Taiwanese Puppetry as a sub-culture

Many of my friends are infatuated with the Pili Puppetry series. Two of them draw drawings featured with characters that have appeared in the Pili series. I love to watch those series as well. Personally, because I have watched Pili puppetry with my father since I was seven. I had deep affection to it, which has accompanied my childhood till now. To me, the pronunciation of Taiwanese is very different from the use of Taiwanese I use in my life. It sounds more scholarly and educated. Sometimes, I really wonder how the script-writers come up with diverse use of vocabulary and complex plot. It is very fascinating to me because listening to the utterances from each character is one enjoyment. For different groups of characters the pronunciation differs. There are different word choices for characters to indicate the same thing. By listening to the conversation, you can simply identify which group the character belongs to.

For my friends, they adore the design of the puppets. For them, each puppet is a piece of art. The delicate clothing, weapon, and hairstyle of each character show how creative the production team is. They also invent different poems, theme songs, names for attacking skills for their characters. Thus, creating a new character is not an easy job. And the successful establishment of a character makes my friends crazy. They all adore the creativity and originality of the production team. When there is a comic expo, many people dress themselves like characters in the puppetry series to pay tribute to the characters and their makers.

I think Pili really does a great job in making the puppetry appealing to younger generations. I have heard from my father that Pili employs college students to write scripts and perform theme songs for characters. With the employment of young generation, I think Pili can keep absorbing new energy and create more fascinating plot, songs, and characters.

Sharon Zheng

My thoughts over Chinese Calligraphy

Each student in Taiwan must have the experience of practicing calligraphy in class. To me as an elementary school kid, it was such a torture that I wanted to escape. To write a good calligraphy, posture was extremely important. We were asked to hang our wrists up in the air and move our arms steadily, which for me was a task. My right arm got sore in several minutes. What’s worse, if I wrote bad calligraphy, the teacher would punish me by hitting me on the hand with a strict. That was the reason why I was afraid of practicing calligraphy. Writing a good calligraphy requires plentiful patience and practice. I still remembered that I envied classmates who could write beautifully. It was an honor if someone could be picked by the teacher to represent the whole class to attend the competition.

However, my attitude changed. Somehow, as I grew up, I found calligraphy artistically beautiful and worth practicing because it could train my concentration on things. I adored the structure of each character and develop my interest in imitating the strokes and the structure of characters with ball pan. Even though I still wrote bad calligraphy, I could write beautifully with ball pans. I even tried to buy models for calligraphy for myself to imitate with ball pan. In the course of imitating, I found much peace within myself and could concentrate more on what I was working on. Each character has to be balanced and you have to be steady enough to write characters properly.

Now, I do think that writing calligraphy is a good way to train oneself to be concentrated and stable. It takes efforts to memorize the whole structure of a character. I feel very peaceful and sharp when practicing writing. When I finish duplicating one model, I often feel a sense of achievement. Whenever I feel upset or anxious, I will sit down in front of my desk and start to write something until my handwriting becomes steady and straight. It is said that you can judge one’s disposition and mood by looking at the handwriting. I often look at my own handwriting. If it is very careless, I would take one model out and start writing. To me, practicing writing calligraphy becomes one way to cultivate my patience and disposition.
Sharon Zheng

Thoughts on Techo Sam Thà Tsú (the Third Prince)

The sensation the Techo Sam Thà Tsú made in the World Games in Kaohsiung was a great success in promoting local culture in Taiwan.
Personally, I do not think very highly about this innovative way of presenting local culture. I prefer the original way the deity is. To me, this way it looks more like a deity than an entertaining thing. Because of the success in the World Games, other places begin to perform Techo Sam Thà Tsú. Sometimes the background music may be other contemporary songs such as "Sorry Sorry" by a Korean group. This phenomenon shows that people become more acceptable toward this invention.

Even though I do not like it very much, I try to think otherwise. To appeal to people who are not familiar with one culture, this kind of performance can effectively attract their attention and interest. I cannot deny that this invention works very successfully.

I learn from this experience that change is not a negative thing. Through renewing tradition, we may inject new energy and meaning to those old things. I hope that after this class, I can try to create something new from our cultural heritage.

Sharon Zheng

My reflection on the course "Chinese Culture in English"

From the course I discovered the beauty of Taiwan and learned more about our culture. However, what I've learned from the course conflicts with what I've known. When we are talking about the beautiful scenery and tourist spots, I thought about the constructions and pollutions the factories and companies brought. For example, we learned that Yunlin (雲林), Changhua (彰化) and Chiayi (嘉義) counties are famous for its wonderful sceneries and the agricultural culture. However, the plan of Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區計畫) is actually ruining all these beauties. Farmers are being evacuated away from the land their rely on. Fishermen can't make their livings because the water is polluted. The Highest Court has already announced that the environmental assessment of the Central Taiwan Science Park is invalid. But the Environment Protection Department didn't use its power to stop the construction. There are hundreds of thousands of reasons to stop the program but our government departments ignore the declaration of the highest court, despite the law of our country and the happiness of the people of the nation, continuously work on the illegal project on Science Park.

And when we are talking about the various and abundant cultures in Taiwan, I thought about the suppression of aboriginals and the disadvantaged ones. For example, once we talked about the groups of people in Taiwan, we mentioned the aboriginals in Taiwan. The seemingly wonderful aboriginal cultures are actually invaded by us (I mean most of the Han people and other cultures). Indeed, they used to do hunting, singing and dancing. Their culture involves a lot of ceremonies for different time periods and they have special dressings and decorations.

