The inauguration of the 16th president of the Republic of China, Taiwan was a riotous affair filled with wildly eclectic performances, incredible variety and diversity, influences from local roots and from around the world, heartwarming enthusiasm, remarkable talent and creativity at moments so surprising it left some of us wondering if hallucinogens were involved. It was an event that could only have taken place and been conceived of in Taiwan’s free and democratic society.
I had the great honor of being invited to attend along with some other writers and commentators on Taiwan, and a cluster of us sat in roughly the 15th row back from the main performance area near a banner featuring the flag of Eswatini. I was seated between fellow Taichung resident and Taipei Times columnist Michael Turton and Taipei-based Jenna Lynn Cody of the Laorencha Blog. Rounding out the conversational sphere and hearing limit were fellow Taichunger Drew Kerslake and the creator of the lovely X account Taiwan Birding, whose account adds a little joy to my otherwise doom-laden X feed and which I highly recommend. There was much witty and informed banter.
We had a laugh that foreigners at the event were easy to spot because we were the only ones who paid attention to the request on the invitation to wear formal attire, while everyone else dressed normally. The suit coats were quickly abandoned in the heat.
Photo: Courtney Donovan Smith
Throughout the event I kept thinking of old videos of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Xi Jinping’s (習近平) events on similar occasions and how they could not be more different. No one would dare to ignore the formal attire request at their events. Authoritarian events are deadly serious and intended to display might, strength, dominance and power and a hand-picked invited audience such as us would be expected to display reverence and conformity.
Taiwanese will have none of that. In the swag bag given to attendees were reversible white bucket hats, which most people wore, but some on the white side, others on the colorful patterned side and many did creative things with the brims, putting them up, down or a bit of both to make it look more like a fedora. This was an individualistic crowd.
Prior to the event beginning images of outgoing president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), outgoing minister of foreign affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and incoming Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) standing around waiting for foreign dignitaries to arrive to pay their respects were shown. Tsai was clearly relaxed and was joking and bantering with Wu and Lin in a jovial manner. At Chinese state events officials stand stiffly and solemnly at attention and never smile, much less speak to each other.
There has been considerable discussion in the local press about the moments when the legislative speaker handed over the seal of office of the president to William Lai (賴清德), which is the formal transfer of power to the new president. Many in the frequently hyperventilating local press suggested that their serious faces suggested tension or even hostility between the two. Reviewing the moment on YouTube, this is obviously not the case, their faces were serious because this is an important moment in a democracy and they were treating it with the reverence it deserved.
ENTER THE 5-STOREY PSYCHEDELIC BLUE HORSE
The events and performances put on for the crowd were meant to be entertaining. Even the military activities were meant to be entertaining. The soldiers marching were playing music and performing impressively choreographic moves that were surprisingly elegant even when twirling rifles with fixed bayonets. They were more akin to a high school marching band, not at all like the menacingly grim, goosestepping People’s Liberation Army.
As if to drive the point home, an actual school marching band soon appeared, playing similar music and also with gun twirlers up front. However, incongruously the musicians were dressed like they were on their way to fight Napoleon, and the gun twirlers with their obvious fake guns looked as if they about to take on aliens from the planet Zlog 9.
What followed was a series of performing troupes that can only be described as wildly eclectic. Even more startling was that they were performing at the same time and weaving in and among each other while shifting from music style to music style, intentionally driving home the point that Taiwan is diverse. Dragon dancers performed while baseball players tossed baseballs in their midst to pounding heavy rock music, then indigenous and modern dancers joined in with martial artists jumping around among them, all to what sounded like an Irish jig. Fittingly, they ended this segment by rolling out a giant globe.
Many more performances followed, including sentimental Taiwanese singers, a rap trio that kicked off their set by dropping an ‘F-bomb’ and an ‘S-bomb’ in front of the foreign dignitaries, modern pop songs, traditional dancers of various ethnic types and a weird performance of children and adults dressed as various popular Taiwanese cuisines and cooking implements.
Fire EX, the hard rock band, performed their famous song Stand up like a Taiwanese, which references the time when democracy activist Peter Ng (黃文雄) shouted “let me stand up like a Taiwanese” as he was being arrested for his failed attempt to assassinate Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) in the US.
