The Hipster Cafes of Miaoli (and other things to do)

The counter at Reinstatement, in Houlong, Miaoli

Because I really don't feel like writing about the election, let me tell you about the trip I took last weekend to visit friends in Miaoli County.

When I moved to Taiwan 14 years ago (!!!), there were plenty of cafes in the cities here, although cafe culture hadn't quite taken off. Even in Taipei you were more likely to find your only choices to be a Starbucks or a Dante rather than an atmospheric place to relax, and outside Taipei and the other cities, Cafe 85 - which lacks charm and doesn't even have good coffee - might have been your only choice.

That's all changed. Now even smaller towns like Miaoli, Luodong and Douliu (to name a few) have more aesthetically pleasing places to relax, with better coffee - and sometimes good beer and sweets - too. That's not all we did in Miaoli, but it was interesting to realize that I could have spent the whole weekend swanning about in cafes and never be lacking in choices (assuming I had a car).

What's even more encouraging is that these hipster-friendly spots aren't just copying Western cafe or restaurant culture; they're reinterpreting it for a Taiwanese setting, not only incorporating local ingredients into their menus but also aesthetic choices that draw on Taiwan's visual and spacial history into their design. Most of them seem to be operated by young people, which isn't surprising - I've heard more than one younger person sick of Taipei hustle express a wish to return to their hometown, but not necessarily work for a family company or a small-town boss. Of course, some of these people will make good on their desires, and open their own businesses.

I arrived in Miaoli late in the evening on Friday. After checking into my homestay which was a little far from the city center, the friends I'd come to meet picked me up. I took the HSR as I had to leave Taipei later than I'd otherwise prefer. There are bus and train connections to Miaoli City, but a taxi was only NT$200.

We went out to one of the only restaurants in the city open that late, Good Food Good Times, a Taiwan-style 燒烤 - barbecued stuff on sticks - and beer joint in downtown Miaoli. 

Good Food Good Times (好食好時台式居酒屋）

Zhongzheng Road #673, Miaoli City

360苗栗縣苗栗市中正路673號

Good Food Good Times is the place to go for late night snacks - they're open until 2am - and Taiwan 18-Day "Fresh" beer on tap (Taiwan Gold Label beer and Heineken are also available). The space is decorated with old-style Taiwanese restaurant tables and chairs and old-school speckled floor, with upcycled old window frames and Japanese elements such as door curtains, rectangular flat plates and a Japanese-style dining bar up front. Frankly, it feels like the entire population of Miaoli under age 40 (so, like, 20 people) hangs out here regularly.

Also, the food is great. You choose what you want from the refrigerator case out front, using tongs to put your selections into a basket - just like a night market stall. There are non-BBQ dishes available too, including pork oil rice with egg yolk and shallot (a very Taiwanese, and in fact Hakka, dish that is simple and delicious). Best of all, it's not particularly expensive. 

The next morning, we slept in a bit - we were up pretty late at the BBQ place, and waited for our friends at the homestay, which was comfortable and very Taiwanese. Basically if you're married into a local family it probably looks like your in-laws' house. 

Not many people come to Miaoli as tourists, and to be honest, there's not much to do in the city itself. If you come without a car, you might be able to amuse yourself for a day in the city center for a day. There's the Weixin Hakka Artifacts Museum (維新客家文物館), with what I am assured by Hakka friends is an entirely fake, purpose-built Hakka roundhouse. We didn't go. There's also the Wenchang Temple (to the literature and scholarship god - 苗栗文昌祠), which is genuinely old and atmospheric, though not otherwise of particular note. The downtown area has a few older buildings worth strolling past, and some good restaurants.

There are also a few cafes in town that we didn't make it to, including Old House (老家生活苗栗店), which is in an authentic old house and I am told has good coffee, and The Spot (新興大旅社) near Miaoli Station. I have no idea how good it is, but it looks atmospheric. 

I'll write more about Miaoli city restaurants later - for now, let's focus on what we did during the day.

Instead of sticking around Miaoli, we hopped in the car and went to Houlong (後龍), a laid-back little town that's pretty to walk through, and offers scattered sights, though again there's not much to keep you there for more than a day.

On the way, we stopped off at the Tang Family Ancestral Shrine (湯氏宗祠) outside of Miaoli city. Sadly, the shrine is only open during the week, so this is as close as we could get. It's quite pretty though, even with that KMT sun symbol gate. If you were ambitious you could probably walk here from downtown, though it's better to drive.

The shrine is near a temple - fairly new and not that interesting - but the parking lot nearby has lovely views of the rice fields leading to the mountains not far away.

Houlong has a train station that will deposit you near the downtown area, but again, it's better to drive as most of the interesting things to do are not remotely within any sort of walking distance.

First, however, coffee. We had excellent coffee and lovely sweets - including a pecan toffee tart and a deliciously moist brownie, at Daddy&Mommy, a cafe run by a couple with (at least) one child, with a child-friendly play space downstairs and open kitchen-restaurant upstairs. They also have good burgers and meals.

