Every argument in favor of keeping Chiang's statue in Dead Dictator Memorial Hall is disingenuous

The Transitional Justice Commission has recently unveiled a plan to remove the statue of mass murderer Chiang Kai-shek from his personality cult "memorial hall". The main reason given for this is simple: it's not simply a memorial statue, rather, the entire complex acts more like a temple which directs you to worship the former dictator and architect of Taiwan's brutal White Terror. You can read all about it here. 

Honestly speaking, there should be little debate about this. The only nuanced critique I've heard so far has been Michael Turton's, pointing out that yes, the statue will go but the place names will probably remain, and the perpetrators will go unpunished.

I'm not saying debate or dissent should be banned, just that there is no good or sincere counter-argument -- the statue has to go. 

The square and park still have public utility as a large, open meeting space with gardens providing greenery and the square itself popular for concerts, protests or simply dance troupe rehearsals. I don't even think the blue-and-white color scheme is ugly. (I do think the National Concert Hall and Theater are less attractive, but are worth keeping as an architectural reminder of the time that the KMT forced foreign aesthetics on Taiwan).

But the statue? No. It's got to go. It should have happened years ago. There is no question now that Chiang was a brutal dictator more interested in using Taiwan -- and eating up its resources -- to "re-take the Mainland" than in any actual care for Taiwan itself. Statues are meant to honor people; they are not neutral conveyances of historical memory. Chiang deserves no honor, therefore, he deserves no statue.

Despite this, the proposal has infuriated a lot of people looking for reasons to be angry, with all the same arguments that always pop up when these sorts of things are discussed: that's cancelling history! (The comment thread on this is deeply entertaining and troubling.) We need the statue to remind us of the past! You can't prove that Chiang was a man with no merit! The government is acting like dictators themselves in trying to remove this statue of a dictator that everyone agrees was a dictator! You're offending all the people who fought for him and retreated to Taiwan!  This causes disunity when we should be united, we shouldn't demonize people who still respect a former dictator!

We oppose the @iingwen administration's plan to remove the statue from National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in the name of transitional justice. The @dpponline should concentrate on promoting social reconciliation instead of rewriting history and fighting partisan struggles. pic.twitter.com/K58kXFTebI

— 中國國民黨 KMT (@kuomintang) September 10, 2021

By now, this "debate" has played out so much that I shouldn't even have to cover the very obvious responses to it all. 

I am pretty sure people will remember Chiang Kai-shek without a statue in one of the most prominent parts of the city. He'll still be in history books and museum exhibits. There's a whole park dedicated to retired statues of him that you can go look at (or mock) if you really need a piece of bronze to help you remember. 

Statues have never been about "preserving history". Again, statues honor people. One does not need to prove he "has no merit" to prove he doesn't deserve a statue. Hitler was a pretty good painter, but there aren't any statues of him. Young Stalin was a stone-cold hottie, but his statues are mostly gone (I think one or two might still exist as museum pieces). Perhaps someone can argue Chiang did a single good thing for Taiwan, of his own volition -- that is, not pressured by outside forces -- because of some sincere care for Taiwan rather than his own selfish scheme to "re-take the Mainland", a plan in which Taiwan were never asked if they wanted to participate (mostly, they don't). I can't think of a single thing, but even if one could, on the scale of horrors to good deeds, the horrors clearly win. 

Why is the "erasing history" argument disingenuous? Because honestly, the people saying these things already know how such debates have played out elsewhere. They already know that people remember horrible dictators even after their statues are removed. They already know that, say, Stalin has not been "forgotten". And they already know that statues don't neutrally mark historical events: nobody thinks that we erect statues of famous people, good and bad, and then keep them there no matter what. Statues are honors, and they know this.

They are perfectly aware that such arguments hold no water, yet they make them anyway. The goal is not to make a good point, it's to manufacture anger. Or they've chosen a side that they think will elevate their political careers, and that side requires them to make obviously ridiculous arguments, knowing some percentage of people inclined to vote for their party will buy them.

When it is sincere, it's still disingenuous. Such people either think the brutalization of Taiwan was justified: that either Chiang still deserves praise for "keeping Taiwan from the Communists", or that the White Terror wasn't so bad, and perhaps even necessary. They know, however, that they can't win on actually praising Chiang, because the history on both of these counts is clear: the ROC did indeed win in Kinmen with a combination of luck and strategy, but nobody seriously -- or should I say nobody serious -- thinks that the PLA wouldn't have eventually taken Taiwan if the KMT hadn't convinced the US to stand by them in the 1950s. As for the "necessity" of the White Terror, we now know thanks to declassified documents and memoirs from the era that most of the people who suffered under it had either committed no crime, or guilty of actions that should never have been crimes in the first place. 

They know they won't win by admitting their tongues are raw from licking the memory of Chiang's boots, so instead they choose "historical preservation" instead, because it sounds like a legitimate point. But they also know that it's difficult to win an argument against a person who isn't sincere, because you spend time arguing that their points are wrong. But they already know that.

