Woodstock era memories, short version, NOT FOR PUBLICATION. LONGER VERSION BELOW, ALSO NOT FOR PUBLICATION

Some 40 years ago, 'Woodstock' changed the U.S. and world -- and maybe Taiwan

By [___] [______]
Contributing Reporter

Despite the cultural differences
between what life was like in Taiwan in 1969 and how the U.S. was
transformed by that year's Woodstock musical festival, Taiwanese
filmgoers and book readers will soon be able to see what
the fuss was all about.

In those days in Taipei, the central government used the
local newspapers to characterize Woodstock as "a hippie
invasion" and most young people here had no idea what was really going
on there.

Even Ang Lee (李安), who would grow up to become one of Taiwan's most
famous film directors and make a name for himself in Hollywood and
Cannes, did not know what Woodstock was really all about at that time.

Now he does. Lee's humorous movie about some Woodstock shenanigans --
titled "Taking Woodstock" [胡士托風波] -- opens
in the U.S. this month and will open here on October 9,
according to film industry sources.

"Taking Woodstock" was a book before it came Ang Lee's latest movie. Elliot
Tiber, now in his 70s, wrote the memoir a few years ago, and it was
translated into Mandarin this year
by Josephine Liao and published locally by Yuan-Liou Publishing
Company in Taipei.
The book is subtitled in English on the psychedellic-art
Mandarin-language cover: "A True
Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life."


The book's English title, "Taking Woodstock'" -- and by extension, the movie's
title, too -- means two
things, according to the book's U.S. publisher.

"It means taking stock of your life and, in a sense, taking control of
your
destiny," Rudy Shur said in a recent email. "Anthony Pomes, our
marketing director,
came up with the title, and Ang Lee used it for his movie as well."

When a reporter asked several expats here if Woodstock was a part of
their lives and how it impacted them, the responses were like trips down memory lane.

"I was six years old in the summer of 1969, so I guess I was mostly
grubbing around on the floor and in the back lot of the apartment
complex in St. Louis where we lived," said Paul Cox in Taipei. "I was
entirely unaware of
Woodstock."

He added: "While I don't listen directly to a lot of music from those days
anymore, a lot of the music I do listen to was influenced to a certain
extent by the music of those days (Hendrix, Santana, Dylan, as well
as blues and jazz musicians who were the inspirations for those
guys -- Buddy Guy, Albert King and John Coltrane, among others). I do still
enjoy the Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Santana."

"Maybe a bit of the Woodstock spirit lives on in the rock and other
kinds of music festivals around the world, including the annual ones in
Taiwan such as Ho Hai Yan, Formoz, Migrant Music Fest, and Peace
Fest," Cox added.

For Jerome Keating, Woodstock was close but "too far away" as well, he
said, noting: "That summer, I was just starting my doctoral program at
Syracuse University, so the concert was not too far away from where I
was, but I could not spare the time to go there."

"I still like the songs of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez," Keating, the author of three books about Taiwan, said. "The
songs expressed a philosophy of protest and need for change in
priority of values. The Sixties included the civil rights movment and
the Vietnam War protests, of course."

When asked if he felt that the philosophy of
hippie life had any
impact in Taiwan, Keating -- who worked as a university professor here and was former manager of technology transfer for Taipei's MRT systems -- noted: "Hippie life and freedom was more a
symbollic challenge to re-examine people's and the government's
priorities; it did not advocate permanency of a new structure. How it
affected Taiwan? That's hard to say. Taiwan at that time was under
martial law and the Kaohsiung Incident was still a decade away. Was
there a ripple effect? Perhaps."

For Gerrit van der Wees of Holland, who now works for the Formosan
Association for Public Affairs in Washington, the summer of 1969
brings back old memories. "Woodstock was a statement against
the establishment of those days, and it questioned authority,
especially in regards to the Vietnam War. Many of the songs at
Woodstock were anti-war
songs."

"In the summer of 1969, I was just on my way back to The Netherlands
from spending a year in Houston, where I worked on the Apollo
program," he recalled.
"After finishing my work there, I drove through the U.S. for a few
weeks, travelling
from Texas, through New Mexico, Arizona, and up to Wyoming and Montana.
In fact, during that trip, I met quite a number of folks who were on
their way to
Woodstock, driving beat-up Volkswagen bugs and even old buses."

"In 1970, a year later, I went to a Woodstock-like event in Rotterdam,
in my native Holland, where we listened to
the Byrds and other bands," he said. "But after a while, the hippie
movement drifted too far
in the direction of 'anything goes' and it lost its original purpose, I think."

When asked if Woodstock had any impact on Taiwan, van der Wees said:
"I really don't know if or how it affected Taiwan, since I didn't get
to
Taiwan until 1977, and I didn't really get into Taiwan life until 1979, just
before the Kaohsiung Incident."


Don Shapiro, editor-in-chief of Taiwan Business Topics magazine now,
was spending the summer of 1969 doing a fourth-year Chinese-language
course at Columbia University, preparing to head to Taiwan that fall.

"I remember reading and hearing about Woodstock when it was going on
-- particularly wondering how a New York state farm could be big
enough to accommodate the huge crowds that reportedly turned up," he
said. "I did like the music of the Woodstock groups, particularly Joan
Baez, but my tastes now run more to classical and jazz."

"Woodstock was part of a whole trend in the Sixties to break down
cultural barriers and to question what had been the conventional
wisdom," Shapiro added. "It had a big impact on the U.S. and then
gradually on the rest of the world, including Taiwan. Without that
change in mindset, the U.S. wouldn't have equality for women or the
widespread acceptance of homosexuality that exists today. And America
certainly wouldn't have an African-American as president today."

Louise Bystrom, who is from Sweden and edits Taiwan This Month
magazine, says she was in her middle teens that summer of 1969. "I
just turned fifteen at the time and was still living with my parents,
of course. I didn't understand the real impact on what was going on at
Woodstock. In addition, at that age and that time, I was very
conservative, much more than what I am now, so all those strange
clothes and flowers and people walking around naked that I saw on
television, it was nothing I could relate to, personally. But, of
course, I was curious about all that. Later, the influence of
Woodstock filtered into Europe and Sweden, and it began to have a
greater impact on my life, but not in any big way. However, I still
listen to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and I enjoy them, but I don't have
their CDs at home here."

When asked how Woodstock might have influenced Taiwan, Bystrom said:
"From what I can see, it hasn't had much impact on Taiwan at all.
Taiwan's society is still very conservative and traditional. Here,
young couples are just beginning to hold hands in public, and it's
still unusual to see people expressing their real emotions in public
or in private."

For Syd Goldsmith, who served as director of the AIT branch office in Kaohsiung from 1985 to 1989, first came to Taiwan in 1968, he said. "I barely had heard of Woodstock at the time," he added.

"The songs of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were good, and I liked them, but
I can't remember when I last had a chance to listen to them,"
said Goldsmith, who is the author of a prize-winning novel about Taiwan
titled "Jade Phoenix."

Don Silver, an editor for Taiwan Review magazine in Taipei, was just
seven years old in the summer of 1969, he said, so he was "too young
for Woodstock to have any impact."

He added: "My parents are pretty conservative, so I can't even recall
any conversation about it at home. The summer of 1969, the thing I
remember is the moon walk -- the first time I'd ever stayed up so late
to watch TV -- 11pm, waiting for the moon monsters to attack the
astronauts."

Silver said he "still listens to Neil Young on occasion, as well as
Dylan's new stuff -- his last CD was pretty good."

When asked about Woodstock's impact on Taiwan, if any, Silver said:
"If the US was in the 1960s at the time, Taiwan was in the 1950s, and
probably stayed that way until the late 1980s. I do think that young
people in Taiwan today are kind of Woodstockish --looking around at
the area near the Red House in Ximending shows me that they're much
more individualistic, more free-spirited than their parents. Not much
tie dye, though..."

For Bo Tedards, Woodstock happened before he was born, but he says: "My mother always says she blames me for 'missing the culutral event of
my generation,' because she was eight months pregnant with me at the
time."

