The Dream Parade, held by Xizhi’s International Dreams Art Collective, has become an iconic large-scale annual arts event for Taiwan, drawing crowds of around 50,000 every year. The man behind the parade is the biggest dreamer among Taiwan’s architects, Gordon Tsai.

The unwanted carnival

The Dream Parade has been getting bigger and bigger in recent years, with the 2020 edition being particu­larly spectacular. Twenty years ago, though, the scene was quite the opposite.

Back then, Tsai and a few residents of Dream Community had to rely on a little liquid courage to even head out, their heads hanging low, masks over their faces to avoid having to meet people’s gazes as they pushed their carts around. And they had to handle a tire blowout along the way. Even the residents taking part would shamefully shout out, “This is so embarrassing!”

It all went back to one midsummer night, when Tsai and his family held a meeting that would turn out to be decisive. They set up Songyuan Construction (later to become Dream Development) and began planning the first phase of Dream Community, a task that Tsai quit his work in advertising to dedicate himself to.

When homes in the community began to go up for sale, Xizhi was struggling with flooding issues, and so prospective buyers would often ask while visiting whether the homes came with their own lifeboats. Resid­ents of Dream Community I and II were mostly first-time buyers who couldn’t afford to live in Taipei City. When floods hit Xizhi, they would either have to leave temporarily or would move out completely.

Despite the outside world not looking positively on his project, the tenacious Tsai was determined to prove that Xizhi could be a place for good homes. To that end, he began working on organizing hiking tours and cultural exchanges in the community, along with setting up music, dance, and cooking clubs, helping it gradually develop a life of its own.

Taking lessons from Seattle

Just as things seemed to be taking a turn for the better, Typhoon Xangsane struck, its fierce winds and rain demolishing housing prices in Xizhi. As a result, homes in Dream Community were sold off in large numbers. Tsai was heartbroken, but he soon found a new inspira­tion while reading a book in which National Taiwan University academic Kang Min-jay discusses Fremont, a sparsely populated community in Seattle that had been transformed into a center of counterculture through artistic efforts. After finishing the book, Tsai was driven to make a trip to Seattle himself in 2002 to be part of Fremont’s annual Summer Solstice Parade and Pageant.

After returning to Taiwan, while working on the third phase of Dream Community, Tsai began work on a Brazilian-style carnival parade in emulation of Fremont as part of his community-building model. Unexpectedly, however, he got a lot of backlash from the residents. “People were throwing joss paper and eggs at us, and some even called the cops. There were a lot of complaints,” For the next phase of the community, Tsai set conditions for moving in: “If you want to join us, you have to prove that you share the same values.”

“The Procedure for Joining the Dream Art Village,” written out on A4 paper, clearly listed five challenging criteria for becoming part of the community. For example, if you wanted to join, you not only had to have money, you also had to welcome the idea of dressing up and taking part in the Dream Parade and write a report on what you got out of it afterward. Rather than scaring off potential residents, this and the other require­ments boosted the community’s popularity, and people lined up to move in.

A light born of darkness

At first, residents didn’t want to dress too revealingly for the parade, joking that they “didn’t want to look like nutjobs.” Seeing that the atmosphere wasn’t going to be changing anytime soon, Tsai decided to take action. As well as looking for help from art students and teachers, he also took matters into his own hands, dropping trou to walk with the parade in a thong and putting on a fire-breathing show. “Blowing some fire on the situation was the only way I could ignite their passions,” he says. And with this daring display, the parade soon became a hit. Fire-breathing looks scary, but, laughs Tsai, “That was the easy part!”

Where there are shadows, there will also be light. With the residents banging on samba drums, Tsai’s parades often drew loud protests from the neighbors. At the same time, though, there were many elderly locals, even some facing their final days, who proudly showed their support by sporting souvenirs that Tsai had brought back from overseas carnival parades.

Having observed such parades in many countries, Tsai remarks, “When I visited the Brazilian Carnival, many of the most gorgeously dressed samba girls were from the poorest slums.” The slums were not well ­policed, and Tsai was robbed every time he went there, leaving him shocked; “How could such a magnificent carnival be born in such a dark place?” Wondering why Taiwan, in better circumstances, couldn’t produce something at least as beautiful, he set his mind to lighting a similar fire of passion here.

Burning his own work

For over 20 years, Gordon Tsai has traveled Taiwan with foundation staff, community residents, and artists from around the world, promoting carnivals and sowing the seeds of art. He and his team have traveled as far afield as Green Island, indigenous villages some 2000 meters above sea level, remote and rural communities, and Hakka villages, setting up samba groups and spreading their passion for freedom, joy, and ­creativity.

In 2015 Tsai lavished NT$20 million on a “Mazu Goddess of the Empty Sea Temple” and assembled a team to take part in the world-famous Burning Man festival in Nevada, USA. Burning Man is held in a barren desert, with tickets costing hundreds of US dollars. A fantastical large-scale art festival, not only is it a mecca for artists, it also attracts people from other backgrounds, such as Silicon Valley tech gurus.

At its grand finale, the Taiwanese art team led by Tsai joined the other participating artists in burning their work, becoming the first group from Asia to exhibit at Burning Man. In 2017 he joined forces with graphic designer Xiao Qing-yang to produce two “Zulai Art Cars,” one of which was burned at Burning Man while the other remains at Dream Community.

Chasing daydreams

Tsai is constantly pursuing his dreams, and with the start of the fifth phase of the community, he launched the daring Daydream Project. To most people, a daydream implies a fanciful idea that has little chance of coming to fruition. Tsai’s fantastical mind saw him set up a Bali-style resort lounge for the workers while construction was underway, a place where they could take breaks in comfort and eschew unhealthy energy drinks in favor of coffee at the “Beefcake Cafe,” wearing work clothes adorned with bikini-clad women.

Tsai invited more than 300 artists from around the world to reside in the village, using the “Fancy House” concept to combine media and creativity and create artworks in all corners of the community. From mo­saics and murals to lighting works, this helped create an interesting and tasteful living environment, while also providing a platform for artists from various countries to create and showcase their works, opening up another avenue for Taiwan to conduct international artistic and cultural exchanges.

Daring to dream, sacrificing the self

Five years ago, Gordon Tsai had a sudden bout of heart palpitations, fainted, and collapsed. He didn’t draw a breath for over an hour, coming close to brain death. Doctors worked long and hard to resuscitate him and were about to pronounce him dead when, astonishingly, he slowly came to with one final electric shock. Not expecting a positive outcome, the doctors told his family that when someone doesn’t breathe for more than an hour, should they come back around they are most likely to be in a vegetative state. Tsai’s tenacity, though, once again proved enough to work a miracle, and while he suffered memory loss, he has now almost fully recovered. His life seems more dramatic than any movie. Reflecting on all this, Tsai just smiles warmly and says, “See how good the heavens have been to me?”

Having suffered such a serious illness, Tsai decided to slow down a bit. “Sometimes you need to go through some things before you can really understand the world.” However, he remains as determined as ever to help carnivals take root in Taiwan and even become more international. “There’s still a long way to go, I think. Taiwan’s learned to do the physical side, but we still need to learn the essence of artistic creativity as it is practiced abroad.”

Tsai’s life of passion has made him something of a “burning man” himself; “Terry Gou and Morris Chang aren’t the only ones with dreams,” he says. “Anyone with a dream and passion can make that dream come true from even the smallest start.”

For more pictures, please click 《Igniting Passions Across Taiwan—Gordon Tsai’s Crazy Dream》