Not once during the three-hour funeral did the voice of the master of ceremonies depart from his meticulously calibrated tone, soothingly providing comfort to the grieving while announcing the delegations of people who had come to pay their respects. But every now and then, he would say something that stung like a stun gun.
We were in Taoyuan on Friday attending the funeral of a young Taiwanese woman who decided to end her life last month. Her father, who spent about five years in jail following the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident, a protest by pro-democracy activists, is a former legislator for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) who now faces a 10-year prison term for corruption. While local media reported that the young woman decided to end her life due to pressures associated with her studies, it is difficult to imagine that her father’s travails did not also weigh heavily upon her.
The woman — a beautiful and wonderfully talented artist who had gone to school in New York — also studied law so that she could help with her father’s defense, reviewing interrogation tapes and turning to well-known international lawyers for assistance. Much of her art reflected the deeply held political views of her family, which emphasize a Taiwanese identity separate from China. Some of her creations had been used, or were to be used, by the Formosan Association for Public Affairs’ Young Professionals Group, an assemblage of young US-based Taiwanese who support Taiwanese self-determination. The beautiful booklet, DVD and postcards handed to those who attended the service also had an undeniably pro-Taiwan slant.
Yet, the MC repeatedly used the phrase “we Chinese” (我們中國人), which stopped us in our tracks. How could the man not have been aware of the political views of the grieving family and those of the woman whose life and death we had gathered to remember? How insensitive would the man have had to be not to realize that her father, a well-known DPP politician with a reputation for singing and wearing costumes, had served five years of his life behind bars because he and others had stood up to the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the White Terror of the Martial Law era? How could he not take her work, her life, into consideration, knowing full well that in life she fought for and took pride in her Taiwanese identity and would always refer to herself as “Taiwanese” (台灣人)?
To me, the affront again confirmed that organized religion has little patience for individuality and limits itself to general platitudes. I have seen this occur time and again at weddings and funerals — regardless of the belief system. That is why priests or monks will movingly talk of “loving husbands” when describing a deceased man who spent his married life inflicting physical and emotional pain on his wife and members of his family.
I do not think the MC meant any slight or sought to impose his political views on the family; he was simply following the script (this could also be indicative of the extent to which the KMT sinicization of Taiwan also left its mark on religion).
By focusing on the masses, organized religion — and the same could be said of another system of control, politics — fails to bring itself to the level of those it claims to represent. How simple it would have been for the temple to change the wording so that it actually meant something for the grieving family and reflected their desires, wishes and beliefs during that one last moment.
There is no reason why priests and monks and rabbis should not have to do their homework on the people whom they purport to serve as celestial intermediaries. But then again, when have religious figures ever been servants of mankind?
J. Michael Cole is deputy news editor at the Taipei Times.
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
Before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can blockade, invade, and destroy the democracy on Taiwan, the CCP seeks to make the world an accomplice to Taiwan’s subjugation by harassing any government that confers any degree of marginal recognition, or defies the CCP’s “One China Principle” diktat that there is no free nation of Taiwan. For United States President Donald Trump’s upcoming May 14, 2026 visit to China, the CCP’s top wish has nothing to do with Trump’s ongoing dismantling of the CCP’s Axis of Evil. The CCP’s first demand is for Trump to cease US
RSS