Daddy&Mommy

356苗栗縣後龍鎮中龍里市興8號

#8, intersection of Zhongzheng and Zhongshi Roads, Houlong
(the town is not big, it's easy to find)

Yes, you ring a temple demon bell to call the boss!

We really liked this place for the way they used simple design to preserve the original character of the building, but modernize it to create a clean and inviting atmosphere, using wood, whitewash and the original speckled flooring.

If you choose to wander around Houlong afterwards, you'll be rewarded with a few old buildings, a very weird/cool vintage clothing shop (closed when we visited), and at least one large temple, Ciyun Gong (慈雲宮). 

Across from Ciyun Gong is an opera stage, around which there are several food stalls. If you want to eat locally, the o-len (黑輪伯）in the clutch of stalls across from temple - tasty boiled things in a peppery, seafoody soup, you've definitely seen it before - is good, though it won't blow your socks off.

Outside of town, one of the few old Chinese-style graves with carved animals can be found near the intersection of Highways 1 and 6, across the CPC gas station. This is the grave of Zheng Chonghe (國定古蹟-鄭崇和墓 - that's how you'll find it on Google Maps), who died in the 19th century. Some of the original carvings, and all of the original animal sculptures, can be seen. It's visible from the road and there is a path leading to it. Just park on the side of the highway.

There are bus stations out here, so theoretically one can get here by public transport, but I wouldn't recommend trying it. Do you want to take a bus to the side of a random highway in Miaoli County and count on there being a bus to take you somewhere else in a timely fashion? Yeah, didn't think so. 

That said, there's at least one restaurant and a 7-11 nearby, so you could do worse in terms of being stranded on a highway.

One of the interesting things about the grave is how some of the animal sculptures actually look like the animals they depict, such as the goat, and others really do not - for example, the tiger.

I guess we can surmise that the carver had seen plenty of goats but not one tiger. Why he thought they had creepy frog faces with human noses, I'll never know. Perhaps he was carving a tiger from a painting of a tiger by a guy who'd only seen another painting of a tiger. 

From Zheng Chonghe's grave, we made three more stops in the Houlong area, not necessarily in this order. 

First, there's the "Cape of Good Hope" (好望角), which is in the area famous for having an extensive wind farm.




How windy was it?

That windy.

It was near this stretch of coast that people protested the building of wind turbines, though these particular turbines are not close to inhabited structures (further down the coast you can see areas where they are closer). 

To be honest, the noise was noticeable, and I don't know that I'd want to live really close to one simply due to the audible sound, but I find the claims of other health problems resulting from proximity to turbines to be questionable, and I'd rather have sound pollution than air pollution. I didn't oppose the protests, however - I too would want the turbines built away from where people live.

I will admit they are a little terrifying to walk under, though not actually dangerous. And they're only a bit creepy if you are directly underneath them. There's an area up here that's popular with tourists with nice views, and it's quite windy (which is, of course, why one might want to build turbines here). I didn't think they detracted from the coastal views - there's no beach to speak of - and although the sound was noticeable, one could talk above it even when standing almost directly under the turbines.

There's also an old railway tunnel here, further down near the actual coast. My friends and husband went, but suffering from a knee injury, I didn't want to risk a walk down and up a hill. There's a parking space down there, but everyone else said it wasn't really that special. 

Another stop was a short "old street" in Houlong, more locally called Tongxing Old Street (同興老街). While not far from Longgang (龍港) train station, and with an old bus stop signpost nearby, and therefore theoretically reachable by public transit, this is another place you're better off driving to.

The street is not long and it's right off a highway, but well-preserved buildings (well, some are falling apart) and the simple and quiet atmosphere make this a lovely short stop on a longer drive. You won't really find souvenir shops or anything like that here, though at least one building is some sort of museum (closed when we visited).

The still-standing houses appear to be currently lived in, and some even have the old style wooden beams across the front, which I associate (possibly wrongly?) with pre-Japanese, Qing-era houses. 

At the top of the street - which continues, but the houses end - there's a little shop called the Cat Organic Bookstore (貓裏有機書店). The friendly, quirky owners sell used books in Chinese (not many, though) and a few traditional-style Taiwanese toys. There's a pretty good Western-style bathroom you can use, too. The house the shop is in is worth a look, too.

By this time we were a bit tired and decided to hang out at a "hidden cafe" above a small countryside grocery store next to the Houlong Bao'an temple (苗栗後龍保安宮). The shop on the ground floor sells household staples on one side - soy sauce, oil, vinegar, dry goods, and sweets on the other - the old-school kind that Taiwanese kids used to eat, and sometimes still do. We're talking dried plums (both powdered and sticky), dried kumquats, those little choco-balls wrapped in sports-ball patterned foil, pixie sticks, various hard candies, chocolate goo in a tube...basically stuff that will make all your Taiwanese friends nostalgic for their childhoods. We bought a few - I can't resist sticky dried plums (I don't care for the powdered kind, which taste like weird medicine) and dried kumquats, and they sell my favorite herbal chews as well. They're even displayed in the old-school plastic containers with red lids.

