 Good evening, welcome to the second screening of the 2014 Understanding Taiwan's Film and Documentary series. I'm Zhang Yu, welcome to this lovely event because we have seen so many different faces, new faces, that's really encouraging. Tonight's film is Tons of Heaven and we are delighted to have the film's director and Nita Chang with us tonight. Let's give her a round of applause. Okay, I will have to introduce her properly again after last night because quite a different group of people here. Nita is an independent filmmaker, she's a teacher and also a freelance writer and she has involved in many arts projects and also has taught in many places in the world. She travels a lot and so this particular film is quite close to her heart. Tons of Heaven is her collaborated work with four young women from Taiwan and also from Hawaii, recording their personal quest for their linguistic identity. It all started from Nita's residency in Donghua or her teaching in Donghua University in Huanian when her student talked about her very great of not being able to speak their own mother tongue and equipped with a simple video camera, they set out to explore their own roots. Depicting these four women from two different locations across the ocean, the film is a human jigsaw embodying the predicament that face minority people and their language and the cultural difficulties under the influence of globalization. Before the screening of course, Nita would like to talk to you a little bit about her film but just before her start, sorry, you know my drill. I will have to and also we are grateful on behalf of the Center of Taiwan Studies, we would like to thank Ministry of Culture and also the very generous donation from Dr. Samuel Yin. Without their generous support, it wouldn't be possible to put on this series of events. So thanks for the official support and the money of course, it's very welcome. So now I'd like to welcome Nita and have a few words for us. Thank you. Thank you so much for showing up Friday night to watch an independent film. And this little labor of love took about five years to make because I had to think about the movie in about two years but then I ended the movie in three weeks. So that's how I sort of operate. I think the topics in the work is very complex and all the four women have very different stories and I kind of wanted to foreground that, that our each person's relationship to language is very, very personal and it's not something you can generalize. Not like you can generalize things but I just felt like the collaborative approach was important also as a formal device to a documentary so hopefully you might be able to notice some of that. And I also just wanted to thank Daphne, I think it's Daphne, right? I always say, you know, certainly just be able to meet such wonderful people from the Taiwan Center, Center of Taiwan Study. And so I wanted to thank also everyone who helped to, you know, make this Center possible. It's really great to be here in London, it's my first time here. So it's great to have a comparison between sort of US attitudes here and of course we're in the cosmopolitan city here in London. And I think language is an issue that I think many of us have grappled with at least one time in life if not continuing to grapple with it. Thank you. Yeah, that's the news that I'm interested in. And I wonder whether the traditional script or memorization is an important part of the preservation and learning. If we're in the written script, how about the teaching method? Except by the direct method of just listening. Right, exactly. Did you see the books that the women were sharing? So those are the kind of the Romanizing? Yes, I saw the Romanizing script. Yeah. Which language is that? That's both Ruku and Rukai. And so they are, it's Romanized script. And much of it was taken from the Bible. Yeah, and the mission is kind of a big part. Someone translated it into the Bible. Yes. In order to translate the Bible into the script. Yes, yes. And it's not mentioned specifically but Kainoa does refer to it with the Hawaiian language. When she was learning the Hawaiian language in an institution like the University of Hawaii it was very different than learning from her grandfather. And she was getting conflicting sort of structural sort of, you know, ways of speaking. And that was difficult. The book, you know, learning it from the book versus from her grandfather. Yeah. In the field, so to speak. What are the cultural heritage and crimes and songs and literature for some kind? Is that in Taiwan or Hawaii? You're not thinking of the, yeah, in Taiwan. Yeah. Well, I mean, her, Anchi's uncle, they were singing. They have a family chance and that is, you know, using the new kind of language. And of course Anchi can't understand a word on what they're saying but she was, you know, she's making, oh, you, Slater? Oh, can you just, she's here. Yeah. Sorry about that. I feel so odd. It's like a strange authoritarian kind of, okay. Yeah, maybe I'll just do this. Yeah. Yeah, she, she can't understand a word of it but she's, you know, she's a filmmaker. So she's been doing quite a lot of documentation just in terms of cultural events, some activist work. So it definitely involved in the community in that way and in her village. But I don't think she's, I think she's decided that she's not going to learn it. And Rukai is, at this point, she's deciding not to. Rukai language is actually really, really difficult to learn. I don't know if there's any Rukai speakers or anyone studying Rukai language. But I think like saying hello is like 30 syllables. You know, it reaches hello or hey, you know, one syllable. Aloha, you know, three