My worst experience in Taipei

So I was debating whether to blog about this but I think I should just to get it out there and then to forget about it because it is frankly ruining my experience in Taipei.

So last Friday (I think?) I went to a speech contest at Sun Yat Sen Memorial, which is pretty far from where I live. I had to change trains twice to get there. Anyways, it was frankly one of the most miserable experiences I've ever had the misfortune of suffering through. Now speech contests are NEVER fun but I had the sheer luck of going LAST, # 80. So I took the subway all the way to Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall and got there by 8:45 AM....but I didn't say my speech until 5:30 PM. That alone could have made it miserable since I had been nervous all day and had been rehearsing my speech multiple times throughout the day before I was up.

Anyways, the worse part of it was that when I gave my speech (which was on cross-strait relations) the judges gave me the dirtiest looks. The old man even crossed his arms and glared at me and never once wrote a single thing down on his sheet. All of the judges frowned at me. The weird thing is that I thought my speech was extremely balanced probably even in favor of Taiwan since the mainland had shown aggression in the past (with 3 missiles being shot into the Taiwan strait), which I described in my speech. However, I think the thing that really rubbed them the wrong way was that in my conclusion I talked about next year's presidential election. I said that Taiwanese people should optimistically choose a new president that could improve relations with the mainland and could also possibly revive the stagnant Taiwanese economy. Now obviously the only party that could do the former (and arguably the second) would be the KMT since the DPP or green party is bent on independence and provoking the mainland. And I didn't know that this speech contest was organized by the government and thus the judges were all DPP supporters. So basically, I dug myself a hole.

However, what really disgusted me was the fact that the only people who won were those who had frivolous topics or those that pandered to Taiwanese pride. From the few vapid speeches that I remembered they talked about how Taiwanese street food (i.e., fermented fried tofu, awajin (scrambled eggs w/ oysters), bubble tea, etc.) and how they loved shopping at the night markets for cheap, knock-off shit. Some other winning speeches talked about how friendly Taiwanese people are and the differences between Taiwan and their native country. Basically, if you said you loved Taiwan and liked Taiwanese culture you won. Most of the winners also spoke in Taiyu or Taiwanese despite it being a Mandarin Chinese competition. The judge who spoke at the very end even spoke Taiyu...when he spoke Mandarin he had the worst Taiyu accent he sounded like A-bien (Chen Shui Bian), the current president-also known as Taiwan's George W. Bush.

It was the biggest joke of a competition I have ever been in. Also, the winners were mostly chosen for the photo op afterwards more than the quality of their speeches. A couple of them deserved it and I didn't catch all of the speeches, but I distinctly remember some of the speeches that were complete vapid shit and they won. More than 90% of the winners were white and blonde (even though most of the contestants were Asian), they threw in two Asians (one from Korea and one from Malaysia for good measure though). The one from Malaysia could barely speak Mandarin and had a horrible accent and a piss poor speech but it was about how much Taiwan was better than Malaysia (more freedom to speak his mind-what a joke) so they awarded him of course. The Korean girl talked about how diverse Taipei is and people are so nice to her and she even sang a Taiwanese song at the end. The other Caucasians that won talked about how much they loved shopping for counterfeit goods or eating Taiwanese street/junk food. Concerning the guy who won first place, I can't really say anything because I couldn't understand a thing he said. He was a Caucasian guy in a suit studying at Taida but he spoke with a really thick Beijing accent, I think those two factors assured that he would get first place. Second place went to a middle aged blonde mom who is married to a Taiwanese man, most of her speech was in Taiwanese. She was actually pretty entertaining and I think she deserved to win.

I should probably watch what I say though because despite the government's propoganda I would not consider Taiwan to be that democratic. The DPP party has its own TV channels and news stations where they spew propoganda and smear the opposing party. They even manufactured rumors about the Ma Ying Jeou, KMT's strongest candidate. Apparently, they said that it was impossible for him to afford to send his daughters to American private universities on a mayor's salary....but they neglected to mention his wife, who is a successful businesswoman. But people here basically trust whatever is said on TV or published in a newspaper so Ma's approval rating plummeted from over 80% to less than 50%.

It's also gotten violent. Just yesterday in front of the CKS memorial a driver who support Chen Shui Bian ran over a reporter multiple times. He reversed then accelerated, reversed etc. The reporter didn't die though and I don't know what happened to the driver. I'm told that it's very dangerous to speak out against the current administration since most people in Taiwan support the DPP despite all the corruption. The only news article I could find online in English was this and it differs a little from what I read because it says a truck ran over several photojournalists. That's all that's mentioned about the 'incident' too. I'm told the incident is all over Taiwan's news stations though (I don't have a TV though).

For those that don't know the protests and barricade of CKS Memorial is due to the current administration's wish to alter the name of the arch. I think originally they wanted to tear down the whole arch but I think they settled on just renaming it "Liberty Square" (zi you guang chang). KMT or blue party supporters oppose it because it is a historic and cultural relic that they think shouldn't be touched.

Anyways, from what I'm told the national police force (DPP) is at odds with Taipei's police, which is KMT. Obviously, there's nothing Taipei's police can do though. So the people themselves have tried to protest and have been beaten by the police and even run over by automobiles now...

So yeah things were much nicer for me in Taiwan when I was completely clueless about politics. Society here is really chaotic and fucked up. My grandmother's friend who is in her 80s was in a taxi cab when she arrived at the airport. The cab driver (who are almost always DPP supporters bc of their class) asked her where her allegiance lies. When she said KMT the cab driver made her get out on the side of the road and then he drove off...Note that the airport is not even in Taipei but a different city (Taoyuan) at least 45 minutes away.

I was talking to my Thai friends and they said that Taiwan is turning into Thailand. In Thailand the president, Thaksin, was kicked out of the country by a military coup. They say that Taiwan needs a military coup as well...