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» » » » “Audio and video waves,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, “are worse than warships and warplanes.” They have the power to “disseminate a rogue culture aimed at the imposition of unethical values and Westernized ideas in order to captivate and humiliate Muslims.”1 Another fatwa pointed out that satellite dishes promote the “spread of ruinous Western diseases.”
» » » » In Taiwan, the Kuomintang issued similar rulings under their de-Japanization policy. Japanese media was the threat to the Kuomintang. This broke down. The rogue culture slipped in: “In view of the fierce competition from fellow [illegal cable] operators … some … began to air Japanese AVs. This caused a huge sensation in Taiwan, for local people could enjoy Japanese hardcore pornography...”2
» » » Xiao Liu describes a photograph submitted to a competition in 1984, showing a set of antennas mounted on a courtyard home: “The enclosed structure of the yard appears to set boundaries to a seemingly autonomous space, but the antennas reach into the sky, bringing a virtual mobility to the courtyard by connecting it to an invisible network of information circulation.”3
» » » » » The campaign against spiritual pollution was eventually expanded to include a struggle against satellite dishes.4 But this proved difficult to enforce.
» » » » The narrator of Chu T'ien-wen's "Red Rose is Paging You" looks out on the city and senses the radio waves bouncing around him. He knows that another city is taking shape above him. He knows what the satellite dishes are doing. They are turning his wife and his children into strangers. They speak another language. Radio waves bounce around him, creating a new world.
» » » » » This is the lot of the nativist. For Chu T’ien-wen,5 the fear of communist ideology replacing Confucian ethics and the Three Principles of the People is replaced with anxiety about the global swamping the local. I wonder if she would sympathize with Ayatollah Khamenei, if not Wang Huning.
» » » It seems quaint, a thin trickle of information and images eroding culture, but maybe only because nobody thinks of satellites in this way anymore. After we had GPS tracking in our mobile phones and access to satellite imagery, pictures on the news of missiles honing in, we knew the danger was in them watching us.
Appendix 1
A translation of “Hung mei kuei hu chiao ni” by Chu T’ien-wen, collected in Fin-de-siècle Splendor (Shih-chi-mo te Hua-li): “red rose is paging you”6
from the time his balls dropped, he had been honing his skills, waiting for this moment, when the entire room was waiting for him to pick up the microphone. hsiang ko!7 they yelled. they wanted him. and his new signature song. hsiao ch’ou.8 the clown. he climbed over their legs. took up his position front and center. this number was all about the chorus. that's what everyone was waiting for. when he got there, he savored it, drawing out the words—hsiao... — ch'ou... — hsiao... — ch'ou...—letting them come and come and come until he climaxed, too, hitting the hook a final time: hsiao ch'ou... hsiao ch'ou... his mind was clear in that instant. he gave himself over to the music. he felt like he was riding the melody up high into the sky. decent, he concluded. decent. not bad at all.
hsiang ko basked in karaoke glory, a weed high, and an xo buzz. if it wasn't for karaoke, he would never have known he could sing. the weed helped. it was strong. half a hit, toasted. it was all for the best. it wasn't easy to smoke in a karaoke box. he'd had to huddle in a corner and sneak a few puffs off a j. he would have loved to bring one of his pipes. maybe the pear-shaped one-hitter that fit right in the palm of his hand. it was cut from ebony. carved with intricate designs. one time, he'd found a busted cod liver oil pill crammed into the mouthpiece. he went on the hunt for the vandal. when longhair confessed, hsiang ko had leaned his son over the bed and whipped his bare ass three times with a bamboo switch. after that, he tried switching from the one-hitter to a brass pipe. it looked nice but it never hit quite as smooth. and after that, he experimented with a sandalwood bat. it was his hobby. he could spend hours cleaning each pipe under the light of his tizio table lamp,9 swabbing them with rubbing alcohol and wiping them out with a clean cotton swab. after they were all clean, he'd then line them up for inspection. he never grew tired of gazing at them. they never tired of being appreciated.
a thought bubbled back up. fucking anniversary. ten years. i don’t know what to get her.