When asked how the Woodstock era and the 1960s might have influenced
Taiwan, Tedards, who is a longitme social activist here, said: "It's hard to say how or whether
Woodstock had any direct effect on Taiwan or the Taiwanese people,
since those days were the depth of the White Terror period here.
However, at least one group of Taiwanese activists living overseas was
inspired by the events of 1968 -- not Woodstock per se, but the more
militant, political 1960s movements in the U.S. and Europe -- to take
matters into their hands, and that's the group who attempted to
assassinate Chiang Ching-kuo in New York."

Tedards went on: "It might be true -- but also pure speculation on my
part -- that the hippie, or at least the progressive culture and
counterculture of the 1960s influenced the emergence of social
movements here in Taiwan in the late 1970s, with a bit of a lag time,
of course. Michael Hsiao has written how these social movements in
Taiwan began with the literary and cultural movements first, so the
news about Woodstock in 1969 might have been an entry point for such
ideas here in Taiwan, but again, I'm just speculating."

"But there were also indirect effects, I think, such as when Taiwan
absorbed later waves of U.S. popular culture, which themselves were
influenced by Woodstock and the Sixes," Tedards said.

David Reid, who hails from Australia where he was born in 1973, said
that he still listens to music from the Woodstock days -- "Neil Young
(he was with Crosby, Stills & Nash), Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin."

Reid, who is a blogger and a master's/post-graduate student at
National Chengchi University here, notes: "At the time of Woodstock,
Taiwan was still under the
dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek. White Terror and and the lack of
freedom associated with it were hardly the conditions for a
counter-cultural movement to flourish."

For Brian Chiu, Woodstock happened before he was born, but he does
have some thoughts to impart. "I was minus three years old in 1969 and
an accident waiting to happen," Chiu said in a recent email. "But my
parents were the Taiwanese equivalents of 'hippies', and they may have
heard of the concert in America. My folks used to play the Byrds, some
CSN, and lots of Beatles/Lennon on Sunday mornings. I still like the
Byrds and CSN -- in fact, folk and bluegrass, in general."

"From what I've heard, freedom was kind of illegal in the 1970s in
Taiwan," Chiu went on. "My uncle got free room and board at a
political prison on Green Island for wanting freedom and love and
fields of flowers -- and he sadly lost his mind in there. A few of my
dad's friends lost their lives in those times of martial law and white
terror. For any aspiring hippies in Taiwan back then, I'm afraid it
was a more grim affair than "free love" -- any extra-state body (such
as a free-love hippie commune would have been seen by the authorites
as sedition."

"Music in the park? The closest we came to music in the
park back then was probably that old catchy patriotic tune about the
superiority of the Chinese race (down to the very controlling-preoccupation
with hair color and eye color) that they taught me to sing in school
when I was 'young and impressionable' in Taiwan. "

"However, I think
that the Woodstock 'philosophy' did guide my parents to react to my
singing those patriotic songs in horror and move us all the hell out
of Taiwan. So we came to America. One Woodstocky memory I have as a
kid in California was in high school in San Diego, being dragged by my
parents to boring evening gatherings where political speeches had
acoustic guitar accompaniment."

How the Mandarin translation of the Woodstock book by Elliot Tiber -- and the movie by Ang Lee -- will be received by Taiwanese readers and moviegoers in Taipei will be interesting
to see.

"Woodstock is not really very well understood by most
people in Taiwan, but the movie, and now this book, will help to serve
as a kind of cross-cultural guide about what hippie and
'counterculture' life was like in
those days," said a Taipei publishing industry source.

Some 40 years ago, 'Woodstock' changed the U.S., and maybe Taiwan....

Photos Above: American expats in Taiwan: Jerome Keating, Eric Mader (their quotes below, among many others)

WOODSTOCK UNPLUGGED - REMIX

Some 40 years ago, 'Woodstock' changed the U.S. and Taiwan (maybe)

WEBPOSTED : October 15, 3009

NOTE: Trista di Genova has done a much better version of this report over at her blog, where she heavily edited and revised and revamped my original piece -- and I am so glad she did! -- and turned it into something worth reading now. So please go here instead:

http://www.thewildeast.net/news/?p=386

COVER OF BOOK / MANDARIN EDITION

TAIPEI, TAIWAN -- Despite the cultural differences
between what life was like in Taiwan in 1969 and how the U.S. was
transformed by that year's Woodstock musical festival, Taiwanese
filmgoers and book readers can now see what
the fuss was all about.

In those days in Taipei, the central government used the
local newspapers to characterize Woodstock as "a hippie
invasion" and most young people here had no idea what was really going
on there.

Even Ang Lee (李安), who would grow up to become one of Taiwan's most
famous film directors and make a name for himself in Hollywood and
Cannes, did not know what Woodstock was really all about at that time.

Now he does. Lee's humorous movie about some Woodstock shenanigans --
titled "Taking Woodstock" [胡士托風波] -- opened
in the U.S. last summer and opened here in October.


"Taking Woodstock" was a book before it came Ang Lee's latest movie. Elliot
Tiber, now in his 70s, wrote the book a few years ago, and it was
translated into Mandarin this year
by Josephine Liao and published locally by Yuan-Liou Publishing
Company in Taipei.
The book is subtitled in English on the psychedellic-art
Mandarin-language cover: "A True
Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life."

Liao, born in Taiwan three years before Woodstock, graduated
from the University of Washington in Seatlle with a degree in
comparative literature in 1990 and has been active in the translation
field here since then.

The book's English title, "Taking Woodstock'" -- and by extension, the movie's
title, too -- means two
things, according to the book's U.S. publisher.

"It means taking stock of your life and, in a sense, taking control of
your
destiny," Rudy Shur said in a recent email. "Anthony Pomes, our
marketing director,
came up with the title, and Ang Lee used it for his movie as well."

When a reporter asked several expats here if Woodstock was a part of
their lives and how it impacted them, several emails told their stories.

"I was six years old in the summer of 1969, so I guess I was mostly
grubbing around on the floor and in the back lot of the apartment
complex in St. Louis where we lived," said Paul Cox in Taipei. "I was
entirely unaware of
Woodstock."

He added: "While I don't listen directly to a lot of music from those days
anymore, a lot of the music I do listen to was influenced to a certain
extent by the music of those days (Hendrix, Santana, Dylan, as well
as blues and jazz musicians who were the inspirations for those
guys -- Buddy Guy, Albert King and John Coltrane, among others). I do still
enjoy the Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Santana."

"Maybe a bit of the Woodstock spirit lives on in the rock and other
kinds of music festivals around the world, including the annual ones in
Taiwan such as Ho Hai Yan, Formoz, Migrant Music Fest, and Peace
Fest," Cox added.

For Jerome Keating, Woodstock was close but "too far away" as well, he
said, noting: "That summer, I was just starting my doctoral program at
Syracuse University, so the concert was not too far away from where I
was, but I could not spare the time to go there."

"I still like the songs of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez," Keating, the author of three books about Taiwan, said. "The
songs expressed a philosophy of protest and need for change in
priority of values. The Sixties included the civil rights movment and
the Vietnam War protests, of course."

When asked if he felt that the philosophy of
hippie life had any
impact in Taiwan, Keating -- who worked as a university professor here and was former manager of technology transfer for Taipei's MRT systems -- noted: "Hippie life and freedom was more a
symbollic challenge to re-examine people's and the government's
priorities; it did not advocate permanency of a new structure. How it
affected Taiwan? That's hard to say. Taiwan at that time was under
martial law and the Kaohsiung Incident was still a decade away. Was
there a ripple effect? Perhaps."

American writer and teacher Jeremy Hammond was born eight years after Woodstock,
he said, adding: "Although, of course, I had heard of the event, I
only really became aware of what it was much later in life as a result
of my love for some of the music from a number of musicians who
attended, particularly Jimi Hendrix, The Who,and Credence Clearwater
Revival."

For Gerrit van der Wees of Holland, who now works for the Formosan
Association for Public Affairs in Washington, the summer of 1969
brings back old memories. "Woodstock was a statement against
the establishment of those days, and it questioned authority,
especially in regards to the Vietnam War. Many of the songs at
Woodstock were anti-war
songs."

"In the summer of 1969, I was just on my way back to The Netherlands
from spending a year in Houston, where I worked on the Apollo
program," he recalled.
"After finishing my work there, I drove through the U.S. for a few
weeks, travelling
from Texas, through New Mexico, Arizona, and up to Wyoming and Montana.
In fact, during that trip, I met quite a number of folks who were on
their way to
Woodstock, driving beat-up Volkswagen bugs and even old buses."

