Taiwan showcasing shared culture with China as tensions rise

Taipei Letter: The great majority of the island’s people describe their national identity as Taiwan ese, with only a handful identifying solely as ChineseMotorcyclists wait for the light as they ride down from the exclusive motorcycle lane of the Taipei Bridge during the morning commute in Taipei on Wednesday. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images

Also known as The Story of the Stone, the 18th-century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber has been compared to Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Until 1998, the school curriculum was focused almost exclusively on China but since then it has put a greater emphasis on the distinctive historical and cultural features of Taiwan. But the broader Chinese culture remains dominant and a cultivated Taiwanese is as likely to have read Dream of the Red Chamber as their equivalent in Beijing or Shanghai.

Although Lai stresses his Taiwanese identity and referred to Taiwan as a nation in his inauguration speech, his own swearing-in ceremony revealed how the Republic of China he now leads remains in important ways the entity established on the mainland in 1912. During the swearing-in, Lai bowed before a portrait of Sun Yat-sen, the Republic’s founder who is buried in Nanjing and is revered in the People’s Republic of China too.

China Xi-Jinping

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