A big congratulations to the Taiwanese duo who recently won GOLD at the 2013 World Table Tennis Championships in Men’s Doubles! If you missed the match, here are some highlights!
Ma Lin/Hao Shuai vs Chuang Chih-Yuan/Chen Chien-An Mens Doubles Finals match at the 2013 World Table Tennis Championships in Paris, France.
NBC got the only right that matters.
You know what makes me cackle the most? That’s the TAIWANESE flag right there. Better pray China didn’t see this, NBC.
(course the rest is ridic. But seriously, the Taiwanese flag, I am rolling around I’m laughing so much. I hope LettersfromTaiwan sees this)
Ha ha ha …
A friend posted this article this morning (her dad is one of the ones quoted.) Brought a lump to my throat.
It’s an article from the Montreal Gazette from February 13th, 1980.
Proud Taiwanese just want to join Games
Montreal Gazette, February 13, 1980
Lake Placid (AP) - Bobsledder Wei Cheng Shieh exercised in a snowy motel parking lot yesterday at the start of the 1980 Winter Olympic Games. Lin Ting Fung, a biathlon competitor, jogged up a slippery drive-way ending a five mile run.
Strapped to a wooden fence facing the Taiwanese athletes hung the flag of the Republic of China—symbol of their fierce national pride and intense legal struggle to compete in the Games.
Taiwan battled all the way up to the New York State Supreme Court fr a chance for its 18 athletes to participate in bobsledding, cross-country, and biathlon events in the XIII Winter Games. The rule-setting International Olympic Committee said the Taiwanese couldn’t train or practice at Olympic sites, or even life in Olympic quarters, unless they gave up their colors to mainland China.
“This has been our flag for 69 years. We are proud of it and of our name—The Republic of China. We have competed in other Games before under our flag, name and anthem. We believe we should not give in to change. Everybody on our team feels that way,” said Wei, a 23 year old business student from Taipei.
Three or four times he has gone out to Mount Van Hoevenberg just to watch.
“It is awful. I see bobsledders from other countries in the track. I wish that it was me, that I was there in the track,” Wei said. ”But I study while I am there. I study the curves in the track. It is a fast track, a good track. I will be very disappointed if I don’t join the Olympics.”
Wei took part in the 1978 Olympics at Innsbruck as a luger. About a year ago, he started training for the two-man and four-man bobseld events. ”We do our best, train hard, and want to participate. It is a great experience and an honor to represent your country.”
Even as the Games opened with the first competitions yesterday, the Taiwan delegation didn’t give up hope.
Lin, 22, trained for four years for his first Olympics. ”It would be so disappointing to get here, this far, and have to go home without ever competing. I am an athlete. I just want to go into the Games.”
At the Olympic Village housing quarters, competitors from around the world mingle as they dance to disco, see firstrun movies, and enjoy live entertainment or a game room after training is over for the day.
At a small motel on the outskirts of the village where the Taiwanese have been staying, it’s quiet at night. Wei watches M.A.S.H. on television and Lin writes letters home.
“Mostly we just stand by. We wait. We want to move into the Olympic village. This whole thing ins nonsense. It’s our flag,” said Wei, pointing to the fence where the flag hung.
It has a background of red signifying blood of the reveolution which brought the country into being, a blue patch in the upper left for sky with a white symbol of the sun in the middle. Olympic organizers told tiny Taiwan, a country of 17 million, it could not use the name, flag, and anthem of the Republic of China, the name by which Taipei identifies itself. That accreditation would go to mainland China, a country of 900 million competing for the first time since the 1949 Communist takeover.
“The athletes have worked hard,” said Tong Hua-Cheng Hsiegh, biathlon coach. ”They work out and run. They trained for a long time and spent almost three days getting here. Somehow, it doesn’t seem fair. It seems to have become more of a political event than a sporting event.
“If we have a favorable ruling we will be very happy and move right away into the Village. We will not give in to pressure to change our flag. If we lose we will probably have to go home. Every day I talk to our team. they ask me many questions—do we have a chance to participate? I tell them I believe the American justice system will be fair to us,” he said.
I am Taiwanese American and American through and through. I believe the Taiwanese people have the right to their own self determination. So it hurts to see this, to know that my own country failed my family’s country. That years later—regardless of how I feel about the ROC/KMT flag—the athletes from Taiwan still cannot wave the flag of their choosing at the Olympic Games.
That the flag cannot even hang on a street nearby. Instead, just an empty space. There’s a place on the line for a flag for Taiwan—China just won’t allow Taiwan to fill it.
It makes me so angry that the world will not support a small democracy. That we give into bullies.
Time magazine reports that China’s state-run media, Xinhua, has called on Jeremy Lin to renounce his U.S. citizenship and join the Chinese Olympic Team. The article speculates about whether or not Lin should, and includes quotes encouraging Lin to play for China’s since the U.S. Olympic team doesn’t think he makes the cut since he hasn’t played long enough.
Never mind that he hasn’t played long enough because he faced discrimination for being Asian at every level from high school to the NBA.
