Cycling Through 228

Chiayi Memorial

During my ride to Chiayi last Sunday I came across two separate memorials to what is known as "The February 28 Incident" or simply, "228"-- an episode of mass violence in which the Chinese nationalist soldiers and police killed and executed tens of thousands of Taiwanese within the course of three weeks in a large scale exercise of state violence. In Taiwan the three simple digits still carry tremendous weight and meaning that would be otherwise lost on a cultural outsider as the event has followed a historical trajectory that pervades Taiwanese society at all levels, from those who remembered and even perpetrated the violence, to those who remember hearing about it in hushed tones behind locked doors as a deafening silence. Younger Taiwanese all recognize the numerological code, but often conflate it into the Formosa Movement and other clashes between citizens and the state.

Nearly every area in Taiwan has some kind of 228 memorial as political and social forces necessitated its reverence. In some cases a memorial stood in defiance in other cases in memoriam. Of the memorials I passed on my ride, each has integrated established narratological forms into the construction to reify the event and secure "the story" of 228 in the public consciousness. The memorial in Yunlin is inscribed with a short narrative to explain 228 to the viewer, and the Chiayi memorial uses a memorial sculpture depicting a history of oppression at the hands of outsiders.

It has been argued that the February 28 Incident and its aftermath made a distinct Taiwanese history knowable through a complex system of iconalization, mythmaking, ritualization and deployment in a process Stanford historian Hayden White describes as “narratological causality”, which asks us to “consider the relationship between what we perceive to be the ‘facts’ of history and their performative and narrative construction.”(White 1987, 194). The events become less of a “true account” of the past, but rather a constructed mythologization of events in an “ irreducible overlap between what has happened and what is said to have happened” as historians and political actors impose their own treatment of history.

The first open commemoration activities for February 28 resulted following the end of martial law in 1987, when the newly formed opposition party, the DPP, sponsored seventeen commemoration events across Taiwan as an extension of the opposition movement (Edmonson 2002, 30). The DPP used the first commemorations to introduce 228 to the public and historicize it in a manner that would link specific 228 related platforms, such as apologies and compensation, to Taiwan Independence and democratization.

Close-up of Sculpture

The initial commemorations were often put down by the authorities, which served to reenact 228 and solidify public support behind the opposition forcing the president to try to discredit the protesters by assailing their motives as political gamesmanship. Despite Lee’s public dismissal, the strategy used by the DPP forced the KMT to finally confront the February 28 Incident. In 1991, president Lee Teng-hui ordered a full investigation into the Incident with inconclusive results. In successive years Taiwan would see the first state commemoration ceremony, a memorial, museum and an apology from the president.

In 1997, the February 28 commemoration involved a parade combining a conglomeration of civic groups and government officials, both oppositional Taiwanese and “New Taiwanese” or "Mainlander". The event followed a route that brought the marchers through the historical sites of 228. The event was explained by Lin Yi Hsiung “as a symbol of social activism’s link to the Incident through a struggle against Tyranny, a battle most civic groups feel embroiled in… and the new Taiwanese discourse of Taiwan’s antagonistic relationship with China…that is why the theme of the march is ‘Remember February 28, Don’t Become Chinese’.”(Wachman 1994, 71).

Reflection Blocks

This paradigm shift of February 28 in Taiwan as a collective national memory of opposition to tyranny has expanded to embrace even the nationalist Chinese on Taiwan who had previously been targeted by the opposition as the perpetrators. China’s growing threat to Taiwan’s defacto Independence and security have become woven into the fabric of the memory of February 28 as the “aggressor”. Peng Min-ming , the DPP presidential candidate during the 1996 elections emphasized the link between foreign aggression and the Incident when he declared, “ The February 28 Incident only proves Taiwan must not unify with China, otherwise an even worse historical disaster would take place.”( Liberty Times 2004). In 2004, Peng’s sentiments were shared by the approximately 2 million people who, on February 28, linked hands, forming a human chain that spanned Taiwan, tip to tip. The event was organized partially as a campaign stunt for the upcoming presidential elections and inspired by a similar exercise in the Ukraine. The symbolism of the event was to create a wall defending the “homeland” against China’s missiles. The event was the high point of the election (Taiwan Ri bao 2/29/2004). It also simultaneously delineated the Taiwanese "us" from the Chinese "them" and repositioned Mainlanders from "outsiders" into a collective Taiwanese "us", or at least offered to provide a bridge to reconciliation.

