週末回台北拿寄來的卡片跟生日禮物 :-p 。星期天剛好也是母上生日，被抓去廚房負責把冰箱的菜變成桌上的菜。
啦啦啦，把卡片用相框立起來～ 倒是這樣就看不到裡面那句更好笑的話了：
Category Archives: Thoughts
Republic Day
Today is the date marks the establishment of Republic of China. Many people from Taiwan might refer you that today is the “Double Ten Day”, but the term is not self explanatory, and today (1010) has really nothing to do with binary numbering. The correct term should be “Republic Day.”
Republic of China(ROC) was (is?) the first Chinese Republic, which ends Chinese monarchy in 1911. After World War II, Communists bets Nationalist who leads R.O.C. and form their second Chinese Republic – People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nationalists then bore the ROC name and fled to Taiwan. Before that, Taiwan was a Japanese colony for 50 years (1895-1945).
The ROC government continued acting as Chinese governments in exile until 1994, a document implicitly recognise the existence of PRC and place ROC as the government represents the Taiwanese people, willing to negotiate for peaceful unification (at the time.)
The new ruling party from 2000, which is pro independence though, push for the formal reorganisation of PRC and ourselves. Plans includes legally change the name of the state to Taiwan instead of ROC which suggested itself as a Chinese government in exile. To do that, with formally “giving up” the sovereignty over China, a constitutional change, even a new constitution has to be in place. PRC sees these reform as a move toward formal independence against China, and thread the use of force. Pro unification parties also rejects the idea.
For your information. I hope what I wrote above can clean things up for you, and answer the question “why Taiwan is formally named Republic of China?” in mind.
With legal point of view, de jule status of Taiwan can only be certain if a treaty was made by China, Japan and United States. But sadly, such treaty can never took place after a serious war, probably World War III. And nothing in the international law says the future if Taiwan should consider the will of Taiwanese residence (the US Taiwan Relation Act does though). Taiwan has operate herself independently for 57 years without a formal status, and is likely to do so for decades (or caught into a war which is the last thing I would like to see).
Green & Red
綠紅，不是立宏(冷)。跟政治沒有關係。
全世界除了台灣和中國(大陸)兩個地方，其他地方的股票漲跌都是綠=上漲、紅=下跌，就連香港也是。不相信的人可以看看 CNN 或是逛逛世界各地的 Yahoo! 首頁。
一片慘綠這個成語在香港會變成一片慘紅(笑)。
Nothing to do with Taiwanese politics.
I was watching CNN one day, and I suddenly noticed the colours of the stock indexes are different: in Taiwan, when stocks rise the up arrows are coloured red; greens are the down ones.
Further investigation (on Yahoo Worldwide portals) shows that Taiwan and China are the only two places on Earth displaying stock indexes the “wrong” way. I don’t know if this was cause by Chinese traditions; red is the fortune colour used in every Chinese/Lunar New Years; green is the colour of one’s face if he/she feel ill or terrible.
On the contrary, Hong Kong does celebrate Chinese New Year – but their colours are as same as international. I guess the Chinese proverb “All terriblely green” don’t apply to them.
Chromatics means a lot in Taiwanese politics. For people who would like to know what red means politically besides Communists read this NYT article.