Shiding 1893 · Siang-po songs

A handcrafted world inside Elsewhen. You wake up as one of the Chen family, who crossed the sea from Anxi together, picking spring tea on a hillside. Someone far off sings a line — you can sing the next one.

Improvised call-and-response singing from the tea country of northern Taiwan, four lines of seven syllables each. Tea pickers sang them to pass the time, to court each other, and to sing about how hard tea work is. In 2023 they became New Taipei City's first registered oral-tradition cultural heritage.

Almost nothing about siang-po songs was ever written down; this world's background comes from local oral accounts. With so little to go on, the people here are played by AI and will get things wrong — words, songs, history. If you know siang-po songs or Shiding's past, tell us what is off and help us bring it closer.

Type what you want to do: talk to your kin, answer the singer with a line of your own. You can also hand this story to the soundtrack companion under the clock and hear it become this world's music.