As two dozen anxious Chinese travelers began their maiden voyage across the Taiwan Strait, their tour guide called an impromptu meeting in the airport departure lounge.
He warned them about littering, spitting, flooding hotel bathroom floors — and the local cuisine.
“Our Taiwanese brothers do not like salt, oil and MSG the way we do,” the guide, Guo Xin, said with a sigh.
Photo: CNA
Then his voice grew serious, the way a coach might caution his team about the impending face-off with a deceptively courteous opponent.
Do not talk about politics with the locals, he warned, say only positive things about Taiwan and China, and by all means avoid practitioners of Falun Gong, the spiritual group whose adherents roam freely in Taiwan but are regularly jailed in China.
“They will definitely try to talk to you,” he said. “When that happens, get away as fast as you can.”
And thus began the heavily chaperoned visit to Taiwan, where Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his army fled in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) troops. The Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China, as they are formally known, may have never formally concluded hostilities, but relations have been thawing rapidly since the election in 2008 of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who promptly broadened economic ties and signed accords on direct postal, shipping and air links. More momentous for people on both sides of the Strait was the agreement that opened the door to group tours from China.
Initially capped at 300 visitors a day, the numbers quickly soared. Last year 1.6 million Chinese visited Taiwan, up nearly 70 percent from 2009. During their tightly managed, all inclusive eight-day visits, they still managed to pour US$3 billion into Taiwan’s economy, an amount equal to 0.72 percent of Taiwan’s GDP, according to Alice Chen, a Tourism Bureau official in Taipei.
In June, another landmark agreement brought the first independent travelers to Taiwan, although restrictions — including limiting the option to the well-to-do from Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen — have kept their numbers to just more than 1,400 since the end of June.
Economics is a key factor in the growing rapprochement, but the decision to open the door to greater contacts has also been inspired by politics and some wishful thinking on both sides.
Beijing hopes to encourage unification of Taiwan and China; Taiwanese leaders think exposing more Chinese to the allures of democracy, free speech and some of Asia’s most scintillating television will erode popular support for any military operation to force unity — an option that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders have long held out should Taiwan embrace full, legal independence.
“By seeing that anyone here can criticize the government and by realizing that democracy does not bring chaos, there is a hope we can subtly influence mainlanders,” said Lin Huo-wang (林火旺), a philosophy professor at National Taiwan University and an occasional adviser to Ma.
Judging from four days of travel with the group from Beijing, it is not entirely clear how many hearts and minds were vanquished. Granted this was a tough audience, many of them middle-aged party stalwarts bolstered by a lifetime of propaganda painting members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as traitorous lackeys of the US who ran off with Chinese treasures.
“It’s hard to compare anyplace to Beijing, the home of emperors,” Li Guihong, 69, a retired government employee, said smugly after taking in the Taiwanese capital’s urban landscape. “Our buildings are more modern and even their stinky tofu isn’t as good as ours.”
The derision runs both ways. Beyond local business owners pleased by the surge in tourist spending, many Taiwanese openly complain about Chinese’s seeming unfamiliarity with the notion of the indoor voice, a collective disdain for the single-file line and their insistence on asking complete strangers their incomes.
The media gleefully recount stories about Chinese visitors’ carving their names into trees at a Buddhist temple or brawls between tour groups. Last month, one overly enthusiastic tourist slipped past Ma’s bodyguards to embrace Ma during a public appearance.
Kao Hui-chiao, 60, a volunteer at Taroko National Park, said she spent much of her time picking up the touring Chinese’s cigarette butts or shouting at those who heeded nature’s call in full public view.
“They think they know better and just don’t like following the rules,” she said with exasperation. “They just aren’t very civilized.”
Even as more than 3 million Chinese have marched across Taiwan since 2008, the arrangement has thus far yielded little interaction between visitors and locals. Part of the problem is that the rules of engagement put travelers through an exhausting gantlet of museums, monuments and jade shops with little free time to rub elbows with the locals.
“The only Taiwanese I met here were the ones trying to sell me stuff,” said Lian Chan, 43, a building materials dealer who was with a group from Yunnan Province.
The other problem is a palpable wariness on the part of many Chinese. Even when the travelers from Beijing had opportunities to chat with local residents — including the Taiwanese guide assigned to their bus — they often engaged in pleasantries and rarely asked questions.
“You can’t blame them for being so closed and self-protected,” said the guide, David Wei, who entertained passengers on daily bus rides by stressing the commonalities between the two places: the clogged highways, the soaring real estate prices and the challenge of finding a perfectly marbled slab of pork.
Even if most Chinese go home unconvinced about Taiwan’s culinary attributes, the place does seem to make its mark on some. Chan formed a compelling relationship with the television set in his hotel room. The gyrating, minimally attired ladies on it during the wee hours were mesmerizing, he said, but so too was the sight of politicians taking combative questions from the press.
“They can throw their leaders out if they aren’t doing their job,” he said with amazement. “Our leaders would never allow that.”
Perhaps the most challenging moments were the inevitable encounters with members of Falun Gong, who pepper the sightseeing circuit and hand out literature that details their persecution by the CCP.
Shih Wen-cheng, 46, a construction worker in a yellow vest bearing Falun Gong’s central tenets, “truthfulness, compassion and forbearance,” said most Chinese recoiled when he approached. A few, however, look both ways and then stuff a pamphlet in their pockets.
“Our goal is to make them realize the propaganda they’ve heard their whole lives is just that,” he said. “If we can convince one of them not to betray to the police a neighbor who practices Falun Gong, then we have achieved something.”
For many on the tour, the biggest surprise was learning that, contrary to what they had heard, most of Taiwan’s 23 million residents are not exactly eager to merge with China.
Just before boarding the plane at Beijing International Airport, Gao Guizhen, 59, a retired piano factory worker, dutifully offered the prevailing sentiment about Taiwan and China.
“We are one,” she said.
By Day 4, she seemed to have second thoughts.
Sitting away from the others as they awaited a train ride along Taiwan’s scenic coastline, she offered a metaphor about two feuding brothers.
The elder, she said, runs off with the riches, leaving the younger impoverished and embittered. Decades later, when the bereft brother grows rich and the anger fades, the grandchildren are allowed to spend time together. They discover that they have some differences, but also that they share many things — including an utter lack of interest in keeping up the feud.
Asked to reflect on how the story relates to the prospect of Taiwanese independence, Gao, who endured a decade of suffering during the chaos of China’s Cultural Revolution, gave a throaty laugh.
“Independence or no independence?” she asked. “To be honest, who cares?”
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