What even is this nonsense from Reuters again

Seriously, Reuters, what is your problem? 

This fistful of garbage was linked to by a friend for some reason, and I feel like it's worth taking ten minutes to conduct a quick review of how to spot anti-Taiwan bias (or "who cares about Taiwan" bias), something that pervades huge swaths of the media. 

Let's take a look, and laugh together.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen is signaling she needs more give and take from China to rein in hardliners on an island China considers its own, officials say, but Beijing is unlikely to budge months before its five-yearly Communist Party Congress.


"Hardliners"?

Wanting your country which is already independent to continue to be that way without the threat of war is not a hard-line stance. Not that many of us want a formal declaration of independence right now (well, I do, but I know I can't have it and I've made my peace with that). We know it's impossible for the time being, but are working toward it happening, peacefully, someday. How does this equate to being a 'hardliner'?

But Beijing is "unlikely to budge" - they are not "hardliners" though, because...

...why?

As she marks one year in office on Saturday, Tsai, leader of the ruling independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is facing a surge in anti-China sentiment amid pressure from Beijing on the proudly democratic island to bow to its "one China" policy.

1.) It's not "anti-China" sentiment, it's "pro-Taiwan" sentiment. Not wanting your country to be annexed by an aggressive neighbor doesn't make you "anti" that country, or rather, doesn't make you that any more than is reasonable. If the US up and decided that it was just going to take over Canada tomorrow, the Canadians who didn't want that to happen would not be "anti-US". This entire way of writing makes Taiwanese who simply love their country - in an engaged and informed way, not a jingoistic one - seem like the bad guys, and annexation seem like the reasonable move. As though wanting to keep a reasonably successful and mature democracy with the human rights and freedoms that entails rather than be subsumed against one's will by a dictatorship that regularly tortures, terrorizes and deprives its citizens makes one, well, a "hardliner". What? Seriously...what? 

2.) Not even a twinge of criticism or even a deeper look into what it means for China to pressure another country to bow to it? I thought we left behind the idea of tributary states in the colonial era, but I guess not


It is becoming more difficult to hold the line against independence-minded constituents and even tougher for Tsai to offer concessions to Beijing, one senior government official told Reuters on the condition of anonymity.


Why should Tsai have to offer 'concessions' to a country that IS TRYING TO TAKE OVER HER COUNTRY AND ISN'T EVEN HIDING THAT FACT??

JESUS. 


"President Tsai's attitude is that she is very determined to maintain the status quo of democracy and cross-Strait relations," the official said, referring to the body of water separating the two sides.


Wait, did JR Wu just mansplain to us what the Taiwan Strait is? Or what 'strait' means? Really? 


China has claimed Taiwan as its own since defeated Nationalists fled to the island in 1949 after losing a civil war with the Communists. Only a handful of countries recognize Taiwan as a country, making it ineligible, for instance, for membership of UN organizations.


While this is an improvement over the old-school nonsense "China and Taiwan separated in 1949" phrasing, it still makes it sound as though Taiwan had been Chinese before the KMT fled there. Which, if you read like even one freakin' book on Taiwan - just one, really - you will know is not the case. 


In recent weeks, Tsai has given a series of interviews after a half-year break and taken to Twitter to talk about Taiwan being shut out of a UN health meeting and made her first extensive comments on the detention of a Taiwan activist in China.


OK, so Confucius McDoorknob here can't even bring himself to call Lee Ming-che a Taiwanese activist. He has to be a Taiwan activist. Being Taiwanese is not a thing, apparently? 


At least 70 percent of Taiwanese do not accept the "one China" policy, with 58.4 percent blaming Beijing as being the more provocative of the two since Tsai took office on May 20 last year, according to a poll by the Cross-Strait Policy Association, which is comprised of prominent academics and bipartisan figures.


It's hard to pinpoint the exact problem in wording here, but the implication one gets from the paragraph taken as a whole is that it is somehow a problem or a negative thing that the Taiwanese do not "accept" a policy that aims to annex their country, that their own government doesn't sincerely espouse, that is being forced on them by a foreign entity. It would, again, be like saying "at least 70% of Canadians do not accept the US's One-America policy" without critiquing that statement, thereby implying that this number is somehow worryingly high rather than showing a majority of people are reasonable and prescient. If anything, this number is lower than I'd like to see.

I would have to look into this, but you can't be more specific than "at least 70%"? Why not?

Maybe my uneasiness at this paragraph is enhanced by what directly follows it: 

"My concern right now is that on some level of cross-Strait relations, a collision is about to begin," said Fan Shih-ping, an association member and a political science professor at National Taiwan Normal University.

