These past two weeks have been a fantastic experience, full of lessons learned and memories that will definitely last a lifetime. Over the next several posts, I plan to recap what happened over the two-week Chinese New Year vacation.
Day 1-3: Outer Taipei.
Day 4: Visa Troubles.
Day 5: Hong Kong in a Day.
Day 6-7: Central Taiwan
Day 8-9: Southern Taiwan
Day 10-12: Kenting
Interesting point by Paul Krugman in the Times over the weekend:
“Yet if King could see America now, I believe that he would be disappointed, and feel that his work was nowhere near done. He dreamed of a nation in which his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” But what we actually became is a nation that judges people not by the color of their skin — or at least not as much as in the past — but by the size of their paychecks. And in America, more than in most other wealthy nations, the size of your paycheck is strongly correlated with the size of your father’s paycheck.”
For the most part, I agree with Krugman’s argument. Aside from a couple slurs I experienced at Penn by non-students, I can’t really think of anytime in my life where I felt I was being judged negatively because of my color. Though racism (even reverse-racism) most definitely exists, I don’t doubt the issue of race in America has become increasingly a non-issue. In contrast, I absolutely believe that America is already a society based on class. I liken the shift from race to class as an issue to the saying, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Whereas in the past color defined the feather, today that feather is defined by our education and work.
Yesterday was Taiwan’s presidential election. When I decided to come to Taipei, I had no idea that 2012 was a presidential year. In the weeks since I’ve been here, I’ve seen countless ads on buses, heard over passing cars with blaring megaphones, on the television, and even flyered on the campus once to don’t forget to vote!
After all the fuss, the campaigns for president against Tsai-Ing Wen and Ma Ying Jeou finally culminated. I spent the better part of Saturday paying attention to the news. Yea, I didn’t understand a good bit of it, but it was interesting to see how the media in Taiwan covered the election. I thought about the big rivalry between the Democratic CNN and Republican FoxNews. The same political bias exists here as well, between certain channels supporting the Kuomintang (KMT) or the Democratic People’s Party (DPP).
In the end, Ma Ying Jeou won. As these articles from the NYT and BBC discuss, Ma’s success ensures that cross-strait relations will continue to improve, not decline, as many thought would have happened if the DPP won. As an American, from a US-China relation’s standpoint, I’m glad Ma won. If it’s good for America, then it’s good in my book.
One other thing that I found interesting was watching the victory and defeat speeches at the end of the night. Ma’s speech almost had a Nixon-esque vibe to it. “xie xie dajia, women ying le (thanks everyone, we won!)” yelled Ma as he raised both arms waving a victory/peace sign, while his campaign staff did likewise. Meanwhile, on the DPP side, I couldn’t help but notice that the media seemed to pay attention to the audience, primarily women, who were pretty much balling in tears of sadness…goes to show how powerful a role the media plays in free nations.
Earlier this past week, I came across this article from The Times about the increasing difficulty of social mobility in America. It goes on to cite that when compared to the other countries in the West, family background has a huge impact on how likely an individual in the States moves up, down, or remains at the same economic level as their parents.
Obviously, this problem isn’t new. As the occupy movement demonstrates, it’s pretty clear America has a growing inequality problem. I certainly agree that an unequal society means unequal opportunities. It might be more difficult to “rise up,” but I don’t think it’s certainly impossible. Regardless of increasing disparity and economic background, I think social mobility, like every other goal, is really dependent on an individual’s determination and perseverance to achieve.