None of this nostalgia trip is accidental. Above the grocery there's an extremely hip cafe, called 重成商號 (Reinstatement) which is known across the region - we suspect daytrippers from larger towns like Zhunan come by here as well, as it's too remote to stay in business on a purely local clientele. 

Reinstatement (重成商號)
56-1號, 中山高速公路後龍鎮苗栗縣356

#56-1, Sun Yat-sen Freeway, Houlong, Miaoli County

The cafe is spread across several rooms decorated with old-school tiles and other bits of Taiwanese nostalgiana, and is especially known for high-quality desserts made with local flavors and ingredients. I especially recommend the chocolate mousse pyramid, with a surprise of sweet pomelo compote in the center. The purple sweet potato mousse is also intriguing, with a light flavor and attractive color and presentation.

There is a bus stop nearby so you could potentially come out here without your own transport...in theory anyway. 

Yes, it is worth the trip. 

By that time, the sun was going down and we were about ready for dinner, so wet set off to return to Miaoli City. In the daytime, one corner of the downtown area looks like this - in fact, rather attractive as smaller towns in Taiwan go. 

For dinner, we went to Jiang Ji Original Wonton Restaurant (江技舊記餛飩店), known locally as Jiang Ji (江技), a well-regarded wonton restaurant run by - you guessed it - the Chiang (Jiang 江) family. They make their own chili sauce here, which is fantastic on the dry wontons, and they make their own pork fat with fried shallots for pork oil rice. The Taiwanese meatballs (肉圓) and pork liver (豬肝) are also well-known. I also really liked the oily tofu (油豆腐). The whole restaurant is pleasantly decorated, with slate floors, polished wood tables and wood carvings on the walls, including an impressive round one bearing the name of the restaurant.

Why there? Well, first it's probably the best restaurant in town. Second, one of the family members is a friend of mine.

Jiang Ji (江技舊記餛飩店)

360苗栗縣苗栗市新苗街88號

#88 Xinmiao Street, Miaoli City

Finally, in keeping with our penchant for hipster cafes, we sought out a place to have a few beers and just chill. Another friend had just put his daughter to bed and was also keen to meet up.

We ended up just around the corner at Donghai (Eastern Sea) Coffee, which has a fantastic selection of beer from around the world, and a comfortable upstairs sitting area.

Donghai Coffee (東海咖啡)
360苗栗縣苗栗市日新街1號

#1 Ri Hsin Street, Miaoli

Donghai is filled with eclectic collectibles and vintage and antique bric-a-brac, keeping the character of the old building it's located in, but in a very different way to the other two cafes we visited that day. In this one, design lines weren't as clean, but the vintage charm of the place kept the space interesting.

Considering that there were "Vote Taiwan 2020" stickers downstairs, we think the old ROC memorabilia is just that - memorabilia and not a political statement. 

We had an early morning the next day, as we planned to drive up to Xueba National Park (雪霸國家公園), specifically to hike in the Xuejian (雪見) area.

But first, breakfast. We went to People on the Water (水上人家), a famous little restaurant - as in, people in Taipei have heard of it - so named because it is (or rather, was) on the old water canal. The noodles are especially famous and well worth getting up early for. They open at 6:30 and close at 1, so it's not a place you can go for dinner. 

People on the Water (水上人家)

360苗栗縣苗栗市天雲街3號

#3 Tianyun Street, Miaoli

The drive to Xuejian was long and winding on narrow mountain roads, or at least I'm told it was as I drifted in and out of a Dramamine-induced stupor in the back seat. There's a tourist information center (雪見遊憩區) up here where you can get food, coffee and tea, which has parking and Western-style restrooms.

We chose this hike - more of a forest walk really - because it affords lovely views of Snow Mountain (雪山), which was a big draw as there's currently snow on the peak. In addition, given my injured knee, was a hike I could do. Being a forestry trail, it's mostly flat with a few uphill stretches, and has no stairs. The elevation is high, so you might feel winded on even slight inclines. Fortunately, there aren't many and none of them are onerous.

From here you can just see the peak of Snow Mountain behind those two ridges: 

And it comes more into view the more you hike:

You can also see Dabajian and Xiaobajian peaks, with a little snow between them. Yes, that's snow, not a cloud.

In some places the view of Snow Mountain's peak is absolutely spectacular, even more so as it was capped in white:

The trail itself is also lovely, and in the crisp winter air it had the distinct smell of Christmas trees. There are a few Port-a-potties (surprisingly clean - and there's no other good hiding place to take a whiz so they're quite welcome) and benches scattered along the way so you can take it easy.

The whole trail is 6km long and not circular, but given the state of my knee and our desire to be off the mountain by sunset, we only hiked perhaps half of it. Or rather, pleasantly walked - this is not a challenging hike. 

On the way back, we took a different route to get to our dinner destination and ended up slightly lost, asking for directions in the charming mountain town of Da'an, which is an Indigenous village. With the election season in full swing, banners for local politicians, mostly Indigenous (and almost entirely pan-blue) were up.





This is a poster for May Chin (Ciwas Ali or 高金素梅), a famous former actress known for her role in Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet, now a unificationist Japan-hater from a small deep pan-blue party, the Non-Partisan (lol) Solidarity Union (she's the only legislator in office from that party) from Da'an village.





