Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1317165
ARI Working Paper No. 81 Asia Research Institute ● Singapore
Asia Research Institute
Working Paper Series
No. 81
From Transnationalism to Nativism:
The Rise, Decline and Reinvention of a
Regional Hokkien Entertainment Industry
Jeremy E. Taylor
University of Sheffield, UK
jeremy_taylor@rocketmail.com
January 2007
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ARI Working Paper No. 81 Asia Research Institute ● Singapore
2
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ARI Working Paper No. 81 Asia Research Institute ● Singapore
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From Transnationalism to Nativism: The Rise, Decline and Reinvention of
a Regional Hokkien Entertainment Industry
Jeremy E. Taylor
INTRODUCTION
One consequence of the much documented rise of nativist nationalism in Taiwan over the last
decade or more has been the extent to which certain cultural traits which are not unique to
Taiwan have been co-opted into a discourse of ‘Taiwaneseness’. One example of this is
Hokkien—a dialect spoken not only in Taiwan, but also throughout Southeast Asia and in
parts of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In Taiwan, Hokkien has emerged as arguably
the most important symbol of the pro-independence movement, and is known simply as
Taiyu—‘Taiwan’s language’. It is to this dialect that Taiwanese politicians turn when they
seek to present their credentials as ‘true believers’ in the island’s independence. And it is to
the films made in this dialect by the ‘New Cinema’ directors that many scholars turn when
trying to make sense of ‘local’ Taiwanese identity.
Yet there has been surprisingly little effort to either deconstruct the process by which
Hokkien has been ‘localised’ in Taiwan, or to examine the irony of the fact that this most
Taiwanese of linguistic symbols has had a very non-local history. The long-standing trade in
Hokkien cultural products across national borders, for instance, appears to have largely
escaped the attention of the academy. Instead, we find numerous literatures which, at some
points, overlap, but which tend to take a parochial focus on the dialect, and the people who
speak it, in respective societies. In Southeast Asia, for example, we find a historiography of a
dialect group—when the ‘Hokkiens’ arrived, what trades they undertook and what
organisations they founded.1
In studies of the People’s Republic of China, we find a focus on
the revival of a province (i.e. Fujian) after decades of stagnation,2
as well as a regional
1
See, for instance, Thomas T. W. Tan (ed), Chinese Dialect Groups: Traits and Trades (Singapore: Opinion
Books, 1990).
2
An example being Y..M. Yeung and David K.Y. Chu (eds.), Fujian: A Coastal Province in Transition and
Transformation (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2000).
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folklore that originates in that province.3
In studies of Taiwan, we invariably find a literature
concerning a language.
Moreover, in the study of cultural expression in Hokkien throughout all these different
societies, there is a general academic tendency to concentrate on either ‘traditional’ art forms
(usually meaning those which find their origins in the pre-modern era) or, in keeping with a
Frankfurt-School-inspired disdain for commercialisation, only those art forms which are
commercially unsuccessful within Hokkien-speaking societies themselves (such as the films
of Taiwan’s New Cinema directors). This has resulted in a dearth of English-language
scholarship on commercial Hokkien popular songs, television programmes and
advertisements, or in the relegation of such products to the footnotes of studies concerning
political developments within Hokkien-speaking societies.4
Yet, as I hope to show in this paper, it is precisely in the commercial entertainment industry
that we can trace the rise, decline and renaissance of Hokkien cultural expression in Asia over
the last half century. And it is the very international nature of this entertainment industry that
enables us to look at the ways in which Hokkien has moved across national borders, rather
than simply within a Taiwanese television industry, a Chinese film industry or a Malaysian
music industry.
In this paper, therefore, my aim is twofold. On the one hand, I am asking why and how
Hokkien as a medium of song, film and television has, internationally, now largely become
the preserve of Taiwanese nationalism. On the other hand, I am asking whether or not we can
speak of a transnational, ‘pan-Hokkien’ cultural industry, in the same way that some scholars
have defined and studied a ‘pan-Cantonese’ cultural industry.5
Further, how might an attempt
to sketch a brief history of a such an industry prompt us to rethink not only the very political
nature of the use of Hokkien in Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the PRC today, but also the wider
cultural relationship between these different societies?
3
Xue Xiaowang, Mazu de zimin: Min Tai haiyang wenhua yanjiu [The children of Mazu: A study of the
maritime culture of Taiwan and Fujian] (Shanghai: Xuelin, 1999); He Jinshan (ed.), Min Tai quyu wenhua
[The regional culture of Taiwan and Fujian] (Xiamen: Xiamen Daxue Chubanshe, 2006).
4
There are, of course, exceptions; some of these shall be raised later in this paper.
5
Indeed, I borrow the phrase from Poshek Fu, Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: the politics of Chinese
cinema (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 56.
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HOKKIEN, TAIWANESE AND AMOY DIALECT
At the outset, it is perhaps necessary to define what is meant by the term Hokkien. In much of
English-speaking Southeast Asia, the term ‘Hokkien’ (despite literally meaning ‘Fujian’ in
the dialect that bears its name) refers specifically to a variety of the Min dialect group, Min
being one of the major dialect groups into which linguists have split the languages of China.6
Reflecting the fact that this dialect has a very different significance in different contexts—
differences reflected in some of the ways I looked at above—Hokkien is known by different
names in others parts of the world. Most noticeably, in Taiwan, where Hokkien is spoken by
over 70% of a population of over 23 million, the dialect is almost universally referred to as
‘Taiyu’ (literally ‘Taiwanese’). Whilst the appropriation of the dialect into a discourse of
‘Taiwaneseness’ throughout the course of the 20th
century is of relevance to some of the
issues I shall be examining below, it will suffice at this stage to note that, despite some
differences in vocabulary and accent, Taiyu is essentially Hokkien by another name.
Similarly, in the PRC, the term Minnanyu (literally ‘Southern Min’) is used, while historically,
the term Xiayu or Xiamenyu—literally, ‘the language of Xiamen’, but most often rendered in
English as ‘Amoy dialect’7
—has also been employed at different periods.8
Whilst there are variations of Hokkien in different parts of the world, and despite the fact that
many of these variations have themselves been identified and named by scholars (e.g.,
‘Taiwanese Hokkien’9
and ‘Standard Malaysian Hokkien’,10
for instance), speakers of this
6
That the term for the entire province is now almost universally used to refer to the dialect spoken in and by
people originating in a very specific strip of coastal southern Fujian (around the administrative districts of
Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Quanzhou), is probably due to the fact that almost 80% of people of Fujianese
ancestry who emigrated to Southeast Asia hailed from that area. See Lynn Pan (ed), The Encyclopedia of the
Chinese Overseas (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 33.
7
‘Amoy’ was the name used in English sources throughout the 19th
and early 20th
centuries for what is now the
city of Xiamen. It was but one in an entire system of Chinese toponyms used by foreigners in China
throughout much of the pre-1949 era, known as the Postal System (other examples being ‘Swatow’ for the
city now known as Shantou, and ‘Canton’ for Guangzhou). This Postal System is now considered archaic,
however. In this paper, I shall therefore refer to the city of Xiamen by its current name, while translating the
term Xiayu as ‘Amoy-dialect’ in keeping with much of the extant literature.
8
And is still used by scholars today. See, for instance, Chen Ronglan and Li Xitai, Xiamen Fangyan [The Amoy
Dialect] (Xiamen: Lujiang Chubanshe, 1999).
9
As in Ho Ching-hsien, Speak Taiwanese Hokkien (Taipei: Taipei Language Institute, 1991).
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dialect in Taiwan, the PRC, Singapore, Malaysia and elsewhere are able to communicate with
one another and understand recordings made in Hokkien; Taiyu, Minnanyu, Xiayu and
Hokkien are ostensibly the same dialect.
