 I'd like to welcome you all to this very special SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies seminar. I think it's going to be probably one of our largest ever seminars. Today's seminar we have a very, very special guest, Dr Long Yintai, who's the Taiwan's Minister of Culture. Dr Long is someone who's very, very hard to categorise. She's perhaps one of Taiwan's most influential public intellectuals. She's published well over 30 books, many of which have been bestsellers. For example, her book, 1949 Untold Stories, has been one such bestseller. Dr Long has a huge following, not only in Taiwan, in Chinese communities abroad, but also in mainland China where her books, so many of her books have been pirated. Whenever you see her lectures abroad, often something like half the audience are often from the PRC. Dr Long is also a well-respected academic. She's taught at universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany. For example, one thing that Dr Long and I have in common is we both taught at Heidelberg, one of my favourite German universities. And a third category that Dr Long has moved into over the last decade or so has been as a government official. She served as the head of the Department of Culture in the Taipei City Government and most recently, since 2012, she's been Taiwan's first Minister of Culture in this newly formed ministry. It's a real pleasure to welcome her to SOAS for her first talk. Let me just say a few words about Taiwan Studies here at SOAS. We formed the Taiwan Studies Programme back in 1999. I'd say when Europe was essentially a Taiwan Studies desert, we were way behind the United States in courses, academic events, publications related to Taiwan. Over the last decade there's been a real transformation of the field in Europe and at SOAS we've tried to play a key role in this development. Over the last almost 14 years we've become perhaps the world's leading institute for Taiwan Studies. We have an MA degree in Taiwan Studies. We have courses on Taiwan society and culture, three politics courses, Taiwan's economic development, Taiwan film, undergraduate courses and postgraduate in elementary Hokkien. And the numbers of students studying Taiwan increases year by year. We're also one of the leading providers of academic events related to Taiwan. We have our regular Taiwan Studies seminar. We run annual international conferences on Taiwan. And we've also founded the European Association of Taiwan Studies which runs a major international conference at a different European city each year. And thirdly we've worked to promote publications on Taiwan. We managed the Routledge Research on Taiwan book series and over the last decade we've published a large number of academic volumes and textbooks on Taiwan. And I should also point out that what we've achieved over the last 14 years couldn't have been done without the support of a number of Taiwanese institutes. For example the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Jiang Jinghua Foundation and have all been very generous in their support for our programs over the last decade plus. We've also received support from the body that the Council for Cultural Affairs when in 2009 we won the European, okay, the French Taiwanese culture prize the way we promoted Taiwan Studies in Europe. Today's event is going to be slightly different from a regular lecture. If you take a look at Dr Long's YouTube lectures one of the things that really stands out is how interactive these sessions have been. And today will be no exception to this. You'll give a very brief talk but the majority of the time will be for Q&A. Currently some of my students have got microphones and they'll try and get you microphones with questions. So without further ado I'd like to give Dr Long a big round of applause. Can you hear me alright from the back rows? It's okay. I'm also slightly concerned if there are still people outside, are they allowed to come in? Because I had one terrible experience when I gave a talk at the University of British Columbia at the Chan Studio, the auditorium there. There were 1,000 seats and they did very punctually the close the door at say 2 o'clock shop and there were people outside who were not allowed in and later on I received emails from some of them who were not allowed in. One guy said he actually drove for nine hours to get to the place and he was locked outside. So since then I always ask if there's still people outside and actually you're standing still. Actually if we can keep the fire marshal away maybe you should move forward. There are places here, come move forward and there's one empty seat right there between Chris Ward and there's going to be the representative to Taiwan in two weeks he goes on report there. There's one seat there and actually please move over here. Sit right next to Dr. Phil. Please come forward, please come forward and make yourself really comfortable. You are here anyway so we might as well have fun with it. Okay. There's one seat here. People complaining outside? What's that? Okay, we'll begin. Ladies and gentlemen, you know me but I would like to also know a little bit about you and as usual I really want to know who I am talking to today. So just roughly I can only see there are women and there are men here in this room. Tell me a little bit, give me a feeling and impression of where you come from so that I know how large the scope is. Those who consider that they come from China, can you just say hi to me? Wow, very nice. Those coming from Taiwan, nice to see you. Anybody from Hong Kong? Great. Hong Kong is my home too. Macao? One, hi. Singapore? Okay, Malaysia? Great. Did I miss any