There are other things to do in that area - Dahu is famous for strawberries and you can pick them yourself on dedicated farms, an activity I've done but I don't think I ever blogged about. There's a hot spring nearby (a public one, not a naked one), and Sanyi, famous for woodcarving, is not far from here, though its chief commodity, woodcarving, is environmentally problematic and the "famous tourist village" nearby is mostly inauthentic. The old Japanese bridge is nice, though.

To finish off our lovely weekend, we had dinner at Mengdingxuan (夢鼎軒精緻小吃), which doesn't have an English name I know. Mengdingxuan was our authentic Hakka restaurant for the trip, and is in a charming old building in Gongguan (公館) township outside Miaoli City.

Also they have two adorable poodles, one chocolate and one black.

Hakka dishes, while delicious, don't photograph well so you're only getting one photo of Hakka Stir Fry (which was actually a bit light on flavor, but heavy on the tasty pork fat). The sour ginger intestine was also sublime, in fact, the whole meal was fantastic and very local. 

Mengdingxuan (夢鼎軒精緻小吃)
363苗栗縣公館鄉華東街11號

#11 Huadong Street, Gongguan, Miaoli County

It was a bit of a sad farewell afterwards (and after a few more beers at Donghai), as our friends are moving to the US soon - as in, in just a few days.

On Monday morning we checked out of our homestay and tried to catch the bus to the HSR (the bus also goes up to Xueba National Park, though I'm not sure where it stops exactly so I don't know how useful it is). It stops in downtown Miaoli as well as out by the arena (yes, Miaoli has an arena).

But, the bus took too long and we wanted to grab coffee before hopping on the HSR back - we wanted to get back to Taipei quickly - so we grabbed another taxi. 

The KMT desperately wants to be rubber to the DPP's glue, but it's not working

To be frank, I don't really want to write about the KMT. I'd rather talk about the re-election campaign of President Tsai and what she's doing on that front. Sadly, other than a new song (which isn't bad as Taiwanese campaign songs go and intentionally references the band's 2014 hit inspired by the Sunflower Movement, Island Sunrise), some bomber jackets and holding the line she's taken since 2016, there isn't much to say on that front. She hasn't come out with any exciting policy proposals or new platforms that I've seen. "Hold the line and take no risks" seems to be her entire campaign strategy. Frankly, while I'd like to hear more from her about what she'll do once re-elected, this isn't a bad tactic, even though it doesn't give me much blog fodder.

So, instead let's talk about the way the KMT is trying ever so hard to turn the Su Chii-cherng fake news/suicide case into a big scandal for the DPP, and why it probably won't work. Sigh.

For those who don't know what this is about, here's a rundown of events, mostly from this source. It's long and involved, so feel free to skip anything you already know - I'm putting the whole story here because  it's one of the advantages of blogging that I can go long-form if I want and tell a fuller story. I'll put the whole thing in a different color so you'll clearly see where I pick up with commentary.

* * * 

Last year, posts on PTT insinuated that the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Osaka (Taiwan's de facto embassy) wasn't providing sufficient assistance to Taiwanese nationals in Japan affected by Typhoon Jebi, in contrast to the assistance that China was giving its citizens. New Bloom reports that the Chinese consulate 'stepped in' to help Taiwanese nationals; other news sources say that the inadequate response of Taiwan was merely contrasted poorly with that of China. The News Lens reports that some Taiwanese apparently feigned Chinese nationality to gain assistance from the Chinese consulate. I'm not sure which version is more accurate.

It doesn't matter much, the truth is that the Japanese government arranged all evacuation assistance, and rejected China's request to send in buses to aid its citizens (although representatives of one Chinese airline filled at least one bus with only Chinese nationals). The Chinese consulate reported falsely that they had arranged transport and food for their citizens and were willing to include Taiwanese citizens who "identified as Chinese" (according to an interview with a Chinese traveler). Global Times, a WeChat post and other Chinese media spread this story.

It was then picked up by Taiwanese social media, where the Taiwanese consulate was criticized for not doing enough for its own citizens, to the point that some pretended to be Chinese. Criticism at first focused on Taiwanese envoy to Japan and 2008 presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who tried to explain the situation but whose statement didn't get much traction on social media.

This criticism morphed into defending Hsieh and placing the blame on the head of the Osaka consulate, Su Chii-cherng (蘇啟誠). Remember, of course, that Su hadn't done anything wrong, as the entire story was fake to begin with. Su committed suicide soon after. It's difficult to say if the fake news blizzard precipitated his suicide, but an investigation was formed (despite the KMT insisting that the DPP and Ministry of Foreign Affairs were "not interested in investigating" the event), and online personality Slow Yang (楊蕙如) was indicted for not only public insult and hiring someone to post disinformation, but for those posts leading to Su's death. Su's widow says the criticism and his suicide are related, although his suicide note did not specifically mention the incident.

Despite Su's family and some media reporting that the government was going to reprimand and demote Su, MoFA says it had no plans to do so.