The KMT as mentioned initiatives such as land reform to show that Chiang is not a man with "no merit". Some praise land reform as a clear positive. It's far from clear, however, that that is actually true.

But it doesn't matter. Again, having some merit is not enough to get you a massive statue in a prominent downtown park, but the point is that it's just not a sincere argument. Even if land reform had been an unproblematic good, nobody erects a massive memorial hall for the guy who did land reform, especially if he also engaged in brutal killing sprees. Nobody also names entire districts, roads and other parks after him. 

This is obvious. The land reform touters do know how fatuous it sounds, but they make the argument anyway. 

Neither is the Tsai administration "acting like dictators". They were democratically elected by a population which, polls consistently show, does not identify as Chinese and does not want to fulfill Chiang's dearest with of "re-taking" any sort of "Mainland". One poll from 2017 exists saying that most disapprove of DPP actions on memorial Chiang junk, but that poll was sponsored by the KMT. That's hardly reliable. Transitional justice is a well-known global mechanism, widely accepted as part of a post-authoritarian democratic progression. Engaging in it is not "dictatorship".

People who decry any form of transitional justice as some new form of dictatorship are, yet again, perfectly aware that it is a democratic mechanism for dealing with past atrocities. They're not ignorant. This is intentional. 

As for "offending" those who fought for the ROC and retreated to Taiwan, I suppose there is some sincere belief here: when you've upended your entire life because you decided to fight for a certain government, to learn later that the very same government you were willing to give your life for in fact ran a brutal terror campaign for decades -- which you barely thought about because perhaps you were not affected -- well, I suppose it must hurt. 

It certainly is hard to tell Old Grandpa Ouyang that the guy he believed in, the guy he left China for, turned out to be a mass murderer. It probably hurts to truly believe for most of your life that pushing Chinese culture on a Taiwan you've "liberated" from Japanese imperialism was the right thing to do, only to hear  that the government you supported was so horrible that people think of the Japanese era fondly in comparison. (And yes, you do have to be pretty horrible to make the Japanese colonial era look good). 

However, I posit that where such reckoning is sincerely and personally difficult, it is also necessary. Grandpa Ouyang won't be around much longer, but his children and grandchildren will, and it helps neither them nor Taiwan to keep up the fiction that Chiang was a great man. At some point many of us have to reckon with the actions of our ancestors, but it doesn't mean we're defined by them. Only be recognizing this can one do better. It also doesn't mean every KMT refugee engaged in the horrors of the White Terror, even if quite a few helped enable it.

Besides, how is it okay to tiptoe around the feelings of a few old soldiers, when so many Taiwanese whose families were torn apart by Chiang and his minions have to put up with him in a big ol' worship-park downtown, with a hagiographic museum to boot? Do the painful memories of the actual victims not count, because it might offend the perpetrators or their enablers?

There's an element of obtuseness here too: the point these veterans and their descendants are trying to make isn't quite "Chiang was good enough to merit a statue", but rather, "removing him forces us to think about our and our ancestors' past actions, and that's painful so we don't want to do it." They are not quite the same thing.

That said, I think some of this 'offense' is performative as well: it's not hard to understand that one's ancestors might have behaved in sub-optimal ways (some more egregiously than others) while realizing that isn't a personal slight against you, now, unless you continue to perpetuate or defend their actions. Either they already know this, or they're choosing not to see it. 

In some cases, it's clear perpetuation: the KMT's position doesn't align with the majority of voters, and the DPP has already taken on the 'pro-Taiwan' mantle. They can't claim to be the great saviors of Taiwan, because now we know they weren't. So all they've really got left is identity: Chinese identity. To really dig one's heels into that, at some point, they have to start defending authoritarian symbols because those icons also symbolize the pro-Sinicization mindset they want to retain.

But you can't very well go around defending dictators, so you have to make up arguments like "he did one thing which some argue had some limited benefits, and that's good enough for a massive blue-and-white temple!" or "removing him is erasing history, all statues are merely history and don't have any other meaning!" or "you made Grandpa cry!" or "any movement on this topic amounts to its own authoritarianism!"

Calls that this is divisive at a time when Taiwan should be united are disingenuous as well. Yes, Taiwanese society should be united against the threat from China, which is very real. But the general public consensus on Taiwanese identity and its authoritarian past are fairly clear, and from what I've seen from the KMT, they're the ones being "divisive", which harms "unity". Perhaps they should stop demonizing the DPP to score political points by defending the placement of a statue that venerates a mass murderer. 

But come on, the people saying that transitional justice "demonizes" some people know what they are doing. They know perfectly well that crimes against humanity were indeed committed in Taiwan, and they know that those who actually carried them out will likely die before they ever face any consequences. They're aware that the orchestrator of these crimes was Chiang himself, and they know the KMT are the demonizers, not the demonized, and the one sowing disunity.

If they really wanted unity, they'd support efforts at transitional justice. They don't.

If they don't -- if they sincerely believe that the KMT attacks are justified but the DPP's are not, I wonder how it is they logic their way into thinking "unity" always comes at the cost of victims forgiving perpetrators, so the perpetrators' feelings aren't hurt.