Oh, there will be a collision most likely. All we can hope for is that it doesn't result in all-out war. But putting this here draws a direct line in the reader's mind from that "at least 70%" of Taiwanese who won't accept that big ol' dickful of annexationist nonsense that China is trying to cram in their mouth to this "collision", implying it is their fault for not wanting to be annexed and therefore being, to quote Wu again, "anti-China". No attempt at all to explore who the real antagonist here is (SPOILER ALERT IT'S CHINA). 

A spokesman for China's Taiwan Affairs Office said last week everything wrong with the current relations could be blamed on the DPP and its refusal to accept "one China".

"No matter what new flowery language the DPP comes up with, it can't shift its responsibility for this reality," spokesman An Fengshan said.

No attempt to critique this? None? Not even a few words to deconstruct what An Fengshan is saying? Tearing apart pro-Taiwan sentiment but silently accepting Chinese annexationism?


It was 10 days before Beijing confirmed Li had been detained for security reasons, but so far it has not disclosed Li's whereabouts and last month canceled his wife's visa to stop her from going to China to look for him.


Not even one word on the very clear truth that these "security reasons" are likely bogus, or even an implication that they may be? 

Tsai has said both sides should look for a "new model" for ties but has not defined it, a senior DPP official said, mainly to show Beijing she is open to ideas.

"I hope Chairman Xi Jinping, as a leader of a large country and who sees himself as a leader, can show a pattern and flexibility, use a different angle to look at cross-Strait relations, and allow the future of cross-Strait ties to have a different kind of pattern," Tsai told Reuters in an interview last month.

China's biggest fear is that Tsai does something rash, like call an independence referendum, said a Beijing-based Western diplomat. That would give the hardliners in the Chinese military an upper hand for a forceful response, he added.


AAAAAHHHHH Tsai CAN'T "define" this new model because no matter what she says China will insist the problem is that Taiwan is being recalcitrant. It doesn't matter. China will always blame Taiwan for China's own aggression. She has to keep it vague, China is forcing her to. 

And not even one bit of inquiry into the unlikelihood of Tsai - who is the least 'rash' leader I've ever seen, she's a brick, not a typhoon - doing something 'rash'? Implying that she very well may?

China has never ruled out the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.


So you're just going to report that without questioning it, without investigating it, without critiquing it? It's not that it's untrue, it's that the media takes it at face value without reporting to the public all that it implies, e.g. that China is quite literally threatening to violently annex another sovereign state, and that nobody seems to be calling them on that. In fact, they are a country that wants to be seen as a major global power - if not the major global power - and yet they think this sort of behavior and rhetoric is acceptable. This portends a massive shift in what we consider the values of developed/leading countries, and what it means to be a superpower and steward on a global scale. This quite literally means that an ascendant China shifts our entire moral compass, on a worldwide scale, away from democracy, freedom, human rights, peace through diplomacy and respect for territorial sovereignty. HOW IS THIS NOT FUCKING TERRIFYING and yet you are not even asking the question let alone attempting to answer it. It's just taken as normal and that is even more terrifying. 


Tsai and the DPP understand that before China's party congress in the autumn, Chinese President Xi won't be able to offer breakthroughs in ties even if he wanted to, Taiwan sources say.


Not a peep about how Xi's "inability" to "offer" breakthroughs is indicative of a horrifying level of dysfunctionality at the highest levels of government in China? Again, to remind you, a country that wants to set the standard for what it means to be a world leader? Do you not even want to engage with what this means?

Did you take two seconds to compare the picture you painted of Tsai and the Taiwanese majority - "hardliners", "might do something rash", "anti-China sentiment" - who are quite peaceful, not rash, and not trying to take over another country or start a war, with how you painted Xi Jinping and the CCP, who are trying to take over another country and very well may start a war? If Xi "can't offer a breakthrough", then he is dealing with hardliners, and not ruling out the use of force means they might do something rash, and they are absolutely anti-Taiwan, but you never say that. You give them a pass, while Taiwan over here is just trying to keep the peace and not get a thousand missiles launched right up its ass while maintaining its territorial integrity like any other country, and you make them sound like complete nutjobs.

A journalist's job is not only to report the facts, but to consider carefully the implications of those facts and report situations as accurately as possible, even if this does not mean two sides get equal airing of their views. You are not only not doing this, you are doing the opposite of this.

This is your job. It shouldn't be, but for now it is.

Do your job better. 

One foreign representative based in Taipei said the party congress and how ties develop between China and the United States, Taiwan's most important political ally, were variables Tsai could not control.

"She's got to map out all the pressure points and try to mitigate them," he said.

