This year's Double Ten design is U-G-L-Y and it ain't got no alibi

 

No, not this. This is actually pretty cool -- it came from here -- and I'm in favor. No, no, the 2024 National Day logo looks exactly like a design for the Republic of China, not Taiwan. It's also an aesthetic monstrosity:

IT UGLY.

If you immediately clocked this as a KMT "Chinese identity" throwback, you're absolutely right. Although I did not actively know that the design committee is organized by the Legislative Yuan and chaired by the speaker, I subconsciously inferred it from this absolute blight on the eyeballs. The legislature is currently controlled by the KMT, so even though the DPP is the "ruling party", this looks like something your crotchety grandpa who shouts that you call yourself Taiwanese because "those 太綠班 brainwashed you kids" would wear on a t-shirt he got for free and wore for the next 17 years.

Maybe it's the subliminal messaging from the giant "H" in the center, that some have already compared to the old Han Kuo-yu bomber jackets. 

Maybe it's the return to the ROC-flag inspired blue and red, or the plum blossom that just doesn't seem to be sitting quite right in the center: I can't quite pinpoint why it looks wrong, but I'll offer a few thoughts on that below. Maybe it's the failure to mention Taiwan in Mandarin, referring to it only in English. 

Just kidding -- it's all of these things. And yes, there's been an obvious design shift based on who runs the committee: 

From here

Seriously, it screams "a government committee designed this", which is exactly what happened. As a commenter below pointed out, it's got big Iron Cross energy, though that's probably unintentional. It's giving "we got super fucked up and watched old Practical Audi-Visual Chinese videos all night". It's giving "Taipei is the capital of Chinese Taipei". It's giving "I fed an AI a steady diet of TVBS for six months and then asked it to design a logo."

Actually, while I didn't feed an AI months of TVBS (not even AI deserves that), I did ask it to generate some designs based on the typical parameters for these logos. Perhaps my prompt engineering could be improved as it kept defaulting to circles, not double tens, but here are a few that made me chortle:

AI seems to show a similar level of commitment to the CCP as the KMT does, but remember, AI isn't sentient. Anyway, I think that thicc-bottomed sun in the bottom left is actually a better logo than the one the government actually unveiled. 

As with the KMT, the AI generator likes big suns and it cannot lie:

Also a fan of the retro zero: 

Artificial intelligence creates even simple characters like 十 about as well as a tattoo artist on one of the seedier Jersey Shore boardwalks who misread the dose on his edible. And yet, it still understands the KMT's secret heart: 

...although I'm not sure why it decided that Double Ten needed to imply beeeewwwwbs.

And this one just looks kind of like a stylized butthole, heh heh:

I'll throw in a few more at the end for your amusement.

My favorite part of this isn't the comment about the giant H or that it looks like the Super Mario warp pipes, it's the defensive commentary from the KMT on a design so many people seem to hate. 

I mean, as a Facebook friend commented, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and perhaps Luftwaffe officers would appreciate the aesthetic. I can think of some dead KMTers with close family ties to the early regime who would love it. But, you know, probably unintentional, right?

Legislative Speaker (barf) Han Kuo-yu called it a "beautiful work" that "carries Taiwan's deepest emotions" -- which is true, if you assume only KMT settlers and their offspring over the age of 60 have emotions.

I also enjoyed this quote: 

Interior Ministry Deputy Minister Wu Tang-an (吳堂安) complimented netizens’ rich imaginations and added that if you look closely, the colors line up with Taiwan’s flag.

He's not wrong exactly, but to see that it imitates the flag, you'd only have to look "closely" if you had glaucoma. 

Wu also said that the theme of 2024's National Day celebrations was "happy birthday to the Republic of China". Okay, but I thought that was the theme every year?

Wu is an absolute comedy machine, by the way. He tied the plum blossom -- a symbol of the KMT, which ran a brutal, deadly suppression campaign for decades under Martial Law -- to "respect for history", and said the blue and red symbolize "different opinions and voices coming together". Sorry dude, but the Republic of China flag that the KMT imposed on Taiwan, which is obvious in the design, isn't known historically for "different opinions and voices". It's known for one voice -- the dictator's -- coming together with his minions and cronies to use the military to disappear, torture and slaughter dissidents. 