Or the most laughable argument I've heard: it's popular with tourists so taking it down is the same as 'cancel culture' which will ruin the tourism industry! 

Who are these tourists? The Chinese tourists who are only allowed to come at the CCP's whim, using tour companies mostly owned by Chinese, who made Taiwan a noticeably worse place to live and travel as they'd buy up all the seats and crowd all the sites with all the ugly hotels and shopping malls built for them, and who only ever contributed a tiny percentage to Taiwan's economy, easily made up with tourists from elsewhere once the pandemic eases.

The use of "cancel" in a lot of these crocodile-tear performances is telling, however. Either disingenuous people are hearing this as some sort of online buzzword and applying it to anything they don't like ("disagreeing with me is cancel culture!"), or they're being directed to do so in a deliberate troll operation. It sounds too much like exactly what Western conservatives say to be a coincidence.

Regardless, it's all fake.

Yes, all of it. People know these arguments are bollocks, but they make them anyway to deliberately waste time and sow division. 

And if you've read all this and still think "no but taking away that giant statue really is erasing history!" you're being either obtuse or insincere.

You can decide which it is. I don't really care.

I attended the Taipei commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and...

The event was emceed by Lin Fei-fan and Miao Poya

...I'm not going to give you a rundown.




I'll just say briefly that I've attended in years past, when the crowd was smaller and perhaps a bit more casual, there to remember the events of June 4th, 1989 but not terribly weighed down by them.

This year's event was better-attended than those in years past. 

This year, I don't know what it was. I would simply expect that there'd be a greater number of PRC spies in the audience than usual, though I can always assume a few are around at any civil society event in Taiwan, so that wasn't it. Perhaps it was the importance of this being a 'Big 0' anniversary. Perhaps trepidation over China's increasing global influence, expansionism and belligerence. Perhaps its increasingly annexationist and violent rhetoric regarding Taiwan. Perhaps a latent knowledge and fear that political conditions in China are worsening, that a genocide is going on while the world shrugs its shoulders ("never again" my ass), that they've already silenced Hong Kong and Taiwan could be next - they intend for Taiwan to be next and this grows more obvious by the day. But I don't really know.

It was something though, and another friend picked up on it too.

I got to meet Miao Poya

"Why does the crowd feel different?" he asked. I'd noticed it too, but couldn't put my finger on it.

I thought for a minute and answered, simply -

Vice-President Chen Chien-jen speaks

"Fear."

I didn't need to yell at those bigots

The future

I set out yesterday with two goals: to check out the inflatable 'tank man' (the iconic protester from the Tiananmen Square massacre) that has appeared in front of Murderous Dictator Memorial Hall as this is the 30th anniversary of those tragic events, and to get some reading done for my dissertation. My route took me through Freedom Square, where I encountered some anti-gay protesters near the arched Freedom Square gate.

They claimed to be against the new same-sex marriage law because it went against "the will of the people" as laid out in that messed-up referendum last November, but in truth, they were simply anti-gay. Here's how you can tell.

A woman shouting into a microphone made points like:

"We voted against gay marriage in the referendum. But they passed it anyway. I ask you - is this democracy?"

Of course, that's not what happened in the referendum. As black metal frontman and Sexy Legislator Freddy Lim helpfully pointed out, the referendum didn't do that: it specifically (though unclearly) asked if people agreed with changing the civil code to allow same-sex couples to marry, or if that should be done by a separate law. The people voted not to change the civil code, but for 'the rights and interests of same-sex unions to be protected' (if I'm translating that right) through some other law. That is what the referendum questions said. Period, end of story, the end, buh-bye. They did not ask if we should not allow any kind of same-sex unions. 

When the government voted to allow same-sex couples to register their marriages (and make no mistake, they are marriages), they not only did so through a separate law just as the referendum asked them to, but even took out the word 'marriage' in one of the articles as a compromise in a bill that was already a compromise. The bill does say couples can register their "marriage" in another article, but...that is what they have, isn't it? What else would it even be called? What gives the anti-gay side the right to define that word?

In any case, a referendum does not supercede a decision by the highest court. When the legislators acted, they acted in keeping with the principles of democracy (as opposed to populism), in which all people are equal under the law, and no group can vote away the rights or equality of another group. I doubt those protesters were unaware of this.

So no, they're not angry about the referendum. That's an excuse, and not a very logical one. They're angry because they hate gays.

In any case, they were all over the age of 50 or so, and there were maybe 20 of them. So when that woman said "I ask you, is this democracy?" I shouted back "YES!" (all in Mandarin of course).

"Can the government do this?"

"THEY CAN!"

Her: "No they can't!"

Me: "You don't understand how referendums work!"

Her: "This isn't democracy!"

Me: "If you don't like equal rights, go to China!"

I may have also laughed loudly at them. (By "may have" I mean, I did.)

So many more people than those angry folks at Freedom Square

Anyway, some very polite police officers came up asked me nicely not to do that, and recommended I go to Ketagalan Boulevard just down the road, where I hadn't realized there was a big, super fun, super gay banquet being prepared. I've been working on my dissertation, okay? I can't keep up with everything these days. Anyway, they were really nice about it, and didn't even take my name...probably because white privilege.

