I returned to my house in Boulder, Colorado on Sept. 20 to discover that Taiwan, my adopted homeland, had been hit by a major earthquake. I'd lived there for five years, and had just returned a few months ago.
My first reaction was disbelief. I tried to call my friends in Taiwan, only to discover that the phone lines were dead.
Then the shock kicked in. Taiwan is a country where every 7-Eleven store has a fax machine, taxi drivers carry cellphones, and most kids can piece together the schematics for a PC motherboard by eighth grade. If the phone lines are down, something very serious is going on in Taiwan.
I first went to Taiwan in 1994, a naive American whose grasp of the language consisted of two jerky greetings and a request for directions to the bathroom. I was invited to live on the fourth floor of the home of the Yeh family in Hsinchu, and spent the next two years basically being treated like a well-liked (but kind of slow on the uptake) special son.
I later moved to Taipei, and lived there for three more years. I got by with a lot of love, encouragement and the occasional use of minor career boosting guanxi ("pulling of strings") from well-connected friends.
I should have gone to Taiwan right after the 921 quake struck, searching for the injured in the rubble of the collapsed Tsunghsih building in Taipei.I should be repaying the Taiwanese people's kindness with more than words, but I cannot. Perhaps this disaster was, as disasters often are in Asian culture, a portent of political upheaval.
Taiwan is a strange place to claim kinship with once you've left, but let me try.
The uncomfortable state of official non-recognition doesn't always give people in the US a clear picture of my adopted homeland. "That's in China, isn't it?" is a comment I've heard, to which I usually reply "No, um, well, officially yes but, um, not really. China is a one-party totalitarian state. Taiwan is a democracy. You know, government elected for the people by the people, the sort of thing you read about in college civics classes.
Taiwan is by no means a perfect democracy -- legislative sessions (as the Chinese Communists gleefully point out in the "why democracy doesn't work for Asians" section of the People's Daily) have been known to erupt in the occasional bench-clearing brawl. Those rumors that you may have heard about the KMT representative from Central Taiwan hurling a baby pig at a political opponent are true, but it should be noted that he apologized immediately -- to the pig.
Still, the Taiwanese people are free to gather peacefully, worship freely, live where they choose and say what they please. Their constitution is a lot like ours, only without the guns. Were it not for China's stubborn refusal to do business with anyone who doesn't adhere to its inflexible labeling of Taiwan as a "renegade province," Taiwan might be as well-regarded in the world community as Britain, except it has better food, nicer weather and a more efficient economy.
A Taiwanese scholar recently compared the relationship between Taiwan and China to "living in the same house as a 900-pound gorilla who thinks he's your older brother." Taiwan, looking to the US for support, is becoming increasingly skeptical that help will come when the chips are down.
My Taiwanese friends look at me incredulously when I talk about the US ideal of democracy. "We are a democracy, so why doesn't America recognize us officially?" is a common question. But the Taiwanese are nothing if not business savvy, they understand the mathematical realities of Sino-American relationships.
There are only around 22 million people on Taiwan, as opposed to the the 1.2 billion potential consumers in China. If you'd each just agree to drink 100 bottles of Pepsi a day," I tell my friends, "you'd stand a better chance at official recognition." Others picture Taiwan as nothing more than a gigantic industrial complex populated by drones spewing out low-quality goods. The epicenter of the 921 earthquake was in Nantou County, a rugged mountain region every bit as breathtaking as the Colorado Rockies west of Boulder. At that latitude it only snows at great altitudes, and when it does the roads are clogged with city dwellers hoping to see it before it melts. Taichung city, hardest hit by the quake, is only slightly less attractive than Denver, and with similarly toxic air. The east coast of Taiwan is sparsely populated. The east coast highway is a two-lane road carved out of cliffs plunging into the sea, and is as beautiful and dangerous as any road you'd ever want to drive on.
While the capital, Taipei is, to be fair, not the most architecturally beautiful city in the world, it is home to many fine and wonderful people. Even in the gray architectural sameness of neighborhoods like Hsinchuang and Sanchung, little pockets of beauty can be found. An old temple, the meticulously carved wooden pillars depicting legends of dragon and fable freshly painted, here. Two old men drinking tea and playing Chinese chess on an ornate marble table there. The Taiwanese have made a whopping contribution to the current cyber-driven world economy, one which is rarely acknowledged.
A thank you wouldn't kill anyone. But don't go packing up blankets, first-aid kits, and cans of tuna for Taiwan quite yet. Send that to Turkey, where the need is far, far greater. The Taiwanese have done pretty well for themselves over the last few decades, and should be able to pull through this disaster with the same quiet determination that pulled them through the "white terror," decades of brutal martial law inflicted on them by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), another leader with a somewhat unrealistic world view.
What Taiwan needs most costs neither money nor time: recognition as a free, conscientious, and eminently integral part of the family of nations. Some sort of acknowledgment is past due.
Joshua Samuel Brown lives in Boulder, Colorado. He can be reached via e-mail at:
phibes@ficnet.net. This essay appeared originally on an Internet site hosted by
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