The person Yang was indicted for hiring was Tsai Fu-ming (蔡福明), although it's not quite clear who made what posts, and I'm not sure it matters much. Yang had previously been close to the DPP and Frank Hsieh in particular, having previously worked for his election campaign. There's also a furor over a company she owns being paid by the Taipei City government - money she was awarded thanks to her ties to DPP and specifically Frank Hsieh-tied city councilors. Suffice it to say, the DPP and Yang have had ties in the past.

Yang is well-known in Taiwan, as an online personality, mostly on PTT. Her reputation, however, is not great - I've talked to a few people about this and the general consensus is that she's always been an opportunist and purveyor of questionable content.

KMT politicians pounced on this, insisting that Yang was a paid troll-master of the DPP who was tasked with spreading fake news and that the accounts used to spread fake news can be traced back to her, as well as to a DPP legislator's office. I'm not quite clear on who is alleging what, but it seems that the Taipei District Prosecutor's Office is indicting Yang for her role in creating these posts, whether by her or by the online troll she allegedly hired, with the KMT embellishing the story by insisting that the DPP was ultimately funding the whole thing.

Last week, KMT politicians held a protest outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) shouting "MoFA kills people!" and insisting that Frank Hsieh and Foreign Minister Joseph Wu both "offer an explanation" and resign. A scuffle ensued, with the KMT lawmakers insisting they were injured due to rough treatment by the police. Video later surfaced of legislator Arthur Chen of knocking off an officer's cap before pushing her. Two other politicians, Chen Yu-jen and Lin Yi-hua (Lin happens to be running for Chiang Nai-hsin's old legislative seat in my district and is something of a rising star in the KMT) got their fingers caught in a door or gate, and Chen apparently fainted. Both went to National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) emergency room for treatment.

Their seemingly (ok, definitely) exaggerated reactions, and those of KMT figures insisting they'd been seriously injured, garnered much online mockery - with Han Kuo-yu and other KMTers visiting Chen in the hospital, video of Chen walking slowly out of the hospital as though dazed some time later, as well as Lin Yi-hua insisting she'd been badly hurt and required hospitalization (and apparently limping pathetically and lying on a stretcher like a trauma victim long after the fact - when the worst of their injuries was getting their fingers caught in a door). 

NTUH was accused by some of giving priority in the queue to politicians (which they denied), and the politicians themselves were accused of abusing national healthcare resources.

DPP legislator Wang Ting-yu then released a video showing at least one person - seemingly Chen though I can't tell, personally - deliberately sticking their fingers in the door at MoFA. MoFA has since filed a complaint against the KMT legislators. 

* * *

tl;dr:

The KMT is screaming about DPP paying "online armies" to spread fake news and then being injured by police when protesting at MoFA, despite there being not much evidence that the DPP was behind the posts, and video clearly showing that the KMT politicians at MoFA were acting aggressively and more than likely exaggerating their injuries.

Got all that?

Great. 

* * *

What strikes me about this whole story is how clearly desperate it is on the part of the KMT.

While it makes sense that the Chinese consulate would spread fake news and Chinese media would pick it up - after all, that's what the Chinese government does - it doesn't make a lot of sense that the DPP would pay someone to spread that news in Taiwan, and then make posts defending Frank Hsieh and criticizing Su under the assumption that the fake news was accurate. 

It doesn't even make sense that the DPP or Hsieh would pay online 'armies' to defend them in this fashion from fake news spread by others, when Hsieh had already released a statement clarifying that the entire story was false. Neither the DPP nor Hsieh are perfect, and they do make PR mistakes, but it doesn't take a tactical genius to see that the truth of the matter would have come out soon enough and if anything, it would just make China look bad, which is always good for the DPP. It should be obvious that adding another layer of fake news to existing fake news is a bad idea.

I also have it on reasonably good authority (not firsthand, but a source I trust anyhow - make of that what you will) that if anyone paid Slow Yang for these alleged actions - which someone or some entity probably did - it wasn't the DPP or Frank Hsieh. You don't have to believe me as it's third- or fourth-hand gossip by now, but I want to put it out there anyway.

Then there's the absurdity of being so outraged by so little proof - it seems likely to me that Yang did do what she's been accused of, although that's just an opinion, but there's almost nothing there to definitively link the DPP to her actions. There's a story concocted out of disparate threads that doesn't make a lot of sense when you put it together, a few old relationships between a person of questionable morals and some DPP figures, and assumptions made based on online behavior that all political parties engage in, and it's become a full-blown conspiracy theory. 

And, of course, there's the conflating of Su's suicide ostensibly being due to facing "humiliation" and a demotion at work, and being humiliated by social media posts. Those are not the same thing at all and although the indictment indicates that the prosecutor's office believe the posts played a role, it's not at all clear from KMT accusations that that's the case. 

The KMT is implicated in a much more thoroughly substantiated allegation of fake news and disinformation linked to Chinese interference online and in the media, with the Association of Taiwan Journalists, the National Security Bureau, foreign analysts and more weighing in. Remember, pretty much every Taiwanese media source accused, with proof, of receiving money from the CCP is tied to the KMT. Every time money finds its way from China to Taiwanese political figures, it's the KMT that's implicated. Every time China spreads disinformation, it favors the KMT.