According to several sources, the design was created by a team of "passionate young designers". They apparently prefer anonymity, which should surprise no-one. As is common in Taiwan, the committee trotted out "it was designed by a team" to avoid admitting that anyone in particular wasted their parents' money on design school. 

Also, I gotta say, "young designers" created this thing? At some point in my prompt journey I told the AI to make the designs "more retro" and it came up with some ideas that, while very weird, at least looked retro in a cool way. This is the sort of logo you'd see on a mug in your parents' cupboard that you'd immediately donate it to charity. Retro, but it's not a compliment.

Or maybe these designers are indeed "young", if measured on a KMT timescale. You know, the same scale on which Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an is young (he's 45). 

The thing is, my dislike of the design isn't just because the KMT sucks, the flag is an ugly reminder of a dead dictatorship, and contemporary, democratic Taiwan deserves better than to be forced to swallow a party logo as a national symbol. 

It's also just a bad design. 

I keep looking at that plum blossom, wondering what in the absolute hell is wrong with it. Perhaps the two petals on the bottom and one on top (which is standard) make it look bottom-heavy when it's placed in the middle of that long, slim line. The blue field taken from the ROC flag cutting into the H makes it look off-center, even though I don't think it is. The design lacks balance: this might be the only time I'll ever say that there's too much going on in the left and center, and not enough on the right. 

The whole thing also looks a bit like it's being crushed? Stretching it out on the sides but keepin' it stumpy on the vertical doesn't evoke progress, innovation or the future. It gives "we're trying to expand our influence but are being crushed by the weight of history" -- which I suppose is an apt metaphor for the Republic of China. 

Long 'n Stumpy here also has a certain...je ne sais quoi. Except, oh wait, je very much sais quoi. You could call it Iron Cross, but I'm gonna call call it "I want to take a picture of my junk, but stretch it a bit so it looks normal and less like a chode." 

I'm not sure if the designers wanted the 十十 to look slimmer, or if they were trying to evoke stately columns or...what, but the edges read "serif" and if there's anything that just doesn't work on Chinese characters, even the simplest ones, it's freakin' serifs. 

Personally, although I'm a Century Gothic acolyte, I like a serif in some cases. I enjoy a nice Garamond or Cochin from time to time. I can ride with Baskerville, and if you're looking for something new, Self Modern isn't bad. I don't think they're hopelessly old-fashioned per se. 

But they don't scream "modern and clean graphics" as Wu Tang-an suggests. I see defensive borders, pushing anything new or foreign from the center. Or maybe they're closing ranks, keeping the riff-raff out. A serif is okay in some circumstances, but these absolutely convey the message that the KMT wants you damn kids to get off their lawn. 

That's not even getting into the clunkiness of the design language. It does not evoke. It does not reference. There is no subtle metaphor. It whacks you over the head with a dollar-store baseball bat. It's the difference between the person who references their love of retro sci-fi with hints of chrome and black in their decor, versus the one who hangs a papier-mâché UFO in their living room.

It does not hint at the ROC flag -- there's a literal ROC flag in the motto! Y'know, because the theme is "happy birthday to the Republic of China", which is a totally fresh and innovative theme to have! It's not symbolic of the KMT's Republic of China vision so much as a simple product of it. And I do mean "simple" in the cruelest possible way.

Something about the size, thickness and spacing of the English, compared to the relatively lighter Mandarin is just off. It's too long and fat, which is yet another thing I never thought I'd say. I know that slogans which aren't necessarily sentences sometimes have periods for emphasis, but something about this period feels wrong. Perhaps the phrase is so long that one's brain is tricked into thinking it could be a sentence, but it's not one.

I didn't always love the Double Ten designs created by DPP-led legislative committees. But at the very least they were contemporary. They weren't afraid to look at colors beyond red, white and blue. You could tell someone under the age of 70 had a hand in designing them. With the possible exceptions of 2019 and 2023, if someone gave you a mug featuring one, you might actually keep it. 

That's all I really have to say, so enjoy some more trippy AI designs for "Republic of China National Day". While I like the terrifying birds, the Alien Body Horror Sphere is also rather eye-catching. 

