Maybe they dropped this earlier in the center and south of the island?
By '92 in Taichung there was none of this standing up for the anthem stuff and the Taiwanese language was making a big comeback.
Anyone still remember being beaten or fined in grade school for speaking Taiwanese, or those creepy college students who stayed in the sophomore year three times over, despite being the brightest in the class, to rat on the kids who talked about Taiwan independence, or talked about 2/28 etc?
More to the point, does anyone remember Buffalo Town?
I remember people standing up during the national anthem in late 1995. This took place in a major cinema in Taipei. Moreover, I usually remained seated, thereby elicting unfriendly stares from the locals.
I am a relative newcommer, but I have been in a cinema where the audience stood for the anthem once. It would have been in early-mid 1999, in Taipei, at the Scholar Cinema on Chang Chun Road (or that other cinema beside the Scholar - there are two in a row there, right?). The movie was a Taiwanese one, ‘The Personals’.
I had only recently arrived in Taiwan, but I had already seen several movies here without any of this standing for the anthem business. So the whoe thing took me by surprise. Actually, I think it might have taken everybody else by surprise as well, since only about half the audience stood up and they were a long time in doing it! I’ve never seen this since.
But anyway, it was definitely happening ocassionally until quite recently.
Are you sure it was the national anthem? A few years back, MTV had a commerical at the movie theatres that started out playing the national anthem. Half of the people, including me, stood up dutifully, only to have the “anthem” segue into an MTV commerical 20 seconds later. Needless to say, we were all embarrassed for having been duped. Pretty funny, actually. I remember one woman sued claiming that in her rush to sit down after being embarrassed, she didn’t notice that her seat had risen and she ended up sitting on the floor, damaging her tailbone. Lose-face-and-hurt-your-ass-syndrome, I guess.
BTW, you can still hear the national anthem if you attend a concert at the National Concert Hall. 8)
Maoman you have a great memory. I definitely remember the piles of garbage on the street and cruising between Spin, Tops, and all the Roxys. Owl’s Nest was always entertaining at around 4 a.m. And the Bushiban, man… reminded me of the Star Wars bar at times. Remember a kid in there once with a cicadia flying around on a string suction cupped to his forehead. Let’s see, what else: doing escape drills in schools to avoid police raids, people staring at you like they had never seen a foreigner, didn’t they used to have Tsingtao beer? Anyway, glad to have it available now. I remember spending many nights eating on the street and being told Taiwan beer is ok but gives you a terrible hangover because it’s made with formeldehyde (a Taiwanese urban myth?). I came to Taipei in 1992 and remember standing before every movie for the national anthem. Oh and the garbage trucks seem to be playing a catchy new tune these days:-) Hshimending (spelling?) looks awful now, like it was rebuilt after a war or something, although it’s always been an eyesore. People are definitely more fashion conscious nowadays. Businessmen are beginning to move beyong the Michael Jackson white socks look and actually just yesterday on the subway I saw someone wearing a jacket that said “Procock fashion” on it…very hip:-)
You know I remember sitting in a cafe that was the definition of tacky 10 years ago wondering about something. What if that period of time represented the glory days of Taiwanese culture, sort of like how Americans look back at the fifties era. What if people look back in 10 years and say remember that great little diner that was so cool? It was a scary thought:-) Maybe it’s another topic, but anyone think that Taipei or Taiwan culture can be broken down into 10 year eras? If so, what was 10 years ago and what is now?
I remember they played the anthem at Pulp Fiction. When did that movie come out again?
I also remember going to Buffalo Town once, as well as Tops (and their weird rock ashtrays) and those Castle Beers.
One big change is back then, when Taiwan’s economy was hot to trot, was lots of local talk about how “white people were going down”, (since all foreignors are white; also keep in mind there seemed to be more North Americans working as strippers, hostesses, prostitutes here, something rather new at the time) and chuckles and ridicule every time there was a horrible natural disaster in the US (like the floods that hit the southern US). An incredibly arrogant attitude brought on by sudden success, something that happens to every human regardless of race. Of course, this attitude changed when the US economy really took off in the late 90s and that September quake here.
Don’t know how we overlooked this one: the dogs. Ten years ago Taipei was full of homeless dogs (with almost unbelievable skin afflictions) that people seemed to enjoy throwing things at or kicking. It reminded me of NY’s homeless person problem, where there were so many people just grew immune to feeling any compassion. Nice to see that’s changed.
Changes in ten years will be quite huge. Actually, only one year will result in big changes. About 15 years ago, a street near my house in Panchiao was just a farming area. Now there is high apartments, saturated with internet cafes, fast food stores, supermarkets and 7-11 stores. As it is near by the MRT, the rent increased dramatically. The department stores and big malls are opened. You must be amused to find out how effective and fast construction is… and comparing that to ten years ago, young people have a much better figure, and are taller and fatter.
