Sat, Jun 10, 2006 page8

• Johnny Neihu's NewsWatch: All aboard Taipei's colonialist MRT

  If one US academic has her way, we'll be hearing a dozen or more different languages announcing the arrival of MRT stations. How annoying ... there'll be no time to curse William Lind for being a China toady.

  • By Johnny Neihu /
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  The political events of the last few weeks have left me a little low, it has to be said. A few days ago, some old drinking buddies in Sanhsia (三峽) invited me down for a little mahjong and a lot of beer. When you're in a funk, there's nothing like the clack-clack-clack of mahjong tiles and some Taiwan Beer with ice cubes to distract you from your woes. [Editor's note: Gambling and excessive consumption of alcohol can damage your health, even with ice. Back to you, Johnny.] How could I resist? Anything to get me away from 24 hour cable news.

  Anyway, last week the news was that the trusty MRT had been extended to the Tucheng (土城) area on the way to Sanhsia, so I thought: If everything's going down the toilet, why not follow suit and go underground?

  Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was more than happy to do so and launch the extension last week, of course, because it was the first and last significant bit of public transport infrastructure he'll be opening in the eight years that he's been in charge of this fair city. But unlike the belea-guered high-speed rail project, the Yongning (永寧) extension came into service early -- three months early to be exact (expect to hear this comparison a lot around election time).

  You've got to wonder about the symbolism of the station names. When you hit Banciao (板橋), the seat of government of Taipei County, the foreign traveler is confronted with the title "Banqiao (Banciao)" underneath the Chinese characters, then with "Fuzhong (Fujhong)" (府中) at the next station. Weird, huh? Locate Taipei City infrastructure in Taipei County and you get a Clash of the Romanizations. Samuel Huntington would be dazzled.

  I'm not a huge fan of the Tong-yong Pinyin system, mostly because I wasn't consulted when it was introduced. That said, I am able to admit that Tongyong is about as useful as a Taiwanese cop after a car accident -- that is, totally, absolutely, comprehensively useless. And my eyes glisten when I remember the old Wade-Giles spelling for Banciao. "Panchiao" brings back memories of sitting at a dusty old train station as a little boy -- long before it was moved underground -- and spotting the English lettering as my family waited for the express to take us home after visiting extended family.

  "Mommy," I asked, "what are those strange shapes on the sign over there?"

  "Not now, you little devil," she replied, "I've got a headache."

  For me, ever since then, the word has aroused a sense of mystery -- and a craving for aspirin.

  I'm also realistic enough to admit that if and when Ma Ying-jeou becomes president, everything he can get his hands on will become Communist Bandit Pinyin. I'm not so concerned -- English place names are irrelevant to most people's lives, and my foreign friends all assure me it is the best system, regardless of the politics. I can accept that. But I'm not sure that the Changhua County Government will be so happy to fork out hundreds of thousands of NT dollars to change their "C" to a "Z" on all of their signs, buildings and letterhead.

  All this musing on MRT language politics reminds me of a 2004 book by MIT professor Emma Jinhua Teng called Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895. Her argument is that Western academics have become addicted to the idea that imperialism and colonization are Western phenomena, a fallacy she proceeds to blow apart with accounts of Han Chinese relations with Taiwanese Aborigines. Late in the book, she mentions our very own MRT:

  "[W]itness, for example, the public address system of [the MRT] ... the absence of any indigenous languages in this system effects the erasure of the Taiwan indigenes from the new multilingual Taiwanese identity, as well as from the modern, MRT-riding public. This oversight is a symptom of the preoccupation in Taiwanese nationalist discourse since 1949 on the ethnic conflict between `mainlanders' and `Taiwanese.'"

  Steady on there, Emma. If you added announcements from the languages of each of the 12 official Aboriginal groups to the Mandarin, Hoklo, Hakka and English, there wouldn't be enough time to hear what the next stop was. My xiaomijiu-drinking friends up in the mountains tell me that there are more Aboriginal languages than official ethnic groups (invent-ed by colonialist anthropologists to boot), so which ones are you going to choose? Add all those together for a non-colonialist public announcement soundtrack, and your Aboriginal friends from outta town will be in Tamsui (淡水) before they hear the announcement for Taipei Main Station.