Considering that, it's a bit rich for them to accuse the DPP of doing the same thing, but with far less evidence to back up their claims.

Or rather, it makes perfect sense, if they want to deflect people's attention from their own disinformation, including blatant untruths spoken by their own presidential candidate.

The KMT's authoritarian roots and the DPP's more activist roots also come into play. It's not just DPP tactics that make them look like the party that's friendlier to activists - they actually are. As a result, they tend to be known for passionate rallies and protests. Having never held full power (both the executive and legislative branches) before 2016, they were usually the ones banging on the doors to the halls of power - halls usually occupied, until recently, by denizens of the KMT.

The KMT has repeatedly tried to harness that same social movement and activist energy, and mostly failing, because it's simply not in their party's roots or ethos. From astroturfed "social movements" and faux protests right up to this spectacle, they've never been victims and so they suck at playing the part.

Let's not forget that it was the KMT who routinely brutalized democracy activists (the people who went on to found the DPP) and who caused real injury to social movement activists just in the past few years - those water cannons, the police beating students with clubs? That was on the orders of a KMT administration. People involved in the democratization movement ended up injured, in jail or dead. The perpetrators of the White Terror? The KMT.

So when they want to claim the same 'cred', and try to turn it around and scream that now that the DPP is in power they are engaging in the same tactics, the best they can do is stage a whole long-winded spectacle around a few minor injuries - injuries that the people involved managed to help inflict on themselves, looking at the video. It's just another way that the KMT takes proven or well-founded accusations against themselves and tries to say it's the DPP who are really doing those things, à la the "Green Terror".

But, as the old rejoinder goes, if there's really a Green Terror, where are the bodies? Where are the missing people and where is the extensive network of shadowy military prisons?

The KMT may desperately wish that they were rubber and the DPP glue - and whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you - but they're not. They keep chucking things off of rubber and watching them boomerang right back on them. (Also I think Ma Ying-jeou might literally be made of glue - he has the right personality and just looks so melty.)

In other words, if you want to know what the KMT has been up to, looking at what they accuse the DPP of doing is a good place to start. 

It's not independence that is "hopeless", it's unification: like many, Terry Gou is answering the wrong question

Screenshot from NowNews video with subtitles added

Let me start this by saying I don't care about Terry Gou. He's just some rich guy, he'll never be president. While he's obviously got business acumen, he's foolish to think that running a country is similar to running a business. I've never forgiven him for saying "you can't eat democracy" as a way of saying he thought money was more important than freedom (and therefore unification would be potentially acceptable), and I have a whole host of new reasons to renew my dislike.

However, please allow me, after saying "I don't care about Terry Gou", to write a lot about my opinion on Terry Gou. Or rather, his views on Taiwanese independence.

The other day, at a rally for some other guy, Gou appeared alongside that candidate, James Soong and Ko Wen-je for a whole lineup of people I don't care about. Around the 19-minute mark of this video, Gou said:

搞台獨都是垃圾...台獨沒有希望、垃圾、違憲 

Translation: "All Taiwan independence supporters are garbage...Taiwan independence is hopeless, trash and unconstitutional!" 

Notably, he tried to make it sound as though he was just repeating and agreeing with something he insists Ko Wen-je said. Ko denied this, saying that he said some independence supporters are scammers and liars, but not all of them, and he respects people who sincerely believe in it.

I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, because people who actively but insincerely support Taiwanese independence are not a thing. I suppose he is trying to create a distinction between people who care about Taiwan independence, and those who only say so to get votes but again - not a thing. It's the other side of that which is true: people who have said they oppose unification, but actually don't, or quietly support it (see: Ma Ying-jeou).

The pan-blue/red and the pan-green media have all covered this, mostly from the "Ko said that wasn't what he meant" angle, which really isn't the story here. It doesn't matter who said it first. That it was said at all is the problem. UDN (pan-blue) notably focused on "Taiwan independence is hopeless, garbage and unconstitutional" - the sort of thing their readers might agree with even if they'd blanche at calling people they disagree with "garbage". Pan-green media focused on "Taiwan independence supporters are all garbage", because that's more of an offensive slur against actual people than merely a stupid opinion on an issue. Rest assured, dear readers, he said both. And both are awful. 

That's not all Gou said, but I'll get to his other stand-out remark later.

First, I'd like to tell you why I'm writing about Gou when I do not care about him. It's because his dumb remarks give me a good 'in' to make a point that's been clonking around in my head for months now.

And that is this: when we talk about whether Taiwanese (or Hong Kong) independence is possible or hopeless, most people are asking the wrong question.

They ask (and answer) "how could Taiwan (or Hong Kong) possibly gain independence? China would never allow it for Hong Kong, and never allow recognition of it for Taiwan! It's impossible! China's too big, too strong!" 

But what they really should ask themselves first is this:

"How could Taiwan and Hong Kong possibly become a part of China?"

