Collective Memories

Conditioning:  I woke up this morning and heard it raining, just pouring!  I got up and went to the window, and saw that the streets were dry and nothing was coming down.  I guess I am hearing what my mind expects me to hear.  Still, the ceiling is low and the day gray.  The morning, though, was dry enough to enjoy a walk again through 228 Peace Park (memorial wall in the picture) and make some more observations for my research project.  That was on the way to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial and the two performing arts centers that flank the grounds.  President Chiang was China’s leader and an American ally during World War II.  In 1949, however, he and his KMT lost to the Communists after a civil war that went back to the 1930s if not before.  In 1949, the mainland became the People’s Republic of China, and the Taiwan archipelago became the Republic of China under Chiang’s and later his son’s leadership.  Democracy took a firm and aggressive hold of the Taiwan only in the 1990s.  Despite our democratic principles, the United States does not recognize democratic Taiwan.  We recognize the un-democratic People’s Republic of China.  You know the reason.  The U.S., however, does have a strong relationship with Taiwan, a.k.a., the Republic of China, and everyone assumes that we would come to the archipelago’s defense should the PRC’s forces get frisky.  I used the word archipelago in this context deliberately, since some of the Republic of China’s islands are only kilometers from the PRC’s coast.  The two most famous are Kinmen (which I knew as Quemoy) and Matsu.  For Virginians, it would be like a foreign power occupying Assateague and Chincoteague.  On my next trip to Taiwan, I want to visit both islands and add two more ferries to my list.

The CKS Memorial:  It reminds me of the Lincoln Memorial, and the grounds (officially, Liberty Square) remind me of Washington’s National Mall.  I find it hard to believe that it dates back to only 1980, the year I finished my doctorate.  Not surprising, I guess, since Chiang died only in 1975.  Chiang’s luminescence here is not what it once was, though.  I came to grips with that as I was planning my trip and was having a hard time figuring out where my plane would land.  I was rightfully confused.  The international airport is now called Taoyuan, but only a few years ago (and still in older sources), it was Chiang Kai Shek International Airport.  The named changed when CHK’s political party lost to the opposition ‘Green coalition,’ which brands Chiang a murderous dictator.  Here on the grounds of Chiang’s memorial, the image of the 228 incident (new to me when I arrived) kept contradicting that nationalistic reverence I was seeing.  Indeed, maybe it is hard for a democracy to look up to someone who defended single-party rule and had little patience for democracy.   In hindsight, it is easy to condemn authoritarian leadership, but one thing is for sure:  There would be no Republic of China were it not for Chiang and his KMT (his political party, the Kuomintang).  Taiwan would have fallen to the Communists, and everyone here would have been traumatized by Mao’s rule and the Cultural Revolution.  Without Chiang, I wouldn’t even be typing this on my netbook.  I have an Acer Aspire, and Acer is a Taiwanese Company with headquarters in Taipei.  Without Chiang, we wouldn’t have Ang Lee and Jay Chou, either.  Of those two names, which one do you recognize, and why don’t you know the other one?  Over the legacy of Chiang Kai-Shek, the Taiwanese people (or are they Chinese people?) will continue to fight, but the nation is still young.  And remember, it took the United States 80 years to agree upon the fact that we were one nation.  Only after the Civil War did we start saying “the United States is…” rather than “the United States are…” 

The Taipei Zoo:  I added another zoo to my collection this afternoon.  The Taipei Zoo is billed as the largest in Asia, and it is easy to get there by a very scenic MRT route.  Despite the showers, the grounds were crowded.  If anything, the rain just added to the authenticity of the tropical rainforest exhibits (though the camels looked like fish out of water, unless that’s a mixed metaphor).  Of course, the pandas are the big attraction.  I saw two big ones, both asleep.  Pandas are relatively rare zoo animals.  The only other ones I have seen have been at the National Zoo in Washington.  With me, every zoo commends a different species.  Here at the Taipei Zoo it was the macaques who get the golden star award.  Our primate cousins must recognize us as kin because they love to mug for the cameras, and their huge family groups make them so photogenic.  Babies will always steal the show, the baby macaque sure did.  This specific species is called the crab-eating macaque, but I understand crabs are not a big part of their diet.  Like Mikey, they’ll eat anything.