Global Futures in East Asia: Youth, Nation, and the New Economy in Uncertain Times (Contemporary Issues in Asia and Pacific) (13 page)

Shop owner Sam was one of the earliest occupants of NKSM. He was in his late twenties when he began his business selling posters and photographs. Originally, he carried photo books of Japanese pop stars because they were popular among the general public. But Sam quickly realized that there was an emerging market for Japanese pop culture and turned his poster shop into an “idol shop,” offering a wider range of items.
20
As an “unauthorized intermediary” (Nakano 2002) who mediated the flow of Japanese pop cultural products before transnational record companies and television stations began to formally explore the market, Sam was able to establish his business before there was much competition. Twenty years later, he owns three shops in Kaohsiung, two of them located in New Kujiang. Sam takes frequent trips to Tokyo and Osaka to obtain posters, pictures, concert merchandise, and products endorsed by Japanese pop stars. He sees his shops as places for the exchange of information and welcomes young customers to linger in the shops, watch DVDs, and chat with salesclerks. As they learn about new releases and the latest gossip, Sam also learns about new trends in what his youthful customers are looking for.

While not a big fan of Japanese pop music, Sam nonetheless admires the “business brain” (
shengyi naodai
) of the Japanese. Japanese products, he argues, are of much better quality than Taiwanese ones. Taiwan is an imitator of Japanese fashion, and there is always a slight time lag between the
two.
This ordering of Taiwan and Japan at different temporalities reflects not only the colonial legacy in Taiwan that identifies Japan as the symbol of modernity and technological superiority (Cheng 2002; Iwabuchi 2002, 2004) but also the rise of Japan’s “soft power” in the global popular cultural market (Allison 2006, 2009; Befu and Guichard-Anguis 2001; Chua 2004). This temporal difference plays to Sam’s advantage. For as long as Japan is still ahead in fashion and popular culture, its products will be desired by Taiwanese consumers. As long as Sam can stay a step ahead of the others, keeping tabs on emerging stars, and obtaining products as soon as they are available, he will have business. For those who do not understand Japanese and cannot order merchandise directly from Japan, Sam’s shops and the regular shipments of magazines are the most convenient way to obtain merchandise and concert tickets unavailable in major record stores. However, no matter how frequently Sam travels to Tokyo, the arrival of new goods never seems fast enough now that the Internet has made it easy for fans to track the newest releases and the appearances of their idols in magazines and television shows. Surrounded by posters and concert merchandise (often priced higher than young fans can afford), his customers often find Sam’s shop insufficient to bridge the distance between them and the place where these items come from. Sam laments that he is at best an intermediary between Taiwan and Japan: “Surely we try to satisfy the customers and sell the timeliest items. But we have no control over what the Japanese [record companies] are going to release. What am I to do if their idol just won’t release a new single or go on a tour?” Constantly chasing after Japanese pop stars and products, Sam feels that his only chance in the market is to react to Japanese trends quickly. Yet, if the time lag were to be entirely eliminated, these foreign goods would cease to be different, and Sam’s shop would lose its allure for consumers.

Eddie was in high school when he discovered hip-hop dance through music videos sold in New Kujiang. After he finished college and military service in the late 1990s, Eddie started moonlighting as a dance instructor in New Kujiang. The studio where he teaches is a space of “America” composed of graffiti and images. One side of the studio is covered by a large mural depicting street scenes. Large signs of Coca-Cola and Sprite are painted on the wooden façade of faux storefront that takes up another side of the studio. In front is a boardwalk reminiscent of buildings from Western movies. When asked why they chose to paint Coca-Cola signs and build the boardwalk, a member of the dance group who founded the studio answered that it was
because
they are “American,” and America is where hip-hop started. Here, hip-hop dance is promoted as a healthy sport. Eddie explains that, while its “central idea (
zhongxin sixiang
)” originated from the streets of New York, “the whole world is influenced by hip-hop.” Therefore, this global popular culture form could be dislocated from New York and become a neutral medium through which Eddie expresses his life philosophy and imagines his position in the wide world of hip-hop.

