Go with Your Feelings: Hong Kong and Taiwan Popular Culture in Greater China Author(S): Thomas B

Go with Your Feelings: Hong Kong and Taiwan Popular Culture in Greater China Author(s): Thomas B. Gold Reviewed work(s): Source: The China Quarterly, No. 136, Special Issue: Greater China (Dec., 1993), pp. 907-925 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/655596 . Accessed: 24/04/2012 22:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press and School of Oriental and African Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The China Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org Go With Your Feelings: Hong Kong and Taiwan Popular Culture in Greater China* Thomas B. Gold Thepeople go withthe Communist Party; the CommunistParty goes withthe Central Committee;the CentralCommittee goes withthe Politburo;the Politburogoes with the StandingCommittee; the StandingCommittee goes with Deng Xiaoping;Deng Xiaopinggoes with his feelings(Deng Xiaoping genzhe ganjue zou). Trying to puzzle out the Communist leadership's reaction to the massive demonstrations then under way during the spring of 1989, some Chinese wits turned to "Go With Your Feelings," a well-known song recorded by the Taiwan pop singer Su Rui.' This not only indicated the critical role of one often unpredictable octogenarian, it also revealed the pervasive- ness of popular culture from "peripheralChina" on the mainland core: an allusion to a pop song from Taiwan could be used (and understood) to sum up an extremely volatile situation. As the economies of the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan move toward increased integration, with Hong Kong and Taiwan supplying the dynamism and the mainland the market, a comparable trend is emerging in the cultural realm: popular culture from Hong Kong and Taiwan is claiming a substantial share of the market and loyalties of mainland consumers. Furthermore,it is redefining the essence of what it means to be a "modern"Chinese at the end of the 20th century, and popularizing a new language for expressing individual sentiments. This article will explore some aspects of the largely one-way influence of Hong Kong and Taiwan popular culture on the China mainland. It will address two central issues: why it has spread so quickly, and the implications for Greater China. Hong Kong and Taiwan Popular Culture This article looks at various types of popular culture from Hong Kong and Taiwan, hereafter referred to as "Gangtai" (a contraction of the Chinese words Xianggang and Taiwan), which have spread on the *I would like to thankAmbrose King, Joseph Bosco, Andrew Jones, Rey Chow, Todd Gitlin, Lydia Liu and Orville Schell for comments on an earlierdraft. Supportcame from the Centerfor Chinese Studies, University of California,Berkeley. Kang-ling Chang provided researchassist- ance. 1. "Genzheganjue zou" ("Go with your feelings"), on the cassette Taibei, Dongjing (Taipei, Tokyo),WEA Records,Ltd., 1988. Accordingto a 1992 survey of 1,500 people in Beijing, 81.9% of those surveyedhad heardthis song (althoughonly 49% claimed to like it). Liu Xiaobo, "Toushi dalu renmindi wenhuashenghuo" ("Perspective on the culturallife of mainlandpeople"), Zhong- guo shibao zhoukan(China Times Weekly)(hereafter, ZGSBZK), No. 61, 28 February-6 March 1993, pp. 70-77 at p. 76. In a speech at the University of California,Berkeley (12 April 1993), Liu Xiaobo noted that anotherTaiwan song, "Wo shi yizhi beifang laidi lang" ("I am a wolf from the north"),expressing sentimentsof poverty, loneliness and authoritarianism,was also popular at the Square. ? The China Quarterly, 1993 908 The China Quarterly mainland of China.2 These include music, film, television shows, litera- ture, advertisements, decor, attire and leisure. Hong Kong and Taiwan are market economies where culture, like virtually everything else, is a commodity. In Hong Kong, the government imposes some controls, in particular in the area of pornography. At times, bowing to pressure from Beijing, it has banned the showing of anti-Communistfilms from Taiwan, but in general, anything goes in the Crown Colony. In Taiwan, the ruling Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party) has a Cultural Affairs Department which sets and oversees cultural policy. The state has the Government Information Office3 which engages in production, regulation and censorship, and the Council for Cultural Planning and Development, founded in 1981 and due for upgrading to ministerial status. The KMT additionally owns artistic enterprises, including a film company and a radio and television station.4 The party and government