The Foreigner in Formosa

300 - Movie Commentary

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.

-Dream, in Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

[Spoiler Alert:  If you're looking forward to seeing 300 for the first time, you may not want to read any of what follows.  If however, you're reluctant to go because the trailers make it look like a bit of a freak show, then this post may change your mind.]

Read a lot of reviews about 300 before seeing it a week ago, many of them rather foolish.  Frank Miller, writer of the graphic novel, is on record as saying that he was trying to mythologize the battle, rather than retell it in a historically-accurate manner.  On that basis, it seems a bit besides the point to complain about historical inaccuracies, gargantuan rhinos and Persians by the way of Mordor.

And yet, when I first saw the movie a week ago, my feelings were mixed.  Sure, there were a lot of great images and battle sequences, but the rational mind still couldn't help but get in the way.  What ABOUT all of those historical inaccuracies, gargantuan rhinos and Persians straight out of the land of Mordor?

My reaction was quite different upon a second viewing last night.  Because it was then that it sunk in more clearly that the events were being narrated by a one-eyed man in front of a campfire.  The narrator is Dilios, the sole Spartan survivor of the battle.  King Leonidas has chosen him to return to Sparta as a messenger of the battle's outcome - not because of any ocular injury, but because Dilios is blessed with a gift with words that is almost unique among his people.  (Spartans were so well-known for their curt manner of speech that our word "laconic" is derived from the geographical part of the Peloponnese in which the Spartans lived.)

By the film's conclusion, the last piece of the puzzle falls into place.  The entire movie is nothing more than Dilios' speech before the Battle of Plataea.  So what we, the audience, have just witnessed for the last few hours is not a literal account, but Miller's attempt to imagine how a Greek storyteller, circa 479 B.C., would have told it.  It's a fish story, a tall tale, a wildly-exaggerated war story.  As Greek myths usually are.

No self-respecting Greek storyteller would ever tell of a hero-king who as a boy once killed a mangy wolf half-starved with hunger and injured from being driven away from its pack by the others.  No, it's got to be 8 feet long, with fangs of black steel and eyes that glow like hot coals.  That's the way myths work.

Whether it actually happened or not is completely irrelevant.  What matters is that it's an allegory that foreshadows the main event that follows.  Storytellers love that kind of stuff.  Even baby Hercules got his start by strangling Hera's serpents in his crib.

Likewise, the priests responsible for not giving the hero-king the aid he needed can't be otherwise decent, ordinary clerics.  No, they've got to be grotesque, misshapen mutants from the Forbidden Zone, who satisfy their obscene desires with the beautiful, drugged-out maidens entrusted to their care.  Moreover, their opposition couldn't have been because of an honest, yet benighted, zeal for religious law and custom.  No, they were black-hearted traitors - in the pay of the Great King himself!

I could go on.  The movie's name should have been 1000, since 700 Thespians (not actors, but inhabitants of the democratic town of Thespia) were present.  But our Spartan storyteller can't resist the urge to claim the glory - ALL the glory - for his fallen comrades.  In fairness, a Thespian bard might have jealously done the same.  Because to the ancient Greeks, winning eternal glory for one's name was everything.  Rally round boys, and dream of the fame you may win in the battle to come!  If you're lucky, you might meet and kill a strange behemoth from a foreign land.  Don't think it can't be done.  Why, didn't I tell you that one of the brave 300 even felled a gargantuan rhino (remember that improbable creature?) with a single throw of his spear?

The enemy's number is vast.  They're fearsome, but not immortal.  At their head is the Great King, who commands and ensorcells them with his spell-binding voice, which is almost supernaturally compelling.  He's more than a man - 10 feet tall - I saw him myself.*  But he may also be...LESS than a man, if you know what I mean.

You may have heard before that he fancies himself a god.  Funny thing though.  He bleeds just like the rest of us.

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* Our Spartan storyteller of course exaggerates much, though it's not clear if he's even aware of it.

