Sometimes, from time to time I would have these sentiments…

All of a sudden I feel deeply sorry to be a part of “Chinese” culture, in it’s broad term. Politically I’m Taiwanese, but culturally I’m Chinese, 華人, sharing the teachings of Confucianism, Taoism, pragmatism, and the history of 2000 years of imperial dynasties.  

That is to say, I am part of this kind of culture, which was violently rejected during the New Cultural Movement in the early 20th century by Hu Shih, Chen Du-xiu, all these revolutionists, whom I could kind of related to, but at the same time understanding their opponents, the anti-New Cultural Movement party, the people who ran the Xue Heng Magazine, for their perspective had deeper academic roots. 

Anyway, this cultural legacy, that those radical revolutionist once attempted to overthrow, survived somehow, and still influencing all the people, across the Taiwan Strait, until the 21 century, is where I’m coming from.

This is the culture that allows the ROC to be vague for more than 6 decades about our nationality…

This is the culture that allow the Chinese government to pretend ignorant about the 700 tons of cyanide in Tianjin…

This is the culture that focus mainly on the skills and the “economic value” or “social status” of art works and artists, and not the creativity or the innovative insight of it….

This is the culture that praises “seemingly” progress as long as there’s no real awful regress.

This is the culture that allows a lot of shit to happen, but still being able to carry on for thousands of years, as it already has been.

Well, maybe it’s a fact that the more you know about your origin, the less easily you feel proud of it…(though you still try to.) You want to criticize it and make a change, but don’t really know how…

But on the other hand, maybe we are all changing rapidly, every minute, every second, globally.

Culture is an out-dated term before we could even define it clearly.