Tourism is now one of the most important industries in the cultural economy of cities because successful tourism not only increases cities’ visibility but draws in global mass tourists for consumptions. In this new era global tourism is emerging due to the flows of people and technology. John Urry observes, “Becoming a tourist destination is part of a reflexive process by which societies and places come to enter the global order” (143). To promote our tourism, Taiwan government particularly designated 2004 as the year of tourism in Taiwan (台灣觀光年) and arranged different cultural events and promotion activities.
During the year of 2004, the government publicized Taipei 101 as the most distinctive local attraction in Taiwan to global tourists. Both our government and the management team of Taipei 101 have tried to make Taipei 101 become a new global touring attraction by
stressing its heights and famous-brand commodities. “With stylish fashion boutiques, fine restaurants and a top-class office tower all under one roof, Taipei 101 is destined to become one of the world’s brand new metropolitan attractions” (Taipei 101 Newsletter 4).
According to Urry, sites are chosen to be gazed upon because “there is anticipation, especially through daydreaming and fantasy, of intense pleasures, either on a different scale
or involving different senses from those customarily encountered” (3). That is to say the tourist gaze is constructed and reproduced through photos, commercials and postcards to generate the most fantastic imaginations and expectations toward the tourist sites. The gaze that is discursively regularized and socially reproduced in the case of Taipei 101 is the
“Roof of the World” or “Miracle of Taiwan.” In Taiwan, we will certainly recapture the gaze of “the world’s tallest skyscraper” when we shop at the mall or look over Taipei city at Taipei 101 Observatory. The purpose of creating Taipei 101 as a global icon like Eiffel
Tower is to occupy a global position of turning Taipei, or Taiwan into a new Asian tourist destination. But the question is does Taipei 101 actually become a global icon to the world and successfully entice global mass tourism?
If we take a critical evaluation of Taipei 101 as local attraction to global tourism, Taipei 101 fails to achieve its symbolic significance to fulfill the anticipations of global
mass tourism. Even though on the first day of opening on November 14th, 2003, Taipei 101 was swarmed with approximately 250,000 tourists and still is a popular touring attraction in Taiwan, a large portion of these tourists are from local areas of Taiwan such as Kaohsiung, Chia-yi, Taichung and Taipei. Obviously, Taipei 101 does not meet expectations of the government as well as its management team to attract the global tourists to “sense” this
“miracle of Taiwan.” According to the survey about “The Major Touring Spots Top 10 2004,” conducted by Tourism Bureau, Republic of China (Taiwan), “Night Market,” instead
of Taipei 101, is the most frequently visited touring spot for foreign tourists in Taiwan.
Another survey shows that for these inbound foreign tourists, their favorite touring spots of Taiwan top 10 do not include Taipei 101.29 In other words, they do not find Taipei 101 an interesting place after visiting. I argue that this is because the gaze of Taipei 101 is too
“globalized” so that ironically its local traits and cultural features of Taiwan are lost. The pleasure of tourism for the main part results from the “distinctive gaze,” that “induces pleasurable experiences, which by comparison with the everyday, are out of the ordinary”
(Urry 12). Taipei 101, on the contrary, elides its local characteristics and Taiwanese cultural expressions because of overly imitating the global city images. Our government somehow is trapped in the paradox as Dennis R. Judd and Susan S. Fainstein propose, “where as the appeal of tourism is the opportunity to see something different, cities that are remade to attract tourists seem more and more alike” (13).
Interestingly, Taipei 101 makes a very successful step to appeal to a cluster of local tourists to “consume” the West. Urry’s observation help to account for why the globalizing characteristics of Taipei 101 are appealing to local tourists in Taiwan. According to Urry,
“rising incomes for an Asian middle class (as well as the student study tour and “backpacker tourism”) have generated a strong desire to see those places of the west that appear to have defined global culture” (143). Taipei 101 provides the Taiwanese a great opportunity to
29 For the detailed tour statistics, please consult CAKE, Categorized Administrative Knowledge Framework for the Executive Yuan (行政知識分類架構). http://pkp.ey.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=940&ctNode=1412.
exoticize the western culture without leaving their country. As one commercial of Taipei 101 shows, once you open the door, you can glance and wander in various cities displaying
in front of you to enjoy the exotic commodities converged in this mall, which is similar to what Margaret Crawford called “the world in a shopping mall.”30 For people in Taiwan, Taipei 101 serves as a shopping world both exotic and familiar for them to consume the
global brand products, exotic restaurants, assorted groceries from all over the world, café and international bookstore, all of which are combined into the mall.