An excellent example of 228's location in Taiwanese life and culture comes from the 2004 presidential campaign. On March 19, 2004, the incumbent president President Chen Shui Bian and Vice-President Lu were both grazed by bullets while riding in an open motorcade. Before the public had been informed that both injuries were not life threatening, the buzz on the street returned to the February 28 Incident. Many people openly pondered the possibility of another uprising, while others prayed to the ghosts of February 28 for peace and for the welfare of their leaders. The immediate connection between the attack on the president and the violence, retribution and ethnic mistrust of the February 28 Incident demonstrates how the resonant silence of 228 combined with its politicization and reemergence as a mythologized common memory and continues to frame the Taiwanese experience in a mimetic symbol of Taiwaneseness. And in an eerie twist, the injured Chen Shui-bian narrowly won the 2004 presidential election by 0.228 per-cent of the vote; a fact that was not overlooked by his supporters.

The memory of the February 28 Incident has passed through over sixty years from a tragic event that transpired over the course of March 1947, beginning with an attack by KMT officials against an individual on a public street. Since that event, the February 28 incident had been in a state of constant negotiation and relocation in Taiwanese society. The impact of the February 28 incident as event, led the KMT authorities to publicly silence the experience in public, forcing the experiencers of 228 and their progeny to mythologize the experience in a social-political frame of disenfranchised citizens against the forced political marginalization of the Taiwanese majority in Taiwan. Despite the massive shifts in state structure, these memorials continue to play a role in creating a Taiwanese collective memory and they symbolize an imagined collective experience that is uniquely located on Taiwan.

Yunlin Memorial

In more recent years there has been an effort on the part of the central government to ignore 228 and Taiwanese have even been called upon to "forget" and "move on". This begs the question: Is there a place for this entity of 228 in the 'Greater China" narrative that seems to be the goal of Chinese nationalists on both sides of the Taiwan Strait? It seems, now that 228 has been unleashed from its decades of suppression, it is possible to let it fade beyond memory as the forgetting is voluntary and not mandatory. That is the real danger.

References:

*Edmonds, Richard Louis. Goldstein, Steven M, ed. 2001.Taiwan in the Twentieth Century: A Retrospective View. Cambridge University Press.

*Wachman, Alan M. 1994. Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization. New York, M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

*White, Hayden V.1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representaion. he Johns Hopkins University Press

The Bicycle and National Identity

Here's is a great little video of one person's Top Ten Cyclists. Some of the footage is truly amazing and inspiring. You can really get a sense of the grit it takes to even compete at this level. Only after you've hammered for a day on a bike can you fully appreciate the heroics these guys have accomplished. Look for the Lance snub.

The Bicycle and National Identity

With the Tour de Taiwan scheduled to begin on March 14, I think it is really amazing how cycling has become a significant part of Taiwan's national identity. People love to turn out and watch.

As most people know, Giant is the world's leading producer of bicycle frames and related products, but it is not the only major player in Taiwan. Several large companies work in close cooperation with smaller subcontractors that produce much of the equipment that makes its way into the professional peloton. Despite what many folks are led to believe, Taiwanese companies do not simply supply the labor to produce foreign designs, but rather conduct much of the initial R&D. The now ubiquitous compact geometry was first developed by Giant to fit more people over fewer frame sizes. This close and cooperative relationship between the OEM, subcontractor and foreign customer has allowed the bicycle industry to seep from the centralized factory compound deep into the township economy. Initially this phenomenon went against the Leninist sensibilities of the KMT during its years of political monopoly. U.S. pressure helped break the state's stranglehold on large industries and allow for small companies to grow and expand.

