...and all through the house not a creature was stirring except yours truly packing mediocre clothes into a blue duffel bag.
I stand at the brink ladies and gentlemen, as if I haven't hyped this up enough yet, you'll just have to get used to my giddiness. My body grows but the passion and humor never go away: as I dance in my room to The Doors throwing belts and socks on the bed. "Peacefrog"s a great song to wake up and get ready to in the morning - same for packing for trips for Taiwan for school.
The jabs about me causing an international incident in the Pacific, or that it's Thailand I'm visiting and not for school; are all appreciated. I've had running obsessions first with Japan, then Hong Kong, and China with Taiwan as the newest addition. My trip feels like a massive blind date in a way: what I've know/learned/seen about Taiwan has come from books and articles online.
Gathering intel on the country from all the myriad sources has shown me an avenue in which to steer this week-long blind date. Not a whole lot of movies out there on the history of Taiwan, "Tug of War" is decent. The focus of attention constantly bends in the direction of China, without which Taiwan as we see it today would be completely different if not for the mainland.
After WWII ended, China's two major political/revolutionary parties had to settle the score for control of the middle kingdom. The Communists under Mao beat the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek forcing him and his troops to relocate to Taiwan in 1949. From then on it was a steady though difficult climb up from an agricutural economy to one of industrial development. This transition lasted about four decades; and was done without help from the international community which increasingly shut Taiwan out of the global scene by cutting ties and officially recognizing the mainland under Mao and the Chinese Communist Party.
That 'problem' I mentioned stems from the above selection in that too big a majority of movies on Taiwanese history start in 1945 with the Nationalist exodus. But its not like the island wasn't there before - it just wasn't as loud as the rest of the world at the time. In 1895 Taiwan became Japan's frist colonial possesion, and kept it under its imperial administration for half a century. The physical ease to which Taiwan developed industrially is an aknowledgement to the ingenuity of their former occupiers. Japan poured a lot of resources to develop its first colony and this motivation to make it closer to the top with their colonial peers at the time ended up laying the groundwork for Taiwan's future economic success.
I'm off now to fold more clothes and "borrow" some extra batteries from my roomates.
Zai Jian until next time