place? Denmark? South Korea. Okay, from the US? Oh yes. Wow. So that you don't get congested there. Move behind me as well. Dr. Feld, we should take a picture of this room. Please settle somehow because, well, there's space here, right here. Please move, please move, please. Please move quickly because the time is really limited and please move forward because, please move. Watch out for Dr. Feld's foot for the next 90 minutes. Is there anybody who is really coming from pretty far away extra for this? Raise your hand. Where are you coming from? Okay. Notingham and? First floor as well. First floor as well, and you? Okay. Good to see you here. Good to see you here. And then one embarrassing question. Are you here because I'm a writer or because I'm a minister? Despite that I'm a minister. And thank you very much for your generosity. This was not intended to be a lecture at all, as Dr. Feld said. I have a horribly busy schedule back home. And then I spent last week doing a lot of things in Paris. And so I actually had absolutely no time to prepare a real lecture. So today is really meant to be a chat, a conversation. However, I still have to give some kind of introduction as a basis for our conversation. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about a very boring aspect of my life, that is the Ministry of Culture. If you have been to the Ministry of Culture, it's not called Ministry of Culture, it's called Media and Culture and so on. In London, you see a beautiful, classic building. And if you would visit the Ministry of Culture in Paris, you would be also very impressed by the beauty and the history of the building. And if you would visit me in the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan, you would come across a very ugly building, a concrete block, which was not meant to be a public building at all. It was built as a building for private housing. And the government is renting this place. The government has been renting this place for the past 10 years. And because it's not meant to be for public offices, and therefore my personal office and the offices of my deputy ministers are kind of all squeezed in some attics. So it's a very non-descript, unattractive place to work in. It does not represent the aesthetics of a cultural place. However, if you read one of my books, I think it's in Banyan Si Suo. I told a little story of a plant called the Desert Rose. Does anybody know what I'm referring to? Shamor, Meigui. Okay. I went to Israel one time, and a friend there gave me a small plant to take home. When she gave me this plant, I looked at it, it was just a bunch of dry grass. I didn't know why she gave me a bunch of dry grass to take home, but I did anyway. So once back home in Germany, I put this bunch of dry grass weed into a small pot, and I put the water in there. Since then, I took a look at this plant every day when I got in the door. So the first day it was as dry as bone. It's ugly, like hell. And the second day went by, and the third day, and the fourth day, when I just happened to take a glance at that thing, I was taken aback, because this ugly-looking plant, which was all crumpled together, in this water, it actually has sprawled out. It has kind of a reaching out with the arms and legs. Then I saw the shape of this plant. It really had the shape of a rose. It really is a rose. And the fifth day, I saw that the color began to change. The renewed fresh greenish came back in, starting from the center of this rose pattern, and slowly each day it spread out so that the whole thing, it used to look like just a black thing, a nondescript thing. It turned out to be a very beautiful green rose standing in my kitchen. And that day, when I was taking a close look at this beautiful thing, it just happened. My neighbor came in together with me. I looked at the plant. I showed her. I said, Erica, look how beautiful this thing is. You have to look at this. There's a rose. She looked at it and she said, what an ugly thing that is. That was the moment when I realized, this thing is absolutely stunningly beautiful to me because I knew where it came from. I knew what it was like before. I knew the process in which something is happening to her. And therefore, when I saw life in it, to me it's beauty. To her, she did not know, she did not participate in the process. She saw just one slice of existence there and to her, by absolute standard, it's nothing at all. That had a great inspiring meaning to me. So I'm referring to the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan. I'm referring to that ugly building in which we work day in and day out. The Ministry of Culture of Taiwan was officially established, actually on May 20th last year. So it's not even a year yet. Starting from January 1st is the real budget for the Culture Ministry for the very first time. It's very, very new. And if you want to listen to an official briefing on the Ministry of Culture, you will hear the following. The Ministry has seven departments. The first one is the Department of General Planning in which we look into the future. We study the trend of the creative industry. We study what is going to happen to Taiwan 30 years from today on. The children are going to be so few that our schools are empty. And when the schools are empty and our children are so few, how do we redistribute our budget, our resources according to the old rule? Shouldn't something change? And we also have the Department of Cultural Resources under which we manage museums, we manage cultural centers from north to south, from east to west, including the off islands of Jinmen and Ma Zuo. We manage historical heritage and we try very hard to do