My latest for Ketagalan Media: The conversation about Taiwan's symbols matters

I got a weapon in my lungs
So tell the fuckin' cops to come
Get ready now
We never back down

- Back Down (Traudes)

This is what I was listening to as I worked with Ketagalan Media on the final edits to my latest piece, a rebuttal to J. Michael Cole's editorial on the importance (or lack thereof) of Taiwanese vs. ROC imagery and symbolism.

And it occurred to me: there was a time in Taiwanese history that my writing a piece like this was illegal, and the cops would have come. In many cases, the cops did come, and people died, some by their own hand. Now, thanks to the efforts of the Taiwanese people and not the dictatorship that persecuted them, I can say these things freely. The cops aren't going to come.

And yet, the symbol of the party that once sent the cops a-knockin' is still on the national flag for some unfathomable reason. I cannot agree that this isn't something we should keep talking about, nor that those who want to see party symbols wiped off the flag should settle down and 'play nice' so we can 'transcend' our 'small differences'.

That is to say, while I agree with some of Cole's points, I take exception to others: it is neither narcissistic nor a 'small difference' to have a legitimate point of contention that the symbol on the "national flag" is the symbol of one political party (in a democracy!), and the party that committed mass murder at that.

I'm sure a foreign resident giving her unvarnished opinion on the imagery associated with a country she is not a citizen of is likely to raise some hackles. All I can say first, is that this is my home too, and I do get to have an opinion on the goings-on in my home.  And secondly, that there are a lot of people who agree with me.

Taiwan deserves better. And I may not be the perfect spokesperson for that, but every last one of us has a weapon in our lungs. Let's use them.

Kind of Blue

I'm sitting in my apartment in downtown Taipei as my two cats scurry around the living room and my husband cleans up from dinner. I think about my job, my friends, my pets, my home which I am very comfortable in, my life and my livelihood, and they are all in Taiwan. I think about what I would lose if I were to leave, and it's quite a lot. I have no home in the US and no obvious city to move to there. My prosperity is tied to Taiwan's prosperity. Taiwan is my home, and it would affect my life profoundly if I were to leave.

However, this is not reflected in my legal status (I've written about why before).

This is not a post about dual nationality, though, it's a post about the battle for Taiwan's soul, and what it means when we are too kind to those whose ultimate goal is to bring Taiwan as close to China as possible even when public sentiment is not in their favor - and what happens when we downplay their side of the argument while telling those with legitimate points of contention to settle down and play nice. 

This is, however, related to my own struggle.

The laws that keep me foreign are Republic of China laws, written in China before the ROC had any reason to claim, or desire to claim, Taiwan.

Contrast that with the welcome Taiwan gives me: a lot of foreign residents here say they are singled out, treated as 'other', not allowed to assimilate. Sometimes that happens to me too, but most of the time I live my life and am treated like a normal person and normal neighbor. Most people I talk to have no idea that I can't become a citizen without giving up my American citizenship and are horrified to learn that fact.

I can't help but feel that while Taiwan wants me here, the ROC doesn't.

There have been attempts to patch up these differences through amending the laws but none have been sufficient. This issue is a microcosm of a bigger problem: the legal system of the Republic of China and the framework Taiwan actually needs to build the country most want it to become are irreconcilable. There is no patch that can fix it - the framework can't just be amended. It needs to be completely revamped.

So, when people say "the ROC is just a name", or "let's not fight over nomenclature and symbols", I do get annoyed. My life is directly impacted by the existence of the Republic of China, and it goes well beyond a name, right down to laws that were written in Nanjing in the 1920s without any reason to consider Taiwan or what kind of country it might become.

Considering all of this, I just can't agree that the symbolism of Double Ten day is mere imagery. It may be true that in the great swaths of the non-political, colorless or centrist population that we are more alike than we are different, but what differences we have run far deeper than a flag, an anthem and a name.

I also cannot agree that it is mere imagery that divides us. There is a portion of the population in this country who may not be pro-unification, but who do think of Taiwan as ultimately Chinese. This is not a minor difference that can be ignored: it informs all sorts of beliefs.

In fact, I genuinely do not believe this is true:

The fact of the matter is, and notwithstanding the nomenclatural issues that arise for many within the green camp, today’s ROC — how it is lived and experienced on a daily basis — is a transitory, albeit official, byword for what everybody knows is Taiwan.

