Finnish ex-con opens ‘rage room’ to repay society

A Finnish man who spent two decades behind bars for murder is trying to repay his debt to society by founding a “rage room” — letting clients vent their anger on household objects with a baseball bat. Janne Raninen, a 44-year-old convicted of two gang-related murders, opened Helsinki’s “Raivoomo” (“rage center”) two months ago using money borrowed from friends, and says he has been “fully booked” ever since. “I was in prison until six months ago and I thought this kind of room could have also been good for me when I was younger,” says Raninen, who became embroiled in gangs while growing up in a disadvantaged suburb in Sweden. “I thought, when I come out I’m going to start this room and let people let out their anger here instead of doing the stupid things that I did in my youth,” he said. Raninen also gives regular talks to young people, trying to steer them away from gangs. “It’s one of my ways to try and pay back society,” he says, adding that the rage room is another -- not only through the taxes he pays but also through the wellbeing it can bring people. SMASH WITH WOMEN Rage rooms are fairly common, particularly in the US, and Raninen’s new venture has proven a particular smash hit with women letting out post-pandemic frustration. “I feel fantastic, you just get swept along with it,” says Sanna Sulin, who has come to celebrate her 50th birthday, letting rip on old printers, a vacuum cleaner and crockery, to a soundtrack of her favourite music. “My friend brought me here to try it and at first I refused, I’m more into repairing things,” she says standing among fragments of metal, plastic and glass. “We women are used to having to behave properly, having to control ourselves,” she says. Eighty percent of the customers are

By Sam KINGSLEY

Desert camel carvings dated to around 7,000 years ago

Life-sized carvings of camels and horses hewn into rock faces in Saudi Arabia could be around 7,000 years old, according to new research that suggests they are significantly older than previously thought. The 21 reliefs, which were only recently discovered, are heavily eroded and were initially estimated in 2018 to be some 2,000 years old based on similarities with artworks found in Petra in Jordan. But the new research by Saudi and European institutions used a variety of different methods, including analysing tool marks and erosion patterns as well as x-ray technology, and suggests the reliefs are around 7,000 to 8,000 years old. This would mean that the area of carvings, known as the Camel Site, “is likely home to the oldest surviving large-scale (naturalistic) animal reliefs in the world,” the study said. In the era that it was created, the region would have looked very different to the arid landscape of today, with a savannah-like grassland dotted with lakes and trees, where wild camels roamed and were hunted. “We can now link the Camel Site to a period in prehistory when the pastoral populations of northern Arabia created rock art and built large stone structures called mustatil,” the authors said in a press release issued by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “The Camel Site is therefore part of a wider pattern of activity where groups frequently came together to establish and mark symbolic places.” ‘ANNUAL GATHERING’ The research, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science on Wednesday, was carried out by the Saudi Ministry of Culture, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, France’s CNRS research institutes and the King Saud University. The team included a stone mason, who estimated that each relief would have taken up to 15 days of carving to complete.

Taiwan in Time: Down with the ‘father’s rights first’ provisions

Sept. 20 to Sept. 26 During Liang Chiu-jung’s (梁秋蓉) bitter three-year legal battle with her ex-husband’s family, her younger son was the only thing that kept her going. But in 1993, her husband’s family, who was caring for their older son, suddenly requested custody. Although the 1990s, article 1089 of the Civil Code still stipulated that in the event that both parents disagreed how to exercise parental rights over a minor, the father had the right of final decision. There was also Article 1051, which by default granted custody to the father in case of a divorce. After losing the first trial, Liang quit her job, left her parents’ house and went into hiding with her son. Although the judge during the second trial invoked a new clause in the Children and Youth Welfare Act (兒童及青少年福利法) and sided with Liang, the husband’s family swore to appeal. In July 1994, Liang and fellow divorced mother Chang Pei-chun (張佩君) brought the issue before the constitutional court with the help of lawyer and future minister of justice Lo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪). The council of grand justices issued Constitutional Interpretation No 365 on Sept. 23, 1994, ruling that article 1089 was unconstitutional and needed to be amended within two years along with other similar provisions. “The solution to this problem shall be provided for based on the principle of gender equality and the best interests of the child,” the interpretation stated. It was the first interpretation by the grand justices to declare gender inequality unconstitutional. However, like the more recent same-sex marriage struggle, the government took its time and waited two years to make the mandated changes. Women’s groups were not happy about the two-year deadline, and were also upset that they didn’t provide any immediate way to help Liang, Chang and other mothers in the same predicament. “These laws have

