Television exchanges
Taiwanese‑Malaysian exchanges extend well beyond music. Turn on a TV at 3 p.m. in Malaysia and you’ll find long-running programs set in rural Taiwan that have a large Malaysian fan base. They’re so popular that Malaysia’s Astro television service even created a station devoted exclusively to them in 2007.
The Taiwanese “idol show” Meteor Garden has also been a huge hit, tearing through Malaysia like a whirlwind and turning not just ethnic Chinese but also native Malays into fans of the Taiwanese boy band F4.
Interestingly, the driving force behind the spread of Taiwanese TV shows on Malaysian TV has been a Taiwanese woman named Yoko Chou. Married to a Malaysian man, Chou also happens to be the CEO of Enjoy TV Holdings.
Chou has continued to pursue her TV career in Malaysia, using her extensive connections and experience to bring Taiwanese and Malaysian resources to bear on producing TV programs. She has also worked with mainland China’s Jiangsu Broadcasting and Malaysian television networks to shoot a variety of programs. “My role is to be something of a platform, to bring Taiwanese talent to Malaysia and mainland China, and to spur cooperation by enabling that talent to be seen.”
Chou branched out into film in 2012, and in 2015 released My Mr. Right, a film that features Taiwanese actors Tou Chung-hua and Lin Mei-hsiu, as well as Malaysian and mainland Chinese cast members. As the Malaysian film industry’s first “trilateral” venture, it established a template that the rest of the industry can follow to make Chinese-language films.
Taiwan’s experience has been proving important to the development of the Malaysian film industry. Chou’s husband Dato’ Sam Yap, president of the Kuala Lumpur Chinese TV & Film Association (KLCTFA), admits: “Malaysia’s film industry has developed more slowly than its other entertainment industries.”
Ah Niu filmed Ice Kacang Puppy Love in 2010. During a subsequent interview with Taiwanese variety-show matriarch Chang Hsiao-yen, he mentioned that Malaysian films with more than 60% of their dialog in Chinese were considered foreign films and subject to a 20% entertainment tax. The reporting of this news prompted the Malaysian government to amend the law, which in turn began the development of Chinese-language film in Malaysia. Such policy restrictions used to discourage Chinese Malaysians from going into film production, and contributed to the sector’s relatively late development. The industry’s next hurdle is overcoming its resultant lack of film professionals.
In 2015, the KLCTFA and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Malaysia jointly organized the Malaysia and Taiwan Film Festival and the Golden Butterfly Awards, inviting Taiwanese and Malaysian directors, writers, producers, and actors to attend forums and take part in exchanges. Sam Yap, who chaired the organizing committee, says: “It was a good beginning. I hope to see more cooperation and exchange between Taiwan and Malaysia in the future.”
TV is an incredibly important form of entertainment in Malaysia, where the average urban household watches 3.7 hours per day and the average rural household watches 4.3 hours per day. With the Malaysian government planning to move all of the country’s state-owned TV stations to digital broadcasting by 2018, and with Enjoy TV Holdings having won the license to operate a block of the broadcasting spectrum and been authorized to devote it entirely to Mandarin programming, Chou and Yap believe that the time is right for Malaysia and Taiwan to deepen their cooperation and that such cooperation will benefit the professionals, capital, and talent on both sides.
Malaysians regularly listen to Taiwanese pop music, watch Taiwanese TV, and even occasionally read the books of Taiwan authors. Taiwan and Malaysia’s many years of close cultural exchanges have incorporated “Taiwanese elements” into Malaysian lives. Moving forward, cultural soft power will undoubtedly play an important role in our deepening ties to one another.
Taiwanese and Malaysian TV and film professionals are undertaking exchanges in multiple areas, creating opportunities for cooperation and mutually beneficial ventures. (courtesy of Enjoy TV Corp.)
These members of a Taiwan study tour traveled the island for 21 days, learning about folk arts through experience-oriented classes.
Taiwan and Malaysia’s extensive musical exchanges include Malaysian singer Athena’s three appearances on the Taiwanese TV show One Million Star. (courtesy of Enjoy TV Corp.)
Crowds pack Malaysia’s annual BookFest. (courtesy of Popular Book Co.)
Drop into any Popular bookstore and you’re sure to find the works of Taiwanese authors on the shelves.