A government, most of the times, is simply a wasteful necessary evil. But one thing we can't tolerate is that more often than not, it creates trouble out of nothing.
The Kuomintang (KMT) government, in order just to please Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, had three old city gates of Taipei rebuilt in 1966 like those magnificent ones in Beijing. Toady officials thought their President Chiang was dissatisfied with the small, but not so dilapidated, city gates in the capital of his Republic of China. So the city gates, built in 1884, were torn down and better-looking ones worthy of the capital came into being. When the city of Taipei was walled in, it was the seat of a small newly created prefecture in the province of Fujian and it had five city gates.
After Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895, the Japanese colonialists had the wall razed into tree-lined boulevards. They first wanted to tear down all five city gates and did dismantle the West Gate, but kept four intact in the face of an angry ethnic Chinese populace. None of the four surviving city gates was bombed during the Second World War. But three of them did not survive the destroying hands of Chiang's "toad-eaters," who, however, spared the North Gate.
One thing they shouldn't have done was to put the emblem of the ruling KMT in relief in a gable of the rebuilt East Gate, located at the circle at the eastern end of the former Chieh Shou Road facing the Office of the President. Chieh Shou Road was renamed Ketagalan Avenue by Chen Shui-bian, mayor of Taipei. Incidentally, the Office of the President used to be the Office of the Japanese Governor-General of Taiwan that was bombed by the Americans towards the end of World War II. Donations were collected to rebuild the building, which was then presented to the generalissimo as a birthday gift in 1946. The building was named Chieh Shou Palace.
After the Council for Cultural Affairs was created, it designated the East Gate, known officially as the Ching Fu Gate, as a historical monument. As a matter of fact, it wasn't. It's a 1966 structure, a modern improvement of the original, historical city gate. In fact, it differs little from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, whose name plaque was taken off by orders of President Chen Shui-bian in 2007 to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the bloody February 27 Incident, and which was hastily designated by Hau Lung-bin, KMT mayor of Taipei, as a national monument in a vain attempt to keep the plaque from being removed. Chen wanted to posthumously liquidate Chiang, calling him the "chief culprit" of the incident.
Last week, three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters of Chen Shui-bian, all Taipei city councilmen, climbed up the scaffold to whitewash the emblem of the ruling party, repainted in a NT$7 million facelift of the rebuilt East Gate, which is considered urgently necessary because President Ma Ying-jeou is all set to double as chairman of the KMT. The Council for Cultural Affairs has condemned their "vandalism against the historical monument." They may be prosecuted and convicted. A public hearing was held to determine whether the emblem is part of the rebuilt historical monument.
The whole episode is a shining example of the government trying to create trouble by doing what it should not do in the first place.
（本文刊載於98.06.02 China Times，本文代表作者個人意見）
周家華
王順民
薛承泰
李正修
