Taiwan Day 6

Day six started with breakfast at Starbucks and a decision to go to one last thing in Taipei before we hopped on the bus for Taoyuan Airport. We had wanted to see the museum, as it has the best collection of Chinese artefacts in the world, but it's a 1-2 day thing and we had just a few hours, so we opted for the Chiang Kai-shek monument the cabbie of saturday night had accidentally taken us to.

Now I'm not sure that Chiang Kai-shek is a man worthy of a monument, and it seems the Taiwanese agree. Virtually every statute of him, park named after him and even Taipei's International airport have been torn down or renamed and now only thins monument remains, the last site for those Taiwanese who still dream of a reconquest of the mainland. Even now there is talk of tearing down Chiang's statue and replacing it with a plaque commemorating the democracy movement and those who died under Chiang's marshal law years and renaming the place the Taiwan Democracy Movement Memorial. So who knows how long all of what I saw will even exist.

The monument itself is an amazing bit of architecture. Geoff said it reminded him a bit of Tiannamen Square in Beijing. There's the monument, the opera house and a smaller playhouse both dedicated to Chinese arts and music (though western opera's and plays run frequently). Actually it's an amazing place if you can get over the fact that it's dedicated to a man who was worse butcher and dictator than Mao was on his worst day.

In the main building is a huge statue to Chiang and inside is a small museum dedicated to him. Historical revisionism at its best. It celebrates his early life, his conquest of northern China and destruction of the warlords, his resistance to the Japanese (where western efforts go unreported except for a pic of Chiang with Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill with a caption that suggests equal importance between the three men). What I learned was that Chiang unified China, drove out the Japanese aggressors and then he was given some nice cars and nothing else happened. His subsequent defeat by the communists goes totally unreported and his decades as a vicious dictator who oversaw a state where people disappeared in the night goes totally undocumented. The fact that more of his soldiers died as a result of malnutrition and his brutal discipline than were killed by the Japanese also goes unreported. Overall, it was a surreal experience and I was happy to see this side of Taiwan before it disappears forever (though I am glad to see it is disappearing, and that the younger generation are smarter than their parents were...... or at least they have better access to education and freedom of expression, which their parents did not).

The momerial did have the greatest gift shop I have ever seen, with political bobble heads and parodies of the leaders. I was glad to see that even here, they take the piss out of Chiang a bit. We then headed back to Taipei  Main Station and got on a bus that took us to the airport. However, it was not the express bus so, 90 minutes later, we arrived at the airport. If I had to think of a low point of the trip it might, oddly enough, be the airport. It was more like Daegu's airport than Incheon or Hong Kong International. Many gift shops but no food or coffee. I was surprised that, in an age where airports seem to be a source of pride in cities, and transport to and from them and luxuries in them seem to be the norm (at least in Asia) Taoyuan still had a 1970's feel to it. It was a hassle free flight and I managed to grab the 940 bus to Daegu, getting in around 1 and asleep by 230 before starting my new job.

Good times.

We are Super Friends

Chiang Kai-shek Memorial

The Chiangmobile

the man himself