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邮箱里收到一封信。我可不敢在外面捅娄子……
Dear Mr Wan,
I am a student from the United Kingdom, and I have been researching the Taiwanese Campus Folk movement for a video series I am writing! I've read your 2024 article on Campus folk's student-led cultural production and it's been very useful in helping me understand the sound culutre's development and different 'styles' of the genre, along with the contextual background and other researchers covering it.
If you are free to do so, I'd like to discuss some of the aspects of the paper with you over video chat and get your perspective on some key moments in Taiwanese history such as the 228 incident and the following 'White Terror' period brought on by the KMT occupation along with the general sentiment of Taiwanese citizens towards the early 1970s following on from the Tamkang (or 'coca cola') Incident that created the movement.
This would ideally be featured in short clips during the video series to provide an experienced academic perspective! Please let me know if this is something you would be interested in and we can schedule a time to meet online.
Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon,
Peter Slight
Oxford Brookes University - Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
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Dear Peter,
Thank you for your interest in the monumental Taiwanese Folk Song Movement of the 1970s, and for examining the cultural implications of this movement through the lens of political history. Regrettably, due to professional constraints, I am unable to participate in your interview project.
Nevertheless, I would be happy to share my perspectives on the prominent emotional expressions within the movement, particularly the Taiwanese public's yearning for democracy under Kuomintang (KMT) rule. This call for democratic life and individual acts of protest have endured into the contemporary era, carrying forward the democratic spirit of the Folk Song Movement through the works of various artists, as well as through indigenous rights advocacy and local ecological protection initiatives.
Of course, this democratic consciousness is closely intertwined with a decolonized, nativist awareness, rather than being directed solely at the rule of a specific political party. Since the 1970s, KMT rule has undergone significant transformations, driven by pivotal political events and reforms in Taiwan's political landscape. Yet, within the cultural works of Taiwanese intellectuals, artists, and academics, this democratic consciousness reveals remarkably complex emotional characteristics.
Take the Taiwanese novelist Chen Yingzhen as an example. Recognized as a leading nativist writer, he actively participated in debates over Taiwanese literary and cultural trends and was once detained under the authorities' cultural censorship policies. Today, he is regarded as a left-wing writer shaped by Marxist thought, whose writings focus on the suffering masses and the motherland. This imbues Chen’s literary works with a unique social context, earning them serious attention and high praise from rigorous intellectuals.
Naturally, this is just one thread of the voices within the Folk Song Movement—a lineage that can be said to have continued at Tamkang University. Looking at the records and narratives surrounding the "Tamkang Coca-Cola Incident," one can detect traces of historical meaning being constructed and refined. Nevertheless, we can imagine that under the KMT's stringent rule and policies at the time, intellectuals exposed to diverse cultural influences—Western democratic thought, rebellious pop culture, and Marxist theory, among others—experienced a political awakening. They sought to articulate political demands through artistic creation and dissemination, all while nurturing a nativist, root-seeking consciousness centered on local culture.
Driven by these multifaceted aspirations, prominent Taiwanese intellectuals and cultural figures reshaped Taiwan's political landscape through cultural action. It can be said that their original motivations were profoundly simple, yet inspired by a rich tapestry of ideological threads. Ultimately, they produced a modern pop culture that was rooted in nativist identity, critically engaged with Taiwan's political reality, and, to a certain extent, offered a resistance to modernity itself.
Best regards,
Chi Wan
Fuyang Normal Univeristy, China
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