Last month, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) sparked controversy with his visit to the nation’s diplomatic allies in Central America, spending NT$80 million (US$2.47 million) on the trip. This time, his administration wants to spend NT$1.16 billion to renovate the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei — less than two months before the presidential handover.
The renovation project was proposed by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and approved by the Executive Yuan in January after passing a review by the National Development Council.
The key areas of work include upgrading an assembly hall, office and artifact storage room, as well as the relocation of a reading room in the library.
Pan-green camp legislators were especially dismissive of plans to renovate the artifact room, which houses replicas of Sun’s writings, with only two calligraphy works and one letter written by Sun being authentic artifacts.
This has prompted questions about whether the hall has lived up to its title and if the money budgeted to renovate it can be justified.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) headquarters has a more comprehensive collection of Sun artifacts, estimated at more than 10,000, including a tooth, personal belonging and writings, in its historical archives.
Ma has made known his admiration for Sun on numerous occasions and the KMT has vehemently defended Sun’s role in the revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty and founded the Republic of China (ROC), amid doubts whether Sun was the nation’s sole founding figure.
If the KMT holds Sun in such high esteem, it should donate Sun’s items to the government, so that they can be used to educate people on the nation’s history. However, the KMT clings to them as if they were holy relics.
One common criticism of the KMT is that since Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) rule, it has forced people to bow to Sun’s statue or portrait, as part of its efforts to consolidate its “party-state” reign. If the KMT truly wants to break away from its past, it should abandon this mentality and start by deconstructing the “Sun myth.”
While Sun can be safely regarded as an influential figure that led to the birth of the ROC, he was by no means the saint that the KMT portrays. The renovation project could be an opportunity for the KMT to give an unbiased account of Sun’s life.
If the hall is to be a true memorial, it should not function as a fawning entity that showers adulation on Sun, but rather should present both Sun’s failures and achievements.
Although the memorial hall could be improved, it is nonetheless a popular tourist attraction and a more friendly place than the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, which, built in the style of a mausoleum, is a constant reminder of the Martial Law era.
With the outgoing Ma administration having set the renovations in motion, it should revise the focus of the project so that the hall would be a more faithful presentation of historical facts and present more educational value to the millions of tourists visiting every year.
Maybe then people would start to believe that the KMT is ready to move on from its totalitarian past.
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