As the US wrestles with the problem of what to do with monuments to a divisive history, Taiwan has found a solution — a park dedicated to unwanted statues of a controversial figure from its past.
More than 200 memorials to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), the former Nationalist leader who is revered as a hero by some but despised as a dictator by others, have been quietly removed from schools and government buildings and brought together in a serene lakeside spot.
Each day, tourists roam among the 253 figures at the Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park, which come in a variety of colors — some teal, some bronze and some copper red.
Photo: AFP
The largest piece is an imposing figure of a seated Chiang, removed from a government office in Kaohsiung in 2007.
Close by are two sculptures of Chiang’s son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), who along with his father oversaw the White Terror era.
Today the statues are less revered monuments and more popular selfie spots, where tourists pose alongside the hotchpotch of weathered busts and towering casts.
“We don’t see [these] statues as political totems. We treat them as historical and cultural heritage,” Taoyuan city official Huang Chao-jin said.
Like the US’ pro-slavery Confederate leader Robert E. Lee, Chiang Kai-shek’s role in Taiwan’s past continues to polarize its present. Both generals fought and lost civil wars — in Chiang Kai-shek’s case he led the Nationalist retreat to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese Civil War; both are symbols of a noble past to their supporters, and of a dark history to their detractors.
However, while lawmakers and activists in the US’ south grapple over whether to destroy, cover up or honor memorials to Lee and his fellow generals, Taiwanese authorities say the relocated Chiang Kai-shek statues — shorn of their original context — have lost their partisan edge and have become a popular tourist draw.
Although there is no tally of visitor numbers to the statue park, located a stone’s throw from Chiang Kai-shek’s mausoleum in Taoyuan, about 2.2 million people come to the area.
Among them, people who have come to pay their respects to a man who waged war against China. They rub shoulders with visitors from China, who remember a leader who fought bravely against the Imperialist Japanese.
“Mr Chiang [Kai-shek] was an extraordinary man. We in China are grateful for what he did in the war against the Japanese,” said Dai Yukuan from China’s Anhui Province, visiting Taiwan for the first time. “After all, it is all in the past. What we Chinese really want is cross-strait peace.”
The serene park offers a stark contrast to events in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month, where a violent rally by right-wing groups to protest the removal of a statue of Lee descended into chaos.
One woman was killed after a white supremacist allegedly plowed his car into a group of counterprotesters.
US President Donald Trump condemned the “foolish” removal of Confederate statues, saying US culture and history were being “ripped apart.”
In Taiwan, the debate over history continues, but is more measured.
In Taipei earlier this year, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorail Hall stopped selling souvenirs depicting the former leader.
The decision was taken on the 70th anniversary of a brutal massacre of protesters by troops from Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), when Taiwan was still under martial law.
Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) said at the time that Chiang Kai-shek had left a “deep scar hidden in the hearts of all Taiwanese.”
However, at the statue park, even as the number of memorials grows each year, their divisive power appears to have drained away.
“It doesn’t feel like the statues were moved here willingly to be commemorated,” said Lin Hui-chun, 33. “There’s more a feeling of abandonment.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching