23 April 2007

Les élections françaises vues de Taiwan.


A Taiwan, les médias ont relativement peu parlé des élections présidentielles. Je relève néanmoins quelques éléments intéressants dont un relatif au fait que l’un des deux candidats au second tour des élections soit une femme (je précise qu’il s’agit de Ségolène Royal, au cas où un des lecteurs de ce blog tomberait par hasard sur cet article après avoir vécu pendant quinze ans élevé par une famille ourse dans une forêt canadienne). La féminisation de la politique internationale semble susciter des interrogations et surtout des espoirs parmi quelques membres de l’électorat taiwanais mais aussi parmi les politicien(ne)s taiwanais(e)s.

Le China Post Online (la version Internet d’un des principaux quotidiens en anglais du pays) titre son édito du jour « Taiwan needs a woman president: Annette Lu » ; de même, quelques mois plus tôt, cet article de Kailing Wang sur le site d’eRenlai, A Woman for President!, nous explique quels seraient les avantages pour Taiwan d’avoir une femme président.

Plus anecdotique, mes sondages personnels des intentions de vote des Français habitant à Taiwan ont donné François Bayrou et Ségolène Royal favoris (je rappelle que l’on ne peut pas voter directement de Taiwan car il n’y a pas d’ambassade, les plus désargentés ou les plus occupés peuvent faire une procuration de vote, les plus fortunés peuvent se rendre en Corée du sud…). En vérité, je n’ai interrogé que huit français, peut-être pas les plus représentatifs, mais les résultats étaient ainsi : 4 pour Royal, 3 pour Bayrou et 1 ne sait pas… Cela a surpris une amie taiwanaise qui aurait cru les Français expatriés à Taiwan davantage à Droite…

12 April 2007

Bananas and eggs........


(Painting by Pan Yu Liang)


Before arriving to Taiwan, I didn’t know I was “so Chinese”. As I have already said, I’m a banana (in between, I’ve discovered that the opposite – white outside and yellow inside – is called an “egg”). As I look Chinese, it seems normal that Taiwanese people at first glance, consider me as being a Taiwanese too. When I just arrived to Taiwan, I didn’t have the reaction yet to say that I am a “Huaqiao” or “Huayi” - that is to say “overseas Chinese” or “FBC” (French born Chinese) - I would simply reply that I was French when people would ask me with a suspicious look : “ You’re not Taiwanese, are you?” (I’m quite proud to say that I hear that sentence not that often now, must be a proof that my oral Chinese has improved a lot…) I even experienced some funny looks when I was saying with confidence that I am French like “I had no idea French and Asian people look alike so much…” Once, in a supermarket, I almost had an argument with the cashier. She would keep asking me “are you sure you are French? You must be Chinese, why do you speak Chinese with a funny accent?” and I had to moderate my answer explaining that my mother is Taiwanese but I was born in France etc… At the end she just said, “Well, you are still Chinese, that’s all!”

Is being Chinese a fatality? Or is a fatality being Chinese?

As soon as I arrived in Taiwan, I started having some identity troubles. Strangely, I almost never felt these itches while I was in France. Especially in Paris where people are so mixed. Maybe some would think I am a tourist, but everybody can potentially be a tourist over there, it mainly depends on the way you are dressed, your way of being, more than your physical appearance. It never came to my mind to say I am a French Born Chinese. Of course people would eventually ask me where my parents are from, if I was born in France. But my saying I’m French had never been something strange or rare.

Here, in Taiwan, I’m actually experiencing a strange transformation: the “banana-becomes-an-egg” mutation. First, I gradually changed my answer, now I always mention the fact that my mother is Taiwanese, etc. “Nice to meet you, I’m Cerise. Don’t be surprised, I’m a French born Chinese, my mother is Taiwanese but I was born in France and I have lived there almost all my life.” That became my name card. By means of repeating I’m Chinese, I really started to believe it (the “kouei method”, by auto-suggestion seems to work after all!)


I
s this what immigration and integration are about? Before coming to Taiwan, I didn’t know whether I would acclimatize myself so much. Some of my Taiwanese friends say it is normal, it must be in my genes. Then I, my mother and my brother must also have French genes because we are pretty well integrated in the French Nation. For what I know, I am a “pure Han product”, I was born with two blue spots on the bottom (don’t worry, they disappear when the baby grows up) and I have a visible line on my forearm which are said to be the genetic marks of Han people. Both of my parents are Hakkas, a Chinese linguistic group and, when I was a child, my father used to say proudly that my brother and I were 100% Hakkas… with a “little something French”, would he add in order to tickle. Then, from the genetic angle, I cannot claim to be the result of mixes like American people for example (About that subject, read this very amusing text by Bob: My Chance Encounters with Chance.) But on the cultural front, I am the result of my parents’ past migration to France : a French girl with a little something of Chinese… Guess what!...


Today’s favourites
My Chance Encounters with Chance by Bob
International Migrations Today
by Kailing Wang

9 April 2007

Quel est votre modèle féminin ?


