Hop into a record shop, and you'll immediately see that amidst the bewildering variety of contemporary pop music, repackaged oldies are also making a fresh appearance on the shelves, and some record companies have even coughed up the dough to set up special oldies displays. You want it? You got it: from the singers of Shanghai-style songs of the prewar era to the crooners of the 1960s TV variety show Assembly of Stars to performers like Feng Fei-fei, Liu Wen-cheng, and Lin Hui-ping in the late 1970s.
You say you're a fan of Western music instead? Don't you worry 'bout a thing: Retrospective collections from the Beatles, the Carpenters, the Eagles, the Bee Gees, Elvis, and Lobo have been flooding the market at a pace that is virtually impossible to keep up with.
Ahead to the past
Pop culture consumers have always placed a premium on novelty, so how many people are really going to buy all those old songs sitting on the shelves? "There is definitely a market for repackaged oldies," says Li Yen-tsung of Himalaya Records, revealing that more than twice as many retrospective albums were released in 2002 as in previous years. It used to be that record companies had little interest in reissues, figuring: "Who's going to buy this unhip stuff?" Even if they did produce some oldies CDs, these were targeted at low-end night-market sales, selling for less than NT$100 apiece, so the companies certainly weren't going to invest anything in promoting them.
But in the last couple of years many in the recording industry have been putting serious effort into the reissue market, and the phenomenon is reaching the critical mass for a consumer fad. Not only are they routinely getting NT$300-400 per CD, one particular CD by Teresa Teng, who enjoyed worldwide popularity among Chinese in her lifetime, costs a nifty NT$1000, more expensive than new pop releases. Li Yen-tsung avers that a market in "nostalgia" for those reaching middle age is taking shape in Taiwan, and the outlook is for continued growth.
A lot of the products in this nostalgia wave come from the pop culture of the 1950s and 1960s. The people who are now the main consumers of nostalgia products-whose generations, based on a widely used formulation in Taiwan, are known as "fourth graders" and "fifth graders"-were children then. As products of the postwar baby boom, they grew up in the period when Taiwan's economy was making the transition from agricultural to urban, when purchasing power was rising sharply, so that people could afford to spend money on entertainment and pop culture.
Each era has a different pop culture look. Back in the 1950s, kids found their greatest happiness in comic books by the likes of Yeh Hung-chia and Liu Hsing-chin; this was also when those soda-pop bottles with the marbles in them, cartoon-character trading cards, and chouchoule (a prize-drawing game) came on the scene. The 1960s were the age of the Beatles and Elvis, Assembly of Stars, the film Liang Shanpo and Zhu Yingtai, and products like railroad boxed lunches. Even if you might not know what these are, Taiwan's "fourth-grade" and "fifth-grade" baby-boomers will definitely remember them, as well the folk music that was added to their collective memory in the 1970s. Even though much time has passed since those days, such deeply embedded memories need only be delicately jostled and they will come rushing back, only sweeter and warmer.
Having grown up in that environment, fourth and fifth-graders-despite the fact that they now have gray hair or perhaps no hair at all-are still habitual consumers. They have never experienced war, and many of them still "think young." They far surpass earlier generations in terms of their pursuit of novelty, while they are just as willing to try keeping up with fashion as the e-generation, and appear to have just as few qualms about parting with their money.
In fact, this nostalgic phase is not occurring only in Taiwan. In the United States, the postwar baby boom generation still plays a leading role in most fields. In Japan, the 38-56 age group accounts for about 30 million people, or one quarter of the total population. In all three countries, this group is rejecting a pop culture that seems to care only about teenagers, and marketing experts have taken note of the enormous business opportunities thereby presented. Going with the flow and responding to consumers' nostalgic sentiments, marketers have been putting out wave after wave of products that were popular when this group was young.
You're never too old
The winds of nostalgia wafting over the island of Taiwan are not only getting an enthusiastic reaction from fourth and fifth-graders, but are showing resonance among other generations as well.
On August 21-22, 2002, Min Sheng Daily, a local newspaper specializing in sports and entertainment news, sponsored two oldies concerts at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, inviting a number of passe pop stars to sing their classic Mandarin hits. They began selling tickets on June 29, and both shows-some 5,000 seats-were sold out within two weeks.
