Changing of the guards: Men made of stone

The National Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall (國立 中正 紀念堂) is located in the center of the capital on a spacious area designed as a large park, you know, when you read my older post about it. 

The whole area is 250,000 square meters and it is the attraction most visited by foreign tourists. Every hour they were attracted by the changing of the guards in front of the statue of Kai-shek, who is sitting on a throne in a marble hall like emperor Barbarossa. Visitors, mostly from the other China on the other side of the sea, stand admiring and film and photograph enthusiastically.

The ritual that the soldiers perform in front of the huge cityscape of the father of the nation is laborious and extremely boring. The young men come in with slow strides, led by an officer and accompanied by roaring drums. They turn jaggedly towards the area in which the members of the to be replaced guard stand on pedestals, motionless as if carved out of stone.

Loud commands, decisive screams. Rifles are presented and the frozen young men on the pedestals are allowed to move again for the first time after an hour.

How they manage to stone their face, not move a leg and keep their shoulders pulled up as if nailed to slats, is a miracle. Normal people cannot do that, here it is demonstrated: the guards are just as motionless as the man whose memory they are supposed to guard.

Chiang Kai-Shek sits on top of his huge throne and looks down at the amazed and photographing tourists around his guard with the typical smile that all Taiwanese sculptors have to chisel on his face.

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