carnation was sitting diagonally across from him. hsiang ko looked up when she called his name. she passed him a business card for a car service. somehow, it was already after one in the morning. he knew carnation wanted him to take a ride with her. she was twenty years old. always ready to go. he slept with her the night before. passed out the second they were done. it was a deep sleep. she could have clipped his nuts off and he wouldn't have felt it. four in the morning, he woke up with a start. kicked off the blanket. rushed out of there as fast as he could. not again. i'm almost forty years old. he dialed the number on the card and went out to take a piss. lay down on the sofa in the hall, pretending that he had passed out. the attendants rushed back and forth. with their bright white shirts and black bow ties, chattering into their walkie-talkies, they looked like magpies building a nest. without opening his eyes, he knew carnation was hovering. the saltfish aroma coming from between her legs gave her away. she reached down and grabbed his crotch. you coming or not? he kept up the act. carnation left. just like that? he couldn't figure it out.
when hsiang ko rolled off the sofa. he heard another one of his signature songs. irene yeh. kiss at midnight. If they didn't know better, someone might have mistaken hsiang ko for the typical potato-headed, betel-chewing, dialect-spewing native taiwanese.10 if they listened close, they might have heard the northern chinese twang in his voice. A third look might suggest a japanese ojisan. his ancestry was actually korean-chinese. only a love for kimchi might have given that away. like his buddy hsiao wan, he was a kuomintang voter.11 hsiang ko remembered what hsiao wan had told him after finding out his wife was going to vote for a democratic progressive party candidate. slip her a sleeping pill. make sure she misses election day. ten years. they had been married for ten years. no idea what to get her.
not even two weeks idle. the days bleached of their meaning. up at eight. worked his ass off trying to turn out as many segments as possible. in the end, they managed to get out two shots that were worthy of the nightly broadcast. it was still afternoon. he went with sung-tzu to shih men to eat seafood. went and got laid after. my poor fucking nuts. his dick jerked like a fish gasping for air on a dock. after he slept with lisa, he flipped her over and let the sunlight hit her fat ass through the venetian blinds. shadow stripes all across it. felt like he was wrestling with a watermelon. his wife went out every morning to an aerobics dance group with some other taitais. she wanted to tone her body. she had toned it until the point where he could barely wrap his arms around her. slept until midday. showered and shaved. put on a sweatsuit that smelled of snuggle fabric softener. went into work. everyone killing time. when the traffic slowed down, he went home and threw on a silvery white silk scarf, an open-necked yves saint laurent shirt, and a pair of chamois bally shoes. he went to lao k chia to look for girls. every time they redecorated, the place seemed to get worse. there were plenty of girls there on friday. his plan was to hang out until two o'clock, then go home, if he couldn't find a girl.
the next day, though, he decided to stay home. if he stayed, there was no way to get back out again. he knew his wife would lay into him if he tried. he ate his dinner while watching tv. it felt like a long time since he had seen longhair. he was growing up fast. he had been the third shortest in his class. as he went into third grade, he was still the third shortest. he’s still developing, his wife said. there was still a note of worry in her voice. longhair, hsiang ko called, get in here. give your daddy a kiss.
longhair obediently rushed to stand in front of his father. he brushed his wild hair aside to reveal his big, sloping forehead. he gave him a playful slap. the boy took the blow and skipped away. hsiang ko was impressed. maybe his wife was right. longhair was growing up.
he joined them in the old ritual. saturday night was set aside for the kids' baths. longhair, fuzzy, and lin wai wai, the kid from next door. they were three little roosters sharing suds with a hairy baboon. he ducked down among the towering bubbles and listened to the trillions of tiny snaps and pops they made. while the boys played, he used a pumice stone to rub his feet and scrape off his elbows. he sat among the bubbles like an immortal floating in the clouds. he was so absorbed in his work that he didn't realize that the boys' roughhousing had carried them out of the bathroom. they soaked the hardwood floor of the hallway and then the living room sofa. his wife howled. he ran to drag them back in. he scrubbed each boy off. gave them a rinse. passed them on to his wife, who was waiting outside with a towel. he stood nude in the center of the room, taking in the scene. my kingdom. my garden of eden. He was happy. wai wai, he called. get over here, let uncle nibble you. the boy smiled up at h hsiang ko. bit his plump cheek. he did it soft enough not to hurt the boy, but hard enough to leave a mark. he set the boy down and called over fuzzy. his youngest son was so boney that he looked like korean ginseng. fuzzy tried to flee but hsiang ko was faster. he picked the boy up, flipped him over and bit his ass. help me! save me! the boy shrieked, giggling. the game continued until his wife threw him a pair of underwear and told him to put them on.