So, like, we're not criticizing Xi for being "unable" to do anything for Taiwan when China is the aggressor in the first place, but we are talking about how this is all on Tsai, when Taiwan is the country under threat?

Did anyone - anyone at all - from the writer to the editor to the copyeditor to the guy who pressed the key to publish this trash heap stop to think for one second what this sounds like?

Christ, Reuters.

You suck and I hate you.

And you folks reading at home, this is what I mean when I say the media is biased against Taiwan and terrified of China. 

Who gets an 'Ideal Mother' award?

A door goddess on the Five Concbines' Temple in Tainan.
I like to think that women are seen as good for more than just sex, good looks and motherhood. 

Mother's Day was yesterday, but I am only getting around to writing this now. I don't do a lot on Mother's Day - although I have a grandmother and mother-in-law, it's still hard to do more than maybe offer a quiet tribute of some kind to my own mother, who passed away in 2014.

Anyway, I don't I'm not meaning to make any deep social commentary here, I just wanted to point out a common practice in Taiwan that I've never heard of being done where I'm from.

Perhaps you've heard of the "Ideal Mother Awards" (or "Exemplary Mother Awards", or however you'd translate it).

Basically, every Mother's Day, local communities, including my own, vote on which mothers in their communities are "Exemplary Mothers". There's a little ceremony and an award of some kind, often but not always presented by the neighborhood chief (里長). I can't imagine it's much. You might have your name published in the community newsletter if there is one. I only know about the one in my area because of that newsletter - I tried to read it once for Chinese practice, found it horribly boring, and haven't tried again.

According to the excellent Women's Movements in Twentieth-Century Taiwan,  this is a 'custom' (a government-created tradition) dating back from the days of Soong Mei-ling  -Chiang Kai-shek's wife -  and has deep ties to state-sponsored women's groups in the ROC on Taiwan. (Autonomous, non-state-sponsored women's groups were not permitted, which is not surprising.) It's directly related to these organizations, and Madame Soong's 'leadership' in women's issues, and their/her vision of what ideal Taiwanese (well, Chinese from her point of view) womanhood should be. You won't be shocked to learn that it involved traditional gender roles, hard work as a homemaker, helpmeet and supporter of the (male) ROC troops in what was perceived to be an ongoing war effort. Basically, calling themselves advocates for women while pushing sexist, traditional gender norms. 

I'm not sure who decides who is an "Exemplary Mother", to be honest, although I know there are a lot more community organizations than I am aware of as a foreigner, even as one who speaks Chinese and gets along more-or-less well with her neighbors (except, ahem, in 2014. You know why). I'd kind of forgotten about it as I no longer read my (again, horribly boring) community newsletter. I was only reminded of the practice again when a student told me that her mother-in-law would receive such an award.

Great! I thought. Here's a chance to ask a few questions about this particular...uh, tradition? Is it even one? 

Ugh, my student seemed to think. It's such a silly old-fashioned thing. I hope nobody ever foists one of those awards on ME. 

I have to admit, I had conceived of the "Exemplary Mother" awards as a sort of patriarchal pat-on-the-back, a carrot of reinforcement of outdated gender norms. Convincing women to think of their "place" as mothers and wives in the family so the whole Confucian train can keep rollin'. Though this is not limited to Asia, in Asia it's often associated with Confucianism, however, we are not innocent in the West, where I suppose it's just associated with being misogynist. Same difference?

And I write that even as someone who strongly dislikes the tendency of foreigners writing about Asia to revert straight to "Confucian!!!" to explain everything, even when that thing can be explained by saying "this is a thing that sucks." But maybe it can be used accurately in this particular case?

Back when I read that article in my community newsletter, I recall at least one-third to one-half of all of the "exemplary mothers" having dual surnames (e.g. Chen Zhuang Mei-ling or what have you), signifying that the mothers in question had taken their husbands' surnames in addition to their own: a practice that is considered by most to be very traditional and old-fashioned, and something of a social signal showing that you, too, are something of a traditionalist.

So, I imagined this whole shebang as a way to reward housewives, perhaps conservative ones, perhaps ones in very traditional family structures who not only upheld those structures, but believed in them and maybe even felt everyone else should too. I certainly imagined them picking mothers who defined themselves by their family, deferred to their husbands, and embodied a certain middle-to-upper-middle-class ROC - can we call it waisheng? - aesthetic, whether they were actually from that community or not (I've long felt that the aesthetic is the thing that seems to count. Whether or not you are actually descended from the KMT diaspora doesn't always make a difference when it comes to this kind of patriarchal elitism. You just have to act like them.)

