Your article about the use of “Chinese Taipei” (“Reporter’s Notebook: ‘Chinese Taipei’? Don’t You Mean ‘Taiwan?’” Nov. 14, 2010, page 3) superbly underscored and drove home with a vengeance the absolute and utter inanity of the denigrating and humiliating moniker.
This cretinous, filthy epithet absolutely must be done away with. I have difficulty finding words that are adequate in describing the risible absurdity of the label.
The core issue is that “Chinese Taipei” is an oxymoron, and the simple truth is that the term refers to absolutely no place on Earth.
What would people’s reaction be if I spoke of “Spanish Vienna,” “German Paris” or “Romanian Lisbon?” People would think that I was extremely brain-damaged or totally insane.
The term “Chinese Taipei” utterly defies the most basic common sense. It violates the most fundamental concept of human language, one of which — by the way — is found in the Confucian principle of the “Rectification of Names.” To say “Chinese Taipei” is like calling a horse a sow, or a camel a rabbit.
I cringe every time I read the term, “Chinese Taipei.” This term is abhorrent, disgraceful, and disgusting.
Please allow me to ask another question: Would it make any more sense to turn the tables around, and refer to “Taiwanese Beijing?” How do you think the Chinese would react to that? After all both the Chinese Communist Party and their pandering, toady lackeys in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) both make the claim that “it’s all one country.”
If it is truly one country — as both the Chinese Communists and the KMT insist, then it should make absolutely no difference at all whether this supposedly “one China” is called “Chinese Taipei” or “Taiwanese Beijing.”
There are people who will say that the name “Taiwanese Beijing” is ludicrous, but this only serves to prove my point that the inane moniker of “Chinese Taipei” is no less risible.
I find a certain poignancy in the question asked by a customs official at Tokyo International Airport.
“You are from Taiwan, but why do you say you are from ‘Chinese Taipei?’” he said.
Indeed. Why are these people from Taiwan forced to say that they are from “Chinese Taipei?”
We all know very well the reason why. It’s all China’s doing, in collusion with the KMT.
However, someone, somehow has to put an end to this nonsense.
Someone has to say: “This stops now; it ain’t going any further.”
And now, dear reader, if you will most kindly excuse me, I have to rush to catch a plane — to Albanian Washington.
MICHAEL SCANLON
East Hartford, Connecticut
Source: Taipei Times - Letter 2011/04/11
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