Why 岛屿天光 Island's Sunrise?
The previous section of this website examined the features of the song in how it plays a role in the Taiwan Sunflower Student Movement. This section of the website will examine the broader political movement and provide further depth as to why Island's Sunrise is as radical of a song as it is.
Very rarely do movements happen in isolation and spontaneity, and the Sunflower Student Movement is of no exception. J. Michael Cole, Editor-in-Chief of Thinking Taiwan explains that this movement "will have serious, and possibly long-lasting, repercussions on the dynamics within Ma’s Kuomintang (KMT) and the island’s relationship with China"(7).
While the song's lyrics reveal very little about the movement's initial cause to review an economic trade pack with China, the song's lyrics do provide the bigger picture behind the movement of wanting to both establish themselves as autonomous from China and of, perhaps more importantly, wanting to send a wake-up call to "Taiwan's democracy [that] has become an empty shell"(6), due to the years of corruption and lack of accountability.
Very rarely do movements happen in isolation and spontaneity, and the Sunflower Student Movement is of no exception. J. Michael Cole, Editor-in-Chief of Thinking Taiwan explains that this movement "will have serious, and possibly long-lasting, repercussions on the dynamics within Ma’s Kuomintang (KMT) and the island’s relationship with China"(7).
While the song's lyrics reveal very little about the movement's initial cause to review an economic trade pack with China, the song's lyrics do provide the bigger picture behind the movement of wanting to both establish themselves as autonomous from China and of, perhaps more importantly, wanting to send a wake-up call to "Taiwan's democracy [that] has become an empty shell"(6), due to the years of corruption and lack of accountability.