By Han Cheung

‘Ghost kitchens’ boom in Asia as pandemic sparks huge demand

In an industrial unit on the outskirts of Taipei chefs are plating meals that will never be served in a restaurant: welcome to the world of “ghost kitchens.” Even before the pandemic sent an earthquake through the global restaurant trade, the “Amazonification” of commercial kitchens was well underway, but coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions have fueled explosive growth in Asia. The recent boom in food delivery apps meant customers were already used to having restaurant quality meals quickly delivered to their homes. To meet that demand a growing number of restaurants set up delivery only kitchens — also known as “cloud kitchens” — or rented space in ones. Then the pandemic struck, ending dining out for billions. “It really drove the whole industry into sort of hyper growth, so that really helped us,” said Jason Chen, the chief executive officer of JustKitchen. JustKitchen started operating Taiwan’s first ghost kitchen early last year — now it runs 17 across the island, as well as one in Hong Kong and is aiming to expand into the Philippines and Singapore by the end of this year, he said. Regional delivery giants like Singapore-based Grab and Indonesia’s GoJek have also jumped on the trend. Grab opened 20 new cloud kitchens in Southeast Asia last year, up from 42 before the pandemic. The global ghost kitchen industry is expected to grow more than 12 percent each year to be worth some US$139.37 billion by 2028, according to a report by Researchandmarkets.com. Asia Pacific, home to 4.3 billion people, already accounts for some 60 percent of the international market. For many in the region’s densely populated cities, where living space is at a premium, eating daily from cheap restaurants or food stalls is more affordable and viable than cooking at home. CULINARY GOLD RUSH Research group Euromonitor estimates there are some 7,500 cloud kitchens now operating

By Amber Wang

‘This is how we dress:’ Afghan women overseas pose in colourful attire

Afghan youth rights activist Wazhma Sayle says she was shocked to see a photograph online, apparently of women dressed in black all-enveloping niqabs and gowns, staging a demonstration in support of the country’s new Taliban rulers at Kabul University. The 36-year-old, who is based in Sweden, later posted a photograph of herself on Twitter dressed in a bright green and silver dress captioned: “This is Afghan culture & how we dress! Anything less then this does not represent Afghan women!” “It’s a fight for our identity,” Sayle said in a telephone interview. “I don’t want to be identified the way Taliban showed me, I cannot tolerate that. These clothes, when I wear them, speak for where I come from.” Other Afghan women overseas have posted similar pictures, striking a chord in Kabul. “At least they are able to tell the world that we, the women of Afghanistan, do not support the Taliban,” said Fatima, a 22-year-old in the Afghan capital. “I cannot post such pictures or wear those kind of clothes here anymore. If I did, the Taliban would kill me.” Many women said they believed the purported protest, which has appeared on social media and in Western media, was staged and that several people dressed in the head-to-toe black burqa gowns were men. Reuters has not verified the authenticity of the pictures. “It is good our women (overseas) were able to protest about it,” said Khatima, another young woman in Kabul. “The reality is, the burqa is not representative of women in Afghanistan.” When the Taliban was in power two decades ago, women had to cover themselves from head to toe. Those who broke the rules sometimes suffered humiliation and public beatings by the Taliban’s religious police. While the new Taliban regime has promised to allow women more freedoms, there have been reports of women being barred

By Zeba Siddiqui

Up the creek in Kaohsiung

As we packed up our riverbed camp on a sunny Sunday morning, we looked upstream to the unknown terrain ahead, wondering what surprises lay there. Would we come out on the other side? Or would we be forced to turn around and return to the start, heads hanging low? We had come to the end of the road and were now about to blaze our own trail through over 40km of wilderness to the foot of Jade Mountain. The day before we had gotten a ride up Provincial Highway 29, which follows the Nanzihsian River (楠梓仙溪) through rural Kaohsiung all the way until it dead ends at an Aboriginal village, Tangaanua, in Namasia District (那瑪夏區). Anyone who has hiked Jade Mountain has seen this river up near its source: it is on the right side of the trail all the way up to the peak. We would attempt to follow this river from the end of the road up to the Jade Mountain trailhead, praying all the way that we would not encounter any slot canyons, waterfalls or other insurmountable obstacles that would force us to turn back. This was above all an experiment, and I was thankful to have my trusty hiking partner Cory along for the walk. The going was easy at first, as the riverbed was over 200 meters wide and the grade nearly flat. Originally, Provincial Highway 29 was intended to continue through this valley to Provincial Highway 21, connecting Kaohsiung with Sun Moon Lake and Puli. This is more obvious on old maps, where Highway 29 is actually numbered as 21. When the dream of connecting the two parts of 21 was abandoned, the southern section was finally renumbered as 29 and the river valley left undeveloped. Despite there being no roads or villages back here, we still

