Harumi

Well, in danger of having this thread moved: I will answer your question.

The Chinese-Taiwanese conflict has been going on ever since the end of WWII, after the Japanese left their occupation, and the Nationalists moved their base to our island.

I think in the beginning, they were happy to see the Chinese come back and chase away the Japanese. You see, they trusted them. But instead of order, the Chinese brought chaos. They treated the Taiwanese like war spoils, and raped the women, stole their food, wrecked their homes...

Well, obviously, you can guess that after a while, the Taiwanese started wondering if perhaps they would have been better off with the Japanese. You see, the Japanese, although they didn't treat them very well, created order, which is a basis of trust, and the people were more or less content. Not happy, but at least they were safe, which is a very important thing in a society. Without trust, there is no security, and for a while Taiwan was very much like an anarchy, until the Nationalists came around.

Don't you just love my attempts at tying this thing together?

Anyways, from then on, there's huge conflict between the two places. Taiwan has after a while grown in economy, because of its capitalistic society. We're very well off, with less than 1% of the population beneath the poverty line. This makes China less than happy at the idea of giving us up of course...Not that any of the money is going to them, other than trade, but anyways...

Yeah. Even in America, the Chinese will treat as badly if they know that we're from Taiwan. My godmother mentioned what had happened where she lived. In a Children's Museum, they decided to create a Chinese one.

The Chinese insisted on the fact that no Taiwanese flag be displayed.

And then they had the audacity to NOT show up when it came time to help out. Everyone was pissed of course, at the hypocrisy.

One of the people there, and American, thought that it'd be a cool idea to write Chinese characters on the lanterns.

Well, they all got their revenge there. When the Chinese came back, on the ceiling, hung lamps in Chinese characters saying:

"China is the worst country in the world!"

"Chinese people are stupid!"

"China should go back to the hellhole it came from, and sink!"



Oooo...that was so very satisfying.

See what happens when you break trust? You get made fun of. Not good at all.

victorialis

Interesting that you mention order. I get the idea that this has been a central value in Chinese culture, historically.

Order has a bad reputation these days. In the free parts of the world, there seems to be a shared notion that anywhere there is order, we're not going to be able to do what we want.

It's apparent on this board, in particular, just how widespread and generally accepted that shared notion is -- that order necessarily involves some form of fascism.

Order has an upside: stability. Very little that is good and lasting can happen without some degree of stability. Otherwise, all the great new ideas just get swamped in a stew of constant change.

I've watched (not closely, but with interest) how the Chinese have been getting on with resisting the temptation to ideologically "improve" Hong Kong now that it has reverted to Chinese control.

If they tinker too much, HK will stop making money. And they don't want that. Nobody wants that, AFAIK.

Harumi

Ever read L.E. Modesitt and his Chronicles from Recluce series? He addresses this very thing. In the book there are two 'opposing' forces, one that is chaos and order.

The people of Recluce are of Order, and those of Fairhaven are of Chaos.

The people of Chaos are supposedly the bad people, but he makes a case for something else: people need both. You see, chaos needs order to give it form, otherwise it would destroy itself, and order needs chaos to grow, otherwise it would rot in the sea of change.

Pretty interesting, and utterly fascinating. That's why it's best to have a BALANCE.

I wrote an essay on it once, but it was on anarchy and dictatorship. I preferred dictatorship over the other. We were supposed to choose one or the other extreme.

Okay, I think we're still on track, except we've pretty much turned this from a discussion of trust to a discussion of order.



It still makes sense...somewhat.