Taiwan's Soundscape

30-Second Overview

Close your eyes — can you hear Taiwan? At six-thirty in the evening, the melody of "Für Elise" drifts closer as a garbage truck rolls slowly down the lane, and the whole alley empties out, neighbors filing out one by one with their bags of trash. Deep in the night at the temple entrance, Beiguan gongs and drums shake the sky while the neon lights of an electric flower float dance before the gods. Up in the mountains, the Bunun people raise their voices in a multi-part harmony, praying to the sky deity for a good millet harvest — one of the oldest forms of polyphonic singing known to humankind.

Taiwan's sounds are not merely background noise. They are a living cultural code. Every sound carries history, memory, and identity.

Key Sounds:

• 🚛 Garbage truck music: a uniquely Taiwanese urban ritual with no parallel anywhere in the world
• 🏯 Temple festival music: Beiguan, Nanguan, and Eight Generals drum troupes
• 🏔️ Indigenous polyphony: the Bunun Pasibutbut (four-part harmony that produces eight-part overtones)
• 🛵 The motorcycle sea: an engine symphony from the world's densest scooter population
• 🌙 Night market vendors: the sonic theater of grassroots commerce

Why It Matters

Every city has its own sonic fingerprint. New York has the screech of subway trains and taxi horns; Tokyo has platform departure jingles and convenience store door chimes. But Taiwan's soundscape has a unique quality: it simultaneously contains the ancient chanting of Austronesian peoples, the temple gongs and drums of Han immigrants, the school song tradition left over from the Japanese colonial era, and the inventive sounds of modern urban life.

This is not one layer of sound — it is four hundred years of sonic archaeology.

To understand Taiwan's soundscape is to walk through Taiwan's history with your ears. And these sounds are disappearing. Some are being swallowed by urbanization; others are being lost through cultural rupture. Recording them is not merely cultural preservation — it is rescue work.

The Sonic Codes of Everyday Urban Life

Garbage Truck Music — the World's Most Civilized Way to Take Out the Trash

A global exclusive: collecting trash with classical music

The two classic pieces played by Taiwan's garbage trucks are DNA-level memories for every person who has grown up here:

1. "Für Elise" — Beethoven's most widely known piano miniature, used primarily by garbage trucks in northern and central Taiwan
2. "A Maiden's Prayer" — a piano salon piece composed in 1856 by Polish composer Tekla Bądarzewska, used mainly by garbage trucks in southern Taiwan

Interestingly, where you live in Taiwan determines which piece you hear — this may be the world's only case of classical music marking regional identity. Northerners find "A Maiden's Prayer" strange; southerners do a double take at "Für Elise."

Since Taipei introduced its "No Litter on the Ground" policy in 1997, the garbage truck melody has become a collective memory for all Taiwanese. This is not merely garbage collection — it is a daily micro-ritual: neighbors meet at the alley entrance, swap gossip, and take out the trash.

Why classical music? When the Environmental Protection Administration chose the music in the 1980s, the criteria were sounds that were "easy to recognize, inoffensive, and able to travel far." Classical piano pieces fit perfectly: simple melodies, strong frequency penetration, and no copyright issues.

International perception: This is probably the urban spectacle most frequently filmed by foreign YouTubers visiting Taiwan. "You collect garbage with classical music?" — Yes, and the entire country considers it completely normal.

The Motorcycle Sea — A Symphony of 14 Million Engines

Taiwan has more than 14 million registered motorcycles, the highest density in the world. The moment a red light turns green and dozens of scooters accelerate simultaneously is the daily soundtrack for every Taiwanese commuter.

This sound is changing. The spread of electric scooters (such as Gogoro) has made the city a little quieter — but that collective roar of engines surging forward may become a nostalgic sonic memory within a decade.

Election Campaign Trucks — Decibels of Democracy

Every election season, campaign trucks mounted with enormous loudspeakers cruise through the streets, blasting candidates' names and numbers at maximum volume on repeat. This is probably the noisiest form of democratic practice anywhere in the world.

Taiwanese people have a love-hate relationship with it: deafeningly loud, yet it is the most direct expression of free speech — during martial law, putting up a single poster could get you arrested.