By Tyler Cottenie

A man. A boy. And a chicken.‘Cry Macho’ lays an egg

Last year, Tom Hanks and George Clooney each took on movie parts in which they showed off their fatherly sides by taking care of a child. Apparently, there’s something in the water over in Hollywood because this month, it’s time for Clint Eastwood. The one-time Dirty Harry directs and stars as a crochety old cowboy pressed into transporting a teenager from Mexico to America in Cry Macho, an aimless and sometimes cringe-worthy film. But it has perhaps the best performance by a rooster in modern cinematic history. The film is apparently supposed to be a meditation on masculinity, with Eastwood’s one-time rodeo star Mike Milo taming and rebuilding his young rebellious charge into an honorable young man. Instead, it’s a meditation on clumsy and predictable filmmaking. The screenplay, by Nick Schenk and the late Richard Nash, is based on Nash’s book. Schenk is film’s leading Eastwood interpreter, having written for the icon before with Gran Torino and The Mule. Eastwood, now 91, is in that place he’s found himself so many times before: A gruff, honorable loner with a heart of gold. The year is 1979 and the honorable loner — a widower, naturally — is still showing up at the rodeo for work in his 90s until his boss fires him. “You’re a loss to no one. It’s time for new blood,” says his employer, played by Dwight Yoakam. A year later, this same boss inexplicably asks Mike for a favor: Get my son away from the clutches of my evil ex-wife in Mexico and bring him to me. Soon Eastwood is on his way south, trundling along in an ancient car. Turns out the ex-wife (Fernanda Urrejola, overdoing it) is an unbalanced mob boss who both laughs at this curious visitor and weirdly wants to bed him. “You think you’re the first my ex-husband

By Mark Kennedy

Drag queen dreams in ‘Talking About Jamie’

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, a predictable and glossy Billy Elliot-like musical of British working-class aspiration that’s nevertheless a joy, is the kind of movie that might have once been made about the trials of coming out as a young gay man. But such hurdles are already well past Jamie New (newcomer Max Harwood), a confident, proudly out 16-year-old who lives in Sheffield, England. It’s not that he doesn’t have some scars from his childhood. Jamie has a supportive, adoring mother (Sarah Lancashire,) but his homophobic, remarried father (Ralph Ineson) is mostly absent. And at school, there is a boilerplate bully (Samuel Bottomley) who harasses him. But Jamie, and Harwood’s winning performance, belong to a different, more modern era. Jamie doesn’t just want to be himself. His dreams are larger. While his school class discusses career options, he daydreams a song-and-dance number with “The Jamie Show” in lights, singing “‘Cause baby I’m a hit.” Specifically, he wants to be a drag queen. Jamie’s journey isn’t so much about self-realization as it is about self-empowerment. Everybody’s Talking About Me, which begins streaming today on Amazon Prime Video, is an adaptation of a popular West End musical, which itself came from a television documentary: Jenny Popplewell’s Jamie: Drag Queen at 16. As bedazzled as Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is, it’s based on a true story. What’s most disappointing about the film, considering its origins, is just how distant anything like real life feels. From the first moment Jamie slides on a pair of ruby red stiletto pumps, there’s not any doubt things are going to work out for him. Those who stand in Jamie’s way — his father, the school bully and a teacher who defends the school’s code-of-conduct (the great Sharon Horgan, here playing against type and a little underused) — are too two-dimensional to take

By Jake Coyle

Movie review: Deepest Uprising

It’s a cool idea to make a documentary that completely gives the voice to its all-female subjects without any context, structure or much editorializing, but a feature-length film still needs a narrative to engage the audience. Deep Uprising doesn’t have one. It basically shows for 78 minutes a succession of 16 female poets in Taiwan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and India performing daily tasks, speaking about issues they care about and reading their work. Many speak of the marginalization of female literary figures in their respective patriarchal societies, but at the end of the film we still don’t know much about who these poets are, why they were chosen and why the film was shot in these four countries in particular. It’s a worthy experiment by a male director to break from the traditional format and let the passionate and provocative words of these women drive the film. Men feature in the documentary, but none of them are heard speaking — there’s even a scene where a Sri Lankan poet’s male companion stares silently at the camera for a few seconds after her reading. One can see what director Huang Ming-chuan (黃明川) is trying to do, but the resulting product ends up being rather unfocused, presenting a monotonous cadence from beginning to end. Having far too many subjects is one of the main issues. They’re all fascinating in their own right, and some do stand out more than others, but overall it’s hard to keep track of them while new subjects keep getting introduced. Additionally, it’s impossible to really get a feel of who they are in the brief screen time they’re allotted. The format is meant to return the power to the subjects, to the women, but instead it somehow further obfuscates their individuality. Huang has spent most of his career

