Taiwan is no exception to this varied tradition, as shown in the following article by Chiu Kun-liang, an associate professor at the National Institute of the Arts. But this tradition is facing unprecedented challenges from Taiwan's rapidly modernizing society. Tastes, expectations, and preferences for filling free time are all in flux, oftentimes to the detriment of the folk arts.
In the past, audiences and support for the folk arts have been drawn from a basically sedentary and rural society. Urbanization and economic restructuring away from an agricultural society have therefore made it more difficult to preserve lengthy folk traditions.
But all is not lost. The government and the people are beginning to see the importance of the preservation and further development of the folk arts, and the growing wealth of society makes the success of both endeavors more probable.
The following article was adapted from the author's book On Preserving Folk Art, published in 1989 by the Council for Cultural Planning and Development of the Executive Yuan (Cabinet) and translated by Dr. Perng Ching-Hsi.
Major changes in lifestyles have accompanied Taiwan's transition from an agricultural to an industrial society. As a result, many traditional folk arts have begun to wane or even disappear. Faced with the threat of losing this aspect of China's heritage, the ROC government is making special efforts to preserve traditional Chinese heritage in Taiwan by passing legislation designed to protect "national folk arts" and "folk customs and related cultural relics."
The key points of the government's policy on cultural preservation are to promote educational folk art activities at temple festivals, to survey and conduct research on popular customs and related cultural artifacts, to identify the most significant folk arts and work for their preservation and development, and to pro vide guidance to private groups when they hold special local festivities that include folk arts.
The Council for Cultural Planning and Development (CCPD), under a pro gram placing equal stress on "refined" and "popular" culture, has since its founding worked to promote and pre serve folk art activities. Each year the Ministry of Education presents awards to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the preservation and transmission of traditional folk arts. The ministry also encourages the continued survival of folk arts by including them in physical education or art classes in public school curricula.
The annual art festivals sponsored by CCPD and the Taipei City Government both feature folk art activities and performances. A popular five-day Folk Theater festival was first introduced by the Taipei City Government in 1982. It was held for five seasons, and included performances of traditional Chinese music, folk songs, musical storytelling, acrobatics, kung fu demonstrations, operettas, puppet shows, opera, and handicrafts. Since 1986, this activity has been expanded to other cities and areas, and is now held islandwide by local governments, city and county cultural centers, and even temples.
Traditional folk art activities serve many functions—worship, entertainment, and promoting social contacts, as well as stimulating the economy and providing civic education. In modern society, most of these functions have been taken over by other artistic activities and social events. In the realm of entertainment, for example, various new art forms and athletic activities have provided different recreational outlets. But some of the biggest competition comes from TV, movies, VCRs, and discos.
Traditional drama and music are characterized by a leisurely tempo punctuated with loud cymbals and gongs, and have gradually lost their appeal, especially to the younger generation. The ethical and economic functions of the folk arts have also dwindled in contemporary society. Compulsory public education has now taken the place of the edifying functions of traditional drama, which taught morals through story plots, song, and dance. In the past, contributing money and labor to promote local folk arts gave members of society a sense of direct participation in local affairs, and taking part in the performance, even as an amateur, would be the best way to exhibit one's personal talent. This sense of participation was essential to the growth of traditional folk arts.
But in modern society, there are other ways for people to play active roles, to display their talents, and to maintain their social contacts. While in traditional society youngsters of the gentry or well-to-do families would join troupes of folk performing arts and thereby take part in local affairs, their counterparts in modern society choose to make their contributions to society and climb the social ladder by joining the Rotary Club, the Lions Club, the Chamber of Commerce, or other business-related organizations.
The rise of industry and commerce in the past 30 years has led to the dissolution of Taiwan's agricultural society. The population is concentrated in towns and cities, and urban culture has become the mainstay of modern life. Traditional artistic activities no longer meet the needs of modern men. Temples, which were once the center of folk belief, art, and culture, are now surrounded by high-rises and factories and are in competition with the luxurious restaurants and bars that are fast emerging as the new social centers. The folk arts are losing the environment that used to nurture them, and they have also lost the edge in economic efficiency, because traditional handicrafts cannot compete with mass production by machines. While handicrafts have suffered greatly as a result, by far the heaviest blow has been dealt to the performing arts.
The decline of the folk arts has also been caused by a lack of adaptability to the new social environment. The site of folk performances is a case in point. In traditional society, troupes of performing artists were brought to towns and villages in an atmosphere of joviality and festivity, as indicated by the following energetic and cheerful couplets:
To greet the gods we put up shows;
For and near, clamor higher and higher grows.
