Taiwan Today

Documenting culture and folk customs is a labor of love for one of Taiwan’s most iconic publishers.

Sitting cross-legged on the asphalt pavement outside the headquarters of Echo Publishing Co. in Taipei City during a photo shoot, company co-founder Huang Yung-sung (黃永松) called for a timeout. The 74-year-old adjusted his tangzhuang, a handsomely tailored coat worn in China by men before the advent of Western-style suits, and pointed at a large Chinese character painted on the road in front of him.

“It says slow,” Huang said. “One should always move in a slow and considered fashion when researching matters of culture. In that way, the risk of missing something important is kept to a bare minimum and a good job can be done.”

True Believer

Since Huang’s first day on the job 48 years ago at Echo, better known by its Chinese name Han Sheng, he has pursued a meticulous and patient approach to his work. This zeal for keeping close tabs on changes in Taiwan’s cultural landscape is one of the reasons for his entry into the exalted ranks of Presidential Cultural Awards (PCA) recipients. According to the official citation, Huang was recognized for playing a key role in Han Sheng’s efforts to protect Taiwan’s cultural heritage and raise public awareness of the need for wide-ranging preservation programs starting in the 1970s.

Presented with the honor by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)—who doubles as head of award-organizer General Association of Chinese Culture (GACC)—last November at the Office of the President in Taipei, Huang was one of five awardees across the categories of arts and culture, community building, creativity and innovation, humanitarian dedication and public advocacy.

GACC is a Taipei-based nonprofit partially funded by the Republic of China (Taiwan) government. Since its establishment in 1967, the association has worked to deepen Taiwan culture, foster exchanges with other countries and territories, and facilitate the development of local cultural and creative industries.

Early Steps

The genesis of Han Sheng is widely credited to the late Linda Wu (吳美雲‬), a U.S.-born and educated ROC national possessed with the single-minded goal of introducing Chinese culture to the West, as well as assisting members of the Chinese expatriate community reconnect with their cultural roots. Along with Huang, Shi Song (奚淞) and Yau Meng-jia (姚孟嘉), she founded the company in 1971 and set about publishing Echo—an English-language monthly targeting foreign readers at home and abroad. Although the periodical folded five years later, its team of editors kept the faith and launched the Chinese version in 1978.

A bimonthly for the first two years of its existence, the magazine became a quarterly and eventually took on the form of a book in size and singular topic focus. For Huang, his mission as the sole co-founder remaining in the company’s employ—as well as the keeper of its editorial flame—is to effectively utilize Han Sheng’s limited manpower in producing exhaustively researched articles offering unique perspectives.

Much of Echo’s brief deals with culture and folk customs, from the preparation of traditional food to a collection of Chinese fairy tales. Related information is gathered through extensive research carried out around Taiwan. “We observed people painstakingly producing sun-dried radish and visited temples to develop a deeper understanding of the various aspects of deity worshipping,” Huang said. “Looking into activities or practices often deemed inconsequential by the masses is what sets us aside from the crowd.”

According to Huang, research usually involves multiple forays into the field, and it is not unheard of for a feature to be years in the making. “Our Dajia Mazu Holy Pilgrimage piece required me to take part in three consecutive processions before I had enough material and juicy interviews with devotees,” he said.

The nine-day, 330-kilometer round-trip annual pilgrimage stops at seven temples in central Taiwan’s Taichung City, neighboring Changhua County, Yunlin County in western Taiwan and Chiayi County in southern Taiwan. In 2004, Discovery Channel identified the event as one of the world’s three major religious festivals, with the other two being the hajj—the pilgrimage to Mecca—and the Hindu rite of bathing in the Ganges River. Taiwan is believed to be home to more than 10 million Mazu devotees, with the deity—also known as the goddess of the sea—enshrined at 510 temples nationwide.

Digging Deep

Echo also reports on tangible cultural legacies and the stories behind them. One example is the Shengji compound in Longtan District of northern Taiwan’s Taoyuan City. Dedicated to Cangjie—according to legend the creator of Chinese writing 5,000 years ago—the city-designated heritage site dating back to 1875 was introduced by the publication in English in the 1970s and covered extensively in Chinese in 1995. The latter article was instrumental in halting road-widening work by the local government that threatened to irreparably damage the cultural value of the compound.

