Famous Ankles

On Saturday, I was leaving my apartment to go to the Steuben Day Parade and saw a long line of marchers dressed mostly in green coming down 2nd Avenue and then turning west on 42nd Street.  It took me a moment to realize that this was a Taiwanese protest march that I had seen announced a few days ago.

They were very orderly, had a few chants, stayed on the sidewalk, and had a bunch of people.  I don’t think they’re going to ever get what they want, though.  They want to have recognition of their independence and a seat in the United Nations.  Not likely.  The U.S. is their best friend and even we oppose it.  Too bad.

Actually, I visited there long ago in 1972.  A beautiful island that had a lot of wonderful things for a teenager to see and buy (they didn’t recognize copyrights and you could buy a whole album for about 50 cents; you can imagine how many albums my brother and I brought back).  Whenever I mention my visit to a Taiwanese, he/she always, always, always says something like:  “It’s changed a lot from back then.  It doesn’t look like that anymore.”  It’s almost scary.

Some more pictures of the group.  I’ve no idea of the size, but they stretched way, way out.

I feel for their situation.  They’re an extremely prosperous nation with a wild and wooly democratic system that occasionally includes fistfights in their government’s chambers.  And the rest of the world thinks of them as a rebellious region of mainland China.  Just like Chechnya, which is what these protesters really fear. (For the reasons of that fear, see here and here.)

-H

This entry was posted on September 19, 2007 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Events, Manhattan, Mid-town. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.