At noon, with the scorching sun overhead, the heat is hard to bear. In Xin Li-Mei’s performance tent, the cast is backstage busily dressing and applying makeup. A few boxes bearing the names of troupe members have been arranged to serve as vanities. Among them, one sticks out for its distinctly foreign-sounding name: Annie.
The name belongs to Nguyen Ngoc Anh, a Vietnamese “new immigrant” who has married a Taiwanese. The Vietnamese “Anh” sounds a lot like “Annie,” so she adopted Annie as her name when she joined a circus at the age of ten. The name came with her to Taiwan when she moved here in 2005, and she’s continued to use it ever since. Her family and friends are accustomed to calling “Annie, Annie” to get her attention, but before she came to Taiwan the name was already following her as she soared through the air and performed back flips at the National Circus of Vietnam.
The itinerant life of a circus performer
Taking advantage of some free time before a performance, Annie looks at a blurry photograph on her cell phone. It transports her back to the age of ten, when she left home for the circus for the first time, and began practicing bends and stretches.
Annie hails from Thanh Hoa in northern Vietnam. One day her father saw a television commercial announcing auditions for the National Circus of Vietnam and immediately started hoping that one of his children would try out. A playful, extraverted lover of dance, Annie was the one to satisfy her father’s wishes.
After three rounds of highly competitive tryouts, Annie was selected, becoming the youngest member of the circus. “Bends, stretches, a sense of balance—I had to learn everything,” Annie says. Her original curiosity about life in the city was replaced with the hardship of training. During her first year at the circus, homesick Annie was frequently reduced to tears.
Just when she was ready to give up on her training, someone retired, and the performing circus was short one person. The circus wanted Annie to fill in, and she became its youngest member, traveling abroad and all over Vietnam to perform.
Learning Taiwanese
The bright stage lights of the circus brought Annie from a small town in northern Vietnam to the splendorous capital of Hanoi, and then carried her even farther, to Taiwan, where she has embarked on a new life, working in another performing art.
In 2005, Annie, then 19, arrived with the circus at the now-defunct Yito Show Village in Chiayi, for a year-long stay. Vaudeville routines, back flips, high-wire and trapeze acts… she did them all. The difficult feats of derring-do always earned nice rounds of applause. At the time Annie was unaware that her future father-in-law Zhang Jinhu had seen her perform and was pulling strings with an acquaintance to arrange a meeting with his son, Zhang Fangyuan.
Fangyuan, the third generation of his family to perform Taiwanese Opera, was serving in the military, but he got wind that his father was arranging a meeting with a potential bride. Still quite young, Fangyuan was resistant to the idea—up until he laid eyes on Annie and saw how innocent and earnest she was. Then he decided to make a proposal.
Upon moving to Taiwan as a bride, Annie busily adapted to her new life and to taking care of her newborn daughter. With very limited Mandarin and Taiwanese, Annie thought that the most she could do for the troupe was “perform odd jobs or perhaps a few summersaults or small roles.” But the troupe encountered a shortage of performers, so Annie, despite the language gap, had to steel herself to get up on stage and perform.
Just uttering five lines proved to be difficult. To prepare for her first performance, Annie went to her husband for lessons and used the Vietnamese alphabet to create approximate sounds. “He’d say a line and then I’d parrot it.” But because it was all memorized cold, with no true understanding, once she actually got up on stage, “My mind went blank, and I forgot everything!”
Annie’s Taiwanese improved, and five years ago, when a retiring member of the company spotted her performance potential, they specially invited Annie to play the role of Nüwa, the creator of human civilization in Chinese mythology.
She had a lot of performing experience, and possessed great stage charm and a limber body, but for Taiwanese Opera you’ve got to be able to recite lengthy passages and sing. The stylized opera poses must also be fully mastered.
Then there are the difficulties created by the lack of a regular schedule. Annie had to learn her part in just a week. Her husband, as well as the troupe’s director and senior performers, all became her instructors.
Annie understood very little Taiwanese back then, so she had to memorize everything and was unable to react in the moment. But she has come to speak Taiwanese fluently, with less of an accent than her Mandarin. She even works with other members of the troupe in developing scenarios and writing scripts.
Annie, who had never imagined that she’d be singing Taiwanese Opera, acknowledges there’s nothing easy about life in a Taiwanese Opera troupe. Things really ratchet up during the peak season, when they may be busily performing without a break for an entire month. They’ll have set performances at noon and in the evening, and then afterwards have to move on to their next location.
If she’s lucky, the performance locations will be near to Chiayi, so that she can find some time to go home and rest. But most often they’ll have to drive to the site of their next performance overnight, scurrying from one county or municipality to another. Typically, it’s the wee hours of the morning before the theater tent is erected and they can go to sleep. But she doesn’t regard the lifestyle as one of hardship. “Rather than causing me suffering,” she says in Taiwanese, “it’s making me stronger.”
As she has traveled with the troupe, she has attained quite a following, and often receives red envelopes and fruit in appreciation. Many say that they won’t watch if she’s not performing. “They want to hear my Vietnamese accent,” Annie says. She finds herself “truly moved” by the response, which has exceeded all expectations.
Since she married her husband Zhang Fangyuan in 2005, Annie’s story has garnered a lot of attention, and the media has crowned her with all kind of titles, including the “Vietnamese Sun Tsui-feng” (after the most famous Taiwanese Opera diva). But this is how she spends her days off:
Sometimes after the troupe has performed for the better part of a month without a break, she takes advantage of a free day to sleep until the afternoon. Sometimes she gets behind Zhang Fangyuan for a spin on his motorcycle, or joins her friends on outings to the mountains or the shore. Otherwise, she might cook some of her favorite Vietnamese dishes or watch some Taiwanese Opera videos on YouTube to study postures and phrasing, thus bolstering her foundation in the art’s basics. She might even take her daughter to watch performances of the National Circus of Vietnam when it visits Taiwan, so that her child will gain an understanding about her mother’s life….
This year is Annie’s tenth in Taiwan, and that daughter whose baby photos grace Annie’s makeup table is herself already beginning to perform.
Annie recalls that when she told her own father that she was marrying a Taiwanese and moving here permanently, her father, who adores her, was sad. But in recent years he has come to peace with her decision, Annie says, “Because he sees that things are going pretty well for me!”
Both in makeup, Annie and her husband Zhang Fangyuan are busy preparing to play immortals of Chinese myth in a matinee performance.
Both in makeup, Annie and her husband Zhang Fangyuan are busy preparing to play immortals of Chinese myth in a matinee performance.
Her notebook is full of notes in Vietnamese to help her remember her lines.
When she was ten Annie began training hard at the National Circus of Vietnam , and she ended up a star performer there.
A performance in Chiayi provided an opportunity for Annie and her future husband Zhang Fangyuan to get to know each other and fall in love. One thing led to another, and she’s now a Taiwanese Opera performer. (photos courtesy of Annie)
As a child, Annie was doing back flips and leaping through the air in the circus. Today, as a Taiwanese Opera diva, she is writing a new chapter in her life as a performing artist.
As a child, Annie was doing back flips and leaping through the air in the circus. Today, as a Taiwanese Opera diva, she is writing a new chapter in her life as a performing artist.
