sign me up. let em deport me…i can use the free airticket! when and where?
I hate to be one to stand up for Lien because he’s a creep, but just maybe, just maybe, he thinks if his son married a westerner, he wouldn’t get the filial piety he believes he deserves from a daughter-in-law.
Older Taiwanese are funny about that. I think it just may have less to do with racism than certain filial expectations.
God have mercy on the poor woman who does marry his son.
If his son isn’t gay, that is. Then god have mercy on the poor son as he may fail to produce another Lien heir.
And I’m not outing his son, ok?
It’s historic fact that former KMT head Chiang Kai Shek read with agreement Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Adolf Hitler always talked proudly of his schooling, and it seems Lien Chan’s rhetoric has been following and will follow the same lines.
Lien Chan doesn’t want his son to marry a foreigner
The crowd likes to dislike foreigners. Lien Chan and the KMT party will keep walking the predictable path. First comes anti-foreigner sentiment. Then, anti foreigner speech. They will be allowing no dissent from the party line. A disloyal KMT politician will be found dead. They will make announcements like: “marriages between people from different cultures do not always work out.” Certainly, nationalists will be pledging their loyalty leading up to the elections. There won’t be speech against Jews. They speak against disloyal sons and daughters and against gays.
There’s a referendum. It’s unlikely China would show strong force against Taiwan. It’s safe for Lien to use the Hitlerian tactic of silencing those who might speak. He told Beijing they should not “do anything or say anything” to help Chen. It was way he spoke to silence the crowd, the emotion and repetition that put Hitler in the hearts of many. “The rallies conveyed a sense of discipline and strength.”
Did you guys all miss the part where Hsiao S asked Lien Chan what he would think if his son brought a man home (ie: what if your son is gay)?
He said “I wouldn’t mind.” Apparently his wife was supportive too.
Then Hsiao S goes on to say, “What if he makes out with a guy in front of you (“she2 wen2”)?”
Lien’s quick response: “Na shi ji shu de wenti.” (That’s a question of technique.) I could be translating wrong, but my Taiwanese friends said the same thing.
Hmmmmm.
Amazing that he can accept a male daughter-in-law, but not a white one. What if Lien’s son’s boyfriend is white?
No, Alien, you are not outing him. But I have heard rumours before.
I don’t see any problem with parents having preferences. Isn’t it natural to prefer people with whom you have a lot in common? For example, let’s imagine I had a daughter and I was asked how I would feel about her marrying a teetotaler. I would have answered as Lien did.
Lien’s not just a parent; he’s running for the highest office in the country and needs to be held to a higher standard. High-level officials have a responsibility not to promote discrimination. He might very well soon be in a position where he could set policy influenced by such biases; shrugging off such remarks isn’t a good thing, especially for those of us who are / might become “foreign spouses.” (And I don’t see this as a mere “preference” on his part but as bias, which is something very different.)
Anyone remember Bush 1 and the brocolli remark? In response to a question from some youngsters about what he liked about being president, Bush said that no one can make you eat your brocolli.
Of course, Bush was soon made to eat crow/brocolli to set an example.
What Lien said is much worse.
Lien Chan can choose the questions they ask him on any show. Why did he choose to have that question?
it is election season. the KMT has a problem. this week’s asian edition of newsweek had the banner across the top of the cover: “The death of the KMT?” and has a heavily nuanced story about how desperate the KMT is this go round. They lose, the KMT is dead the logic goes. demonizing foreigners has long been a political routine to unite disparate entities. give the splintered groups someone else to hate as a mutual enemy. china and taiwan have long used japan as just such a punching bag.
lien chen is but another scion of the elite, rising on the works of his father. he finished DISTANT third last time and hasn’t ever done much in his political career. a taiwanese al gore without the spine or the charisma.
I don’t think foreign women will wants to marry his son anywayz, look at him, he is not even that cute!!! :raspberry:
I think he’s certainly right about the likelihood of cross-cultural difficulties, beginning of course with the bride having to put up with in-laws like him. But it was stupid of him to have said it.
I have to say that this stupidity characterizes the whole KMT campaign. They might still win, but it will be in spite of rather than because of Lien and Soong. At every step they’ve been outplayed by Chen, who has managed to set the agenda for the race. Now the KMT has squandered its lead in the polls.