Taiwan's particular historical trajectory resulted in Taiwan developing the unique economic and industrial relationships between the center and the periphery. Following WWII when most Taiwanese were excluded from participating at the center of political, cultural life and state driven economic enterprise, those who owned land and could rely on extended family for labor, could deploy these resources to establish small to medium sized enterprises. It was not uncommon for young men and women of the era to have received some industrial and vocational training under the Japanese. These small to medium sized enterprises often took advantage of guanxi networks to build the foundations of an industry. For example, at one time, almost the entire township of Caotun was in some way involved in the umbrella manufacturing industry. Homei did textiles and the township of Chingshui once produced hats for the Japanese where the skilled weavers later went on to sew tennis racquets and other sporting goods... including footwear and later parts for bicycles. Piece work was a common way to enter an industry and involve the entire family in the process. From this period the Taiwanese bicycle industry really took root.

The Taiwanese consciousness of their global role as the producers of the world's finest bicycles was partially driven by politics as many political actors sought to strengthen a Taiwan centered identity which has existed for at least 100 years, but an identity which has been assailed by competing ideologies since its inception. Despite the politicization of the bicycle in Taiwan, the image has been widely accepted as a meme of both the Taiwanese identity and Taiwanese pride. It is not uncommon to see politicians ride bicycles or pictured along side bicycles to appeal to the Taiwanese national identity which is shared by approximately 80% of the population (Often those who do not support the Taiwanese identity by deed are the first to appeal to it).

This conflation of the bicycle into the Taiwanese identity often manifests itself on the road where ordinary folks take an interest in a group of passing cyclists. I get spontaneous waves and smiles from random strangers when I am on the road. Children root and cheer. I have had complete strangers hand me food and drinks. In the U.S. the only time you get a drink is when someone shouts "faggot!" and throws a Big Gulp at you from the window of a pick-up. In Taiwan, people like to admire a nice bike and they can usually tell if it is good or not.

Still, I always get the same question... "Is it a Giant?"

Cycling Interest Rate Drops

According to this link below the recent bicycle fad in Taiwan has passed and sales are dropping back down to normal levels.

Not long after the spike in fuel prices in 2008 cycling joined egg tarts and hoola-hoops as another Taiwanese fad. Since Taiwan is the world's largest producer of bicycles it brought an added public awareness of cycling as recreation and as a sport.

In a prestige culture, such as Taiwan's , cycling embodies the image of affluence, foreign knowledge and leisure. It embodies the value of technically advanced equipment and a smart looking kit. Cycling, if done right, looks clean, sleek and graceful and has its "Top Guns". Unlike current Taiwanese values, cycling involves hard, physical work and outdoor training to become a strong rider. Many Taiwanese do not value physical exercise and it is not promoted as a worthwhile past time for children when they could be in cram school or learning an instrument. Exposure to direct sunlight is discouraged and brown skin is still regarded as "ugly".

This is not surprising as traditional Han cultures have equated strong, muscular physiques and brown skin with degradation and barbarism.

Many of the Qing era records of frontier peoples fixate on the athletic and muscular physiologies of their object. Frontier gazette paintings would often exaggerate the body types of indigenous peoples in contrast to the more "refined" Han. This imaging is still in use today, valid or not in the process of "othering" the Aborigines in Taiwan. Despite the high value Taiwanese put on science and mathematics there is still a tendency to project folk beliefs into understanding human physiology. One traditional belief is that skin color was a direct corollary to the purity of food and thus influenced the character of the person. The enlightened or degraded properties of a person could be determined by their diet and location. Location, of course, meant proximity to the Emperor. This helped to explain the "savagery" of the frontier. These folk beliefs were later incorporated into Sun Yat-sen ideology and largely contributed to the racialism at the core of contemporary Chinese nationalism.

To bring this back into the frame of cycling:

It is not uncommon to ride past indigenous villages where the people are represented by statues depicting "braves" in traditional dress, rippling with muscles like action figures, hunting or holding their traditional knives. These images only serve to reinforce the otherness of the Aborigine and create distance from non-Aborigines and affirm their need to be tamed by the Sunism of the R.O.C.

I guess I am probably straining to relate these ideas together, but I do think cycling as a popular activity in Taiwan highlights several conflicting values in contemporary Taiwanese cultural life and some of the anxieties of cultural change in Taiwan.

Still, an expensive carbon frame becomes a Rolex, BMW or Apple computer; a demonstration of ...er... mobility.

http://life.chinatimes.com/2007Cti/2007Cti-Rtn/2007Cti-Rtn-Content/0,4526,110107+112010022200430,00.html