More importantly, in Taiwan, the only society in which there remains an industry of any note
dedicated to the production of songs, television programmes and, to a much lesser degree,
films in Hokkien, the popular culture which has developed around this dialect is not merely
distinguished from entertainment in other dialects and languages linguistically. Rather, Taiyu
has taken on a significance that goes beyond language, such that Taiyu films, songs and
television programmes are now differentiated from songs in other dialects by the style in
which they are sung, the people who perform them, the market they enjoy and the entire
culture that surrounds them. Hokkien (i.e., as Taiyu) has become equated with an entire
aesthetic and style of cultural expression.
In much of the literature concerning contemporary Hokkien popular culture in Taiwan the
origins of this link between the dialect and a particular style or aesthetic are never questioned.
It is almost universally accepted that, as Hokkien is the language of ‘the people’ (as opposed
to Mandarin, the ‘language of the state’), the products made in the dialect reflect a style that
is modest and less glamorous. Whilst the glamour of the mainstream Mandarin music scene
in Taiwan and its Hong Kong on-screen contemporaries is often described as false or forced,
it is just as equally assumed that Hokkien singers reflect a genuine sincerity. On album covers
and television screens, Hokkien-speaking celebrities are invariably portrayed as anything but
glamorous, as the children of difficult upbringings in urban ‘underworld’ or rural settings.
While the international stars of Hong Kong cinema and Mandarin pop advertise luxury items,
the local stars of Hokkien song and drama advertise karaoke machines and alcohol.
But why is this the case? Has this dialect always been associated with a particular lifestyle
and culture? In order to answer such questions, it is necessary to look back to what might be
identified as the ‘golden age’ of both Hokkien popular music and film in Asia—the mid-
1950s through to the mid-1960s―a period which, as we shall see below, set many of the
standards that continue to define Hokkien popular cultural production today.
10
Tan Chee-Beng, ‘Socio-cultural diversities and identities’, in Lee Kam Hing and Tan Chee-Beng (eds.), The
Chinese in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 46.
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THE POST-WAR HOKKIEN WORLD
The recording of Hokkien opera and songs in Taiwan and China can be traced back to the
1920s. There also existed, during the middle stage of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan, an
industry of recorded Hokkien popular music. This was funded mainly by American record
companies such as Columbia and RCA. Although significant, this industry was largely
destroyed by the start of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, and the subsequent restrictions on
cultural production in Chinese dialects introduced by the Japanese.11
In terms of scale of
production and sheer market size, however, developments in the 1920s and 1930s pale in
comparison to the international Hokkien popular culture industry that emerged within a
decade of the end of the Second World War.
The birth of this post-war Hokkien culture industry was the result of a series of political
developments in East and Southeast Asia in the immediate post-war years. For Taiwan,
incorporation into the Chinese Republic in 1945 saw the return to the island of a Japaneseeducated
cultural elite—the children of middle-class, Hokkien-speaking Taiwanese who had
made the most of Japanese colonialism by pursuing studies in metropolitan Japan during the
1930s. This period also saw the arrival of Nationalist Chinese government institutions which
would provide the hardware (i.e. the physical studios and recording facilities) for this
industry. Ties across the Taiwan Strait, specifically between Taiwan and Fujian province,
were also strengthened in the 1945–49 period, and this had a profound impact on Hokkien
cultural production in both Taiwan and Fujian, as it meant increased interaction between
Hokkien opera troupes, theatres groups, writers and intellectuals.12
Elsewhere, this early post-war period bore witness to the foundation of entirely new Hokkienspeaking
communities in places such as Hong Kong. The closure of China’s borders
following the founding of the PRC in 1949, coupled with suspicions about large-scale
Chinese immigration in countries such as the Philippines, saw a substantial number of
Fujianese stranded in Hong Kong while en route to or from Southeast Asia in the early 1950s,
11
The history of the production of Hokkien popular music in Taiwan during the 1930s is most thoroughly
documented in Zhuang Yongming, Taiwan geyao zhuixiangqu [Taiwanese ballads and nostalgic songs]
(Taipei: Qianwei Chubanshe, 1994), esp. pp. 22-23.
12
This led to a renewed interest in performance arts such as gezaixi. Chen Geng, Haixia beige: fengyu cangsang
gezaixi [Tragedy in the Strait: the long and difficult story of Hokkien opera] (Fuzhou: Haichao Sheying
Chubanshe, 2005), pp. 140-149.
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8
for instance. It was from this community—Hong Kong’s ‘Little Fujian’13
—that a future
Hokkien entertainment industry would come to be peopled.
Moreover, the fall of the Chinese mainland to communism in 1949 saw the displacement of
entire media industries, particularly from Shanghai. This would indirectly shape the Hokkien
entertainment industry in the years following. For instance, in Singapore and Malaya, the loss
of Shanghai resulted in a shortage of recorded Chinese music, and the need for local business
interests who had previously distributed Shanghai-produced music and films to look
elsewhere for product.14
Moreover, a number of scholars have also identified the foundation
of the People’s Republic as the catalyst for what has been described as a ‘diasporic Chinese
film market’—one which, until the 1960s, involved Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and
Teochew film industries co-existing with one another.15
In urban Southeast Asia, the end of Japanese occupation also allowed for greater cultural
interaction with China and amongst Chinese communities around the region, while the rubber
boom of the early 1950s led to greater spending power amongst sections of the middle class.
The results were seen in the amusement parks of Singapore and Malaya, where live
performance in the form of getai—modern, Shanghai-inspired stage shows—was reaching a
peak by the early 1950s.16
As we shall see below, it was from getai that many of the
celebrities of Hokkien entertainment would emerge, and it was amongst the amusement-parkgoing
Hokkien crowds of Southeast Asia that such an industry would find a market.
13
The most thorough study of this community’s origins and fate is Gregory Elliott Guldin, ‘“Overseas” at home:
the Fujianese of Hong Kong’, PhD Thesis, Department of Cultural Anthropology, University of WisconsinMadison,
1977. See also Siumi Maria Tam, ‘Engendering Minnan Mobility: Women Sojourners in a
Patriarchal World’, in Tan Chee-Beng (ed), Southern Fujian: Reproduction of Traditions in Post-Mao China
(Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2006), pp. 145-162.
14
A point noted explicitly, for instance, in Singapore’s Department of Broadcasting, Report of the Department
of Broadcasting for the years 1946-52 (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1953), p. 12.
15
Yingchi Chu, Hong Kong Cinema: Coloniser, Motherland and Self (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p. 31.
16
Yung Sai Shing and Chan Kwok Bun, ‘Leisure, pleasure and consumption: Ways of entertaining oneself’, in
Chan Kwok Bun and Tong Chee Kiong (eds), Past Times: A Social History of Singapore (Singapore: Times
Editions, 2003), p. 164.
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9
AMOY-DIALECT FILMS
These social, political and economic developments in different parts of East and Southeast
Asia provided the context within which the first truly transnational Hokkien-based popular
culture industry was to come into existence. This was represented in the so-called Amoydialect
films, or Xiayupian—films made in Hong Kong but in Hokkien. At one level, this
industry was the creation of Southeast Asian Chinese capital which saw a market for
Hokkien-speaking audiences in the ‘Nanyang’ and in Taiwan in the immediate post-war years.
Yet the industry was only possible thanks to the existence of cheap Hokkien labour in Hong
Kong’s ‘Little Fujian’17
and an excess of performers from different parts of the Chinese
world, not all of them Hokkien.