Moreover, people who were unable to buy tickets-including a number of well-known celebrities-demanded that the sponsors stage extra shows. Eventually, Min Sheng Daily agreed to add another gig, and the 2500 tickets for that were cleaned out in a single morning. After the event, the emcee, Chen Kai-lun, said that this was the most moving event he had ever hosted. There was not an empty seat to be found, no one left halfway through, and everyone felt as if they were being carried back in time on a genteel current of luxurious music.
Wu Ying-yin, now 81 years old, who made her career as a singer of prewar Shanghai-style songs, announced on the occasion of her "farewell concert" in Hong Kong two years ago that she would never perform again. But in response to enthusiastic requests from Taiwan, last month she staged a benefit concert for "senior middle-aged people" 60 and older. The sponsors originally planned for one show each in northern, central, and southern Taiwan, never expecting that all three shows would be sold out within three days.
More amazingly, several elderly folk who were unable to get tickets appeared at the sponsoring organization where they button-holed concert organizers and poured out their plaints: We have been listening to so many of her songs since we were very young, but we've never had the chance to see her in person. This is like the realization of an old dream, and would be one of the biggest things ever to happen to me if I could go.... One statement-"If I miss this great opportunity, I will never live to see another"-was especially effective at making the organizers feel guilty, so that they were left with little choice but to add another show in order to satisfy these fans.
Two of the most coveted performers in this oldies wave are Tsai Chin, who became famous during the "campus folksong" era, and Fei Yu-ching, long a favorite of now-middle-aged people. In April 2002, they performed a show of classic Shanghai tunes in that city, creating a sensation. Shortly thereafter, Hong Kong, Macao, and Singapore, not wanting to be left out of the fun, put on shows featuring Tsai and Fei, who drew unprecedented crowds each time they hit a new town.
Tsai Chin's comeback was such a success in the Chinese-speaking world that Taiwan's Godot Theater Company decided to strike while the iron was hot and invested NT$3.2 million in a musical that would feature Tsai, A Passionate Night in Shanghai. In this show Tsai sings and dances, interpreting 18 classic numbers from Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, enough to intoxicate the fans of this music.
The never-ending story
At the end of December, 2002, fuel was added to the nostalgia flames by two performances of Liang Zhu (the love story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai) at Chungshan Hall. There are many old music fans who can never get enough of the huangmeidiao style of Liang Zhu. The lead actress in the original film, Ling Po, who played the role of the male character Liang Shanbo, had announced many years ago that she was saying goodbye to the stage, but she couldn't resist repeated calls from her fans, and in recent years has again begun to perform. In 2002, to mark the 40th anniversary of the release of the original movie, Ling Po and her old partner Hu Chin once again put on their makeup and took to the stage, touring Taiwan in a show featuring the musical highlights of the film.
Amidst this Liang Zhu revival, Chen Yao-chi, a director of Chinese-language films active in the 1970s and 1980s, accepted an invitation from the Taipei City Bureau of Cultural Affairs to bring Liang Zhu back to the stage, to be performed during the Taipei Festival of the Arts.
Chen's Liang Zhu had Lang Tsu-yun in the role of Liang Shanbo and Xia Wei playing Zhu Yingtai. Liu Ta-lun, who holds an MA in theatrical arts from Yale University, was brought in to do stage design, with Lin Heng-cheng, chairman of the department of fashion design at Shih Chien University in Kaohsiung, handling costumes. With more than 50 members of the Taipei Municipal Chinese Orchestra doing accompaniment, and a twelve-member mixed chorus providing support off stage, the production, held free of charge at Chungshan Hall Plaza, was a delight in which fans of the genre could truly revel.
"We wanted to pay our respects to this more than 40-year-old film in a way that would show respect for the tradition," explains Chen Yao-chi. They opted for an outdoor production, hoping to share a crisp autumn evening with the public as in the old days, when most people saw stage plays and even movies outdoors, giving everybody "a chance to enjoy a collective memory of old Taipei residents."
Despite the fact that heaven did not cooperate on the night of the performance (it rained), this did not dampen the enthusiasm of fans. Those who had thought ahead simply pulled out their rain gear, while those who had no raincoats held newspapers over their heads or ducked under trees, all the while never missing a beat in singing along with the performance line by line.
Taipei City Bureau of Cultural Affairs Director Lung Ying-tai not only personally attended both performances, she brought her parents along as well. In the future, she said, the Bureau of Cultural Affairs will hold more events like this that tap into people's collective memories.
