Taiwans grandfather: The smiling man in the high castle

If you visit Taipei as a German (see my other posts here), you will of course end up in the Coffeehouse "Vergissmeinicht" sooner or later. It's small, cozy and you even have old German "Reichsbahn" railway signs from the GDR on the wall. The drinks are super expensive, but the food tastes good and it is only a short jump across the street to one of the city's great sights, which tells a lot about Taiwan and the self-image of this small island nation that has split off from great China.

The National Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall (Chinese 國立 中正 紀念堂) is located in the center of the capital on a spacious area designed as a large park. It's not the same kind of a sensation like the Sun and Moon Lake or the south end with the beaches near a nuclear plant. But you shouldn't miss it. Wide paths lead between excellently manicured flower beds to the heart of the national understanding of the Taiwanese, who are Chinese but do not want to be confused with the communist sisters and brothers on the mainland.

Visitors from mainland

The father, now better the grandfather, of the country, is this very Chiang Kai-shek, who was the opponent of the communist leader Mao Zedong in the Chinese civil war between 1927-1949. After the defeat by the communists, the 51-year-old fled with his supporters to the nearby island and proclaimed the provisional government of the Republic of China on the island formerly known as Formosa, which to this day claims to be the actual Chinese government.

The whole area is 250,000 square meters and it is the attraction most visited by foreign tourists. Outside the gate of Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, there are poles carrying the sign of "true rightness", because Kai-shek was always right they believe.

The four sides of the structure are similar to those of the pyramids in Egypt. The material is white marble. The roofs are decorated with deep-blue glass as part of the reflection of blue sky and bright sun. The blue, white and red all around express the National Flag and the spirit of freedom, equality and brotherhood that Taiwan stands for - agains China of course.

A bloody grandfather

Like his archenemy Mao, Kai-shek ruled dictatorially, but he murdered far fewer people. Nevertheless: Kai-shek's party, the Kuomintang, based its power in Taiwan on guns by bloodily suppressing the actual native Taiwanese when they rebelled against the new masters.

From the "white terror", as this phase is called today, nothing can be seen in the magnificent building in the center of Taipei. No wonder, because the palatial house, modeled on the Sun Yat-sen mausoleum in Nanjing in what is now the People's Republic of China, serves entirely for hero worship and the idolatry of the long-time president and highest military commander of the Republic of China.

He is sitting right at the entrance behind his desk, he looks up with a smile, his hand with a pen still busy signing a pioneering paper. Everything on display here is real, the shoes, the uniforms, the shirts, the books. Even Kai-shek's black government  limousine Fleetwood is laid out, surrounded by cordons and released for admiration.

He's a hero now

Personality cult as in communism, but still understandable. When Kai-shek's people came to Taiwan, they had little more than hope that one day they would be able to go back to real China. This evaporated over time, but in that time the father of the nation succeeded in building a modern country with an iron hand. Taiwan is now the chip factory of the whole world, without the semiconductors that come from here, no technical device would run in the west.

For today's Taiwanese Chinese, all of this ties in with the man who here smiles benevolently from every wall. Sometimes the president, who died in 1975, can be seen in a painting in oil, sometimes he is a comic figure, sometimes a drawing, sometimes photos show him in a cosmopolitan pose or as a soldier. As big as the self-confidence of the studied military, as big as the monument in his honor.

The memorial hall comprises several floors, it has its own souvenir shop and a changing of the guard regularly takes place in a separate area in front of a statue of the founder of the Republic of China and the Kuomintang. Visitors, mostly from the other China on the other side of the sea, stand admiring and film and photograph enthusiastically.

The foundation stone was laid on October 31, 1976, Chiang's 90th birthday, and the building was finished in April 1980, punctually on the fifth anniversary of Chiang's death. Since then, time has stood still here sourrounded by traditional chinese gardens with beautiful flowers, miniature hills and plants, ponds, ornamental bridge and waterfalls as well as green grass presents scenery beauty. The walls surrounding the area are with nostalgic design. 

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