However, I was pleasantly surprised. A quick rundown of the questions I asked and the answers I got:

So these awards - what do you have to do to get one?

Well, you have to have at least a few kids. Maybe three is enough - a lot of kids anyway, probably more than two. And you have to have sacrificed a lot for your family.

What do you mean by 'sacrificed a lot'? 

Like, spend a lot of time raising your kids, and they should be successful, good students or high-level workers if they are older. Always cooking nutritious food, that sort of thing. And usually you are not rich, I guess they think it's easy to raise kids if you are rich.

So, housewives?

No, sometimes the mothers have careers. You don't have to be a housewife to get this award.

Do they have to be particularly traditional?

No, I mean, I guess if you're divorced you won't get the award. But you don't have to be very traditional. Like I said, you could work or have a career too. Actually if you just do everything you are told you probably won't get it. You have to be a leader in the family.

Anything else? 

You should take care of other family members, like your husband's parents. If you take care of kids and the older generation, that's really good. And you should have a...'harmonious family'.

What about your own parents? 

I don't know, but I think if you take care of your own parents and raise kids, that's actually okay. It doesn't have to be so traditional.

So, are there "Exemplary Father" awards? 

Yes! We have those on Father's Day. But honestly, people don't pay as much attention to them. And you also have to sacrifice a lot for your family to get that.

Sacrifice how?

Like do a lot for them, raise your children well, and have a lot of kids, spend time with them, and the kids should be model citizens too. Just like with the mothers.

So it's not about earning money for the family. 

No! Anyone can do that. An 'Exemplary Father' has to do more than that.

It seems like the main thing here is rewarding people who have a lot of kids. 

Yup. Well you know our population is low, people are not having a lot of kids these days. So maybe the government wants to encourage that by rewarding the parents who do that even though they are not rich, and who raise their kids well.

Other than being good students or successful adults, what does it mean to be a 'model citizen'? 

Well, like a good person. Maybe you do something for the community.

So it's about more than obeying your parents, or growing up to earn a lot of money? 

Yeah.

What do you think it means to have a 'harmonious family'?

Like, you get along, the neighbors don't think of you as fighting all the time, maybe you seem happy as a family. Not divorced. But also, not arguing all the time.

Do you need to have a son?
Not as far as I know, no. But I guess most people who win this award have at least one son, because they always have many kids.

* * *

Anyway, this is one person's answers, and narrators can be unreliable. I don't know how true her statements are regarding the entire practice. Perhaps in her neighborhood they are more progressive, but you never know, perhaps they are less so, or perhaps her views of what it takes to be an "Exemplary Mother" are not as in line with the committee members' ideas as she thinks they are. There's no way to know (well, there is a way to know, but I'm not an academic with a research budget, so there's no way for me to know).

There are things I could nitpick, though many could be nitpicked in any country: the idea that one needs to have many kids to be an "Exemplary Mother" (or father), the idea that fathers get less attention paid to their awards (though fathers being thought of as less involved with family is an issue hardly unique to Taiwan). I wonder to what extent female obeisance is required to maintain a 'harmonious family', and what behavior at home might be known about but ignored by neighbors. I wonder to what extent wives and mothers might not speak out lest their neighbors think of them as less than 'exemplary' (again, not a problem unique to Taiwan).

The award also only seems to be open to same-sex couples, as we don't yet have marriage equality in Taiwan, and the idea that one can't be an "Exemplary Mother" if one is divorced. It reinforces gender norms and gender identity, and provides a frighteningly pre-fab idea about what 'sacrifice' and 'harmony' mean. I also wonder how often it really happens that a woman who receives such an award really does have a high-powered career on par with her husband's. Perhaps it is possible, but is it common?

I could also nitpick what this means for the kids. Sure, what my student said above is all well and good. It sounds wonderful on paper, but what does it really mean? Does it mean pushing kids to study all day for pointless tests, so they get good grades and thus are "good students"? How narrow is the definition for "model citizens"? I mean, that last one sounds like something Ma Ying-jiu would have been called as a kid, and something Hung Hsiu-chu would blather on about now, and I wouldn't call either of them model citizens. Do they really not define 'successful' as 'high-status and earning a lot of money' or is that just something one says because it sounds like the right sort of sound bite? And is the fact that the winners generally have sons really because they tend to have more than two kids in general, or because sons really are considered more important by the committee that hands these awards out?

I don't know, and I can't know, but I have to admit the whole thing is a lot better than I'd imagined it to be.

A Review of Taiwan's Imagined Geography

Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895
Emma Jinhua Teng
Available at Bookstore 1920s on Dihua Street, Amazon and Book Depository UK (with free shipping!)