syllables. I mean, but it's like this kind of, you know, really beautiful poetic language. And many, many indigenous languages there. And linguists and anthropologists going a desperate race to record them. Someone saying one native speaker there. Right. Very sad. Yeah, that's, that's a case today. I don't know if you've seen the movie The Linguists. I haven't seen it yet, but yeah. My hands on that. Daniel, yeah. I'm doing MA Taiwan Studies course. Oh, I found it quite interesting at the end of the, I think it's a mother, she says, I blame the Ministry of Education because the kids weren't allowed to speak their mother language. But now in Taiwan the Ministry of Education has kind of switched and all kids are expected to learn their mother language, whether it's Taiwanese or one of the Aboriginal languages. How much would you say that that is an answer to preserving these languages as opposed to within the societies themselves? Yeah, I mean, when I was living there, it was a really complicated issue because they were trying to encourage the students to, if they could pass an exam of their indigenous language, then they would get extra points for admission into college. So that was sort of to encourage the young people to kind of make an effort. The problem is that the young Taiwanese, especially the indigenous students, would learn languages where there were teachers. So it was not necessarily their own language, but for example, let's say your native tongue is so kind of an abu, like yenthen. But then the budan population is large, so she would be able to, she's actually fluent in budan, which is interesting, yeah, just because there's just more people, but you can learn, pick up another language and be able to just study for the exam and then get those extra points. And I think at least my students, when I was there, they mentioned that it was just not effective, not really getting to the heart of the issue, right? And then finding teachers, it was really difficult. When I was teaching in Bahia and the East Coast, they actually had to pay for the elders to come to the plains and to teach the students. So there's a challenge, you know, whether or not institutionalized learning of these minority languages is the way to go. Don't really know what they're still trying to work it out. But there have been hot debates. For example, should we regulate when students in Taiwan learn English? It should not be before six, for example. And then there's this Hawaii, you know, it's like, well, because it's shaping their minds, they're already starting to think in English then. It's very controversial and it's a heated debate. It's going on all the time. I'm not sure where, at this point, the policy stands on that. But I remember my students saying that they couldn't really start learning English at all, maybe middle school or a little bit maybe elementary, but usually middle school and high school. Now we'll see that that's the whole controversy. We want kids to start learning at that age. Yeah. But very likely debates for sure. My last question about saving languages, it isn't necessarily what I think it is, we talk about keeping the language alive. But if the language isn't developing, is it really alive? Or you're just keeping it there, and just like we see these Indigenous people standing there for a photo opportunity, but it's serious, you know. It's all just stage and costume drama. But it's different. It's just keeping the language alive. Are you really keeping the traditions alive? All the photo stuff should go with the language. What I'm trying to say is the young people might be wanting to learn their languages if the language was still developing, the new words coming into the language, it must make it precious, or this is the language, and nothing else can come into it. Franchally, the danger of doing that with their own language, not allowing formal words into the language to develop it. So I'm wondering if this whole thing is about preserving the language in the same way to preserve the native dress and the cultures just for the service. Or is it really going to be properly used in the real language? Yeah, I mean, again, I think you sort of touched at how complex the issue is. And I think for every community, it's different. You know, I kind of wanted to show a little bit, to make that comparison between Hawaii, it has a very committed revitalization movement, and it was under a lot of duress and struggle, actually. It kind of encountered lots of obstacles, and it was totally grassroots. It was a group of people that decided that we're going to do this, and who cares about the Department of Education in the United States? They're not going to give us any funding for this. So they did it on their own, and it was a small group of people. And so you're not going to have everyone that's going to buy into it, and then the way a community approaches language revitalization is also very unique, too. And when you ask the question about developing, I'm not really sure what you mean by that. But I mean, languages are working changing all the time. It's not some static thing. But it made me think of Hebrew, which was completely revitalized. And also, there's been some work in the United States as well, where there's no speakers at all, and then going through the Bible and reconstructing the language through these documents, and making it a viable medium of communication and their own journey. I mean, it's really pretty, it's quite fascinating. One of the questions I was trying to ask, is the usefulness of the language dropped off, and that's why the language dropped off. So people stopped probably to learn it from their talents, because it's