  Teng's heart is in the right place. But the real question is this: Why aren't there any Japanese announcements on the MRT? Because apart from the large number of tourists it would help, just about everyone over 70 years old who grew up here can speak it. Denying ongoing colonial status? Emma, we wrote the book.

  Anyway, after a long day of clack-clacking and shots of icy beer, I boarded the bus in Sanhsia (Sanxia (Sansia)) and got off at Yongning station to hasten my return home. It was then that I read an article that had been printed off the Internet by one of my more English-savvy friends from the mahjong marathon. It was a June 3 piece called "The Perils of Threat Inflation" by one William Lind, and brought me back to such a level of agitation that I wished I hadn't read it. I'll be honest: I was so scandalized that the three or four schoolgirls opposite me in the carriage turned off their iPods to watch and hear an old man self-combust.

  Lind writes a column for the Web site www.lewrockwell.com and is a former adviser to Democratic senator Gary Hart of Colorado (Lew Rockwell himself is a self-described "opponent of the central state, its wars and its socialism," whatever the hell that means). Most importantly, Lind is a man who thinks China should be left alone to do as it likes. In attacking the US Department of Defense for "inflating" the China threat, he calls Taiwan "a small island of no strategic importance to the United States," before likening future conflict in the Taiwan Strait to the Iraq mess, both being, he claims, a "war of choice."

  Other howlers include comparing cross-strait tensions not only to the US Civil War, but also to "the strategic rivalry between England and Germany before World War I."

  Good heavens, he moans, if China isn't allowed to get Taiwan back, then the wailing and gnashing of teeth will be so severe that provinces will rise up against the center and the entire country will fall apart. China, you see, is the real victim, and the US needs to help stop it from imploding. Therefore, "America needs to handle a rising China the way Britain handled a rising America, not a rising Germany."

  Historical hallucinating aside, Lind is a person who in one breath opposes US and European imperialism and in the other thinks that China (in whatever dynastic clothing) can do no wrong, can hurt no one, can colonize nothing. Don't ask him about Tibet, Xinjiang, the Gulag or where the Khmer Rouge got its weapons. "Imperialism is white, and China's alright" is the slogan that no doubt sits on his desk, next to the photograph of his family, his dog and his cat and the "Thank you, Comrade William" plaque from the Chinese embassy.

  Well, if there's one thing that Emma Teng and I agree on, it's that there is a breed of sanctimonious white person who thinks that autocratic Chineseness is next to godliness (what is it with Democrats? Senator Dianne Feinstein must be Lind's love child -- or maybe it's the other way around).

  I'm not asking you, dear reader, to subscribe to the "Everything in Iraq is going swimmingly" theory or even that invading Iraq was morally or strategically right. I do ask you to consider what sort of commentator likens Taiwan's predicament to the Iraq conflict with a straight face.

  Here's part of the answer. In an earlier column on the same Web site ("War with China?" May 19, 2005), Lind raised the possibility of a nuclear exchange between the US and China and asked the question: "Is Taiwan worth Seattle or L.A.?"

  Is saving Taiwan worth the nuking of a west coast US city? Funny, all three places are populated by human beings who live in a democracy. Lind's question has a whiff of racist contempt, and is heartless to boot: either you're Chinese and unaccountable, or Taiwanese and sacrificial.

  Bill, open your eyes and look at yourself. You see? There's a gaping hole right where your credibility once was. Call it "the colonization of conscience." And give Emma Teng a call; she'll give you an education on Taiwanese history and Chinese imperialism. Now, if you will excuse me, I will leave it there -- I've missed my damn stop.

  Heard or read something particularly objectionable about Taiwan? Johnny wants to know: dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com is the place to reach me, with "Dear Johnny" in the subject line.
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