Taiwan Fest digs into history, culture
This year’s festival celebrates Taiwan’s relationship with the Philippines through art and music
When TaiwanFest began its “dialogues with Asia” series in 2016, the five-year plan was to focus on a different city or country’s connection to Taiwan each year.
By digging deeper into the historical and cultural dimensions of these relationships, organizers hoped to inspire deeper understanding and generate jumping-off points for future discussions. Finding connections between Taiwanese and other Asian cultures and how these ties become relevant to Canada is one of the goals of this series.
Year one was reaching out to Hong Kong, a city that has a long trading history with the world and a very close one with Taiwan. Japan, which had occupied Taiwan for 50 years following the Treaty of Shimonoseki after the Sino-Japanese War (1894 — 1895), was the focus country the second year. This year, it’s the Philippines.
“The connections between Taiwan and the Philippines are not as well known as those between Hong Kong or Japan,” said Charlie Wu, managing director of Asian-Canadian Special Events Association, producers of TaiwanFest.
“There are these unspoken ties between us that, once you start talking, turn out to be pretty big. My wife, who is Chinese-Taiwanese, was born in the Philippines, and there are a lot of families like hers established there over the past few 100 years. Then there is the deep connection between the Austronesian Indigenous peoples who share language and many customs going back much, much longer.”
One of the reasons Taiwan has been a hotly contested territory through history is that the island nation is particularly well positioned for trade and cultural exchange throughout southeast Asian waters. Long before Dutch and Portuguese traders fought over the prime ports, a well-developed long-distance trade network was well established among the Austronesian and Chinese peoples throughout the region. Some disputed scholarship argues that the migration of people to the Philippines, Borneo, Indonesia and beyond may well have kicked off in Taiwan around 3,000 BCE.
These earliest migrations are generally agreed to have been spurred by environmental demands, while more recent ones have been largely about employment opportunities. These days, there is reverse migration as people flock to Taiwan to participate in the country’s vibrant economy.
Wu notes that the influx of temporary foreign workers to Taiwan from the Philippines and elsewhere has created unique cultural experiences not dissimilar to those experienced by new immigrants and workers coming to Canada from Asia. Community building under difficult conditions seems to generate similar results planetwide.
Sundays in Taiwan is a series focusing on the experience of migrant workers from the Philippines in Taiwan.
“Mario Subeldia, started as a migrant worker in a factory seven years ago, working Monday to Saturday, very long hours,” said Wu. “The only day he and others have to themselves is Sunday, and a whole series of events has developed around this one day and expressing themselves. Mario developed as a sand painter and into fashion, all with the hope of having the mainstream, local Taiwanese take notice of what this community was doing.”
Initially drawing his family’s faces on the beach to overcome homesickness, Subeldia eventually obtained a Street Artist Permit, the first Philippine migrant worker to do so. He developed a network of migrant worker artists and set about showcasing their skills in the evenings and on Sundays. Ranging from handmade costumes and fashion designs displayed on the street to his sand paintings and more, Subeldia’s and colleagues’ achievements will be showcased at a number of TaiwanFest events presented in partnership with Vancouver Fashion Week.
“This whole notion of coming into a new country and working hard to be recognized is one that we thought reflected many of our own experiences in Canada’s multicultural society, as well as the changing face of Taiwan,” said Wu. “Maybe one day, as we are discovering our futures in diversity, we will all be so mixed that there is no need to talk about it anymore. It’s an interesting idea.”
Further explorations of the changing social fabric of Taiwan come from Asuka Lee’s Migrants’ Park. This Taiwanese online media platform specializes in reporting news about, and for, new residents and migrant workers in Taiwan. Set up by journalist Lee without much prior experience, and minimal foreign language skills, the platform has become an important part of migrant worker community development. He discusses his work at a number of Hope talks at the festival.
Naturally, you can’t look at the present without considering those Austronesian roots between the Philippines and Taiwan. That is where the Auba Rukai Children’s Choir comes in. The group will perform a number of concerts, including a cross-cultural jam with Mario Subeldia and the SFU Concert Orchestra titled Hohaijan Mabuhay! (Sept. 2, VAG plaza, 8:30 p.m.).
From the Rukai tribe in Taiwan’s mountain region, this group is reclaiming its language and cultural practices through song. Similarly to Canada, Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples were subjected to assimilationist policies intended to all but eradicate their cultural traditions. In August of 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen issued an apology for centuries of “pain and mistreatment.”
“Since childhood, these children live in an environment where their ancestral language is unfamiliar and, though the Rukai language is particularly difficult to learn, through simple nursery rhymes children start to develop an interest in learning their ancestral language,” said Kalisekese Arubulru, Rukai heritage educational administration director, Auba/Cing-Ye Elementary School. “In recent years, these children won many national singing competition championships in Taiwan and earned a chance to travel to Italy and perform at the Basilica della Santa Casa during the Loreto International Festival. This also gives them a motivation in continuing learning their native language.”
Thanks to a changing mindset at all levels of government and society in general, Kalisekese says that preservation, revitalization and dissemination of Aboriginal traditional culture is becoming recognized globally as a key foundation of Taiwanese culture. This has enabled Taiwanese Aboriginal artists, ranging from Bulareyaung Dance Company to the singer Suming, to tour to places from New York City to the Philippines and contribute to strengthening their culture at home and abroad.
“This year’s theme for TaiwanFest is learning, and it’s inspired by the idea that you can get so much from just being in a place and soaking it up, taking it in naturally,” said Wu. “The Philippines is particularly great for music and art coming together on the street in everything from performances to the decorations on the jeepney. We hope that we can bring some of that experience to the streets of downtown Vancouver and Toronto’s city streets.”
TaiwanFest Canada: Fete with the Philippines looks set to equal or eclipse the insider’s look the festival provided to both Hong Kong and Japanese cross-cultural communication with Taiwan and Canada. Think of it as a trip abroad without the jet lag.