Especially as it exists now, what would it take for such an annexation/integration to be successful?

It would require Taiwanese and Hong Kongers to willingly give up their rights and freedoms and submit to authoritarian Chinese rule. It would require this even though people from both places have seen the way that China treats its own citizens - that is, not well at all.

It would therefore entail people from these places not only agreeing that it's acceptable to be 'a part of China', but to actually think of themselves as Chinese. Hong Kongers no longer believe the former, in large part, and are slowly moving away from the latter (considering how common it is now to refer to themselves as "Hong Kongers" rather than as "Chinese"). Taiwanese haven't believed either for quite some time.

How would Taiwanese (and Hong Kongers) ever come to believe and willingly submit to these things? What would it take to accomplish that?

The answer is that there is no way to accomplish that. There is no way to peacefully and straightforwardly convince Taiwan (or Hong Kong) to unify. The only option is violent annexation following underhanded attacks on democratic norms.

Taiwanese are already soured - probably permanently - on the notion of being a part of China. The youth are soured on considering themselves Chinese in any sense. Hong Kong is quickly moving in that direction, which I would argue was an inevitable development given what China is like.

By starting with the wrong question, unificationists like Gou - and yes, he is a unificationist - delude themselves into believing that unification could possibly be peaceful, that a general pro-China consensus will ensure that it's not necessary for the PLA to come in and start shooting at Taiwanese, and therefore that this outcome is better than the threat of war under continued independence.

That's not what will happen, though, because there won't be a general pro-China consensus. Ever. Unification will not make the differences in culture, belief systems and society between Taiwan and China go away. The only option left is prolonged Hong Kong-like guerilla warfare - and that won't drive Taiwanese to change their minds, either. If anything, it'll only harden them against China even more.

And that way - the only way one can conceive of working - simply is not going to happen. Rather than "accept unification or it's war", it's time we accepted the real truth: "the only choices are independence, or war".

So when Terry Gou says "Taiwan independence is hopeless", what is that supposed to mean? What does he expect to happen instead? It's unification that is hopeless. How would it even work? Why do people - Gou included - allow the assumption that unification is possible to pass unquestioned, but not the assumption that independence is possible?

Most likely, if asked, he would point to the "status quo" - the ROC not claiming independence but resisting unification - as others have done. That's surely what he meant when he called independence "unconstitutional" (which is true, I suppose, but absent a threat from China, the constitution can be changed.) He doesn't seem to realize that the status quo is independence, as much as he'd like to pretend that's not the case.

Gou and others might want us to believe that 'Taiwan independence' is a terrifying unknown thing, whereas the status quo is safe, secure and known. But a version of Taiwan independence already exists - the mirage of danger is created and maintained by Chinese threats, not any lived reality. And the status quo, insofar as it is different from independence (which it isn't in any practical way) is not particularly safe.

Of course, the status quo is not tenable. China has made it clear that they do not intend to allow it to continue forever, and it's time we paid attention. It's just not smart to assume they are bluffing because that's the easier truth to swallow - when someone tells you who they are, believe them.

The longer it is prolonged, the longer China has the time to build up its military, poach diplomatic relations, throw out debt traps and economic dependencies to make the rest of the world beholden to its agenda. And the longer it is prolonged, the more Taiwanese (and Hong Kongers) will resist the idea, as they have done and will do.

Of course, I won't even entertain the notion that a unified China under the ROC is possible. Why not? Because hahaahhahahahahahaha.

So stop asking whether independence is, as Gou said, "hopeless" and "trash". Ask instead whether unification is hopeless. You'll find that it is.

UDN also pointed out that Gou said this:

第三勢力不容忍台獨、反對台獨。 

The Third Force doesn't tolerate Taiwan independence, it opposes Taiwan independence.

That's interesting, I guess. I mean, the Third Force has, since the term came into being, referred to the left-of-the-DPP folks who considered themselves "colorless" (but, in truth, were always broadly pan-green). Other than their generally socially liberal political views and activist roots, one of the things that binds them together is a support for Taiwan independence.

Now, it seems that people like Gou, Ko Wen-je and his new ego-machine and the PFP/James Soong people are trying to appropriate the term for themselves. That's a joke - the term already refers to a group of people and they can't be silenced. These guys aren't colorless, either. They are broadly pan-blue and always have been. Let's not forget that in the past year or so, Ko has consistently attacked the DPP and been supportive-ish of the KMT. James Soong was the guy behind a lot of censorship and colonial-mentality policies from the authoritarian era, when he ran the Government Information Office. Gou very recently tried to win the KMT nomination and is sucking sour grapes because he lost spectacularly. 

In other words, these guys absolutely have a color. The real Third Force has engaged in a very long internal debate on whether they are "little greens" or exist independently of the pan-green camp, instead holding the DPP accountable. It seems clear that most of them have decided that they are little greens for the purposes of the presidential election, for now, because Han and the KMT are a greater threat to Taiwan than the DPP having no meaningful opposition from the left. This is right, as it puts the country first. If Huang Kuo-chang wants to sulk in the corner about it, that shows how self-serving he's always been. 