I experienced a similar phenomenon once several years ago, while driving through a rural area at 55 mph late at night.  In the darkness, a huge ghostly grey wolf, or giant dog, suddenly appeared in my headlights.  Its eyes glowed, though my 20th Century mind knew that was merely because the light was reflecting from the back of its retinas.

There was no time to react.  To my horror, it was run down instantly with a sickening thud.  There was nothing I could have done.  Pulling off the road, I weighed the possibilities.  If it was a wolf, I had just killed an animal that was endangered or threatened in the part of the country I was in.  On the other hand, if it was a dog, then I had probably killed some farmer's poor animal.  (Sorry environmentalists, but the thought that I might have killed some child's beloved pet is what distressed me the most.)

Fetching a flashlight from the glove compartment, I walked up and down the section of road I had just traveled.  But the carcass of no wolf or great dane could I find.  In its stead was only the bloody, lifeless body of a small red fox.

My imagination, in that split-second in the car, had inflated a puny little fox into a huge, preternatural wolf.  So it doesn't surprise me that that in the frenzy of combat - with spears stabbing, weapons slashing - that a Spartan fearing for his life might perceive an attacker as a needle-toothed goblin instead of an ordinary, all-too human, man.

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POSTSCRIPT:  It was telling that during one of the final scenes, when the Persians have surrounded the brave 300, and are drawing their lethal arrows upon them, that a Taiwanese sitting beside me blurted out, "Zhong guo ren" (The Chinese).

Interesting.

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UPDATE (May 30/07):  On the subject of fish stories, I was recently reminded of "The War of the Simpsons," episode, which concludes when a bait shop owner is asked if anyone has ever caught a giant local catfish nicknamed "General Sherman":

Well, one fella came close.  Went by the name of Homer.  Seven feet tall he was, with arms like tree trunks.  And his eyes were like steel, cold and hard.  Had a shock of hair - red.  Like the fires of Hell.

(Images from Filmthreat.studiostore.com and Devir.com)

A Few Links

From Strategy Page:

Taiwan's movement towards a volunteer army

Birth of a Cyber-Cold War with China?

From Taiwan's China Post:

Engineer steals American submarine silencing technology for China

America lacks defense against Chinese supersonic aircraft carrier-sinking missiles

On The Sunny Side Of The Street

I'm not going to heap scorn upon this China Post editorial.  Because there are days when I, too, think things might work out for the best in the Middle Kingdom:

Today's communist leaders in China are pragmatists, who believes in Deng Xiaoping's "cat theory" of getting results rather than Mao Zedong's egalitarianism of glorifying poverty on an equal footing. The merit of the law should be judged by the answer to a single question: Do the people want it?

But the mainland people may want more-free elections, free press and independent courts, for example. Clearly, the National People's Congress is in no hurry to work on these political reforms, which are lagging far behind. These are the reforms that can best safeguard against the abuse of power by corrupt officials. So, after property reform, political reform must be on the agenda.

Already, grassroots pressure for such reform is mounting. The rising middle class and increasingly well-educated people will demand political reforms that are now put on the back burner. If the past is an indication, we have reasons to be optimistic that such reforms will be carried out in another decade or two, if not sooner.

China's communists may be more pragmatic than they once were, but is that pragmatism directed at doing what's good for their country, or merely doing whatever allows them to hold their positions of power and privilege?  A selfless utilitarian might, out of a sense of pragmatism, be willing to allow himself to be voted out of office in order to better serve the needs of society.  But communist oligarchs obsessed with clinging to power may be much less inclined to do so.

Furthermore, while I agree that the well-educated will demand political reforms, it is not at all inevitable that they will succeed in getting these demands met.  Tienanmen Square happened once, and it can happen again.  And again and again.  Heinlein once depicted a society whose subjects were completely co-opted by a fascist state; they were perfectly free to make all the money they wanted, and as long they tended to their own gardens, the State was content to leave them alone.  The Federation was unapologetically brutal to those who dared meddle in politics, however.

"Starship Troopers" may have been fiction, but a few societies HAVE paralleled it in real-life.  Could China take that path as well?  I wonder...