Funding for the production of Amoy-dialect films came from Philippine-based companies
such as Xinguang, as well as, later, from Singapore-based companies such as Kong Ngee and
Eng Wah. Yet it was also driven by smaller companies, such as Minsheng and Hua Xia,18
which had been set up by Hokkien-speaking sojourners from China living in Hong Kong. By
the mid-1950s, these and other companies were together producing dozens of Amoy-dialect
films each year. By the end of the decade, the industry had become so lucrative that even the
Shaw Brothers had become involved in making a handful of films in Hokkien.19
Receiving no government backing, Amoy-dialect films were completely market-driven. This
meant that companies sought not only to produce films that would appeal to the largest
possible market of Hokkien speakers, but also meant that they sought the lowest possible
production costs. This is perhaps one of the reasons for the initial trend towards the
production of ‘opera films’—something which was witnessed in both Hong Kong and, a few
years later, in Taiwan—which essentially involved the filming of Hokkien opera
17
As the Singapore film financier and distributor Goh Eng Wah has noted, the fact that many members of this
itinerant Fuijianese population in Hong were looking for work meant that Amoy-dialect films were essentially
cheap to produce. There was always a steady stream of people willing to write songs, act as extras and play
music for soundtracks. ‘Interview with Goh Eng Wah’, 7 July 1997, Oral History Collection 1907 (Reel 9),
National Archives of Singapore.
18
The names of some of these smaller studios displayed a very clear dedication to the production of films
specifically for Hokkien reception: Minsheng literally meant ‘the sound of Fujian’; Hua Xia ‘Chinese
Xiamen’.
19
Raphaël Millet, Singapore Cinema (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2006), pp. 56-60.
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performances.20
This saw a number of traditions associated with Hokkien opera, not least that
of the khau-tiau-a21
—sad, ‘tear jerking’ melodies and plots—becoming central features of
commercial Hokkien production.
But the early dominance of these opera films also reflected the ‘deterritorialised’ nature of the
industry. Being based on a traditional performing art, and on plots drawn from the Chinese
classics and Fujian folklore, Amoy-dialect opera films were accessible to Hokkien speakers
throughout Asia. The fact that such films largely avoided reference to contemporary political
or social issues also meant that government interference (in Taiwan, Hong Kong and
Southeast Asia) remained minimal in the early years of this genre,22
and may explain why at
least some Hong Kong-produced Amoy-dialect opera films were exhibited in post-1949
Fujian.23
By the late 1950s, however, a whole range of sub-genres of Amoy-dialect films were being
produced, from costume dramas to urban melodramas and comedies. Many of these began to
reflect the realities of life in different parts of the Hokkien diaspora, and marked a distinct
move away from on-screen reproductions of operas or Chinese myths. The financial
challenge of post-war life in Hong Kong’s ‘Little Fujian’ and working-class Malaya; the
cultural differences between modern urban centres such as Hong Kong, Taipei or Singapore
and rural village life in Fujian; and the changes that were being wrought by political and
economic developments throughout the region—these were all themes that began to be
explored in some depth by the late 1950s. Like Cantonese and Mandarin films of the day,
Amoy-dialect films also began to appeal to a distinctly middle-class audience, depicting a
Hokkien-speaking world of white-collar workers, nightclub hostesses and ‘modern’ couples
who shuttled back and forth between Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila and Taipei.
20
The point concerning the low production costs of Hokkien opera films produced in Taiwan is made in Ju-Fang
Shih, ‘Gezaixi dianying suoyou chansheng de shehui lishi’ [Social history derived from Taiwanese opera
films], Xinwenxue yanjiu [Mass communication research] 59 (1999.4): 23-40. It is significant that both Amoydialect
films, and Taiyu films (which shall be examined below), began with filmed operas.
21
On the tradition of the khau-tiau-a, see Chen Geng, op. cit., pp. 97-101.
22
Ye Longyan, Chunhua Menglu: Zhengzong Taiyu Dianyingxing Xingshuai lu [Dreams of the spring dew: The
rise and fall of genuine Taiwanese films] (Luzhou: Boyang Wenhua, 1999), p. 59.
23
One Taiwanese author notes how the 1957 Kong Ngee-produced Amoy film Taohua qixue ji [Peach Blossoms
Weep Blood] was exhibited in post-Liberation Xiamen. Dajia lai chang Taiwan ge [Let’s all sing Taiwanese
songs] (Taipei County: Taibeixian Wenhua Zhongxin, 1993), pp. 5-6. The question of PRC state policy and
local Fujian consumption of Hokkien films and songs produced in Hong Kong (and indeed in Taiwan) in the
1950s is a fascinating issue that future studies might go further in addressing.
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Today, the Amoy-dialect films are mentioned only in passing in studies of the ‘national
cinemas’ of Singapore or Taiwan, or else as a footnote to the development of the Hong Kong
film industry.24
But as the first major wave of commercialised, mass entertainment produced
in Hokkien, the Amoy-dialect films and the songs they brought with them—the so-called ‘mo
deng Fujian gequ’ [‘modern Hokkien songs’] which sustained a market in their own right
throughout Southeast Asia25
—were significant in setting a number of standards.
The first of these was a reputation for shoddiness. The continual search for low production
costs, coupled with what seemed to be a willingness on the part of many Hokkien audiences
to accept a generally inferior standard of production, resulted in poor quality films. Amoydialect
films cost less to produce than Mandarin or Cantonese films in terms of both money
and time.26
Moreover, as a reflection of the fact that many of the stars of the Amoy-dialect world had
started their careers on the stages of amusement parks or opera sets, these films maintained a
close connection to music and live performance. For example, the tradition of suipian dengtai
(lit. ‘going on stage following films’)—in which actors would tour to Taiwan, Malaya and the
Philippines and perform songs from particular films live on stage—was apparently unique to
Hokkien.27
Amoy-dialect films also lacked much of the glamour associated with Mandarin-based
entertainment that had developed in Shanghai in the pre-war years. The ‘stars’ of Amoydialect
cinema were almost always depicted as having led difficult lives or hailing from
humble origins. The life story of Sio Kwan (aka Ivy Ling Po)—probably the most successful
star of Xiayupian in the 1950s—as dramatised in a 1964 film made in Taiwan, showed her
journey from a working-class childhood in Republican-era Xiamen, abandonment by her
24
As in Stephen Teo, ‘Local and Global Identity: Whither Hong Kong Cinema?’, senses of cinema 7 (2000.6),
www.sensesofcinema.com.
25
Modeng Fujian geji [A collection of modern Hokkien songs] (Singapore: Youlian, 1954). Mass-produced
booklets such as this contained lyrics and scores from songs featured in Amoy-dialect films.
26
Amoy-dialect actor Kwan Sin Ngee, for instance, claims to have acted in ten movies in only a seven-month
period in Hong Kong in the late 1950s. ‘Interview with Ong Joo Hong (aka Kwan Sin Ngee)’, 18 August 1992,
Oral History Collection 1369/14 (Reel 2), National Archives of Singapore.
27
‘Xiayupian huanghou Zhuang Xuefang’ [Chuang Hsueh-fang: Queen of Amoy-dialect film], Yinhe Huabao
[Milky Way Pictorial] (27 (1960.5): 24-25.
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mother in Shantou, and relocation to a shanty town in post-1949 Hong Kong before finding
fame.28
The public persona of one of Sio Kwan’s contemporaries, Chuang Hsueh-fang, was
similarly linked to a poverty-stricken childhood.29
Such stories were often reflected in the
very characters that were played on screen—the struggling songstress or actress of rural
upbringing being a common character for both the above-mentioned artistes.
The Amoy-dialect films also set a precedent in terms of a lack of originality, or rather, a
tendency to borrow story lines, songs, studios, and indeed entire films, from the Cantonese or
Mandarin canons. The actor Wong Ching-ho, for instance, notes that many of the Xiayupian
in which he acted were essentially carbon copies of Cantonese productions, with some
studios shooting Cantonese and Amoy films concurrently, each scene being shot in a different
dialect.30
In other instances, Hokkien films would be based on successful Mandarin films.31
Linked to this constant borrowing from Mandarin and Cantonese cinemas was a tendency on
the parts of Amoy-dialect actors, directors and producers to move back and forth between
parallel dialect worlds. It was completely acceptable, perhaps even desirable, for people to
maintain careers that went beyond the world of Amoy-dialect films. At the same time,
performers who in many cases were little more than conversant in Hokkien could often find a
place in Amoy-dialect films. The Singapore-based performer Shangguan Liu Yun, who acted
in a number of Eng Wah-produced Xiayupian, came from a Cantonese-speaking
background,32
while the Taiwan-based actress Bai Yi, who starred in a number of Hong
Kong-produced Amoy-dialect films, was Shanghainese. This set something of a tradition in
Hokkien cultural production in which no such thing as loyalty to the dialect ever existed, and
in which the boundaries between Hokkien and the world of Mandarin and Cantonese
28
This was dramatised in the film Gunü Ling Bo [The Orphan Ivy Ling] (Taipei: Tailian, 1964) but was also
repeated in the entertainment press in Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
29
Like Ivy Ling Bo, Chuang’s life story is also linked to the loss of a parent and limited opportunities for
education due to financial difficulty. See, for instance, Liu Guowei, Lao ge qing wei liao: liuxing gequ liushi
nian [The emotions in old songs never disappear: Sixty years of popular song] (Taipei: Huafeng Wenhua,
1997), pp. 163.