"In 1970, a year later, I went to a Woodstock-like event in Rotterdam,
in my native Holland, where we listened to
the Byrds and other bands," he said. "But after a while, the hippie
movement drifted too far
in the direction of 'anything goes' and it lost its original purpose, I think."

When asked if Woodstock had any impact on Taiwan, van der Wees said:
"I really don't know if or how it affected Taiwan, since I didn't get
to
Taiwan until 1977, and I didn't really get into Taiwan life until 1979, just
before the Kaohsiung Incident."

For Eddie Tsai, a Taipei native who graduated from Chung Cheng
University in Chiayi in 2008, Woodstock was something he learned about
from his father and uncle.

"I wasn't even born yet, in 1969," Tsai says.
I learned about Woodstock frm my dad and from some books about
American history.
I am sort of liberal in my own thinking, this was the way I was
raised, and I always admired what many young people in America did in
the Sixties, way back then. I like those concepts of 'freedom'and
'simple living' that hippies talked about -- and lived. But those
ideas are hard practice in Taiwan's society."

When asked what music he liked from those days, Tsai said that due to
the influence of
his father and uncle, he knew the songs of Bob Dylan. "I still listen
to his song titled "We Shall Overcome". Even now. I like it."

Asked about Woodstock's influence on Taiwan, in 1969 or in the
following years, Tsai said he felt that the music concert and the
worldwide publicity it engendered on TV and in newspapers at the time,
had almost no impact on Taiwan.

"You have to understand, at that time, Taiwan was pretty much a closed
society, especially to Western culture or ideas," Tsai said. "The
government in those days even treated what was called 'the Beatles
culture' as an enemy, as forbidden fruit, and there even an
'Anti-Beatles movement' in Taiwan, where police would stand on the
streets in Taipei, and they saw any young guys with hair similar to
the Beatle's long hair, the police would bring the young men back to
the police station and cut their hair. Maybe Ang Lee knew about this,
too."

"So, in general, I don't think Woodstock had any impact on Taiwan," he
said. "And today, as you know, most young people don't care much about
the history of Woodstock, it is a forgotten era, even in America.
There are few people here who really know anything about Woodstock,
and as you know, Taiwanese young people are still very conservative in
many respects, and they always listen to what their parents tell them.
Just like the lyrics in the Jay Chou song titled 'Listen to What Your
Mother Told You [聽媽媽的話]."

Don Shapiro, editor-in-chief of Taiwan Business Topics magazine now,
was spending the summer of 1969 doing a fourth-year Chinese-language
course at Columbia University, preparing to head to Taiwan that fall.

"I remember reading and hearing about Woodstock when it was going on
-- particularly wondering how a New York state farm could be big
enough to accommodate the huge crowds that reportedly turned up," he
said. "I did like the music of the Woodstock groups, particularly Joan
Baez, but my tastes now run more to classical and jazz."

"Woodstock was part of a whole trend in the Sixties to break down
cultural barriers and to question what had been the conventional
wisdom," Shapiro added. "It had a big impact on the U.S. and then
gradually on the rest of the world, including Taiwan. Without that
change in mindset, the U.S. wouldn't have equality for women or the
widespread acceptance of homosexuality that exists today. And America
certainly wouldn't have an African-American as president today."

Louise Bystrom, who hails from Sweden and edits Taiwan This Month
magazine, says she was in her middle teens that summer of 1969. "I
just turned fifteen at the time and was still living with my parents,
of course. I didn't understand the real impact on what was going on at
Woodstock. In addition, at that age and that time, I was very
conservative, much more than what I am now, so all those strange
clothes and flowers and people walking around naked that I saw on
television, it was nothing I could relate to, personally. But, of
course, I was curious about all that. Later, the influence of
Woodstock filtered into Europe and Sweden, and it began to have a
greater impact on my life, but not in any big way. However, I still
listen to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and I enjoy them, but I don't have
their CDs at home here."

When asked how Woodstock might have influenced Taiwan, Bystrom said:
"From what I can see, it hasn't had much impact on Taiwan at all.
Taiwan's society is still very conservative and traditional. Here,
young couples are just beginning to hold hands in public, and it's
still unusual to see people expressing their real emotions in public
or in private."

Brian Funshine, a Taipei musician and voice-over actor, has his own
take on Woodstock, noting: "I was born in 1972, and my parents weren't
at all hippies, but my life has been profoundly influenced by elements
of the 'love generation', which Woodstock helped promote, beyond a
doubt. With so much of the East and West coming together, perhaps this
was one reason I pursued such interests as yoga, world music,
international travel, meditation, and a general sense of
open-mindedness. I believe that the Woodstock era also contributed --
deeply -- to the current movements of compassion, humanitarianism and
a new respect for animals and the environment in Western societies."

For another American expat who spent long periods in Taiwan, the
Woodstock festival itself had no direct impact on his
life, he said, but the longtime friend of Taiwan, who has visited here
many times over the years and is the author of several books about
this island nation, tells a good story full of interesting
recollections.

"I was a nerd," he said in an email note. "In the summer of 1969, I
was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I had a four year old
child and a wife who was in graduate school at Harvard. I was
finishing my Ph.D. thesis, which I completed the following winter.
Woodstock had no direct impact on my life."

"I was into classical music. My first companion had no
aesthetic sense at all. She did not care for any music or art. We
were intellectual soul mates. We studied and went to Ingmar Bergman
movies from Sweden. Most of us in the China field were not very
cultural or modern. Learning Chinese took up all of our energies.
Also my companion was a graduate student and I was getting a job teaching.
We were not part of the undergraduate community, so were not even into
the Kingston Trio. But the Weavers and Pete Seeger were my favorites.
I did enjoy the Bealtes," he said.

"The hippie dress -- or undress --was not a fantasy of mine. As for
drugs, I took the Jewish very of things: my brain was all I had. To
screw up my brain with drugs was a form of suicide, I felt. Also, I
had two children then. We had a natural child in 1965 and then we
adopted a two-year-old African-American boy in 1971. Preparing for
that, and being pioneers in this type of inter-racial adoption took up
a lot of time.," he recalled.

"As for nakedness and the Woodstock days. You might ask a longtime
expat in Taiwan named Lynn Miles. He went on a day-long hiking trip
with me and my students one day outside Taipei, in the mountains.
Lynn swam in a mountain pond in the nude. My Taiwanese students wore
clothes. Then we ate a picnic lunch while sitting on the rocks. Lynn
did not bother to put his clothes back on. This seemed natural to
him. My students thought it was weird, but nobody complained."

"I can tell yoi another post-Woodstock story about Taiwan, and it's
about Lynn Miles again. When we went on our class field trip, as I
described above, Lynn arranged for the students to go in a van up in
the moutntains. The American guy that he got to drive the van was
smoking weed. I followed on a motorscooter. And me, as a non-drug
person, I was terribly angry later when I heard about the weed being
smoked in the van. But one else seemed to mind."

My second companion was really part of that Woodstock era culture.
I was born in 1938. She was born ten years later. Culturally and
Woodstock-wise, we have two different anchors. The Vietnam War
affected me much more than the Woodstock era did."


Another longtime expat in Taiwan who didn't wish to be named in this story, said from his home in urban Taiwan that the music of the Woodstock era helps to keep memories of 'Tricky Dick' Nixon, Gen. William 'fierce fire fight' Westmoreland, and the Kent State shootings from fading away."

"I still listen to Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, the Who, Santana and other artists from the days of Woodstock. I was just watching some Richie Havens videos from Woodstock on YouTube not too long ago," he said.

When asked if he thought Woodstock had any impact on Taiwan, he said: "I've never noticed any. Spring Scream -- [Editor's note: a yearly concert in Kenting promoted by expats Wade Davis and Jimi Moe since the mid-1990s] -- is probably the closest thing a small minority of Taiwanese have ever had to the Woodstock experience."

He added: "Taiwanese were struggling too hard during those years to worry about the 'freedom' to go naked. The KMT had used up all of Taiwan's resources, people had been wearing underwear made from sacks of flour donated by the US, and everyone's living room was a 'factory.' There was no time for 'fun.' The lifting of martial law and the White Lily student movement were still two decades in the future."