after a couple days at home, he felt like he was turning into that tizio lamp. crooked and bent. a man should not spend more than two days at home.
that tizio lamp. it looked more like a fishing rod than a lamp. he'd won it in a lottery at the office new year party. hsiao hsieh came over with the box. this is a designer lamp, she said. lee cha something-or-other, 1978. he hadn't paid much attention. when he took it home, he wasn't sure where to put it. fucking strange. He realized that nobody in the house had a desk that needed a lamp. longhair had a fancy little table, a japanese import, expensive as hell. it flipped open like a piano and a built-in light switched on automatically. the jet black tizio was adjustable. it could be stretched out or set straight up. when it was folded up vertical, it looked like a river prawn. in the end, he set it on his wife's makeup table. it replaced a gaudy pink lamp with rayon flowers on its shade. after a while, the lamp was backed into a corner by various jars and flasks. perpetually kept folded vertically in its river prawn form. only allowed to stretch out when pressed into service for his pipe cleaning routine.
his wife wanted to drag him to her meeting with secretary feng. there was no way to get out of it. ten years. what the hell am i going to get her? sung-tzu had just gotten in ten pairs of fogals. they got snapped up quick. he was going to get more, though. maybe give two pairs to his wife. fuck it. she'd never wear them, anyways. they'd sit in a box forever.
hsiang ko's wife and the other members of her dance group wanted to put up a corrugated tin shed in the alley, so that they could keep practicing even when it rained. at first, they had been forced to climb up a hill to a small park to practice. it was too hot up there and they had gone looking for somewhere else to practice. that was when they found the dead-end alley in the neighborhood. it led to the foot of the mountain. the homes on either side had high walls. even in the summer, as long as they got there before nine in the morning, there was a bit of shade. one morning when he got up to piss, he was startled to hear a michael jackson song. he felt as if he were shaking awake in his own grave, remembering his magnificent final night. he was in lao k chia. until he realized the music was actually reverberating up the road. the heavy bass was gone. leaving behind a tinny beat. michael jackson was providing the soundtrack for his wife's aerobics. when it rained, they had to go to the parking garage beside the supermarket. they had to endure the gaze of neighbors and strangers.
he had seen it for himself one morning as he drove past. there were a dozen or so. they wore white tennis skirts that showed off knees that looked like thai guavas. they bounced away. not paying the slightest attention to the rhythm of whatever was coming out of the boombox. they were absorbed in their routines. their lack of self-consciousness made the whole thing almost shameful. he looked away. he couldn't bear to watch them. his wife saw him.
his wife was in the back of the group. she danced boldly. happily. clearly not caring what anyone thought. when she saw her husband's car, she froze. even across the parking lot, hsiang ko could sense that his wife was happy that he had seen her. he had finally seen her dance. he recognized the smile. it was that ambiguous, absent-minded smile that he had seen back when they were dating. he had been seeing it less and less over the years. he appreciated every chance he got to enjoy it again. that strange mix of anger and happiness in the expression. it could melt him. back before they were married, hsiang ko and his wife did a lot of things. they didn’t do them anymore. he used to suck her earlobe until her whole body turned red. And then they didn't fuck. even sung-tzu didn’t believe him. in the end, hsiang ko had no choice but to marry her.
at first, the taitais' morning exercise had been resisted by people living on the alley. there were noise complaints. but over the next two years, they managed to make peace with their neighbors. they owned the spot at the end of the alley. if anybody unaware of their occupation parked a car at the end of the alley, the taitais would go around to sort it out. it was usually kids visiting their parents. once the taitais arrived, there was no protest possible. they had to sheepishly move their car. when they started building the corrugated tin shed, there was plenty of noise but no resistance. secretary feng was the only one putting up a fight, insisting that a shed couldn't be put up on public land. when they kept working, he called the police. hsiang ko's wife had run panting into the house around ten in the morning. she wanted him to accompany her to the negotiation.