30
Wong Ching-ho, ‘A unique genre of Hong Kong cinema: the rise and decline of Amoy films’, trans. Teri
Chan, Hong Kong Film Archive Newsletter 23 (2003.2).
31
One of the clearest copies being the 1958 Amoy-dialect film Manbo Guniang [Mambo Lady], produced by
Yicheng; the film was almost a direct copy of the Mandarin classic Manbo Nülang [Mambo Girl] produced by
the Cathay Organisation a year earlier.
32
Shangguan Liu yun (with Lin Fanping), Wuye Xiangwen [Kisses at Midnight] (Singapore: Lingzi Dazhong
Chuanbo Zhongxin, 1996), pp. 64 and 108-110.
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13
entertainment were always porous. As Sio Kwan herself once said (shortly before embarking
on a Mandarin film career): ‘Mandarin, Cantonese and Amoy-dialect films—I’d like to make
all of these….Dialect is insignificant’.33
HOKKIEN POPULAR CULTURE IN TAIWAN
Whilst the Amoy-dialect films of Hong Kong represented the first major form of massproduced,
commercial Hokkien entertainment, they also inspired creative endeavours in
others parts of the world. Most importantly, the increased market for Amoy-dialect films in
1950s Taiwan led directly to local Taiwanese directors and producers trying their hand at the
production of Hokkien films. It is no coincidence that the first Hokkien film to be made in
Taiwan was shot in 1955, just as the Amoy-dialect opera films were reaching a peak. Nor is it
any coincidence that Taiwan-produced Hokkien films, like their Hong Kong-produced
cousins were, at first, inspired largely by Hokkien opera, before branching out into other
genres.
Most cultural historians identify Taiwan-produced Hokkien films from the Xiayupian genre
by referring to such films as ‘Taiyupian’—‘Taiwanese language films’. Yet it is significant
that from the mid- to late 1950s, the distinction between the two was far from clear. Amoydialect
films were advertised in Taiwan—one of their largest markets—not as ‘Xiayupian’
but as Taiyupian, just as Taiwan-produced films were. Equally, films that are now identified
as being genuine Taiyupian were distributed as Minnanyupian (Films in southern Min) in
parts of Southeast Asia. Whilst such differences may reflect, above all, marketing preferences
amongst film distributors and exhibitors, they also suggest that the boundaries between the
two were largely irrelevant when it came to Hokkien-speaking audiences. Hokkien films of
both Hong Kong and Taiwan origin competed for the same Hokkien markets.
Moreover, there was a constant flow of celebrities between Taipei and Hong Kong in the
1950s, so much so that the two cities shared a largely centralized reservoir of on-screen
Hokkien talent. Indeed, a browse through the annals of both Xiayupian and Taiyupian will
reveal many of the same names: Sio Kwan, Xiao Yanqiu, Bai Lan, Bai Hong, Bai Yun, Jiang
33
Liu Xing, ‘Xiao Juan yaozuo ‘sanlou dongwu’’ [Sio Kwan wants to be a ‘three-storey animal’], Yinhe
Huabao [Milky Way Pictorial] 35 (1961.1): 28-29.
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14
Fan.34
There were also instances of Hong Kong- and Taiwan-based companies cooperating in
starting courses in acting for Hokkien performers, in casting and in producing films.35
So
although it is clear that Taiwan-based producers of Hokkien films were at one level
competing with Xiayupian in both Taiwan and Southeast Asia, there was also a good deal of
movement and cross-fertilisation between the two. Indeed, it could well be argued that the
Hokkien entertainment industry in this early period was one that had no single centre, but
revolved around three centres of production: Hong Kong, Taipei and, to a lesser extent,
Singapore.
Yet there were differences between the ways in which Hokkien was brought to the screen in
Hong Kong and Taiwan, and these reflected differences in the historical and political
situation in Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as the changing nature of Hokkien-speaking
markets. For example, unlike the Amoy-dialect films, Taiyupian were the product of Fujianborn
intellectuals who had moved to Taiwan prior to 1949,36
as well as Japanese-trained
Taiwanese who had returned to the island after the end of the Second World War. Individuals
such as the film director He Jiming and the song-writer Yang Sanlang—who penned the
music for many Taiyu films and whose popular songs inspired the storylines of a number of
others—were instrumental in bringing skills and ideas learnt in Japan to Hokkien cinema and
music in Taiwan. As we shall see below, the influence of Japanese popular culture would
begin to assert itself by the early 1960s in Taiwan-produced Hokkien products.
Nevertheless, many of the same standards that had been set in the Hong Kong-produced
Amoy-dialect films again came to dominate the Hokkien entertainment industry in Taiwan.
Taiyupian developed a reputation for being highly predictable and of poor quality compared
34
Indeed, as the Taiwanese cultural historian Ye Longyan has shown, there existed, from 1958 at least, a trend
for Hokkien-speaking actors who had already started acting in Taiyupian to travel to Hong Kong and make a
name for themselves in the Xiayupian industry, perhaps because it was believed that a stint in the crown
colony would enhance their fame. See Ye Longyan, op. cit., p. 14.
35
Ye Longyan, ‘Taiyupian yu Xiayupian da duijue’ [Competition between Amoy-dialect films and Taiwanese
films], Taibei wenxian (2000.3): 121.
36
Such as the directors Bai Ke and Li Jia. Li Yongquan, Taiwan dianyiang yuelan [A Taiwan cinema reader]
(Taipei: Yushan She, 1998), p. 12; on the movement of performers, opera troupes and intellectuals between
Xiamen and Taipei in the same era, and its effect on the Taiwan film industry, see Taiyupian Shidai [The age
of Taiwanese movies] (Taipei: Guojia Dianying Ziliaoguan, 1994), pp. 114-117.
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15
to Mandarin films and songs.37
A willingness to ‘Hokkienise’ films (and, later, music) that
had first appeared in other languages or dialects became a hallmark of Taiwanese cultural
production during this period. For instance, the Hokkien music industry in Taiwan was
completely dominated by an entire genre of tune known as the ‘hunxue ge’, or ‘hybrid
song’—songs in which Hokkien lyrics were set to Japanese enka melodies. Many of the bestknown
standards of the Taiwanese Hokkien repertoire can be traced to this trend.38
As mention of music suggests, the association between live musical performance and film
which had been established in Hong Kong also became a feature of Hokkien cultural
production in Taiwan. The practice of suipian dengtai was emulated, with celebrities being
expected to be as adept at stage performances as they were at on-screen portrayals.39
Indeed,
it is instructive that the rise of Taiyupian coincided with what one scholar has referred to as
the ‘heyday of Taiwanese language [sic]…popular songs’40
insofar as films provided an
alternative avenue of cultural expression for songwriters and singers. The distinction between
Hokkien music and film became even more blurred in Taiwan than it had been in the Amoydialect
films, the two being virtually inseparable for much of the 1960s, with Hokkien actors
turning to the recording of popular music, and singers trying their hand at acting. And within
the wailing tones of Hokkien enka tunes that were entering Taiwan via the above-mentioned
‘hybrid songs’, the tradition of the khau-tiau-a that had been first brought to the screen in the
Amoy-dialect opera films came to be perfected in 1960s Taiwan.