community work in Taiwan. And then we have the Department of Arts, especially visual arts and performing arts. If you go to Edinburgh and you see the performances of groups from Taiwan, they are probably supported by the Ministry of Culture. And if you see an exhibition in London of Taiwanese artists, they are probably funded by the Ministry. And firstly, we have the Department of Creative Industry, which I don't need to explain because the UK is so famous as the place with very, very successful schemes for creative industry. And we are trying very hard to promote our creative industries as well. And over the lunch table, which was very kindly organized by Mr Chris Wood, who is sitting right in the middle there, I was asked by an official from the UK Ministry of Culture, he asked me, what is the biggest challenge for you in terms of creative industry in Taiwan? I said, I can give you one concrete example, then you understand what is our biggest challenge. That is, there once a surgeon assistant, a woman who works in the hospital, she helps with operations. So she used to, with her very smart fingers, she used to sew together broken parts or fragmented organs. And she decided that she was sick and tired of that kind of life, so she moved away from Taipei and moved right into the Taitung County where most people are of the Aboriginal origin and lived right along the coast of the Pacific Ocean. She opened a small shop in which she began to, with her smart fingers, she began to weave hats. And the design of her hats is so beautiful that very soon designers discovered her because her hats could be sold or exhibited on Fifth Avenue or Champs-Elysees in Paris. And the task that's facing us is how do we bring these talented artists like people together with the market? How do we make her beautiful things seen by the companies, by customers? How does she develop her market so that she can survive, she can go on with her creative work? We also have the Department of Humanities and Publishing in which we try to take care of our literary writers, our publishing industry, which, as you know, the traditional way of publishing paper printing is a sunset industry. And if you do not quickly learn how to digitalize your work and how you run your companies, publishing companies in an international mode, you are a dying industry. And we're trying to do a lot on this. And the sixth one is the Department of Film, Media and Popular Music. Cinema, as people in this room will know that we have a pool of world-class talents, especially with directors such as Hou Xiaoxian or Cai Mingliang. We also have first top quality documentary filmmakers. And in terms of popular music, as you probably know that in China Mainland, for instance, I know those students from China, the songs you're saying, or the songs that you listen to, a high percentage of them are written or created by Taiwanese songwriters. And in the Chinese KTVs, for instance, we have investigated that of every ten songs which has been chosen, about seven of them are from Taiwanese writers, Taiwanese songwriters. So there's a huge industry there, but because the piracy, Dr. Feld has mentioned that, the bridge of intellectual property, our songwriters actually have a hard way of surviving because they don't earn what they deserve to earn. And to negotiate with Beijing about the protection of intellectual property is one of our important works at the moment. And the last but one of the most important department is the Department of International Cultural Exchange. And as you know, for political reasons and historical reasons, Taiwan has a hard time to be connected with the international community. And when politics fails, we try with culture. And that is why our work with international exchanges is very, very vital for the intellectual growth of our children as well. And that was the boring part of the work, breathing. So I want to move on to the next topic that is, while we entire, what are the major challenges to you? Not on the technical level, but intellectually on the broader perspective, what are the most important challenges to you? I would say it's very interesting and it's very unique and that is, nobody from the outside would see this. That is, the Ministry of Culture is actually the first new ministry since 1949. That's the first one. So I should give credit to President Ma that this is the first new ministry that he establishes. And, well, when I was a child, I loved to see documentary film on plants, especially when the blossoming of a flower opening up under a small, slow motion. So you see how the flower goes at every step of it, like my desert rose. I think the Ministry of Culture now is part of that, in that motion, in that state of becoming. And it's exciting to be inside it and taking part in it. I'll give you one very concrete example. The establishment of the Ministry of Culture is kind of a heart and parcel of this democratization process, the blossoming of Taiwan. I'll give you an example. So half of my staff, we have about, well, within the Ministry, we have about 500 staff employees. In the larger circle, we have all together about 2,000 people working under the umbrella of the Ministry of Culture. And the Ministry was kind of a piece together from four different ministries. So during the first eight months, we had to sort out who is who and where is what, because it's a huge organizational work. And then one day, all of a sudden, I was told, Minister, we have five people working at the key loan custom house. I said, why Ministry of Culture has five people working at the custom? What do they do? Well, they check everything that comes from China. They examine them, and