This is likely to be a short review, by my standards, not because I did not like this book, but because I liked it too much. It's easy to write reams about a flawed tome; a far more difficult task is writing about something one has no substantive quibbles with.

I was immediately impressed by this book for two key reasons: the first was its thickness compared to the chunk of time it covers and the narrowness of its focus on that time: the book provides historical narrative, but its purpose is to support the main point: a cut-through of travel writing on Taiwan by Chinese colonial visitors. Teng begins and ends her investigation in Qing-era Taiwan, exploring only briefly the accounts of earlier visitors if they add to that narrative, for example, discussing what Shi Lang, who captured Taiwan (from the Zhengs of Koxinga fame), said about the place before it was ever really incorporated into Qing holdings, and what a Chinese visitor in Japanese-era Taiwan had to say about losing a part of what he called "my China".

The second thing that impressed me was how engagingly it was written, for a book that has real scholarly heft (in fact, in some parts where she begins quoting other academics, it differs little from textbooks you absolutely would not read for pleasure, and yet it remains pleasurable). If I had to compare it to anything, I'd say it's Taiwan's version of A Distant Mirror (name drop: hands in the air if you've read it!)

Unless you are already an expert in the field, you will learn quite a bit from this book, almost all of it relevant to what makes Taiwan what it is today. You can see the roots of many issues of identity and politics taking shape, from indigenous issues to questions of nationalism and the historical roots of, as well as a well-deserved challenge to the legitimacy of, China's claims to Taiwan as Chinese "since antiquity."

Spoiler alert: not only did China have no claim on Taiwan whatsoever until the Qing dynasty came and kicked out the Ming loyalists, but for most of the ancient history of China they were either unaware of its existence, or barely-aware, not not really caring. There are various historical reasons for this, including the conception of what was included in "China". Even when the Qing did hold Taiwan, they only controlled its Western plain, considering the mountains a 'hedgerow' or 'screen' protecting China proper, until the late 19th century when they realized that other powers might be interested in taking it. For much of the time before that, they considered it barely worth their time, a drain on coffers rather than a treasure adding to them. And, finally, there is a case to be made that the Qing treated Taiwan more as a colonial holding than an integral part of its territory.

You can read about all of this in the book, and I was aware of all of these points well before I read it. I mostly added the above paragraph so that the next time some pro-China troll comes along I can link or copy-paste rather than repeat myself.

The part that interested me, and will presumably interest you, is the various ways in which the colonial travel writings and associated maps Teng includes reflect the changing attitudes of China towards Taiwan during this time, from a 'ball of mud beyond the pale of civilization' to a 'treasure island', spending quite a bit of time on how Taiwan and its indigenous tribes were perceived as 'other', and what exactly it means to consider Taiwan more a colonial holding of the Qing than a frontier territory.

If I could come up with any one criticism of this book, it's that at times I would have actually liked to dive a little deeper into a straight accounting of history. I don't hold that against Teng: it's made clear at the outset that Taiwan's Imagined Geography is not meant to be that, and I won't criticize the book for something it was never meant to be. I would have also liked if she'd spent just a bit more time deconstructing the veracity of the claims of the various writers: she makes it clear that as narrators they are often unreliable, but does not make it her business to analyze exactly how.

Now, I did say above that despite being a scholarly work, Taiwan's Imagined Geography is eminently readable. However, I am a person with something of a scholarly bent. I'm no professor, but I can and do read this sort of stuff for fun (and in my defense my husband is a much bigger nerd than I am), and I am more than happy to learn, in great detail, about various aspects of Taiwan past and present. If you are not this sort of person and prefer more general reading, or are interested in Taiwan more in passing, you might find it more of a slog than I did. But if you liked A Distant Mirror - despite it being on an entirely different topic - you will love this book.

And I guess that wasn't a short review at all.

To be a woman anywhere

Everywhere we go, we are less than: considered more from the back than the front

I have wanted to express something about the Lin Yi-han sexual assault and subsequent suicide case, but have refrained, being unsure of exactly how to put into words my thoughts on this (you may be surprised to learn that when I am more than a little unsure, or don't think I have much to add to a topic, I actually do stay silent). I did not know Lin, nor have I read her book - though I would like to - and I don't keep up with Chinese-language news as much as I should, which kind of implies a lack of reason to comment. This is one reason why I said little, if anything (I don't recall writing any posts on the topic) about the Fu-jen University rape case and subsequent cover-up.

But something struck me about the universality of women's experiences when it came to this case - not that every woman experiences such things, but that they are experienced by women around the world, of all ages, backgrounds and circumstances.