Yet despite criticism of poor quality and predictability, both Taiwan-produced Hokkien
cinema and songs continued to thrive into the mid-1960s, even while the Amoy-dialect films
of Hong Kong started to decline in popularity. Indeed, by the mid-1960s, Hong Kong
companies that had specialised in the making of Hokkien films and records had almost all
either closed down or moved to the production of Mandarin and Cantonese products. In
37
‘The popular view today’, wrote the film critic Huang Ren in 1957, ‘is that Taiyupian are seen as being a
grade lower than Mandarin films. But this view is not accurate, and should be broken’. Huang Ren, Taiwan
yingping liushi nian: Taiwan yingping shihua [Sixty years of film critique in Taiwan: the truth of film critique
in Taiwan] (Taipei: Yatai Tushu, 2004), p. 103.
38
Jeremy E. Taylor, ‘Pop music as postcolonial nostalgia in Taiwan’, in Allen Chun, Ned Rossiter and Brian
Shoesmith (eds), Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan flows, Political Tempos and Aesthetic
Industries (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 173-182.
39
Huang Ren, Beiqing Taiyupian [Tragic Taiwanese cinema] (Taipei: Wan Xiang, 1994), pp. 38-40.
40
Edwin A. Winckler, ‘Cultural policy on post-war Taiwan’, in Stevan Harrell and Huang Chün-chieh (eds),
Cultural Change in Post-war Taiwan (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), p. 31.
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16
contrast, over a hundred Hokkien movies and several hundred Hokkien songs were being
produced annually in Taiwan by 1966.41
The decline of the Amoy-dialect films left much of the Southeast Asian Hokkien market open
to Taiwanese companies and investors. Yet it also meant that Taipei suddenly found itself to
be the only place in which mass, commercial Hokkien entertainment was being produced in
any volume, and this began to show in the sorts of films and songs that were being produced.
The very names of many of the Hokkien films that were produced in Taiwan in the 1960s
demonstrate the increasingly local nature of the production of commercial Hokkien
entertainment in this era: film-makers and songwriters in this period largely replaced the
deterritorialised nature of earlier opera films, melodramas and comedies in favour of films
that found their inspiration in the toponyms and local scenery of Taiwan. Plots played out
amongst the hot springs of Beitou, the wharves of Kaohsiung or on the ‘the last train out of
Taipei’ became the norm; songs about falling in love in Anping marked a move away from a
search for international Hokkien markets—for which Taipei, Beitou, Kaohsiung or Anping
meant little—and towards an entirely local audience. What had been a vibrant, multinational
industry in the mid 1950s was a purely Taiwanese one by the end of the following decade.
THE ASCENDANCY OF MANDARIN AND THE POLITICISATION OF HOKKIEN
Whilst it is true that the Chinese Nationalists had long been suspicious of popular culture in
dialects,42
and that they had tried to restrict the everyday use of Hokkien on Taiwan since
1948, it was not until the mid- to late 1960s that this began to influence the production of
films and music in this dialect. The banning of the broadcast of popular songs along both
moral and linguistic grounds began in earnest in 1961.43
This was followed some years later
by the labelling of Hokkien songs, as an entire genre, as ‘vulgar’ (mimi zhi yin).44
And with
the introduction in 1966 of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement by Chiang Kai-
41
The reasons for this shall be examined further below.
42
Both on the mainland and on Taiwan: the Nationalists had banned the production of Cantonese films in the
1936-37 period, for instance, because of a belief that such films undermined a sense of national unity in China.
On this point, see Poshek Fu, op. cit., pp. 58-59.
43
Sun Songtang, ‘Tamen weihe bei jin, jin, jin…: Zhuisi Taiwan jin’ge shi’ [Why were they banned, banned,
banned? Tracing the history of banned songs in Taiwan], Zhongguo Shibao, 30 October 1996, p. 18.
44
Tan Shi, ‘Taiwan liuxing yinyue de lishi fang’an’ [The historical design of Taiwanese popular music], Lianhe
Wenxue [Unitas] 82 (1991.8): 73
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17
shek—a campaign in which Chinese ‘high culture’ was promoted at the expense of what were
seen as a regional and divisive ‘local’ cultures—any form of cultural expression in Hokkien
became subject to both control and official dissuasion.45
The suppression of Hokkien popular culture (together with the concurrent promotion of
Mandarin and Chinese ‘high culture’ on Taiwan, and the rise of the commercial Mandarin
entertainment industry) also coincided with the introduction of television in the mid-1960s.
This was a media that, by virtue of its ubiquity and ability to influence a far wider audience
than film or recorded music, was closely monitored by the Nationalist authorities. It is no
coincidence that while there had never been restrictions on the number of hours a cinema
could devote to the exhibition of Hokkien films in Taiwan, there were restrictions on the
amount of time (no more than a single hour per day for each channel) that could be spent
broadcasting dialects on Taiwanese television from the early 1970s onwards.46
The introduction of such broadcast policies did not completely destroy Hokkien cultural
production. There remained a marginal market for Hokkien soap operas on Taiwanese
television, a small number of Taiyupian were still made during the 1970s, and singers
continued to record songs in Hokkien. Yet in all these instances, there could be little
comparison with the vibrancy of the era between the late 1950s and mid-1960s. As a result,
many people who had started their careers in Hokkien cultural production switched to
Mandarin, or left the industry altogether.
Another effect of restrictions on the broadcast of Hokkien during this period was the
ascendancy of live performance. Indeed, it was only by performing live that many Hokkien
singers were able to make a living. As such, Hokkien came to be largely associated with the
nightclubs and bars around Taiwan in which it was performed. This, in turn, saw Hokkien
popular music come to be associated with the underworld and the margins of Taiwanese
45
As Allen Chun has suggested, this was closely linked to the events of the Cultural Revolution in China; the
Nationalist regime was keen to present itself as a protector of China’s ‘great traditions’ while these very same
traditions were being destroyed on the mainland. Allen Chun, ‘From nationalism to nationalizing: Cultural
imagination and state formation in post-war Taiwan’, Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 31 (1994.1): 51-
75.
46
On the debates about the broadcast time allotted to Hokkien programmes during the 1960s and 1970s, see He
Yimou, Taiwan dianshi fengyun lu [A record of major events at Taiwan Television] (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu,
2002), pp. 180-182.
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18
society, and the figure of the jiujianü (bar girl) roundly celebrated in the lyrics of Hokkien
pop.47
Many of the Hokkien performers who would, in later decades, come to the fore—
singers such as Jiang Hui and Wang Yee Ling, for example—trace their careers to live
performance in the bars of Taipei during the 1970s.48
Most significantly of all, however, was that restrictions on the broadcast of Hokkien songs,
films and television programmes had the effect of politicising the use of this dialect in
Taiwan. For instance, because the singing of a song in Taiyu was now subject to political
controls, it became a largely political act, regardless of whether or not the song itself was of a
political nature.
In Southeast Asia, political, market and social forces also began to influence the production
and reception of Hokkien-based popular culture. In particular, the shift towards the use of
either Mandarin or local languages amongst younger members of Chinese communities in
Southeast Asia—a trend that reflected changing affiliations,49
and the blurring of what had
been far more highly-defined distinctions amongst ‘dialect groups’ in the region in earlier
decades—meant that songs and films produced in Hokkien were increasingly associated with
an older generation, and were thus largely unfashionable. The dominance of Hong Kongproduced
Mandarin popular culture, popularised by the likes of the Shaw Brothers, also
saturated the Southeast Asian Chinese market, and reflected the ways in which Mandarin was
becoming a language of choice amongst locally-born Chinese.