I said "but they just hate gays! They don't care about the referendum!"

Police officer: "Yeah, I know. But they registered their little protest." (translated but pretty direct quote, which I think was pretty cool.)

I did leave - the police were super chill about it and that's fine - but not because I thought it was wrong to shout at some anti-gay protesters. They have the right under freedom of speech and assembly to voice their (bigoted) views. They don't have the right not to face consequences for those views, like being told they're bigoted in public. I didn't force them to stop or take away their microphone, and I couldn't have ejected them if I'd wanted to as it's public space and that's what freedom of speech means. So, no regret there. 

I don't even regret doing it as a foreigner - they probably aren't going to be convinced that same-sex marriage is a local cause in Taiwan. They probably don't care that the anti-gay side is the one that turned to Western hate groups for funding and advice whereas pro-equality groups mostly kept their effort local (though I've heard that some foreign donations did come in late in the game). And I live here too - this is my home and what happens here affects me. As a resident, I also have the right to freedom of speech (really - look it up.)

But, I'd made my point and it was time to move on.

I passed the mass wedding banquet as it was being set up - a friend noted that it was organized by TAPCPR (the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights) and again on my way home when it was in full swing. There were photo backdrops, musical performers, a huge 'flower car' stage and some vendors selling beer, water and promotional goodies. As the banquet was an official function, people who wanted to celebrate but weren't on the guest list came and pickicked on the perimeter. A large screen showing the events on stage was set up for them. The crowd was young, vibrant and enthusiastic. They'd finally grabbed a tiny corner of the privilege to be treated equally and humanely that society had denied them for so long. They were the future.

Picknickers - the main banquet was closer to the Presidential Office

And let me tell you - it was huge. The crowd of thousands (including the banquet-goers) dwarfed the twenty or so oldsters across Jingfu Gate screaming falsehoods about the referendum. Though I didn't see it, I'm also told the oldsters had an audio recording of crying sounds and a hearse (!) at some point.

Which, LOL. Okay. I guess if you're that self-victimizing (seeing as same-sex marriage doesn't affect them at all) and imagine yourself downtrodden (despite being in the age and class that has held so much power and privilege in Taiwan for so long) you have to turn to histrionics.

So in the end, I went home thinking that I didn't really need to yell at them. Not because I was wrong to do so - I truly don't believe that I was, and don't think I actually broke any law - but because it simply wasn't necessary.

The huge crowd across the street, and all the happiness they exuded, made the same point far more effectively.

The aging protesters will look more and more ridiculous as marriage equality slowly becomes an accepted norm in Taiwan, and normal people realize that the sun is still in the sky and the Earth is still spinning and nothing has changed about their own lives, and that if they don't like same-sex unions they don't have to have one. They'll cry and weep and rend their garments, and we will ignore them. (Though let's not get complacent about 2020 - we will eventually win but they will certainly try to use this against Our Lady of Spice, Tsai Ing-wen).

The future held a much bigger party, a much younger party. They won, love won, and Taiwan won, and the angry oldsters with their hearses and black signs can die mad about it. 

For the former colonizers of Taiwan, equality feels like oppression: my latest for Ketagalan Media

Because apparently Lao Ren Cha is all about the sensational (but true) stories today, let's all take a look back at last week's insanity (again)!

This time, I look at retired entertainer Lisa Cheng slapping current Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chiun in the face at a Lunar New Year banquet, over what she called Minister Cheng's desire to "eradicate" Chiang Kai-shek, "discredit" his "contributions" to Taiwan and "demolish" Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.

Note my liberal use of scare quotes. None of what she says about Minister Cheng is true, yet she slapped her anyway.

Why? Because she's lashing out at the perception that the group she identifies with, who were once the dominant/default/ruling social class in Taiwan (by force, no Taiwanese invited them to swoosh in like they owned the place), is being oppressed (lol) when, in fact, society is simply moving towards greater equality. She's retreating to identity politics and letting her insecurity and fragility get the better of her.

Anyway, I talk about all this and more in my latest for Ketagalan Media.

Let's hope this week is less of a dumpster dive for news, seeing as last week was basically a crazy parade of people acting badly. Oh man. But at least it produced a little worthwhile commentary for this tired, nihilist blogger?

Paint the town red!

I don't have access to the actual photo so I made my own with this Wikimedia Commons photo.
Feels nice, let me tell you. You should make one too! 

Another day, another lob of red paint thrown at a Chiang Kai-shek statue - this time the Big Kahuna, the huge bronze atrocity that graces Dead Dictator Memorial Hall in downtown Taipei (link in Chinese).

A bunch of people are going to post this with some (maybe self-righteous - it's hard to avoid sounding that way) screed about how they "support the goals" of the people who did this "but not the actions" because they "turn off" the other side, are "uncivilized", or make it "impossible to engage in dialogue" with those who disagree, or who might think such actions inappropriate.