Never mind that the article glosses over his Taiwanese heritage (“since Taiwan—or whatever China wants the Olympics to call Taiwan this year—doesn’t qualify for basketball, Lin can always play for China blah blah blah”)
Thank you, Time magazine, for continuing to perpetrate the stereotype that Asian Americans are avaricious turncloaks who will jump at the opportunity to denounce their American citizenship and “switch sides.” It’s not like that stereotype has ever been used to perpetrate the mass imprisonment of Asian Americans or anything like that, just harmless speculation, right?And while we speculate about Jeremy Lin’s loyalty to Team USA, we can also talk about whether or not Barack Obama a secret Muslim with a forged birth certificate.
Jeremy Lin is Taiwanese American. Most of his family has been in Taiwan as long as most white people have been in America; they moved to Taiwan to get away from China and find a better life.
Only one of his four grandparents is from China. She was a Christian and she fled China for Taiwan in the 1950s. Like many waishengren, she did not feel safe in China. If she had stayed in China, she would not have been able to openly practice her religion—the same religion she has clearly passed down to her grandson.
Successful athletes of Taiwanese descent are bribed to denounce their Taiwanese heritage. Taiwanese women’s golf prodigy and current No. 1 ranked Yani Tseng was offered $25 million by a Chinese company to change her citizenship from Taiwanese to Chinese.
The Chinese are more than happy to “reclaim” Lin, even though the only reason he has had the opportunity to be what he is today—an openly Christian, American NBA player— is because he is a Taiwanese American.
Add in the additional context that many Taiwanese hold citizenship in the United States or have moved their family to the United States in part because China has tons of missiles aimed at Taiwan, the freedom of Taiwan is at stake, and they feel American citizen is a safer and more prosperous bet.
Jeremy Lin grew up American, and learned his moves from watching VHS tapes of Jordan, Magic, Kareem with his immigrant father. Rather than examining the oppressive structures that have made it difficult for Jeremy Lin to play for American or Taiwan in the first place, now it looks like Americans are more than happy to speculate that Lin secretly harbors loyalty for China, simply because he has an Asian face.
Simply because China thinks that it has the right to tell Taiwanese Americans who and what we are.
Now this is just plain silly. Really, China? Really?!?!
Called it. I knew that they would.
Yani Yseng was offered the same thing but she turned it down and is playing loud and proud as a Taiwanese person. So yeah, I mean good for Jeremy Lin and all, but “Yeah I’m Chinese, but technically my parents are Taiwanese” is just complete fucking bullshit. Nothing worse than a celebrity without integrity, roots, and ideals. I bet your parents are real fucking proud of you.
I hope he takes the goddamned offer. Would just prove my beliefs that he is nothing more than a money and fame-mongering white-washed basketball player. I doubt anybody is going to read this rant, but if you do, I welcome you to send me hate mail. I’d like to hear what others have to say.
In presidential elections this weekend, Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s incumbent president from the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), or Nationalist Party, decisively defeated Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). With about 52 percent of the vote (compared to Tsai’s 45.6 percent and the third-party candidate James Soong’s 2.8 percent), Ma will be able to govern with a clear majority of popular support. His margin of victory was far higher than most opinion polls had predicted. Many Soong supporters seem to have decided in recent days that by voting for their preferred candidate, who is almost politically identical to Ma, they might hand Tsai the victory….
After avidly following Taiwan’s presidential campaign online, many mainland Chinese expressed the desire to one day soon choose their own leaders.
So, I did more research on my initial complaint about how UCLA Graduate applicants who are Taiwanese are told to mark “Chinese / Chinese American (including Taiwanese)” on the Biographical Data section of the general application, and how this perturbs me.
Why does this matter?
Because…
dt3k:
For many on the tour, the biggest surprise was learning that, contrary to what they had heard, most of the island’s 23 million residents are not exactly eager to merge with the mainland.
Just before boarding the plane at Beijing International Airport, Gao Guizhen, 59, a retired piano factory worker, dutifully offered the prevailing sentiment about Taiwan and China. “We are one,” she said.
By Day 4, she seemed to have second thoughts. Sitting away from the others as they awaited a train ride along Taiwan’s scenic coastline, she offered a metaphor about two feuding brothers. The elder, she said, runs off with the riches, leaving the younger impoverished and embittered. Decades later, when the bereft brother grows rich and the anger fades, the grandchildren are allowed to spend time together. They discover that they have some differences, but also that they share many things — including an utter lack of interest in keeping up the feud.
nytimes, 10.08.11.
A response to a letter sent into Taipei Times by Ms. Yang Liu Hsiu Hwa, which is an indirect response to the recent (welcome to election time in Taiwan!!) heated issue of Taiwanese identity. You can read President Ma’s answer here.
Second post is in regards to a Malaysian Chinese in China. This ties into the “generational Chinese” effect. Can I ask, really, honestly, is it only the Chinese who really really want to do that group thing when they try to bring it all back to China? I’ve heard claims of Korea, of Japan, basically most other Asian countries spawning off China at some point in the billion year old history. Do other countries do this outside of Korea and Japan sparring at times? I don’t know anyone else being forced to squeeze out which generation of Chinese they “must have” come from. Who says stuff like “my bloodline comes from the Yellow Emperor” like President Ma - I mean do the French say they came from Louis XIV or the English present themselves as the same bloodline as Henry the Whatever? There needs to be some sort of scientific study or poll on a global level about this mentality.
We all know how difficult or annoying it may be to defend your identity to outsiders. The fact is, that this occurs within Taiwan as well and the reason for why I spend a majority of my time countering this. After all, if you don’t know yourself and love yourself, how will you be presented to others?