No, not really. Today's ROC for many - not for everyone, I concede - is a byword only for "the ROC", which is in Taiwan and includes Taiwan, but is Chinese. It's a byword for the ultimate cultural underpinnings of Taiwan, and for something they quite likely hope will happen someday: a liberalized and democratized China that they can convince the Taiwanese to happily unite with. Perhaps not in their lifetime, but someday. This is what they mean when they say they are not pro-unification.

It is a byword for "let's not rock the boat" at best, for "no matter what you say you are fundamentally Chinese" or "no matter what people think being Taiwanese is about having Chinese ancestry" at worst.

Wait, no, at worst it is a byword for - and this is a real quote from Foxconn chairman Terry Gou - "you can't eat democracy".

If I am wrong and "the ROC" is, in fact, a byword for "Taiwan", somebody better tell my neighbors, because they sure don't see it that way.

It is the driving belief behind rewriting history to make the KMT seem benevolent - "228 was a necessary step to 'stabilize' the situation in Taiwan" - and those who fought for Taiwanese democracy "troublemakers" (while re-writing that democracy as some kindly deathbed wish by an enlightened and saintly Chiang Ching-kuo). It's the belief marginalizes all non-Mainlanders, which prioritizes Mandarin as the primary language and Chinese history and culture as the primary focus in schools. It's the belief which keeps pushing for economically problematic deals with China. It's the driving force behind treating Taiwanese culture and language as something for 'peasants' and teaching children that before the KMT came in and "fixed everything", Taiwan was a poor backwater (this is, of course, completely false). It is the side that complains about Taiwanese who won't call themselves "Chinese", as though anyone had any right to tell someone else how to identify.

It is a byword for all of these things - for how they want Taiwan to be, in direct contradiction to public sentiment as well as what Taiwan already is.

One can argue that those who hold these beliefs and yet do want to see a future for Taiwan are just another side of the pro-independence coin, and I'd actually agree to an extent. I'm not that interested in the "taidu" vs. "huadu" debate; I find the whole thing a bit overcooked. Those who want Taiwanese independence can want it however they want, and I too am not sure there's a huge difference.

What I am interested in, however, is the papering over of the pro-China slant of the KMT. For example (and from the same link above):

Thus, despite its [the KMT's] stronger identification with ROC symbols and nomenclature, it is unfair to describe today’s mainstream (read: electable) KMT as pro-unification; when one recent chairperson flirted with the idea of uncomfortably closer ties with China she was quickly cast out and will be no more than a footnote in the party’s history.

That isn’t to say that a number of KMT politicians have not, rather unhelpfully, played the China card in a bid to gain an electoral advantage against their opponents from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) or the New Power Party. But more often than not this was political expediency rather than the expression of an actual commitment to PRC ideology or unification. 

Here's the problem with that: just as being pro-independence no longer means voting for a pan-Green party, being pro-China no longer means being pro-immediate-unification. Being against immediate unification does not mean one is against eventual unification.

The politicians who use "closer ties with China" as a campaign platform aren't doing so for political expediency alone: they may not support unification now, but generally do not believe in independence, ever. This is not "huadu". This is a "let's wait it out" pro-China belief system.

Generally speaking, it is pretty clear to me that their deeper political beliefs are oriented towards China: a cultural and ethnic (Han) notion of China that transcends PRC and ROC, but ultimately ends with unification, because Taiwan is simply not a wholly separate identity to them, and will never be. Not in this generation, anyway. They are not "huadu", they are "status quo right now, unification someday far down the line". There is no "du" (independence) about their beliefs, only biding time.

Those who have no love for an PRC ideology do not necessarily believe that Taiwan's future is one that is free of China. Remember, they feel Taiwan is ultimately Chinese and they are offended and threatened by the idea of a separate Taiwanese identity that has no ties to China beyond a few dubious ethnic links and a few hundred years of being a colony of the Qing. Being pro-China, rather like being pro-Taiwan, is also on a spectrum. They are not necessarily on our side for the long haul.

You don't have to be a unificationist to feel that way. You don't have to be White Wolf or Hung Hsiu-chu. You can be any run-of-the-mill politician who still stands by the old symbols of a dead regime, who still feels Taiwan is Chinese.

