'Meteor Garden' helps Taiwan pop culture invade China

'Meteor Garden' helps Taiwan pop culture invade China
Flower Four helps Taiwan pop culture invade China

Benjamin Kang Lim
Reuters
Taipei

Lu Jing, a 21-year-old stowaway from China, paid 20,000 yuan
(US$2,400) and hid for three days in a flimsy Taiwan-bound
fishing boat before being caught by the island's coast guard in
March.

But Lu, from the southeastern city of Fuzhou, was no defector
from communist rule to freewheeling democratic Taiwan.

She told astonished Taiwan interrogators that she wanted to
steal into the island to get a glimpse of F4 (Flower Four), a
Taiwan boy band that has swept fans in China -- and indeed much
of the rest of the Chinese-speaking world -- off their feet.

China's cultural tsars had pulled Meteor Garden, a hit soap
opera featuring the band's four tall and handsome heart throbs,
off the air, fearing that the decadent lifestyle portrayed in the
drama would corrupt the minds of the masses.

Taiwan pop culture has permeated China since the world's most
populous nation opened up in the late 1970s. But China's cultural
mandarins remain on guard against what they call "peaceful
evolution" -- the gradual undermining of communism by Western
cultural, commercial and ideological values.

"Orthodox Communist Party leaders see pop culture as a kind of
threat," said Hou Dejian, a Taiwan composer-singer who was
welcomed by China with open arms when he defected in 1983.

"Pop culture is their number one enemy," said Hou, whom China
deported for taking part in a hunger strike days before the
Chinese army crushed the 1989 student-led demonstrations for
democracy centred on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

"They are convinced there was a direct relationship between
pop culture and the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe," Hou, now 45, added.

Despite the ban, millions in China have seen Meteor Garden,
adapted from the Japanese comic book Hana Yori Dango -- meaning
Boys Prettier than Flowers -- about friendship and love.

About two million pirated videos of the 19-episode drama have
been sold in China, according to one estimate.

When F4 visited Shanghai in June, thousands of frenzied
Chinese fans mobbed the band and riot police were mobilised. The
group cancelled a concert to prevent a stampede.

Taiwan pop culture has filled an artistic vacuum for many
Chinese since the ultra-leftist 1966-76 Cultural Revolution
destroyed almost every trace of traditional culture.

Beijing's English-language mouthpiece, the China Daily,
defended the government ban on Meteor Garden, saying the serial
would "mislead and have a bad influence on young people".

Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian enraged China last week by
backing the idea of a referendum on formal independence for the
island, but cultural exchanges can help to prevent political
tensions from escalating.

"Cultural exchanges can definitely ease tensions, animosity
and discrimination between the two sides," said Ernest Huang, a
Taiwan script writer.

Taipei and Beijing have been military and diplomatic rivals
since their split at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.
Paradoxically, their economies have become increasingly
intertwined. Cultural and social exchanges have boomed since
detente began in the late 1980s.

Cultural invasion works both ways and China has also exported
traditional and pop culture to Taiwan, to the dismay of the
island's pro-independence die-hards who want to give Taiwan a new
national identity and sever any links to the mainland.

Several Chinese soap operas about imperial China's palace
conspiracies have taken Taiwan by storm.

"Mainland serials stoke Taiwan viewers' memories of their
Chinese origins," said Huang, the script writer.

Taiwan's cultural invasion of China is not limited to F4.
Taiwanese imports from music to novels to instant noodles have
mass appeal in China.

The Taiwan anchors of Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite
Television are stars on the mainland, where the Chinese-language
broadcaster claims viewers in about 42 million households.

On the other hand, China's renowned Tsingtao beer and low-
priced Haier washing machines are big sellers in Taiwan.

F4 are not the first Taiwan pop artists to fall foul of
China's cultural mandarins.

China briefly banned Taiwan aborigine singer Ah Mei in 2000
for singing Taiwan's national anthem at the inauguration of
independence-minded President Chen.

Beijing says Taiwan is a rebel province to be returned to the
fold -- by force, should the democratic island of 23 million
declare independence or drag its feet on reunification talks.

Back in 1983, alleging "spiritual pollution", China banned
records of the legendary Taiwan singer Teresa Teng, fearing her
saccharine ballads would turn Chinese against communist rule.

Her fame gave rise to a popular saying: "By day, Deng Xiaoping
rules China, but by night, Teresa Teng rules" -- a reference to
people crooning her songs at karaoke parlours.