“Hip-hop is about living happily.” Eddie explains. “But you need an economic basis to live happily.” Regrettably, making it as a hip-hop dancer is not easy in Taiwan and even less so in Kaohsiung. Eddie has to travel to Taipei to take part in dance competitions. Adding to his difficulties, record companies prefer foreign dancers to local ones. In this global hip-hop landscape that Eddie has constructed, Taiwan remains at the margin even though it does not have to be so. Working as individuals, Taiwanese dancers cannot compete with foreigners. However, “if we can bring everybody together, we can change the situation.” The solution, according to him, is that someone rich and powerful, “like the government,” has to get involved. Eddie feels that an ordinary citizen (
xiao laobaixing
) like himself has limited resources and power to change things and hopes that, through government intervention such as funding programs for dancers, this distance between Taiwan and the world stage can be crossed. But if the government does not do anything, Eddie would take things into his own hands. He believes that there is a financial future in the land across the strait for Taiwanese dancers. In his view, although Taiwan lags behind America, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea in hip-hop dance, it is still one step ahead of China. This temporal difference and Taiwan’s strong presence in Chinese-language music industry would give Eddie the required cultural and symbolic capital to operate in China. With entrepreneurial initiative, he is determined to find his way into the world—with or without the government’s help.

When Eddie began to teach dancing in New Kujiang, Ming was in his final year of high school and was more enthusiastic about making money than studying. Having sold products from snacks to accessories in night markets since he was seventeen, Ming was already an experienced vendor when he decided to try his fortune in New Kujiang in 2007. Wage labor never attracted Ming. He feels that factory jobs have no future and does not like the pay of office jobs. As for sales, he says, “You might as well be your own boss if you are going to sell things.” The lack of opportunities in Kaohsiung
has
led many of Ming’s friends to leave for Taipei, the high-tech industrial zones in Hsinchu and Tainan, and China. Ming does not want to leave his hometown, so he created a job for himself. Unlike older vendors such as Mr. Hong and Lian, he never saw street vending as the last resort. Instead, it was his choice from the very beginning and a basis on which he hopes to build his own enterprise one day.

While Eddie sees his future in China, Ming feels that the only route out of Taiwan into the world is through local culture. Having spent years selling other people’s products, Ming has decided to develop his own T-shirt brand. Mixing Hoklo, Mandarin, Japanese, and English, Ming proclaims his love for Kaohsiung, criticizes the government, and makes fun of Taiwanese society through his designs. He also throws in what he considers to be “Aboriginal” symbols such as ocean waves, mountain lilies, and tropical flowers, which look suspiciously like the hibiscus patterns on Hawaiian shirts. The collage of cultural elements, Ming contends, tells the “peculiar history of Taiwan,” in which the island is constantly under foreign influences through colonial occupation, transnational consumption, and waves of migration from China and elsewhere. On his T-shirts is a multicultural Taiwan that is always already internationalized and ready to step into the world stage dressed as a colorful and trendy cosmopolitan person. Instead of seeking participation in the global market through brokering Japanese fashion or imitating Euro-American modernity, Ming and many of his peers now look to put Taiwan on the map through embracing a Taiwanese identity. This proliferation of a Taiwan consciousness and civic identity, as opposed to the old Chinese cultural identity, can be traced back to the nation-building project that produced the reconfigured space of New Kujiang and a Taiwanese identity through the production of locality. Moreover, this identity, as Scott Simon argues, is also a “result of globalization and transnationalism, as international Taiwanese individuals seek the same kind of social recognition enjoyed by citizens of other nation-states” (2003: 155).