more useful to learn Mandarin, and English needs to become the language of government, and try it. It's not, I mean, there's a huge amount of things convenient. I mean, they were forced to not speak such language. So then when you're looking at it as a whole, then it seems like it's not useful, because you're being told, that if you speak such language, you're sort of singled out in a whole group of people. You are less educated, and therefore you shouldn't be doing that, because what you want to do is to fit it in the community. And so when it's such a long time, like for a whole generation, where they know their parents were suppressed, and they were abandoned to go up on different mountains, then of course it's very easy for these next generations to think, they don't want to learn, because why should I go into a society with my skin colors already dark, therefore I should just try to blend in and speak such language. And so I don't think it's the same way as how you think. I can see it really aroused passion. Yes, of course. I think you've got another question. On the MA course of Danger Languages, and I'm quite interested in maybe doing my PhD on revitalization at the Simon. So I was wondering how I can get involved. I was told to. You can start. I mean, I have, I'm sure that they're just a great resource to, to pick your brain, see what you're interested in, and find what's the best route for you. There's quite a lot of efforts, actually, into it, but you know, sometimes it is not that there's no intention, but it's how to do it, how to get around difficulties, because now it is in danger. So they are, as you said, they are some bigger tribes and smaller tribes. And there's also differences of accents. So even the same tribe, this village is different from that village. So who should be standardized? So, which one to pick? So there's quite a lot of political issues as well. I've been in Jersey very, very early, so I've experienced the politics of the kind of rich language, very ancient areas. Yeah, they're fascinating topics. We're looking forward to reading it. So, I think, yes. I'm doing my PhD in Sakazaya, so language spoken. Do you know me? No. Oh, okay. Introduce. Yeah, yeah. I was staying in Hualien last year. I'm going back there this year to do my field research. And I was thinking of that. You live at Bontau University, right? Yes. And so, and she... Yeah, they were students there. Yeah. You said that she's not interested in learning the language, but she's still studying, like, revitalization? Oh, no. No, she was initially... Just don't work. She was, she went into the department I was teaching in the department of Indigenous Languages and Communication. So, most of the students who are involved there actually think that they can learn their Indigenous languages when they're there. But then they realize, at least for her, the Rukhai, and the Rukhai instructor is great. He's just a wonderful man. I think she wanted something more rigorous, where she could, within two years, be able to speak, or at least something that she couldn't pick it up and it was very difficult. And, like I said, I think that if you're learning a language as a second language, not everyone has a map for languages, too. See, that's another thing. It might be difficult to pick up a language, although she could speak Minai, in Taiwanese, and Mandarin. Like, she's in Mandarin, but she's having a hard time with Rukhai. And then she got really philosophical about it. The way you saw the movie the way I edited is actually chronological. So, she started to kind of change over the course of two, three years when we were making this, where she started to just say, you know what about a language which deserves to be saved? Just like arbitrarily when we say, well, the white-faced squirrel, you can't hunt anymore, but you kill the boar once a week. You can hunt that. Like, who made that decision like this, because it looks more distinctive? And why this language and not that language? So, she's kind of getting more at sort of the philosophical part. We were saying we were just getting a little bit of social dialogue over here, but essentially what it comes down to is it's up to the community. They want to use it. If the community of Native speakers feel like the language is important, then they want to keep the human rights issue essentially plus the author or someone. Does that end to help them by revitalization, documentation, and providing resources? If you say no, then you're essentially you're ignoring it or you're contributing to a kind of cultural genocide. What does it drop? Not that it's enforced to educational policies like it was back in the day. We would say that's an accurate description of this. But I think what you were saying, too, about value, when you grow up feeling like your culture is devalued, including its language, including the color of your skin, how you look like, then you want to speak perfect Mandarin. And my students, they can really speak perfect Mandarin, and then they'll go into the lazy timings, then they'll do the Beijing acts, because they're hilarious. They'll go into their visions, they mix it up, and they speak English, and they have a lot of fun with it. But I mean, they're kind of also putting fun at the pressure to speak perfect his kind of Beijing Mandarin. So, yeah, I think that the way we feel about our language is one of the causes of it. I mean, I only spoke to a few of the Aboriginal people about my family, you know, and from my understanding is that they mentioned the lack of the urge to learn their own particular language in the younger generation that each tribe were dispersed from each other and they were