Taipei: The New Old Berlin

So I was reading this article about how Berlin has changed and, as I read it, something about the old, pre-cool Berlin that the writer describes felt familiar.

I can't point to any one quote that captured this for me, just an overall feeling - a modern, capitalist, free city (well, half-free) that was not particularly inviting to outsiders, was off the beaten track, and was full of grubby neighborhoods that you could live in if you wanted cheap rent. If you were there it was because you wanted to be there, and not anywhere else, but anyone who wanted to be anywhere else generally did not give Berlin a second look. The "beautiful people" were in other cities (London, Paris, Milan).

And I realized, it reminded me of Taipei now. Taipei is not particularly cool. It doesn't have the cachet with Westerners that Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong or Tokyo (or more recently, Seoul) do, or even Bangkok or Singapore. Tourists from other parts of Asia come here but it is not a global tourist hotspot by any standard, and wasn't a tourist hotspot at all until Chinese tourism opened up. You are here because you want to be here - at least I am here for that reason - and not anywhere else. It's very local, and looming just across the straight is a massive Communist threat. I highly doubt Chinese missiles are going to rain down on my head anytime soon, but some days you can't help but wonder and be reminded of that during the occasional air raid drills. The beautiful people are in those other cities, and with them their beautiful overpriced nightspots and commercialized bar and restaurant scenes.

It can be nice and shiny and new - look at Xinyi (or don't - I kind of prefer not to). But entire neighborhoods are a bit grubby, and you have to look more deeply to find their charms (which they do have). It's so cool because it's not cool at all.

And, like that older version of Berlin, you have to work to understand it, and you might not always like it at first. You may remember that I did not really like Taipei when I first arrived. It was hard - foreigners generally make friends with coworkers when they first land but I didn't care for most of mine (the ones I liked I still didn't feel that close to, and they have pretty much all since left Taiwan). I cried on my birthday, after eating dinner alone at a terrible Indian restaurant, two weeks after arriving, on the Muzha line MRT because I could look down through rain-streaked windows at people on the street all going somewhere they belonged and probably seeing people who cared about them in lives that were anchored in some way, and I had none of those things.  It took another year or so before I felt like Taipei was alright, and probably another year after that before I began to really feel it, and Taiwan, was someplace special.

As an aside, so far I can count on one hand the number of people who know why this blog is called Lao Ren Cha. There is no special reason why I don't publish the reason publicly other than I never really felt like it. The people who know I felt, for whatever reasons I had at the time, deserved to know. Some still do! But, it's not a big deep secret, and perhaps someday I will write about that. What I'll say now is that it was very much intentional - not just a pretty name - and is very much directly related to my experiencing Taipei first in a muddy, dark, monochromatic sepia and only later a stunning, clear azure blue. It took more time than you would ever think such a thing would require.

And I'm not alone - when my cousin visited recently and stayed for a semester, he took time to adjust too. At first absorbing everything, then feeling a bit down due to the unrelentingly bad weather, then finally realizing one day that he had a solid group of friends and that Taipei was a super cool city to be in. The Taipei effect is not immediate.

I do wonder, as Taipei gets cooler - maybe not Seoul-level cooler but cooler nonetheless, with its plethora of perfect little cafes and increasing number of tour buses, increasing rents and gentrifying neighborhoods if it will start to become a victim of its own coolness. Part of me hopes it will bypass the Brooklyn effect, as it feels like it's already become too expensive to truly be a hip haven - and all the cool kids are already taking advantage of the better weather and cheaper rents in Tainan.

I wonder, I guess, if in 10 years (assuming I am still here, which I may be), what was an off-the-beaten track choice for building a life in Asia will start to be THE place to be and it will start to lose some of its street-level vibrancy and slightly grubby charm. Will I feel like that disaffected old expat in 10 years, complaining about all the new kids and how "this city isn't what it used to be"?

Yes, I do realize expats before me have already said that, but I wasn't here then so LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

Part of me wants Taipei to get that international recognition. Part of me wants it to stay the way it is.

1992 Whiplash

image from here

I should start by saying that literally nothing qualifies me to comment on this other than the fact that I majored in International Affairs in college, which is about as relevant as someone who studied psychology in undergrad and then became a Starbucks barista trying to diagnose your clinical depression.