By Han Cheung

The Facebook feed of spooky dolls

Finding dolls creepy has a long and storied past, from the actual phobia of dolls (pediophobia) to the generally accepted theory that dolls are often unsettling due to the “uncanny valley” effect. There are museums devoted to collecting horrible little mannequins. There are movie franchises about bad dolls that will kill you and your family. And for the past couple of years I’ve been in a private Facebook group called Spooky Doll Hour — and somehow the spooky dolls are the least weird thing about it. The premise of Spooky Doll Hour is really simple: it’s a small Facebook group where you can share pictures, memes and videos of spooky dolls — for one hour only. Spooky Doll Hour is from 8:16pm to 9:16pm Taiwan time, and if you post or comment outside of the hour, you will be “removed from the group and haunted by a doll for the rest of your life.” Usually the posts are funny; sometimes they are just pictures of spooky dolls. They are often memes either about spooky dolls or using spooky dolls — but it’s simplistic to just call it a spooky doll meme page. COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT The premise might be simple, but the “why” of it all is more complicated: the way it engages the community, and that community’s adherence to arbitrary rules, all point to a deeper level of humor. “The inspo for this group came from another group called Goblin Hour, which really was in its prime in 2018,” says one of the Spooky Doll Hour founders, James Anthony. The rise and demise of Goblin Hour follows a familiar narrative. It was “popping off” in 2018, Anthony says, quickly reaching thousands of members. Once it got too big, it got toxic. The same goblin memes were repeated; there was persistent infighting about what constituted a

By Patrick Lenton

‘Significant threat:’ cyber attacks increasingly targeting critical infrastructure

A quarter of cyber incidents reported to Australian security officials over the past year have targeted critical infrastructure and essential services, including health care, food distribution and energy. The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) disclosed the incidents in a report published yesterday, warning of “significant targeting, both domestically and globally, of essential services.” These incidents have “underscored the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to significant disruption in essential services, lost revenue and the potential of harm or loss of life.” The report will also show ransomware attacks disclosed to the ACSC increased 15 percent in the 2020-21 financial year, when compared with the previous financial year. The ACSC — which is part of the Australian Signals Directorate — received more than 67,500 reports of cybercrime of all types in 2020-21, or one every eight minutes. That compared with one every 10 minutes the previous year. HUGE LOSSES The report says businesses, individuals and other entities had incurred more than US$33 billion in total losses from cyber crime throughout the year. Cybercriminals sought to exploit the pandemic by encouraging recipients to enter personal credentials to access COVID-related information or services, while unnamed foreign governments targeted the health sector seeking “access to intellectual property or sensitive information about Australia’s response to COVID.” The ACSC responded to about 1,630 cybersecurity incidents in 2020-21, or an average of 31 cybersecurity incidents a week. “Approximately one quarter of reported cybersecurity incidents affected critical infrastructure organizations, including essential services such as education, health, communications, electricity, water and transport,” the report says. A breakdown of the severity of cyber incidents in 2020-21 shows there were 14 cases in which federal government entities or nationally significant infrastructure suffered the removal or damage of sensitive data or intellectual property. This category also includes the supply chain to critical national infrastructure. Those entities also suffered a further 44 incidents in which there was