And, if you still feel Taiwan is Chinese, you can use that to justify not teaching much Taiwanese history in schools, whitewashing what history you do teach, and continuing to be dismissive of expressions of Taiwanese identity and the cultural importance of the Taiwanese language (you might even, against all linguistic evidence, insist that it is merely a "dialect").

It is about way more than the imagery: it's about the ultimate identity of Taiwan, and about how that identity informs everything from a constitution that no longer adequately governs the Taiwan we have today, to a legal and governmental framework that does not fit Taiwan - remember, we got rid of the Tibetan affairs council very recently and we still don't treat China like a regular foreign country. It also includes everything from fundamental ideas of how children should be educated - what history they should be taught and why - and which languages should be given priority to what extent Taiwan should move away from being a state whose citizenship rests mostly on family history to one that is more international.

It is not just nomenclature, and it is not just an anthem. It is more than imagery. It directly impacts lives, including mine.

That said, let's take a look at that imagery. I don't think enough people appreciate that the reason why the pro-Taiwan side hates the flag of the Republic of China is not necessarily because it is not a flag that originated in Taiwan. Certainly that is an issue, but what inspires such disgust for the ROC flag is that big ugly KMT sun. The reason people protest the national anthem is not that it's "not Taiwan's anthem". That surely instills some level of dislike or annoyance in many, but a lot of it is the lyrics that blatantly refer to one party (just look at the first few lines). The issue is not as much the ROC as it is the KMT's centrality and privilege within it. Many see that flag or hear that anthem and think of the relatives and ancestors that that party killed, imprisoned, tortured or "disappeared" - and yet there they are, still on the flag, still in the anthem.

How is it not obvious why this bothers them? Why should they be the ones to bridge this gap and accept symbols that are directly linked to the pain of their history?

Why should people be expected to "set aside" this difference? Why on earth should they have to pretend it's not a problem?

Yes, we have an ROC in which the KMT is out of power, but they still occupy that place of privilege on the flag and in the anthem. I do not see how it is acceptable that one party is enshrined in this way in a democracy, and do not see how such symbols can ever be viable symbols for that democracy.

Why should they look at that flag, celebrate Double Ten or hear that anthem (or look at that portrait of Sun Yat-Sen) and think Taiwan? If I were Taiwanese, I wouldn't.

I can't condone an attitude that the victims of a historical injustice should just quiet down already, because they're causing trouble with their protesting that the party that once killed their family members and mucked up their country for a generation still has their damn sun on the flag like it's all okay.

Yes, in today's Taiwan it is possible to refuse to sing the first two lines of the anthem, or to change the lyrics. It is acceptable to refuse to pay homage to Dr. Sun. It is okay to speak your mind about the flag and the party logo enshrined on it.

The problem is, we shouldn't have to do any of that. Taiwan deserves a flag that doesn't remind some of its citizens of the suffering of their ancestors, an anthem we can stand for proudly and a holiday that doesn't give us mixed feelings.

It doesn't do anyone any good at all to say we should push all of that down and pretend it's not a problem. It very much is.

My heart is Taiwanese, not Republic of Chinese

I am not a patriotic person by nature. Even when I was young, with flags in every classroom and prints of portraits of the founding fathers in our history textbooks, the Pledge of Allegiance every morning and the generally rah-rah pro-America conservatism of the town I grew up in, I just wasn't into it. I mouthed the words to the Pledge; pretending to go along was easier then. I applied the same logic to religion: after my parents' shocked reaction when I proclaimed my atheism at a surprisingly young age, and clear disapproval at choosing any belief system that didn't include faith, I pretended there was a God all the way through my confirmation because it was easier than fighting people who had no business telling me what to believe anyway.

Being ex-hippie liberal academics, my parents' attempts to make me into a wholesome young woman who feared God, prayed to Jesus and loved her country were half-hearted but sincere. Their worldview was a constrained liberalism that, while openminded, ultimately colored within the lines. In particular, Mom lamenting that she "didn't do enough" to make me into a good Christian and happy, honor-defending American was an attractive but ultimately specious reasoning for my turning out the way I did. There's nothing she could have done. I decided God didn't exist around the time I figured out Santa Claus wasn't real - I told you I was young when it happened - and I expressed a desire to live abroad as early as junior high school.