And yeah, that's not entirely wrong, but you know what? I don't care. So let me pre-emptively say:

If you are "turned off" from dialogue with those who have a political belief you are not naturally inclined to follow because of some red paint, but not put off by actual blood Chiang Kai-shek spilled, I just don't think you can be reasoned with, nor should people waste their time trying. If his being a brutal, murderous dictator doesn't bother you more than an act of civil protest pointing out that history - civil protest in which no one was injured - I don't see how dialogue is possible.

Let alone "respectful" dialogue, as though one should feel the need to be "respectful" when talking about support for a mass-murdering dictator. 

This is in stark contrast to a woman in China who disappeared after throwing ink on an image of dictator Xi Jin-ping. These paint-throwers will probably face charges, but they won't disappear. They won't be executed. They won't be tortured. And other acts of civil disobedience might well go unpunished, as it is now something of a core tenet of Taiwanese democracy. The reason why Taiwan is more tolerant of this sort of protest? Well, because of the past pro-democracy protest actions of the sort of people who would throw red paint at a statue of a dictator to begin with. You have their ideological predecessors to thank for the fact that you have the right to speak out at all in Taiwan. Remember that next time someone is afraid a little red paint will "offend" people.

There are those who will also say "if we can act like this, the other side can deface statues too" - sure, they can. They did, to Yoichi Hatta's statue in southern Taiwan. But honestly, these actions don't happen in a vacuum: they are justified (or not) by historical facts. Those who would deface Chiang have recorded history on their side. Those who would deface Hatta do not, and their actions make them look like idiots. There is no moral equivalency between the two actions.

In fact, this isn't a matter of "opinion" - we have the facts. We know what he did. It's been public for some time, and new facts come to light all the time. There's no shading this - it's not "you see a 6 and I see a 9" - the records are there and there's no glossing over what he did. Those people are still dead, or their livelihoods (or mental health, in some cases) destroyed. We know he was a dictator because that word has a meaning, and he embodied it through actions that provably happened. That money is still in KMT coffers, we already know how most of it got there, and we can now finally count it.

This is all true whether or not you like, or would engage in, or "approve" of, this kind of civil disobedience. It's true whether or not you think civil disobedience is an important component of healthy democracy (it is, and if you don't think so, I think you're wrong, but at least one can have an opinion on that. It's an idea, not a fact.) Your "feelings" about some red paint don't really matter.

That's not an "opinion". That's not a "side". That's not "well we just see this issue differently". That's not "let's have a dialogue". It happened, we know it happened, and if you still think "dialogue" is necessary because you don't want to face facts, and you might be too "offended" by some paint (again - but not murder?) to engage in that "dialogue", or you want "respect" for the "perspective" that maybe Chiang was not a dictator or mass murderer because you don't think words mean things or past actions can be proven, then all I have for you is a big fat

 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

...and a big ol' ball of red paint.

I'm in The News Lens, punching you with history

My response to two opinion pieces on what to do about Chiang Kai-shek statues (and his memorial hall) appeared in The News Lens International Edition today - you can read it here.

A few key points:


His legacy ought to be studied and analyzed, if only to remember the horrors and agonies of the history of this island nation, and to educate ourselves on the importance of avoiding a backslide into totalitarianism. I do not believe anyone has suggested that he be deleted from history textbooks, nor would it be wise to do so.


This gets to the heart of why I wrote the response to begin with - the first article used the word "delete" in the title but never actually suggested he be erased from history, merely that his presence in statue form does not belong does not belong anywhere in the country, except perhaps at Cihu. I have no issue with a place like that existing, in the same way that one may visit other sites around the world that cause us to reflect on the tragedies of history. However, many people who defend Chiang's likenesses remaining intact equate removing the statues with 'deleting' him entirely from history. It must be clear that this is a straw man argument: no reasonable person would say we should forget Chiang existed, any more than we should forget that any other dictator existed.

Let's remember, as a friend pointed out, that one can appropriately remember and study history without keeping statues everywhere. The nations of the former USSR are quite able to learn about and understand what led to their 20th century circumstances without statues of Lenin still hanging about everywhere.

I also took issue with Adam Hatch (the original writer's) three key reasons for why the statues and memorial hall should remain. In short, he pointed to "economic development", "defense against the People's Republic" and "land reform", saying that all of these things make Chiang's legacy more complex than many would have you believe, and he tried to point out without apologizing for Chiang's crimes that, as a result, Chiang did some good in Taiwan too.

Why would I have an issue with this? Well...even if these points were historically accurate (spoiler: they are not), they do not adequately make a case for continuing to let Chiang's horrid face pop up around the country:


In short, there is no political, military or economic argument for continuing to allow Chiang statues to dot the Taiwanese landscape. Even if the economic and anti-Communist defenses were accurate, they would still not begin to contend with the pain his actions caused in Taiwan.


However, that's not why I wrote in.

