Dust settles on war over CKS memorial name change

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The dust has settled after a brief war over the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, leaving the Taiwan Democracy Memorial standing in its stead.

The renamed memorial, with its renamed main gate, was opened to the public yesterday, four days after it had been cordoned off for the namechange.

Supporters for the renaming jostled against protesters into the enclosure, now known as Liberty Square, at 10 a.m. as the roadblocks in front of the gate were removed and tourists streamed in.

The renaming is being contested, however.

Su Yung-kwei, the Taipei chief of labor affairs, was on hand to inspect the work the Ministry of Education had contracted out to put up a new plaque atop the renamed memorial and replace "Da Zhong Zhi Zheng" with "Zhi Yu Guang Zhang" as the new name of the gate.

"Da Zhong Zhi Zheng" or "Great Mean/Perfect Uprightness" had to go because the second and last ideograms, if combined, form the preferred given name of Chiang Kai-shek. It was replaced with "Zhi Yu Guang Zhang," which means Liberty Square.

The old plaque bore "Zhong Zheng Ji Nian Dang," which literally mean "Zhong Zheng (Chiang's given name) Memorial Hall." One of the granite characters in the quintet was cracked Saturday as it was separated from its stone base above the lintel of the main gate and craned down onto the ground.

That was considered willful damage, which is punishable, according to the cultural heritage conservation law.

After the on-site inspection, Su said the Taipei municipal authorities are suing six MOE officials and contractors. Among the officials named were Tu Cheng-sheng, minister of education; Chuang Kuo-yung, his chief of staff; and Tseng Kun-ti, manager of the memorial.

"They made changes to the memorial and the gate in defiance of our orders to stop work," the Taipei labor chief said.

Hau Lung-bin, Kuomintang mayor of Taipei, made the memorial a municipal cultural heritage site last May 22. No changes to and within the structures therein can be made without his permission.

The opposition-controlled Legislative Yuan insists that the renaming be legislated. So far as the Taipei mayor is concerned, the whole site is still the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.

Tu Cheng-sheng made last-ditch effort to prevent the name change. He had the Council for Cultural Affairs declare the memorial a national cultural heritage site to overrule the municipal authorities.

Then Tu had his chief of staff direct a name-eradication campaign. Tseng is a MOE functionary.

A brief skirmish occurred shortly after the memorial was reopened. Supporters and protesters traded verbal abuse, but no melee ensued.

There were also not too many tourists. A few American and European tourists simply did not understand why there should be much ado about the names.

"Who cares what they are called?" an American asked. "The memorial remains the beautiful memorial," he said, "and that's all we care about as tourists."

Though the fight was over, Chuang never abated his verbal jabs towards Ma Ying-jeou, the Kuomintang standard bearer who actually has nothing to do with the issue over the memorial.

After proclaiming Ma's homosexuality, Chuang told the press the Kuomintang candidate is a chicken.

He said Hau, who lacked education in democracy, has guts, whereas Ma "hasn't known what guts are his entire life."

"Nor does he know what manliness is. He is a little chicken."

But Chuang said he would like to apologize for calling Ma a homosexual.

"Not to Ma, though," Chuang said. "I want to apologize for the way I said it, because that might lead to some misunderstanding with the homosexual community."

Ma said Chuang does not have to apologize to him.

"What Chuang has to do," Ma said, "is to apologize to the public."