But today these are all just something for sale. The unique dressings and decorations have become products in the souvenir stores. The ceremonies have become parts of some tourist programs. Today the aboriginals have to leave their hometown and come to big cities such as Taipei or Taichung to make their livings. Most of them become the labors who build the skyscrapers and the mass transportation systems. These labors work hard and are exposed to dangerous working environments but they received small amount of money, which is just right enough for them to make the ends meet. With insufficient salary, these workers can't rent a place to live and they have no spare money to send back home. This become a cycle for them: they can't earn more money because after their own living expense, there is no more for them to use; they haven't earned enough money to go back home, thus they stay at the cities for a longer time to earn more.

If we take a look around us, we might found that there are plenty of aboriginal tribes living at the countryside around Taipei county. I've been to a tribe of A-may under the bridge between Sanshia(三峽) and Yingge(鶯歌). The experiences and discoveries I had there really struck me and influenced me a lot. If possible, I would like to invite our classmates to visit the tribe.

For me, it is really a suffer to take the course because every time I learned something precious in Taiwan, the reality keeps bothering me. It is really pathetic that at the same time we students are figuring out methods to promote Taiwan, but at the same time people are damaging the beautiful island. If we can have the chance to discuss about what is really happening in Taiwan, we can understand what kind of problem we are facing and come up with some solutions to make Taiwan better.

The followings are the links to some article to what I've mentioned. If you are interested in the issues, please take a look.

中科四期精選懶人包
http://antictsp.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/中科死四期，精選回顧-懶人包/
撒烏瓦知、崁津、三鶯部落後援會
http://support-sanying.blogspot.com/

Judy Chou

Reflection on the Food Presentation

This experience of undergoing a presentation regarding Taiwanese food gave me a good lesson. In the course of selecting representative foods, I discovered that Taiwanese foods included a variety of origins. That made the selection much more difficult than ever. Now, as the diverse people of diverse ethnic groups emigrated to Taiwan, different cooking elements from other cultures affected Taiwanese food culture. Thus, we have restaurants with Tai-style, Mexican style, and etc. Besides, sometimes Taiwanese people integrate different cooking and added their creativity. One of the famous example is the pizza. We try to put fruits into it, which is not the original style. Some Italian people react negatively against pizza with pineapple. However, I love it very much. Once I heard one French exchange student saying that she loved this kind of pizza more than the original one. Taiwanese people are really talented in cooking. Personally, I like Chicken soup with some Chinese herbs. Though some combination of herbs taste bitter, my mother makes soup sweet by adding red dates and fructus lyciis. This kind of soup is beneficial to body. I especially love to drink chicken soup in winter. After drinking this soup, I always feel warm and energetic.

Sharon Zheng

Foot Massage in my memory

My initial impression of foot massage was from one of my relatives whose occupation was a massage therapist. He owned a store with black glasses which blocked light from outside. Thus, I always thought massage was conducted in a dark environment, which aroused my fear without doubt. I received foot massage once from him. During the whole procedure, I felt pain all over in my foot. I even felt pain after the massage was finished. And the relative started to say that my liver was poor, my digesting system was weak, and my body needed more nutrition, which later became a guide for my parents to improve my body condition. They picked Chinese herbs which were said to improve my health status. At that time, I really thought that foot massage was a way to punish people. How could people feel relaxed after foot massage!!?? I couldn’t understand.
Later, I memory about foot massage was connected with a blind singer, Bing-hui Li. He became famous because of his song “wandering to Danshui”. Many TV programs invited him to share his career as an impaired-massure. That was how I knew about an impaired-massure’s life was like. My impression toward this occupation was blind people, low-income, and difficult. They had to rely on other people who took them to their working place.
Now, my impression toward foot massage is associated with bright and clear parlors along the street, which is very different from the past one. I still feel very amazed when watching at the new type of store for foot massage. Different from the dark room which aroused my fear, this new decoration really eases my nervousness toward foot massage. However, now I still cannot gather my courage to give it a try. I still can vividly remember the pain I felt in my childhood. I may try again when my life style becomes more healthier.

SharonZheng

Face (Mianzi)

Face (Mianzi)
People in Taiwan care a lot about their dignity, in other words, they care a lot about their faces (Mianzi). Most of the Taiwanese tend to would pop their faces (mianzi) in front of others. The main reason why people do such kind of thing is they want to earn others’ respect and higher social status.

On the contrary, if you make people lose their faces (mianzi) in public by revealing their secrets or something they don’t want others know, people would think of you as a rude person because you insult this person to some degree.

In order to keep their mianzi, people usually only share something positive with others during the chatting, conversation, or interaction with others in public.
For instance, if a man lost all of his belongings, in order to save his mianzi, this man might simply act as if there was nothing happened to him.

Saving mianzi doesn’t only happen to men, women also do similar things. For example, when Taiwanese women encounter some thing bad such as domestic violence, rape, or conflict with their husbands, most of Taiwanese women would choose to remain silent instead of asking help from others. The reason why these women do not reveal the negative sides of their lives is they want to save their mianzi so that the society won’t treat or see them with special attitude.

In short, in Taiwan society, you need to save face (mianzi) not only for yourself but also for the ones that you interact with. In this way, you can show your respect to others and earn others’ respect at the same time.