--- id: "post-38-en" title: "Alongside the Nostalgia: Karaoke" type: "review" authors: ["Wu Jingxian"] publicationDate: "Sat Aug 22 2026 21:22:20 GMT+0800 (Hong Kong Standard Time)" publisher: "Taipei Fringe Festival" originalUrl: "https://tpac.org.taipei/festival-fringe/2026/comment-writer/1611" tags: [] relatedEvents: ["Karaoke"] liveUrl: "https://www.rooftopproductions.hk/en/review/karaoke-tff-1611" --- # Alongside the Nostalgia: Karaoke **Post Details:** - **Type:** review - **Author(s):** Wu Jingxian - **Published:** 22 Aug 2026 - **Publisher:** Taipei Fringe Festival - **Original Source:** [Link](https://tpac.org.taipei/festival-fringe/2026/comment-writer/1611) - **Related Events:** Karaoke --- ## Content Brought to us by Hong Kong's Rooftop Productions, *Karaoke* is a highly successful and exquisitely crafted performance that uses song to recall the historical moment of Hong Kong's sovereignty handover, interwoven with the coming-of-age story of its creator, Michelle Li. Having already garnered significant attention during its premiere in Hong Kong, it is incredibly special to see it presented in Taiwan today at the Taipei Fringe Festival. The performance opens in a stand-up comedy format, stringing together Hong Kong’s golden hits from the 1980s and 90s, instantly drawing the audience in. Back then, she was a member of the children's choir at the handover ceremony, singing in both English and Mandarin to see off the British as they boarded the royal yacht docked at Victoria Harbour. Looking back nearly 30 years later, Prince Charles's speech on the day of the handover sounds exceptionally ironic today. Ultimately, when her father is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, she has no choice but to use her voice as a form of "nostalgia therapy" for him. Although the show feels like stand-up, you can sense that the performer leaves much unsaid—perhaps because it is too inconvenient to say—forcing her to hide her true words within the songs. Amidst the melody of *Years Flowing Like Water* (似水流年), who can truly escape the sorrow of confronting the drastic changes Hong Kong has faced over the past decade? Rewatching this history of the handover of sovereignty, a whimsical thought suddenly struck me: if Taiwan ever faced a day where our sovereignty was handed over, who would we be sending off to board a yacht docked at Keelung Port? But returning to the topic of nostalgia, I am reminded of what Mu Yu wrote in his book *Generations* (代代): *"Nostalgia is essentially taking a set of rules from the past, believing that these rules are better than the current ones, and hoping the future can replicate the past."* You can distinctly feel that in recent years, following the arrival of new "rules," Hong Kongers and creators have found themselves at a loss. They have had little choice but to turn back and look to the past, even using nostalgia as a medium to voice themselves. *"But alongside this nostalgia is, in fact, a sense of powerlessness. Could the reason we try to hold onto the past so tightly be that—after Queen's Pier was demolished, after the high-speed rail from the North rolled in, and after efforts to preserve the footprints of old heritage failed—memories are among the rare things we can still firmly grasp? But let me say it again: the future we imagined back then was definitely not this current version."* Perhaps Prince Charles, delivering his speech at Victoria Harbour that day, genuinely believed that Britain would continue to look after Hong Kong well in the future; perhaps "Fat Patten" (Chris Patten) also thought back then that he would definitely return. Taiwan, too, has been swept up in a wave of nostalgia over the past decade. We still reminisce about the epic clashes of titans at the Golden Melody Awards back in the day, and how the millennial era sparked trends across Asia. Of course, we should continue to remember the past, speaking it out loud when memories are on the verge of fading. But we must also be careful not to confuse our beautifully imagined home of the past with our actual home. After all, the prince of the past is now a King, and today's youth hardly go sing karaoke anymore. As us "LKKs" (old folks) spend our days dreaming of a cultural "Renaissance," where exactly do we hope our future society will go? We can choose to live our days *"looking at a stretch of sea,"* or we can choose to seek out a different scenery. --- **Cultural Notes for Context:** * **LKK:** A popular Taiwanese slang acronym derived from Taiwanese Hokkien (老摳摳, *lāu-khoo-khoo*), meaning an old person or someone behind the times. * **Fat Patten (肥彭):** The affectionate Cantonese nickname given to Chris Patten, the last British Governor of Hong Kong. * ***Looking at a stretch of sea*:** A direct callback to the lyrics of the song sung in the play, mentioned in your previous text. *Originally published in: Taipei Fringe Festival. We create a mirrored version of reviews and articles about our shows for archival purposes, so that we can retain a version if the original disappears. We always link to the original publisher and credit the author. However, if you are the owner of this material and you would like us to remove it, please get in touch.*