There ARE indeed hopeful developments in China, but there are others the sober observer cannot ignore.  The creation of the "Great Firewall", continuing persecution against certain religious minorities, a blithely amoral foreign policy - these are all things that suggest China might be moving in a darker direction.

To this list, I might add China's treatment of the free and democratic state of Taiwan.  A few years ago, a Taiwanese industrialist doing business there was threatened, with tax audits and overzealous safety inspections, into signing a document declaring his "opposition" to Taiwanese independence.  It was only last year that Chinese arm-twisting caused an airplane carrying Taiwan's president to be forbidden from flying over Mexican airspace.  And let it not be forgotten that China currently aims a thousand missiles at Taiwan, in an effort to terrorize the population into submission. 

Taiwan is the canary in the coal mine, and how China treats it should be of interest to everyone.  Today, it's Taiwanese industrialists who are being bullied into taking political stances; tomorrow, it may be businessmen from YOUR country.  Today, China prevents Taiwan's president from freely traveling; tomorrow, it may prevent the president of some other democratic country it's displeased with from doing so.

And the missiles?  Well, TODAY they, and other weapons, are targeted upon Taiwan.  And tomorrow?  Well, by now I hope you've gotten the picture.

Get Up And 'Go'

How can anyone resist this?  A Taiwanese kid is taunted and bullied by schoolmates because of the port-wine stain that covers nearly a quarter of his face.  He discovers a board game, Go, and practices relentlessly.  At age 27, he wins a world championship, and a short children's version of his autobiography becomes part of the educational curriculum.

It'd be nice to think that his life story would both inspire kids to reach their potential, as well as teach them to show some humanity towards their fellows.  Yeah, it'd sure be nice.

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UPDATE (Apr 1/07):  And now...the OTHER side of the story:

His father was a stern teacher. Whenever Chou lost a game he received severe punishment from his father.

Lovely man.

He's Not Dead, Ma - He's Just Sleeping.

So my gray-haired old mother called me the other day, and somewhere between telling me the weekly weather forecast and her menu plans for the next few days, she mentioned this story:

Rat poison found in US pet food

Now, Mom happens to own a (live) pooch of her own, so it's hard for me to know if she's exaggerating the scale of the story.  Nevertheless, she tells me that a few wealthy people lost dogs to the dog food in question, and that these are the kind of people who can afford expensive attorneys.

The China angle here is that the rat poison may have come from adulterated wheat gluten from the Middle Kingdom.  And that's maybe not great PR for the Chinese right now, what with their big trade surpluses and all.

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UPDATE (Apr 6/07):  Earlier this week, it was determined that the contaminant was not rat poison, but melamine, a chemical sometimes found in Asian fertilizers.  In addition, there are suspicions that hundreds of dogs may have died, although there are only 15 confirmed cases so far.  American imports of wheat gluten from the Chinese company in question have been suspended.

UPDATE (Apr 21/07):  There may only be 15 CONFIRMED cases, but statisticians now say that 39,000 cats and dogs became sick or died from the poisoned pet food.

Heaven, I'm In Heaven

I like Taiwan, but confess I've never heard it compared to 'paradise' before:

"What we want [in Hong Kong] is one person, one vote. But [current Chief Executive Donald Tsang] criticized us, saying that is a dream that can only be found in paradise. According to his logic, the people of Taiwan are all in the paradise," [said Emily Lau, the chairwoman of a Hong Kong pro-democracy party.]  "Hong Kong cannot compare with Taiwan in this regard."

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UPDATE (Apr 6/07):  A good column on the Hong Kong "election" can be found here.

The Problem With Lists

Last week a Taiwanese nationalist found Chiang Kai-shek in a book listing the 100 most evil dictators of all time, and said something a bit foolish:

"[Since Chiang is on this list,] from the perspective of foreign academics, Chiang, Mussolini and Hitler were equally cruel."