have produced and disseminated a great number of ideological works, both in the form of straight propaganda and entertainment. They have also worked to preserve traditional Chinese culture, especially in the face of the Communists' efforts to eradicate it, most noticeably during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Over the years, the party-state on Taiwan has exercised cultural control selectively, mostly in the political realm - strictly controlling production or dissemination of works which challenge its hegemony, raise questions about its past or legitimacy, spread Com- munist propaganda or even introduce life in Communist countries. It has cut sexually suggestive scenes out of films and marked up periodicals to blot out offensive text or illustrations. In both Taiwan and Hong Kong, American popular culture has claimed a major share of the market. Although Taiwan was a Japanese colony for 50 years and Japanese culture retains influence over many older Tai- wanese, the mainland 6migr6 regime's close ties with the United States and enmity towards Japan (especially after Tokyo established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1972) brought about a strict control over the import of Japanese culture into the island. The presence of American soldiers, both as advisers since the Korean War and then for rest and recreation during the Vietnam War, spawned a major industry designed to entertain them. In addition to bars and brothels, Taiwanese entrepreneurs vigorously pirated American records and books which made their way into the mainstream. American Armed Forces Radio broadcast American pop music, while subtitled (and censored) American movies dominated 2. I use "popularculture" to refer to culturalproducts produced for the mass market,which reflect market-determinedpopular taste and are for enjoyment.This is in contrastto more elite or high culturewhich has a much narrowerappeal and poses more of an intellectualchallenge to the consumer.It is also in contrastto politically contriveddirected culture. Taiwan and Hong Kong do have high culture,but its spreadon the mainland,by definition,has not been as greatas popular culture.The few culturalproducts which have gone from the mainlandto Hong Kong and Taiwan are generally of the less commercialvariety. 3. The Republic of China Yearbook1993 (Taipei: GovernmentInformation Office, 1993), p. 103. 4. JeremyMark and JuliaLeung, "KMT'sblend of business and politics drawsfire," The Asian Wall Street Journal, 2 December 1992, p. 1. Popular Culture in Greater China 909 the film industry. Taiwan cultural figures began to imitate American popular culture.5 Being more open and virtually non-ideological, Hong Kong became the major centre for the production of Chinese popular culture. Many of the pioneers of the Hong Kong entertainmentindustry were refugees from Shanghai.6 As the standard of living rose among Overseas Chinese communities in South-east Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong films in Man- darin with indigenous-language subtitles, and songs, found a ready market. The Chinese mainland remained completely off-limits except for KMT propaganda radio, loudspeakers and balloons. The revolutionary decision of the Chinese Communists to reform their economy and open it to the outside world, taken at the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978, provided an unprecedented opportunity for culture entrepreneurs to cultivate and then penetrate this potentially boundless market. A Reconnaissance of Gangtai Popular Culture on the Mainland7 Over the past decade, popular culture from Taiwan and Hong Kong has swept the mainland of China. From a base of close to zero at the time of the Third Plenum, the extent and multifariousness of this imported culture is striking. If anything, it has increased since the violent crackdown on dissent and bourgeois liberalization in June 1989 for reasons discussed below. This section provides an impressionistic reconnaissance of the presence of Taiwan and Hong Kong popular culture on the mainland as evidence of the phenomenon. In early 1979, while an exchange student at Shanghai's Fudan Univer- sity, I overheard Chinese students listening to smuggled or copied tapes by the Taiwanese crooner, Deng Lijun (Teresa Teng). In 1992, numerous singers from Taiwan and Hong Kong toured the mainland with lavish stage shows jointly produced by Hong Kong, Taiwan and local state enterprises which sold out quickly to a primarily youthful audience.8 5. Americanpopular culture such as music, romance fiction

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