Once considered the stuff of night markets, “Made in Taiwan” is becoming a sign that is more and more sought after in New Kujiang, especially as China-made products have flooded Taiwanese marketplaces. Much like Eddie’s temporal ordering of Taiwan and China, the popular perception in New Kujiang is that Taiwanese products are more advanced than Chinese ones. They might not be as fashionable as Japanese or American products, but they are nonetheless a guarantee of a better quality than Chinese products.
This distrust of Chinese products is built not only on the perceived temporal difference between Taiwan and China’s degrees of modernization but also on the political tension between the two. The Beijing government sees Taiwan as a renegade province of China and never ceases to block Taiwan from participating in international organizations. As the two sides become more and more closely linked economically, the desire to claim a non-Chinese Taiwan becomes intensified. In postindustrial Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s integration into the global market and its growing economic connection to China are experienced through a rising unemployment rate. Even though vending is still active on the streets in New Kujiang and transnational labels are opening shops in the area, small businesses are feeling the pressure from the real and imagined economic plight of Taiwan as its industries move offshore. China remains both a threat and an opportunity. Some in New Kujiang pin their hopes on the Chinese tourists who might or might not buy from them. Some, like Eddie, see China as a potential market and look for chances to explore it. Some, like Sam, prefer to align Taiwan with Japan and other advanced countries and purposefully refuse to acknowledge any possible connection with China. And some, like Ming, turn inward to look for a cosmopolitan Taiwanese identity through which to reach outward to the world. Routed through their different experiences with the transnational flows of commodities, images, and ideas in New Kujiang, the international future in Taiwan’s national project becomes refracted and reworked to envision different futures that somehow remain enmeshed in the key words of global connectivity and market success.

Conclusion

A decade after the Datong Department Store fire, the surrounding commercial area has reinvented itself as a stage for youthful fashion display. Here, former residential streets have been transformed into showcases of goods and images. Across the road from the recently reopened Datong, a park long associated with the Formosa Incident has been renamed Central Park and renovated with wide walkways and outdoor cafes.
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A subway system began operating in 2009, and the grand subway station in Central Park has become a new tourist attraction. With its sunny weather, glittering lights, wide roads, geometric street patterns, and revitalized shopping streets, Kaohsiung
now
attracts Taiwanese filmmakers as a generic modern city where urban characters play out their stories. New Kujiang’s eclectic hybrid of a night market and a pedestrian mall allows it to double both as a traditional site and a cosmopolitan backdrop under the camera.

In this international place engineered for consumption, it is possible to dream of being a part of a world beyond Taiwan—the quality shopping districts of advanced countries; the fashion centers of Japan, America, and Europe; and the transnational hip-hop community. Moreover, the constant search to connect with the world stems from the endeavor to refashion Taiwan into a desired site for consumption and investment in the global network of capitalism. The obsession with everything international in Taiwan underscores the difficulty of a nonnation that seeks its place in the global community of nation-states. Economic participation becomes the strategy to pursue international legitimacy and way of bypassing the impossible bind between China and Taiwan. As Taiwan remains floating in political uncertainty and as neoliberalism induces nations, places, and local actors to become entrepreneurs of themselves in search of marketable values, New Kujiang and the island’s past, present, and future are constantly remade and renegotiated in the hope of finding a place in the world.

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Parts of this chapter appeared in
City and Society
22(2): 286–308, under the title “
‘Making Streets’: Planned Space and Unplanned Business in New Kujiang, Taiwan.” They are reproduced by permission of the American Anthropological Association from
City & Society
, Volume 22, Issue 2, excerpts from pp. 286–308, December, 2010. Not for sale or further reproduction. The research and writing of this paper were partially funded by the Taiwan National Science Council and National Tsing Hua University. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for Stanford Press for their comments.

1
. There are many forms of romanization of New Kujiang in official publications, including “Shin Kuchan,” “New Horie,” “Hsin Chueh Chiang,” and “New
Jyueijiang.”
Although its correct pronunciation in Mandarin (the official language) is
kujiang
, locals often pronounce it as
juejiang
. I have opted to use New (
xin
) Kujiang for clarity. Throughout the article, I use modified Wade-Giles system for place names, as this is the convention in Taiwan. Some idiosyncratic romanizations such as Keelung have become conventional. In these cases, I adopt the commonly known names. Pinyin is provided as needed for clarity.