if we use the word from old time, we censor them. So I said, oh, that still exists, you know? Yes, it does. As a matter of fact, the Ministry of Culture is composed mainly of the old cultural council and then the old GIO, which means Government Information Office. And the nature of Government Information Office is it is responsible for cosmetics of the government as spokesperson for the government. So you have to have a specific mindset to do that job. And that mindset is not what I would imagine the right mindset for the cultural ministry. So it's like we have a huge class. I said, I'm leading a huge PhD seminar in which everybody is learning. We all have to change our old habits of working and even the basic concept. For instance, before I came to this lecture hall, I used the WhatsApp and asked my director of cinema film and broadcasting. I asked him, Zhu Wenqing, please tell me how many Chinese mainland films are we still watching and censoring last year? We have a whole team still working on in the room watching imported Chinese TV series, so I said, give me the figure. Okay, now I'm giving you the exact figure. That is, last year as 2012, my team, my people, they have, okay, there have been 861 items, meaning titles of TV series, so popular, were not. And altogether it means 1600, no, what's the figure? 1600, no, that's too many zeros. About 1700 volumes of TV series that my staff has to sit in that dark room and watching on the screen, reading and watching everything, and altogether it means it's 1326 hours. How do I say that? I have to sit in the moment of TV and watch 1111,000. Yes, 11,000 hours of Chinese soap opera. I mean, that's the worst job you could have. Are you still doing that? Are you watching out that they don't say anything that's共產黨萬歲? Viva, communist muscle, what is it? What are you watching out for? Well, they have to do that because before you stop doing that, you have to change the rules. And for us to change the regulations and laws, it takes time. We haven't managed to change all the laws yet. And then we are civil servants so we do everything according to the letter of the law and therefore we still have to go on watching those soap operas. 11,000 hours. It just means that we are in transition. We are in transition and it takes time. And then we had another discussion. I communicated a lot with my staff with WhatsApp so some of my staff is here and they smile. I read in the news just yesterday and the news reported that Ministry of Culture censored an imported, I think, the US Hollywood film because in it there is extreme violence. So I was thinking, this is again, you are doing it according to the law which we haven't managed to change yet. So yesterday I was talking to the cinema policymaker in Paris. So I asked him, well, tell me precisely, how do you do the classification of film? And he said, well, that's according to the content that's under six years or 12 years old or 18 years old. So I said, so it means that above 18 years then you have no limit at all. Do you know that about UK? What is the case with UK? Is there any limit at all on content when it's above 18 year old? Well, anyway, the French do it. He told me explicitly, no. For the films which are for audience above 18 years of age, there's no limit. So I said, now tell me, if I'm director and I make a film and I'm an artist, I kill the baby, I film it and I eat it. I film it too and it's a movie. Can I show it? Do you show it to people over 18? He was stunned. He said, well, if it's a film, then yes, it's legal. There's no limit. But if it's real, then it's a criminal case. Okay, so I gave him a second example. I said, suppose I produced a film in which the clear message is all Jews should be killed. What do you do about that? Guess what his answer is? Is it okay or not? Yes, same. It's okay. But there will be huge uproar, debate and fights. But that's another matter. Okay, so just to give you an example, because we had censorship before. Taiwan was liberalized in 1987 and now it's already 2013 in the indigenous culture in this long process of democratization and modernizing ourselves. We are still in the process of making Taiwan a really truly, thoroughly more liberal, more tolerant place. But that really needs a process and we're still in the middle of it. If I go on further, we're not going to have time to do QA, so I'm going to finish very soon. And if you ask me, well, what are some of the fundamental questions you and your staff at the Ministry of Culture are asking yourself? Here they are. I ask myself and I ask my staff to ask themselves this question. As Ministry of Culture, what we are doing is actually, we collect tax from people and then we redistribute them. Do you give more money to the middle class? Do you provide service for the national theater where people would dress up and walk the red carpet with crystal lights? Or do you put more emphasis or in the countryside to help with the grassroots community work? Which one is more important? I ask my staff that you always have to keep in mind this crucial question to yourself, that is, imagine a 12-year-old child walking down the street in the center of Taipei, the poshest, the most beautiful area of town, and imagine that he walks for 10 minutes where he will reach the national theater and then another five minutes he would be in the middle of the cinema area. He gets everything. Compare this child to another 12-year-old kid who lives, who grows up in the middle of the aboriginal tribe in the Taidong County along the Pacific coast. What kind of resources does he have and compare the two? So these are one of the fundamental questions that we keep asking