The Context of the Movement
As the Taiwanese protesters confidently sing out "Dawn is near / Don't be afraid / Today is the day / That I protect you for a change"(18), it's important to understand why the political statement that they sing is so deeply transforming.
Taiwan, beginning in 1949, was ruled by the Kuomingtang (KMT), the party that fled Mainland China after the Communist Party established the People's Republic of China. The native Taiwanese that had resided on the island prior to the KMT rule initially welcomed the new leadership, seeing it as part of the "retrocession" that began in 1945 to reunite themselves with China. However, with the arrival of the KMT and their 2 million followers, a rule of "white terror" begins, suppressing any native Taiwanese opposition or identity development. As such, since 1949, the KMT "has worked, through educational systems, and through political, economic and cultural policies, to construct the concept of Taiwan as an extension of China...[the] ideology of Taiwan as an extension of Chinese culture has functioned to benefit the mainlanders [that had fled from the Mainland], and in every way to oppress the [native] Taiwanese people"(15). By the late 1960s, the development of the middle class and the break-up of official Taiwan and U.S relations led to "Americanization", advocated by the elites and the government. "Americanization" improved people's standard of living and had impacts in the cultural and social spheres. As noted in the previous section of the website, this was also around the time Taiwanese (settlers of Taiwan that had fled the Mainland) campus folk began to develop. Furthermore, nationalism began to develop around the idea of "one China", with KMT claiming themselves to be "the legitimate ruling party of China, while...[condescending] the Chinese Communists...as "robbers" who stole away Mainland China"(15), providing grounds for "orientalizing" Chinese culture, while suppressing the native Taiwanese culture as inferior. However, in the mid-1970s, the first generation mainlanders who grew up in Taiwan revolted against modernization. A decade later, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) arose in the late 1980s and "declared the death of the one-party and one-man dictatorship"(14), while raising conscious awareness of the KMT's oppression of the Taiwanese people and of "Taiwanese"-ness. Yet despite the efforts for political reform and a more democratic society, the media commercialized the new concept of "Taiwanese" while still rendering cultural folk music as a vulgar form of culture. The situation has since improved, though cultural folk songs sung by ethnic minorities are still few and far in-between. While the media has taken its liberties to commercialize a "Taiwanese" identity, it is important to note that it is also in part because of the media that songs such as Island's Sunrise are able to quickly reach people all across the island of Taiwan. And this commercialization of a "Taiwanese" identity has, too, allowed the present generation of young and educated Taiwanese students to once again fight against the "way of life...threatened by China" and fight to "[reinstate]...functioning democratic mechanisms"(7). However, it is important to note that this time, "the entire DPP apparatus could be thrown behind bars...and...would have almost zero effect on the movement"(5), showing how the DPP "in reality could not have cared less for the efforts of civil society in recent years"(5), despite its initial act of breaking KMT's one-party rule. The students then, in singing "Today is the day / For the brave Taiwanese"(18), are singing to reclaim the land that they were born and raised in and the land that they want to see be represented of their ideals, both independent of China and free from its own political corruption. "'We are fighting a war against a state apparatus with massive resources, an authoritarian stranglehold on the executive and legislative branches of government, and a tight-knit organization,' the Sunflower leadership announced in a speech that was eventually released in Chinese, Japanese and English. 'No matter how tired we are, we will not budge from our last stand.'"(8) The students are also singing to define for themselves a new history as evidenced by the lyrics "Once the sun reaches the mountain / Then it's time to go home" - and home for them is to see the establishment of their nation under true democratic principles. |
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