[quote]A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker on Thursday suggested designating an area around the National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei City as a “Chinatown” to assemble all the “Chinese people” who live in Taiwan.
In saying the “Chinese people,” Tsai said he was referring to “all those who desire unification with China.” He claimed this group “organized a series of actions which had caused serious social disturbances” since the anti-president sit-in started in September.
“[The protests occurred] due to the lack of ‘Chinatowns’ in Taiwan, a place that can channel the ‘Chinese’ people’s thinking and strength that might otherwise lead to social upheaval,” he added.
Tsai said that since that there are Chinatowns everywhere in the world – in the US, Japan, Australia, South Korea and Singapore, Taiwan also needs such an area.[/quote]
I never knew Taiwan never had Chinatowns like the rest of the world (except China) :loco:
[quote=“BlueGreen”][quote]A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker on Thursday suggested designating an area around the National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei City as a “Chinatown” to assemble all the “Chinese people” who live in Taiwan.
In saying the “Chinese people,” Tsai said he was referring to “all those who desire unification with China.” He claimed this group “organized a series of actions which had caused serious social disturbances” since the anti-president sit-in started in September.
“[The protests occurred] due to the lack of ‘Chinatowns’ in Taiwan, a place that can channel the ‘Chinese’ people’s thinking and strength that might otherwise lead to social upheaval,” he added.
Tsai said that since that there are Chinatowns everywhere in the world – in the US, Japan, Australia, South Korea and Singapore, Taiwan also needs such an area.[/quote]
I never knew Taiwan never had Chinatowns like the rest of the world (except China) :loco:[/quote]
A more important question is was there a breakout at the local psychiatric hospital? :roflmao:
Um, yeah, ok…wtf? That has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve heard come from a politician in a while. A Chinatown in a country that is populated by Chinese…real useful that is.
If you put all Chinese people in the area around the CKS Memorial, then the rest of Taiwan would be practically empty, populated only by Aborigines and foreigners.
funny, I distinctly remember hearing an almost identical argument back when I was a kid living in apartheid South Africa… I thought it was a f**king stupid idea back then and nothing’s changed… That fool should be locked up for even suggesting it, it’s racist peasant politicians like that him who are what’s wrong with this island… :fume:
[quote=“BlueGreen”][quote]A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker on Thursday suggested designating an area around the National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei City as a “Chinatown” to assemble all the “Chinese people” who live in Taiwan.
In saying the “Chinese people,” Tsai said he was referring to “all those who desire unification with China.” He claimed this group “organized a series of actions which had caused serious social disturbances” since the anti-president sit-in started in September.
“[The protests occurred] due to the lack of ‘Chinatowns’ in Taiwan, a place that can channel the ‘Chinese’ people’s thinking and strength that might otherwise lead to social upheaval,” he added.
Tsai said that since that there are Chinatowns everywhere in the world – in the US, Japan, Australia, South Korea and Singapore, Taiwan also needs such an area.[/quote]
I never knew Taiwan never had Chinatowns like the rest of the world (except China) :loco:[/quote]
I think it’s a jolly good idea. They should open lots of real Chinese restaurants there like the ones back home. Gloopy sweet and sour sauce, prawn crackers, chow mien with beansprouts, the works. All packed up in little tinfoil boxes. I’d go there.
(I’m not trying to make a political point here. I just miss real Chinese food).
For what it’s worth, prior to this - during the depose Chen activity, I had Taiwanese coworkers in Taoyuan joke that they should just rename Tapei as Chinatown. Just another one of those national identification things surfacing…
I guess I can’t figure out how a Hakka town or Hoklo town would be distinguished from “Chinatown”. If Hakka/Hoklo is exorcised… exactly what “Chinese culture” would be celebrated in this Chinatown?
Or were you seriously adopting joesax’s tongue-in-cheek suggestion of bringing Western Chinese-emigre cuisine (primarily Cantonese due to historic happen-stance) to Taipei?
OK, this guy is a nut, but there is actually a Chinatown in Tainan - it’s a seedy, run-down collection of food stands, ancient arcade games and a crumbling second-run cinema.
Over the last 15 years the government’s been tearing down the old “juancun” (眷村 - Military Dependents’ Villages) which housed the mainland evacuees who came here in 1949 and the 50s. I suppose these could be considered “Chinatowns”…the few that remain, that is.
But honestly, the Hoklo and Hakka are Chinese themselves, having come from…well, China (Fujian and Guangdong).
oh you know… fundamentally Chinese things like Chinese New Year, Mid Autumn Festival, Ghost Month, Dragon Boat Festival etc. and there would be all kinds of Chinese practices and traditions you could go and see like burning ghost money, bai bai, making paper sky lanterns, writing caligraphy, Chinese literature, preparing and drinking tea, zodiac astrology, name deriving, fortune telling, playing mahjiang, Chinese food, all that kind of Chinese stuff… Exposure to all that Chinese-ness sure would be a “new experience” for all the folks who think they are so busy being uniquely “Taiwanese”…
It is exactly the attitude of recrimination and retribution, which you display as a pan-Green supporter, which make non-Hoklo on Taiwan wonder if pan-Green Hoklo is fit to lead at this point. It is not ones ethic group on Taiwan, which mars them with a negative image, it is there current actions and attitudes.
I wonder if the politician is aware that overseas Chinatowns are referred to the as Streets of the Tangs, or that many ROC Hoklo immigrants live in them in harmony with PRC immigrants.
Just like CSB grandchildren will be absorb into the oversea Tang culture if they decide to grow up in their birthplace.
I have a hard time understanding why “Hakkas” and “Hoklos” aren’t mainlanders. Certainly, there are some Hakkas and Hoklos with roots in Taiwan. But there are tens of millions of Hakkas and Hoklo’s that are mainlanders as well.
This ‘mainlander’ and ‘non-mainlander’ divide is an artificial construct created in Taiwan. Chiang Kai-shek, James Soong, Sun Yat-sen are all members of different “ethnocultural” sub-groups (Zhejiang, Hunan, Guangdong). All three have substantially different cultural and linguistic backgrounds… None of the three spoke/speak Mandarin natively, or for that matter, much better than Chen Shui-bian. This is a fact of life amongst all Chinese, everywhere.
In other words, being Chinese is a sociopolitical construct as well. The Chinese, thanks to the sacrifices and unifying work of our forefathers, have already achieved what you’re begging for the Taiwanese today. Despite your revisionist history today, the large number of Taiwanese in the KMT political structure just reaffirms that CKS wasn’t a Zhejiang-supremacist. He was a Chinese nationalist perhaps, but such a definition didn’t preclude folks like Lee Tung-hui or Wang Jin-pyng… or people from any of the other ethnocultural sub-groups in China, from rising quickly in the ROC power structure.
A modern attempt to define “Chinese” in Taiwan as being non-Hakka and non-Hoklo is simply nonsensical.
well, one cannot say they are not soothing the tone - from sending Chinese back to China to get them a cosy space in Xinyi area (which is worth some millions) that is already a big improvement. But then again… how many “Chinese” who live in Taiwan consider themselves superior to the rest?
Reminds me of my brother in law slamming the phone off just because the woman making the poll by phone, in mandarin, used different tones on the question if he was Chinese (proudly), Taiwanese (in a completely different tone) or both (also with a lousy tone). But hey, I also get pissed off when someone tells me that in Portugal we speak Spanish…
