The Mainland Madness on Local TV

The people of Taiwan and mainland China were separated for 40 years. Some people describe their new relationship as like that of a pair of lovers. At first there was passion and curiosity, but after about five years of dating, more rational attitudes came to the fore as they looked to the future. This metaphor is also fits viewers' attitudes about the mainland programs on each of Taiwan's three television stations.

How complete is the image of the mainland in the Taiwanese lens?

The first program that went to the mainland for its material was "Journey of 8000 Miles." A step ahead of government policy, it caused an uproar before it even aired. Previously Taiwan had gotten its information about the mainland second-hand through Hongkong, Japan or Western countries, and when the program aired - billing itself as having "a Chinese perspective" - it was well received by both the academic community and the viewing public.

After two years of being the only fish in the pond, "Journey of 8000 Miles" suddenly had a crowd of competitors. Last year the fever for programs about the mainland boiled over. If you include public television productions like "The Vast Land of China," you could catch seven programs a week. On Friday and Saturday nights a never ending stream of Mainland scenery and exotica emanated from the tube.

"Ten Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" has opted against narrated shots of the mainland. Taking an entertainment show format, it has turned instead to inviting celebrities and entertainers to a competition in the studio, where they answer questions about the origins and history of Chinese clothing, food, architecture and transportation.

Last month the newest participant in the war, "Run Around the World," made use of a satellite hook-up to let performers on either side of the strait compete in full view of each other. Competing in the 9:30 Friday night slot against "Journey of 8000 miles, " "Run Around the World, " with its unabashed entertainment format, is said to run over NT$1 million a show.

Kung fu, a discipline both broad and profound, is a favorite with media and audiences alike. （provided by Yunchiang Productions）

Each production team tries to give its own program a defining character that sets it apart. But whatever the format, the viewers can't understand why the television cameras just go back and forth between the mainland's most famous scenic locations and a few remote areas where minorities live.

The folk customs on the mainland, the leisure time activities of the ancient Chinese, and famous historical relics have all been covered ad nauseam by different programs. It makes us think, "The mainland is so big; surely the topics that one can shoot must be inexhaustible." Yet this clearly is not so.

"China has 5000 years of history and 11 million square kilometers of land; in theory it should be able provide an endless supply of new topics," says Chan Te-mao, the chief writer for "Journey of 8000 Miles. " But theory is theory. As soon as you consider the actual production situation, the pressure of having to broadcast every week takes its toll. And the mainland reports have got to rely on shots of the mainland. If you're shuttling back and forth, traveling thousands of miles, you will end up stretching the distance between theory and practice.

The producers of "Ten Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" say that once they thought long and hard about what they needed and decided to go to an alley in Peking and capture the noisy sounds of the food vendors walking about and hawking their delicacies. They thought it would be interesting to play it for the special guests and have them guess what it was. It wasn't until they got to Peking that they found out that vendors don't walk about hawking their food anymore. But the producers couldn't come home empty handed so they just filmed anything that looked interesting.

Some producers say that they don't touch real life problems because their shows "aren't good at handling political topics." But in truth there's another reason that's well known to them all: When they go filming in the mainland, they can't just shoot anything they want because the planning for these weekly programs must be first approved by the mainland's "Radio, Film and Television Bureau," and the completed tapes have got to be sent over from Taiwan. Since they all want to return and since permission to do so is controlled by the mainland authorities, they tend to shoot ancient historical sites and introduce local cuisine. They won't criticize the mainland system - let alone touch the sensitive problem of the actual state of cross-strait relations. Promoting travel is in accord with the policies of the mainland authorities, and here their interests converge.

When looking at mainland compatriots with living environments so entirely different from ours, couldn't the media show a little more compassion and emphasize a little less our economic superiority? （photo by Vincent Chang）

Thus it has happened that Taiwan production crews have come face to face with each other on the mainland. In particular they'll bump into each other at celebrations of ethnic minorities or at travel sites being pushed by the mainland authorities for promotion abroad. And so Taiwanese viewers have to see the water splashing festival of the Dai People three times. "The truth of the matter is that stressing coverage of remote areas gives a wrong impression of the mainland, " says a producer who has already gradually steered most of his professional interests across the strait. Mainland society is like a pyramid; it's the small group of people at the top who are really pointing the way to the future.

