I really don’t understand why the argument likes” because Taiwan holds the heritage of Chinese culture so Taiwan is a part of china” still exists. What is Chinese doesn’t mean to be of china, not to mention to be of Chinese government. It’s the trick of words, saying that the Taiwan holds the heritage exclusively Chinese so that prove Taiwan belongs to China. That’s a lousy trick. That seems like saying because north and South Korea have the same source of culture heritage so they must reunite. What kind of argument is that? The problem must be distinguished into cultural source and political body, and I really don’t see how we can infer one to the other. Yes, there are many elements in the majority, but not all, of Taiwanese’s thought, costumes, habit, holidays, that’s say elements of culture, which are in extreme similarity of what we know as the Chinese culture, which many of them don’t even exist in China anymore. If we really follow this from- culture- to- political- body inference, isn’t it just lead to prove that China belongs to Taiwan since we are the one holding the original heritage? What a Stupid argument. It’s just playing the trick that the “internationals” don’t have a clear picture of what’s between China and Taiwan, and using the point that China had won the interpretation on history and culture by its economic force. The real problem between China and Taiwan remains on political body, not even government. We had formed different political body, and develop the relatively independent and intersubjective “culture” or costume. Besides, the natives in Taiwan had formed a irreducible part in Taiwanese culture, that makes the two cultural system entangled but independent in the same time. The Taiwanese worship ancestor, put family in a significant status like what is taken to be in Chinese culture, but in the same time the idea of respect of Mother Nature, the animism in Taiwan had jointed the elements from the natives and transformed into something different from the Chinese, but neglected because of lack of understanding and ignorance. It is in our daily lives, our expression, our jokes, our way of living, which makes any one of us irreducible to “CHINESE”, the citizens of PRC. Why the Taiwanese hate to be called as Chinese? Isn’t it the proof that there’s no essential problem of identity with the Taiwanese people? Is there anyone likes to be called as someone else? It is true that because of history and political atmosphere, that many of Taiwanese run into problem using words to indicate ourselves as Taiwanese, Chinese, belong to Taiwanese culture or Chinese culture, especially when we are facing the “internationals”. The problem of indication from words to ideas which had made even worse by the politician in Taiwan, may confuse us in words and then in ideas, but it doesn’t confuse us on emotion, which for me is the true resource of national identity. Like what I heard from the writer of Imagined Community in a speech: the irration in nationalism.
