Walking into the restaurant opposite the Beidou police station in Chiayi County’s Minsyong Township (民雄), one cannot help but notice the ideological names of dishes on the menu and its satire against the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Restaurant owner Huang Chin-cheng (黃金城) said that during his youth, slogans such as “Wipe out the bandits under [Chinese general] Zhu [De (朱德)] and Mao [Zedong (毛澤東)], take back the Mainland,” were found everywhere, adding that such phrases were considered almost ritualistic conclusions to every essay.
Despite the anti-Communist sentiment then spread by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), they now refer to their former enemies as “brothers,” Huang said, adding that he finds such changes unacceptable.
Taiwanese have been tricked by the KMT for seven decades and even today the KMT is pursuing a policy of obscurantism by promoting changes to high-school curriculum guidelines, which were arbitrarily decided, Huang said.
Huang’s comments referred to the Ministry of Education’s adjustments to high-school history and civics curriculum guidelines. Detractors of the changes say it pursued a “China-centric” historical perspective and sought to eliminate certain historical facts about Taiwan from the curriculum.
Although the Ma administration continues to emphasize cross-strait policies as its greatest achievement, the Chinese “brothers” it is ready to embrace are already considered hao xiong di (好兄弟) by some Taiwanese, Huang said.
The term hao xiong di in Mandarin literally means “good friend,” but is also used as a euphemism to refer to ghosts and spirits.
No friend or “brother” would aim thousands of missiles at you, Huang said.
Huang said that the Ma administration seems to have taken its role as “head of the district of Taiwan” to heart, adding that it did not even protest Chinese military exercises that used a target that resembled the Presidential Office Building.
Huang’s restaurant is filled with signs protesting government policies that raised the prices of gasoline, electricity and gas, as well as a sign that reads “Inviting bandits to Taiwan = Inviting spirits into one’s house” and another that reads: “People harming Taiwan are all damned Communists.”
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