(Peinture de Pan Yu Liang)

L’autre jour, en classe, la prof de chinois nous a demandé si nous avions un modèle féminin et de qui il s’agissait… A l’exception de l’unique garçon présent en classe (j’ai d’ailleurs l’impression qu’il se sent parfois grandement exclu, seul entouré de quatre représentantes de la gent féminine… que dis-je ! Ne vous y trompez pas, c’est en fait un peu le chouchou de ces dames…) Nous nous sommes creusé la tête un court moment et nous avons toutes donné des réponses assez diverses : ça allait de Lady Di à Yinqi (une femme d’affaires taiwanaise, responsable du développement du TGV à Taiwan). Pour ma part, je ne sais pas quelle mouche m’a piquée, mais le premier nom à me venir en tête fut celui de Blanche de Castille ! Non pas que je m’identifie à une reine française du Moyen Age (Blanche de Castille est la mère de Louis IX, elle a aussi la réputation d’être une femme à poigne) ; je pense surtout que nos réponses sont représentatives d’une vision plus moderne de la femme : consciemment ou inconsciemment (comme dans mon cas) nous avons tout de suite associé l’idée d’un modèle féminin à celui de l’image d’une femme forte, possédant aussi un
rôle politique assez important.

Il serait faux de dire que la femme taiwanaise est encore accablée par le poids des valeurs confucéennes : traditionnellement, la place de la femme chinoise est limitée à trois rôles qui déterminent également sa place et sa marge de manœuvre au sein de la société. Lorsqu’elle est fille, elle doit obéir à son père, après s’être mariée, c’est à son mari qu’elle doit rendre ses comptes, enfin, quand ce dernier disparaît, c’est au fils qu’elle doit se soumettre. Ce principe connu comme celui des « Trois Obéissances » n’a heureusement plus tellement cours de nos jours à Taiwan. Néanmoins, le fond de cette pensée transparaît encore de manière plus insidieuse notamment au travers de l’éducation par exemple ou de questions portant sur le
mariage et même la cigarette !

Ma famille taiwanaise réunit à elle seule les deux extrêmes de modèles féminins taiwanais que j’ai pu rencontrer ici ; d’une part, ma tante : une ancienne chanteuse de cabaret, sans enfant, vivant en concubinage avec mon oncle et fumeuse par-dessus le marché ! D’autre part, ma cousine, belle liane asiatique aux cheveux soyeux et à la peau de lait, assez timide et secrète, sans aspiration notoire sinon de travailler pour gagner de l’argent…pour faire du shopping !

Suggestions du Jour
New Models for Asian Women? By Li-chun Lee
A Woman for President! By Kailing Wang

3 April 2007

When time has stopped on the island.


Have you ever watched TV in Taiwan? It is very hard to find international news. There must be at least a dozen TV news channels which broadcast all the same stuff at the same time. Whenever I ask some Taiwanese about this phenomenon, most of them say that local people are just not interested in what is going on abroad. But what is the real cause? Are the Taiwanese TV networks not reporting about news abroad because there is no audience? Or are the Taiwanese not interested in watching international news because TV does not report it?

But maybe the main question does not even lay there or we risk falling into the unsolvable problem of the egg and the hen. As for myself, I think that it comes from the “island” mentality, predominent in such a small country. Thus, Taiwan besides being physically isolated, also seems to live in an abstract isolation. Taiwan is its own whole world.


Recently I read a Taiwanese short story called “The Clock”. It was written by Zhang Xiaofeng (張曉風) as part of her collection of short stories published in 1968, entitled Wailing Wall (哭牆). The story is about clocks and time: in a remote village of Taiwan, people start to be confused and disoriented when they realize that no clock gives the same hour. All the everyday life becomes a mess, teachers arrive 30-minutes late to class and a rivalry begins between the eastern and the western part of the village since each side relies on a different clock. The narrator is a disenchanted junior high school teacher, who goes to see a friend, a former teacher, who lives a misanthropic life, raising goats. They discuss the situation. The narrator says that, since nobody can decide which is the right time from the two main clocks of the village, why not look for a third source to decide a reliable time, for example a radio. But his friend just makes a violent diatribe against the necessity of having a radio. They don’t need a radio because they are used to living happily without knowing anything from the outside world. They know nothing about hunger in India. They are happy because they are not conscious of misery elsewhere in the world.


Is this one of the particularities of a “living-on-a-island” way of thinking? The island by its natural limits is also a castle which can protect from outside calamities, but what if the worm is already inside? In fact, the narrator is far from being happy: he seems to regret the time he lived in Kaoshiung (the biggest city in the South of Taiwan); he misses his girlfriend of that time; he was sent to the countryside after being at odds with the Head of his former school; he was punished for not conforming to the rules or local norms. A clock and the time it gives have to be normalized in order to be useful. If not, as in this story, dissensions may arise. Is it also because when we live in society, we need some norms, some rules to cling to or to bypass.


At the end of the story, the narrator lends his watch to his wife who goes to find out the right time. For the first time in a long time, he feels weird and then free without the watch he is used to wearing on his wrist. But as night descends on the village, the clouds of his dull life shadow once again his emergent hopes.



Today’s
favorites
Every man lives on an island by Bob
Medias in Taiwan by Kailing Wang


 
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