Seasoned television director Fung Kai’s (馮凱) Din Tao: Leader of the Parade (陣頭) is edifying for those not familiar with dintao, a type of traditional temple performance troupe. For everyone else, the film is an overly long formulaic exercise in banality.
Performer Allen Ko (柯有倫) plays A-tai, a young man who dreams about becoming a rocker in the US. He quits school in Taipei and returns to his Taichung hometown before following his heart’s desire.
A-tai has never been on good terms with his father, Uncle Da (Chen Po-cheng, better know as A-hsi, 阿西), who runs a dintao troupe. The father and son never make an effort to understand one another, and quarrel each time they meet.
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But Uncle Da has other things to worry about. While his company struggles to make ends meet, long-standing rival Wu Cheng (Liao Chun, 廖峻) and his troupe meet with success and popularity.
Irked by Wu’s arrogance, A-tai decides to take the troupe’s demoralized members on a countrywide walk in search of inspiration to revamp the traditional folk art form.
The movie was inspired by the Jyou-Tian Folk Drum and Arts Group (九天民俗技藝團). Founded in 1995 by drummer Shue Chen-rong (許振榮), the Taichung-based troupe is credited with updating folk drumming, acrobatics and traditional dances for contemporary audiences and introducing the performances to international audiences by attending art festivals abroad. The troupe’s last sojourn was a seven-day, 250km-long ultra marathon across the Sahara Desert in Egypt in October, completed while its members carried a 17kg statue of the deity Nezha (哪吒).
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The movie has a certain degree of authenticity in its depiction of dintao as an extended family in which the troupe’s leader is more like a father figure to the group’s young members, most of whom are dropouts. It also fares well in the acting department, anchored by veteran actors A-hsi, Liao Chun and Samantha Ko (柯淑勤). Pop idol Alien Huang, better known as Hsiao-kuei (小鬼), deserves special mention for his dintao performances. Yet the movie is little more than a glorified television drama, replete with cliches, stereotypical characters and an uneven narrative.
As Taiwanese grassroots culture is a mainstay of local productions of late, movies like Din Tao: Leader of the Parade have come one after another, following what is believed to be a winning formula that blends traditional practices with modern elements. However, without a good story line and emotional depth to sustain it, the enthusiasm for traditional cultural doesn’t last the distance.
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Once again, we are listening to the government talk about bringing in foreign workers to help local manufacturing. Speaking at an investment summit in Washington DC, the Minister of Economic Affairs, J.W. Kuo (郭智輝), said that the nation must attract about 400,000 to 500,000 skilled foreign workers for high end manufacturing by 2040 to offset the falling population. That’s roughly 15 years from now. Using the lower number, Taiwan would have to import over 25,000 foreigners a year for these positions to reach that goal. The government has no idea what this sounds like to outsiders and to foreigners already living here.
Lines on a map once meant little to India’s Tibetan herders of the high Himalayas, expertly guiding their goats through even the harshest winters to pastures on age-old seasonal routes. That stopped in 2020, after troops from nuclear-armed rivals India and China clashed in bitter hand-to-hand combat in the contested high-altitude border lands of Ladakh. Swaths of grazing lands became demilitarized “buffer zones” to keep rival forces apart. For 57-year-old herder Morup Namgyal, like thousands of other semi-nomadic goat and yak herders from the Changpa pastoralist people, it meant traditional lands were closed off. “The Indian army stops us from going there,” Namgyal said,
A tourist plaque outside the Chenghuang Temple (都城隍廟) lists it as one of the “Top 100 Religious Scenes in Taiwan.” It is easy to see why when you step inside the Main Hall to be confronted with what amounts to an imperial stamp of approval — a dragon-framed, golden protection board gifted to the temple by the Guangxu Emperor that reads, “Protected by Guardians.” Some say the plaque was given to the temple after local prayers to the City God (城隍爺) miraculously ended a drought. Another version of events tells of how the emperor’s son was lost at sea and rescued