This is just a quick post and run. Life is great, which as is often the case, means life is busy. I just don’t have the time to grab a seat, pour myself a cup of tea, and chat in depth.
Besides, life in the cross-strait world is just about the same, isn’t it? Just a few quick comments:
Olympics boycott = mental masturbation. Rather than doing something more meaningful (fighting for/against US pacification of Iraq, or at the very least self-immolation on Tiananmen), all of this “activism” is intended to do is satisfy the hero fantasies of a few isolated individuals.
Olympics torch. Really, who cares. Of course, it’d be fun if Taiwan was included in all the wonderful pomp. I’ve always loved the Olympics, and have done my very best to watch (for no reason at all) every hour of the Olympics coverage since '88. And Taiwan’s active, positive involvement would be especially sweet, since I’m 99.99% likely to be in Beijing for the Olympics with my ROC wife… and at least 75% likely to be in Taipei the months immediately prior.
But if the DPP wins the 2008 election and the torch (or even the Olympics) doesn’t happen… oh well. Which leads to my next point…
the same larger trends continue. Taiwan continues with her political “priorities”, leading her further down the path towards economic irrelevance. In the mean time, mainland China continues to gain in wealth and influence. Be it the new UPS shipping hub or the Intel fab deal, the center of gravity continues to shift… in the mean time, let CSB worry about the WHO or free trade with the Caribbean or trade with Vietnam or whatever.
And with that in mind, here’s the newest tool in China’s reunification war. Catchy, eh? No translations offered, but here’s a shout out to my Chinese compatriots in Taiwan and elsewhere. youtube.com/watch?v=-kieqsZNQcw
Go Chinese Taipei…Or Taiwan or ??? thats gunna be a mess, so if one of Taiwan’s or should I say Chinese Taipei Athletes wins a gold there not allowed to play the national anthem?? or they’ll just rip the flag form the athlete like they did before? should stir up some commotion
wow, those meimei act blacker than me. it would be nice to have a video that celebrated universal values instead of just one language. when i showed my husband the video- it struck a note of chinese nationalism in him. he said it meant everywhere you go in the world you can hear chinese.
i want to make sure that with all the anti china news we have been getting in the us lately: melamine in pet and livestock food, counterfeit drugs and other goods, prc support of the sudanese gov’t, big t-bill holder, prc population getting sick from its own industrial effluent, etc., that americans don’t get the chinese people/asians mixed up with the prc gov’t and the greedy business people of all races who feed off prc government policies. i was thinking of designing a t-shirt to wear during any anti-beijing protest i attend to say something like ‘it’s character, not color’ or some other smarmy sentiment…
there is a boy of african descent in my school who is always being sent to the office. since the principal is busy a lot, this boy is usually sent to sit outside the office on chairs set up against the wall in the hallway. he’s a cute kid, so every once in a while i teach him some chinese so he’ll have something interesting to do while he sits around in what i call the ‘naughty chair’. i hadn’t seen him for a while when I heard a voice that seemed to come from my past from behind the office door: ‘laoshi hao!!!’ waaa. ta jiang de nemme sun! he can say laoshi hao, dui, guo lai, and ni hao. so i am doing my best to realize the very important message of that video. cctang, has the little one arrived yet?
PS My husband said that girl group was from china. so i asked him why they used traditional characters instead of simplified. he said that was because the market for this was people in HK, Taiwan, singapore, malaysia, overseas chinese from those areas etc who read traditional characters. the market in china was too small. that didn’t make sense to me. do many music videos from china groups use traditional characters? might this video have been specifically targeted to foster chinese nationalism outside of the mainland and taiwan?
Uhm, I thought it was common knowledge that SHE is a girl group from Taiwan. Their label is a subsidary of Avec Trax (Japan). I think your husband should visit the KTV scene…
Most Taiwan base artist now actively try to foster a PRC fan base. Tours are the real money makers for these artist. Last I check most artist make less than 10NT per CD sale (these girls got to divide that by 3), and given Asia consumer tendency when it comes to bittorrent and bootleg CDs…well you can see why SHE would want to have a few Chinese nationistic songs in their cover list.
Unless it is owned by a Holo TI supporter the pan-Green side will always complain about trival stuff like that.