Yet government policy also played a role, just as it was doing in Taiwan. Changes to
educational policies introduced in the 1960s (such as the introduction of ‘Mother Tongue’
education in Singapore) had the effect of subsuming what had otherwise been quite separate
47
Often to the chagrin of those who seek to portray Hokkien popular music as a symbol of a ‘healthy’
Taiwanese nationalism. For an example of such criticisms, see Qiu Chuizhen, ‘Cong “chi-tho lang”, “Wunü”,
“Jiunü” dao “gan yi bei”’ [From ‘bad boys’, ‘dancing girls’ and ‘bar girls’ to ‘cheers’], Taiwan Xin Wenhua
[New Taiwan Culture] 1 (1986.9): 26-33.
48
Wang Yee Ling was interviewed on the 11 December 1999 episode of the Taiwanese variety show Chaoji
Xingqitian [Super Sunday], aired on the Chinese Television System (Hua Shi) network, and spoke at length
about how she had started singing in Hokkien and Japanese in bars around the Taipei suburb of Beitou as a
teenager.
49
Affiliation with the political Left and Right, or to specific political parties, replacing older dialect groupings.
Ray Nyce, Chinese New Villages in Malaya: A Community Study (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Sociological
Research Institute, 1973), p. 125.
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19
modes of expression, with their own unique pasts and trajectories, into a rather vague
designation called ‘dialect’.50
In turn, ‘dialect’ was increasingly looked down upon in official
discourse in Singapore, and was compared unflatteringly to Mandarin—one of the island’s
four official languages. The ultimate mark of official disapproval came with the introduction
of restrictions on the broadcast of dialects in Singapore in 1977, 51
followed by the
introduction of the Speak Mandarin Campaign two years later.52
In Malaysia, a policy of
restricting the broadcast of any Chinese dialects or Mandarin from the time of the
introduction of television in the 1960s until the mid-1980s had a similar, if not more
detrimental, effect on the reception of Hokkien popular culture.53
As in Taiwan, such trends did not spell a complete end to the Hokkien entertainment industry
in the region. One could mention the continued role of the radio station Rediffusion in
disseminating Hokkien cultural production through on-air story-telling and other forms of
entertainment. Yet, as in Taiwan, such changes drove Hokkien entertainment off television
and film screens and onto the stage. Local performers in Singapore and Malaysia, such as
Linda Yong and Singapore’s ‘King of Hokkien pop’54
Chen Jin Lang, continued to pursue
careers in Hokkien entertainment, but did so mainly through live getai performance.
The disfavour with which various Asian governments viewed the production of commercial
Hokkien popular music and television films also led to a certain stigma becoming attached to
the use of the dialect in the region. What had in the 1950s been tolerated by central
governments as an unappealing but unimportant regional tongue, had, by the late 1970s,
become a symbol of vulgarity. Indeed, what Chua Beng Huat has described as the
‘…positioning of Hokkien as the language of the lowest social class, the marginally
50
It remains the case in Singapore today that the English term ‘dialect’ is often used as a kind of synonym for
Hokkien, despite the fact that Hokkien is but one of many Chinese dialects spoken in the city.
51
Interestingly, Singapore looked to Taiwan (and Hong Kong) for expertise on how to restrict the broadcast of
dialects in the 1970s and early 1980s, with the state-owned Singapore Broadcasting Corporation employing
‘dubbers’ from Taiwan to assist in rendering Cantonese television dramas which were being shown in
Singapore at the time into Mandarin. Lim Kay Tong, On Television in Singapore (Singapore: Singapore
Broadcasting Corporation, 1988), p. 63.
52
Wendy Bockhorst-Heng, ‘Singapore’s Speak Mandarin Campaign: Language ideological debates in the
imagining of the nation’, in Jean Blommaert (ed), Language Ideological Debates (Berlin and New York:
Mouton de Gruyter, 1999), pp. 235-265.
53
Sharon A. Carstens, Histories, Cultures, Identities: Studies in Malaysian Chinese worlds (Singapore:
Singapore University Press, 2005), p. 182.
54
‘Don’t cry for me’, The Straits Times, 10 July 2005, p. L4.
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20
employed, the unemployed and the unemployable’ 55
in more recent representations in
Singapore film can be traced back to the positions taken by various Asian governments in
regards to the uses and broadcasting of Hokkien in the 1960s and 1970s.56
Developments in the 1970s thus also had ramifications for the ways in which Hokkien
popular culture was thought and written about, for the rapid decline of a Hokkien recording
and film industry from the late 1960s onwards translated into a tendency to forget that such
industries had ever existed in the first place.57
In much of the literature concerning the use of
Hokkien in Taiwanese New Cinema or the Singaporean films of Jack Neo, and equally in the
1990s return to a tradition of regional tours by Hokkien singers such as Chen Lei and Wang
Yee Ling—much in the manner of the suipian dengtai—little direct acknowledgement is
made of the ‘golden years’ of Hokkien popular cultural production in the post-war decades.58
It is almost as if the political marginalisation of Hokkien through the 1960s and 1970s
succeeded in erasing not just much of Hokkien popular cultural production itself, but also the
social memory of such production.
THE HOKKIEN RENAISSANCE OF THE 1990S
The cultural and political developments that occurred in Taiwan during the 1980s, and which
led to the lifting of martial law in that country in December 1986, have been examined in
great depth elsewhere, and need not be repeated in detail here.59
Yet it is relevant that the
political move away from the sinocentrism of earlier decades which occurred in tandem with
democratisation on Taiwan had all kinds of ramifications for Hokkien cultural production in
55
Chua Beng Huat, Life is Not Complete without Shopping: Consumption Culture in Singapore (Singapore:
Singapore University Press, 1993), p. 161.
56
What is most interesting here is that Hokkien was traditionally not a language solely of the working class on
the Malay Peninsula. Hokkien-speaking migrants to Southeast Asia were, in fact, more closely associated with
trade than with manual and rural labour.
57
A recent example is June Yip, Envisioning Taiwan: Fiction, Cinema, and the Nation (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2004), in which it is falsely claimed that until the 1980s ‘the local dialect [i.e. Hokkien] was
seldom if ever used in cinematic dialogue’ (p. 165).
58
Indeed, performers themselves appear surprised to learn that a market for Hokkien popular songs has ever
existed beyond Taiwan’s borders: Zhao Yafen, ‘Huang Yiling Xinjiapo kaichang, xia yi tiao’ [Wang Yee Ling
was surprised when performing in Singapore], Zhongguo shibao, 11 December 2002, p. 27. The first line of
the article reads: ‘She [i.e. Wang Yee Ling] originally thought Hokkien songs had been banned locally; she
had never thought that the reaction of fans [in Singapore] would be so intense’.
59
A recent examination of localisation can be found in John Makeham and A-chin Hsiau (eds), Cultural, Ethnic,
and Political Nationalism in Contemporary Taiwan: Bentuhua (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
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21
the 1990s. Indeed, as I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, Hokkien lay at the very heart
of the so-called ‘localisation movement’ (bentuhua yundong), insofar as it was identified as
being the ‘local’ language of the island. And Hokkien has since emerged as a symbol for
many of the same groups that promoted a greater awareness of local culture and history in the
first place.
The shift towards a more open society that emerged alongside localisation not only resulted
in the lifting of media bans and restrictions on the broadcast of Hokkien in Taiwan, but also
translated into official encouragement for the use of a dialect during the years of the Lee
Teng-hui presidency. Furthermore, the introduction of new media technologies, most
noticeably cable television and karaoke, provided new means by which Hokkien songs, films
and other art forms could be produced and marketed. This coalescence between political
reforms, cultural change and technological advances gave rise in the 1990s to a renaissance in
Hokkien cultural expression, and a revival of the hitherto moribund Hokkien entertainment
industry. Indeed, by the mid-1990s, Hokkien was being heard everywhere on Taiwan, and the
production of Hokkien cultural products was reaching levels it had not seen since the late
1950s.