What I'm trying to say is, this is a pretty baked-in character trait. I see patriotism as a more Earth-bound form of religion: different faiths and their interpretations are ultimately fake lines drawn in the heavens that mean little beyond how they affect our real-world interactions, and patriotism is the worship of fake lines drawn across the globe delineating arbitrarily-decided "countries" which only matter, again, insofar as they affect how we think and interact (or are allowed to interact) as people. The borders themselves though? They're only real in our minds.

When I was younger, my desire to live abroad was a bit more Machine-approved. I'd always assumed I'd do it through the foreign service, international business or NGO work, academia, that sort of thing. None of them were working out - I hadn't considered in my plans that someone who is at best institution-apathetic would not fit in well at a large organization.

Forget chips on shoulders: I had bricks. Packing up and doing it on my own with a few thousand dollars in savings - and let's be honest, a hefty chunk of white middle-class privilege because I can not entirely escape the benefits of institutions - mortared those bricks right up into something like a moveable fortress. But at least they were off my shoulders.

That was ten years ago. Listen to me now, and I sound like a Taiwan missionary. Spreading the gospel of Taiwan to everyone I meet, and probably being deeply annoying in the process.

Have you accepted Taiwanese democracy into your life?

Here, read this article about Taiwan. It will change your life! I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Did you know that many Taiwanese died for the freedoms we enjoy now, and someday the Republic of Formosa will rise again?

If you are interested, you are welcome to come with me to a protest this Sunday.

Okay, I'm not that bad (usually), but I am a true believer.

So what happened? I'm not a different person - I didn't suddenly decide that loving one's country was great and we should all love our countries and place deep importance on national borders. I didn't become a flag-waving, anthem-singing, crying-eagle-meme-posting patriot. I'm still the same old Jenna who doesn't function well as a cog in a corporate (or government) machine, who thinks God is an interesting fantasy, and who wants to keep her American citizenship as a matter of convenience and who has done her best work without a boss issuing commands.

Yet I do believe. As I've written before, I can really believe in a country that, despite having thousands of missiles pointed at it, wakes up every morning quietly insisting on its continued existence, perseveres, builds and improves itself and refuses to be ground up like so much pork filler in China's world-building sausage-fest and has, against the odds, turned itself into a pretty damn solid first world democracy. I didn't want to be a cog in an organizational machine, and Taiwan refuses to be a casualty of the global realpolitik machine. I feel that. I feel it like some people feel Jesus.

As Double Ten Day approaches - celebrating start of the Xinhai Revolution (in China, not Taiwan) on October 10, 1911 - and as the usual array of "Happy Birthday Taiwan!" nonsense starts appearing, it's given me a moment to reflect on how this came to be. That is, how I managed to be so enamored of Taiwan and yet not a patriot.

I think it's because Taiwan both is and is not a country. It is a sovereign nation in every respect that matters: it is self-governed, has its own military, currency, constitution and international relations and flag. Sort of.

It is also not a country in that the government currently in place here is a foreign one. All of the things it has, which make it fully independent, come from a government neither conceived nor formed in Taiwan, and certainly not by the Taiwanese. That government decided back when Taiwan was a colony of another country that it ought to be theirs - nobody asked the Taiwanese how they felt about this. That government has localized in some ways but not in others, and arguably not in a lot of the ways that matter. (To give one example, the citizenship laws were written in China in the 1920s and have not been meaningfully amended since.) This makes it a colonial government. The Republic of China is a country. Taiwan is still under colonial rule, playing host to its foreign master. It is also independent, a situation which is just as difficult to explain to non-believers as all the contradictions in the Bible are, except in this case it's true.

Imagine if the British government lost its territory in the 1800s and relocated to India, and India today was fully independent under the name and governmental system of Great Britain. Imagine if few recognized this government, opting instead to recognize the People's Republic of Britannia in the British Isles, and nobody recognized that India had a right to not only de jure independence, but to have that independence as India, not Great Britain. It's like that.

Imagine if the day after tomorrow was Magna Carta Day, and all of India would have a public holiday and be expected to celebrate the signing of the Magna Carta, and told all their lives that this was somehow relevant to their own history and land.

I doubt if I were an immigrant in that other-universe version of India that I would care much about "Magna Carta Day", nor about "Great Britain".

Similarly, I don't care much about the Republic of China.