The English-language media I have read about these tragic events have been sympathetic, non-sensationalist and taking aim at not just the recounting of personal tragedy but at the larger social issues laid bare. If one were to read only the English-language reporting on this, one might think that Taiwan was, if anything, a more progressive and thoughtful place than the US when it came to such issues.

Of course, as New Bloom points out, this is not the case:

And so while it is important that this case be discussed by Taiwanese society, the sensationalist attitudes of the media in their treatment of female subjects are another issue which should be discussed. Indeed, much reporting on the matter in Taiwanese media has been disgraceful, seeing as while some media outlets has skirted around reporting Lin’s name for fear of legal punishment despite Lin’s parents having already released her name, this strikes as hypocritical when they otherwise have no compunction in sensationalizing similar cases—one suspects respect for the victim or concern with addressing the social issues which led to Lin’s death is the last thing on their minds. 

And with that, it just feels like I've seen this sort of media circus play out, time and time again, in the USA - and while I don't read news from every country, I can't imagine it is unique to any one place. Whether you report it or not at the time almost feels immaterial: if the news becomes public, it will be sensationalized, the victim will not be accorded any amount of privacy or respect, and some people will search for any angle or reason they can think of to find a way to blame the victim.

That's as true in Taiwan as it is anywhere, although Taiwan's notably unprofessional press (yes, I said it: Taiwan may have a free press but it does not have a well-trained one, nor across-the-board professional journalistic tradition) might perhaps dive deeper into that particular gutter.

Leaving aside questions of how individual victims and families react in such situations, more than one of my students has questioned to what extent we can call what the teacher allegedly did "rape".

Why?

"She wasn't underage."

"It seemed she went out with him, she liked him, that means she flirted with him or maybe wanted him, so how could it be rape?"

"Sometimes in Taiwan women who want to go further don't say so. You have to figure it out in other ways. They won't tell you 'yes'."

"It happens a lot that a young woman wants to sleep with a man, maybe an older man, but she doesn't want anyone to think she's a 'bad girl' so if it gets out she'll say he raped her or 'seduced' her."

Of course, I won't bother explaining the very obvious reasons why any or all of these could be true, and a sexual encounter could still be rape. In terms of the last one, I don't know the 'false accusation' rate in Taiwan (I don't think anyone does, and I'm not sure anyone really knows it anywhere, but there is strong evidence in the US that it is quite rare indeed), but that's an old rhetorical weapon common in the US used to dismiss or explain away sexual assault statistics as well as individual victims, often trying to portray the accused or potentially-accused (usually men) as suffering so much more under the weight of false accusations than the victims (usually women). It usually holds no water.

What I will say is that in many cases (at least the first two), this sounds quite a bit like, well, the sort of comments one hears or reads when a high-profile sexual assault case hits American public discourse. We will never know if Lin Yi-han would have been treated fairly in court had her family filed a police report and pressed charges - though I don't have much faith that she would have been - but rape victims and alleged rape victims are routinely dragged through hell, with very little chance that their charges will ever amount to substantive punishment for their rapists. Even when a rapist is caught, and found guilty, he may well receive a too-light sentence (which, by those who seek to preserve privilege by painting privileged groups as 'the real victims', will be painted as a massive life-destroyed burden...unlike, apparently according to them, being raped). 

So how is this different from the public reaction to a similar story anywhere? I don't think it is, at least not substantively. In some ways Taiwan is more sexist and patriarchal than the US or other Western countries. In other ways, it's less so. I did not particularly feel that the US was a better place to be a woman than Taiwan when I was living there - though I have friends who disagree - and if a bestselling author in the US had committed suicide as a result of depression stemming from a rape in her past, I am not sure at all that the public dialogue would be all that different, from the media coverage all the way down to the Internet trolls.

The same may be said for the difficulty in seeking treatment for depression and other issues stemming from the incident, and from potential (it's not clear in this case) issues with family. Although it is not at all clear that this is what happened in Lin's case, I could just as easily see a prominent family from any other country pressuring their daughter to not report, or cover up, a rape. I could just as easily see a woman from any other country dealing with mental health fallout from that. I could see the victim in any country feeling pressure to internalize her trauma.

I could see the patriarchy working against her, no matter where she is or where she's from.

Media frenzy aside, even the circumstances are not unique to Taiwan: pretty young woman, older male teacher (though this is not limited to that gender dynamic: older female authority figures groom young men, too). Young woman does or doesn't like the teacher - in either case, the teacher goes after her. No matter where this story goes from here, it starts with women being seen mainly as sex objects, and ends with society condemning women no matter what path they take: to say yes, to say no, to report, to internalize. And it might be this way in any country.