Sacred Sounds: Temple Festivals and Religion

Beiguan — Rock Music at the Temple Entrance

Beiguan is the most common traditional music at Taiwanese temple festivals: high volume, fierce rhythm, and extreme emotional intensity. If rock music is defined as "expressing the strongest emotions at the highest volume," then Beiguan is Taiwan's oldest form of rock. Beiguan encompasses both instrumental music (paiziand string pieces) and vocal music (opera and fine tunes); the vocal texts use a kind of "zhengyin Mandarin" — not Taiwanese Hokkien but an archaic official speech register with classical resonance.

Historical context: Beiguan was brought to Taiwan during the Qianlong and Jiaqing reigns of the Qing dynasty, and its name contrasts it with Nanguan (southern pipes), which came from Quanzhou. Interestingly, its vocal style traces back to Zhejiang's Pujiang luantan and Guangdong's Xiqin opera rather than directly from Fujian — today, no identical genre survives in Fujian itself. In Taiwan, Beiguan developed two major schools — Xipi and Fulu (corresponding to the "Xuan" and "Yuan" amateur guild halls) — and rivalry between the two schools sometimes escalated into armed clashes. Musical taste, in Taiwan, has historically been worth fighting over.

Present situation: Beiguan faces a severe succession crisis. Young people find it too noisy and too old-fashioned, and the number of learners is declining sharply. Paradoxically, international ethnomusicologists marvel at its complex banqiang system and qupai structure — it shares roots with the xipi and erhuang styles of Peking opera, and has been jokingly called "Peking opera's country cousin."

Nanguan (Southern Strings / Nanyin) — East Asia's Oldest Chamber Music

In sharp contrast to Beiguan's ferocity, Nanguan is refined, elegant, and slow-paced. Originally called "xian guan" (string pipes), it originated in Quanzhou and was brought to Taiwan by Southern Fujianese migrants. The standard "upper four instruments" ensemble consists of a horizontally held pipa lute, a sanxian three-string lute, a dongxiao end-blown flute (preserving the Tang dynasty standard of one chi and eight cun in length), a two-string fiddle, and clappers. In 2009 it was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity under the name "Nanyin."

Sonic character: Nanguan's melodic lines are extraordinarily long — a single phrase may unfold over several minutes. In performance, the texture is "silk wiping" — the string instruments (pipa fingering) lead, and the bamboo sound (dongxiao) dissolves in afterward, each part complementing and following the others while remaining individually audible. This is music that demands stillness to hear — in an age of scarce attention, Nanguan teaches you above all else to slow down.

Cultural roots: Nanguan preserves musical traditions dating back to the Han and Wei dynasties. Its ensemble instrumentation traces back to the Han dynasty xianghege (described as "strings and bamboo in mutual harmony, with the one keeping time singing"), and its instrumental forms and structural principles are closely related to the great musical suites of the Tang and Song eras. Scholars call it "a living musical fossil" and praise it as the "thousand-year clear tone." In Taiwan, Lukang is Nanguan's most important stronghold.

A singular detail: The Nanguan pipa is still played horizontally in the Tang dynasty manner, while the pipa in all other musical traditions long ago shifted to a vertical playing position — that posture alone is a thousand-year time capsule.

Electric Flower Floats — Sacred and Secular Collide

This is Taiwan's most magically realistic soundscape: atop a funeral or temple float, a pole dancer performs under neon lights while an electronic synthesizer plays music blending Taiwanese-language pop, electronic dance music, and Buddhist scripture.

Cultural logic: It looks absurd, but there is a serious folkloric logic behind it — the noise and spectacle are for the gods, and also the deceased's final party. "Send him off in style."

International attention: Electric flower floats have been the subject of feature coverage in BBC, Vice, and other international media, regarded as Taiwan's most distinctive visual and auditory folk spectacle.

Layers of Chanting and Ritual Sound

Buddhist temple morning and evening services, Daoist ritual text recitation, the drum troupes accompanying a Mazu pilgrimage procession — religious sound is the deepest stratum of Taiwan's soundscape. In the city you may simultaneously hear a church bell, a temple's wooden fish percussion, and a mosque's call to prayer — this is Taiwan's religious pluralism expressed in sound.