Getting better with age
There is, in fact, nothing novel about nostalgia fads for popular culture. They are more or less part of our lives at most times. In 1995, radio host Tao Hsiao-ching invited a dozen or so singers from older and younger generations to hold a retrospective concert on 20 years of Taiwan folk at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. The event set new records for packing in the crowds, and many friends suggested that it would be fun to hold such concerts every few years.
It is just that the current fad seems to be especially intense.
In January of 2002, at the reopening of the Chungshan Hall in Taipei, one of the main events on the program was a concert of "campus folk music" from the late 1970s and early 1980s. As you might expect, "fourth and fifth-graders," who were in their teens or twenties at that time, responded in large numbers, and the tickets for the two days of shows sold out. Virtually all the significant singers from that era were on hand to cover their well-known hits. Yang Hsuan, a first generation folksinger living in the US, even made a special trip back to Taiwan to participate, and sang a duet with Hu Teh-fu that brought memories flooding back.
Tao Hsiao-ching says that her initial idea, which she discussed with the management of the Chungshan Hall, was that the event would be called "the story of campus folk," and two younger hosts would be invited to tell the story in order to add a little more sparkle to the evening. She didn't expect that everyone thought it would be most appropriate if she told the story because "only people who were part of events can really bring back the feeling of those days." Tao says self-deprecatingly that under "difficult circumstances," with her hair turning gray and her figure long gone, the only thing to do was for her to get up on the stage and tell the story of how folk music electrified a generation.
In search of old Taiwan
Of course, in a commercialized era, a nostalgia fad is not limited to movies and music. Deeply embedded memories of old flavors and old toys remain powerful, and many old-fashioned products are showing enormous commercial potential. "Stone age" products like chocolate toothpaste, candy cigarettes, chouchoule, soda-pop bottles with marbles inside, and beanbags are hot sellers.
For example, the Hi-Life convenience store chain has debuted a series of nostalgia products under a Chinese name evoking the same connotations as "the old general store" or "ye olde shoppe." Brother Wang and Brother Liu comic books, chewy "QQ" candy, Morinaga caramels, straws for blowing "glue bubbles," and lollipops have been selling so fast that it's hard to keep them in stock. Moreover, the marketing of "Alishan boxed lunches"-actually made on Alishan (Mt. Ali) by local cooks using local ingredients-by the 7-Eleven convenience store chain not only has made the Alishan boxed-lunch restaurants once again into tourist attractions, it has kept the old chefs so busy that their hands are sore.
The nostalgia wave has also washed over the Internet. Web-sters have begun using the Internet to record their memories of the toys, songs, television programs, and movies that accompanied them in childhood. Some have gone a step further and organized nostalgia clubs, discussing their memories on Internet bulletin boards.
Not long ago, eBay held an activity entitled "In Search of Old Taiwan," attracting more then 1600 net-surfers to vote for the product they thought most typified "the old days" in Taiwan. The winner, with more than 800 votes, was an old wooden vegetable storage box used before the widespread availability of refrigeration. Four items tied for second: Tatung Corporation promotional dolls, Zhuge Silang comic books, patriotic lottery tickets, and a Japanese cartoon series known in Chinese as Little Science Hero which aired during the early 1980s. There are also online auctions for nostalgia products.
Publishers are also on the nostalgia bandwagon. Eurasian Press two years ago produced a collaborative work by six "fifth-grader" authors entitled Fifth-Grade Classmates. The work attracted a great deal of attention, with comments on the book jacket finding particularly strong resonance among many people: "Fifth-graders grew up in a repressed era when boys had military style haircuts and girls could have hair no longer than one centimeter above the ears. In those days boys and girls were kept in separate classes in middle school, and when they took the university entrance examinations, they had to make out a list of their preferred schools before even knowing their scores. The most popular cartoons were Peerless Steel and Little Science Hero, and the spot where people went on dates with their first loves was the shaved-ice shop next to the school. The 'hottest' activities in summer vacation were events organized by the China Youth Corps, like hiking to Mt. Ali and summer 'combat' camps on military bases."
Fifth-grade reunion
Fifth-Grade Classmates has struck a chord, and is now in its sixth printing. Last April Eurasian Publishing followed up with The Fifth-Grader Youth Commemorative Handbook, written by "Mimiko" (a Taiwanese writer well-known for her online publications). This nostalgia book, with illustrations and text, corrals many beautiful childhood memories for fourth and fifth-graders.