For Syd Goldsmith, who served as director of the AIT branch office in Kaohsiung from 1985 to 1989, first came to Taiwan in 1968, he said. "I barely had heard of Woodstock at the time," he added.

"The songs of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were good, and I liked them, but
I can't remember when I last had a chance to listen to them,"
said Goldsmith, who is the author of a prize-winning novel about Taiwan
titled "Jade Phoenix."

Don Silver, an editor for Taiwan Review magazine in Taipei, was just
seven years old in the summer of 1969, he said, so he was "too young
for Woodstock to have any impact."

He added: "My parents are pretty conservative, so I can't even recall
any conversation about it at home. The summer of 1969, the thing I
remember is the moon walk -- the first time I'd ever stayed up so late
to watch TV -- 11pm, waiting for the moon monsters to attack the
astronauts."

Silver said he "still listens to Neil Young on occasion, as well as
Dylan's new stuff -- his last CD was pretty good."

When asked about Woodstock's impact on Taiwan, if any, Silver said:
"If the US was in the 1960s at the time, Taiwan was in the 1950s, and
probably stayed that way until the late 1980s. I do think that young
people in Taiwan today are kind of Woodstockish --looking around at
the area near the Red House in Ximending shows me that they're much
more individualistic, more free-spirited than their parents. Not much
tie dye, though..."


For Trista di Genova, an American writer,
artist, musician and filmmaker here, said she was "the proverbial twinkle
in my
father's eye at that time" noted that she has asked her father "and
many, many other people about their recollections of Woodstock, and
everyone has had the same thing to say: It was a major musical and
cultural event."

In a recent email, she said: "I'm listening to Donovan right now.
Music lovers everywhere are still mining through the mountain of folk
tales, poetry and iconoclastic sentiments that come from that era.
Myself included! It would take a lifetime."

When asked if she thought that Woodstock had influenced Taiwan at all,
she replied:
"Absolutely not. Very little. It was a shock at first to realize this
is one of the few places on Earth that never experienced a rock
revolution. As a result, the music here in Taiwan is little more than
a time capsule from the 1950s, with very few changes or
experimentation over time, compared to the West. Taiwanese people --
except for a tiny fraction of cool, tuned-in young folks -- rarely
know or even recognize the names of any of the multitude of bands that
transformed American and Western culture."

For Bo Tedards, Woodstock happened before he was born, but he says: "My mother always says she blames me for 'missing the culutral event of
my generation,' because she was eight months pregnant with me at the
time."

When asked how the Woodstock era and the 1960s might have influenced
Taiwan, Tedards, who is a longitme social activist here, said: "It's hard to say how or whether
Woodstock had any direct effect on Taiwan or the Taiwanese people,
since those days were the depth of the White Terror period here.
However, at least one group of Taiwanese activists living overseas was
inspired by the events of 1968 -- not Woodstock per se, but the more
militant, political 1960s movements in the U.S. and Europe -- to take
matters into their hands, and that's the group who attempted to
assassinate Chiang Ching-kuo in New York."

Tedards went on: "It might be true -- but also pure speculation on my
part -- that the hippie, or at least the progressive culture and
counterculture of the 1960s influenced the emergence of social
movements here in Taiwan in the late 1970s, with a bit of a lag time,
of course. Michael Hsiao has written how these social movements in
Taiwan began with the literary and cultural movements first, so the
news about Woodstock in 1969 might have been an entry point for such
ideas here in Taiwan, but again, I'm just speculating."

"But there were also indirect effects, I think, such as when Taiwan
absorbed later waves of U.S. popular culture, which themselves were
influenced by Woodstock and the Sixes," Tedards said.

David Reid, who hails from Australia where he was born in 1973, said
that he still listens to music from the Woodstock days -- "Neil Young
(he was with Crosby, Stills & Nash), Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin."

Reid, who is a blogger and a master's/post-graduate student at
National Chengchi University here, notes: "At the time of Woodstock,
Taiwan was still under the
dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek. White Terror and and the lack of
freedom associated with it were hardly the conditions for a
counter-cultural movement to flourish."

For Eric Mader, a writer in Taipei, Woodstock happened when he was
just three years old, and he noted with humor: In 1969, I was three,
so if I took my clothes off it didn't quite have the same charge to
it."

But Mader added: "I will say, however, that when I was in high school
in the 1980s, Woodstock was much on my mind, as was Sixties music. I
had an album collecting the Woodstock performances and was part of a
large contingent of classmates in my school who admired the 1960s and
the music and the politics too -- the countercultural stance in
general."

"I loved listening to the Doors, the Who, Pink Floyd,
CSN and Y, and others whose albums -- and lyrics -- I basically had
memorized. Which is somewhat odd, considering that Madonna and 1980s
pop were everywhere on the radio and TV. But my group of friends at
high school were quite entrenched against that Madonna pop stuff."

"It's hard to assess how the 1960s and 1970s of the Western world
impacted contemporary Taiwan," Mader went on. "In a way, the
generation now of older middle-aged Taiwanese seems to have no
connection whatsoever to what went on in the U.S. and Europe back
then. Taiwan was under martial law and censorship in 1969, of course.
And the younger generations here who now get washed over by wave after
wave of retro-Western fashion -- they don't have a sense of what, in
terms of ideological conflict, was behind the 1960s. They certainly
don't have any sense of critique of the commodifcation of people or
music. There is no notion that a singer, for instance, might have good
reasons not to do TV commercials for MacDonald's."

"However, I think in the last few years Taiwanese youth have been
actively exploring a broad range of music and fashion styles. Events
like the Hohaiyan Festival, which has been going for about ten years
now, might be Taiwan's version of Woodstock."

For a Taiwanese book editor in Taipei who is now now in his 50s,
Woodstock had and has little meaning for him, he said in a recent
email.

"To be honest, Woodstock means almost nothing to me," he said, and
then explained why, noting: "In the summer of 1969 , I was around
fourteen years old, and lived in a small city in central Taiwan in
Yunlin County. As a teenager there, I knew almost nothing about the
world outside Taiwan, and as you might know, Taiwan itself was
basically sealed off from the world by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek
and his KMT party."

"In fact, the whole of Taiwan seemed to be Chiang's exclusive and
private domain, at least that is how he treated it. The next year,
Phenn Beng-bin (Peng Ming-min) escaped from Taiwan, then a big prison,
though our home. It is until much later, when I was a student in
college that I found that there had been two classes in Taiwan: one
class including most native Taiwanese and a few poor or "ordinary"
Chinese exiles, the other was the ruling class, many generals
included -- and, yes, today I'll call them the high class mainlanders;
their lifestyles were totally different. Most of us knew not much
about outside world, except what the KMT propaganda wanted us to know. I
don't believe they would tell us anything about Woodstock. Until much
later, I realized that there were a few richer, more educated native
Taiwanese families had another lifestyle. But at that time, I knew
not much about that.

Perhaps it was until when I was in college in Taipei that I heard
about Dylan and Baez. But I was not much in with music. It listened to
their music only when my college friends played it. I seemed from
another world and was still there, things in Taipei seemed still very
"foreign" to me. I knew that some friends from the South and the East
seemed quite familiar to that. But I was not and still am not. A few
weeks ago, in a luncheonette near my office, I heard a song that
seemed familiar, but I thought that American Country songs are all
similar to me--sorry for this. Only that I thought I liked the voice.
So, I told my co-worker who had the dinner with me that the voice was
beautiful. My younger co-worker cocked her ear and tried to listen to
it more clearly among noise. And then she said, "Oh, yes, it's Baez."

"Although I am not sure that Woodstock had much of any impact on
Taiwan, when I look around at some of my friends, then maybe, yes, it
did influence Taiwan in some ways. Maybe not so much in terms of
people taking their clothes off in public or at music fesitvals, but
the music of the Woodstock era does live on here. And, you know, when
I was in college here in Taiwan, I read books about existentialism,
phenomenology and post-structuralism. Do those things have anything to
do with the Woodstock era? Maybe. Maybe in this way, Woodstock did
influence Taiwanese artists and intellectuals and musicians."