But, it was very interesting to read all the different takes on Tsai's deliberately vague and careful language surrounding the "1992 Consensus" (scare quotes intentional because it's not a real thing).

The English translation of what she said was this:

We will also work to maintain the existing mechanisms for dialogue and communication across the Taiwan Strait. In 1992, the two institutions representing each side across the Strait (SEF & ARATS), through communication and negotiations, arrived at various joint acknowledgements and understandings.

So she explicitly acknowledges that a meeting took place, which is fine because it did. She acknowledges that there was a spirit of communication and attempts to find common ground, which I suppose there was. She said there were some "joint acknowledgements and understandings" but declines to define what those were. At no point did she say there was a "1992 consensus" that, according to contemporary rhetoric, involves both sides agreeing that there is "one China" with "different interpretations" of what that means.

To hear New Bloom talk of it you'd think she'd acknowledged the 1992 consensus (which, in my view, she didn't) - they frame it as her acknowledging it "in all but name", and that her vague words "can be understood to mean acceptance of the 1992 consensus or would allow her some wiggle room".

I can't say I agree with this - to acknowledge it in all but name would mean to say - far more clearly than she did - what those "various joint acknowledgements and understandings" were, and to tack that on to what people say the 1992 Consensus was. She didn't do that.

On the other side, South China Morning Post talks about how she has pissed off Beijing by "failing to acknowledge" the 1992 Consensus. This makes sense, New Bloom is on the far left, and SCMP, while not a mouthpiece of Beijing, sometimes acts like one and is, shall we say, not that far too the left. Not by my standards anyway. Of course they'd report their interpretation of the same words differently.

You could say it makes no difference - "stopping short of acknowledging the 1992 consensus" and "acknowledging the 1992 consensus in all but name" sure do sound the same. In the real world I suppose they are - or at least they are so close to the same thing that you could swap one for the other.

But statecraft is not the real world - it's a world where entire oceans of meaning are found between sentences, in single words or words not said. Tsai was absolutely right to be as careful as she was, and showing her diplomatic and negotiating chops in good form.

So, in my totally non-expert opinion, she did not acknowledge the 1992 Consensus, but she did accomplish something far more deft.

By mentioning that the two sides met in the spirit of finding common ground is a way of coming close to what Beijing wants to hear without actually caving in to them, making it harder to criticize her (her words were intentionally vague), allowing her to say she called for peace and acknowledged history in her speech even as Beijing was denied the exact thing they were pressuring her for.

To which, if Beijing complains, Tsai can say "well I did acknowledge that 'various agreements were reached' in 1992!", and if Beijing says "but you didn't SAY 1992 Consensus" makes Beijing, not her, look bad. Like big warmongering babies for being angry that she - a democratically elected leader not technically under their control - did not stick to the exact script they laid out for her.

At the same time it allows her to say "hey, I didn't cave - I didn't give them the exact words they wanted" to her base, and even Taiwanese not in her base who still have pride in Taiwan and don't want their elected leaders to parrot words Beijing throws at them.

What I don't get - because again I am not an expert, I just majored in it - is why no major news outlet is reading it this way, talking about it or showing any sort of understanding that this is what she did, this is why she did it, this is the brilliant trick she managed with the crappy hand she was dealt, and it was very intentional, and very smart. Either they say she acknowledged it or they say she didn't, often defaulting to their own biases.

This is statecraft. I don't always agree with it (I'm a burning radical at heart) but this really is how it works. It does make a difference. As much as the crazy lefties like me - whose heart would rather follow Chen Shui-bian-style China-taunting even as her mind knows that's a bad idea, who would rather occupy the legislature (hi Sunflowers!) than work within it* - and the other activists and progressives and strong independence supporters would like it to be otherwise, this is how the game is played and if you play it well, you just might win.

Tsai plays it very, very well. I may not agree with all of her choices, and I may be generally suspicious of the 'establishment' as a whole, but I'll give her a chance.

*now you see why, despite preparing for a career in the foreign service, I did not go down that path. Would have been a terrible idea for me.