“We come up with topic ideas that stimulate debate in society or lead social trends,” Huang said. In 1986, when food safety was not yet headline news, Han Sheng commissioned articles prompting readers to reflect on eating habits and acknowledge the threat posed by additives to health and well-being. The company was also quick to identify artistic talents of tomorrow, bringing to the fore the likes of sculptor Ju Ming (朱銘) and the late painter Hung Tung (洪通), who was renowned for his vivid works reminiscent of those from the avant-garde dadaism movement. In 1975, one of Echo’s cover stories featured the then 37-year-old Ju, a full year before he opened his first solo exhibition in Taipei and commenced creating his signature series of tai chi pieces in the 1980s.

While gathering in-depth information on culture and folk customs and highlighting issues of public concern is Han Sheng’s overarching goal, presenting the material in an eye-catching manner is no less important. Chang Chao-tang (張照堂), one of the PCA judges and winner of the National Award for Arts in 1999 for his social change-themed cinematography and photography, believes the secret to the company’s success is its ability to capture the essence of tradition and reimagine it in a palatable form for the modern reader. “Han Sheng is building bridges between past and present, giving relevance to topics at risk of falling out of the public eye,” he said.

Chang largely credits Huang, Shi and Yau, all fine arts majors at the forerunner to National Taiwan University of Arts in New Taipei City, for Echo’s distinctive design dominated by detailed illustrations. “These hand-drawn works are often more effective than photographs in helping readers better understand a story and key issues,” he said.

Huang, who takes unabashed pride in the appearance of Echo, said the intricacy of the publication’s building illustrations is at such a level they could be theoretically used to construct a replica from scratch. This sophistication extends to the step-by-step diagrams of handicrafts like oil-paper umbrellas in Meinong District of southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City, he added.

Cross-Strait Reach

Since Echo’s first cover story on a Taoist temple near Han Sheng’s headquarters in January 1971 to its latest piece dedicated to the Year of the Dog in the Chinese zodiac, the publication has shone brightly as a beacon of creative and intellectual stimulation. Although Huang was pleased with Echo’s Taiwan content, he long eyed mainland China as a potentially rich source of stories deserving to be told. In 1991, Han Sheng established a branch in Beijing and ramped up production of cultural content from the other side of the strait.

The company’s rock-solid reputation in Greater China owes a lot to its involvement in mainland China. “Considerable efforts and resources spent documenting the state of cultural development across the strait over the past 30 years have paid real dividends,” Huang said.

“We regularly send local editors and designers to Beijing to share expertise and help mainland Chinese colleagues achieve high editorial and production standards.” This has resulted in a series of strong pieces featuring such treasures as the earthen houses of Fujian province and the rustic noodles of Shanxi province.

Chang, a strong supporter of Han Sheng’s role as a cultural missionary of sorts on the other side of the strait, said arts and culture reporting tends to take on an academic tone in mainland China. “Huang’s dedication to changing this state of affairs through expanding the company’s operations and raising Taiwan’s profile partly explains the decision to honor him with a PCA.”

Influential Voice

The perception of Han Sheng as a guardian of culture in Taiwan is not limited to those involved in the publishing industry. According to Kathy Tien (田相韋‬), founder of Future Pass Asia—a Taipei-based exhibition curating firm—the company first came to her attention as a preschool reader in the early 1990s. “I fell in love with the Chinese fairy tales and graduated to Echo in my late teens,” she said.

These days, Tien considers Han Sheng an invaluable cultural resource from which she obtains rare materials for exhibitions or leads for further investigation. “The company’s importance transcends its publications,” Tien said, adding that its influence in matters of culture extends from the halls of academia to the corridors of government.

The tale of Han Sheng, along with Huang, is a slow and measured one inexorably intertwined with Taiwan’s rich tapestry of culture and folk customs. In Chang’s eyes, the company and Huang are as one. “He’s devoted his entire life to preserving culture through Han Sheng and its publications. Few people can put their shoulder to the wheel for such a long time.”

Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw