The made-in myth

Essays on the west and the rest #2 Taipeh 

“You are so young!” T.W. exclaims, as I emerge from behind the sliding doors. The laminated sheet with my name slips from his hands. “Don’t worry,” I say, “it is a condition I will grow out of naturally.” He looks at me, puzzled. His gaze journeys from my eyes straight down to my boot-clad feet. Tough crowd. 

I make an effort: “It’s great to meet you in person after all those emails…” He takes the handlebar of my suitcase from me, and starts walking. He walks fast. For each step he takes, I’m forced to take two, like a child trying to keep pace with its father. We zigzag our way through Taipeh’s spaciously set up train station. T.W. searches his pockets for his cellphone. A silver, high-tech looking thing emerges. He flips it open, shouts into it franticly, then flips it closed. You don’t need to know Chinese to understand this message. With his free arm, he steers me sharply towards the platform. “Please” he says, indicating as the train doors slide open.  

While we are looking for seats I begin to think T.W. is right. I am too young. At least in his eyes, and considering the stakes he has riding on this. Generally speaking, knowing too much can sometimes be a problem. At 25, I can’t say I’m guilty of that. So when my boss asked me if I wanted to go to Taiwan, I said yes without a thought. But I should have known that disappointing T.W. was unavoidable from the moment I agreed to take on the job. 

The brand spanking newness of the trains’ white plastic frame, its smooth weightlessness and the absence of any sound, gives me the feeling of being on a movie set. A screen seems to simulate the landscape passing by. T.W. makes no effort at conversation. I attempt to regain my composure and buy myself some time by turning away from him to admire the scenery. 

I had envisioned Taiwan to be a dirty industrialized place, with a dark Dickensian air to it. But for over an hour, all I see is a lush, green, tropical island spread out before me. Palm trees and high grass running along smooth slopes and more rugged mountain peeks in the distance. The only thing betraying the economic fervor of the country is the high speed train track we travel upon, built on concrete columns as high and as wide as a six story building. Oddly enough to western eyes, it is virginally free of graffiti. 

I make a mental note to add Taiwan as a summer holiday option for the coming year. It will be hard to convince any potential traveling companion of this, though. What a burden a reputation can be, and how hard to change in the minds of others. Three words imprinted in your mind; every time you put on your t-shirt in the morning, while washing up your pots and pans at night, even when you occasionally tune your piano: Made in Taiwan. If some people in emerging economies are wrestling with non-existent nation branding, not so the Taiwanese. “Is Taiwans’ reputation for low cost production a good thing for your company?” I ask T.W. absentmindedly, forgetting his moody silence. “It is killing us.” T.W. answers slightly annoyed, followed by a long sigh. I could not have chosen a better conversation starter.

While he relaxes into a more casual sitting posture, I have a chance to observe him more closely. He is well dressed in jeans and a crisp white shirt, wearing super light aluminum framed spectacles. His accent is American, probably East-Coast. Now that I look closer, I see that he is not much older than myself, probably around thirty. I try to look as encouragingly and disarmingly as a woman possibly can, without being accused of flirting. 

“The company is owned and operated by three generations of my family. My grandparents sent my father and uncles to the U.S. to become engineers, and they have sent us over in their turn. And we will hand over the company to our sons. It’s a long term thing. There is lots of honor in it. We don’t just do production, we also design the machines that manufacture our products. People think production is stupid work, but it is not so easy, I can tell you that.”. T.W. looks proud. His eyes light up as he warms to his role as story teller. 

“So what is killing you?” I ask. He is quiet for a moment, contemplating what he can reveal to the outsider. “Just as it was smooth sailing for me and my cousins, the game shifted on us. Some of our biggest A-brands moved their production offshore to countries with even lower wages… We were baffled! How could these countries offer our product at the same quality? You know, it’s not possible. But we handed it over on a silver plate, ourselves…” 

He explains how the company could not get their production machines made in Taiwan because of their large size, so they had them made in China. “Of course, the Chinese being Chinese, they produced the machines for us, but resold the models to producers in other countries without telling us. Vietnam, Korea.” Pretty soon, T.W.’s company started to loose out. And they weren’t the only ones. Taiwan started to lose out as a whole. The race downhill for even lower wages was lost before it had begun. The only way forward now is to reposition the country as a knowledge economy. 

But ‘Designed in Taiwan’ turns out to be harder to nest in people’s mind than anyone could have ever imagined. Riding the wave of these developments, T.W.’s only chance is to create an A-brand for himself. But which western consumer buys a Taiwanese brand, with an unfamiliar name and face? “But now you are here to set that right.” T.W. says, more to convince himself than to flatter me. 

The train slows down. When the doors open, we are hit by a wall of tropical, moist heat. A company van is waiting for us outside. T.W. speaks in a hushed but agitated voice to the driver. It’s a quick ride: in ten minutes we arrive at the factory. T.W. shows me around. It is surprisingly open and green, with different hangar-like buildings spread over the area, their doors and windows open to let in fresh air. More like a rural environment than high-tech assembly line. 

Some areas are brimming with people, others are quiet and occupied solely by machinery. To know that all this rests on your shoulders must give you some sleepless nights, I think. At the end of one production line, I watch workers paste on A-brand logo’s. Brightly colored European household names that look great on the dark surface of the product. The other half of the stack is reserved for T.W.’s own logo. “The A-brand is a western myth. We are the pawns in this game, and we will play along. But don’t think we don’t know it.”

We spend the afternoon in several meetings with the different generations that run the company, followed by an intimidating talk to their German agent doubling as designer and defender of the current, soon to be replaced, logo. Afterwards, T.W. sees me safely back to the train. As the train doors close, he gives me some last encouragement. “Make me a brand as good as Phillips,” he says earnestly. “they can ask five times as much for the same product.”