Taiwan temple art by school dropouts reaches IIT-B

MUMBAI: The Chio-Tian Folk Drums & Arts Troupe delivered an unforgettable, entertaining, engaging and culturally immersing performance to an audience of students from 1700 colleges across 24 countries who represented the 49th edition Mood Indigo 2019 at IIT Bombay on Dec 26-27.

Chio-Tian is a true legend in Taiwan’s education, which built a reputation from central Taiwan by getting school dropouts and wayward teenagers came to the temple and involved in the traditional art of “Tīn-thâu” (the leader of the parade in Taiwanese).

The leader of the troupe, Dr. Chenjung Hsu taught and trained these dropouts from zero to the professional art performers. Now it has successfully performed all around the world, including the US, Canada, Germany, and other European countries.

The group has also been a driving force for many of the youth in Taiwan as it helps some dropout students to find a goal, give them an opportunity and motivation to be a part of the troupe, and become a famous performing arts group today.

With support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, Ministry of Culture, Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India (TECC) and Taipei World Trade Centre Office in Mumbai, IIT Bombay successfully invited Chio-Tian to perform in “Talent Fiesta” of their annual cultural festival, Mood Indigo on Dec 26-27.

International groups from 24 countries and students from 1,700 colleges conducted performances or workshops to facilitate cultural exchange in IIT Bombay. This festival is considered to be Asia’s largest cultural festival and one of the biggest of its kind in the world.

Peters Chen, Director of Education of TECC said, “Taiwan Education Centre has been established in IIT Bombay since 2015. The trends in the growth rate of bilateral educational exchange show a huge potential focused on Ph.D. degree programs and internship programs. It is a pleasure to take the invitation from IIT Bombay to participate in Mood Indigo and invite Chio-Tian here to let young people have a more mutual understanding from a cultural perspective. They would find how similar we are in religious culture.”

This is a performance about the “leader of the parade”, or “Tīn-thâu” (陣頭) in Taiwanese, is a part of Taiwan’s traditional temple culture, which has played an important part of ceremonies for thanking Goddess, Chio-Tian. Thus, the troupe’s name is Chio-Tian.

What’s more amazing is that, in religion, “Chio-Tian Goddess” is actually “Shakti Goddess” in India. The audience was surprised and happy to know the culture and the legend of Chio-Tian Troupe. The Mood Indigo also gave the Taiwanese groups a great opportunity to reach the audience in India and present a glimpse of its culture through the performance.

Taiwan has made numerous efforts to improve bilateral educational relations with Indian universities, with 2,398 Indian students studying in Taiwan in 2018.

This can be seen as another milestone in the same direction for bilateral relations among young people. Regarding cultural preservation, the General Association of Chinese Culture (GACC) in Taiwan is the oldest NGO to respect and preserve both ancient Chinese and Taiwanese culture and has made efforts to have international cooperation in performance and research. You may visit the website: https://www.gacc.org.tw