By Daniel Hurst

Book review: Index, A History of: scholarly anarchy

An index is an arsy-versy tool: it enables us to sneak into a book from the rear end, saving the time it would take to advance through the text from the beginning. Jonathan Swift, quoted by Dennis Duncan in his witty and wide-ranging study of the subject, compares readers who use such short cuts to travelers entering a palace through the privy. In two less cloacal anecdotes, Duncan identifies the index as a convenient hiding place for academic backstabbers. During the 1690s, a snarky faction at Christ Church, Oxford, defamed the great philologist Richard Bentley by mocking up an index that gave page references for “his egregious dullness” or “his familiar acquaintance with Books that he never saw.” This learned amusement still helps to pass the time in our ancient, addled universities. The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, having spent an embattled few years in the 1980s as master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, revenged himself on his detested colleagues in the index to a book of essays, where he directed readers to “Peterhouse: high-table conversation not very agreeable, 46; main source of perverts, 113.” Snipers can exploit such opportunities like this because indexing is so arbitrary and anarchic. It chops up texts and can make prejudicial choices about what deserves to be emphasized; by following alphabetical order, the index, as Duncan says, “turns from content to form, from meaning to spelling.” The alphabet is a “great leveler” and it frees the indexer to take associative leaps, “sparked by a single word or concept, firing unpredictably in multiple directions.” An example is the Table of Distinctions compiled by the 13th-century scholastic philosopher Robert Grosseteste, which Duncan calls “a Google on parchment.” Grosseteste’s primal search engine demarcated topics by using Greek and Roman letters, numbers, zodiacal signs and glyphs that resemble “streams of emoticons” as they

By Peter Conrad

Taipei’s latest theatrics

The pandemic seems to be far from over, but the Post Pandemic Renaissance Theater (PPRT) is getting a head start by putting on its first event last Friday: the first round of the Taiwan Monologue Slam. Ten contestants delivered passionate and nuanced pieces on stage, and the audience voted with their phones for two winners who will advance to the local finals in November. There will be four finals in the next year, and each winner is automatically entered into the World Monologue Games regional finals, bypassing the preliminaries. The goal is to eventually get a Taiwan team to next summer’s games, while also encouraging locals who want to practice English to engage in experiential learning, company founder and artistic director Stewart Glen says. Don’t be intimidated by the talent on stage last week as the slammers at the first event were all English-speaking members of the PPRT company, and first place winner Cleo Whittingham is a seasoned, classically-trained actress. Glen hopes to attract a wider range of participants over the next two months with a lofty goal of having the final team being 80 percent Taiwanese. This is in line with the government’s vision of developing Taiwan into a bilingual nation, he says. “If the Taiwanese slammers show interest and promise, they will be invited to train with us to build their English confidence skills,” Glen says. “You don’t have to be an actor to be a slammer. This is less for people that want to be actors and more for frustrated ESL students.” The company is keeping busy in the next two months, with monologue slams every other Friday at the Red Room Rendezvous, and live staged readings of acclaimed as well as original screenplays on alternate Fridays at 23 Comedy Club. Both event formats will not have sets, props and

By Han Cheung

Popular series sparks new debate over South Korea’s military conscription

A hit Netflix series is reigniting a debate in South Korea over the country’s massive military, its history of abuse scandals, and the mandatory conscription that fills its ranks with young men. D.P., short for Deserter Pursuit, has been among the top Netflix shows in South Korea since it premiered at the end of August. The series follows military police assigned to capture deserters, shining a light on daily life for many conscripts, including mental and physical abuse from other soldiers. Director Han Jun-hee said he sought to tell a humanising story about how the system makes deserters both victims and criminals, as well as the toll it takes on those forced to do the hunting. “D.P. is a story of tracing a deserter, but at the same time, it is a paradoxical story of looking for someone’s unfortunate son, brother, or lover,” Han said. Asked about the popularity of the show, a defense ministry spokesman said that the military environment has changed and that the ministry has tried to stamp out abuse and harsh treatment. Last week the military announced that even before the series came out, it had planned to do away with the system of having rank-and-file soldiers track down AWOL comrades. That change will go into effect in July next year. South Korea maintains an active duty military of 550,000, with 2.7 million troops in reserves, amid decades of tensions with North Korea. All men must serve for up to 21 months, depending on the military branch. South Korea’s military criminal law punishes desertion by up to 10 years in prison. The Defense Ministry says abuse and desertion among conscripts are down, largely because of a 2019 decision to allow enlisted soldiers to use cellphones in their barracks. The ministry declined to confirm the exact number of deserters, but South Korean media reported that 55 cases

By Sangmi Cha

‘Unfortunately, she’s a woman’

