Olympism

TAIPEI, Taiwan--I believe that the Chinese people know their country has problems. I also believe that they just want to put on a good show. But I have to wonder if the Chinese people, with the way their media filters information, really understand the severity of their government’s problems.

The Chinese had their feelings hurt by the protests during the Olympic torch relay. Indeed, having protesters jump the torch bearers, use fire extinguishers and climb the Golden Gate Bridge were all ugly acts of getting a message across. Finally, one of the IOC bigwigs Dick Pound has admitted that the torch relay was a “disaster”. They are also considering that future torch relays stay domestic.

For the Chinese to argue that politics shouldn’t be part of the Olympics is ridiculous. I would argue that more than any other host country in the past, China’s bid in the first place was for political gains as opposed to economic development. The torch relay protests were spinned into this conspiracy theory by the West against their country. I cannot agree with their reasoning that this was their torch relay, that this is their Olympics. That is a fundamental difference in how China and the rest of the world view these Beijing Games.

The symbolism of the Olympics should go beyond any one country. There are too many feel-good underdog stories. Consider this CNN spoof with a Barack Obama impersonator, tying the successes of 2 kinds of underdogs:

This presidential campaign has been like a marathon.
And you know who wins marathons?
Guys from Kenya!

Recently, the entire Iraqi Olympic Team was banned by the IOC after its government overthrew the national olympic committee. The IOC’s reasoning was that the Olympic Charter forbids political intervention. Hilarious, I know. Now, after some negotiations Iraq will be sending 4 athletes to Beijing. So, it’s a happy ending. Or is it?

There have been fewer reports that the 24 original members of the Iraqi Olympic Committee were kidnapped and that their whereabouts are still unknown. How many other articles out there appear happy on the surface but what lies underneath is more grave?

An article I came across on the website nbcolympics.com describes the ping-pong diplomacy that opened the door for US table tennis players to enter China in 1971, followed by President Richard Nixon the next year. His visit resulted in the Shanghai Communiqué, in which the US "acknowledged" that Taiwan was a part of China. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter officially switched diplomatic ties to China, leaving Taiwan in the dark. The article was entitled “Pleasant Politics”. For Taiwanese citizens, there was nothing pleasant about this chain of political events.

However, it did in some way foster the democracy movement in Taiwan, spilling over with the Formosa Incident at the end of 1979. A rally on December 10th for Human Rights Day was broken up by police. The “Formosa Eight”: Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介), Shih Ming-teh (施明德), Chang Chun-hung (張俊宏), Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文), Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), Chen Chu (陳菊), and Lin Hung-hsuen (林弘宣) were indicted on sedition charges. Their 9-day trial, which was broadcast on network television, started on March 18, 1980. Exactly 20 years later, Annette Lu would become the Vice President of the country.

Thus, the manifestation of Taiwan’s democracy is incomparable to China’s lack of progress. Early on, Beijing Olympic organizers had thought of holding the beach volleyball competition in Tiananmen Square, where the country’s democracy movement exploded onto the scene. It’s hard to imagine that Mao Zedong (毛澤東) would be pleased to stare across and see bikini-clad athletes and cheerleaders. It’s also hard to imagine that on July 4th of this year, the vigil held in the Square was not for the victims of the student crackdowns 19 years ago but rather for the victims of the recent Szechuan earthquake.

The leaders of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations have moved on with their lives. Wang Dan (王丹) studied at Harvard and came to Taiwan to observe the presidential election. Chai Ling (柴玲) has gone into the private sector in the US. Wuer Kaixi (吾爾開希) has opened a bar in Taipei. What has happened to their legacy, and why has it been replaced by a nationalist fervor, more intense than ever before?

What is the ultimate sacrifice?

TAIPEI, Taiwan--I’ve been thinking about the Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮). As she nears the end of her term, now what? I know that she has purchased a place close to where I’m living now, and it’s a lot of space for just one person. At the end of the day, are there really no regrets that she spent the prime of her life fighting for Taiwan? I’ve seen her shed tears talking about not being able to attend her mother’s funeral because she was imprisoned. She has certainly paid her dues in other ways for a noble cause. At the least, she was rewarded with the vice presidency for 8 years.

I can’t help but notice that the DPP is much more sympathetic towards women (and other marginalized groups for that matter) than the KMT. You could tell that there were far fewer women involved in the higher-ups of Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) campaign (not talking about his fans here). Yet, somehow this was all overlooked when just one woman, Ma’s wife Chow Mei-ching (周美青), finally came out of hiding.

I also can’t help but notice that in addition to Lu, there are several other female DPP politicians who are single. After Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was elected in 2000, I read a book entitled “不一樣的女人”, which roughly translates to A Different Type of Woman. In it were the stories of the 10 or so female members of the new Cabinet. It was inspiring in a professional career kind of way but not too optimistic for personal development.

Of course, marriage is by no means the magic key to having it all. Just look at the President’s daughter Chen Hsin-yu (陳幸妤). Chao Chien-ming (趙建銘) was a handsome, orthopedic surgeon from the nation’s best medical school and from Tainan, the same city as her parents. At first, she seemed content with her new life. Who could’ve known that he would turn out to be such a thug?

There must have been warning bells. His father Chao Yu-chu (趙玉柱) was an elementary school principal who already had a reputation for having sub-par character. Could she really not have known? Or did she want to escape the life of being a politician’s daughter that badly?

Who can blame her?

As a young girl, her mother Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) was run over in a KMT-motivated accident, paralyzing her from the waist down. To add to the trauma, her father was sent to jail shortly after. He certainly wasn’t the only one. The history of Taiwan’s democratic movement is like an episode of “Where have all the fathers gone?”

I went to middle school with a girl whose father was sent to prison. Years later, I was flipping through one of his books. In the section with all the photographs, I was rather touched by this one drawing he made. It was a depiction of his cell, and it was also her birthday present. Growing up, you’re taught to be good and that it’s the bad people who get sent to jail. Only now can we say that it’s a bad government that sends the good people to jail.

In 1989, Cheng Nan-jung (鄭南榕), the husband of Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭), committed suicide rather than be arrested, leaving behind an infant daughter. February 28 is a sore spot in Taiwan’s history. In 1947, thousands of Taiwanese people were killed by the KMT regime. On the same day 33 years later, the emotional toll for former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) family would become much greater. How could he have imagined that while he was imprisoned, his mother and twin daughters would be brutally murdered inside their own home?

On the day before the 2008 election, Judy Linton (林奐均), Lin’s sole surviving daughter, wrote this letter to Ma supporters:

http://blog.vivataiwan.tv/?taiwan=10370 (in Chinese and English)

The sacrifices made by the previous generation of activists, whether it was with part of their life or all of it, have allowed us to be the nation that we are today. I’ve only mentioned the well-known stories. There are too many other unsung heroes…