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Remapping Taipei: How Politics Transforms a City
The calls for austerity have given way to an acceptance of leisure and pleasure, with once military spaces in the center of the city now commonly used for pop concerts and other public rallies. The story about Kalgalan Square, and its effort to give public acknowledgement of Han Chinese atonement for their misdeeds towards the island's original aboriginal population, typifies this openness to the greater use of space for more inclusive, public statements from below.

All these physical and spatial changes reflect and nurture changes in the citizens' values, as the monumentalism of the past has been replaced by the wish for grass roots' politics. Whereas Hong Kong's architectural modernity was promoted by expatriates and banks, Taibei's architectural changes were often initiated by non-governmental organizations (NGO). Ironies here are abundant, with boulevards once named after strong leaders renamed after more politically democratic events and people.

Taiwanese have come a long way politically. They no longer just vote for someone of their same surname, same school, and same locale. They have public strikes and demonstrations. They have knowledge of local traditions such as festivals in public areas. Yet, there is no certainty that this will continue. The rule in Hong Kong is far from democratic, and time perhaps will be the main problem.

What Divides Us: A Cultural Reading of the Taiwan-China Problem

The Taiwan Straits is one of the world's most serious flash points. 500 Mainland Chinese missiles are aimed at Taiwan. China has 256-times greater area, 58-times population, and at least 3 times as many titles published every year. I want to ask today how different are their values and how might those differences be bridged.

For over half a century the threat from China has not been an abstraction to the Taiwanese. It is concrete and can even be found on the beaches, 10.000 bombs for every square mile on the islands between the Taiwan and the Mainland. Three generations in post-war Taiwan grew up on a powder keg. The beach to us had the image of a frogman invader rather than a place of fun and leisure with palm trees. This siege mentality was a natural outgrowth of all these fears for my generation, with heroes on one side and traitors on the other.

If we try to plot Taiwan's political and social culture in terms of order vs disorder, one would have to say that compared to Singapore, Hong Kong,

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