Sunday, February 22, 2015

Trying to understand my family through observing Taiwanese politics

I have been following Taiwanese politics lately and been watching Taiwanese shows and TV. Basically missing home. However I was there not too long ago and pretty much was dying to come back to Sweden after barely 1 week.

Taiwan is going through another party change. The DPP party recently majorly beat out the ruling KMT party by winning the majority in the municipality election, and will likely win the presidential election next year.

But that's not my main concern. I felt that from observing the election campaign news footage plus the Taiwanese political discussion shows, I have learned a lot about my family and about the Taiwanese culture.

Many of the politicians are in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s, but if their parents were also held office in the past, the reporters would ask them, "Do your parents approve of what you do?" And in some cases, indeed the candidates' policies or decisions to run for office were deeply influenced by their parents. In a culture where you are never truly independent from your parents even if you have reached your 60s, of course I'm considered as a huge sinner in my family.

In Taiwan politics is considered as dark, corrupt, complex, and evil, and good citizens should not meddle with it. Most "good" families strongly discourage their good kids from participating in the political scene... which means, that, the country would forever be run by sons and daughters of existing politicians and gangster members... basically this attitude ensures that the political, social and economical condition of the country would never improve.

Good thing that a few capable people in their 40s and 50s finally found the courage to "rebel against their parents' wishes" and run for office. It sounds a bit pathetic from the western point of view, but it's huge progress for Taiwan. The younger people, who aren't so obedient anyways, have been very supportive by volunteer their time and efforts during the campaigns, and exercising their right to vote. Traditionally, it is very costly to win an election, and voting rate is very low among young people. As internet and mobile technologies mature, it because easier to reach people, to spread information, and communication becomes simpler, even among strangers.

I have been very excited following the progress of Taiwan, since I miss home very much. Sadly, when I returned home in Taiwan last Christmas, I found that my closest family members have not been following this progress at all. This is because the mainstream TV and the internet show different kinds of information. While you can look at many different points of views on the internet, the mainstream media are still much more biased. In addition, all kinds of media contain a lot of misinformation, and it takes a lot of effort to judge the correctness of a piece of information, which my family has no in wasting so much brain power on deciphering the information. The results is that where I see a rainbow in the horizon, they still see doom, and would rather ignore the doom and talk about my weight instead, and pretend there are no strains within the family by continually saying nice things, hoping the cracks and strains between the interpersonal relationships within the family will disappear on their own.

For the longest time I didn't understand this attitude. If there's a strain between person 1 and person 2, they should talk it out. They might not agree with each others' values, but it helps to see where the other person is coming from. But in my family the situation is more like:

"This is the set of (arbitrary) values. Since you are a member of this family you must follow. Because that's how it's always been and always will be. We try everything we can to keep people on track following this set of values. When people derail, we force them back on track. But when most people have derailed, and there's nothing we can do to bring everyone back on track, we just pretend everyone is still on track, because this is the best we can do. We cannot have a conversation about the current situation, because the values cannot be wrong. They must always be maintained".

This is the exact same attitude of the current Taiwanese president, who currently has <10% of public support. Since my family comes from China and came to Taiwan from the same ship (figuratively) as the original KMT members, the behavior of KMT is very similar with my family.

I don't wish to have a revolution in my family. I just wish people would acknowledge all the problems we have, face to face. But instead, I suspect everyone will continue to hide behind polite greetings that sound very strained and fake. Everyone is too busy trying to hide their own wounds to notice other people also have wounds and troubles. The ironic things is that we already know about each other's problems, so I have no idea what people think they are hiding. I guess it's like playing hide and seek. My family still thinks that by covering our own eyes, other people cannot find us.

This makes me really sad.

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