Thinking along these lines, I realized that my love - and missionary zeal - for Taiwan has nothing to do with patriotism. I love Taiwan - the concept, the land, the history, the civic nationalism borne of shared values. I do believe Taiwan deserves statehood and I would happily reside in that state, but I doubt I'd ever be a typical "patriot". I love Taiwan not in the way one is taught to love the arbitrary boundaries defining one's world but which were not chosen: the religion, country and family one was born into (though I do sincerely love my family). I love it the way one love's one's friends or spouse (no, not like that, you know what I mean). As something one chooses because of shared values and other commonalities and compatibilities. I will love Taiwan no matter what happens to its national boundaries, although I wish for it something better than what it has now. After all, I was not born here. My family is not Taiwanese, but my friends are.

I still don't dare say I am Taiwanese - a lot of people get the wrong idea, sure, and also on some level I don't think I deserve the honor. But my heart is here.

The Republic of China? That could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn't care. If it were replaced by the Republic of Taiwan, I'd celebrate. Double Ten Day will come and go this year, as with every other year, and I just won't care.

In short, my heart is Taiwanese, not Republic of Chinese.

Public celebrates Sun Yat-sen's founding of Taiwan

CHINESE TAIPEI, REPUBLIC OF TAIWAN (CHINA):

Citizens across the country celebrated Sun Yat-sen's founding of Taiwan 105 years ago today. Known as "Double Ten", the holiday celebrates Taiwan's founding just over a century ago on October 10 from volcanic eruptions creating an island where there had previously been open sea.

"On October 10, 1911, Dr. Sun raised his arms, sang the incantation, and Taiwan rose from the ocean. This is why the Portuguese named it Ilha Formosa, for the island's great natural beauty, when they came to the region in 1544," explained former president Ma Ying-jiu, who was on leave from his new post-presidential post as an exhibit in Madame Tussaud's.

"Before 1911, there was no Taiwan," explained Taipei resident Chang An-lo. "Now, there is Chin- I mean Taiwa- I mean the Republic of China. Happy birthday!"

In 1911, what was then known as the Chinese Sea (property of China) was a popular open-water fishing spot, where fishermen from China had been recorded plying their trade since ancient times. Then, visonary thinker and revolutionary Dr. Sun determined that an island should exist in that spot. He opened the Ancient Book of I-Ching, found the chapter on inciting volcanic activity, waved his arms in the precise circumlocutions proscribed by his ancestors, and caused modern Taiwan to erupt from the sea floor.

Despite a few visits to his creation by Dr. Sun, his successors appeared unaware that the island brought into being by their mentor was birthed with a full population that spoke Japanese, Taiwanese and several aboriginal languages, many of whom had neither ever visited China nor spoke any language familiar to the majority of Chinese.

"I remember my grandmother's stories about how Dr. Sun caused her to come into being," noted an Atayal village elder known as A-mue. "It all sounded very exciting."

China and Taiwan separated in 1949 after a brutal civil war forced the KMT to flee from China to the Republic of China. Before that time, China and Taiwan had been united without any division since antiquity.

Taiwan before it existed c. 1910

"Happy birthday, Taiwan!" said Auntie Ho, while turning down the volume of the TVBS show she was watching.

"But, in 1911 Taiwan was a Japanese colony," countered neighbor Pubic Wang. "Double Ten has nothing to do with Taiwan really."

"Ssssshhhhhhh," Auntie Ho replied. "Stop complaining so much. Nobody likes a complainer who doesn't understand history and our 5,000 years of culture since 1911. Taiwan is a democracy now so we can all give our opinions, so please stop giving your opinion after I give my opinion. I love my flag, which is the flag of Taiwan."

Taiwan before it was created by Dr. Sun Yat-sen in 1911

Taiwan after 1911

Stated Wang, "The flag of the Republic of China - which was not conceived in Taiwan, still depicts the KMT sun, which shows that Taiwan still has a long way to go if it is to carve out a distinct identity and future from its authoritarian pa--"

"I said shh! We should celebrate all of the wonderful things the Republic of China has given Taiwan, like 228 Peace Park, the Jingmei Human Rights Museum and a national holiday!" snapped Ho. "Without Sun Yat-sen, you wouldn't even exist!"