he reached out and started to slide his hand up her white skirt. longhair was already at school. fuzzy was at kindergarten. he wanted to drag her into bed. what the hell is going on with this skirt. he looked closer. it wasn't a skirt at all. It was a pair of shorts. the skirt part was only on the outside. he put his hand up one of the legs.
who the hell does she think he is? his wife muttered angrily. he’s not the secretary of me. some paper pusher thinks he calls the shots around here? she kept cursing secretary feng while dragging hsiang ko out of the door. he grabbed her ass. but she kept going. he sighed. it was hopeless.
when they got to secretary feng's house, the place was full of women. the taitais had finished their dance practice and then stood around talking. the more they talked, the angrier they had gotten about the entire situation, which is why they charged off to confront secretary feng. the veterans among them decided it would be good to have a man present, so hsiang ko was sent for. he listened to one of the women plead their case. to hsiang ko, she was polite as could be, but once she turned back to secretary feng, her tone was acid. before the secretary had a chance to offer a rebuttal, the women were on him, talking all at once, drowning him out. if nobody was going to be reasonable, there was no sense in even negotiating. it didn’t seem to hsiang ko that the secretary was unreasonable. he wanted to have his bureaucratic temper tantrum. it didn’t take much to push him in their favor.
it was the middle of the day. every other man was at work. except for him and the secretary. the women had finished with him, so they turned to hsiang ko. they wanted to hear the latest gossip from the station. they asked him about the rumor that some starlet was pregnant with a millionaire's baby and had run off to seattle to give birth. they told him they'd heard that so-and-so had lost twenty-five pounds with a new acupuncture regimen. is that true? they wanted to know if he’d heard the story about an actor that had gambled away an eight figure paycheck in a single night. what about the actress that went to switzerland to have blood transfusions to keep her looking young? one of the older women begged him to get an autograph from madonna. She wanted to give it to her granddaughter. the little girl always wore crop tops. hey, secretary feng, why don't you get us an autograph from wu tse-t'ien? she was always your favorite, wasn't she?
hsiang ko sat with secretary feng and drank tea. the women stood and sat around them. they laughed at everything he said. it was too much. if he had been able to pass one of his pipes around, they might have died from laughter. hsiang ko's wife stood in the back. she tried to play it cool. whenever she couldn't stifle a smile, she looked out the window. hid her face from him. whenever he went too far she would cluck her tongue and scold him. ai, he likes to run his mouth! since the negotiation had been concluded successfully, he offered to take the ladies out for an afternoon of karaoke. the ladies simpered. we'll go. but you have to make sure you get us home on time. we have to be there when the kids get back.
that afternoon, he tried to take advantage of the short time they had before longhair came home to get his wife into bed, but she was absorbed in a special on nhk. he'd read in the newspaper about the debate over broadcast satellite services. their compound had it already. fifty yuan a month. hsiang ko's wife wanted to learn knitting. but the show was in japanese, so she had to learn that first. six months later, she could start to piece it together. she watched nhk to improve her listening. there was a stack of japanese textbooks beside their bed.
hsiang ko was busy. the choice of mr. chao to bring in hong kong stars and their production team had led to complications. that extended from the actors down to the lowliest grips. he was running all over, dealing with whatever needed dealing with. he had to make sure the stars had everything they needed: weed, speed, a good meal out in the city, then a massage joint to unwind in after. the additional stipulation there was that it needed curtained off private boxes. hsiang ko waited for them outside. he was on the phone. he had to rent out an alley for a location shoot. you're gonna rent it to us or we'll come down there and make sure nothing comes in or goes out. if that doesn't work, we'll come and kick the shit out of you. hong hongers? hong kongers chiau-khui! that was what he'd mutter under his breath while working with them. he'd heard it from hsiao wan and ah kang back in kaohsiung. those boys. piece of work, right there. chased them out of the bar with a black star pistol. hit him once in the back. they piled into a car. hong kongers chiau-khui! get some! then he shot into the windows of the mercedes, pop pop pop pop pop. fuck, you think we're going to let anybody else run kaohsiung? hsiao wan said. one morning hsiang ko woke up to the sound of someone reciting japanese. he liked the sound. after a moment, he realized it was fuzzy. He looked around the corner. the boy had memorized the script that his mother was going to recite in her japanese speech competition. mother and son were like a pair of tape recorders. they would speed up and slow down. emphasis on certain points. playing with their own voices. they were having fun. his wife got first prize. when she told him, he thought she was wasting her time.he even felt bad for her. but what the hell was he doing? who was he busting his ass for? mr. chao would tell him he was indispensable. it was just talk. when the ratings were good, the boss came in with a cake for them. but it all came down to the red envelopes. or a promotion. for himself. fuck. all for himself. just look. the kanji for kagoshima floated across the tv screen. his wife was more interested in kagoshima than she was in him. much more interested.