Um, no.  I could come up with a list of my 100 most favorite foods, and would probably like numbers 79 and 84 equally well.  But I'm reasonably certain that I'd prefer #1 to #84.

Sorry, Chiang may have been bad, but he wasn't Hitler.  It's not even close.

Prison Term Looms After Militant Chiu Yi Loses Appeal

Back in 2004, Chinese Nationalist Party legislator Chiu Yi decided to contest a narrow presidential election in Taiwan by standing atop a truck with a bullhorn, and ordering it to crash through a police barricade around a courthouse in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung.

Oddly enough though, Taiwan's China Post neglects to mention that, saying only that Chiu tried to "break into" the building with a mob.  The Post then mentions the aftermath:

Eight police guards were injured in a melee that followed.

No, not exactly.  At least ONE policeman was injured when the truck smashed into the barricade, not from any melee that happened afterwards.  He was led away in agony with a sprained (or broken?) arm - I saw the tape.

That's assault with a motor vehicle, in my book.

KMT To CPC: Kidnap And Murder Taiwan's President; We Don't Mind

Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party bellyaches about military evacuation drills for the President in case the Communist Party of China orders a decapitation strike:

"The military wasted money just to create a war nightmare to impress upon the people the possibility of the enemy at the door before the two important elections," [KMT legislator Lin Yu-fang] charged.

If I recall correctly, the military undertakes these drills about once a year, so the charge that this is something new to influence elections is a bit hollow.  The Taiwanese can sleep well knowing the KMT takes their country's security so seriously.

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UPDATE (Apr 15/07):  There was an air-raid drill in northern Taiwan on Apr 10th at about 2 pm, which lasted about a half hour.  In my place of employment, we were told to turn out the lights and close the curtains.  Naturally, the KMT complained that that, too, was an election gimmick.

Japan Wins Taiwanese Hearts And Minds

So I read that Taiwan has at least 5 Japanese-inspired restaurants featuring waitresses clad in French maid outfits.  And the waitresses greet guests with a curtsy and a, "Welcome home, master."

That just beats the HECK out of China's panda offer.  And it's further proof that the West is falling SERIOUSLY behind Taiwan in some of the finer amenities of civilization.

What The Smart People Think

Heh, heh.

I don't usually bother discussing polls taken in Taiwan, but this statistic was interesting:

...85 percent of [Taiwanese] 20 to 30 year-olds and 80 percent with a university degree or higher education favor independence.  [emphasis added]

Gotta remember that number next time Taiwan's China Post prints an editorial claiming the "rational and educated" within Taiwan prefer the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its policies of surrender.

Female Taiwanese Nationalist Legislators Propose Corporal Punishment For Sex Offenders

It was in all the papers here on Monday, but here's a link to the Taipei Times' story.  Um, is anybody here even thinking about how well that's gonna go down in Europe?  Because The View from Taiwan reports that France is STILL pressing to supply weapons to the Chinese Communists, and we know that it's only prevented from doing so because of opposition from the European public.

Yet now some Taiwanese legislators want to throw away their country's democratic bona fides and all the goodwill that goes along with it by CANING people?

Sounds like some Taiwanese nationalists need another one of Vice-President Annette Lu's lectures on the value of "soft power".

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UPDATE (Mar 21/07):  Michael Turton sees this as going nowhere - typical nonsense one should expect from political primary season.

Pro-Beijing Media Bias In Taiwan's China Post

Yeah, I know.  Surprise, surprise.

Headline in the China Post:  50,000 people vie for tour guide license to host mainland visitors

Sounds like China Fever.  All those folks wanna get in on all those tourist dollars.  Nothing wrong with that.

But wait, the China Post forgot to inform us there's something else explaining the increased number of people taking the tour guide tests.  A Taipei Times story discusses expectations of future Chinese tourists, but mentions something else, too:

Relaxed qualification requirements for tour guide licenses led to a record 50,000-plus applicants sitting this year's tour guide exam, held nationwide at 13 venues on Saturday and yesterday.

[...]

