I have just spent ten days accompanying John Seed on a trip around Taiwan. John is an environmentalist from Australia well known for his efforts protecting rainforests around the world and also as a philosopher of Deep Ecology. I met John at the Taoyuan Airport on the morning of 28 March. We then took the high speed train to Kaohsiung where we met Dr Lin Yih-ren who arranged John’s visit to Taiwan. Continue reading
The 2010 Justice For All Concert (正義無敵音樂會) was held in Pingtung yesterday. I arrived at the venue in the mid-afternoon while the bands were still doing their sound checks. The venue was a park in the Pingdong Sugar Factory — a big grassy area surrounded by palm trees with a banyan tree providing some nice shade.
In the late afternoon the crowd began to build as the first band Windmill (風籟坊) took to the stage. Windmill’s Hoklo rock was followed by the Hakka folk of Lin Sheng-xiang (林生祥). Sheng-xiang is well known as a protest singer and lives in Meinong, not far from Pingtung.
Next up was one of my favorite bands Aphasia (阿飛西雅). Their post-rock music contains no lyrics, but the inside cover of their album The Crocodile Society of Aphasia says, “Not having words doesn’t mean not having ideas” (沒有語言 不代表沒有意見). Their music evokes powerful emotions and in between songs Luxia Wu often makes some strong statements on the theme of justice.
After Aphasia’s set Freddy Lim made a speech mentioning that last year they didn’t organise a concert for 228 but this year they decided to do it again. Before it had always been in Taipei but if it was in Taipei every year that would be “boring”. This year they were able to get sponsorship from the Pingtung County Government. He said he hopes to hold the concert in other places around Taiwan in the future. Freddy also said that every year around 228 many people say that young people don’t love Taiwan. However, that’s not right. Young people really love Taiwan and events like this are a way of showing it.
The next bands were Hoklo punk artists LTK Commune (濁水溪公社) and Kaohsiung punk band Fire-Ex (滅火器). Last but not least ChthoniC (閃靈) appeared in their full make-up. Their latest album Mirror of Retribution is based on a story related to 228, so it was very appropriate that they performed songs from it on this occasion.
David on Formosa 