A failed attempt by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) to attack the central government has drawn renewed attention to the many streets in Taiwan that are named after places in China.
Describing the legislature in Taipei as surrounded by a “Chinatown,” Ko in a Facebook video on Tuesday highlighted that many streets in the city are named after places across the Taiwan Strait, including Qingdao, Hangzhou, Tianjin, Nanjing and Guangzhou.
A certain political party has been presenting itself as the “local” party, sporting phrases such as “Taiwan consciousness,” but its headquarters are on Beiping E Road, Ko said, referring to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) without directly mentioning it.
“Don’t you think it’s weird?” he asked.
Ko, chairman of the Taiwan People’s Party, urged the central government to rename the streets to better reflect a “Taiwan spirit.”
However, he became the laughing stock of DPP members, who pointed out that the right to rename streets in Taipei lies with the city government alone. Ko’s video was removed just a few hours later.
The incident again exposes how Ko often uses clumsy tricks to grab headlines by poking at the DPP, even though they often backfire.
Yet the issue of street names, and the names’ political and cultural connotations, is indeed thought-provoking.
The street names singled out by Ko highlight that Taiwan has accommodated many immigrants from China. Whatever their initial motives for moving to Taiwan, they often sought to rebuild their hometowns on this side of the Strait.
Places that are hundreds of kilometers apart in China, such as Jinan and Xuzhou, are only a block away from each other in Taipei — an area that is famous for its variety of beef noodle dishes and Chinese traditional pastry stores.
Many streets in Taiwan are also named after the eight traditional virtues highlighted by Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), including Zhongxiao (忠孝, “loyalty and piety”), Renai (仁愛, “mercy and love”), Xinyi (信義, “faith and loyalty to friends”) and Heping (和平, “harmony and peace”), although they are not necessarily the most important virtues for today’s Taiwanese.
Likewise, there are many streets nationwide referring to Sun himself and Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), including those with Zhongshan (中山), Zhongzheng (中正) and Jieshou (介壽) in their names.
The streets, many of them a city’s or town’s arterial, symbolize the omnipresence of the authoritarian figures.
On March 21, 1996, Jieshou Road leading to the Presidential Office Building was renamed Ketagalan Boulevard by then-Taipei mayor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the DPP, marking the city government’s respect for Aboriginal history.
The renaming ceremony was just two days before Taiwan’s first direct presidential election, and the boulevard became a venue for many social movements and protests.
While many roads have been renamed to reflect residents’ heritage, some street names still reflect the Japanese colonial period of the nation.
Despite the tense relations between Taiwan and China, the intricate relations between people across the Strait can hardly be severed with a clean cut. Changing the name of a street might not be difficult, but more efforts are required to prompt people to reflect on the teachings of history.
After a country eliminates the name of an autocrat from its map, has it moved away from autocracy, or is the act part of building a new one?
When some streets are named after minority groups, are their cultures more respected or sooner forgotten? These are some questions that are more worth thinking about than Ko’s shallow show.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS