A very short, grossly inaccurate history of Taiwan

Taiwan

Just in case you’re unaware of it, (which is highly unlikely, or you wouldn't be perusing this) Taiwan is an island between 150-250kms (depending on which bit you look at) off the coast of mainland China that I visited in the mid- 1980’s. I went there for three weeks and had a stop over in Thailand for a bit of R and R for a week on the way back, for reasons which will become obvious if you carry on reading.

To give a little potted history of the Island, which may or may not be strictly accurate, on account of the fact that I’m relying on my memory and not looking it up on Google (which would be the obvious thing to do, but any silly bastard can do that).

Alright! Taiwan was originally populated by a mob of Chinese, they were invaded by the Japanese. They, the Japanese also invaded Manchuria, but they made a big mistake some time later, when they bombed the crap out of the American Fleet at Pearl Harbour.

This had the result of making the Americans very angry, which any idiot could have predicted. This resulted in the Yanks dropping a couple of atom bombs on Japan, which wasn’t particularly friendly, but did stop WWII which was good, unless you were Japanese. To the Taiwanese this meant the end of the Japanese occupation.

Meanwhile, on the Chinese Mainland, the Japanese had also returned home. This left the Communists under Mao Tse Tung and the Nationalists under Chiang Kai Shek to resume hostilities over who should rule China. Well, depending upon which particular school of thought you were dragged up under, for better or worse Mao beat the bejasus out of Chiang.

Chiang, spat the dummy and along with his supporters (The Kuomintang) grabbed as much gold and priceless relics as he could get his sticky fingers on and took off for Taiwan in 1949. I am unaware what the locals thought of this, they may have been overjoyed, or they may well have thought “What the fuck is going on here? I don’t like the look of this new mob!”

However, it was a ‘fait accompli’ as we intellectuals say and the locals were stuck with them. Between them they started copying things from the West in much the same way as the Hong Kongers (another mob of ex-patriate Chinese) so that ‘Made in Taiwan’ and ‘Made in Hong Kong’ and ‘Made in Japan’ became synonymous in the West as ‘A bunch of el-cheapo crap’ in the 50’s and 60’s.

Of course the Orientals were far too inscrutable and hard-working to let that continue and those labels are now badges of pride. All you have to do to confirm this, is to visit any Department Store or Car Yard and check out the electronic goods and cars and shake your head in wonder.

That ends the history lesson.

Cheers for now,

SkyBlueSkull