SHE lose fans in Taiwan? What’s a market of 24 million compare to a market of 1.2 billion when it comes to selling out large venues. What is the record sale for Minnan album on Taiwan these days? I don’t see many Minnan song artist going on tour outside of Taiwan these days…
There are probably more Minnan listeners on the Mainland anyways. So when the Minnan song artists decide to use modern riffs and samples like SHE, instead of old Japanese big band nightclub melodies from Japanese colonial days perhaps there would be something to talk about. But the demographics for Minnan song listens is not composed of young progressive with large disposable incomes.
Even a-Mei panders to the Mandarin speaking Hans and had to bow to PRC pressure during the height of her career.
Taiwan variety shows usually have Minnan singers on. They always go into the background of the song. A majority of the those Minnan songs are from the colonial era, because the host or the singer will go “This is based on an old Japanese song” or “This melody was taken from a favorite Japanese song”. If you don’t understand Minnan when they go into their banter the shows are subtitled in Mandarin. So next time your in a taxi in Taiwan and the driver has a Minnan song and the tune sounds like every other Minnan song in Taiwan, at least you know why.
First I have to deal with people that don’t know who SHE is. Now I have to mention variety shows on Taiwan. Beside some basic understanding of Taiwan politics are any of you guys plugged into Taiwan pop culture?
Look if you guys want to counter argue cc_tang point, just mention that SHE refers to Mandarin as 中國話 and not 普通話. Which is just splitting hairs at that point.
edit- One of the SHE members adores Faye Wong. A Beijing girl that developed her career in HK. And sang the English theme to the Japanese game Final Fantasy. Oh no the implications to Taiwan…
Just like cctang said, fewer and fewer people care/worry about Taiwan after seeing how the DPP has run it and how it intends to continue to run it. Does it matter that the torch doesn’t pass through Taiwan? Does anybody care if Taiwan is missing from the Olympics line-up if the boycott goes through – would anybody even notice? Does anybody care that booger-sized countries of the Pacific are in a “democratic league” with Taiwan in exchange for Taiwan investing in their guano harvesting industry? No, no, and no. (And if you thought even for a moment there might be a yes in there, you’ve been in Taiwan too long.)
Just like cctang said, fewer and fewer people care/worry about Taiwan after seeing how the DPP has run it and how it intends to continue to run it. Does it matter that the torch doesn’t pass through Taiwan? Does anybody care if Taiwan is missing from the Olympics line-up if the boycott goes through – would anybody even notice? Does anybody care that booger-sized countries of the Pacific are in a “democratic league” with Taiwan in exchange for Taiwan investing in their guano harvesting industry? No, no, and no. (And if you thought even for a moment there might be a yes in there, you’ve been in Taiwan too long.)[/quote]
While I am neutral regarding TI, somehow I feel that is what it is all about…at the end of the day, the outside world does not care about Taiwan, only the Taiwanese do. So why give up your interests to people who couldn’t care less about you except as some footnote to a historical wrong?
My thoughts exactly, if ROC citizens show that they don’t care about ROC athletes, why should people involved in ROC athletic training program care about TI and pan-Green leading this boycott effor?
Unlike ROC businesses that can go around numb-nut politicians and their policies to do business in the PRC. Participating in the ROC athletes requires ROC support.
It is not a surprise the last ROC Olympic medalist ran under a KMT ticket for the LY, if boycotting the Olympics is the graditude pan-Green leadership shows their citizens.
My thoughts exactly, if ROC citizens show that they don’t care about ROC athletes, why should people involved in ROC athletic training program care about TI and pan-Green leading this boycott effor?
Unlike ROC businesses that can go around numb-nut politicians and their policies to do business in the PRC. Participating in the ROC athletes requires ROC support.
It is not a surprise the last ROC Olympic medalist ran under a KMT ticket for the LY, if boycotting the Olympics is the graditude pan-Green leadership shows their citizens.[/quote]
Yeah, you should see ROC support for the Olympics, Geen or Blue. I’ve rarely seen more venal, arrogant or corrupt people. The funny thing is they act like they are doing public service.
Specially when the Olympic Games are going to be held in a place where they cannot wave their national flag, sing their national anthem or even say their nationality. If they don’t care about those things, they can go to China, get their cards and participate as Chinese - if they are candidates for medals, for sure the CCP will make good use of them as publicity tool, don’t worry.
Here’s an interesting question - if Taiwan were to participate, will China add Taiwan medals to China’s medal tally and claim that these were won by a Chinese province? How would be IOC feel about this?
