...Other than the money it takes to change it. In the past i mentioned how Taiwan's first president who wasn't from the KMT political party, had an initiative to change many of the names of things that had "China" in it. The idea was by changing this and other such things that show a connection to China, Taiwan would be taking it's first steps towards truly being it's own country.
Taiwan independence is a huge issue over here, and while I can realistically see the benefits and drawbacks to both being independent and to being part of china, i don't think that the first step towards independence is wasting large sums of money on a petty gesture while ignoring the needs of your people. Then again perhaps that's exactly what most countries do, waste money on trivial things when they still haven't solved the most important domestic issues. So in that perspective Taiwan truly an independent country.
Well one place that wasn't able to escape the name change was Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall (shown yesterday). The whole complex used to be called Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall, but both the park and the actual memorial building had their names changed. The building's name was changed to National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall, while the park was changed to Freedom Square.
As much as I may criticize Taiwan, it's democracy is one of the most free and forward thinking in all of Asia, and some of their choices set the tone for the rest of Asia (I will definitely make more posts about this in the future). But at the end of the day any democracy has it's severe flaws as well. Meaning When a KMT party candidate next became president, the name was changed back.
Actually only the name of the building was changed back, the park is still known as Freedom Square. Perhaps the most perplexing thing for me is while the name change was a petty jab at the KMT and it's history, it in actually makes the KMT and CKS seem great. I always felt like the name "Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall" just was a place to remember a guy, didn't make him either good or bad. But the names "National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall" and "Freedom Square" make me feel like it's something you would do if you felt that CKS did a lot to create democracy in Taiwan, and give freedom to it's people. Which as we know is not his legacy, and definitely is not what the opposing party wants people to think.
Or maybe i'm just not looking at it the right way. Instead of being a huge waste of money that actually had the opposite effect of what they intended, it instead was a deliberate effort to re-brand something to make it sound nicer, thus being able to better cope with the horrid history behind it. Genius! I am going to try this myself. From now on my chinese book will be know as "Valuable Depository Of Endless Knowledge" perhaps than I will more enjoy my time with my textbook, rather than despising it as I do now.