Unlike previous years, where applicants needed a college diploma or to have graduated from high-school with at least one year of experience in the travel industry, this year the candidates could apply for the test so long as they had a high school diploma.

Ah-ha.  Econ 201 time.  If the price of a commodity goes down, the quantity demanded goes up if all other things are equal.  In this case, the price of a tour guide license went down (in the sense that it became easier to apply for the license).  So yes, one would expect the number of applicants to increase.

We see now that there are really two factors here driving the increased number of applicants: relaxed license requirements AND expectations of job growth in the tourist industry.  The Taipei Times simply gave the reader a more balanced picture of the facts here.

And There'd Be Even MORE Tourists If It Were Dedicated To Mao Tse-tung

Tough to defend the existence of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on moral grounds, so the latest argument is a naked appeal to economic self-interest.  From Sunday's editorial in the China Post:

Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall has become a tourist attraction that's extremely popular with tourists, especially visitors from mainland China.  It contributes immensely to the development of Taiwan's tourist industry.

The abolition of this historic site would deprive the island of a major tourist attraction and do tremendous harm to the lives of countless businesspeople who rely on this tourist center to make a living.

Making pilgrimages to monuments to authoritarianism is about the LAST thing that subjects of a communist state ought to be doing.  If Chinese tourists come to Taiwan, let them visit monuments showing Taiwan's commitment to democracy instead.

Lenin's Tomb is a pretty big tourist attraction too, but that's entirely beside the point.  Bury the sonofabitch already.

Sonic Teenager Repellent

Kinda cool, and kinda creepy at the same time.  But really, people want to take this to court, saying it's discriminatory?  Yeah, well, so's rap music, but I don't see old codgers suing over it.

Dealing With The Past

For some time now, I've been reflecting on the similar situation that Hungary, Estonia and Taiwan face in removing statues dedicated to communism / authoritarianism, but it took Dr. Keating to actually write about it.  Finding myself in such agreement, I had to search pretty hard to find ANYTHING to disagree with:

A side issue of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial [relative to renaming it] is whether to tear down the walls.  A few extra gates could be built to ease access, but taking down the walls will serve no great purpose.

The rationale behind the proposal to tear down the walls was to reflect "democratic openness" in keeping with its new name (the Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall).  This initially seemed to me an exercise in overly esoteric symbolism, but a few days later, I changed my mind.  Instead of being a serious suggestion, the proposal should be viewed as a diversion (or perhaps an opening bid in a negotiation).  I mean, for days afterward, the big story wasn't "Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall to be renamed", but "KMT vows to defend memorial walls".

Masterful.  And if the memorial IS renamed, President Chen ends up looking magnanimous when he says, "OK, you win.  The walls can stay."

Aside from that, there's something Dr. Keating brought up that I wanted to elaborate a bit more upon:

...above Budapest, the Liberty Statue monument prominently stands on Gellert Hill overlooking the city and the Danube River.

This monument too has received its own rectification -- a rectification of inscription.

Originally erected in 1947 by the conquering Russians, it used to bear the hypocritical inscription: "Erected by the Hungarian Nation in memory of the liberating Russian heroes." Some liberation!

The Hungarians quickly realized the destructive and oppressive nature of these heroes. In 1956 they rebelled and were severely put down.

(Liberty Statue in Budapest, Hungary.  Image from Academic Programs International.)

Dr. Keating didn't have space in a single newspaper column to flesh out the expression "severely put down".  I'll retell but a single story that readers might not be familiar with:

When the Red Army rolled into Hungary in 1956, their tanks initially took relatively heavy losses against Molotov cocktails.  To prevent this, the Soviets did what anyone pupilled in the ethical school of Marx and Lenin would have done: they simply tied Hungarians to their tanks and used them as human shields against the flaming glass projectiles.

Some liberation, indeed.  Reckon I wouldn't judge too harshly Hungarians if they busted a Red Army statue into a couple hundred pieces after hearing that some petty local magistrate wanted to present it as a token of eternal friendship to the Russians.

