Photo Taiwan-style; say ‘jishi!’ - Taiwan Travel Story
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Title: Photo Taiwan-style; say ‘jishi!’
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In September 2002 I paid a visit to the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. I had a friend there called Cindy, and one evening she took me downtown to experience the delights of a culture so unique, I am yet to see anything that even comes close.
Cindy’s most immediate concern that night was to get our photo taken together, but after passing her my camera and suggesting potential photographers on the street, she laughed and told me we should get it done properly. I have to admit I was intrigued, but never in my wildest dreams could I have envisaged what Cindy’s brain had come up with. It seemed I was about to have my photo taken, Taiwan style, and the place in which we did it was a far cry from the supermarket booths we have in England.
Stepping inside the shop, I confidently suggest there were enough blinding neon lights, astoundingly bright colours and deafening pop music to make it a suitable double as an Earth-based reference beacon for orbiting spacecraft.
“Houston, this is Spacecraft 1, we are lost, over. Please supply a bearing on our current location as…wait…wait. Correction Houston, we are now passing over Happy Smiley Photo in downtown Kaohsiung. We are adjusting our co-ordinates accordingly, over.”
The shop seemed a regular haunt for much of Kaohsiung’s bored teenage population and was filled with passport-photo sized booths that offered ‘amusing’ and ‘light-hearted’ takes on the traditional photograph. Usually, this translated to a life-size image of the celebrity of choice or copious amounts of balloons and ticker tape being digitally pasted into the background. Having grown up in ‘boring’ Britain, as Cindy deemed it, I was amazed to see that teenagers here seemed far more interested in the wholesome pastime of having their photographs taken with their friends rather than say, getting blind drunk on bottles of cider in a suped-up Vauxhall Nova in the car park of a local cinema. “What a strange country,” I thought.
Wandering around the maze of enormous booths, I saw that each was covered from top to bottom with insanely large images of Asian pop-stars and the Hollywood celebs. I also counted more than ten footballers, including (of course) David Beckham and Michael Owen but also, oddly, the aging Arsenal centre-back Martin Keown whose face, for those of you unsure, never once appeared on the front of Cosmopolitan magazine. Touring the shop, Cindy offered me a continuous running commentary. Despite her valiant efforts at maintaining her English however, the deafening racket of the music meant that I couldn’t hear a thing she was saying. I like to think it was something about the relative merits of playing Steve Bould ahead of Martin Keown in a flat-back Arsenal defence, but I’ll never really be sure.
Standing with me alongside a particularly garish collage of celebrities, Cindy got talking to a girl that worked in the shop. Being both in Chinese and under the incessant blare of the music, the details of the conversation were an absolute mystery to me, but frequently interspersed with the unnerving combination of smiles and glances in my general direction. Eventually, and after convincing the girl that in fact no, I wasn’t her boyfriend and that yes, I probably was the only western twenty-something in Kaohsiung, Cindy informed me that if I so wished, I was assured of a date that night.
Tempting as it was to go out with a stranger whose grasp of English was about as non-existent as mine on Chinese and with the permanent accompaniment of Cindy as both driver and translator, I decided to let her down gently. The only suitable way, I decided, was to inform her that I was flattered, though unable to accept her welcome invitation. I asked Cindy to tell her I was gay.
“She wants to show you off!” Cindy said, grinning and poking me in the ribs. “She says you look like Tom Cruise.”
Mulling over the possibility that in the dim light of a nightclub after the consumption of a quite staggering amount of alcohol, I concluded this may just be the case, but standing as we were - tee-total in a shrine to all things luminous, I somehow doubted both her sanity and sincerity. She pointed to a photo of Tom Cruise on the booth beside us, which only compounded my suspicions and at the same time made me wonder what comparison she would have used if we were next to the one boasting the face of Martin Keown.
Sensing my inability to take control of the situation, Cindy concluded her conversation with the girl and arranged for us to have our photo taken. The girl smiled and nodded her head; it seemed that for the duration of our stay in the shop, I was gayer than one of Elton John’s dresses.
Whilst Cindy and the girl faffed around on a computer screen in the booth - adding balloons, floating ribbons and, despite my best efforts, the guaranteed absence of any Arsenal full-backs – we drew a small, but dedicated crowd. Cindy told me that this was indicative of the fact that Kaohsiung attracts very few travelling Westerners. In a way I felt like one of the innumerable celebrities plastered across the walls of the shop, albeit a very embarrassed, reluctant one.
Dragging me inside, Cindy insisted we strike the most ridiculously clichéd poses imaginable. The booth had no curtain, so not only was my mental torture due to be caught on camera, it was also on full display to an increasingly large gathering of Taiwanese teenagers, who giggled and prodded each other with glee. Cindy was convinced they just wanted to talk to me, but I argued it was because I was holding a ‘V’ sign across my eyes like John Travolta in the film Pulp Fiction (Cindy’s idea, not mine) and looked like an absolute wanker.
We had to wait a few minutes for the photos to be processed and when they were, they bore the image of Cindy and I in the midst of an explosion outside a balloon and ribbon factory. I wondered if all this was at Cindy’s request, or whether they were present in such abundance for the sake of my supposed sexuality. The girl asked Cindy to find out what I thought of the photo. I turned to her with a smile.
“It looks like the worst ever children’s party at McDonalds,” I beamed enthusiastically. “Xiexie” (meaning ‘thank you’).
