A New Beginning?

Beautiful view of Kaohsiung City, Taiwan

     As Taiwan, or more officially, the Republic of China moves into its hundredth year of governance, I wonder how much has change over the last century? Or more closely related to me, how much has change over the last two decades in our beloved country? My two years of education in Taiwan has shown me a lot, in terms of shifting my perspective from a foreigner, into the eyes of the locals, as well as other cherished experiences.

     It seems to me that the name itself, Republic of China, shows us half the picture.

     After the political separations in the Qing dynasty, the Kuo-Ming Tang lost its battle and retreated to the famous Formosa, and claimed the island's sovereignty. And after a century later, there is still an ongoing political battle between China and Taiwan. The fact is, foreigners seldom show their consent for the legitimacy of Taiwan as an independent country, both because of the pressure from the Mainland China, and also, simply because of lack of understanding.

     During my high school years, my parents and I were not a big fan of Taiwan's demonstrations, and this seems to be true as well for my relatives and classmates. In retrospect, this seems to me as a worrying sign of our education. Even after a year of my stay in Taiwan, I find demonstration to be an irrational move to ask for attention, as if a baby crying in it's crib. That is, until I've seen this marvelous movie named "Formosa Betrayed". The sad thing is, I have never questioned authority before, ever in my life, whether the syllabus of the Ministry of Education, nor the supreme Ketuanan Melayu.

     橫看成嶺側成峰，遠近高低各不同。
     不識廬山真面目，只緣身在此山中。

     I guess I need to give credit to the above old Chinese proverb, written by the famous Chinese poet Su-Shi, of which the proverb literally means, "Look from different angles and different distances and you'll see the same mountain in different shapes and sizes; You do not know the real nature of this mountain, simply because you're in the mountain." Since it's a self translation, it's a rough translation, but as a speaker of both English and Chinese, I'd say at least the meaning is conserved =). So as the saying goes, the further you go, the clearer you see, and over the years I had definitely doubted my old beliefs, and had began to ponder over some "sensitive" issues.

     A century has passed for the beautiful Formosa island, and only a mere 50 years of transformation (obviously less than fifty), from the dark ages of "White Terror", an era at which democracy was suppressed, authority was supreme and the mere mentioning of communism would result in immediate death, into a country claimed by outsiders to be "too democratic" (and surprisingly some of the locals thought the same as well), a country where the active advocates all know too well the importance of demonstration, of voices from the people to the governing bodies. Why is it important? The reasons were simple. Going back to the old History textbooks from our Junior High and you'll a see picture of the people of Greek voting.

     And that is it.

     Democracy from the Greek showed us the basis for a democratic society was voting, voting in a sense not the act itself, but rather, the participation of the people, it is each and every one of us that decides. And so I was in a recent dilemma during my trip to the medical student Joint Conference 2011 in Hong Kong, of which I had the precious opportunity to exchange views with a medical student from China. We started to talked about the sensitive topic of politics, of the current communism in China, and as the discussion progressed, it was I, coming from a country that is against communism, who had trouble finding words to continue the conversation.

At Joint Conference, Hong Kong.

     "......sure communism has it's flaws, but at the moment it is suitable for the current situation in China. Democracy is not flawless itself, I had relatives living in Taiwan who had never voted before, because they think voting will make no difference, and a waste of time."

     And so that hit me, and I thought about my progress into adolescence, and I found that the same problems applies to my social environment as well. When I was growing up, I had always been given an impression that "...voting is useless lah", "...you really think your one vote will change anything meh?", "...why waste the time queuing up on election day?", where the underestimation of this "one vote" came from parents and relatives, my peers and even some of my teachers. Of course this was only my social environment, and I do hope there were others who had the contrary, but for others who were same as I, this distorted concept is definitely a  worrying issue, of which none of us were properly educated otherwise by our country's education system.

     The recent Bersih 2.0 rally had gained my support (Although I didn't attend the actual rally, of which I now regret). I did, however questioned myself the necessity of the internet social-networking act by some advocates of "promoting" news, similar to the actions of the recently popularized cyber-bullying (Which did claimed someone's life and is a serious issue, by the way), but at the end of the day, I've decided that I'm glad, because I've seen many new generations of our country taking real action to speak up and step forward. And as I learned from my dear friend in Malaysia, I was touched to know that even organizations including Churches had promoted the importance of voting.

    In less than a month from when this blog entry was written will be our National Day. It is our 55th year of independence and status as a democratic country. I hope well that we can all achieved far more better than a mere slogan.