intermission 3: double ten

Today is National Day, the foundation holiday of the Republic of China, the sum effect of which on my life currently is that the lady who usually sells me my fried rice is taking the day off. National Day, the tenth day of the tenth (solar) month, is kind of a strange event in a place that a relatively limited number of organizations acknowledge as a nation(-state). It’s hard to say anything definitive about it, aside from the fact it is not a sound aesthetic principle on which to construct buildings. The shape of Taipei City Hall, which looks like it was built in 1973 but was actually built over twenty years later, is based on a reduplication of the character for “ten,” which is an even-legged cross, as you can see in red near the base of this image. Aside from looking incredibly clunky and having, by all accounts, miserable fengshui (it’s surrounded by wide avenues that sweep all the good luck away), it is, as you can imagine, pretty inconvenient to get around in. Talk about putting symbolism first.

I’m about to go immerse myself in hot water (going to a mountain hot springs place with Tiffany and My American Friend), so I’ll leave you for now with the President’s National Day Address, and draw your attention particularly to this nice little paragraph: “The sovereignty of the Republic of China is vested with the 23 million people of Taiwan. The Republic of China is Taiwan, and Taiwan is the Republic of China. This is an indisputable fact,” which may or may not cause a lot of talk tomorrow—either from the people who are disturbed about the shutting-out of the PRC, or from the people who are part of the “rectification of names” movement that would eliminate the name "Republic of China" altogether.