mountainous to the coast, they were actually more dangerous in the past. And so, all they could do was to survive and to do that was not to speak their language and to just get through by and then to have the next generation. And hence, as you can see, many parents didn't want to speak their language to their children. They think, what if they get in trouble like I did? And so, I think that cost what happened exactly. And so, I think that's one of the biggest problems in Hawaii or such places. Although not many people, but sort of enough and the places they live they support each other. Whereas the ones that we see in Taiwan from here is that they are mixed tribes. So, let's say you get 100 of them within that 100 they probably have four tribes. And so, none of them sort of say we're going to speak ours. So, they sort of say okay, let's just get through this. So, I think it's slightly different. So, language, there's nothing really absolute while or long. Your accent's better than mine. You know, it's always making up along the way. So, I can understand. So, policy does matter. So, I think David has one question. Well, I wanted to follow up on one of them. There's an increase in language education. But the other simultaneous trend is an increase in spending on broadcasting, public broadcasting or the language other than Mandarin like television, radio Taiwan, international. There's a lot of languages. And of course we're going to have stuff with the the digital media. And I was wanting to work on this actually helps. Because if you think about for example, language, the revival of Welsh in the future is Welsh TV. I think it's definitely had a big impact on my invention. So, what did this come up in your conversations? Oh, definitely. I mean, I was there when they started the Indigenous television and visited them several times. And I think the issue with Taiwan and Hawaii for example, Hawaii is one language. Taiwan has many languages. And still, there's new ones cropping up like part of the kind of tie up the language family, right? So you have like two groups. So that's the issue in this you know, at least when I looked at the stations and I talked to some of my students and they said, well you get a half hour of hukai at a time. That's it. And then they switched to another language and that is, you know, and that's all you get. And so it's a little difficult. So it's not actually in terms of drawing. It might actually attract the insurance. Well, they're trying to fill in more animation. It's really, because they're also trying to find speakers to, you know, to get involved and, you know, participate. But you've only got one station and then... Let's take two questions. Front first, then. Could you tell us your name? Sorry? Yes, I'm Matt. Matt Davis. I thought it was great film because I think it does capture that tension between the need to preserve identity and the cultural identity and the need to kind of prosper and get on. And that's not just people learning, but also parents, actually, which language they decide to teach to their children. Yeah. So it captures it beautifully, I thought. But what about the solution? So actually they went to Hawaii and I was quite interested to see what, could you tell us a bit more about the school situation that was obviously they were learning Hawaiian in the classroom. It actually looked, I mean maybe 90s, maybe it was not just ethnic Hawaiians, but actually Hawaiian mixed groups. Could you say something about that? Yeah, actually, the language of civilization in Hawaii is actually attracting local people who are not ethnically Hawaiian. Yeah, exactly. So they feel, the parents feel like there's value for their child if they make their home in Hawaii, especially the big island, right? So Sushin Kilo, that they want that, they want to keep the child in an immersion program. So it's a choice of the parent. Yeah. And it's, you walk in there and it's pretty amazing. You know, so you've got these high school kids studying, like, you know, that was a science class, you know, in Hawaiian. And I think there were two or three PhD dissertations written in Hawaiian. Yeah, just, yeah, it meant even more than that, but when I was there, yeah. So there's some, there's a really kind of, you know, push for that. But I, you know, it's interesting because how only the woman in my film still feels that it's really, it's still not safe. She really feels that it's in danger because they constantly come up with obstacles, you know. And I think, for example, the idea of a bilingual immersion education, I mean, just that concept, most people are against it. I mean, in the United States, absolutely. They're like, what? Spanish, English, bilingual, like in California, which has a huge Spanish-speaking population. And also, now, Mandarin and Kansas and U.S. and you see these schools cropping up, but most tax payers are like, I'm not paying for this. You know, this has got to be a private school and protests, you know. I mean, it's really kind of quite contentious. And they don't understand. They think, wait, so if a child grows up with two languages, how can they master one? They wouldn't be good in one. They just have sort of, you know, tangential knowledge of both. I wouldn't want my kid to, you know, expert have that, you know. You are the best example of the act fruit that they run. Because you're quite good with Mandarin. Oh, well, but that, you know, I don't know. A little bit. Parker? No, no, no. Sorry. Do I have to say my name as well? Yes. Well, I'm Johnny and I study the A.M. origin history itself. And I found the scene where you were in the park that was kind of used to reserve the culture. Very interesting, that