My interest in Chinese music and cinema developed in the years following the Tiananmen Massacre. The first few that blew up in my face were Clara Law's film Farewell China and Cui Jian's album Nothing To My Name. Later films were to be Tsui Hark's Kings Of Chess and watching earlier ones like Ann Hui's Boat People and Stanley Kwan's Rouge. But most of all it was Wong Kar Wai's Days Of Being Wild that blew me away. For music, I was listening back to Cui Jian's earlier works. He Yong was an explosive punkrocker. Zhang Zhu was probably the Chinese Dylan-Morrissey while Tang Dynasty made lyrical heavy metal. Most of these works study anger, hurt and loss. The same feelings that hit me when I read the headlines on the morning of June 5th 1989.

Working for a Taiwanese company a few years after that brought me closer to my Hokkien roots. As I was making frequent trips to Taipei, likeminded colleagues there introduced and shared with me a world I came from but didn't know. I got turned on to the indierock of Lin Qiang, the urban folk of Chen Hsiao Xia, the rural tunes of Chen Ming Zhang and Wu Bai's common men take on street blues rock. In films, Hou Hsiao Hsien (City Of Sadness, The Puppet Master (including their excellent soundtracks)) led the light. And particularly Wu Nien Zhen's (Hou's regular screenplay writer) debut feature A Borrowed Life carries special meaning for me. The discovery curve became steeper and with it, the Hokkien language showed itself to me to be as textured and beautiful as any language- it is definitely unlike the diluted form we only know here.

At one point working trips to Taipei always felt like "coming home". Its sprawling urbanscape, unregulated back alleys and perpetual grey winter sky were welcoming. Pacinkos palors, sleazy pubs and raunchy underground discos in a city that never sleeps littered my nights there with keen buzz. After knowing Taipei better, I ventured out, spending more than 2 weeks travelling around other cities and towns. It wasn't enough. I must have been to Taiwan more than a dozen times over those 4 years in the mid '90s. Somewhere along the line I even thought I could live there and nearly did.
This was on the way to Jiu Fen, a small picturesque coastal town where City Of Sadness was filmed.

This is fist-punching in the air time- Livonia's version of Don't You Forget About Me. Not a quality boot but good enough to capture the good vibes on the nite of 11th Nov '98 at Moods.