Over these past ten years, the number of things one would hope to accomplish were too many, and time--as always--was too brief. The most fortunate occurrence, however, has been that we have been able to find a group of young, dedicated teachers, many just back from studies abroad, and bring them together in one campus. It was truly providential that they were retained even in Lu-chow's dilapidated environment and buildings.

Each new teacher that comes brings along some new things. For example, in the Department of Music, just last semester they invited a Vietnamese professor, Chen Wen-hsi, to come from Paris to teach traditional Vietnamese music in hopes of giving the students a new angle. But there are also severe difficulties Many teachers invited back are not only faced with heavy responsibilities on campus, they are also often artistic pioneers in society. They must both teach and create and perform; since both require a great deal of time, it is hard to give them each the attention they deserve.

Good teachers can affect the development of the whole department, and are crucial. In order to bring in top talent, the NIA employs a number of flexible methods. For example the Department of Dance has invited nearly twenty foreign guest lecturers, all of them being top dancers in first-rate companies. As for teachers with great expertise who are short on credential, we bring them in under the headings of "resident artist" or "arts instructor." Two examples are Peking Opera master Liang Hsiu-chuan, or Glove Puppet teacher Huang Hai-tai.

The faculty at the NIA are truly inspiring. Take for example the "Center for Research in the Traditional Arts." Its establishment was approved by the Ministry of Education in 1982, but as yet no funds have been appropriated, nor personnel assigned. However, we have worked around this. The colleagues who work there all share one large office. Some already having MA degrees are willing to stay as "work-study students," giving up jobs outside where they could earn NT$50-60,000 a month, braving sun and rain to travel about small towns and village fields to collect information on traditional customs.

As for the students, this year there are a total of 624 students in the four departments and the newly established graduate programs in music, drama, and fine arts. Thinking back, the students one cherishes most were those recruited during the several years when the NIA entrance was independent of the university system. At that time the joint college entrance exams and the NIA entrance test were the same day: If you chose to take the latter and didn't get in, then you wasted a whole year. It was like the "Dare to Die" corps, and people had to make a real commitment to study here. After the school became part of the joint entrance exams in 1985, there was some alteration. Therefore we are preparing so that in the future graduate student recruitment can rely more heavily on interviews, because you can't really tell anything about a person's character from written test scores or their art portfolio or repertoire alone.

When the NIA had just recently been set up, everyone had great hopes for the "interlinked arts education" system. It was hoped that an affiliated middle school might be established. But a new arts education law, which has been under consideration since 1979, is still "being studied" by the Ministry of Education. Recall that the new Kuantu campus was just completed this year, and that an affiliated middle school would need dormitories, how could the "offspring" be hatched without a place to live? The only thing to do is put it off. Not to mention the fact that there are still many problems in domestic arts education, so we must move cautiously. Because people's orientations change with time, we can only successfully implement the concept of "interlinked arts education" if we have a system like that in France: There is one channel for normal education, and one for arts education which also starts at the youngest ages and continues upward, yet there is interchange between the two channels, and it is easy to leave or enter either one. But even Germany and Japan have not yet reached this point. Japan has an arts education system that goes from nursery school to a Ph.D., but it is very difficult to transfer to the normal educational system if your direction changes. You have to worry about this even more in our system.

Yet there have been improvements in the arts education system in the last few years. The Ministry of Education has an "Arts Education Committee," headed up by Vice-Minister Chao Chin-chi, which has been quite helpful in many ways. For example, in the past the budget for "instructional facilities" was set at the same level as for an institute for the humanities: NT$1 million per year. Yet, if you think about it you could have fifty students taking one class in the humanities, but could you have fifty students for one class in piano or voice? So now it has been changed to the level of the physical sciences: NT$2.5 million per year.

It doesn't matter how many places in the legal framework are still inappropriate, or that change is slow, like all teachers we just prefer to keep our noses to the grindstone. But arts education absolutely cannot be taken out of the context of cultural development and history. I often encourage all performances to tour the various cities and counties. This April when the Lan Temple in Ta-chia held its Matsu festival, I urged the more than 80 students in the drama department to also go to participate in the procession. The activities lasted for eight days and seven nights--but only if they actually went through this would they know the challenge of art and the real meaning of setting down roots. In another area, art has recently also gone along with the trend in society toward protest with the lifting of martial law, with the small drama troupes, the May 20 fine arts exhibit, and so on. However, the NIA has not followed this trend. Of course, teachers and students can have their own responses to society as individuals, but in general I believe in responding less and studying more. If one reacts too hastily, there is no time to learn anything. I tell students that the environment will never be perfect, and you should study well when it is time to study, and go forth yourself when it is time to go forth.

Looking back over these ten years, I have always maintained one concept: If you don't start today, then ten years from now you still have to start from scratch. Art is something that accumulates bit by bit, and is not in the least something one can make a sudden fortune on. This year is only the fifth graduating class at the NIA, and only the fourth for the Department of Dance. If you add to this that people must do military service, and may go abroad to study, then our achievements are still not so self- evident. But give us time--we've only just grown up.

[Picture Caption]

The cultured director of the National Institute of the Arts, Pao You-yu, has laid a firm foundation for the NIA over the last decade. (photo by Huang Lili)

In July, the NIA got to hold this year's graduation ceremony in the new Kuantu campus. (photo by Huang Lili)

In July, the NIA got to hold this year's graduation ceremony in the new Kuantu campus. （photo by Huang Lili）