For Brian Chiu, Woodstock happened before he was born, but he does
have some thoughts to impart. "I was minus three years old in 1969 and
an accident waiting to happen," Chiu said in a recent email. "But my
parents were the Taiwanese equivalents of 'hippies', and they may have
heard of the concert in America. My folks used to play the Byrds, some
CSN, and lots of Beatles/Lennon on Sunday mornings. I still like the
Byrds and CSN -- in fact, folk and bluegrass, in general."

"From what I've heard, freedom was kind of illegal in the 1970s in
Taiwan," Chiu went on. "My uncle got free room and board at a
political prison on Green Island for wanting freedom and love and
fields of flowers -- and he sadly lost his mind in there. A few of my
dad's friends lost their lives in those times of martial law and white
terror. For any aspiring hippies in Taiwan back then, I'm afraid it
was a more grim affair than "free love" -- any extra-state body (such
as a free-love hippie commune would have been seen by the authorites
as sedition."

"Music in the park? The closest we came to music in the
park back then was probably that old catchy patriotic tune about the
superiority of the Chinese race (down to the very controlling-preoccupation
with hair color and eye color) that they taught me to sing in school
when I was 'young and impressionable' in Taiwan. "

"However, I think
that the Woodstock 'philosophy' did guide my parents to react to my
singing those patriotic songs in horror and move us all the hell out
of Taiwan. So we came to America. One Woodstocky memory I have as a
kid in California was in high school in San Diego, being dragged by my
parents to boring evening gatherings where political speeches had
acoustic guitar accompaniment."

For longtime expat Adam Guenther, Woodstock brings back memories, too.

"I grew up about 50 miles from Bethel, New York -- the location of the site of Woodstock, as you probably know -- but I was only nineyears old at the time," Guenther said. "Back then, the big thing for me was the Apollo moon landing and the Mets who won the baseball world series in 1969. I can also remember the Vietnam war problems that were in the news all the time. I knew the Woodstock festival was going on and saw some of the clips on TV, but as I remember, it was raining most of the time and didn't look like much."

"Music-wise, I didn't really pay attention when I was nine years old, except for what my mother played on the AM radio -- Yellow Submarine by the Beatles stands out for some reason. I never really got into the 1960s music, well, maybe Neil Young and a few Dylan songs. I really started listening to music around 1977 or so when 8-tracks faded out and cassettes (and vinyl) were big."

"Basically, Woodstock it didn't have any effect on my life," Guenther said. "I think for the Taiwanese, it would be seen that they wouldn't have any clue as to what it meant. They don't really care about freedom, only money. Look at the way they are letting the KMT sellout the country to the PRC. It's so disappointing and depressing for me to see that most of the people just don't care. I've gotten to the point where I don't care anymore either. Why bother?"

For Martin de Jonge, a Canadian expat who works in Taipei and lives on a beach along the north coast, Woodstock has a place in his life, too -- and when interviewed recently by email, he volunteered the information that his sister in law was the set decorator for the new Ang Lee movie about Woodstock. Small world, indeed!

Just twelve years old at the time, he recalls today: "I was in Canada just over the border from Buffalo, only a few hours drive away from that festival that bonded the more idealistic and hedonistic members of the North American baby boomer's bourgoisie. I had turned twelve a few months before that, and I don't even remember my parents or anyone else mentioning Woodstock, but in retrospect I'm just amazed that even though I was so young I didn't hear about it until a few months after it'd happened. Still, I was so impressed by the very idea of it that I even bought a book called ''Woodstock '69'', with stories and pictures of the four-day affair, from my elementary school's book-of-the-month club."

De Jonge adds: "Bubble gum music was at the height of its popularity during that weekend in the middle of August in the summer of 1969, and I remember very well listening to the number one pop tune on the local radio station: "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies. Andy Kim's "Baby I Love You" was also in the top ten. Other songs frequently airing included a rollicking part-medley, part-original romp called "Good Old Rock 'n Roll" by Cat Mother & The All Night News Boys and an off-the-wall song about the future by Zager & Evans entitled "In The Year 2525". Other notable songs in the top 30 included The Rolling Stones immortal "Honky Tonk Woman", Bob Dylan's lethargic "Lay Lady Lay" and my favorite at the time, "Laughing", by The Guess Who.

"I grew up in reverence of the Woodstock generation, which for all its claims of love, peace and understanding never quite accepted me -- I was a little too young for it," de Jonge notes. "That group just considered me a little punk."

"And so it came to pass," he adds, " a mere decade after Woodstock, I was a singer in a punk band. Already by that time, hippies just made my eyes roll. Didn't anyone tell them they *gave* peace a chance?"

When asked what music from those days he still likes to listen to, de Jonge said: "I no longer listen to any music of that era. And if I catch myself experiencing nostalgia over songs from that time playing in a public place, I give myself a good, swift kick in the ass, because culture, especially pop culture, is meant to progress, and time and emotion are far better spent seeking out and appreciating the new than reminiscing over and getting mired in the old."

He adds: "I remember one night in 1996, on one of my first days in Taiwan, three of four foreigners sitting at the bar at 45 right around closing time, arms around each others' shoulders, all singing a very drunk, off-key version of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone". The first thing that struck me was that those guys had cloistered themselves in a foreigners' bubble way, way too long. The second thing was that clinging to old pop culture is really maudlin and puky. I vowed right then and there that I would never, *ever* be like them. So far, so good..."

When asked if Woodstock has any impact on Taiwan at all, de Jonge said: "I'm not sure if "hippie life and freedom" ever really took hold in Taiwan. Elements of that era have certainly been subsumed by the mainstream culture here, but never to the effect that they've had any lasting meaning or strength. Taiwanese have certain images of the Sixties from the most popular of pop music and films from the Sixties and later music and film portraying the Sixties, but I don't think the Taiwanese ever internalized the spirit. The individualism, the "do your own thing", the rebellion against parents, political confrontation, and other things, those things are anathema to Taiwanese life."

What about the public nudity that Woodstock promoted, on the side? "As for nudity, Taiwanese bathe and shower with their children right up to the time when the children start to approach the age of puberty, which wouldn't be comfortable at all for most Americans; but public nudity to Taiwanese is considered freakish -- when Taiwanese see nude Europeans on the beach in Thailand, they start *photographing* them, like they're at a circus," de Jonge said.

"Respectable adults in Taiwan dress very modestly. Showing cleavage in middle-class environments such as offices and educational establishments, as common as that is in the West, is considered very sluttish in Taiwan. And nudity as a social expression of personal freedom is something I don't think I've ever heard a Taiwanese champion, let alone defend," he added.

"Nevertheless, personal freedom nowadays does have a certain social cachet, as exemplified by t-shirts you see Taiwanese locals wearing. Quite often I've seen t-shirts in English -- and the writing, by the way, is getting a little better over the years -- expressing things about freedom of conscience, freedom of thought and freedom of lifestyle, but I would guess any connection between that and any genealogy of ideas tracing back to the Woodstock generation is a strawclutcher," de Jonge concluded.

How the Mandarin translation of the Woodstock book by Elliot Tiber -- and the movie by Ang Lee -- will be received by Taiwanese readers and moviegoers in Taipei will be interesting
to see.

"Woodstock is not really very well understood by most
people in Taiwan, but the movie, and now this book, will help to serve
as a kind of cross-cultural guide about what hippie and
'counterculture' life was like in
those days," said a Taipei publishing industry source.

[ LIFESTYLE ] Teenage girl, 17, uses her thumb to travel around Taiwan

[ LIFESTYLE ] TAIPEI TIMES in Taiwan July 16, 2009

Teenage girl uses her thumb to travel around Taiwan

When 17-year-old Venus Tsai embarked on a round-the-island solo hitchhiking trip, it landed her some national TV publicity and a book contract

By Dan Bloom
CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Thursday, Jul 16, 2009, Page 13


Aged 17, Venus Tsai (蔡慧蓉) hitchhiked around Taiwan solo with NT$2,000 in her pocket. She completed the journey in 13 days and a total of 25 rides and on finishing found herself in the national news. The Yunlin County native — a Taipei vocational school student at the time of her trek — wrote a book about her experiences.

Locus Books in Taipei released A Gift for Adulthood (十八歲的成年禮) on June 1.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Tsai in a recent interview over fried rice and tofu in Chiayi City. “I always wanted to hitchhike around Taiwan, and I did it … I am very excited and psyched, and this is just the beginning. I plan to travel around Malaysia this summer, and then go to Australia on a working holiday visa for a year.”

