TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — “We’ll all get rich” thundered the then Kuomintang (KMT) Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) to thousands of his excited fans, “make big money!”
Four years ago, the Han wave was in full swing, lifting him improbably to the mayorship of Kaohsiung after 20 years in the hands of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), resulting in a landslide victory for the KMT.
His “Han army” came out in droves to massive rallies. Han was at the time affable, self-effacing, funny and relentlessly positive: The defiance, paranoia, and anger that came over him in his later presidential run hadn’t yet appeared.
His rallies were unusual in that they sang songs and featured imagery that could have come right out of the 1980s. It was clearly visible in his crowds, and later borne out in polling data, that the bulk of his voter base came of age in the late authoritarian era.
In the last week, Han has been back in the headlines as he crisscrosses the country to speak at rallies in support of KMT candidates. He has been coy on whether he’s going to run for president again in 2024.
He still has a big, middle-aged fan base. Nearly everyone under age 40 hates him, and those old enough to remember the earlier, darker period of martial law are not enamoured with him either.
Younger voters who grew up during the democratic era are deeply suspicious of Han and his followers' authoritarian-era nostalgia and strong Republic of China (ROC) nationalism. Many feared Han would try to turn back the clock if he won.
Han army worldview
While many middle-aged voters didn’t vote for Han, and many aren’t so nostalgic for the authoritarian era, a surprisingly large number of them did. The reality is that the worldview of these people is quite different from younger Taiwanese.
It doesn’t just show up in politics, it’s a cultural difference. For example, it shows up in murder cases.
I do the central Taiwan news reports for ICRT, so I read the really local news for Taichung, Changhua and Nantou. One thing I noticed is the majority of murders don’t reach national level press coverage.
Of course, dramatic gang murders, and love affairs gone violently wrong, do make the press. But there is a whole category of murders you most likely won’t read about.
It’s because they all follow almost exactly the same script. A working-class man in his 50s or 60s, while drinking with his “friend,” gets into an argument (usually over money) and stabs him, almost invariably, with a “fruit knife."
Why are these people so different from today’s youths? And why are so many nostalgic for the authoritarian era?
Youthful nostalgia
One simple factor is nostalgia for youth. You need to understand the very different world they grew up in.
I arrived in Taiwan in 1988, having just turned 19 years old a few weeks earlier. Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) had passed away a few months earlier, and a new president, Lee Tung-hui (李登輝), who everyone thought was going to be a weak caretaker until a strongman took over, had just assumed office.
Though martial law was only in effect on the offshore islands and had been lifted in Taiwan proper, the new security laws put in place were not much of an improvement. Nylon Deng (鄭南榕) had yet to self-immolate in protest at the government’s tyranny.
It was still an authoritarian one-party state, and would only start the long road to democracy a few years later. Like China today, propaganda banners featuring political slogans were a thing. Many have a rose-tinted, selective amnesia about that time.
What has been forgotten
A common occurrence is that when I mention something from that time that is gone today, middle-aged Taiwanese will get a curious expression in their eyes while they look back in their minds. After a few moments, their eyes will grow wide as they remember. There are many things about that time they really wouldn’t want back.
It’s not just losing their National Health Insurance or going back to the much lower salaries and standard of living back then. It’s much bigger than that.
As long as you kept out of politics, Taiwan was largely lawless at the time. Corruption was rampant, and pervasive, even down to the local convenience store level.
In the early 1990s, one Taichung convenience store owner complained to me about his business venture in China, noting the police in Taiwan took “reasonable” bribes that allowed him to stay in business. However, in newly opened China they hadn’t yet figured out bribing a business to death wasn’t a good long-term strategy. The same man felt Taiwan gangsters to whom he paid protection money were also more “reasonable.”
Gangsters everywhere
Gangsters were everywhere, and well-connected with the police. Laws today, such as those governing nightlife, are still vaguely written, so as to give police wide leeway in enforcement: If a gang was getting unruly, the police could interfere with their business interests to bring them back under control.
My boss for a time was a KMT factional politician in Changhua, and he was drunk constantly. Until I finally pointed out that getting drunk before teaching children was a bad idea, he’d drag me out for drinking sessions at lunch, sometimes with the county’s police and fire chiefs, among other major government officials.
The chief live entertainment of the day were entertainment halls that put on shows of strippers, comedians like Chu Ke-liang (豬哥亮), and other acts for their drunk audiences. Posters for these shows covered nearly all the available wall space throughout Taipei.
The sex trade was everywhere and overt. There were (and still are) “barber shops” where seedy looking men would act as touts and try to rope you in.
Young people hung out in MTVs, short for “movie TV.” These were small rooms with VCRs you could rent to watch a pirated movie and get away from your parent’s crowded homes.
Young, low-level gangster toughs swaggered through the streets like they owned them and careened about wildly on their Honda motorcycles. You knew to steer clear of them and sometimes you’d see them beating someone in the street.
Crime was far more common than it is today, and often one’s only recourse was to bring in gangsters. That came with a price, though, often in cash or owing them a favor.
Traffic bad today?
If you think traffic is bad today, it is a model of safety compared with then. Traffic laws theoretically existed, but no one paid them much attention, or wore a helmet.
On average, I saw one dead body on the streets every six months or so, and many injuries. Once I had to help cart a dead body to an ambulance because the superstitious villagers watching wouldn’t touch the dead body.
Pollution was out of control, and after riding a motorcycle for 10 or 15 minutes you would have to wash the soot off your face. Sometimes months would go by when the smog was so heavy it appeared overcast.
Factories would dump toxic chemicals in the irrigation systems of the rice paddies. I recall the colors were sometimes so bright and unnatural they were almost pretty.
Han Kuo-yu may be right that harkening back to the 1980s economically might be good for business, but people forget how dangerous and unhealthy it was. There are a lot of things that those nostalgic for the era probably wouldn’t want back if they thought it through.
But those are the bad things in the world that shaped that generation. There are actually a lot of good things to be nostalgic about.
After all, I fell in love with the country, pollution, gangsters and potentially fatal traffic notwithstanding. We will delve into the parts that those rose-colored glasses see in the next column in this series.