The dogs have gone ??? That was quick. When I left in 97 they were still festering in the sunshine. That was my No 1 gripe about Taipei. Come on, they’re still there aren’t they? Barking all f***ing night…
So is all this legislation a good thing or not ? Crash helmets, drink driving, white lines… doesn’t anybody miss the wild east feeling ? I certainly noticed that it was a damn site harder to get jobs in the late 90s than it was in the early 90s.
Next thing you know there’ll be tourists coming to the island… then you know it’s time to leave…
Until 1992, they sold the American version of Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Club, and Gallery at every convenience store and even at the train stations. And they weren’t censored at all.
There also used to be lots of Pachinko parlors everywhere, and they were exactly like the Pachinko parlors that are still in Japan nowadays.
And there used to be lots of video game parlors, too. They used to be legal, so they didn’t use to have black windows and dark lighting like they do now. And there were Tetris arcade games everywhere, even at restaurants and cafeterias.
There were also strip shows called “beef markets” (niu2 rou4 chang3), but they were different than Western strip bars because in Taiwan, they weren’t bars. Instead, there were two-hour shows which were at old theaters. (Five or six shows a day, every day of the week.) First a girl would come on stage wearing a nightgown and holding a microphone and sing a song. Then she would go backstage for a minute and then she would come out again stark naked and sing two or three more songs while she stood there naked holding the microphone. (You never got to see her get undressed.) Then she would sit down on a chair with wheels and spread her legs wide open while a guy slowly pushed the chair from one side of the stage to the other so that everyone could get a good look. Then she would go backstage and another girl would come out and do the same routine (about one girl every five minutes). At the end of the show, all of the girls (about 20 to 25 girls) would come on stage stark naked, standing beside each other while everyone clapped. It’s really a shame that they don’t have these shows anymore because they were much better than Western strip bars. You never had to give any tips and you never had to buy any drinks. And they always had a bright spotlight pointing right at the girl, compared to the dark lighting at most Western strip bars.
Before the Taiwan edition of Penthouse knocked it off the shelves, there was a lookalike called Panthorse. A collector’s item (if the pages weren’t stuck together).
Spack, you’re cheating. That was more than ten years ago, so either your nostalgia has you away with the mixer or you’re exaggerating excessively![/quote]
He ain’t cheatin’…I remember the anthem too. And no ARCs. And no Grandma Nitti’s, only a small shop on the corner of Jinhua and Yongkang with some woman who claimed she used to cook for the US Navy, or something like that, who made a wicked BLT. (Better than the ones you get now, fer sure.) That was 1984. OK, so I went back for a breather in between…so shoot me!
Italian Vespa scooters used to be very popular here during the 1980’s, especially the Vespa PX, which was much better than the Japanese scooters because it had a four-stroke engine (100 cc, 125 cc, or 150 cc) and manual transmission. There were four gears, and you changed gears by pressing the clutch (the lever on the left handlebar) while turning the left handlebar.
In fact, if it wasn’t for Piaggio, there wouldn’t be any scooters in the world, because Piaggio invented the scooter in 1946 (but they didn’t export them to Taiwan until the 1960’s), and then Honda, Yamaha, and Suzuki started making scooters in the early 70’s. (In addition, Cushman and Lambretta also made scooters in the 50’s and 60’s, but they were never exported to Taiwan.)
Here’s the story about how Piaggio invented the scooter in 1946:
Vespa scooters all looked almost exactly the same from 1946 until about 1985. That’s when Vespa stopped making the PX and started making scooters which look just like the Japanese scooters.
Vespa still makes scooters, but I hardly ever see them in Taiwan anymore. They used to really stand out because they looked so different than the Japanese scooters. And Taiwanese people would often brag about how the Vespa engines were built much better than the engines in the Japanese scooters. But in Taiwan, it isn’t “cool” to have a scooter that’s more than 5 years old, so the Vespa PX started to die out in the early 90’s.
By the way, “vespa” means “wasp” in Italian (because of the buzzing sound of a scooter engine).
And the Bushiban, man… reminded me of the Star Wars bar at times. Remember a kid in there once with a cicadia flying around on a string suction cupped to his forehead. Let’s see, what else: doing escape drills in schools to avoid police raids, people staring at you like they had never seen a foreigner, didn’t they used to have Tsingtao beer? Anyway, glad to have it available now. I remember spending many nights eating on the street and being told Taiwan beer is ok but gives you a terrible hangover because it’s made with formeldehyde (a Taiwanese urban myth?). I came to Taipei in 1992 and remember standing before every movie for the national anthem. Oh and the garbage trucks seem to be playing a catchy new tune these days:-) Hshimending (spelling?) looks awful now, like it was rebuilt after a war or something, although it’s always been an eyesore. People are definitely more fashion conscious nowadays. Businessmen are beginning to move beyong the Michael Jackson white socks look and actually just yesterday on the subway I saw someone wearing a jacket that said “Procock fashion” on it…very hip:-)