Indigenous Sounds: The Earth's Memory

Bunun Pasibutbut (Millet Harvest Prayer Song) — the "Eight-Part Polyphony" That Is Actually Four

The Bunun Pasibutbut is often called "eight-part polyphony," but this label is a beautiful misunderstanding — it is actually four-part harmony (mabungbung, maidadu, mandaza, mahosngas). Through intensive chest resonance and throat-singing technique, the performers produce rich natural overtones that register as eight parts on a spectrograph. It is not eight people singing eight voice-parts — it is four voice-parts singing a physical miracle.

In 1952, Japanese musicologist Takatomo Kurosawa submitted a recording of this song to UNESCO, stunning the international ethnomusicology community.

Sonic character: Six to twelve men (an even number) join hands and stand in a circle, rising gradually from low vowels — "o," "e," "a," "i" — toward higher pitches. There is no conductor, no score — only mutual listening, achieving harmony through the convergence of sound. When the overtones stack correctly, you hear more voice-parts than the number of singers — one of the most mysterious acoustic phenomena the human voice can produce.

Cultural significance: Pasibutbut is a ritual for communicating with the sky deity Dihanin, and may only be performed during the millet harvest season from January to March each year. The more harmonious the singing, the happier Dihanin, and the fuller the millet will grow that year. It is currently transmitted only among the Lalung and Isdaza subgroups of the Bunun, and is not practiced by all Bunun communities.

Origin legend: The people, while out hunting, heard the resonance of hollow giant trees and wild bees, the echo of waterfalls, or the wind through pine and bamboo groves, and understood it as a blessing from the sky deity — and so they imitated these sounds to create the song. Different communities tell different versions of the origin story, but all point to the same truth: this song came from the sounds of nature.

Amis — Song and Dance of the Harvest Festival

The Amis harvest festival (Ilisin) is one of Taiwan's most magnificent Indigenous celebrations. During days of continuous singing and dancing, "antiphonal singing" between a lead singer and the group demonstrates the dynamic relationship between individual and collective.

Sonic character: The lead singer improvises the lyrics while the group responds. The words may be improvised, but the melody is relatively fixed. This style of singing is also common in African music — the similarities between Austronesian and African music remain an ongoing research topic in ethnomusicology.

Paiwan and Rukai — the Double-Tube Nose Flute

The double-tube nose flute (lalingedan) of the Paiwan and Rukai peoples is one of very few instruments in the world played by blowing through the nose. One tube carries the melody; the other produces a sustained drone, creating a distinctive sound effect.

Cultural context: In Paiwan tradition the nose flute was an instrument reserved for the nobility, closely tied to the clan hierarchy. It was used at important occasions such as weddings and funerals, and a player's breath was considered an extension of the soul.

Tao — Clapping Songs and the Ocean

The Tao (Dawu) people of Orchid Island (Lanyu) are Taiwan's only ocean-dwelling Indigenous people, and their music is inseparable from the sea. The clapping songs of the flying fish season and the work songs sung while building boats all echo the rhythms of the ocean.

The writer Syaman Rapongan said: "The ocean's memory is longer than any person's." Tao music is the sonic version of that sentence.

Natural Sounds

Spring Thunder and the Plum Rains

Taiwan's climate has a vivid seasonal sonic character: the first crack of thunder in spring, a downpour drumming on a corrugated iron roof during the plum rain season, the eerie few seconds of silence just before a summer afternoon thunderstorm. Anyone who has lived under an iron roof knows — the rain can be so loud you cannot hear what the person next to you is saying.

Cicadas

Taiwan has more than 60 species of cicadas, and their summer song can reach 90 decibels — roughly the volume of a vacuum cleaner. Different elevations host different species, creating a vertically distributed sonic spectrum: the Taiwan bear cicada in the lowlands, the Formosan bear cicada at mid-elevations, and the Yezo cicada at higher altitudes, each with its own timbre and rhythm.

Sounds of Taiwan's Endemic Species

The Taiwan hwamei's song is widely considered one of the most beautiful bird calls in Taiwan. The bark of the Reeve's muntjac — which sounds like a dog — often startles hikers. And at night in the mountain forests, owl calls and frog song interweave to create the unique nocturnal soundscape of Taiwan's highlands.