Restorations

OK, I knew that the name of the Chiang Kai-Shek Airport was initially supposed to be the Taoyuan International Airport, and was only given that name because the dictator died.  So in a way, renaming it back to the "Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport" is only restoring it to what it should have been called in the first place.

But I didn't know that the building of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall also usurped a previous plan:

In July 1973, ‘Taipei reading’ (volume 67) had an article about the project, ‘Ying-Pien New Community.’ The government originally planned to raise 1500 billion NTD to build a ‘modern business center’ across 62 acre area in Hsin-Yi Road. There would be five 18- to 50-level business buildings, three 24- to 30-level international hotels for tourists and apartments, four department stores, conference hall, world trade center, culture centers, and entertainment facilities. There would be transportation systems between buildings, and moving tracks for pedestrians. In the cover and content of this journal, we can see the scenographs, and all of them are towering glass-covering buildings. This project is full of the imagination of ‘modern and technology advance,’ and it was set to start the development in June, 1974. However, Chiang Kai-Shek died in 1975, and the plan was suddenly changed to use the land for Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall.

(from Chih-Hung Wang, via Global Voices Online)

Mischievous thought:  If the name of Taiwan's main international airport can be restored, then why can't the original vision for the memorial's parcel of land be as well?  The Chinese Nationalist Party never ceases to claim that Chiang was the sole cause of Taiwan's economic miracle, so what better monument could there be to such a man than a few 50-story skyscrapers?

Capitulationists Offer The Great King His Tribute Of Earth And Water

...by offering to accept China's "1992 Consensus", which would surrender Taiwan's sovereignty to the Communist leviathan in perpetuity.

Sprucing-Up The Place

Thursday's Taipei Times displayed a front-page photo of the Presidential Office, with a potted plant set in a place formerly reserved for a portrait of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China.

(Photo from the March 15th edition of the Taipei Times)

A day later, an editorial in the China Post read, "DPP's attempt to cut ties with China will backfire."

Much as I'd like to say they're all wrong, I can't.  Yes, I know why President Chen, a TAIWANESE nationalist, would wish to remove a symbol of CHINESE nationalism.  But replacing a picture of Sun with a PLANT?

That's a slap in the face.  It needlessly mobilizes his political enemies, while antagonizing voters who straddle the fence.  When you're engaged in a struggle with the Chinese Nationalists over the name of the Post Office and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, why open another front?  Removing the "China" from the titles of the Taiwan's Post Office and other state institutions is a worthy cause necessary for distinguishing this "China" from the REAL one.  And dismantling the cult of Chiang isn't de-sinification; it's democratization.

But near as I can tell, Sun Yat-sen, unlike Chiang, never hurt Taiwan.  In politics, you have to pick your battles, and I'm sorry to say, I have agree with the China Post when it says that Chen is over-reaching here.

Hope I'm wrong.

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UPDATE (MAR 19/07):  A few townships controlled by the Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party removed portraits of SITTING President Chen Shui-bian during the height of the anti-Chen protests in September / October 2006.

All The King's Horses, And All The King's Men

I had to read this story twice to fit it all together.  In the Taiwanese port city of Kaohsiung, a statue of Chiang Kai-shek was taken down recently.  The mayor of the Taiwanese city of Tahsi requested the statue, but he didn't want it for HIS town.  Instead, he hoped to send it as a gift to the village in China where Chiang was born.

So the trucks rumble into Tahsi sometime before 5 in the morning.  I'd like to think that the lead driver was a broad-faced teamster smoking a cheap stogie.  Driver steps from the cab and says, "We got your Chiang statue for ya.  Just sign right here, mac."

One little problem though.  The 8.17 meter statue had been broken up.*  Into 200 pieces.

Butterfingers.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Tahsi is in Xikou, China.  He's trying to persuade the Chi-coms of Chiang's village to accept the statue of their former enemy.  And apparently, he's been making progress.  So he gets a phone call, telling him that, y'know that statue you were kinda hopin' to give away as a gift?

Well, there's been a little complication.

