from different places all over China, seeking refuge in a place they considered part of China, but which turned out to be a rather alien place to them, a place more like the Japan they had been battling for decades, and not much alike that home they had left behind. Moreover, while large portions of the original Chinese immigrants had remained bilingual, that Chinese language they spoke, Fujianese or Hakka, was quite unlike the Mandarin spoken by the new wave of immigrants. As it can be expected, this type of migration also brought with it new identity issues. This is perfectly reflected in the life and works by writer, journalist, theatre and film director Chen Yu-hui: her grandmother came from Okinawa, now part of Japan, but at that time Okinawans did not consider themselves as Japanese, nor as Chinese; her grandfather s family was originally from Fujian (they had migrated long time before) and her father was a soldier in Chiang Kai-shek s army. Mazu s Bodyguards Film Still (Source: Photographer Liu Zhenxiang, National Performing Arts Center-National Theater & Concert Hall) http://images.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.taiwanacademy.tw Since 1949 the history and identity of Taiwan has been written, for the most part, from a male perspective, either as a history of unbroken millennia of cultural continuity, or as the history of hard-working but suppressed Chinese settlers. In her bestselling and prize-winning novel of 2004, Mazu s bodyguards, Chen Yu-hui re-writes this history from a female perspective, telling the story of three generations of women her grandmother, mother and herself - who have all been abandoned by their men in a way or another. For Chen Yu-hui, the symbol representing the plight of these women, but also the fate and identity of Taiwan, is Mazu, the goddess of seafaring people. Originated in Fujian province, the veneration of Mazu quickly spread to other Chinese provinces and to Southeast Asia. As the first wave of migrants to Taiwan were mostly Fujianese and Hakka, it is not surprising that Mazu became (and still is) the most worshipped deity on the island. According to one of the legends surrounding the goddess, Mazu has two bodyguards, one who can see for a thousand miles, and the other who can hear everything. In the novel, Mazu is Chen s grandmother, and the bodyguards are her grandfather and his brother, with whom the grandmother has an affair, while her husband is fighting for the Japanese during WWII.
Cover of the book Mazu s bodyguards by Chen Yu-hui, also known as Jade Y. Chen. Courtesy of Chen Yu-hui In Chen Yu-hui s novel, the goddess becomes something altogether different from the traditional account, as she is turned into the symbol representing these three generations of women abandoned by their men: as the men are away, the goddess waits in her temple, protecting them, but most of all guaranteeing a continuity - a female continuity, of women who remain at home, and who maintain the family. Elaborating her own experience of diaspora and migration, Chen also re-writes the historical experience of her native home. Using an approach that comes close to a Junghian analysis of an age-old national symbol, she discovers a new ambiguity in the identity of this national emblem, illustrating, in a new way, the role and perspective of women in the history of Taiwan. In Chen s own words, the book is an allegory in which the family saga reflects the history of the country. But is this a country? Taiwan is not recognized by the UN and China considers it one of its provinces. The love triangle in the novel is reflected in the political triangle that entangles Taiwan, Japan and China. On a very personal level, Chen questions whether she has a home: she does, but at the same time, she does not, as she has travelled and lived in many different countries. As I worked on Mazu s bodyguards, I worked on my identity. While in the 20 th century identity was strongly connected with the idea of a continuity, and travel and migration as an encounter with the other that is perceived and constructed as different, these categories seem to become rather blurred and put under serious questioning with the phenomena of mass migration of the 21 st century. This is highlighted by two documentaries by Taiwanese-Viennese filmmaker and artist Ella Raidel, Double Happiness (2014) and Subverses / China in Mozambique (2011). The first tells the story of the city of Hallstadt and how it was reproduced in a Chinese development project close to Shenzhen. As the narrative slowly unfolds, several questions arise: what is it, that has been copied by the Chinese? A mere surface? A scenery of buildings, ready to become the
Still image form the docu-film by Ella Raidel Double Happiness, 2014 background of selfies and photographs? A lifestyle? An idea of European culture reduced to sipping cappuccino in a bar with tables outside, and a rather large pedestrian area in the center of a city of high-rise buildings otherwise well connected to the motorway? Do the categories of identity, as they have been developed in the 20 th century, still apply to a country whose architecture mostly copies Western models? It is easy to dismiss the copies of historical sites such as Hallstadt, but also Venice Still image form the docu-film by Ella Raidel Double Happiness, 2014
or Paris or the Egyptian pyramids, as fake and to describe it as fake culture, but are we not witnessing instead the reduction of identity to a thin surface, apparently easily interchangeable and available to anyone with the right cash? Can we really claim that this is a phenomenon limited to China, as it creates fake European city centres, or is it a wider phenomenon that has also infected Europe, especially highly iconic places such as Hallstadt or Venice, as they are transformed by mass tourism and the proliferation of Airbnb? Is the transformation of old city centres into sights and backdrops not rather part of the spread of suburbia, the only difference being that in Shenzhen suburbia came first, and with the copy of Hallstadt the seemingly old city centre came later? As China is re-writing its architectural heritage at home, it is doing so also in other parts of the world, especially Africa, as has been highlighted by the other documentary by Ella Raidel Subverses. Still image form the docu-film by Ella Raidel SUBVERSES China in Mozambique, 2011 A phenomenon almost completely below the radar of most European intellectuals and politicians, China has started to invest massively also in Africa, building roads, railroads and entire cities, mostly in exchange for natural resources. These new cities are nothing but copies of the suburbia that has been proliferating all over China in the last few years, and their inhabitants are also almost entirely Chinese: a mass migration of entire cities, this time not as a result of war, but out of economic reasons. And very unlike the intellectual travelers and the refugees of the 20 th century, no encounter or dialogue with that other culture is planned and wished for: the new Chinese settlers and colonizers in Africa have strict orders to avoid any contact with the local population, let alone intermarry with local women. Apparently the biggest political fear is the encounter and the dialogue with that other culture, and the possibility that eventually those settlers might start to identify themselves with that new place, and might lose interest in that link with the homeland. This was the Taiwan experience in the 20 th century, with refugees who eventually started to identify themselves with their new homeland, an experience that now needs to be avoided at all costs in Africa.