Sounding for as the smallest bridge and remotest inn,
Songs and trumpets made a joyous din.
The lanes are empty, everyone is out to play,
More candles are lit than on Lantern Day!
But in modern cities, with their concentrated population and heavy traffic, the temples that used to serve as social centers are now often in the noisiest and most congested parts of town. Activities related to the traditional arts, with their large number of participants, have difficulty finding enough space for their festivities. On the other hand, performers of traditional arts have made inadequate adjustments in their selection of performance locations, musical instruments, and performing styles. They merely try to overcome the distractions of the surrounding environment with crude loudspeakers. This not only leads to further restrictions on the quality of performances, such as the change of vocal tones or gestures or postures due to the use of a microphone, but also seriously disturbs the peace and quiet of nearby residents. Many people, particularly those seldom exposed to tradition al arts, become antagonized and alienated.
Folk performances traditionally emphasized the actor's art, and audiences cared less about an actor's appearance or the arrangement of the stage. But modern audiences are easily displeased by less than professional makeup and costuming or simple and crude staging. There are disappointments with the content of performances as well. Traditional drama is characterized by lengthy, loosely-structured scripts. Some plays, especially those based on popular novels, take several days to finish, while some scenes tell incomplete tales, expecting audiences to fill in the gaps with their own knowledge of the story. Such plays might have suited the tastes of a time when people were used to having performances last all night, but the rambling plots usually fail to engage the attention and interest of modern audiences accustomed to shorter, faster-paced TV programs.
As people become increasingly divorced from folk arts and their functions, the quality of the genre has begun withering. Folk customs have come to serve primarily as necessary rituals in which older, rural people worship ancestors and deities. Many of these people are accustomed to donating money for theatrical performances as a way of making good on vows to the deities, and they form the backbone of support for today's folk art performances.
Looking at the positive side of the folk art preservation picture, Taiwan currently has some 700 local professional theatre troupes and about 1,000 drama and music' amateur troupes. Registries for such troupes published in the late 1970s indicate that there were 89 professional troupes in Taipei and 663 troupes in the rest of the province of Taiwan (including Kaohsiung). Scholars estimate from their field studies that there are also roughly 1,000 amateur troupes. Together with numerous other performing arts groups, these troupes put up shows in conjunction with local festivals. Even today, vying with each other to welcome the gods is still a popular activity, and in some places theatrical performances extend over several months. At the Pai-hsing Kung (Lord of the Populace) Temple in Changhua and the Hsiao Cheng-huang (Little City God) Temple in Tainan, the two most notable places of such activities, theater is almost an everyday routine.
But the number of folk groups is somewhat misleading. Many of them perform infrequently, and most have serious problems with quality, especially as their older, experienced performers retire and are replaced with people less skilled and dedicated. Finding younger people eager to devote their lives to folk art skills is becoming increasingly difficult, especially since public support of such performers and practitioners is waning.
Although folk art performances are still part of Taiwan's frequent sacrificial ceremonies at temples, in the past these were only one of several social functions, including being a form of entertainment and a good way to pass the time. Today, these have been replaced with other forms of social activity, and potential audiences, especially the youth, have moved on to other pastimes.
Even the connections of folk performances with religious activities have been weakened as a result of rapid social changes. For example, enterprising motion picture distributors have already started courting temples and their believers. During temple "thanking the gods" ceremonies, it is now common for temples to erect large, portable movie screens in their courtyards instead of putting up prefabricated stages for opera group performances. The movies are considerably cheaper than sponsoring a theatrical group, the cost being about c one third that of hiring regular professional troupes of Taiwanese opera or other forms of dramatic productions, and people believe that movies can also serve the function of entertaining the gods. In addition, the movies appeal to a larger range of people than do the older folk plays.
Some temples have even resorted to sponsoring ball games, hikes, and other activities with less cultural content instead of sacrificial ceremonies featuring theatrical performances. This trend can be expected to become stronger as today's younger generations eventually become the new breed of leaders and local gentry.
Given these changes, it is not surprising that the performing folk arts are plagued by severe talent shortages. While some activities, such as the dragon dance and the lion dance, are doing fine, very few young people are inclined to take part in theatrical or musical performances. The problem of survival for private professional troupes is the most serious of all. In the past, the two primary sources of performing talent used to be the artists' own family and children from poor families.