One thing that really, really bothers me is the use of historical arguments to make one's case that are not actually historically accurate. I can tolerate it to some extent on the Internet because that place is full of crazies who don't know what they're talking about, but Hatch is a graduate student in the field. I don't want to be too mean, but I have to say, a grad student in this subject ought to know better. I'm a graduate student (or I will be soon) in an entirely different field, and simply because I care about Taiwan and read a lot, I knew his points were wrong. So where did he get these ideas? Who is teaching the postgrads at NCCU? What is up with the revisionist history? I do not believe that Hatch is attempting to push an agenda, and I do not mean to attack him personally, but whoever is teaching this version of history sure is.

What's more, these three arguments keep popping up in discussions of Taiwan affairs and their related history - this isn't the first time I've heard the "but economic development, land reform, and he kept the Commies away!" triad of arguments.

Frankly, I'm sick of it. It's time to beat these inaccurate arguments down - punch them with the fists of history.

A quick summary of why all three points are wrong - not wrong in my opinion, but factually wrong:

Regarding "Chiang Beat The Commies":


The change in Western attitudes to Taiwan came with the outbreak of the Korean War. The U.S. decided that Taiwan was an essential bulwark against the spread of Communism (and of China's navy into the Pacific). It was this change in Taiwan's strategic importance and the subsequent mutual defense agreements signed between the United States and the Republic of China, not any action of Chiang’s, which ensured that Taiwan did not fall to the People's Republic. Not only would this have likely happened without Chiang in power, it might have happened sooner under a leader more appealing to the United States, or with Taiwan hypothetically having gained independence as a former colonial territory of Japan.


Of course, we can't know what would have happened if the ROC had never come here, and Taiwan had been dealt with by the Allies as all former colonies of Japan had been, but the hypothetical seems reasonable given how things played out elsewhere.

In any case, Taiwan not falling to the PRC had nothing to do with Chiang himself.

And about "Chiang created economic development initiatives that made Taiwan an Asian Tiger", remember that this bit of revisionism asks you to believe that the KMT came to backwater Taiwan, and developed it, but that was not the case:

Before World War II, Taiwan was one of the most prosperous territories in Asia.

World War II certainly did its part to create economic turmoil in Taiwan, but for the most part, the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) inherited a prosperous and well-run economy in 1945. This is not a defense of the Japanese colonial period: colonialism is, generally, indefensible. However, Taiwan's pre-ROC era economic prosperity is simply a fact. What destroyed the Taiwanese economy so much that the KMT eventually decided to "develop" it? The KMT themselves: as Hsiao-ting Lin (林孝庭) notes in “Accidental State”, under Chiang-appointed Chen Yi (陳儀), resources were so badly mismanaged, governance so high-handed and command economy and state monopoly enterprises so unsuited to local conditions that the economy, and the living standards of the Taiwanese, plummeted....

Chiang Kai-shek did not develop initiatives to turn Taiwan from a backwater into an Asian Tiger. He merely, and belatedly, sought to fix what he and his own party had broken to begin with. 

More could be said about this, and is included in the article, but the point is, you are not a hero when you wait a decade or so to fix what you yourself broke. And even if you were, it does not absolve you of other crimes: if you kill tens or hundreds of thousands, it does not matter if you made the trains run on time.

Finally, on "but land reform was really necessary, something Chiang realized led to his failure in China!" - yeah, not really, no:


Land reform is similarly a complicated issue: while breaking up large landholdings of an entrenched property-owning class is quite defensible, much of that land was ceded by Japanese owners leaving the former colony, and although some was redistributed, much of it was taken by the state directly, or given to KMT state-run monopolies. Make no mistake: land reform was enacted to enrich the ruling diaspora, including Chiang himself, just as much as it was meant to redistribute land to everyone else.


So please, make your arguments, mount your defenses, create your cases, but do so with an accurate view of history. Quit it with the "look at all the good Chiang did, too!" remarks. We know them to be inaccurate, because history tells us so. These are not secrets. These are not hidden stories. We know the story of the end of the Chinese Civil War. We know the story of the Taiwan Miracle. We know how land reform was handled. We know these things, so don't try to make a case by getting them wrong. These points keep popping up, and I'm done. Stop it.

Learn your history, and learn it well. 

You Stay Foolish, We Stay Hungry

So I had a day off yesterday - even though "teachers" usually don't get the day off (apparently they're not "labor", nor is anyone who works for the government, a distinction that I find ridiculous), I did because most of my students are corporate clients. If they have the day off, so do I. So, yay for that.

I spent the morning roaming the demonstrations taking place at CKS Memorial Hall, as well as a smaller one over by Taipei Guest House (台北賓館) and took a few photos. I didn't stay long at CKS, though, because my friend Cathy and I were starving and wanted to get lunch. We spent more time at the smaller demonstration, as it was organized by her teacher.

One good thing about being a part of a smaller protest - it's easier to get quoted in the paper. And I did!

Yes, that's a quote of me speaking Chinese (they cleaned it up a little I think, I don't remember exactly). It wasn't translated. So clearly my speaking ability far exceeds my handwriting ability. It sounds more like I'm complaining about my own work hours and salary than I'd intended, at least if it's not read carefully, but that's more on me than anyone.
I really was there for my friends, students and acquaintances. My salary's pretty darn good. My working hours, though hectic at times, are acceptable (and if they're not I have the power to do something about it). I am free to take long vacations if I wish. But I know so many people in Taiwan who work themselves to exhaustion - 7am to 11pm, meeting rehearsals before meetings, regular Saturdays, months and months without a weekend off (sales reps have that problem), and they're expected to be enthusiastic and energetic about it, to even agree that it's necessary, to never complain, and to continue delivering at peak performance. "We have to," they often say. "It's not fair, but that's my workload."

