The characters in the above picture are derived from a manga turned anime series titled Hetalia by Himaruya Hidekazu, which personifies the various countries of the world as human beings. In the above picture, Taiwan is represented by the Asian girl, Japan by the Asian guy, and the ang moh guy should be America if I am not wrong. I believe the Chinese in the above picture should be simple enough for most to understand. For others, Taiwan is showing us how to draw the Taiwanese flag that was used from the period of 1893 to 1906. Japan notices that the sun in the Taiwanese flag is placed at almost exactly the same place as the Japanese flag, and asks her whether she is thinking of him. Taiwan blushes and decides to relocate the sun to the upper left hand corner of the flag.
Even though the above characters are derived from simply manga, I would say that the author of Hetalia has shown herself to be quite accurate in the personification of countries, displaying adequate historical knowledge. During my tour in Taiwan, the tour guide has emphasised time and time again that the Japanese have a very good understanding of the Taiwan people. It would seem to those that have grown up reading Singaporean history books that a Japanese occupation would result in negative sentiments towards the Japanese. But even though Japan has occupied Taiwan for around half a century, many elements of Taiwanese popular and non-popular culture can be said to be heavily influenced by Japanese culture. In fact after listening to the tour guide for a good 8 days, I would say that there is a stark lack of animosity between the Taiwanese and Japanese people. And that Japan is a country that remains foremost in the minds of the Taiwanese people (together with China, of course).
Japan supporting Taiwan when she is weary.
During my tour in Taiwan, it also became slowly apparent to me that the task of reuniting China and Taiwan is an enormous one. My tour guide, for one, was hardly apologetic of his anti-Mainlander comments, which resulted in much laughter throughout the tour. In one of his many stories, he recounted how one of the Mainland tour groups he took hung their underwear and socks in the tour coach to dry, after realising that it wasn’t possible to do so in the hotel room. He said he aged 10 years taking that Mainland tour group, and told us that it was a luxury to take a Singaporean one.
I would say that the reason Himaruya chose to draw Taiwan as a young and pretty girl as opposed to many of the other countries she personified, usually in the form of young men, is firstly because Taiwan is inherently weak, and will not be able to withstand an invasion from the Mainland alone (China is seen fending off Germany and Japan alone in the anime). And from the top of Building 85, I would say that Taiwan does possess quite a breath-taking cityscape. And for a moment up at the 85th floor of the said building, I longed for Singapore to have a cityscape as beautiful as the one Taiwan has. In fact, Taiwan is also known as Formosa which means “beautiful island” in Portugese, which I hopefully am able to demonstrate in the following pictures that I have taken.
But if there is one thing that most people go to Taiwan for, its for the food in their night markets (incidentally the reason why this blog post is named thus, in case you are wondering) which is nothing short of incredible. To wrap up this picture heavy blog post, I would say that my trip in Taiwan was thoroughly enjoyable, and I definitely wouldn’t mind re-visiting on my own at a more leisurely pace (the tour group basically rushed from one place to another very quickly).
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