The authoritarian Chiangs would be rolling in their graves seeing that performed in front of the Presidential Office Building during an inauguration event for president of the ROC. For that matter, they probably would be rolling in their graves at the entire event aside from the 12-gun salute.
The part that had all of our jaws dropping was when they rolled out the roughly five-story tall, psychedelic blue flower-patterned horse with rainbow mane and tail, a moving head and inexplicably spouting jets of smoke. On top were two festively dressed dancers — one in neon pink, the other in green — enthusiastically dancing their hearts out and doing their own thing, obviously having the time of their lives. All of us were thinking the exact same thing and said it about the same time about this creatively bizarre and possibly one of the most preposterous things we had ever seen, and wondered if the designer created it in an altered state.
Below was a miniature version of the horse, some Taiwanese animal replicas held high by people carrying them on poles while people roamed through the crowd handing food items. Jenna got an orange, Drew hilariously got a cucumber, and I got a package of Taiwanese tea. Poor Mike got nothing.
This mind-blowing creation and all the performances were utterly unlike anything that would be put on in Beijing. The creativity, the diversity, the enthusiasm, the excitement often verging on the edge of chaos was far too liberating for a collectivist ethnonationalist authoritarian state.
In China we would have been watching performances by troupes with names like “the Fifth People’s Performing Arts Troup of the People’s Liberation Army” probably involving dancers with scarves acting out a scene celebrating the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The highly choreographed, precise and almost mechanical style of their performances would be technically masterful and impressive, but not the slightest bit of individuality would be allowed to peek through. The message would be clear: conform.
SIMPLE HUMAN THINGS MATTER
Reviewing the event for this column in news coverage on YouTube, while we had been staring wide-eyed at the giant psychedelic blue horse spectacle, the news had shifted their coverage to Lai greeting foreign dignitaries. He greeted them with confidence and warmth, and several took selfies with him, which he took in stride. The president of Paraguay leaned in to give Lai a warm hug, which Lai took in stride.
As far as I know only once has Xi Jinping ever hugged anyone in public, and that was his awkward not-quite-touching embrace of Vladimir Putin in the less formal setting of seeing Putin off after his visit earlier this month. That he would, like Lai, actively engage in an unexpected warm, close hug at a formal state event on television is unimaginable. Authoritarians are sticky about protocol.
Further emphasizing that theme, albeit unintentionally, after honoring victims of the Hualien earthquake and singing the national anthem with schoolchildren from there, singers from various ethnic groups came on stage and sang while a kaleidoscopic series of artistic images of people hugging each other played out on the giant screen behind them. President Lai and Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) sang along, danced awkwardly to the music and made heart signs with their hands to the crowd.
The event ended with that. A cluster of performers hung around and people took selfies with them.
Then came the moment I will remember and cherish the most about the inauguration. I left the cluster, where people were taking selfies with people dressed as food, a troupe of women in what I think was traditional Hakka garb posing on Taiwanese-made electric scooters and people dressed as animals.
I stood to the side of the crowd looking up at the wonderfully, beautifully and amazingly preposterous giant, psychedelic blue horse. On top, the dancers were dancing freely, with their own individualistic flair and with overflowing joy and enthusiasm.
I raised up my hand and waved to show my appreciation, a little figure in a tie with a bright red sunburned face clutching a bag five storys below. The dancer in neon pink spotted me and with a happy smile of acknowledgment of my fandom waved back.
At this simple human act I felt a strong emotion wave over me. This surreal scene, at a presidential inauguration, could only have happened in a free country. A free Taiwan.
Suddenly I was overwhelmed with gratefulness, humbleness and happiness at the truth and power of life this meant.
Having arrived in authoritarian Taiwan almost four decades ago, I was weak in the knees watching the tiny high in the sky neon-clad dancer on a monumentally giant horse built to honor an incoming president was not just standing up, but was exuberantly dancing, as a Taiwanese. For a moment our joy at expressing freedom, human connection and living our lives as we want was met in a single moment. Stay true happy dancer, always be yourself. I’ll always remember you as a powerful symbol of what it means to live without repression, in your own joyous and beautiful way.
Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文) is a regular columnist for Taipei Times, the central Taiwan correspondent at ICRT FM100 Radio News, co-publisher Compass Magazine, co-founder Taiwan Report (report.tw) and former chair of the Taichung American Chamber of Commerce. Follow him on X: @donovan_smith.
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