ourselves. If you want to have a second example, I would say the fundamental task facing us is, as you know, because of political reasons, the 23 million Taiwanese are pretty much deprived of their global citizenship because the problem of the Taiwan Strait, the Taiwanese are not allowed to officially take part in many of the international organizations or international activities. And that is why we have to do extra work to do cultural exchanges so that the work of our creative spirits gets to be seen by the international communities. The scholarship that is being done by our scholars will not be unseen because we are not a recognized entity in the international circle. And we also want to give our children to have a fair chance of interacting with the global community so that they are not affected by this political factor. And a third example is peace with China. Of course, it's very important work. If you ask me about Longmingtai, you are now defense minister. Why are you talking about peace with China? Well, I think it might be wise that I and the defense minister would swap our jobs. That would not be a bad idea. If you read my book on 1949, you would understand that I think it's a prime, most important mission for our generation to prevent any possibility of war across the state. How do you achieve that aim? You can have political means where the political leaders from both sides would shake hands or even sign treaties. However, if you do not have the authentic mutual trust from both sides, coming from the people, coming from the people themselves, I think any treaties that are signed by political handshakes are probably not really reliable because they can be designed or they can be torn. And therefore, the ministry culture puts a lot of emphasis on cultural exchanges with China as well. Finally, then I'll stop. I spent 13 years of my life in Europe. I remember my older son, Andy, when he was six and he got into primary school the first year. You know, when a German kid goes into school the first day, they have on their shoulder a satchel, very colorful satchel, green, yellow, red. And he came back the first day, very proud. The first day of school, mommy, the books, the first ever books from school, first school day. And he took our family, his satchel, a map. It's a huge map when it's opened up, but it's very big. So he was very small, of course. So we opened up the map and you could imagine the picture where the mother and the son on that map and try to read that map with our fingers. Of course, I thought it's a world map. I thought, wow, my child is going to learn the world map. Until when the map was fully opened on the floor, I realized, oh my goodness, it's not a world map, it's a map of our village. The village is called Schoenbach. Schoenbach has a population of, well, actually altogether was 18,000, but in Schoenbach it's maybe 8,000. So it's a huge map of a village with 8,000 population. And of course, I still went with him with both fingers through all the little streams and little pools and every stone and almost every tree in that map. But this experience had a thundering effect on me. Because as you know, well, I was born in 1952, several generations of the Taiwanese have grown up in Taiwan learning only about the Yangtze River and the Yellow River and all the mountains in China. We grew up never having learned the names of the rivers where you really swam in. You never learned the name of the mountains that you did go with your parents. And so I looked at the map and I thought, hmm, that's a really different way of growing up. And it really is a different way of shaping your world views. I use this example as the last to end my talk. It's because I want to say that Taiwan is an exciting place. As I said at the very beginning, it's like you're watching a flower blossoming, opening up in slow motion. If you can get rid of the ideological biases, just observing it freshly, then it's a rare chance for you to take part in something that is authentic, that is historical, that is not being but in the process of becoming. So welcome to Taiwan. Thank you. Thanks for that inspiring talk. I think it really ties in nicely with a lot of things that we've been discussing on our various courses on Taiwan. Just yesterday we were talking about the debate about the quality of Taiwan's democracy because there's been a lot of pessimism about the state of Taiwan's democracy over the last decade or so. It's really the role of culture in the consolidation of Taiwan's democracy, similarly in terms of Taiwan's role in soft power. That's many things that I'd like to ask, but I think I shouldn't be selfish. I'm sure we have a lot of questions. We've got two student helpers, one on this side, one on this side, so they'll be passing the microphone around. So who would like to ask the first question? One. Okay, and you get the second one. So could you, Felicitas, could you give that one? And Nino, have you spotted the second one? Yeah, this guy here. Doctor, can we have maybe three questions at one time? Yeah, let's take, we'll take three questions. And this will be the third one at the front. Okay. Oh, you've got it. Okay. Okay, go ahead. Thanks very much for the talk. It was brilliant. One thing you mentioned was about popular, Taiwan's popular music. I've been both a participant and an observer in the Taiwan music scene for the last few years, and I think Taiwan has probably got the most exciting music scene in Asia at the moment. And yet it's the Korean music scene that is being exported to the rest of the world. I was wondering, in the Ministry of Culture, do you have a strategy, or how are you going to promote and export