In the rush to rediscover, reinvent and remarket Hokkien in the 1990s, however, Taiwan’s
entertainment industry faced a problem. On account of the substantial damage that had been
rendered by the broadcast restrictions of earlier decades, there were few immediate local
precedents upon which record companies and television stations could rely in the search for
inspiration and talent. The result was that the late-1950s to early 1960s, being the last major
period of Hokkien cultural production, were called upon to provide the standards by which
the Hokkien popular culture industry could define itself in post-martial law Taiwan.
This tendency to find inspiration in the post-war decades could be found in almost all spheres
of cultural production. On Taiwanese television screens in the 1990s, audiences were treated
to unabashed nostalgia for a pre-industrial, Hokkien-speaking world of the early post-war
period.60
A substantial proportion of Hokkien television dramas that were produced in 1990s
by people such as Li Peng, for example, looked unambiguously to the 1950s and 1960s for
60
Jeremy E. Taylor, ‘Images of the Hometown: the clash of city and village in Taiwanese popular songs’,
Chime 16-17 (2005.12): 72-87.
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22
plots.61
Many television dramas in fact took their titles from Hokkien songs of the 1950s or
from storylines found in both the Xiayupian and Taiyupian genre; others followed the
Xiayupian practice of inventing storylines around popular Hokkien myths or stories.62
In terms of music, the re-recording and re-mixing of Hokkien ‘hybrid songs’ from the 1960s
also took precedence. In other instances, and in the songs recorded by artistes who had started
their careers in the nightclubs of Taipei in the 1970s, there was an attempt to reproduce a
1950s and 1960s ‘fugu’ (nostalgic) sound and aesthetic. The bar and drinking songs
popularised by the likes of Jiang Hui—the so-called ‘queen of Taiwanese pop’ during the
1990s63
—were emblematic of this, often referring musically and lyrically to the early postwar
period, as well as to the tradition of the melancholic khau-tiau-a that the Amoy-dialect
films had brought to the screen.64
Even more interestingly, many of the precedents that had been set in the late 1950s not only
came back to shape Hokkien popular culture in late-1990s Taiwan, but were actually
celebrated as integral parts of the revived Hokkien entertainment industry. Some of the most
commercially-successful Hokkien television dramas, for instance, continue to be criticised as
being of poor artistic and dramatic quality—the most recent example being SETTV’s
immensely successful though also often lampooned, Taiwan Longjuanfeng (Taiwan
Hurricane).65
61
Li Xianwen, Taiwan dianshi wenyi zonglan [A reading of Taiwanese television] (Beijing: Zhongguo Guangbo
Dianshi Chubanshe, 1997), p. 89.
62
Mazu (the goddess of the sea and a deity worshipped by Hokkien speakers all over Asia) and the Bodhisattva
Guanyin, for example, were both the subjects of 1950s Amoy-dialect films and 1990s Taiwanese Hokkien
television dramas.
63
Government Information Office, The Republic of China Yearbook 1995 (Taipei: Government Information
Office, 1995), p. 421.
64
Taylor, ‘Popular Music as Postcolonial Nostalgia’, 178-180.
65
In music, also, Taiyuge have often been critically derided for their tendency to build on a limited and highly
predictable set of lyrical and musical clichés. Indeed, the belief amongst sections of Taiwan’s cultural elite
that Hokkien popular songs were of a poor standard was revealed at Taiwan’s Golden Melody Awards (Jinqu
jiang) in 2003, when the award for best male Hokkien singer was awarded to none of the three artistes
nominated—a decision which stirred heated debates in the industry about different standards between
Mandarin and Taiyu. Liu Weili, ‘Changpian ye: pingshen jianta Taiyuge’ (Recording industry: the judges
have trodden on Hokkien songs), Lianhe Bao, 7 August 2003, p. D2; Duan Zhenzhen and Su Weiquan, ‘Taiyu
changpian gongsi lianhe qiangsheng’ [Hokkien record companies unite to cause a stir], Ziyou shibao, 7
August 2003, p. 31
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23
Moreover, the very marginalisation that Hokkien had suffered in the 1960s and 1970s came
to be publicly celebrated in the world of entertainment during the 1990s and into the new
century. The increasing use of the term ‘Tai’ (literally ‘Taiwanese’) was deployed in the
entertainment media, to signify many of the decidedly unglamorous, outmoded and garish
aesthetics of commercial Hokkien popular culture.66
As this link between Hokkien popular culture and Taiwaneseness might suggest, the Hokkien
cultural renaissance on Taiwan has been intimately linked to political and cultural debates.
Indeed, in a context in which all things ‘Tai’ are now celebrated, Hokkien popular culture has
gained unprecedented levels of political importance. This has meant that many of the
traditions that developed in response to purely commercial concerns now reinterpreted as
expressions of a unique Taiwanese identity. For instance, the melancholic khau-tiau-a—
inherited from the opera films of the 1950s and perfected in the ‘hybrid songs’ of the 1960s—
is now reinterpreted by nativist intellectuals and politicians as an expression of Taiwanese
anguish after years of marginalisation at the hands of the KMT.
If there were ever any doubt about the importance that the current pro-independence
administration in Taipei attaches to commercial Hokkien popular culture, one need look no
further than the increased levels of interaction between the world of entertainment and the
sphere of nativist politics. The appointment of Jiang Hsia (an actress who had made a name
for herself in Taiwan by starring in Hokkien soap operas), as the head of the state-run
Chinese Television System (Hua Shi) in June 2004 was powerful in its symbolism: Hokkienspeaking
celebrities were being given leave to direct cultural and broadcasting policies; the
popular appeal of Hokkien popular culture was being channelled into the nation-building
efforts of a pro-indepedence administration. Nor is it insignificant that Hokkien singers are
often called upon to perform at election rallies; that Hokkien popular songs are themselves
reinvented as electoral campaign songs by politicians; or that Taiwanese legislators make a
point of either being able to sing Hokkien standards or recite lines from popular Hokkien
television dramas.
66
Indeed, there have been attempts to academically study what this term means, and the wider social
significance of its usage, particularly by the sociologist Liu Weigong.
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Given such government support, it is hardly surprising that Hokkien music and television
have become closely associated solely with Taiwan in other parts of the world since the
1990s.67
Indeed, so close has the link between Taiwan and the use of Hokkien become that
the two have, in some parts of Asia, become inseparable.
While it was in Singapore and Malaysia that live performances by Taiwan-based Hokkien
singers68
and the sale of Taiwan-produced Hokkien albums peaked in the 1997-98 period, it
is Taiwan that has now replaced these societies as the undisputed centre of world Hokkien
cultural production. Southeast Asian actors seeking to pursue a career in Hokkien cultural
production must now travel to Taiwan to act in Hokkien television dramas, and adopt a
Taiwanese Hokkien accent and ‘Tai’ style if they expect to succeed. The few Southeast Asian
producers of Hokkien products that still operate, such as Malaysia’s New Southern Records,
have been forced to repackage Hokkien songs of Taiwan origin for dwindling local markets.69
Similarly, the consumption of Taiwan-produced Hokkien songs and television dramas in
China’s Fujian province appears not only to have arisen as a result of a shared a dialect across
the Taiwan Strait, but just as importantly because of a desire on the part of a newlyprosperous
Xiamen to consume explicitly Taiwanese products.70
In other words, through the
rise of the 1990s Hokkien renaissance, an entertainment industry that started as a completely
transnational endeavour has been reinvented and repackaged as being a purely local,
Taiwanese project. Taiwanese cable television networks and record companies have not only
succeeded in finding new markets in places such as the PRC, but have also been responsible
67
On a completely unrelated visit to Hong Kong in mid-1998, I was intrigued to find that numerous Taiwanproduced
Hokkien CDs and videos were being sold in a night market in Mongkok, but that these appeared to
be being sold not to Hokkien speakers, but as a part of a trend in Hong Kong at the time for ‘things
Taiwanese’ which went beyond music and television, and included food and fashion. In other words, it
appeared that such products were not distinguished for their ‘Hokkien-ness’ but for their Taiwanese origin.
68
‘Hokkien pop concerts take off’, The Straits Times, 29 December 1997, L7.