When asked why she wanted to hitchhike around Taiwan by herself at such a young age, Tsai, who grew up in Yunlin County’s Peikang Township (北港), said she had watched The Most Distant Course (最遙遠的距離), a film in which a young sound recordist circumnavigates the country recording its natural sounds.

“That movie inspired me to go on my own solo hitchhiking adventure … ” she said. “I wanted to go out and find my dream, to make my dream come true, and also I wanted to learn more about who I am and what I can do by myself, on my own, so I did it. I just wanted to leave the real world behind and embark on my own adventure. My father wasn’t very happy about what I planned to do, but he trusted me enough to let me go, reluctantly.”

Having completed her second year at Shilin High School of Commerce in Taipei, Tsai is taking a hiatus from studying and leaves for Malaysia on July 26. “I plan to finish [my] senior year … later on, when I come back to Taiwan,” she said. “I’m young and full of life, and I feel that this is the time to travel, so I am doing it my own way.”

When asked how she caught the travel bug, Tsai said: “My parents both work in the tourism sector, my father is a bus driver and my mother is a tour guide, so I guess I have the travel bug in my genes maybe.”

Tsai was “discovered” by a TVBS camera crew and an Apple Daily reporter by complete chance, she says, setting her on the path to becoming a teenaged published author.

“I was on the final leg of my hitchhiking trip when I found myself at a traffic light in Taichung and saw a car that had stopped at the intersection. I decided to knock on the window of the car and ask for a ride north,” she said.

“The three people turned out to be television reporters, and when I told them what I was doing, thumbing my way around Taiwan, they said this would make a great news story,” Tsai explained.

Tsai noted that because she was a minor when she signed on with Locus Books, the publisher asked her father to sign the book contract for her.

“I’m still young,” she said.

「阿兜仔」─ 熱絡還是侮辱的稱謂？ TAIWAN TRIBUNE, published in USA for Taiwanese communities there...

「阿兜仔」─ 熱絡還是侮辱的稱謂？

原文：丹布隆 (Dan Bloom)‧漢譯 ：Shirley Tu

[Edited by Liu Yu-Hsai, NEW JERSEY]



你是個「阿兜仔」嗎？你喜歡被朋友、同事甚至路上遇到的陌生人叫「阿兜仔」嗎？甚至被你的妻子或丈夫如此稱呼？

無論您對這個有趣、幽默，用來稱呼「外國人」的的台語俗語感覺如何，請你用幽默感來閱讀本文。

儘管「阿兜仔」一詞指的是「外國人」，但主要指的是西方人，日本人不會被稱為「阿兜仔」，印尼人、印度人、越南人 或 菲律賓人也不會被如此稱呼。

前台灣行政院新聞局派駐多倫多台北經濟文化代表處新聞組長郭冠英以筆名在部落格發表文章，文中用「台巴子」及「倭寇」兩詞來形容台灣人，受到許多台灣學、政界人士責難，但多數台灣人仍然認為用「阿兜仔」來形容西方人並無不妥。

但有些人認為這個字眼令人感到憤怒，必須避免在公共場合使用，甚至在廣播或電視中禁用。

多年來，一些旅台外國人的網路討論區中，對這個稱謂的正反兩面意見都有，也有許多幽默的回應。

一個普遍的看法是，這個辭彙意味著「突出的鼻子」，來自台語「Dok-Dok(突突)」，用來形容鼻子的「突出」或「高聳」。

多數台灣人說這個字眼並無貶抑或侮辱之意，甚至是含有相當幽默意味的贊許辭彙。

一些旅居台灣的外國人則覺得，六十年前「阿兜仔」可能是用來形容高鼻樑的西方人的字眼，幽默而友善。但某些人，特別是電視節目主持人如吳宗憲等，在節目中毫無顧忌、不管他人感覺的使用這個字眼實在不應繼續。

輔仁大學歷史系教授陳君楷在電子郵件中說： 大多數的台灣人相信「阿兜仔」是幽默的字眼，但如果大部分在台灣的西方人討厭它，台灣人毫無疑問不該再繼續使用。

陳教授表示：孔子說「己所不欲，勿施於人」，如果台灣人不喜歡中國人(外省人)稱呼我們為「台巴子」，台灣人就必須停止用「「阿兜仔」來稱呼西方人。如果被稱呼的人不喜歡，我們就沒有必要繼續使用它。

他說：因為長久以來語言上和種族上被羞辱，台灣人至今仍未能正常發展。我們必須為我們的自由奮鬥，並建立一個新的、公義的國家。如果能達到這個目標，我相信我們可以從其他國家的人學到更多的東西。

另一位任教於東華大學本土文化系教授的紀駿傑教授在電子郵件中說：

我必須承認我從未想過「阿兜仔」是一個不好的或有負面字義的用語，

我確信台灣人只把它當作一個幽默的字眼來使用，並不含有任何負面的意思。

他說：儘管如此，重要的是，「阿兜仔」被廣泛使用並不意味它是好的用語，即使它不是以負面或否定的方式被使用。紀教授說：使用語言首要的事就在於當它涉及不同國家、人種或族群時，被提及的人的主觀感覺。

他說，根據字面，「阿兜仔」被用於在臺灣的西方人時…但鼻子的形狀遠不及與他們的個人特色來的重要，這兩者是不能相提並論的。

一位旅居台灣超過十二年的加拿大人Martin de Jonge以別的方式來看待這個稱謂。

他說：因為我來自一個長久以來一直以種種方式來進行資訊活動的國家，其使用的方式包括打造、啟動、追蹤、注意、再形塑、再啟動等等方式。這些活動的目的在於讓這個國家的諸多不同文化族群以分享資訊、提高人們敏感度，增進彼此了解的方式來促進不同文化間的了解。因此，我有時會理所當然的認為，台灣社會的一些異常現象，本地媒體及領導者的公共言論應該可以用正確的方式，限期將之去除。

居住於美國紐澤西，海外台灣人報紙《臺灣公論報》的編輯劉玉霞女士以長期(1992年以來)旅居美國的角度來做評論。

她告訴我說： 「我已經多年不曾聽到『阿兜仔』這個詞語，但我小的時候曾使用過。我同意你的意見，從一個美國人的觀點來看，「阿兜仔」可能有點侮辱、忽略他人的感覺，有如稱呼某人『胖子』一樣。然而，當臺灣人叫西方人「阿兜仔」時，並沒有侮辱的含意」。

「但重點是，如果有人不喜歡被冠上這樣的稱呼，這個字眼就不應該被使用。」

她說：「臺灣人不像西方人對與人體有關的字眼那樣敏感，例如體重、高度或眼睛等。某些臺灣人被別人說『胖』、『矮』或『小眼睛』時，他們同樣感到不舒服。但是一般來說，臺灣人並不是那麼敏感」。

「下次當有人稱呼你『阿兜仔』的時候，你可以認真、嚴肅的告訴他(她)，你不喜歡這樣被形容，我相信這個人以後再也不會這樣稱呼你。」

至於住在美國的台灣人會不會稱呼他們的鄰居「阿兜仔」？她表示：我們通常不會，因為這裡的「阿兜仔」太多，但有時我們會叫他們「老外」，但我們忘了，我們才是真正的「老外」。

法庭依舊在審理此案─「阿兜仔」在今日是否有其實用價值？真正的法官仍是台灣人本身。

那麼這是我給讀者的問題： 「阿兜仔」是臺灣人應該繼續使用的字眼，或是應該丟棄的老辭彙？台語裡是否有更恰當的字眼，而不是以他們鼻子或眼睛來形容西方人？

無論您是否同意我的看法，我希望您在讀完這篇報導之後能讓我知道您的看法。請以email(中英文皆可)送到 bikolang@gmail.com 或台灣公論報(taiwantribune@yahoo.com)。

(作者Dan Bloom, 美國人，目前居住於南台灣，著有兩本中文書「我就這樣哈上了台灣」及 「丹布隆 哈上台灣夜市」，其部落格為：danbloom888.blogspot.com；Shirley Tu為 台北市民。)(本文英文版載於taipeitimes：http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2009/05/19/2003443960)。