the fantastic resource of music that you have in Taiwan? Okay, you have the second one. Hi, I'm from China, and my question is about a couple of days ago, the Taiwan politician Shi Chang-ting's microblogging account. In China, it was a shutdown, so what's your comment on that? And my second question is about we know you are a very successful writer, but right now, what do you think is the real difference between you and the professional politicians, such as Taiwan, or yes, there's two questions. Okay, brilliant. We've got one more question this side, and then we'll take one more. So we'll take this one, and then we'll come back to you, okay? Oh, okay. Okay, wait. Thank you very much. My name is Yan Zenderman. I'm a student from Germany, and I'd like to ask a question that concerns me as a mainland European. I've read a... I guess in the UK, you just call it Europe, right? Yeah. I've read an article in a Guangzhou newspaper today arguing that people in Guangdong province and in Hong Kong shouldn't speak Cantonese in public because it's unwelcoming to people from other parts of China, and in my anecdotal experience from Taipei, young people in Taiwan, or many young people seem embarrassed when they have to speak Taiwanese in front of other people. Yeah, and my question is, do you think in three or four generations, Chinese stylists other than Mandarin will still exist the way they exist today? Okay, we take that fourth question then. Thank you very much for talking. My question is during your time in the office, what kind of measures would you like to take in order to facilitate the cultural exchange between mainland China and Taiwan? And at the end of your time in the office, what kind of atmosphere or what kind of environment you would like to see, means the internal cultural perspective between mainland China and Taiwan? Thank you. Okay, that's quite a lot of questions there. K-pop. And Taiwanese pop. I think K-pop has become so successful in terms of commercial gains as well as promotion internationally has a lot to do with the fact that Korea has started out it's, well, there's one more. I'm not squeezing you. Okay, I have something to do with the fact that Korea started rather early in starting out as organizational creative industry. So with the huge chunk of investment from the government and plus institutionalize this effort so they have gone pretty far. So you have to give them credit for having made the right strategy. If we consider culture also a form of goods, of production, so they have been very effective in that way. However, you could also counter, over a counter argument by saying that can you, can one possibly overdoing this cultural production or cultural industry by offering an example saying during the Cold War when you look at the result of the gold medal, number of gold medals from which country you found out that the highest number of gold medals were always won by the Eastern Bloc and the way they do it, they did it was by organization institutionalized sports and actually the state was running it. And when you move that into culture I think it is legitimate to raise the question whether this is the right way to promote culture. I think that's a philosophical question and that is in my mind as well when I compose my cultural policy. I would still hope that culture has, before it becomes an industry it has to be culture at first place and as culture it has to come from the grass root, it has to come from the heart, it has to be spontaneous. It's only the second or the third or the fourth step where you turn it into a commodity and turn it into an industry. It's not to say that industry is not important, it is. However I think we should never forget that at first place it is culture. This is a very rough way of answering the question. As to Mr. Xie Chang-Ting's blog micro blog being censored I don't think it's worth comment because what has been censored there is beyond your imagination. Mr. Xie's micro blog is a very very small thing by comparison. Let's look at the real big picture. There are really essential issues by comparison. It's too small to be commented on. As for myself versus very talented Ms. Cai in one, I think that's comparing banana with oranges. She is a dedicated professional politician. I am a fully dedicated writer only taking my time to do a temporary job at the Ministry of Culture. So there's no comparison. The Hong Kong people and the Hong Kong people whether they should speak the dialect or not and this is my very strong conviction. I think dialect first of all is everyone's natural right to speak it. It is a right you are born with. You know the reason why it's called mother tongue please tell me which country has the right to tell you that you should not speak your mother's tongue. Can you accept that? That's one aspect of it. The second aspect is I regret myself that I don't speak any dialect. My father comes from Hunan province. You cannot understand him because my mother comes from Zhejiang dialect. It's hard to understand her too. I grew up in Taiwan I was taught to think that my Mandarin is the only correct and superior way of speaking and therefore I ended up speaking only Mandarin. So when people tell me commented on my Mandarin saying wow your Mandarin is so beautiful you speak beautiful Mandarin I said at the cost of my dialect at the cost of my dialect look at Mo Yan's works or Jia Pingua even our Huang Chunming dialect is is the blood vessel of your body without the blood vessel anything that you express is lacking in its most authentic imagination it is a flower not planted into us so dialect is the root of your expression and more than that I don't need