I wander
I wonder

shoelace untied
thoughts clump

I don’t want to be there as a woman
but how about justice?

memory sizzles
chew the unforgettable

fuck your expectations
I have my own

tough love
NEVER CONFORM

1. 霓虹 Neon (2016)

Korg Monologue

The first time I visited Hong Kong was in 2002 when I was seven years old. That was five years after its sovereignty being transferred. It was amazing to see how this city, 20 minutes train ride from the one I lived in, felt so different. As the train moved through the hilly buffer zone on the border, it started to look different, smell different, and sound different. It felt as if I traveled afar to get there or experienced some kind of time leap and arrived in a different dimension, like the other side of that tunnel in Spirited Away. A different tone and quality of colors. A different set of beeps and chimes. A different style of font. Cars driving on the wrong side of the road. By dusk, the entire city would be submerged in these softly but brightly glowing, colorful signs. Sometimes they move in a very corny pattern, but it was difficult to take my eyes off their motions. My body felt like it was being wrapped in a fond embrace, and it was glowing with the lights. That was the beginning of the end of the neon era. By 2010 LEDs had taken over for the most part. Some of the neon signs had moved to a museum as a collection. Since my first visit, I would spend a few weeks at my cousins’ in Kowloon every summer and winter break. I noticed the excitement diminished a little bit with every visit, while melancholy became more profound. I don’t know if it’s because I was growing up, or the disappearing neon lights, or both, or everything that’s happening.

4. 逍遙遊/蘭嶼之戀 Enjoyment in Untroubled Ease/Sareedan Ni Kavutulan (2021)

Field recordings, Voice, Ableton Live
Song & Lyrics: 蘭嶼之戀 by 陸森寶 Baliwakes, Rock Music Publishing Co., Ltd.

The soundscape in this piece was recorded in Taitung and Hualien County in Taiwan during 2017 - 2020. This region, including the long and narrow valley between the Central Mountain Range and Coastal Mountain Range and its adjacent coastal area offshore the Pacific Ocean, is the ancestral homeland to more than eight distinct groups of indigenous Austronesian people. There is an abundance of cultural treasure, wildlife, lush vegetation, and great finesse in agricultural practices, but it's the most vulnerable region to natural disasters. As the effect of globalization reaches every corner of the world, it's much harder to make a living there as a farmer, and tourism is on the rise. Although tourism didn’t seem to make people’s lives much better, thanks to its popularity as a tourist destination, I learned about the region and the local artist community, which motivated my first visit.

Besides merely wanting an escape from life and expectations, my initial motive for visiting the region was musical and linguistic curiosity and how the values, languages, music, and literature evolved and preserved with modernization, globalization, and nearly 400 years of colonization by different regimes - the Dutch, the Spaniards, the Zheng's empire of exiled Ming dynasty officials, the Qing Manchu empire, the Japanese, and the current Republic of China. After my first visit, I kept going back there every year, having gained familiarity with the region. Besides the postcolonial topics and the astonishing variety of local music to explore, I just felt it's such a magnificent place to BE. Have nothing planned, and let all encounters happen spontaneously. There were no expectations or agendas. Sometimes I slept till awakened by the roosters. Sometimes I slept till noon. I walked around and went on hikes with a handheld audio recorder. I ate fresh fruits sold straight from the trees. I took naps on the beach. Upon awakening, I would get a popsicle and chat with people: local elderly, travelers, youths on working holiday, expats, b&b owners, surfers, bikers, drunken passers-by, artists, researchers, you name it. Everyone was very approachable and had fun stories to tell. Sometimes there is live music at night, in very intimate settings, that I always enjoyed going to. Sometimes I made music until early morning.

I learned the song sareedan ni kavutulan there. It's one of the most popular songs among the indigenous tribes in Eastern Taiwan. Although it was initially written in Pinuyumayan language by Puyuma composer Baliwakes, it is also sung in Amis and Paiwan languages, and the lyrics have different meanings from each other. Nobody knows who wrote the lyrics in other languages. It remains a myth when exactly it was written (Different sources of information indicate that it was written in 1958, 1969, or 1971). However, it is known that the song was amongst the earliest modern popular music in indigenous Taiwan, often sung in casual, non-ritualistic settings and with influences from traditional tunes, church hymns, and Nakasi music from Japan. Baliwakes often writes about the mountains, the ocean, airplanes that flew by, agricultural and social activities in his tribe. When I wandered around there, between the mountains and the ocean, I thought of his music a lot. During the colonial and martial law period, music from that region was often exoticized and sometimes taken advantage of to be used in propaganda, including some works by Baliwakes to romanticize the military. However, the current music scene there is exceptionally free and diverse - artists make whatever kind of music they are gravitated to, and are encouragingly collaborative.