Liberty Times, letter to editor, ◎ 黃大河 re 翻譯官回應「阿凸仔」

The Liberty Times published a letter today from a reader about the ongoing "adoah" debate, pro and con:

http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2009/new/jul/14/today-o6.htm

翻譯官回應「阿凸仔」

◎ 黃大河


署名 Biko Lang 的西方人士，在自由廣場投書呼籲台灣人：請別叫我「阿凸仔」！其理由是因為許多住在台灣工作的西方人認為，那是一個侮辱和不尊敬的詞句，不應該出現在公眾場合。

筆者同意Biko的看法。打從少年時代開始接觸西方傳教士，到了成年在美軍駐台顧問團工作，筆者接觸過的西方人為數不少，但是我始終沒有使用過「阿凸仔」來稱呼西方人。當然，我承認目前在台灣還有許多人使用「阿凸仔」來稱呼西方人。在新加坡、馬來西亞等國家使用福建方言的華人族群裡，他們雖然不講出「阿凸仔」，卻使用另類獨特的稱呼。他們把西方白種人統稱為「紅毛仔」，看場合有時也叫「紅毛猴」，而且是現在進行式。在新加坡的地理中心地帶就有個大社區叫做紅毛橋（Ang Mo Kio）。新加坡政府早察覺到此語不妥，所以帶頭把華文的正式名稱改為「宏茂橋」，以期誘導新加坡人漸漸地淡忘「紅毛橋」。高明吧！比較之下，台灣的政府對此現象似乎很遲鈍，令「有品」的台灣人無語問蒼天。（作者早期曾任美軍駐台顧問團翻譯官，部落格http://www.goodweber.com/?4151）

-----------------------------------------

REFERRRING TO: RE:

http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2009/new/jul/8/today-o7.htm

請別叫我「阿凸仔」！

◎ "Biko Lang" (pen name)


大多數的台灣人認為 ：「阿凸仔」這個稱呼外國人的暱稱是熱情且友善的。但許多住在台灣工作的西方人卻認為，那是一個侮辱和不尊敬的詞句，不應該出現在公眾場合，電視節目和廣告應該要禁止使用這三個字。你同意嗎？

「阿凸仔」的意思是指「大鼻子的人」，無論你對這三個字的俚語詞有什麼感覺，請你用你的幽默感來閱讀此篇文章。

日本人、馬來西亞人、印尼人、印度人、非洲人、越南人或菲律賓人，都沒有使用類似「阿凸仔」的名詞來稱呼西方人。

郭冠英在他匿名所寫的文章中提到「台巴子」及「倭寇」，許多台灣人很生氣，但是多數台灣人卻認為「阿凸仔」沒有侮辱的意思，並無不妥。例如輔仁大學歷史系教授陳君愷在一封電子郵件中寫到：大多數的台灣人相信「阿凸仔」是幽默的詞語。但是如果大部分在台灣的西方人討厭這樣的形容，那麼台灣人就不應該再繼續使用這個詞語來形容西方人，特別是在公眾場合及電視媒體上。吳宗憲先生，請問您看到這篇文章了嗎？

那麼這是我給讀者的問題：「阿凸仔」是否是台灣人應該繼續使用的詞，或是應該捨棄不用呢？無論是否同意我的看法，我非常有興趣了解你的看法與回應。我的部落格是
http://pcofftherails101.blogspot.com
（作者本名 Dan Bloom，為美籍資深新聞從業人員；
翻譯者Shirley Tu）

請別叫我「阿兜仔」！ (smile...)

請別叫我「阿兜仔」！

READ the original article in ENGLISH here in the Taipei Times, sister newspaper of the Liberty Times, on May 19, 2009. It is about 1500 words, and includes much more information than that short article that appeared in the Liberty Times on July 8th.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2009/05/19/2003443960



by Biko Lang

A POLL OF TAIWANESE PEOPLE SAYS:

Editor's note: Readers may remember an article that freelance
reporter Biko Lang in Taipei Times on May 19, 2009, which has been translated
now for the Liberty Times. After the article appeared, a poll was taken by a local
marketing firm in Taipei based on the article, and the results are, if
not conclusive, nevertheless very interesting.


The online poll was conducted by a TNS Taiwan, a Taipei marketing
firm, from May 22 to May 24, with about 25,000 Taiwanese people
participating, and with several
questions being asked.

When those polled were asked "Do you use the term 'adoah' to refer to
Caucasians?" the results were as follows: 45% said
they do use the
term while 55% said they do not use the term.


When people were asked "If you learned that this term of adoah was considered
offensive by some Westerners living in Taiwan, would you
stop using it?" the results were as follows:

93% said they would no
longer use the word "adoah" while 7% said they would continue to use
it.

In the poll, the total sample
size was 25,276 respondents, distributed in terms of age and gender
proportionately to the general population, with ages ranging from 13
to 64, according to the polling firm.



大多數的台灣人認為 ：「阿兜仔」這個稱呼外國人的暱稱是熱情且友善的。但許多住在台灣工作的西方人卻認為，那是一個侮辱和不尊敬的詞句，不應該出現在公眾場合，電視節目和廣告應該要禁止使用這三個字。你同意嗎？
「阿兜仔」的意思是指「大鼻子的人」，無論你對這三個字的俚語詞有什麼感覺，請你用你的幽默感來閱讀此篇文章。
日本人、馬來西亞人、印尼人、印度人、非洲人、越南人或菲律賓人，都沒有使用類似「阿兜仔」的名詞來稱呼西方人。
郭冠英在他匿名所寫的文章中提到「台巴子」及「倭寇」，許多台灣人很生氣，但是多數台灣人卻認為「阿兜仔」沒有侮辱的意思，並無不妥。例如輔仁大學歷史系教授陳君愷在一封電子郵件中寫到：大多數的台灣人相信「阿兜仔」是幽默的詞語。但是如果大部分在台灣的西方人討厭這樣的形容，那麼台灣人就不應該在繼續使用這個詞語來形容西方人，特別是在公眾場合及電視媒體上。吳宗憲先生，請問您看到這篇文章了嗎？
那麼這是我給讀者的問題：「阿兜仔」是否是臺灣人應該繼續使用的詞，或是應該捨棄不用呢？
無論是否同意我的看法，我非常有興趣了解你的看法與回應。（作者本名 Dan Bloom，為美籍資深新聞從業人員。翻譯者Shirley Tu）

http://pcofftherails101.blogspot.com/2009/06/is-this-good-word-or-bad-word.html

COMMENTS WELCOME: ---------------------------------------------------------------

A Taiwanese reader of this blog, a woman, 35, Buddhist, tells me:

"You point out a very important issue here. That is 99% of Western people, including you, in Taiwan dislike and hate the term. And most of Taiwanese people don’t even sense that problem including me.

People use it because they think it’s harmless and even a cute way of expression.

But they will stop using it if they know you don’t feel comfortable with that.

I think most of the people will disagree about “ADOAH” is a mean or bad word, but they will agree that they should stop using the word if it makes you feel offended.



I am sorry that this is bothering you but this term is rarely used by people nowadays and mostly used by elders who speak Taiwanese.



But what’s the impression on Taiwanese people about foreigners at early time? And why they have a special term for them, I think maybe people started to use it at the time right after Japanese colony and during the period when US army came to Taiwan. In fact, I don’t know exactly and not familiar with that part of history of Taiwan, I am just curious and try to find some clues via internet.



I found a thesis about” U.S. Army under the Rest and Recuperation Program” -- R and R -- with a picture as attached: The picture was published by Time magazine on Dec. 22, 1967 and taken from a hot springs hotel in Taipei county. The soldier’s name is Alley Bailey, 21 years old from Cincinnati. It introduced that there are 75 spring hotels in Taipei County. I am pretty shocked by this photo which shows part of the history of Taiwan. Probably American soldiers made such impression on Taiwanese people at that time, and that’s why people called them “ADOAH”.



So, here is my observation,..... Taiwanese tend to use “A-XXX-AH” to call people who are from other country. This expression is mixed with a feeling of *teasing, *banter and even *hostile, anyway, not in a friendly manner.



As you know, we privately call Chinese people “A-LA-AH” recently as well. Also, I have ever heard people call Japanese people “A-BUN-AH”.

* A LA AH : LA means “mainland China”

* A DO AH : DO means “tall, stiff nose”

* A BUN AH : BUN means “Japan”



There is nothing wrong with the middle words, but the AH sound is the distinction of this way of expression. Do you see now?

