... of all varieties today. Firstly because it's election eve in Taiwan, and secondly because I saw an article which my friend Cara shared on Facebook.
On national identity. What is your fucking problem, yo?
You don't own designations. Don't say 'I am a real Taiwanese' because that implies there is such a thing as a 'fraudulent Taiwanese'. Just because someone's idea of where the limits of this nation begins and ends (or if it in fact is a nation) does not invalidate their status as 'Taiwanese.' A nation such as ours is as much based on difference as it is on consensus. Borders and nationalities are redrawn and reinvented time and time again. If you cannot propose a vision of the nation which co-opts my imagination, I consider that to be a failure of yours, and I look elsewhere.
Political parties and individuals who rely on stirring up conflict as their sole political platform should slap themselves. This is not a pan-blue or pan-green issue.
Then secondly, an article by Margaret Cho.
When someone says something negative about my face or body I will always and forever just completely lose my shit, because I have so much hatred in me, a violence that lies just beneath the surface of my delightfully illustrated skin.
(via Margaret Cho's blog)
I know what you mean (and I don't mean that in a patronizing way). I respect your anger, and I think there should be more of it because those who don't understand where its coming from need to know.
Finally, right now.
In Kinmen, sitting up in bed wrapped in a heavy duvet. Outside the villages are Ming and Ching dynasty houses, red brick and swallow tail roofs, intermingling with anti-communist slogans, riddled with bullet holes; dilapidated, fallen, renovated; occasional two-story south east asian colonial style family homes, glazed tiles from Japan peeling off the walls, perhaps once richly coloured banners above and flanking doorways faded to pale pastels. Intricate geometric patterned wooden window frames, painted in azure and gold.
The economic boom that had been hoped for with the Three Small Links has passed Kinmen by unscathed. May it remain so, a sleepy, backwater, unprosperous island town, occupied mainly by the aged and the young, carrying the burden of history with apparent ease; tarnishing gradually, gracefully (and secretly all mine).
And you? What legendary things are you up to today?
On national identity. What is your fucking problem, yo?
You don't own designations. Don't say 'I am a real Taiwanese' because that implies there is such a thing as a 'fraudulent Taiwanese'. Just because someone's idea of where the limits of this nation begins and ends (or if it in fact is a nation) does not invalidate their status as 'Taiwanese.' A nation such as ours is as much based on difference as it is on consensus. Borders and nationalities are redrawn and reinvented time and time again. If you cannot propose a vision of the nation which co-opts my imagination, I consider that to be a failure of yours, and I look elsewhere.
Political parties and individuals who rely on stirring up conflict as their sole political platform should slap themselves. This is not a pan-blue or pan-green issue.
—What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen.
—Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.
(God bless Project Gutenberg; via Ulysses)
Then secondly, an article by Margaret Cho.
When someone says something negative about my face or body I will always and forever just completely lose my shit, because I have so much hatred in me, a violence that lies just beneath the surface of my delightfully illustrated skin.
(via Margaret Cho's blog)
I know what you mean (and I don't mean that in a patronizing way). I respect your anger, and I think there should be more of it because those who don't understand where its coming from need to know.
Finally, right now.
In Kinmen, sitting up in bed wrapped in a heavy duvet. Outside the villages are Ming and Ching dynasty houses, red brick and swallow tail roofs, intermingling with anti-communist slogans, riddled with bullet holes; dilapidated, fallen, renovated; occasional two-story south east asian colonial style family homes, glazed tiles from Japan peeling off the walls, perhaps once richly coloured banners above and flanking doorways faded to pale pastels. Intricate geometric patterned wooden window frames, painted in azure and gold.
The economic boom that had been hoped for with the Three Small Links has passed Kinmen by unscathed. May it remain so, a sleepy, backwater, unprosperous island town, occupied mainly by the aged and the young, carrying the burden of history with apparent ease; tarnishing gradually, gracefully (and secretly all mine).
And you? What legendary things are you up to today?
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