scene. But most of the tourists were Taiwanese and how much to the Taiwanese population who aren't necessarily indigenous have this idea that rather than it being about a kind of contemporary societal issue with a lot of cultural identity, it's actually more about a historical preservation of the indigenous people. Oh, yeah. See, that particular park is interesting. I don't know the entire history of it, but it definitely had this facade of what you, I don't know, describe it. I think you know what it's like. It means definitely for tourists. But it's supposed to also energize the local economy. And so, and then you have, I had students that would work there, you know, and then they would just say, well, it's to make money and they have mixed feelings. They feel the one hand, it's definitely not authentic. And the other hand, when they perform, they don't want to be crazy either. They want to give a sense of, they have pride too, right? So it was a real mix. For me, I thought that scene was just important to get to think about what does it mean when you feel like if you, if you, if there's some economic value to your existence, like your language also. It's just exactly what the bounty said. Your language also then had value. So what gives the Hawaiian language, for example, value? For those who are not in Hawaii, and the parents wanting to, you know, put their kids in a bilingual version program, right, and tap what would keep that, you know, language alive. It's a tourist destination for one, right? And so, whether or not that draws other people to want to learn that language, I mean, it's just kind of food for thought. Who decides how value is placed on something, like a language or culture? And I just thought that that park had a lot of bizarre things going on. You know, these wax figures to this guy, he's like half calm, so he's probably tired, but I didn't know. That's what I found interesting. In Taiwanese media, for example, would this kind of struggle to keep a language alive be seen as something of trying to preserve something from history, or is it actually seen as Taiwanese people as more of a kind of, okay, this is a contemporary societal issue, and people are losing their culture. Are you using their culture? Yeah. You know, I mean, I think all of this is only possible because of Taiwan's post-coloniality. It's conditions of post-coloniality. It really is why all of this is even possible. To even talk about language, even implement a, you know, like a department, like to begin a department or put up a department that's called Department of Indigenous Languages and Communication to even just have that. So, I think, yes, it's definitely, you know, a statement that, yeah, our culture is important, but also what have we suppressed during these colonial times? What is it, what can we unearth and, you know, sort of think about what we really want to be, what we want to become? So I think it's this idea of, you know, auntie's uncle saying, well, if the Muka language is disappeared, if it does disappear, then who will we become? Mandarin speakers in order to what? I mean, you know, it's kind of used to open. And as I did, her father said if the Muka language is lost, then the world will not be whole. I thought that was like so, and he's like, trying to fix the, he's like, not even like, he's just, the house is about to fall into the river, right? He's like fixing this thing, and he's kind of like, you know, and she's like laughing, you know, but I was like, wow, that's so profound to me, and I wanted to open the movie. I think we're sort of run of time, but we think, oh, one more question. Oh, I'm so sorry, yes. Let your question be the conclusion. No pressure. Yes. My names were replacing all those from the animation group, so I wonder how sustainable they are, because I think a language can really survive their spoken-up scene in the day-to-day environment, and I can see it from Germany where we're in a similar issue with low-german, but it's completely safe, which supposedly might not be able to speak. Yeah. And we have all sort of art school activities, and it's fun participating in that, but after you, sort of, out of that environment, you know, you can only read the film, and then you forget that you will never really be able to validate your children. So I'm just wondering how sustainable they are. I mean, is there, do they actually then try to teach their own children once they become more intelligent or... Yeah. I mean, I think those are all just really good questions, and we can only look at examples. I mean, for example, Hebrew, like how did that in and continue to be a really kind of robust living language from no one speaking it to me, right? So you could look at different models, and, you know, I think that, you know, this idea of, right, you need speakers, you need to be speaking all time and hearing it, and you know, and of course, language fluency is so it doesn't mean that you have to be really fluent in the language, right? You can be conversant and communicating and and still get a lot from being and speaking and speaking and being in that community and speaking, right? It doesn't mean... I mean, when you say sustainable, I guess I understand what you just heard mean. But on the other hand, it's... Yeah, I mean, I guess it's... It is a difficult question, isn't it? Really? I mean, she's a filmmaker. She's not a linguist. She's not a linguist. I found out in the movement that linguistics in terms of, you know, it is the big question everyone's after. So I think maybe, you know, we can ask a later, later, when you are over a glass of wine in our lips. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.