to say period okay with mainland China this is the first time I heard that continent in Europe versus UK across the street that's very interesting well the cultural exchanges between Taiwan and China there is one basic structural difference that is the cultural activities which come from the mainland for example performing arts coming from China to perform in Taiwan they can be a state organized but Taiwan is a democratic structure where all the exchanges are done by private initiatives or private sector initiated by individuals or private groups and therefore the state, the ministry we do not organize everything and so to carry on this exchange with China what we do is we think that to build mutual trust is a very important thing and therefore we like to facilitate exchange of culture and what we do is we look at what are the obstacles there for example when our orchestra, our national orchestra goes to play in Beijing or in Changchun their musical instruments hundreds of musical instruments get stuck at the custom because of this regulation and that regulations that we try to solve these problems to facilitate cultural exchanges but we do not really direct the cultural exchanges okay yeah thank you so much for the talk it's very inspirational my name is Goyin Chen, currently teaching at Northingham Business School I'm from Taiwan myself so I'm very proud that you are here today just a couple of questions really in the past couple of years, a few years I have been heavily involved in supporting different cultural activities especially the artists coming from Taiwan to do the exchange performances here currently as an academic I'm working together with the partitioners from the art and culture industries and wanted to contribute to the culture and art activities in Taiwan so as a minister of culture in Taiwan I don't know what kind of expectations or what kind of involvement you expect or you would like the academics who are working overseas to get involved in and what can we do to facilitate the arts and cultural activities from Taiwan and just on the note of that I've got one of my business partner well, research partner here with me it's William Taylor from Business of Culture, the director here with me and to share some thoughts thank you hi Dr. Long it's a great pleasure to see you today and I'm a PhD student I'm here I'm a PhD student at Oxford so before I came I collected questions from my Oxford fellow friends we would like to let you know that you have become the role model for a lot of very educated, independent and ambitious girls in our generation because you've already developed a very successful career path through a global revolving door like universities and family and politics and everywhere so we would like to ask what are the crucial certainties and uncertainties in your life and what's your life plan and your suggestions for the fellow girls thanks we'll take this one first okay okay thank you very much Dr. Long first of all I would say I'm part of that generation as well I've been inspired by you since very young I'm currently teaching documentary films at University of Kent in the film department while you were talking about film censorship my first question is actually regarding to that if you still continue film censorship in Taiwanese cinema and the second one as we have this talk in the university settings what such suggestion would you give to to bring the scholarship from the academic world to the general much wider audience that is how of academic intellectuals and how can we contribute better to the society thank you you expressed your willingness to travel to mainland China within the years and do you have some preconditions when do you think at the right time to fit there and in what identity thank you very much hi I'm from Korea and I I was curious how you define culture has your definition of culture changed or affected by being a minister of culture and also you said culture has to come first in terms of culture industry and do you not sometimes have to compromise your definition of culture or your perception of role of culture in the process of police making if the other people that you have to work with put more emphasis on the industry rather than culture how would you cope with that folks, too bad time is too short if you are living or working overseas and you would like to be of some contribution to the promotion of Taiwanese culture or cultural exchanges overall what you can do this is really too broad there are so many possible ways one is you might decide to quit here and go back home and work there and join the ministry of culture for example and you might decide that I want to start writing here for the Chinese language audiences or for the UK audiences that's one way of participating and contributing you might and if you already have a structure in which you are working with the cultural network I met with the director of the Edinburgh Edinburgh Festival for example he recognizes that Taiwan has a unique perspective on culture and very special creative spirits coming out there and therefore he would pay special attention there trying to find out who and which groups are the best and the western world could benefit from getting to know them so if you already have that structure this might be the way of doing it there are hundreds of ways and then about this generation of young and beautiful and talented women who like to take me as a role ambitious I want to tell you that you are wrong because this is a very bad role model I am definitely not a good role model because I have no plan for my life I've never had one I give you one example how I have not planned out my past