Disappearing Sounds

The Knife Grinder's Horn

The knife grinder who cycled through the alleys pressing a distinctive horn and calling out "Sharpening — scissors!" was once one of the most familiar sounds in Taiwan's neighborhoods. With modernization, this sound has almost vanished.

Hardware Store Broadcast Hawking

Recorded Taiwanese-language advertisements blaring from hardware stores ("Come, come, everything on sale…") were once the background ambience of Taiwan's small-town streets. Today they can still be heard in some traditional markets and rural areas.

The Radio Era's Sounds

Before television became widespread, the radio was the sonic center of the Taiwanese household. Taiwanese-language radio dramas, gezaixi opera broadcasts, glove puppet show soundtracks — these sounds shaped the auditory memory of an entire generation and now exist only in the recollections of the elderly.

The Tones of Taiwanese Hokkien Are Fading

Taiwanese Hokkien has eight tones (seven in active use), making it one of the world's tonally richest everyday spoken languages. But with the spread of Mandarin-medium education, younger generations' proficiency in Taiwanese has declined sharply. When a language disappears, what is lost is not only vocabulary — it is also the particular sonic texture and musicality unique to that language. The rising and falling of Taiwanese Hokkien is itself a melody.

🚇 MRT Soundscape Project

In 2018, Dahe Music conducted a unique field recording project along Taipei's MRT network — the "MRT Soundscape Project." Moving through the metro grid, they recorded the most representative everyday sounds near each station. These 8-second clips are like a map of Taipei drawn in sound.

📝 Curator's Note: Every MRT station has its own sonic DNA. The scripture chanting and oracle block casting at Xingtian Temple, the buzz of tattoo machines in Ximending, the hawking of New Year goods on Dihua Street — these are not "noise." They are proof that a city is alive.

🎧 Listen: Taipei MRT Soundscape (Recorded March 2018 by Dahe Music)

Contemporary Sound Experiments

Sound Art

Taiwan has a vibrant sound art scene. Platforms such as C-LAB (Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab), Etat Lab, and the Voice Crack Festival continuously drive the creation and presentation of sound art. Works by artists Wang Fujui, Yao Chung-han, and Chang Yung-ta translate Taiwan's environmental sounds into a contemporary artistic language.

Field Recording

A growing number of sound workers are engaged in field recording across Taiwan, documenting disappearing sounds. From alpine forests to coastal intertidal zones, from old markets to industrial districts — these recordings are not merely archives; they are auditory cultural assets.

Interactive Sound Installations

Taiwan's new media artists have made outstanding contributions in the field of interactive sound installation. By combining sensors, real-time computation, and spatial audio, they transform audience body movements into sonic experience — making "listening" a full-body act of participation.

Surprising Facts

• 🔢 Garbage truck music is a global exclusive: Taiwan is the only country in the world that uses classical music to remind residents to take out their trash. The two pieces have been in use for more than 25 years and have become the most powerful collective memory triggers in the nation.
• 🔢 The "eight-part polyphony" is actually four parts: The Bunun Pasibutbut is four-part harmony that produces an eight-part effect through natural overtones. After Takatomo Kurosawa submitted a recording to UNESCO in 1952, it stunned the international musicology community.
• 🔢 Nanguan is a living fossil: Preserving musical elements from the Tang and Song dynasties, it is one of the oldest surviving chamber music traditions in East Asia and was inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009.
• 🔢 Taiwan's cicadas reach 90 decibels: Summer cicada song is as loud as a vacuum cleaner; more than 60 species create one of the world's densest cicada soundscapes.
• 🔢 Taiwanese Hokkien has seven tones: One of the world's tonally richest everyday spoken languages, in which every change of tone changes the meaning of a word — the language itself is music.

References

• UNESCO: Nanyin — Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
• Council of Indigenous Peoples: Taiwan Indigenous Music Database
• C-LAB Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab
• Taiwan Soundscape Association
• Classic FM: Beethoven's "Für Elise" calls Taiwanese residents to take out the trash