what the hell are they saying? translate for me. he pressed himself against her.
she brushed him off. he stuck his arm down the front of her t-shirt. she curled away from him. focus. she was absorbed in her translation. sometimes she could only guess what was being said, based on what was on the screen. he kept rubbing. it was dry. she kept translating. she was treating him like he was deaf. he let her go. he listened. he went and got his cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol and went to work on his pipes.
after dinner, his wife suggested they go to the night market. as they were about to head out the door, the phone rang. longhair answered. hai, chotto matte kudasai. mama! denwa! the Japanese flowed easier. maybe better than his Chinese.
it was ms. nakatsuka, the japanese teacher. hsiang ko had answered the phone when she called before. she called in the evening to help her students practice conversation. she took her job seriously. hsiang ko listened to his wife chatting away in japanese. he didn't recognize her tone or her expression. it made him uncomfortable. hsiang ko realized in an instant that his family all spoke a second language. he was excluded. why japanese? he had never heard any of them trying to learn his korean. his wife had taken advantage of his time out of the house and led his sons in a revolution. this powerful woman wanted to subvert his power.
male stamina secrets. guide to couples massage. tapes from the mainland. sex and politics. the night market stalls could run through hundreds of copies. chen kuang-fu forced su nan-cheng to bow down to him? vol. 6 of chen kuang-fu's kaohsiung city council sessions. bombard the legislative yuan, ju gau-jeng's secret conversations with liu kuo-tsai. one day the underground world would replace hsiang ko's station. his wife had reverently purchased a tape of river elegy. what made those bastards think they could get away with something like that? cartoons. they had those. who buys that stuff? his wife said, looking at a five-tape set of yellow river.12 she preferred to watch the tapes that ms. nakatsuka brought back from Japan.
it was eleven thirty when they got home. he heard his beeper going off inside. he had forgotten to bring it. he rushed in. 006. hsiao wan. he called. everyone's here. we're waiting for you. hurry up. hey. if you can, bring a couple pipes.
they want action, i’ll give it to them. i’ll put their dicks in the dirt. he changed. grabbed the sandalwood bat.
i am i wo shih wo. the owners had given hsiao wan the title of manager. hsiang ko had never been. he left his car beside the toys r us lot and called someone over to park it. the toys r us was already closed. through the big windows, he could see a squadron of carefully-arranged big birds. they were all striding in the same direction. it was a magnificent sight. he had taken his sons there once. he told them to buy whatever they wanted. they were like wild beasts released into the wild. their eyes glowed. longhair rushed around. papa, i don't know what to get. he went back to running up and down the aisles. when he was finally forced to make a decision, he went with a g.i. joe. do kids still play with g.i. joes? of course they do. it was a hot item. the year before. and there were plans to hold a twenty-fifth birthday party for the plastic soldier. it was a long time ago. his father was working as a cook in the canteen of the combined logistics command. he brought home a g.i. joe. it wasn't new but it was in good shape. it was his only toy. seeing joe again was like reuniting with an old friend. he was happy his son wanted to get to know him. ten years. ten years of marriage. when the clock strikes midnight tonight, time's up. it had been on his mind all week. on the day itself, he completely forgot. what do I get her, hsiao wan? tell me.
get her a gold chain. that'll work. she'll get the picture.