The woman who broke barriers as the first female foreign minister and deputy prime minister in culturally conservative Somalia now aims for the country’s top office as the Horn of Africa nation moves toward a long-delayed presidential election. Parliament member Fawzia Yusuf H Adam is well aware of the challenges in winning votes in a nation where women often remain marginalized. In an interview, she described the struggle of leading a foreign ministry staff that was overwhelmingly male. “They were very reluctant to collaborate with me just because I am a female,” she said. Even as more educated women return to Somalia from the large diaspora to help rebuild the country after three decades of conflict, attitudes toward Adam’s run for office are mostly skeptical, if sympathetic. Even friends and colleagues see her chances as next to impossible because of her gender. “She’s good, but unfortunately she’s a woman,” said Abdiwahid Mohamed Adam, a doctor at Mogadishu Memorial Hospital. Complicating her bid, he said, is the fact that Adam comes from the breakaway region of Somaliland, a comparatively stable area in the north that has sought international recognition as an independent country for years. But the soft-spoken Adam, a widow and mother of three, said she believes her run for the presidency is worthwhile, not futile, on several levels, while the timing of the election has been pushed back once again amid political tensions from mid-October toward the end of the year. “I want to break this barrier against women, so that in the near future many others will have the courage to run and even win,” she said, adding that it’s time to fight for the rights of women. LOW-PROFILE CAMPAIGN Somalia’s years of insecurity marked by devastating attacks by the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group also have driven Adam to run. “There was mayhem in this country

Feminist love stories?

The label “date movie” hasn’t traditionally been applied much to documentaries but filmmakers Betsy West and Julie Cohen have twice now made non-fiction films of trailblazing female icons that also happen to be portraits of loving, supportive marriages. In RBG, the 2018 Oscar-nominated bio-documentary of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the filmmakers lingered over the encouraging role of her longtime husband, the lawyer Martin D. Ginsburg. Their latest, Julia, which premiered Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival, is likewise about a pioneering 20th century woman, the adventurous TV chef Julia Child, whose ascent was tenderly and enthusiastically advocated for by her husband, Paul Child. He even wrote a sonnet for her. “For never were there foods, nor were there wines / Whose flavor equals yours for sheer delight / O luscious dish! O gustatory pleasure! You satisfy my taste buds beyond measure.” “Feminist love stories are our genre,’’ Cohen says in an interview alongside West. “RBG was a great date movie. Julia is a slightly more expensive date movie because it really needs to be the movie and then a good dinner.’’ Julia, which will be released on the US on Nov. 5, is an affectionate and flavorful tribute to a beloved culinary figure. The film surveys a life that found fame relatively late. Child was nearly 50 by the time her debut cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking was released in 1961. Her career on TV, beginning with an omelet on Boston’s WGBH, came the year after. There and beyond, Child was a charismatic, 188cm-tall exception to a male-dominated cooking world and a carefree antidote to the force-fed image of the TV-dinner cooking ‘50s housewife. Her husband, a former diplomat, contentedly took a background role. In The French Chef Cookbook, Julia Child wrote: “Paul Child, the man

Notes from Central Taiwan: A transition without justice

Last week the Transitional Justice Commission proposed taking down the statue of Chang Kai-shek (蔣介石) at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in central Taipei. It depicted the move as part of a plan for excising markers of authoritarianism from the park. The most important task, the commission said, would be removing the hall’s “axis of worship,” the 6.3m-tall bronze statue of Chiang. Let us hope that if and when that obscenity is finally removed from the memorial, it is placed in the famed Cihu Memorial Sculpture Garden in Taoyuan’s Dasi District (大溪), where it can be properly mocked for all eternity. CHIANG, CHIANG, EVERYWHERE Removing markers of the authoritarian era should start, of course, with names. Chiang’s personality cult, recounted in Jeremy Taylor’s “The Production of the Chiang Kai-shek Personality Cult, 1929–1975” (China Quarterly, 2006), remains stamped across Taiwan’s physical and political spaces, like a ranch brand on cattle. Almost all the nation’s cities host a Zhongzheng Road (中正路), named after Chiang. Keelung and Taipei boast Zhongzheng (中正) districts. No mere indicators of Chiang’s power, these names from China are markers of a colonial regime that reshaped the island’s life to its own ends. Visitors often wonder why the street names haven’t been changed. For a street name change, under the law, a vote must be held by the individuals owning addresses on the street. Since few people will vote to undertake changing every piece of paper that defines their lives, perhaps reviving old property disputes and certainly necessitating scores of encounters with Taiwan’s bureaucracy, changing street names is almost impossible. Thus the ancien regime remains a current presence. Another signifier of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) power that needs to be scrubbed is place names in the mountains. Taiwan’s Aboriginal areas are marked with silly names relating to rebuilding the Republic of China (ROC)

By Michael Turton