Covering cross-strait relations is a mine field where one wrong move could spell persona non grata. But if producers want an easy go of it, they need merely say a few nice things and be lauded for being in the vanguard of "uniting the two sides. "

"Journey of 8000 Miles" host Ling Feng has always dared to express his "personal opinions" about touchy matters to the governments on both sides of the strait. In a segment on Outer Mongolia, for instance, the map he used colored the region in a shade that was different from the rest of the mainland to show its "separateness" - a choice that made officials here nervous. Over there some cadres felt that he had ventured a little too far with opinions about the mainland system. And so in November of last year, for reasons of "incomplete paperwork," permission for the show to shoot in the mainland was delayed for three months.

Ling Feng, the host and producer of "Journey of 8,000 Miles," has made bold remarks about current affairs on both sides of the strait that have attracted widely differing opinions.

In addition to the problem of limited topics, there is the stations' department-store approach. Production companies make programs, and the stations provide a "market place" for selling their shows. By providing selling space for the production companies but no guidance, they simply won't get shows on par with the Japanese "Silk Road" or "Yellow River."

What's more, because there is a vast gulf of time and space between the studio here and the locations there, if a production crew isn't extremely thorough in its preparations it will inevitably find that its plans differ greatly from reality.

Of course, there are other things in the equation. The Taiwan public is still curious about the mainland, whose mysteries have only recently been unveiled, and these programs about the mainland can't help but take us to see the strange and unfamiliar. "China Moods" last year aired a series of reports about Chinese medicine on the mainland that drew a steady stream of phone calls and letters-- once 30 calls in one day--all wanting the addresses of doctors of Chinese medicine on the mainland.

Some viewers, however, are skeptical. Recently some have complained to the Department of Health and the R.O.C. Press Council. The viewers attacked CTV's "The Wonders of China" for its introduction of a Peking doctor "who only treats the mainland's leaders and patients from Taiwan" and, "though saving countless lives, takes no money for seeing patients or giving medicine." To top this off, the mainland doctor said herself, "there is a recovery rate of 60 percent here without radiation or chemo-therapy." To these viewers, it sounded as if "the show's producers were making an advertisement for her." One of those who complained was Ling Hsiang-chang. In the hospital where he works, there are many cancer patients who made the trip to the mainland. Among them, many have been duped. He raised the red flag because he doesn't want more people falling victim and delaying the time of their treatment.

About this matter, the scholars sigh, "If Japan can, why can't we?"

The famous scenery of Guilin and other famous tourist spots have continued being the locations most loved by local television crews. （photo by Ni Shu-yun）

Japan's Channel Four last year broadcast a program entitled, "Witness: Supernatural Phenomena around the World. " Forty minutes of this two-hour program focused on exposing the tricks of mainland frauds.

On the show, a mainland master of Chi (inner strength) broke a metal plate against his head by moving his chi. The Japanese program took the plate back to Japan to have it examined by a university lab. A computer analysis of the plate revealed that the spot where it had broken apart had already been tampered with.

Another performer, said to have the power of being able to read characters written in sealed envelopes, was caught cheating by a camera hidden by Japanese television in a hotel room. Credited with the ability of being able to see characters inside sealed envelopes, she was actually being quietly tipped off by someone sitting next to her.

In the 1990s, when such paranormal powers are everywhere being scrutinized, how is it that Taiwanese television is taking them at face value to attract viewers? It makes one old television hand shake his head and say privately, "I definitely do not agree with handling it this way. These performances are just fooling the audience."

As for exposing the hucksters, the producers of "The Wonders of China," which has introduced paranormal phenomena on the mainland, say that they approach filming such material with an attitude of introducing magic and performance. "If you're at the scene, and someone takes a leaf and makes it bigger or smaller," says Chou Chih-min, "it makes you curious. But you don't know how it's done. We let the viewers decide for themselves whether to believe it or not."

How much does this dual focus - on the strange and the scenic-- help the public to understand the mainland?