The girl seemed extremely pleased that I was in favour of her work and Cindy stifled a laugh before leading me swiftly out of the shop.
Website:
In September 2002 I paid a visit to the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. I had a friend there called Cindy, and one evening she took me downtown to experience the delights of a culture so unique, I am yet to see anything that even comes close.
Cindy’s most immediate concern that night was to get our photo taken together, but after passing her my camera and suggesting potential photographers on the street, she laughed and told me we should get it done properly. I have to admit I was intrigued, but never in my wildest dreams could I have envisaged what Cindy’s brain had come up with. It seemed I was about to have my photo taken, Taiwan style, and the place in which we did it was a far cry from the supermarket booths we have in England.
Stepping inside the shop, I confidently suggest there were enough blinding neon lights, astoundingly bright colours and deafening pop music to make it a suitable double as an Earth-based reference beacon for orbiting spacecraft.
“Houston, this is Spacecraft 1, we are lost, over. Please supply a bearing on our current location as…wait…wait. Correction Houston, we are now passing over Happy Smiley Photo in downtown Kaohsiung. We are adjusting our co-ordinates accordingly, over.”
The shop seemed a regular haunt for much of Kaohsiung’s bored teenage population and was filled with passport-photo sized booths that offered ‘amusing’ and ‘light-hearted’ takes on the traditional photograph. Usually, this translated to a life-size image of the celebrity of choice or copious amounts of balloons and ticker tape being digitally pasted into the background. Having grown up in ‘boring’ Britain, as Cindy deemed it, I was amazed to see that teenagers here seemed far more interested in the wholesome pastime of having their photographs taken with their friends rather than say, getting blind drunk on bottles of cider in a suped-up Vauxhall Nova in the car park of a local cinema. “What a strange country,” I thought.
Wandering around the maze of enormous booths, I saw that each was covered from top to bottom with insanely large images of Asian pop-stars and the Hollywood celebs. I also counted more than ten footballers, including (of course) David Beckham and Michael Owen but also, oddly, the aging Arsenal centre-back Martin Keown whose face, for those of you unsure, never once appeared on the front of Cosmopolitan magazine. Touring the shop, Cindy offered me a continuous running commentary. Despite her valiant efforts at maintaining her English however, the deafening racket of the music meant that I couldn’t hear a thing she was saying. I like to think it was something about the relative merits of playing Steve Bould ahead of Martin Keown in a flat-back Arsenal defence, but I’ll never really be sure.
Standing with me alongside a particularly garish collage of celebrities, Cindy got talking to a girl that worked in the shop. Being both in Chinese and under the incessant blare of the music, the details of the conversation were an absolute mystery to me, but frequently interspersed with the unnerving combination of smiles and glances in my general direction. Eventually, and after convincing the girl that in fact no, I wasn’t her boyfriend and that yes, I probably was the only western twenty-something in Kaohsiung, Cindy informed me that if I so wished, I was assured of a date that night.
Tempting as it was to go out with a stranger whose grasp of English was about as non-existent as mine on Chinese and with the permanent accompaniment of Cindy as both driver and translator, I decided to let her down gently. The only suitable way, I decided, was to inform her that I was flattered, though unable to accept her welcome invitation. I asked Cindy to tell her I was gay.
“She wants to show you off!” Cindy said, grinning and poking me in the ribs. “She says you look like Tom Cruise.”
Mulling over the possibility that in the dim light of a nightclub after the consumption of a quite staggering amount of alcohol, I concluded this may just be the case, but standing as we were - tee-total in a shrine to all things luminous, I somehow doubted both her sanity and sincerity. She pointed to a photo of Tom Cruise on the booth beside us, which only compounded my suspicions and at the same time made me wonder what comparison she would have used if we were next to the one boasting the face of Martin Keown.
Sensing my inability to take control of the situation, Cindy concluded her conversation with the girl and arranged for us to have our photo taken. The girl smiled and nodded her head; it seemed that for the duration of our stay in the shop, I was gayer than one of Elton John’s dresses.
Whilst Cindy and the girl faffed around on a computer screen in the booth - adding balloons, floating ribbons and, despite my best efforts, the guaranteed absence of any Arsenal full-backs – we drew a small, but dedicated crowd. Cindy told me that this was indicative of the fact that Kaohsiung attracts very few travelling Westerners. In a way I felt like one of the innumerable celebrities plastered across the walls of the shop, albeit a very embarrassed, reluctant one.
Dragging me inside, Cindy insisted we strike the most ridiculously clichéd poses imaginable. The booth had no curtain, so not only was my mental torture due to be caught on camera, it was also on full display to an increasingly large gathering of Taiwanese teenagers, who giggled and prodded each other with glee. Cindy was convinced they just wanted to talk to me, but I argued it was because I was holding a ‘V’ sign across my eyes like John Travolta in the film Pulp Fiction (Cindy’s idea, not mine) and looked like an absolute wanker.
We had to wait a few minutes for the photos to be processed and when they were, they bore the image of Cindy and I in the midst of an explosion outside a balloon and ribbon factory. I wondered if all this was at Cindy’s request, or whether they were present in such abundance for the sake of my supposed sexuality. The girl asked Cindy to find out what I thought of the photo. I turned to her with a smile.
“It looks like the worst ever children’s party at McDonalds,” I beamed enthusiastically. “Xiexie” (meaning ‘thank you’).
The girl seemed extremely pleased that I was in favour of her work and Cindy stifled a laugh before leading me swiftly out of the shop.
