Cheerleaders with guns

Taipei First Girls’ Senior High School Honour Guard and Drum Corps performing at this year’s Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Video requires Quicktime 7.

The Edinburgh Military Tattoo began in 1950 as a kind of last hurrah for Empire, rebranded after WWII as the British Commonwealth. Nowadays it seems a curious spectacle, ripe for “reading”, if one is so inclined, the violent history of British colonialism and its cheerful reimagining as colourful nostalgia. It’s hardly a small event, though, with more than two hundred thousand tickets selling out in January for the three weeks of performances in August each year, and it is surely the world’s number one showcase for all things marching. So hats off to the Taipei First Girls’ Senior High School for their invitation to perform. It would be really interesting to know the history of their performance styles, as they look like a rather riotous amalgam of Japanese imperial, Chinese republican, and US military/high school culture. And whatever one thinks of the KMT (e.g. not a lot), it’s very nice, too, to see the flag of the Republic on display on their shoulders at an international event.

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Published:: August 26, 2007 / 3:47 pm

Category:: Personal, Photographs, Taiwan

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asi 8.26.07 / 10pm

Was there, they did a great show. It really was good.

Only niggle is that many other countries flags are shown, but where Taiwan’s flag should have been there was some Taipei city flag inserted instead(I think it was a taipei flag, I dont know, deintaly not taiwan flag though) The patches on the shoulders were definitely to small to be seen by the audience, but they showed up clearly for TV audience and it was good to at least see them on TV,

mharrison 8.27.07 / 6am

The Republic’s flag on the shoulder was a clever idea, avoiding any nasty scenes which might be reminiscent of this and I don’t think the Taipei First Girls’ Senior High School could have hoped for better coverage on tv. “Smiles” was obviously the video editor’s brief.

Serge Fraeyman 9.2.07 / 7am

I was impressed by the show from these pretty girls but the programm was a bit short.They spend only 3,5 minutes on the esplanade.I hope they come again and perform a little longer.

skepticlawyer 9.10.07 / 4pm

Went on the last night (the show with the massive fireworks at the end). The Taiwanese marchers were bloody brilliant. The girls are quite small, and they were chucking decently heavy rifles around. Very impressive.

Jayde 10.6.07 / 5pm

Great Title. Makes me want to ask my mother about her days at Bei Yi Nu. She has pictures of her class marching around in Indian head dresses. It would indeed be fascinating to trace how marching bands arose and developed in Taiwan. Must have something to do with boy scouts, no?

mharrison 10.6.07 / 9pm

Indian head-dresses? There are some references on-line to the origin of the Bei Yi Nu marching corp, to do with the US forces from Korea coming over to Taiwan in the 1950s with their ceremonial marching corp, but there are a lot of other references, too, it looks like.

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Cheerleaders with guns

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