Some producers frankly say that most viewers aren't much interested in knowing about the mainland anymore. The early homesick feelings for the mainland, the longing and expectation about the fatherland, have already subsided as the government has relaxed its mainland policy, but the other needs of the audience have not been met.

"The mass media just don't get it. They keep thinking that the viewing public doesn't want to delve into things deeply. Coverage of the mainland has grown fragmented, and these shows have been reduced to consumer products, " says Kung Peng-cheng, the former head of the Culture and Education Office of the Mainland Affairs Council.

In his view, even for the historical sites that the Taiwan shows so favor, issues can be discussed and investigated in depth. They can tell the viewers how the mainland goes about digging at these sites and protecting these relics. Have their policies met with any difficulties? Do they need any help from society in the mainland or from abroad? And now that the mainland's unearthed artifacts are ever more numerous, will hordes of tourists going to these sites have an ill effect?

"These are questions that Chinese around the world care about. Would doing such shows serve as promotion for the red hooligans? Ask their archeological authorities questions instead of just letting the tour guides speak without any basis."

At times Taiwanese visitors to the mainland have been criticized for harboring feelings of superiority and inferiority at the same time. Their money makes them feel superior, and the grandeur of the mainland's classical culture makes them feel inferior. When cameras from Taiwan go to the mainland they've been accused of falling into the same trap. When the production crews go to a remote area of the mainland, it seems as if they particularly love to shoot the locals' startled reactions to seeing the camera. The narration will take a smug tone, belittling them for not having seen the world. For example, "The natives don't like being filmed, but you can take a picture as long as you shell out 20 renminbi" or " They've been cut off too long from the outside world, and are very curious about people and things from the outside. One of the crew brought along a 'Tetris' video game, and they loved it so much they didn't want to give it up."

Scholars hold that taking the perspective of tourists has caused us to pay attention only to what's on the surface. It's as if only the new and strange have attracted our attention. " These kind of expectations, " points out Kung Peng-cheng, "are essentially no different from Westerners going to China to glimpse `the mysterious orient.'"

To approach the mainland without these feelings of superiority or inferiority, we've got to part with our nouveau riche attitude that using money is the best way to get something done, but we shouldn't lose our ability to decide for ourselves. And when looking at the mainland we need a Taiwanese perspective.

"The Taiwanese perspective is not a narrow local standpoint," Kung Peng-cheng says. After 40 years separation, the values and ways of thinking on the two sides of the strait differ. "The Taiwanese point of view is simply the way we ourselves look at the mainland."

The field of seven shows about the mainland has thinned, which might make one conclude that this mainland fever is cooling down. But this would be a misreading. There are still many Taiwanese crews going to the mainland to shoot movies, videos and serial television dramas.

"There's no such thing as a cooling down of mainland fever," says producer Chou Ping. Taiwan will always find the mainland irresistibly delicious. And so even if there are numerous variables in the production process and the crews all have bitter experiences, they'll still be swarming like bees to go.

Having used television as our eyes, what have we been seeing in the past few years on the mainland, that place at once so strange and so familiar? Besides good food and good fun, what else do we need to know about? Will future shows about the mainland give us a satisfactory answer?

[Picture Caption]

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How complete is the image of the mainland in the Taiwanese lens?

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Kung fu, a discipline both broad and profound, is a favorite with media and audiences alike. (provided by Yunchiang Productions)

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When looking at mainland compatriots with living environments so entirely different from ours, couldn't the media show a little more compassion and emphasize a little less our economic superiority? (photo by Vincent Chang)

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Ling Feng, the host and producer of "Journey of 8,000 Miles," has made bold remarks about current affairs on both sides of the strait that have attracted widely differing opinions.

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The famous scenery of Guilin and other famous tourist spots have continued being the locations most loved by local television crews. (photo by Ni Shu-yun)

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Sent to shoot on location in mainland China, the R.O.C. television crews, lugging their equipment on their shoulders, play the role of Taiwan's eyes on the mainland.

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Do the R.O.C. tourists view the mainland in the same light as foreign tourists coming to China from afar? (photo by Vincent Chang)

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Having watched programs about the mainland for so many years, what do today's audiences still hope to see?