When members of Taiwan’s elite declared independence as a move to halt Japan’s takeover of the country towards the end of the 19th century, one of the first things they designed was a flag to reinforce their determination to be free from imperial rule. A replica of the original flag, known as the Yellow Tiger Flag (黃虎旗) of the Republic of Formosa (台灣民主國), is currently on display at the National Taiwan Museum.
The museum’s curators said that the Yellow Tiger Flag embodied the aspirations of the pro-independence forces in Taiwan, which was ceded to Japan in the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki following China’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War.
Despite high hopes and fierce resistance, however, these anti-Japanese fighters only held out for five months before being overwhelmed by Japanese forces. The flag, having been captured, was immediately sent to Japan.
Photo courtesy of the National Taiwan Museum
The National Taiwan Museum, which holds a replica of the original flag painted in 1909 by Japanese artist Untei Takahashi, recently discovered documents that yield a greater understanding about the thinking that went into the design of original flag, the whereabouts of which remain unknown.
“We organized the exhibition so as to share our findings following extensive restoration, which took 15 months to finish,” Li Tzu-ning (李子寧), an associate curator at the museum, told Taipei Times in an e-mail interview.
The museum’s staff found that the tiger drawn on the back of the flag is different from the tiger drawn on the front. Though the overall features of the two felines look the same, there are minor variations.
“The pupils of the tiger on the front are round and open, while the ones at the back are crescent-shaped. This shows that the pupils dilate and contrast in response to the amount of light in the day and at night,” said Wu Pai-lu (吳百祿), a researcher who took part in the repair project.
“The two tigers, one posing for the day and the other for the night, create an image that is both symmetrical and complementary. It coincides with the belief that the flag will protect the nation day and night (日夜護國),” he said.
Though Takahashi’s work is only a facsimile, Wu says it’s “crucially important” because the original flag — or three flags according to some historical documents — is nowhere to be found.
Of the four existing duplicates in Taiwan, the Takahashi version is the only one that was commissioned and approved by the then-Japanese authorities. In 1953, Chiu Nien-tai (丘念台) — the son of Chiu Feng-jia (丘逢甲), the man who led the resistance against Japan’s occupation — commissioned respected artist Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) to create two paintings based on Takahashi’s flag. Lin produced another color ink version of the flag in 1974.
Although it continues to serve as a symbol of Taiwan’s autonomy, Lee said that today’s independence activists are disinclined to use the flag because of its complex associations with the past.
“The main reason is because the Republic of Formosa was so short-lived,” he said. “And, declaring independence was a diplomatic strategy” to return Taiwan to China.
Google unveiled an artificial intelligence tool Wednesday that its scientists said would help unravel the mysteries of the human genome — and could one day lead to new treatments for diseases. The deep learning model AlphaGenome was hailed by outside researchers as a “breakthrough” that would let scientists study and even simulate the roots of difficult-to-treat genetic diseases. While the first complete map of the human genome in 2003 “gave us the book of life, reading it remained a challenge,” Pushmeet Kohli, vice president of research at Google DeepMind, told journalists. “We have the text,” he said, which is a sequence of
On a harsh winter afternoon last month, 2,000 protesters marched and chanted slogans such as “CCP out” and “Korea for Koreans” in Seoul’s popular Gangnam District. Participants — mostly students — wore caps printed with the Chinese characters for “exterminate communism” (滅共) and held banners reading “Heaven will destroy the Chinese Communist Party” (天滅中共). During the march, Park Jun-young, the leader of the protest organizer “Free University,” a conservative youth movement, who was on a hunger strike, collapsed after delivering a speech in sub-zero temperatures and was later hospitalized. Several protesters shaved their heads at the end of the demonstration. A
Every now and then, even hardcore hikers like to sleep in, leave the heavy gear at home and just enjoy a relaxed half-day stroll in the mountains: no cold, no steep uphills, no pressure to walk a certain distance in a day. In the winter, the mild climate and lower elevations of the forests in Taiwan’s far south offer a number of easy escapes like this. A prime example is the river above Mudan Reservoir (牡丹水庫): with shallow water, gentle current, abundant wildlife and a complete lack of tourists, this walk is accessible to nearly everyone but still feels quite remote.
In August of 1949 American journalist Darrell Berrigan toured occupied Formosa and on Aug. 13 published “Should We Grab Formosa?” in the Saturday Evening Post. Berrigan, cataloguing the numerous horrors of corruption and looting the occupying Republic of China (ROC) was inflicting on the locals, advocated outright annexation of Taiwan by the US. He contended the islanders would welcome that. Berrigan also observed that the islanders were planning another revolt, and wrote of their “island nationalism.” The US position on Taiwan was well known there, and islanders, he said, had told him of US official statements that Taiwan had not
RSS