I think, to a certain degree, those foreigners are the invaders to Taiwanese people whether it was a truly invasion or the invasion of cultural or economic.



As you also know Taiwanese people used to call Dutch people “Un-Mo” (red hair). So let’s make a list for these terms in the order of the eras below.

1.Dutch colony :
Un-Mo – no longer used in Taiwan

2. Japanese colonial period :
A-BUN-AH – rarely used now

3. US army stationed :
A-DO-AH – seldom used now

4. Chinese tourist group :
A-LA-AH – a new term used recently in 2009



Now I think you are right......“A-DO-AH .....was not a friendly word to foreigners in the very beginning, and as time goes by, people don’t know why the term came from or for what reason. You can’t really tell from the meaning of the word itself sometimes. I believe each special term has its unique background and story.



This is just an idea from my own thought, maybe it is not correct, but it is good to help me thinking things deeply and know more history about my country."

----------------------

An AMERICAN RESIDENT OF TAIWAN TOLD ME TODAY:

Dear Sir,

Looks like you stirred the pot for sure with this discussion online;

a lot of responses and with such detail.

My Taiwanese wife said she did not feel there is a racial slur with the word ''adoah''.


==================

Yes, today a student at CCu in Chiayi told me, re the same thing you said:

"Dear Sir

No, I don't think the Taiwanese readers will be angry about what you
wrote about adoah, if you publish that article in Apple Daily or the
Liberty Times or UDN or the China Times in Chinese.....
There are always some misunderstandings between two different
cultures, and if we never clearify these things, there might be more
people who agitate others and never understand why people seems angry
about that........
Thus I think it will be good if you publish it on the newspaper........

But I think you still need to notice the way you wrote, make sure the
readers won't misunderstand what you want to say.
Especially the following paragraph,

雖然許多台灣人被批評郭冠英,前行政院新聞局派駐多倫多台北經濟文化代表處新聞組長,

在他以匿名所寫的文章中提到 “台巴子”及”倭寇”兩詞.

多數台灣人仍然認為使用”阿兜仔”這個詞語來形容西方人並無不妥.

in this part, 倭寇 means pirates and 巴子 means foreigners who come from
rural area and wear or talk "improperly"(like a country bumpkin or
yokel, like a redneck),
both of these words are used with really bad attempt to humiliate
people. If you are trying to make an analogy between 倭寇,台巴子 and ADOAH,
be careful...because..Some people might not agree with this.
Especially you are mentioning thing about politics, it is a sensitive
issue for Taiwanese people.

Hope these suggestions are helpful."

====================================

TAIPEI TIMES article, May 19, 2009:

'Adoah': A demonstration of familiarity or an insult?

'PROMINENT' OR 'HIGH': While most Taiwanese think 'adoah' is a humorous word used to refer to Westerners, some believe it is a little insulting and insensitive and should be avoided in public and forbidden on the airwaves

By [Biko Lang]
CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Tuesday, May 19, 2009, Page 4

“Taiwanese people are not as sensitive as Westerners to some terms associated with a person’s body, such as weight or height or the eyes. Some Taiwanese also feel uncomfortable when they are called ‘fat’ or ‘short’ or ‘small eyes,’ but in general, Taiwanese are not so sensitive.”

— Liu Yu-hsia, editor of Taiwan Tribune in New Jersey, USA

{This article was addressed to foreign residents of Taiwan. The Liberty Times letter to the editor on July 8 was addressed to Taiwanese nationals in Taiwan and overseas. -- Biko Lang)

BEGINS HERE:

Are you an adoah? And do you like being called adoah by friends, co-workers or complete strangers on the street? And maybe even by your wife or husband?

Whatever your feelings about this colorful and humorous Taiwanese slang word for “foreigner,” read the following with a sense of humor.

Although the term is used to mean a “foreigner,” it is mainly used to refer to Westerners. Japanese are never called adoah, nor are Indonesians, Indians, Vietnamese or Filipinos.

While many Taiwanese academics and politicians have been critical of Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英), a former government press officer in Toronto who was fired for using such words as taibazi (台巴子,Taiwanese rednecks) and wokou (倭寇, Japanese pirates) in blog posts written under a pen name, most Taiwanese still feel it is okay to use the word adoah to describe Westerners.

But some people feel that the word adoah rankles and should be avoided in public and forbidden on the airwaves.

Over the last few years, a few expat Internet forums have discussed the expression, with both supportive and scornful reviews and plenty of humorous rejoinders.

‘DOK-DOK’

One popular opinion is that the expression means “prominent nose” and comes from an old Taiwanese term — dok-dok — meaning “prominent” or “high” when describing noses.

Most Taiwanese say the term is not a slur or an insult, but more of a compliment than anything else, although delivered with a dollop of humor.

Some expats feel that while 60 years ago adoah might have been a humorous and friendly word for Westerners with a “high” nose bridge, people, especially TV hosts such as Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) who use the term on TV shows with abandon, should drop the word.

Chen Chun-kai (陳君愷), a professor of history at Fujen Catholic University, said in an e-mail: “Although most Taiwanese truly think adoah is a humorous word, if most Western foreigners in Taiwan hate that word ... then that word is no doubt a bad word and should not be used anymore by our people.”

Chen added: “Confucius said: ‘Do not do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you.’ So if we Taiwanese don’t like to hear Mainlanders calling us taibazi, then Taiwanese should stop using that word adoah in reference to Westerners. There is no need to keep using the word adoah anymore, if those who hear the word don’t like it.”

“We Taiwanese are still crippled by a long history of linguistic and ethnic slurs, even now. We need to fight for our freedom and establish a new nation with justice. If we can achieve this, I believe that we will also learn more from people in other countries,” Chen said.

Another professor, Chi Chun-chieh (紀駿傑), who teaches in the Department of Indigenous Cultures at National Dong Hwa University, said by e-mail: “I must admit that I never thought that adoah was a bad or negative term, and I am sure that people here use it as merely a humorous word and not in any negative sense at all.”

“However, and this is important, this common usage does not mean that adoah is a good term, even though it is not used in a negative or pejorative way,” Chi said.

“The most important thing about language when it is used to refer to different national or ethnic or racial groups are the subjective feelings of people being addressed,” Chi said.

“In terms of the word adoah as it is used to speak about or address Westerners in Taiwan ... the shape of a person’s nose is not relevant compared to his or her more important personal characteristics,” he said.

Martin de Jonge, a Canadian who has lived in Taiwan for more than a dozen years, pointed out another way of looking at the issue.

“As I come from a country where the government has a long history of crafting, launching, tracking, monitoring, refashioning and relaunching information campaigns designed to facilitate intercultural understanding by informing, sensitizing and enlightening its various cultural groups, I sometimes take it for granted that obvious social dysfunction here in Taiwan should iron itself out in due process and in due time time by the local [Chinese-language] media and through public statements from leaders,” Jonge said.

SENSITIVITY

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has lived abroad since 1992, Liu Yu-hsia (劉玉霞), the Taiwanese editor of the Taiwan Tribune in New Jersey, a newspaper for Taiwanese expatriates, said: “It’s been many years that I have not heard this term adoah. I used it when I was little. I agree with you. Adoah is a little insulting and insensitive from an American’s viewpoint. It is just like calling somebody ‘fat.’ However, when Taiwanese call a Westerner adoah, it is not meant to insult the person.”

“But the point is, if the person being addressed or spoken of doesn’t like the term, then it shouldn’t be used,” Liu added.

“Taiwanese people are not as sensitive as Westerners to some terms associated with a person’s body, such as weight or height or the eyes. Some Taiwanese also feel uncomfortable when they are called ‘fat’ or ‘short’ or ‘small eyes,’ but in general, Taiwanese are not so sensitive,” she said.

“The next time someone refers to you as an adoah, tell him or her, seriously, that you don’t like to be described in that way. I believe that person will not do it anymore,” she said.

When asked if Taiwanese expats in the US ever call their neighbors adoah, Liu replied: “We usually don’t, because there are so many adoah here. Sometimes we call them laowai, but we forget that the actual foreigners are us.”

The jury is still out on whether the word adoah serves a useful purpose today or not. The real judges will be the Taiwanese themselves.