The China Post reports the mayor was "heartbroken".  Having lost a set of dinner plates on my last move**, I know exactly how he feels.

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* The statue was 8 meters tall?  Just how much did the damn thing weigh, anyway?  In defense of the teamsters, it must have been one heck of a job even to load up the broken pieces.

** I didn't, really.  I just made that part up.

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UPDATE (Mar 20/07):  Looks like the statue was only segmented into 79 pieces instead of 200, and my footnoted questions were appropriate:

[The sculptor of the statue said that] the way the bureau removed the statue was correct given the statue's size and weight.

Taiwan's Trade With Denmark At All-Time High

The story's from a few weeks ago.

Bilateral trade between Taiwan and Denmark
set a new record of US$907.8 million in 2006 thanks to the signing of
a double taxation avoidance treaty between the two countries in
August, 2005, according to Taiwan's representative to the North
European country.

Those numbers, of course, could easily change - particularly if some Danish newpaper takes it upon itself to publish cartoons of the Prophet Chiang Kai-shek.  Peace Be Upon Him.

Was Chiang Kai-shek Really So Bad?

That was the question the China Post's Joe Hung posed in his column on Monday.  Let me begin by stating that it's entirely fair for Hung to enumerate the beneficial things Chiang did for Taiwan (though at the same time, some of the things he lists are debatable, even refutable).*  And I certainly take his point that historians should endeavor to tell all the facts, not just cherry-pick the ones they happen to like.

But when he says that history isn't judgment, I confess to being a bit baffled.**  Can we now expect the China Post will stop slamming President Chen Shui-bian's record?  Because by definition, Chen's record IS history, isn't it?  And didn't Dr. Huang just finish telling us that that's something we're not ALLOWED to judge?

By strange coincidence, I ran into a quote during my vacation arguing rather the opposite, by Yale Classics professor Donald Kagan:

Finally, I must explain and defend my use of what has been called "counterfactual history".  Some readers may be troubled by my practice of comparing what happened with what might have happened had individuals or groups of people made different decisions or taken different actions.  I believe that anyone who tries to write history rather than merely chronicle events must consider what might have happened; the only question is how explicitly he reveals what he is doing.  Historians interpret what they recount, which is to say they judge it.  They cannot say that an action was wise or foolish without also saying or implying that it was better or worse than some other action that might have been taken - that, after all, is "counter-factual history".  [emphasis added]  All true historians engage in the practice, with greater or less self-consciousness.  Thucydides, perhaps the greatest of historians, does this on many occasions, as when he makes a judgment of Pericles' strategy in the Peloponnesian War:  "such abundant grounds had Pericles at the time for his forecast that Athens might quite easily have triumphed in this war over the Peloponnesians alone." (2.65.13; emphasis added [by Kagan])

I think there are important advantages in being so explicit.  A clear statement puts the reader on notice that the assertion in question is a judgment, an interpretation rather than a fact.  It also helps to avoid the excessive power of the fait accompli, making clear that what really occurred was not the inevitable outcome of superhuman forces or of equally determined and equally mysterious forces within the historical actors.  Instead, what happened was the result of decisions made by human beings acting in a world they [did] not fully control.  It suggests that both the decisions and their outcomes could well have been different.  I continue this practice in examining the life of Pericles.

- p xiii-xiv of Donald Kagan's Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy

I perhaps should have underlined Kagan's claim that all true historians judge history, whether they're conscious of it or not.  Because after making a point of admonishing his readers not to judge history, Hung goes on to do exactly that:

The fact, however, is that despite [the 2-28 Massacre and the White Terror], Chiang was a good autocrat...But for [Chiang's] defense force and American intervention, Taiwan would have been a province of the People's Republic of China before the end of 1950.

Now, I happen to agree it was A GOOD THING that Chiang helped prevent Taiwan from falling to the communists, but I also recognize that that sentiment is a JUDGMENT.  A judgment with which most Marxists, and more than a few leftists, are liable to disagree.