But today, these children are becoming apprentices in other trades, finding work as clerks in stores, or seeking factory employment. While some kinds of arts and crafts still appeal to young people, contemporary youth are usually more impatient about achieving fame and fortune. As a result, they are less prepared than their elders to endure lengthy, rigorous discipline as apprentices in folk art skills. This creates a vicious cycle, because the deterioration in performing skills further reduces social support for the folk arts.
A common argument concludes that modern society is basically unsuitable for the development of folk arts. Whether this is a pessimistic or realistic position in the ROC depends upon many factors, the most important of which are the degrees of commitment by both the government and the people to preserving tradition. If no commitment to this end exists, then no significant action will follow that will prevent a long and priceless tradition from withering and perishing. But there are positive signs that leaders in both the public and private sectors are realizing the extent to which folk art is a condensation of Chinese cultural experience.
There are also those who argue persuasively for preserving folk arts for practical purposes as much as aesthetic ones, for they say the traditional arts can help a more healthy modern culture to evolve. As people have come to realize the significance of traditional culture, they have encouraged the government to create agencies and laws to preserve and develop Taiwan's fast disappearing cultural assets. Equally heartening is the growing interest in folk arts among young intellectuals, who are conducting research in folk arts or taking part in the creation of art works or performances. While it is still too early to predict a renaissance of folk arts in Taiwan, these developments are a strong ray of hope that these traditional arts will not become extinct.
This reappraisal of the functions and values of folk arts comes at a time when Taiwan is experiencing an unprecedentedly high living standard. Ironically, the very environment that turns people away from folk arts is also wealthy enough to bring about its preservation and further development. Handicrafts are currently faring well, especially as people recognize their rustic beauty, but the performing arts are in more difficult straits. Folk drama, music, and other types of performance involve not only props, costumes, and instruments, but more importantly, an entire cast of performers. A complete presentation of singing, dancing, and other skills requires talented performers, and in this area the shortages are becoming severe.
In the past, the music, songs, dances, and the scenarios of folk performing arts followed the rhythms of traditional lifestyles, especially festival celebrations. The challenge for today is clear: as society changes, the entire performing system must change, or it will be unable to compete with modern performing arts and other forms of popular entertainment. Folk performances need not be seen as being totally out of step with contemporary life; as in past centuries, it must adjust to the times while holding onto its inherent skills. The creativity of folk artists has traditionally been expressed both in their skills and in their adaptability to audience needs. This is no less true today as the folk arts try to survive in a modernized and industrialized society.
Festivals As Entertainment For The Whole Family
Folk arts are found in their richest variety at traditional festivals, which are observed according to the Chinese lunar calendar. In Taipei, for example, the anniversary of the birth of the Hsiahai City God is observed on the 13th day of the fifth lunar month. On this day, an elaborate and well-attended reception ceremony is held in honor of the city god, and is accompanied by performances of open-air operas and many other traditional folk arts, of which puppetry is one of the favorites.
Chinese hand puppetry, shadow puppetry, and marionettes are age-old folk arts. In the rural society of the past, puppetry was an indispensable part of religious activities and festive occasions. Puppet show plots, drawn primarily from historical stories, folk tales, and myths, were entertaining as well as didactic. Created by men of letters, the original hand puppet plays were mainly ethical plays performed in a refined, traditional drama form. Later, more action-packed military plays became popular because of their pure entertainment value. Traditional hand puppet plays were accompanied by wind and string instruments, such as the hu-chin, a two-stringed Chinese violin, and the so-na, a trumpet-like wind instrument, which heightened the dramatic effect of the productions. Percussion instruments, including drums, gongs, and cymbals, also added to the excitement.
Traditional hand puppets are small sack figures topped with painted, sculptured heads. Making puppets requires great skill, including the arts of sculpture (for the head), painting (the face), and embroidery (the costumes). Like Chinese opera, Chinese hand puppetry is highly symbolic; the facial makeup and the costumes reflect the social status, age, and personality of the character portrayed.
In a shadow puppet play, performed in a dark room or at night, the puppeteers manipulate the puppets while seated behind a large, back-lighted white cloth screen. Puppet plays produce an air of mystery and excitement, especially as the puppeteer skillfully introduces perspective and depth by altering the size of shadows during the performance. Colorful lighting effects on the animated figures further enhance the dramatic impact.
Puppet play scripts are divided into "singing" and "fighting" plays. Accompanied by drums, gongs, and the stringed yeh-hu (a type of hu-chin), singing is the major vehicle of plot development.