69
This is not to say that there are no Hokkien recording artistes in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. On
the contrary, singers such as Malaysia’s so-called ‘Hokkien princess’ (Fujian gongzhu) Jacqueline Teo have
indeed recorded Hokkien albums with the above-mentioned New Southern Records. Yet the fact that many of
these songs are in fact Taiwanese ‘hybrid songs’ points to the dominance of Taiwan as a source of Hokkien
cultural products in the current era.
70
See, for instance, Gregory Eliyu Guldin, What’s a peasant to do? Village becoming town in southern China
(Boulder: Westview Press, 2001), pp. 122 and 157.
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for encouraging the creation of a cross-Strait community of Hokkien-speaking consumers
who are, ironically, extremely ‘Tai’ in their tastes.71
There are recent signs, however, that things may be changing, for in one of the many ironies
that have shaped the history of modern Hokkien cultural production, the very songs and
television programmes that have been held up by enthusiastic nativist politicians in Taiwan
who oppose greater rapprochement across the Taiwan Strait are now finding a market of
significant size in communist China. In other words, the nativist renaissance on Taiwan has
resulted not only in louder calls for political independence for Taiwan, but also, conversely,
in greater levels of cultural interaction between Taiwan and southern Fujian.
Even more significant is the fact that the consumption of this resurgent Hokkien popular
culture in Fujian has led to a rediscovery of a transnational history of cultural production in
the one part of the Hokkien-speaking world (i.e., Fujian) that was largely cut off from this
industry in its ‘golden years’. Inspired by events on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, and
influenced perhaps by increasing trade contacts between the two, government and business
interests in Fujian are now encouraging events such as international Hokkien singing
competitions, 72
while Fujian-based media interests are presenting awards to Taiwanese
performers for their contributions to Hokkien pop.73
That Xiamen-based journalists and
scholars are now also claiming the 1950s Xiayupian genre as something of Fujianese—rather
than Hong Kong, Taiwanese or Southeast Asian—origin says something about the changing
fortunes of this dialect over the last half century.74
71
This is not something restricted to entertainment; it can also be seen in the emergence of Hokkien popular
religion ‘rooted in the rural and working classes’ on either side of the Strait. See Mayfair Mei-hui Yang,
‘Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State, and Satellite Television Footprints’,
Public Culture 16.2 (2004): 209-238.
72
The first was held in Jinjiang in 2006 and involved performers not only from Taiwan and Fujian, but also
from Southeast Asia and North America.
73
As in the case of Fujian Dongnan Dianshitai (Fujian Southeast Television)’s presentation of an award to the
Taiwanese singer Chen Lei in November 2006. ‘Chenji duoshi, Chen Lei huo Lu ban gongxian jiang’ [After
lying low for some time, Chen Lei wins a prize for his contributions on the mainland], TVBS news report, 14
November 2006.
74
As in the rediscovery of the Amoy-dialect films by Xiamen-based journalists and intellectuals. See, for
example, Jiang Shaoyao, ‘Xiamenhua dianying ceng jiaozuo haiwai shichang’ [Amoy-dialect films once
claimed an overseas market], Xiamen Ribao, 18 May 2004.
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26
RECONSIDERING A REGIONAL ENTERTAINMENT HISTORY
Popular culture emanating in the predominantly Chinese societies of Taiwan and Hong Kong
over the past two decades has inspired a wealth of academic research. Interest in the mass
media as ‘…one of the most prolific arenas for transnational culture sharing among the
Chinese population today’75
has largely come to eclipse an earlier concentration of ‘cultural
China’ in appreciation of the ways in which cultural products are traded between and beyond
different sections of the Chinese world. In post-economic-reform China, Hong Kong and
other ‘…cities of the south China coast…’ have been described as having ‘…remerged as
leading centers of transnational economic activity and cultural production’.76
The commercial
success of cultural production in Hong Kong, Taiwan and, more recently Shanghai, has been
viewed as the result of a natural ‘southern Chinese’ propensity for trade and liberal thought.
Tied to this is idea of a resurgent ‘southern Chinese’ popular culture, has been the sense that
such a culture, being market-driven, has challenged national government control in the region.
The ‘free-wheeling’ spirit supposedly found in the Taiwan and Hong Kong entertainment
industries, it is assumed, has inspired all kinds of post-nation-state ‘imaginaries’ amongst
ethnic Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and elsewhere; these have undermined the
idea of a single, Chinese state in the form of the PRC. As the anthropologist Mayfair Yang
has put it: ‘…new forms of mass media and popular culture have generated sentiments
towards eluding and transcending …[the] state…with the creation of transnational cultural
subjectivity in the exposure to an ethnic overseas Chinese capitalism’.77
Yet in studying cultural production in Taiwan and Hong Kong—and in attaching to it the
‘catch-all’ label of GangTai (literally ‘Hong Kong and Taiwan’)—scholars have tended to
concentrate on the increasing sameness of the popular culture emanating within what are
75
Sharon A. Carstens, op. cit., p. 179.
76
Carolyn Cartier, Globalizing South China (Oxford: Blackwells, 2001), esp. 34.
77
Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, ‘Mass Media and Transnational Subjectivity in Shanghai: Notes on
(Re)Cosmopolitanism in a Chinese Metropolis’, in Aihwa Ong and Donald M. Nonini (eds), Ungrounded
Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 311.
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27
vastly different societies, while playing down the different traditions that have developed
within popular cultural production in and between these societies.78
The problem with such an approach is that it has seen forms of popular culture which
emanate in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but which do not resemble GangTai culture in their
development, slip between the proverbial cracks. As I hope to have shown in this paper, the
commercial Hokkien entertainment industry—from the Amoy-dialect films of Hong Kong to
the soap operas of today’s Taiwan—did, of course, develop within the Hong Kong-Taiwan
axis. Hokkien popular culture in Asia was also subject to an intricate network of influences,
from gezaixi to Japanese enka music, to say nothing of the international Mandarin
entertainment market which was largely complicit in the decline of dialect-based
entertainment in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet Hokkien popular culture also developed along its
own trajectory, one which was concurrent with but separate from the world of Cantonese or
Mandarin entertainment. Indeed, when we look beyond the much-studied world of
mainstream Mandarin film and music over the last half a century, we find not so much a
single world of Chinese cultural production, but a set of interconnected and overlapping
industries which frequently run parallel to one another, yet which just as frequently
responded to quite different political, social and economic forces.
Moreover, the trajectory followed by Hokkien popular culture over the last two decades has
not conformed to the assumptions made about southern Chinese cultural production in recent
academic studies. Though this industry first developed within the lassez-faire markets of
post-war East and Southeast Asia, it has not, by and large, played a role in challenging state
narratives about ethnicity and identity. However, the 1990s Hokkien renaissance, though born
of commercial concerns, has been largely co-opted into a state-sponsored project of nationbuilding
in Taiwan. Nor has it challenged Beijing’s efforts to promote a shared history or
experience across the Taiwan Strait. Indeed, in recent times, the rediscovery in Xiamen of a
shared entertainment culture based in Hokkien has been used to promote cross-Strait ties. In
neither case has Hokkien cultural production challenged the dominance of the state.
78
Thomas B. Gold, ‘Go with your feelings: Hong Kong and Taiwan popular culture in Greater China’, in D.
Shambaugh (ed), Greater China: The Next Superpower? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 255-
273.
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Nor is there any evidence to suggest that this industry has arisen as the representation of some
kind of ‘pan-Hokkien imaginary’ throughout Asia. On the contrary, the very real possibility
of the creation of some kind of pan-Hokkien imaginary that may have existed in the films and
songs of the late 1950s has been successfully destroyed by governments, and equally erased
from the social memory in more recent times. In its place, we find a mode of cultural
expression which finds its history in a time of far closer interaction amongst Hokkienspeaking
peoples in the region, yet which has come to define itself through the only society in
which it still finds a sizeable market—Taiwan.
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1317165