"The students are like family," she added. "They really care about us."
National Taiwan University sociologist Lee Ming-tsung (李明璁) says many students see Losheng as a kind of utopia. "Their discourse is full of romantic images, because they see Losheng as a pure, clean, happy land outside the crowded and noisy city." However, he added, "they thoroughly understand and care about the human rights and cultural dimensions of the issue."
Lee took part in the Wild Lily Student Movement (野百合學運) , the 1990 democracy protest which drew tens of thousands of people over the course of a week to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. Echoing others, he said Losheng is Taiwan's largest student-led movement since then. "It's ironic," Lee said, "because many people from the Wild Lily Movement who later came to power in the Democratic Progressive Party are to blame for the current problem at Losheng."
John Liu (劉可強), an urban planning professor at National Taiwan University and advisor to the youth league, said the students involved represent both sides of Taiwan's political divide. "Some of them were Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) or DPP supporters and wouldn't talk to each other before," he said. "This issue is pointing the way for a new kind of social awareness that is beyond the party politics that activated people before. It's a new kind of consciousness that deals with local culture, local history."
Right now, the students are a headache for both Premier Su and Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋), who have been playing political hot potato over who is responsible. Chou sent 200 police officers to Losheng last month to post a demolition notice and led a demonstration of 10,000 Sinjhuang residents to demand that the sanatorium be torn down. "We posted a notice [for demolition] on March 16," Chou told the crowd. "When the deadline comes on April 16, the county government will act according to the law," he said, before passing the buck to Su by adding, "unless the Executive Yuan decides otherwise."
After the student-organized demonstration at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on March 15, Su announced a two-month postponement of the demolition, during which time a Cabinet official would broker a compromise.
Some analysts believe that Su is just buying time to avoid bad publicity as he runs for the DPP's presidential nomination, which will be decided as early as next weekend.
"He's letting this issue drag on and on until the dust is settled," said George Tsai (蔡瑋), a political analyst at National Chengchi University. "I think, personally, he's in favor of constructing the MRT and demolishing Losheng. But since the competition [for the nomination] is so tight, it's better to wait and not make any final clear-cut decisions at this point."
The Losheng Youth League maintains bilingual blogs at losheng-paradise.blogspot.com and lovelosheng.blogspot.com
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