And what do they get for this? Salaries that have not kept up with inflation. Salaries that won't allow even white collar workers to buy homes in Taipei City. Salaries that I, personally, would laugh at if offered for the amount of work expected to bring them in. You want me to work how many hours a week, for NT $40,000-$50,000 per month? Enough to live an OK but not extravagant life? And that's considered a good salary for someone with experience? You want me to break my back for that? And to like it (or at least put on a reasonably convincing show of it)? You offer me that, and you can take your job and stuff it.

I feel I can say this because I'm not trapped in that grind. I hear this sentiment a lot among my students, and yet it's always followed up by some super humble comment about how it "has" to be done, it's "important", it "can't be avoided", and how they still want to do the best for their company. Which I'm sure they do, but deep down I think they're afraid that if they don't tack these things onto the end that I'll go tell their bosses. I won't.

Anyway.

A few photos:

This is more for my students than myself.

I don't know what she was protesting about - something about Buddhism, and doomsday, and Taiwan...it didn't really make sense. 

My friend's protest signs for Ma's "Facebook page"

This game was supposed to symbolize the wealthy keeping money and resources from the poor, but hitting them with longer work hours

People wrote all sorts of things on this huge poster of Ma's Facebook page. If you can read Chinese you'll be amused by some of them.

過勞死 and 財神請道我的家門口 are mine (yes, I know I wrote 財 wrong). I did not write the paper in English.

Restaurant Review: Yin Yi (銀翼/ "Silver Wings")

Yin Yi / Silver Wings Restaurant
銀翼餐廳
(02) 2341-7799
Jinshan S. Road Sec. 2 #18 2nd floor / Jinshan Xinyi intersection
金山南路2段18號2樓 / 金山信義路口
10am-2pm, 5pm-9pm
MRT CKS Memorial Hall (you could also get there from Zhongxiao Xinsheng without much trouble. It's very close to the Xinyi end of Yongkang Street).


Notes: Reservations recommended, great for large groups, some specialty dishes need to be ordered in advance (a few hours ahead)


Four words: really tasty, great service. Here's a rundown in Chinese.


So, OMG, I managed to find a good restaurant recommended by a student that has not already been reviewed in the Taipei Times! Yin Yi is locally famous, although not really well-known among expats (obviously, the restaurants that get to be known among us foreigners tend to be the ones that end up in guidebooks, which are often good, sometimes not). Rather like Rendezvous (龍都酒樓, another gem), local reactions to my eating there run along the lines of "it's famous! How did you know about it?!" with the strong implication that all Taiwanese in Taipei have heard of these places but it's expected that foreigners have not.

清炒鱔魚 - slivered braised eel (or something like eel)

Yin Yi specializes in Yangzhou food (from the province of Jiangsu, but cuisine from here is apparently closer to Shanghainese or Zhejiang food), although locals I know have mistakenly said that it's a "Zhejiang" restaurant or even a "Shanghai" restaurant. I'll be honest - the food was amazing, but if you told me "this is Zhejiang food" and not "this is Yangzhou food", I'd be all "Oh, OK." The three cuisines are really very similar. I wouldn't really know. I know a fair amount about regional Chinese cuisine, but I'm not an expert.

鍋粑蝦仁 - shrimp and puffed rice in tomato sauce

But anyway. The food. It was excellent! We had three kinds of dumplings cooked on pine needles, which give the dumplings a subtle but unique aroma and flavor. I highly recommend any one or all of the three.

小籠菜餃 (the second photo) - all the dumplings cooked on pine needles are recommended!

We had the famous shrimp pot with tomato sauce and puffed rice, which is a good dish to order if you're entertaining visiting friends or family members (or clients) - very easy on foreign palates. We had the "shanyu", which is like eel ("manyu"), which had an interesting texture. There was a shredded tofu and dried meat dish that, by east coast Chinese standards was spicy, but to this woman who lived in Guizhou and ate Sichuan-style food for a year, was not spicy at all, but still good. It was hard to tell what was tofu and what was meat, because it was all quite tender. We also had a sour cabbage salad and the red bean paste in fried tasty thing (it has a real name, but I prefer this one) as well as their famous noodle dish （蔥開煨麵), which was fantastic, but I don't have a photo. It's thick noodles in a cloudy soup with dried meat and shrimp: delicious!

紅椒肉絲炒干絲 - dried slivered pork, I think with tofu, and some chili

Finally, we had the duck. It's served as something between Beijing duck and fatty pork gua bao (the dish for which you put slices of braised fatty pork into sesame buns): a roast duck, more dry and not as 'lacquered' as Beijing duck is torn to shreds, and the shreds dipped lightly in salt and put into soft white buns. Absolutely delicious, and a real treat. The salt really made the dish: don't skimp.