I've always been, all my life been guided by what's coming out of my heart in my time when I got my PhD in the United States the fashionable thing at that time to do was to somehow try to get a green car and stay in the United States and don't go back however I wanted to go back to Taiwan 1982-83 and the reason why that reason you would laugh at that reason was I've grown up in Taiwan only as a little girl and a student I didn't know where the market is to buy vegetables I didn't know Taiwan as a society at all I never lived there as an adult and how could that be I have to get to know Taiwan first with my adult I was 20 when I got my PhD I don't know young and so I decided to go back to Taiwan as simple as that no career plan I went back and in 1985 and that's why I was shocked by Taiwan and I wrote the Wildfire because I was so shocked that this is the Taiwan my country so I wrote this Wildfire and if it was career plan you would say I was overnight a star and the hero and so on but I got my baby and decided this is time to breastfeed the child so I left Taiwan I went to Switzerland and I breastfed my children for two years I disappeared from that public life so that was not career planning I stayed in Europe for 13 years until one day I got the phone call from the mayor's office Mayor Ma of Taipei the office staff asked Professor Long would you kindly give us your curriculum because Mayor Ma would like to have it and on the telephone I answered I'm not asking for a job from the mayor if he wants to get to know me go buy books that's what I said to Mr. Ma that was not career planning and then he somehow he flew to Frankfurt and he came to my home actually his staff called me and said Mayor Ma was in Rome but he was secretly trying to avoid the reporters so he flew only with one personal assistant to Frankfurt to meet me when he arrived it was pitch dark at night so his assistant actually asked me if I would drive to the airport to meet him as arrogant and ignorant as I was at that time believing that intellectual is somebody who is as powerful as king I told his assistant to him, he should come to my house and I was so ignorant because I did not even know what a busy schedule a mayor has and how tired he must be I was totally heartless and ignorant so he came to my home and that's how I got back and became his culture minister so that was an accident and so in 2003 he got re-elected I should continue with the second term I decided no I want to write books so I left I went to Hong Kong and I wrote Da Jiang Da Hai so I am not a good role model so forget about me it's not a good model now documentary my own criteria for censorship my own criteria is one thing my own personal criteria is I would like to do the way the French do it there is no limit you have to respect for mature individual and mature individual in a democratic society has the right to decide for him or herself what he is allowed or not allowed to see however Taiwan is a democracy and therefore my personal view apart we have to get consensus we have to talk different groups we have to speak with the NGO we have to have a lot of discussion and debates and how do you care the missions contribute to society this is similar to the way I answer there are 100 ways of contributing to society the most important thing is you have to be happy about what you do and how you live be truthful to yourself is probably the most important key to anything at all be it success or not be truthful to yourself in what capacity would I travel to China I have said many times anytime is the right time I could go to China anytime but if whether I should go not in my capacity as a minister that is thing that we have to negotiate and we have to decide so when that is a political a barrier we would have to think we have to we have to evaluate the most important thing whether to keep that status or to emphasize that capacity is the most important cornerstone or otherwise we are still talking about it final definition of culture I did that once before I was working at the city government in Taipei city and I remember that was when I met her and we were defending our budget and I walked into I was taking question from the city parliamentarians and there were 52 parliamentarians who would come in and out but we had to stay there at that time it was 24 hours we were there waiting and it was very cold outside I was put on the stand and then this one parliamentarian he he was red because he just drank he had food so he asked me, tell me what is culture this is what I said to him to me culture is you look at the person walking towards you the way he carries himself or herself when a tree branch is hanging to low how does he brush it away when a dirty stray dog walks across the slicks and hinder is hinder in German or English? is English verb? hinder does he automatically give the dog a hard kick or otherwise or does he treat the dog gently so culture is it expresses itself in the way you carry yourself how you treat others how you treat your environment how you treat yourself self respect and the holistic attitude of that I call culture culture I want to thank you so very much it's a pleasure to be here thank you thanks very much Dr Long for this one other thing I should mention is that this event was planned a very very short notice it wasn't part of Dr Long's original schedule and I talked to her colleagues in London and looked at her it was such a packed schedule we managed to find just one short two hour free space and this was the biggest room we were able to find at short notice but I'm so delighted that you were able to do this I think we should give her one last round of applause