this place. i am i wo shih wo. it might be a good place to sell a tiger pelt. since it had opened, it was popular with year end company parties. they had to limit reservations to six hundred a day. hsiao wan took him on a tour. the place was massive. it was a pdk. piano bar, disco, and karaoke. you could eat dinner, see a show, and then play the slot machines. taipei traffic was so bad, it was better to keep everything under one roof. it made life easier. he told hsiao wan to ask around if anybody was renovating their office. he had two tiger pelts. he had sold one to a designer that sung-tzu introduced him to. he cleared a hundred thousand yuan on the deal and took half of it. he got them from indonesia. poaching was banned. there were only fifty of this particular species of tiger left in the world. forty-eight. he had some tropical birds, too. he kept them at his mother-in-law's place. they had two long feathers on both sides of their head. they looked like the pheasant tails that peking opera actors wore on their foreheads. wonderful. not a bad idea to pick one up for display. not a bad idea, discovering his wife was a coal mine. once the boys grew up, she would dig deeper, inch by inch.
he had to admit he was a bit surprised. it was a threat, he knew. somehow, he didn't actually feel that way. he only wondered why the uncomfortable thought came to him at that moment.
the glass-fronted karaoke booths were sprinkled like a field of stars on the four sides of the piano bar. two tinfoil palm trees rose in the middle. ngoi jan tung zi and onsenkyo coexisted. the drifters eulogize chhit-tho while dreaming of camel bells. hsiao wan was one of them. he always risked the lofty peaks of dream of camel bells. he failed every time. rushed through the rest.13 lisa was sent for. she could sing. not a single song he recognized. a tuneless mess. a jumble of words. so many years ago, he had brought his wife back to his bachelor apartment. she saw the sheets of calligraphy laid out on his desk. who wrote all this? she asked. props for a series. i wrote them. he claimed the brushes. the inkstones. her credulity moved him. he realized it was a trap. feigning innocence was how she baited him.
the wind rattled the blinds. died away. he looked up. the sky flashed with purple-blue light. mahjong tiles snapped. lightning crashed. a night like this. he used to think it was better to go home early. back when they were first married, they were living at his mother-in-law's house. the thunder covered the sounds they made. his wife was usually more relaxed.
love song 1990.14 that's what she was singing. the pipe came around. women always want men to think they're childish. they keep their cunning to themselves. they don't want to embarrass their men. he didn't know whether to be thankful. or even more frightened. hsiao wan said: i heard some people say red rose is on the air.
hsiao wan had a dual band shou pa chi.15 if he wasn't busy, he turned to channel one four five and screwed around. citizen band. eight two megahertz. with nothing but a machine you can hold in your hand. reach out and touch somebody. bare-assed on the toilet. in the tub. scanning thousands of miles. the conversation goes shower, excuse yourself to take a piss. take a call. and you free yourself from the web. red rose was on the air. red rose is paging you. red rose, paging scout horse. please respond. hear you loud and clear. no interference. looking for a latenight snack. they boosted their power, battling with each other. a talented novice emerged. suddenly chatting on one four four one four six booming at fifty watts. not knowing these territories were being monitored. the amateurs didn't know that the hams were taking over.
he had sworn an oath with sung-tzu. because what sung-tzu feared more than anything was alzheimer's. he made hsiang ko swear that he would snuff him before he got there. they were so young. they used to fuck girls in the same room then switch. the girls used to laugh and tell him that sung-tzu's dick was bigger than his. he was taller. it was proportional, he told them.
he went to call his wife. he woke her up. ten years, he said. thank you for everything. hsin k'u lah.
what time are you coming home? she asked. i can get some noodles ready for you or shui chiao.
it's almost two. you get to sleep. if i'm hungry, i can make something for myself.
he wasn't worried about alzheimer's. long before that, if he lived long enough, the languages of his kingdom would be incomprehensible. at least two. japanese. and the americanese that fuzzy was learning at his montessori kindergarten. trying to speak to them, he would only be able to guess at their meaning. suspecting. feeling ashamed. slowly withering. and then dying. he faced the glass-fronted karaoke booths and watched the screens flickering inside like constellations. and the dancefloor, lit by a wall of mtv. that is how he saw his future.
the lights were shining. the nightlife glowed like wildfire. somewhere above him, he knew that there was another city taking shape under the darkness. one that could be heard but not seen. it was a city carried on radio waves. as the night deepened, the transmissions grew more frantic. until the sun rose and the sound vanished. red rose, calling blue stocking. when the future came. when hsiang ko withered away. all he hoped was that his wife might let him find some temporary solace inside of her.
march 25 1992
This is from the fourth volume in Hamid Naficy's A Social History of Iranian Cinema, quoting Shahram Khosravi (The Third Generation: The Islamic Order of Things and Cultural Defiance among the Young of Tehran), quoting Ayatollah Khamenei.
