ABSTRACT
Off a small street near Taitung’s old railway station lies a hole-in-the-wall shop, Shan Wang [衫旺]. In the green light refracted through a tarpaulin Hanging over dusty racks bordering the street, faded cassettes are lined up under peeling plastic coverings. The cassettes – many bearing the politically incorrect genre title of shandi ge [山地歌] – are catalogued according to local ‘stars’ fronting their record covers, clad in all manner of exaggerated aboriginal dress. Inside the shop, wall-lined shelves are crammed with hundreds of CDs, some in stacks of unsold titles. Browsers huddle through the tiny space made synaesthetically more claustrophobic by music pouring out from a tape deck and the pungent aromas of fish being fried up for lunch in a makeshift kitchen behind the shop.