The various parts of the puppets are cut out of thin, colored leather and are fastened together with strings. Sticks are attached to the back for the puppeteer to manipulate the movements of the puppets. Traditional shadow puppetry emphasizes the unending struggle between good and evil. The puppet's characters are clearly represented by their appearance: virtuous puppets have handsome, appealing features, while evil figures are villainously ugly.
In the past, when a new temple was constructed, a building was destroyed by fire, or somebody had met with an untimely death, a marionette show was performed to drive away evil spirits, prevent further disasters from occurring, and invoke the blessings of heaven. There are various types of marionettes, including stick puppets and string-suspended puppets, the most popular, which are brought to life by clever manipulation of 10 control strings handled by an experienced puppeteer.
Two of the most common folk art performances are the dragon dance and lion dance. Both are indispensable parts of festivals, Chinese New Year, and other major celebrations. The Chinese revere the dragon, which symbolizes power, dignity, and good luck. The dragon dance has been popular from the Sung Dynasty (960-1279 A.D) to the present day. The dragon mask and body used for the dance may be gold, green, fiery red, or of mixed colors. Dances can be performed in the daytime or at night. If performed at night, the dancers are usually preceded by someone carrying a flaming torch to illuminate the procession. The dragon may be from nine to 24 sections long, each section being from five feet to six-and-a-half feet long. The Armed Forces Dragon Dance Troupe in Taipei has a gigantic dragon measuring close to 400 feet long; the head and body weigh over 220 pounds. The dragon's body is a scintillating gold, and is enthusiastically manipulated by more than 100 soldiers.
Lion dances are performed more frequently than dragon dances, in part because they require fewer participants, a smaller dance area, and less elaborate props. One person manipulates the head and another the tail. Sometimes a third person, carrying a silk flower ball or wearing a mask of the laughing Buddha and holding a banana leaf fan, leads and teases the lion into action, adding to the gaiety.
Other festive folk performances include "riding in a boat on land," stilt walking, "carrying a youth piggyback," and the clam spirit dance. The bottom-less boat used in "riding in a boat on land" is usually made of woven bamboo branches covered with colorful cloth or paper. One man portraying a young female passenger carries the boat, while another plays the part of the rower. The poling and rowing motions and the interactions between the two characters make for a hilarious and entertaining stage show.
Stilt walkers use stilts that elevate them from 12 to 20 inches from the ground. They dance to various types of music and sometimes engage in mock battle.
In "carrying a youth piggyback," a young woman straps a head-to-waist wooden mannequin of an old person to' the front of her body, giving the appearance that an old person is carrying her piggyback. This portrayal of two persons by one is performed as a burlesque pantomime. For the clam spirit dance, a young woman wears a clamshell woven out of bamboo strips. In one sketch, the clam spirit opens and closes her shell in response to a fisherman casting and pulling in his net, but the fisherman always fails to get anything in return for his efforts. In another sketch, a snipe tries to peck out the clam's tasty flesh for a meal, but then gets its beak stuck in the clamshell instead.
Chinese folk games that go back thousands of years, such as playing diabolo, shuttlecock kicking, jumping rope, and spinning tops, challenge and delight youngsters even today. The diabolo is shaped like two hollow cones joined at their apexes, and is manipulated on a string tied to two sticks held in the hands. The diabolo spins as it is worked from side to side, and it can be flung into the air and retrieved again while still spinning. When the diabolo is spun fast enough, it emits a pleasant humming sound. Once the basic technique is mastered, many elaborate and varied tricks can be performed with the toy.
Shuttlecock kicking is another popular folk game. It is fun to do and provides vigorous physical exercise. There are countless different styles and methods of kicking, some of which include kicking the shuttlecock back and forth in a group of people. The game is also a useful form of training for soccer players. Jumping rope, with its many and intricate stylistic variations, is an age-old activity in China as in the West. One can jump alone, in pairs, or in groups. Besides endurance, the key requirements for any style of jumping rope are the same: concentration and coordination between participants.
Top spinning in China is much different from what is found in the West. Top sizes range from miniature to giant, and may be made of wood, metal, or plastic. Top spinning is as much an adult pastime as it is a children's game. For example, classes and competitions in top spinning for adults are held in the town of Tahsi in Taoyuan County. These use king-size wooden tops, some weighing as much as 110 pounds. — (Excerpted from Republic of China Yearbook, 1989.)