This is from "The Politics of Cultures is the Culture of National Identity Politics in Taiwan: "Japan" in the Nation Building of Lee Teng-hui's Regime," Wong Heung-wah and Yau Hoi-yan in Reconceptualising the Divide: Identity, Memory, and Nationalism in Sino-Japanese Relations.
You can read her essay here: “Information Fantasies.”
The Christian Science Monitor reported on it in 1990: “Satellite Dishes Get Static From Beijing.”
Taiwanese author, born 1956, Mainland literary celebrity father and Japanese translator mother of Hakka extraction, noted for turn from KMT sympathies to celebrations of Taiwanese identity after her collaborations with Hou Hsiao-hsien, among others.
There is no editor to tell me not to format this without capitalization or italics. It looks better that way. It’s more faithful. Nobody can tell me otherwise. But there is nobody to correct my errors or tell me when it doesn’t make sense. This deepens my respect for Michelle Yeh, Eva Hung, and Ellen Lai-shan Yeung, who translated stories from this collection.
I know that Hanyu Pinyin is the current standard for romanization in Taiwan. But it wasn’t when this was written. Most translations of stories from the Fin-de-siècle Splendor (Shih-chi-mo te Hua-li or Shìjìmò de Huálì?) use Wade-Giles or some messy combination of romanizations.
Taiwanese pop culture references are lost on me. A sappy 1980 hit, sung originally by Kuei Chang, I think. The chorus goes something like, “The clown, the clown, the cloud / It is his pain / That becomes happiness / Presented to you.”
Lamp designed for Artemide. Futuristic. Symbol of 1970s industrial design and 1980s yuppie consumerism. Widely copied. You can see it here: Richard Sapper, Tizio Table Lamp, 1971.
The ethnic distinctions might not make sense. “Native Taiwanese” does not denote a member of indigenous communities of Taiwan, but people of Chinese ancestry, often Hoklo or Hakka. Their roots in Taiwan go back further than the arrivals of the 1940s.
We know Hsiang Ko is Korean-Chinese, but we also know, since it’s mentioned later that his father worked for the military, that he’s probably included with the wàishěngrén. But why is it remarked upon, the fact that he votes for the Kuomintang, the party traditionally associated with the 1940s arrivals from China? I don’t know. It’s pointed out here that the KMT is the party of organized crime, as well.
I couldn’t explain to you all these tapes covering Taiwanese politics. It is interesting that his wife buys a bootleg copy of River Elegy, the 1988 CCTV documentary about Chinese civilization suppressed after the events of the summer of 1989. River Elegy presents a metaphor: China as the sluggish Yellow River, carving away the sand, and the West as the deep blue sea. And Yellow River was a joint NHK-CCTV documentary, far less polemical, made in 1986, intending to build on the success of The Silk Road (1980-1981).
Does any of this make sense? Maybe not. It’s built mostly from references to popular song lyrics. I don’t think it’s worth the struggle to annotate them.
A love song from 1990 by Lo Ta-yu. Perhaps this gentle tune from a former campus balladeer is intended to signal a shift in mood. We have left the “tuneless mess” and the stream-of-consciousness pop allusions.
This section is about citizens band radio. Hwei-cheng Cho’s thesis (PDF) on Chu T’ien-wen notes simply: “CB radio was a fashionable craze in Taiwan in the 1980s.” There are many sources on Taiwan underground radio, but they focus on what came next, after this story takes place (Chu T’ien-wen seems to be hinting at the next wave). The first few years of the 1988 to 1993 period are treated briefly here: 還原媒體的時代形貌-臺灣地下電台運動史流變的再論述. Anyway, thirty years on, it is difficult to find anything to help in deciphering the jargon, which is, I suppose, not really intended to be deciphered.