In sort, this is what it's like to be a woman anywhere. People of all genders are at risk of sexual assault, but women are particularly so. And if that happens, you face an unrepentant media, a potentially hostile or uncaring court, entire verbal landfills of hateful comments, thoughtful (though at times self-aggrandizing) thinkpieces, aspersions cast on your character and more.

I am not at all sure that the tragedy of Lin Yi-han sheds much light on the issues of rape, depression, suicide and patriarchy in Taiwan specifically (as New Bloom also noted, while cram schools face less regulation than other educational institutions, this sort of thing is not unique to them).

I don't mean to say that Lin Yi-han's particular story is not unique: all stories are unique, but that doesn't mean they can't add up in their similarities to a universality that affects all people and places. 

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. 

Diamond Conflict! (Also, fuck you Reuters)

What Reuters, and the Australian hosts of this conference, need to grow.

Better yet, grow some vaginas. Everyone knows they are stronger and more able to withstand pressure than these sensitive globules. 

As you may have heard, a delegation from China acted like a bunch of big whiny babies (with representatives from several African countries that no doubt receive plenty of aid from China supporting them), insisting that the Taiwan delegation be removed from an inter-governmental conference on combating the problem of conflict diamonds.

After a few private meetings, the Australian hosts did, in fact, kick the Taiwan delegation out, because they clearly lack the vagina to stand up to a bully.

I don't have a lot to say about this that was not already covered by other news outlets, but I would like to offer a run-down of articles to make a point:

ABC Australia: it's "regrettable"
Foreign Policy: Chinese delegation "blows up"
Sydney Morning Herald: "Disgusting" and "extraordinary" scenes
BBC: Chinese delegates "hijack mic" / "It's disgusting" (though their use of "reunited" when discussign what China wants to do to Taiwan, and not digging further into the Chinese consulate's nonsense word garbage doesn't redeem them)
The Telegraph: Chinese delegates disrupt forum

...and more. 

And of course a host of Taiwan- and Asia-centric sources, including Taiwan Sentinel and The News Lens (and others) also covered the story.

Only Reuters, as they so often do, hands out some verbal blowjobs to China by saying China and Taiwan "sparred" at the meeting.

Which, of course, they did not. Chinese delegates acted like shitty little assmongers, and Taiwan was kicked out. That is not "sparring", fuck you Reuters.

And over an anti-conflict diamond meeting - is there no low to which the Chinese government and its hand-jobbers are not willing to sink?

But there's a bright side to this. No really, there is.

For once, China is getting the bad publicity its shitty attitude deserves.

Remember when China blocked Taiwan from an international aviation conference in Canada like a bunch of butthurt fuckboys? If you weren't in Taiwan or reading Taiwanese news sources, you might not, because few reported on it.

Remember when Taiwan was made to call itself "Chinese Taipei" at major international sporting events, and how everyone made excuses for how it "had" to be this way?

Remember when Taiwan was actually blocked from the WHO, meaning it could not share useful health information even in epidemics like SARS?

Remember how everyone sat back and fucking took it? Remember how people who didn't know Taiwan said it was either 'inevitable' or made excuses for why it was actually acceptable?

Remember when Tsai and Trump talked on the phone and the world lost its shit, because people who don't know Taiwan consistently talk down to its people and government, or make excuses for China's bitch-baby tantrums?

Well, for once, China throws its stupid conniption yet again, but this time, to some extent at least, they finally get called on it.  Not by the Australian hosts, but by the international media (except Reuters: fuck you Reuters).

We need more of this. We need the media to consistently and correctly call out China's assy behavior. We need it to be international - we need to show the world what the Chinese government really is and how they really treat Taiwan. No more excuses, no more explanations, no more condescension and vague cover-ups and garbage words. What we need is unvarnished truth: China is consistently and predictably a dick to Taiwan in every conceivable way, no matter how petty, no matter how it makes them look.

It's time the world finally saw that and stopped making excuses.

Good job, media.

Except Reuters.

Fuck you, Reuters.

Are there false churches, too? A review of The Man With The Compound Eyes (複眼人)

The Man With The Compound Eyes （復眼人)
Wu Ming-yi
(available at eslite)

As I plow through books on Taiwan before my leaving date (about a month from now), I've been intentionally alternating between fiction and non-fiction. After finishing Accidental State (and breezing through The Mapping of Taiwan), I came upon this small volume with a gorgeous cover. After hearing high praise for the quality of the translation, I decided it would be the fiction filling to my Accidental State / Taiwan's Imagined Geography sandwich.