The fireworks show of Taipei 101 at the New Year eve of 2006 is another successful example in the domestic tourism of Taiwan. According to the news report,31 more than 400000 people gathered around the Taipei City Hall Plaza to witness how the biggest fireworks splashed out from the world’s tallest building for 128 seconds. During the 128 seconds, Taipei 101 seems to be real “public space/spectacle” to all residents, including those who watch live TV news. Until the advertising words of “2006 Bravia by Sony” show on the building, Taipei 101 at that moment is not merely a political space and also a commercial space. Taipei 101 is appropriated not only to signify an important political achievement of our government for political propaganda but also to help promote Sony’s LCD for commercial purpose. This sparkling fireworks show has won the public’s positive
30 In the article of “The World in a Shopping Mall,” she said, “The world of the shopping mall—hasrespecting no boundaries, no longer limited even by the imperative of consumption—has become the world” (Crawford 30).
31 See Chinatimes (中國時報), 1 Januray 2006.
This is splendid Taipei 101 in the night and you will see the commercial mark of “Bravia by Sony.”
(Picture taken by myself.)
recognition in Taiwan and draws international media attentions from agencies like CNN, AFP (法新社), and The Associated Press (美聯社) that compare Taipei 101’s new year festival with those in Time Square of New York and in Sydney. Yet, if such fireworks show may occur in many other international cities like New York or Sydney, the Western tourists would not bother to come to Taiwan to “gaze” upon Taipei’s fireworks.32 Without critical
32 According to the official of Tourism Commission of Taipei City Government, Ping-cheng Kang (康炳正), although more and more foreign tourists would like to visit Taiwan, the favorite countries top three in Asia for the Western tourists are still Thailand, Indonesia and Hong Kong. See BCC news (中廣新聞網), 2 January 2006.
reflections on Taipei 101’s own historical orientation and its cultural symbolic, the glamour of “world’s tallest building” might be as the fireworks, splendid but short.
I would like to conclude my discussion of Taipei 101 by drawing on David Harvey’s concepts of “collective symbolic capital,” and “monopoly rents” to disclose the global ideology of capital flows and its monopoly claims in contemporary tourism in Taiwan. For Harvey, monopoly rent “arises because social actors can realize an enhanced income-stream over an extended time by virtue of their exclusive control over some directly or indirectly tradable item which is in some crucial respects unique and non-replicable” (395). He suggests two situations in which monopoly rent comes to matter: one arises when social actors control a unique resource and the other is the locational centrality such as a financial center (395). This suggests that to claim monopoly rent refers to the claims to uniqueness, authenticity, particularity and speciality to gain economic profits from cultural activities and artifacts. Monopoly rents, in Harvey’s sense, depend upon “the power of collective symbolic capital” and “special marks of distinction” because increasing the symbolic capital of one place and creating its distinctive cultural marks will reinforce its claims to the uniqueness that brings monopoly rents (404-05).
Borrowing Harvey’s theories on monopoly rent, I consider Taipei 101 as a discursively constructed “mark of distinction” as the “world-top building” to heighten its symbolic capital that yields monopoly rents, not for the public good but for the capitalists.
The “Manhattanization of Hsin-yi District,” where Taipei 101 is located, has become the glamour zone that the land price has amounted to a new peak and continues to grow. The completion of Taipei 101 has fostered the development of Hsin-yi areas with the land price increasing 2.56 percent on average, from about NT$780,000 per square meter to NT$800,000 per square meter this year.33 The commodification of cultural artifacts and special environmental characteristics in contemporary tourism gives rise to the monopoly claims that might in the end alienate local people from its own culture. In my discussion of Taipei 101, the monopoly rents reflected not only in the rising rents of that urban area, but
also in certain privileged middle-classes or global elites as those in its commercials to afford those world brand products, such LV, Prada, Tiffany or Celine. As for most of the local inhabitants, they could only maintain their relations with this glittering building by “visual”
consumption of its images. Eventually, Taipei 101 might turn out to be only a visual space to its city-users.
33 Please see Taipei Times, 16 December 2005.
Chapter Three
Cultural Politics of Techno Music in Taiwan: Shining 3 Girls
This chapter attempts to elucidate cultural politics of Techno as the global popular in the local context of Taiwan. My discussion centers on the transformations of “Taiker Techno Music”(台客電子舞曲)34 along with the example of Shining 3 Girls (閃亮三姊妹)35 in terms of their music and performance to explicate the cultural dynamics of localities in Taiwan. I will examine the music and performance of Shining 3 Girls to demonstrate the local specificities manifested in “Taiker Techno Music.” I would also deal with the body performance of Shining 3 Girls such as their dancing and dressing style to argue for the locomotions by females and thus to challenge the gender divisions of the global as masculine and the local as feminine. Shining 3 Girls is a female group made up of three sisters, who are young, sexy and vigorous, particularly distinguished by their “Taiker” or
“Taimei” (台妹) style and taste. They combine Techno music with local Chinese and Taiwanese lyrics and with the particular performing style of Electronic Float to gain more and more popularity in Taiwan. The concept of “Tai” or “Taiker,” widely entangled with history, economics, politics and culture in the social context of Taiwan, has become more complicated due to the process of cultural globalization. This chapter, therefore, engages in
34 “Taiker Techno Music” is one kind of Techno music, which is designed especially for Taiker as the target audience.
