The Bright Sail

The following is not recommended unless you are familiar with Taiwan’s society and history.

This is sort of an old news and I kinda lost track on how this went down, but there was a huge hoorah about the renaming of Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei just a few months back. When this news got stirred up, I never paid much attention to it — thinking that it was just yet another political stunt from Democractic Progressive Party and I dismissed it as a non-issue especially when I am not too much of a political person.

Fast forward a few months.

I have recently been reading some blogs from foreigners living in Taiwan and my, is it eye-opening. It really altered how I view Taiwan as a whole, the society and politics. There is only one way to describe this ‘awakening’ and it is through reciting a famous quote from one of Keanu Reeves’ ‘classics’, the Matrix. He uttered the following famous quote after he found out the Machines were using human bodies as crops to power their world — “WHOOOA”.

So, get this, after Chiang Kai Shek — the generalissimo, the dictator — took over Taiwan and after his Kuomingtang butchered 20,000 Taiwanese civilians in the infamous 228 Incident, he still gets a nice swanky memorial hall in his name? This question may irk some of the “Out-Of-Provincials”, as Chiang did bring them in from mainland China back in the late 1940’s as they were his soldiers; however, the later generations should be supporting the renaming movement.

Why?

Because you were all brainwashed, including myself, an “Of-Provincial”. We were brainwashed under KMT’s education to uphold Chiang as one of the great leaders. And of course we were brainwashed — he was THE dictator of Taiwan. And what do dictators and victors of war do? They rewrite history. Not to be outdone by the Mao in China — the culture revolution and all, Chiang obliterated every. single. trace. of Japanese colonization where possible, even those of historical treasures. Very sad. And was there any mention of 228 Incident in history books? Before the martial law ended in 1991, there wasn’t much of a beep. Because if you let out a beep, you would be prisoned. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. So, upon knowing all these facts, would you still want to have a memorial hall (those that have been there know how big the building is) in your city? Exactly.

Now, I do support renaming of the memorial hall and perhaps even the destruction of the main hall, but I wouldn’t agree on the removing of the walls. The walls surrounding the grounds are well done and worth keeping, and the grounds itself can be easily converted to a regular and well maintained park which old and young can enjoy.

All in all, this renaming movement is definitely an DPP’s public stunt, but it also does make sense — for the modern Taiwanese people — as it is about “doing the right thing”. Besides, why in the world would you keep a memorial for a murdering dictator anyway? Hopefully, common sense will prevail and people can recognize that this is an issue on “why-are-we-still-having-a-memorial-hall-for-a-butcher” and not “DPP vs KMT” or “Out-Of-Provincial vs Of-Provincial”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Taiwan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.