Ko, Soong, Gou and their various party affiliations and hangers-on - are not even trying to engage in that debate. They are acting blue while calling themselves "colorless" and "the Third Force". It's just another iteration of the pan-blue camp calling DPP and pan-green ideas "ideological" and their lawmakers as "doing ideology", while pretending their side is neutral and ideology-free (of course, it isn't. No side is.)

It's also vaguely interesting to me, watching the NowNews video linked above, that whenever they need to drum up sentimental support, these guys pivot from "independence is trash" and "the ROC" to "Taiwan", with Ko Wen-je saying "give Taiwan a chance!" and the resulting chant focusing on Taiwan, not 'the ROC'. It's almost as if - and stop me if I sound insane here - that they know that voters have a stronger attachment to the concept of 'Taiwan' (their island) than 'the ROC' (a foreign government which claims sovereignty). It's like they're aware that when people conceptualize their country, in their minds that country is Taiwan.
So despite being anti-Taiwan/pro-China in platforms and rhetoric, they're quite willing to hypocritically call on that sentiment when it suits them.

Never fear, the actual Third Force, like most Taiwanese, prefer independence or the closest thing to it. These folks are an entirely different ideological force, and are likely to remain a sidelined one.

Why? Because they're asking and answering the wrong questions. And who will vote for you when you can't even ask the right question, let alone answer it?

What does Han Kuo-yu's strategic baby tantrum tell us?

The speech bubble says: "I'm 200 times bigger than a standard jelly baby!"

Recently presidential candidate and Kobitos peach Han Kuo-yu likened looking at poll results to 'getting hemorrhoids' and then said that his supporters should stop participating in them (or lie and say they supported Tsai Ing-wen).

I'm not even going to bother going into how childish this is - basically the equivalent of "I'm taking my ball and GOING HOME!", showing what a big fat man-baby Han is deep down - because I think there's more going on there.





Frozen Garlic already covered this pretty well, pointing out that other KMT candidates might not be so pleased about it, which indicates it was more of him mouthing off than a KMT-planned strategy, which implies that rifts within the KMT are not only deep, but that the cracks spread rather wide. Perhaps wider than the general public is aware of.

His mouth-off might have been strategic or intentional, or not. There is a childish logic to deciding that you're going to try to remove a thing that's not working out for you, rather than dealing with it.  It almost doesn't matter; when commentators liken him to Donald Trump, this is the sort of thing they mean. "The rules aren't working for me, so I'm not just going to throw out the playbook, I'm going to crap all over it so nobody else can use it either!" is extremely Trumpian. And remember, Trump won. It's not a crazy tactic to try and basically neuter a problem plaguing one's campaign, in this case, poor polling results.

But something else struck me while chatting about it with a friend late the other night. This is a bully's move, not the move of someone hoping to attract more supporters. This is what you do when you think you've got everyone on your side that you are going to get, and all you can do from here is try not to lose any more points, and hope for an upset or technicality that gets you in (you know, like Trump).

Voters who are still on the fence between "obvious hotheaded puppet of Beijing" and "cautious person who has run the country competently for four years" aren't going to think "well, Tsai has stood up to China really well, but you know, I like that Han Kuo-yu just sort of gave his finger to the entire concept of data collection. I think I'll vote for him!" This is the sort of thing that riles up an angry base, but does not necessarily expand it.

What we can deduce, then, is that Han has decided to play a bully's game rather than use poll results to try and hone his message and grab more voters who may not love Tsai and are still open to voting for the KMT. He knows he won't be able to. We can also see how little he actually cares about carefully targeted messaging (though to be honest, I think we already knew that).

Interestingly, though, for a man who claims to speak for the people, he doesn't seem very interested in what the people are actually saying when they respond to those polls! Could it be - that he doesn't actually care and thinks swagger alone could help him win? Call me crazy.

But when those polls are conducted - and they surely will go forward - we'll be able to gauge to some rough degree whether Han's supporters are actually listening to him. By that measure, we might have a stronger idea of how many of them are strong supporters and how many are just voting for him because he's KMT and they'd vote for a paper bag if it had a white sun drawn on it, but won't necessarily voice automatic agreement with everything he says.

His tantrum was reminiscent to me of the time he said he didn't want the votes of Taiwan independence supporters, telling them to "vote for Tsai!" An odd strategy, as most Taiwanese support some form of independence, or at least they don't support unification of any kind, ever. 

It's also odd as, in the past, the KMT has at least pretended to want to court independence supporters (not trying that hard, knowing they'd never get the hardcore folks, but trying to get the so-called 'centrists' who might buy a line like 'no independence, no unification, no war', a saying of Ma Ying-jeou's during his own campaign and administration). However, that doesn't seem to have been just an outburst of Han's, as around the same time the KMT started testing out the idea of promoting a "cross-strait peace agreement" (tantamount to some form of unification), and Ma himself changed his tune to "no independence, no war, don't reject unification".

That doesn't seem to have worked, as his poll numbers have been slipping ever since. Hence his latest screamer.

I suppose I could say more about this, but you know what? It's a beautiful Sunday and I could be not doing that.