35 “Shining 3 Girls” are described as “the legend of Taimei, the only teen-aged girls group of Techno that aims to make the global audience’s eyes wide open.” Please see:
“Taiker Techno Music,” in which the global dance music (Techno) and the local culture of Taiker have intersected, to rethink the dialectics of the global and the local and to revisit the gendered qualities of globalization.
The emergence of Techno music, including House, Trance, Brit-Hip, Garage and Hip-Hop since the 1980s in the West has now successfully broadened its musical geographies all over the world and become one of the most popular music genres in the global era. Simon Frith, a famous cultural critic of popular music, has observed that the popular music has gone globalizing, among which the dance music is the most significant one for investigation. Another music critic, Daniel Chamberlin, acknowledges that it is Techno that is getting globally popular nowadays.36 Techno connecting to rave parties and pub culture as a trendy cultural expression in the 1990s has deeply engaged in pop music’s international formations. The global spread of Techno does not entail a homogenization of popular music; local inflections and variations mark the widening dissemination of Techno.
Infusion of Taiwanese folk elements into Techno music produces a locally specific expressive culture of music called “Taiker Techno Music.” In “Taiker Techno Music,” we can discover different strands of gender, class and national identity in the localities of Taiwan such as the cultural representations and styles of “Taiker” (台客) or “Taimei” (台妹) that make “Taiker Techno Music” significantly distinct from but also globally similar to Global Techno.
36 Please check the website of “Washington Observer” for more information:
http://www.washingtonobserver.org/SocCul-Techno-030503CN25.cfm
This is the cover picture of Shining 3 Girls’ first album.
While the global popularity of Techno and Rave culture has drawn more and more discussions in Taiwan, not many critics pay attention to local variations of “Taiker Techno Music” and its impacts. Most of academic discussions in Taiwan still focus on the relations of Techno, Rave Party and Drugs. I will instead investigate the local transformations discovered in the music and performance of Shining 3 Girls, one representative group of
“Taiker Techno Music,” to look at the agency of localities and its local activations given the encountering between the global and the local, and between Techno music and Taiker culture (台客文化). How are the global flows embodied in the aesthetical representations
and imaginations of music culture implied in “Taiker Techno Music?” How do the local subjects, through the senses, serve as the material space that contains such flows as capital, technology and ideology? Briefly, I will examine the aesthetical implications and cultural politics converged in “Taiker Techno Music.”
In my view, neither the traditional Marxist category such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s “cultural industry” nor the postcolonial vocabulary of “hybridity” by Homi K.
Bhabha can fully explain the cultural complexity of Techno as the global popular in the local context of Taiwan’s music geographies. The former overlooks the local mobility whereas the latter overvalorizes the local agency by underestimating the control of global capital. Ardono, in “On Popular Music,” critically comments that popular music is always already planned by “structural standardization” and “pseudo-individualization” (305-07).
He argues that large-scale economic concentration has institutionalized the standardization of popular music. Market competition makes imitation necessary. As Ardono remarks, “the most successful hits, types, and ‘ratios’ between elements were imitated, and the process culminated in the crystallization of standards” (306). According to Ardono, popular music is a completely dominated cultural industry determined by market and capital. Any local music, in this sense, has always already been pre-structured by the global capital. Though I agree that the power of market and capital will have structuring effects on popular music, I seek to explore more localities and creativities in local music, illustrated by the example of
Shining 3 Girls.
In addition, I do not intend to employ cultural hybridity, Bhabha’s postcolonial vocabulary to explain “Taiker Techno Music” culture in Taiwan because his concept of hybridity stresses too much the cultural ambiguity and ambivalence with such terms as
“beyond,” “in-between,” or “transnational/translational” (Bhabha 4-5). Such postcolonial discourse cannot analytically bring out different localities but will possibly replicate the global hierarchy and become the accomplice of global power. If we overemphasize the ambiguity of transnational cultural flows, we will fail to grasp the material conditions that ensure circulation of these flows and will not be able to clarify its power relations consequently.
Cultural globalization, or the cultural encountering of the global and the local, which involves both local differences and transnational flows should not be simply termed with cultural hegemony of colonialism. As Arjun Appadurai reminds us, the flows of cultural globalization are in “disjuncture.”37 In other words, we should not regard the process of cultural globalization as the simplified oppositions of the colonizers and the colonized or the centered culture versus the marginal one. In addition, we should not romanticize national narrations that exaggerate the mobility and agency of our local and national culture without considering the impacts of global capital. From this complex perspective of cultural
globalization, I attempt to sift multiple cultural politics layered on “Taiker Techno Music”
through Shining 3 Girls.