I'll close with a story about a friend of mine, a semi-professional videographer.  Fellow went down to 2-28 Memorial Park with an interpreter on February 28th to conduct a few interviews with family members of 2-28 Massacre victims.  He's hoping to do a documentary on 2-28 sometime, though he apparently has other projects on the front burner right now.  Anyways, instead of a FEW interviews, he was surprised to find that a long line of Taiwanese old-timers began to form, each wanting to tell the wai-guo-ren*** with the camera their story.

Their stories were depressingly similar.  "The KMT army came to my house one night and took my father away, and we never saw him again.  I just want to know the truth of what happened to him."  This my friend heard, over and over.

I wasn't there, so I don't know what questions my friend asked of the interviewees.  For that reason, I don't know if it even occurred to him to ask them whether they thought Chiang Kai-shek was "all that bad".

I'll venture to say though, that they would have scoffed at the notion that that's something they shouldn't be allowed to judge for themselves.

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* Particularly amusing is Hung's statement that Chiang's KMT controlled runaway inflation.  While it is true that there was high inflation in Taiwan at the end of World War II, inflation increased - not decreased - during the first few years of KMT administration of the island.  The uprising that occurred on February 28, 1947 was in part a reaction against the KMT's gross economic mismanagement, if not outright thievery.

It takes a bit of nerve for Dr. Hung to praise the KMT for controlling hyperinflation, when in fact it was something they were largely responsible for.

** It should be clear what Hung's Georgetown professors were driving at.  It is indeed a tricky thing to judge those who have gone before us by our own moral standards.  The ancient Greeks and Romans lived in a different moral universe from our own, and I don't see much use in spending a lot of time denouncing them for keeping slaves.  The question then, I think, is whether the KMT of Chiang's time also dwelt in a different moral universe, or whether it was one which more closely resembled our own.

I would argue the latter.  I suspect that if one looked carefully enough, one could still find original records of slave sales in ancient Rome.  Why would anyone conceal such records, when they were a normal part of the world in which they lived?  Contrast that to the KMT's behavior after 2-28; they concealed evidence, and even attempted to justify their conduct by inventing a cockamamie story about there being 100,000 Japanese troops hiding in the Taiwanese mountains waiting - waiting! - to join forces with the Taiwanese rebels. [note to self: find the link for this later]

100,000 Japanese troops hiding out in the Taiwanese mountains.  In 1947.  Riiight.

In the world of law, people who commit crimes sometimes try to plea criminal insanity.  "I didn't know what I was doing - I didn't know what I was doing was WRONG."  But such a plea is usually not taken very seriously if it can be proven that the suspect tried to lie or conceal evidence after the fact.

Maybe that's because the act of hiding evidence is not usually associated with men who are innocent.

*** Mandarin for "foreigner"

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UPDATE (Mar 27/07):  A good Johnny Neihu piece mostly devoted to this topic.  He expresses astonishment that Chiang could not have known what his subordinates were doing in Taiwan around the time of the 2/28 Massacre:

Unaware! Chiang was a control freak who distrusted his subordinates so deeply that he countermanded his generals mid-battle. At one point he held 82 government posts simultaneously, including chief of the government, army and party, plus -- rather bizarrely, the presidencies of the Boy Scouts and National Glider Association. To believe that he could have been "unaware of conditions on Taiwan" is pushing it just a little.

I didn't know that.  Though Neihu's list DID jog my memory about something else - that Chiang's army was based on Leninist lines, with each unit having both a military and a POLITICAL officer.  The job of the latter was to spy on the former, to make certain he was loyal.  If it looked like the military officer might be mutinous, the political officer was authorized to put a bullet in his head.

It's therefore hard to imagine Chiang not being aware of the situation in Taiwan with all of those political officers floating around, each one of them regularly reporting back home.

Back In The Game

NINE weeks to get a computer fixed?  And there are still software issues?  Fortunately, none of you is here to see me hulking-out right now.

Might just be time to consider keeping a backup computer on hand for times like this when the first one goes kabloey.  Although this internet cafe isn't too bad: smoke-free and not terribly noisy.