In addition, Luo Ta-you, a fourth-grader who has been described as "the godfather of Taiwanese music," has published a book on his own childhood. As he explains on the cover, "The journey of aging is a journey of growing. So long as one remains in a fertile, nourishing place, one will continue to grow. That feeling is like continually returning to childhood." Luo suggests that though the childhood years are now obscure, they have left profound marks. They seem far away and remote, but they have roots in our selves, and will never be forgotten.
Mimiko relates that she began to have a powerful ambition to recall the past as a result, oddly enough, of the high speed of the Internet. She discovered that the more she ran to keep up with the cyber world, the more she found she was behind the times, so she figured she might as well just go backwards. Only then did she discover her own background was so beautiful and so unforgettable.
Author Liu Yung says that two factors explain why people are fond of old things or prefer to think back on the past. The first is that they are satisfied with their present reality, but still appreciate things from an "aesthetic distance." Like collectors of antiques, they are simply admirers of beauty. A second reason is that people are dissatisfied with the status quo, and cannot establish values that fit the present, while contemporary culture cannot satisfy their spiritual needs. So all they can do is to turn back to their old values to fill the void in their hearts.
Those were the days
Peng Hay-jan, an associate professor of social work in the College of Law at Tunghai University, says that nostalgia is not a question of good or bad, but certainly does to a certain extent imply dissatisfaction with the status quo, and a belief that today is not as good as yesterday. By way of example, he points to the nostalgia fad in the US.
In the 1990s, American power and status were at their peak. Everything seemed to be going well, both political leaders and ordinary citizens were enjoying life, and people were full of confidence. They turned their eyes to the future, thinking "Tomorrow will be even better" and "In the future America will be even stronger." But in recent years the American economy has slowed down, and there was also the September 11 incident. Many people have begun to miss the glory days gone by. Nostalgia products have been emerging to satisfied people's demand.
"Basically, Taiwan's situation is similar to that of the US. We are in an age of uncertainty, and the economy is in a downturn. The larger environment is unsatisfying, so the best way to duck reality is to see the past as good, to get warmth and solace from memorable products and moments," says Peng.
While the nostalgia craze can be interpreted in many ways, Mimiko believes that thinking back to the past does not necessarily mean one is turning into an old fogey. "It's a very natural thing, and a feeling that arises only when one has lived, when there are experiences worth preserving. Why don't children feel nostalgia? Because they do not have enough experience in life, and they have not accumulated enough memories worth treasuring. When they accumulate a certain amount, they naturally will also feel nostalgic."
Perhaps nostalgia is nothing more than human nature, and a kind of pleasant diversion like pop culture itself. When the past is gone, all that we can do is recall its essence, so we might as well happily enjoy the reemergence of so many things from the old days while we can.
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(facing page) In a nod of respect to the 40-year-old film classic Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, the Taipei City Bureau of Cultural Affairs reinterpreted the script for an outdoor show at the Chungshan Hall Plaza, attracting a crowd of nostalgic fans.
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Baby boomers will never forget the folk music wave, and through retro concerts those beautiful memories of the past can be brought again to the surface.
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Western oldies are also part of the current nostalgia wave-every sha-la-la-la, every whoa-whoa-whoa, it's yesterday once more.
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Food and objects of daily use from days gone by are also part of the nostalgia fad. Though old, these shared memories will never disappear.
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In a simple jar can be stored whole childhoods, happy moments, and countless memories.
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The old signs indicating that a shop was licensed to sell tobacco and alcohol are deeply etched into many people's memories.
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The Tatung promotional dolls given away with every purchase accompanied many a child through both happy and sad moments.
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Old-fashioned songs, dusty albums.... But for those who were young when they were hits, they are precious memories. (photo by Jimmy Lin)
Food and objects of daily use from days gone by are also part of the nostalgia fad. Though old, these shared memories will never disappear.
Western oldies are also part of the current nostalgia wave-every sha-la-la-la, every whoa-whoa-whoa, it's yesterday once more.
Old-fashioned songs, dusty albums.... But for those who were young when they were hits, they are precious memories.
The Tatung promotional dolls given away with every purchase accompanied many a child through both happy and sad moments.
In a simple jar can be stored whole childhoods, happy moments, and countless memories.
The old signs indicating that a shop was licensed to sell tobacco and alcohol are deeply etched into many people's memories.
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