In Britain and the U.S., we have a curious custom that when a politician loses an election, he takes responsibility for that by standing aside and letting somebody else try the next time. Al Gore did that, after some hemming and hawing. (Well, he arguably won, but at least he didn’t win by the margin that he should have given his advantages). But Lien and Soong? They put their own good above the good of their respective parties, let alone their country (whatever entity that may be), and it shows. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them tank. “Uncharismatic” is an understatement, I think they’re negatively charismatic.
Prediction: their big rally supposedly coming up will be a flop and an embarrassment.
Let’s face it. Many parents have an opinion about whom their children should or shouldn’t marry. I knew a taiwanese woman in the states who told me her mother would be very upset if she would ever consider marrying a foreigner because her mother would fear that her daughter would one day move away from Taiwan forever.
While it may not be nice to say, if I had a daughter and she told me she wanted to marry someone from say, Iran or Saudi Arabia, I would be very against it. (Just watch the movie or read the book “Not without my daugter,” which details an American woman’s plight living in Iran with her Iranian husband and American born daughter and you might better understand my point of view).
WHile I don’t condone the politician’s statement about his son marrying a western woman, I sure do understand it.
Oh, all parents have opinions. They wouldn’t want their precious child marrying anyone less that perfect. But parents everywhere since the dawn of the institution of marriage have had to grumpily reconcile themselves to their precious darlings marrying imperfect spouses. Has there ever been a mother who’s entirely approved of the girls her son was dating? Nah. My parents warned me before I came to Taiwan about not marrying an Asian bride, because they feared the cultural differences would be too great. But I know, knowing my mom and dad (who are basically decent people), that if I did bring back home a Chinese wife, they wouldn’t make any real fuss. They’d have their misgivings, of course, same as parents always have misgivings about their son’s choice of wife. But I’m 100% sure they would keep all that in their hearts and not try to ruin things with me & my honey. Any truly decent parent would do the same. I’m sure that Lien would react with tolerance if he actually found himself in the same situation in reality, despite his theoretical rhetoric. How can a father who’s a halfway decent human being disown their son’s choice of life partner?
everybody listen!! i need 10 people at least to show up at AIT this week (WEDNESDAY at 10:00AM )and protest:
- lien zhan’s stupid remark
- AIT’s doing nothing about it
- force AIT to say something about it
put whatever you want on the sign! call me: 0918029591
get your friends in on this. fight for our rights. don’t be scared.
RAN THE MAN
On what grounds? Why should AIT be expected to respond to an off-the-cuff remark by a political candidate, which has no practical effect on local legislation, economics, or any other field of interest to the AIT?
If you want to make a protest somewhere, KMT headquaters is a better place.
I agree that KMT HQ would be a better place. Great thing is that I am already planning on making a trip to Taipei on Wednesday morning. Someone should call the Liberty Times as well and let them know that a group of foreigners will be protesting at KMT HQ!
Where’s Jeff Locker when you need him ? He’s supposed to be our “bridge”, and noone else is allowed to complain about our gracious hosts.
Yeah, the guy just oozes charisma! 
I just made my weekly call to my mother in New Hampshire. We talked about this and we agreed on the reaction if either President Bush or Senator Kerry had said that they didn’t want any of their children to marry a Black person. There would be an uproar of Biblical proportions!
I am sorry that I don’t really understand what all the fuss is about some politician saying he does not want his son to marry someone from the west. It seems to me that he was stating a personal opinion but not that he was saying that western people were bad.
It seems that whenever politicians don’t say what they truly feel inside, they get attacked for being phonys. Yet here is a politician saying exactly what he felt as a parent concerning his own children and people are planning to hold protests to show how angry they are because he was being honest.
WHile it may be true that Bush or Kerry or any number of other politicians would not state publicly their true feelings about their children marrying someone of a different race, it would be hard to believe that they would not oppose such an arrangement in private.
(In other words, they would tell their children don’t do it).
Dumb things are said by many people, public figures as well as private citizens, all the time. However, this appears to me to be an honest, albeit, perhaps too honest, opinion, and I don’t think that is a bad thing to find in a politician.