During my hikes there, sometimes there would be no sight or sound of humans for a long time, just explosions of birds chirping away or insects screeching. Intermittently, fighter jets from the nearby air force base would fly above me, with the loud, crisp hum juxtaposing any other sounds. The tremendous contrast between the sounds left me in awe and bewildered. I couldn't help but think of the despairing fact that the serenity and people's lives on that island are under the constant threat of military actions. But the locals seem to live a peculiarly untroubled way of life through creating the simplest joy for bondings and resilience. I am thankful to this land and its people for hosting me, providing me warmth and inspiration during a time when I felt gloom and confusion were all I had and was.

5. 夠膽你就而家嚟拉我 I Dare You to Arrest Me Right Now (2020)

Field Recordings, Eurorack, Ableton Live

I recorded the audio samples used in this track in Hong Kong, on January 5th, 2020, during a protest in Sheung Shui, a town located on the Northern border of Hong Kong. About thirty minutes into the peaceful protest, the police declared that it was an illegal assembly, and shortly after that, began to pepper spray protesters and passers-by. I fled the scene as the police took violent actions and changed my clothes to avoid being targeted. The person who confronted the police in the recording was Lam Cheuk-Ting, who served in the North District Council at the time. On February 28, 2021, Lam was arrested for violating the newly imposed national security law by the Chinese government, along with 46 other Hong Kong activists, charged with conspiracy to commit subversion, and has been in custody ever since. Then comes the crackdown on the pro-democracy press and the cultural industry. It’s disheartening to see the room for freedom in Hong Kong shrink almost exponentially each day forward.

6. 呼吸 Breathe (2018)

Ableton Live

Keep breathing.

Inhale - - -
Exhale - - - 

Hold hands.
Stay safe.

Be water.

-Gabby Wen, 2021, originally in Cantonese.

In memory of my hometown, erased identities, forgotten languages, and my ancestor Wen Tian-Xiang (1236 - 1283), who was a poet, politician, and later the marshal general of the late Southern Song Dynasty. He was a popular symbol of resistance against the invading regime. After his capture and death, some of his descendants who served in his army settled down in the area known today as Shenzhen and the New Territories of Hong Kong, which is my father’s hometown and where I spent my early adolescence.

8. 起來 不願做奴隸的人們 Rise! Those Who Will Not Be Slaves (2021)

Samples from the internet, Eurorack, Inductor pickup, DIY electronics

Audio sample in this piece was from the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, where Xi Jinping changed the way of voting in the Congress from anonymous electronic voting to hand-raising. 

During that meeting, Congress members voted to have Xi's name and ideology written into the Party constitution. 

Xi: "Objection votes, please raise your hands."
Congress members: "None!"
"None!"
"None!"
........

Xi: "Abstention votes, please raise your hands."
Congress members: "None!"
"None!"
"None!"
........
Xi: "Law passed!"

*Applause*

“Rise! Those who will not be slaves” is the opening line of the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China under the communist party authoritarian regime. Despite the fact that its lyrics promote nationalism, it did encourage people to rebel and revolt against the oppressive government. Nearly a century after the anthem was written, the actions described in its lyrics had turned into the worst nightmare of the CCP regime. 

Today, Chinese people, especially the less privileged ones, have no outlet to voice their suffering and experience with injustice. Opinions that don't align with the government’s political agenda are censored within the shortest possible time. Surveillance cameras are everywhere. AI technology employed by the government watches and controls every aspect of people’s life. Although many have benefitted from the economic growth in China after the 1980s, myself included, there is nothing worth sacrificing human potential, not to mention to this extent, and on a collective level. One cannot deny that the intellectuality and expression of the people have been tremendously undermined and oppressed. No opposing voices are allowed to exist, and critical thinking is regarded as unimportant and has no value. To obey and never challenge authority is the virtue of all virtues in this highly patriarchal society. Although the CCP was founded to organize workers, farmers, and women against the oppression from capitalism and feudalism, women and laborers remain the population who suffer the most in today’s China while the patriarch, the rich, and the powerful hoard all resources and hijack the narratives of Chinese people. 

The anger of knowing I was being fed so many ugly lies since birth, decisions being made on my behalf without my approval, having my body commodified, my capabilities insulted, my voice muted, my boundaries violated - will always keep me going. They are the scars in my heart that remind me freedom is not to be taken for granted, and one must keep questioning, stay curious, and be expressive for not to have it at stake.