And it's true, the translation is wonderful. If I hadn't known it hadn't been written originally in English, I wouldn't have guessed as much. It's engaging and eminently readable, in fact, I'd say it is a pleasure to read on nearly a conscious level.

The characters, especially, are well-drawn, their backstories draw you in, although I had to smile at the trope of the novelist making the main character of their novel an English professor who is also a writer - write what you know, I guess. I appreciated that, for a novel set in Taiwan, most of the characters were in fact not ethnically "Chinese": the novel was heavily, and purposely, aboriginal and yet not exclusively that.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the story, so I'll start with this: it was engaging. I only actually give books perhaps 50 pages to draw me in; if I'm not hooked by then, I usually don't finish. I have better things to do than read a book I'm not that interested in. The Man with the Compound Eyes had me from page one.

But what was it about exactly? I'm still not sure. The clearest theme seemed to be that of god as nature, and different people's relationship to it - the god of this novel is one that not only does not live up in the sky and have a beard and rain down hellfire, but rather who lives in the mountains, the jungles and the oceans, but also one that is not an active creator or intervener. Somewhat simplistically, those with the strongest relationship to nature/god seem to be the Taiwan indigenous and fictional island characters (I'm not saying this is necessarily wrong, although I don't believe in god, it's just something of a well-worn trope), with Westerners and ethnically "Chinese" Taiwanese being furthest from.

Caution: ahead there be spoilers

I'm also not sure, other than another "untouched natives living simply with nature and no knowledge of the outside world" narrative what the journey of Atil'ei was really supposed to mean for the larger story: did his meeting with Alice, at which point he as a fleshed-out character nearly disappears from the narrative, serve to bring her to some deeper understanding of nature? If so, perhaps that could have been explored a bit more. I am generally a fan of subtlety but rather than picking up subtle cues about the point of the story, I ended up feeling mostly confused, as though a missing, hidden chapter I was supposed to have read, but didn't. A lot of ancillary characters seem to do a lot without really adding much to the narrative if you don't make big metaphorical leaps in trying to consider what it all means. I felt in one case it really could be boiled down to "engineer who helped build the Xueshan Tunnel heard a weird sound back then, returned to Taiwan, and decided he should not try to find out what that sound was". Okay, I guess?

Overall, I felt the backstory leading up to the arrival of the trash vortex on Taiwan to be the most satisfying, and the most engaging in terms of reading about how another person views and sees certain aspects of life in Taiwan, most notably, I felt a lot of my own sentiments reflected in the description of the east coast town, the shantytown by the river in Taipei, and what it means to have a "homestay". The characterization was likewise enjoyable - the friends-or-more relationship between Dahu and Hafay was handled with subtlety and grace. Backstory was well-handed: engaging, thoughtful (each person has their own 'island'), not overly cumbersome but deep enough to count.

I was less satisfied with the story of Atil'ei's island love, Rasula. Her story felt like it hit a big random dead-end and served no real narrative purpose other than to keep her in the story a bit longer. I had expected they'd either meet again or she'd encounter some sort of worthwhile adventure, or that we'd find out what happened to Atil'ei as he left Taiwan and began sailing back to an island that (spoiler!) will no longer exist by the time he gets there, if he ever does. Neither comes to pass. It just ends. It doesn't feel like that story thread ever fully gels with the rest of what's going on in any satisfying, conclusive way. I especially feel that we're forced out of Alice's headspace - even in a first-person narrative told by her! - for that part of the novel, and never really get a sense of the impact Atil'ei has had on her.

Yes, this story comes with a twist - but I'm writing about it at the very end because it probably had the least impact on me in any deeper emotional sense. It could have worked in a longer novel, but here it felt unearned, like Wu felt he needed something like that to happen, so *poof*, it did. Alice's experiences after finding the cliff where her husband died felt rushed through, the realizations not supported much by the narrative that had come before.

All in all, The Man With The Compound Eyes is worth reading (and honestly, it won't take you long. It is not a tome by any means). It feels very Taiwanese, and very connected to this country and the experience of living here, and specifically very 21st-century Taiwanese, with its focus on local, non-Chinese culture, environmentalism, small towns and everything that sort of embodies a post-industrial Taiwan that is so very over Taipei, choosing instead a smaller city or one's hometown.

It also feels very Taiwanese in its narrative subtlety. It is entirely possible that I didn't feel I fully understood the integration of the storylines because so much was left purposely unsaid, and I was meant to connect the dots in a way that someone of this culture might perhaps be able to do, but which eludes this straight-to-the-point, no-stone-unturned New Yorker.

By all means, read it, and if you figure out What It All Means on a deeper level than I've tried to express here, let me know.