香酥全鴨 - duck with bread. You can see what we did to this poor duck, who is now just a carcass (in our fridge, because we took it home - Imma make SOUP!)

Everything was  really just...good. I'm not sure how else to describe it: think of visiting a new city and having your friends there introduce you to their favorite place that isn't in guidebooks. Or going out with a group to a new restaurant and having just a fantabulous meal together. Think of a well-made, well-served meal where you leave thinking "that was so yummy, my stomach is so full, I'm going to get cramps if I try to walk!" That's really the tone the food at Yin Yi sets. For me, that's the hallmark of a good Chinese meal.

I'd also like to note Yinyi's fantastic service. These folks could really go teach Song Chu a thing or two about cultivating service that will keep people coming back. We got a free dish because I said the boss (or a boss, it's hard to tell), who also took care of our table looked like my boss - and he did. To the point where I was startled for a second. He brought a free dish (the sour cabbage salad) and said "it looks like you don't like your boss, and I don't want you to not like me!"


                           
                                               拌白菜心 - sour cabbage salad with peanuts

When they realized it was Brendan's birthday - our reason for going out - they helped us with the cake I'd brought from My Sweetie Pie and gave us a plate of mint candies and almond roca (although we were so stuffed already that it was hard to eat it)! They didn't pressure us right away with the check, and they didn't try to overload us with food: what they said should be enough for 8 people was just about enough, but we ended up ordering more. At some less ingenuous restaurants - not sure if that's the right word but we'll go with it - they'll purposely upsell and oversell in the interest of raising the bill, not what you actually want to eat. At Yin yi, they recommended the dishes that they were truly famous for and didn't kill us with volume.

We killed ourselves with volume, ordering three extra dishes that we could barely finish!


It was never difficult to get a waiter to come over (something that is a problem at a few good restaurants in Taipei) and we never felt rushed, bothered, upsold or kicked out even though we stayed until closing time, even long after we'd finished our order and were having cake and Brendan was opening gifts.

                                            豆沙鍋餅 - red bean paste in tasty fried thing


All in all, it was a fantastic evening and I strongly recommend this restaurant to anyone and everyone. Especially for foreigners who like Chinese food but want dishes that are palatable to Western diners: this isn't American Chinese, not at all, but the flavors are the sort that Westerners can enjoy, even if they aren't used to the many variations of Chinese cuisine.


Now, as it was my dear husband's birthday, enjoy a few birthday pics!

Here are some "extremists" for you.

Apologies for the poor quality of the video. My camera doesn't do well at night.

Except they're not "extremists" at all.

Some photos and videos from the student protest and accompanying support protest at National Democracy Memorial Hall continuing last night.

They're students - and not the radical kind; they're students from medical school and teacher's college. One boy is studying to be a dentist and his father is at the protest supporting his actions there. They're smiling kids with glasses and in jeans.

Supporting them, marching in a circle in front of the gate, are some more "extremists" - they are grandmothers, parents, middle managers, retired people, office workers and day laborers. There are even a few foreigners. Again, not extremists. Average people who happen to have political views that are inconvenient, so they are wrongly labeled.

I wrote awhile back that nobody was doing anything about the martial law imposed while Chen Yunlin was visiting, and am happy to be proven wrong. It would be better, however, if more people were there. Get those 600,000 demonstrators back; that'll show Ma how this country really feels about his actions during that visit.

It also worries me that this is getting approximately zero international press. BBC had a story, otherwise people worldwide seem to think all the hullabaloo is over the arrest of Chen Shui-bian (we weren't sure if he was taken into custody or formally arrested; this morning's Taipei Times says he was formally arrested yesterday).

It seems other stories have appeared in various newspapers, including the South China Morning Post - but, ahh...tell that to the otherwise worldly and well-educated friends I've spoken to who haven't got a clue what's going on here until I mention it. If that's a sample of the world of people who should care, it sure is an ominous sign.


Protesters - look at those extremists! - supporting the students.

Extremist banners with extremist Chinese characters on them. I forgot what this one said, but I see the characters for game and for tragedy - so probably something about amending the parade law. How extreme!

Protesting students and strawberry balloons. Sorry - extreme strawberry balloons. The balloons are there, presumably, as a smart-aleck comeback to the student generation being labeled the "strawberry generation" - soft and unable to stand up to pressure.

Which would also explain why so many of the adults I talked to (the students were listening to speakers) seemed to be parents who were there supporting their offspring.



The extreme gate to Freedom Square and Nat. Democracy Memorial Hall (aka Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall).
Woman reading the names of students protesting and asking for a change to the parade law. There's another faction that says Ma and the entire executive cabinet and chief of police should step down.

The number of extreme hours that the students have been there.


The protesters gather to chant a few times.


Let's see - someone's auntie, a kid who works in an office in Neihu somewhere, a nice elderly couple who could be your neighbors. Extreme, huh?


There were a few speakers through the evening while I was there. This guy was especially passionate and - from what I could tell with my poor Chinese - eloquent.