Hawking Carrot Cake and a New President

I was aware of that, but was the carrot-cake seller? He was busy frying up slabs of gelatinized carrot cake and hawking them, from his mobile vending stand, to hungry supporters of the new president.

Although living on the island semi-permanently, I haven't read a word about the Taiwanese presidential election -- I am far too cynical to stoop to that So everything in my report comes directly from hearsay, gossip, hype, and rumor. Read it as you would the gutter press.

The election started in earnest a few weeks ago. Some hovels, recently demolished, had given way to a vacant construction lot , which suddenly sprouted an elegant prefabricated building, emblazoned on the front of which were two huge, ugly heads: one was male, with slick, black hair, sharply parted too far to one side; the other was female, bearing a forced smile and bad teeth. This was to be the campaign hothouse for the pro-independence party, accused in Beijing of wanting to split the island from the motherland. Looking up at those two mugs, I asked my friend why the hopeful candidate had such an intimidating wife -- I could almost smell her breath. I was wrong of course, and that poster girl is now the vice-president.

Urban legend has it that the candidate's wife was crippled in a car crash while driving with her husband, the unfortunate victim of a deliberate attempt on her husband's life. The perpetrators were supposed to have been the KMT, Taiwan's nationalist rulers, trying to silence the opposition. The candidate is praised still for the magnanimous way he has selflessly devoted himself to taking care of his wife ever since. On learning this nugget, I immediately felt that he should have had his poor wife up there on the prefab, attracting more sympathy, instead of that grinning, round-faced gargoyle.

The next incident in the run-up to voting day was the discovery of a mysterious five million dollars in the checking account of a charismatic hopeful, ruining his better-than-even chances of becoming the next president. He had been the governor when Taiwan had both a National Assembly and a province to govern; but a few years ago the legislature decided to do away with that unnecessary extra level of government, and he lost his job. The Governor was a lofty position, but even in Taiwan, where the president is the highest paid president in the world, five million dollars smelt a bit fishy. At first he denied any knowledge of the money, professing ignorance of its origin; then he quickly transferred it to a new account, where it still sits, waiting to be claimed. Later, under pressure, he said that the money was entrusted to him, by the president himself, for the care of the wife of a late president (who must be living in the lap of luxury itself). Later still the story changed again: the KMT was blamed; the money had been planted to destroy his chances. His ratings plummeted.

Ratings were not the only thing going up and down. The stock market nose-dived on the day people finally realized that the ruling nationalists would no longer be ruling and a new pilot would soon be in the cockpit flying the island towards declaration of independence. Chinese are renowned gamblers, and the pain of not having any form of legalized gambling has been relieved somewhat by speculative investing: the islanders have taken to the local bourse in a passionate way; everyone has a stake. Understating the reality: Chinese care about money. And if a change in the status-quo meant a financial loss, well, then the status-quo might need to be maintained; or so it was thought. The nationalists, who own almost everything there is to own in Taiwan, were roundly blamed for orchestrating the panic, and the index whiplashed up again.

The incumbent president skillfully destroyed his own party's chances of victory by first booting out the country's most popular politician -- the aforementioned embezzler -- and then choosing a wet flannel to stand. Neither stupidity nor senility (he is seventy five) were blamed -- days before the ballot he was caught colluding with our ugly-headed friend on the prefab (the splitist), and influential business men and academics were arm-twisted into last-minute changes of allegiance, away from the nationalists -- it seems that all along Mr. President, who is also Mr. Chairman, wanted not his own party to prevail but the splitists, and he was doing his cloak-and-dagger best to effect his wish.

The nationalist party, seemingly unaware of their leader's treachery, made a last-ditch effort to hang-on to power by abusing their rights as owner of the three broadcast television networks and blanketing the island in propaganda in the forty-eight hours before polling commenced.

The president had his wish: the nationalist vote was hopelessly divided between the embezzler and the wet flannel, and our poster-boy was swept to victory. Angered by their leader's skullduggery, the nationalists turned on him and booted him out of his position as chairman of the party. His wife and personal secretary were seen boarding an airliner with large suitcases.

Mr. Chen had won, and I, living but a stone's toss from campaign headquarters, was rudely awakened from a late-afternoon nap by his boisterous supporters. A firecracker, a bullhorn, a pea-whistle, a roar, I am not sure what awoke me, but I quickly dressed, left my rooftop home, and joined the hordes descending on the prefab. At strategic intervals along the road outside, party faithfuls were letting off firecrackers and rockets, right in amongst the crowd, at appropriate intervals in the speechmaking -- or not, it made no difference. The human treacle was quickly spreading out along the road, its verges, and pavements, separating only for those pyromaniacs and their incendiary displays.

I ensconced myself on the front bumper of a blue Nissan delivery van, between the carrot-cake hawker and an elderly photographer, who seemed to be hanging inside an enormous tripod, upon which his cameras were bolted. The crowd swelled as the president elect kept us waiting. Huge television screens had been wheeled into the street upon which the final stages of the vote-count were being broadcast. Between the numbers, appeared hoarse speechmakers, whipping up the crowd with well rehearsed slogans and deft oratory techniques; rarely did the crowd not respond when it was supposed to, and usually with more vigor than was called for.

The crowd ballooned, the noise threatened to burst my ears, and my discomfort increased, eventually passing my tolerance level; I nodded to the hanging photographer and jumped off my vantage point. I bought a slab of carrot cake and left them to it.

© Paul S. Davey, 2000

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Paul S. Davey is a freelance travel and fiction writer. He started life in the UK but now turns up in the strangest of places around the world -- usually with his notebook handy

novels:
Ghost Money first chapter of a new novel
Fei Azzis and the Water Table of Sa' An (coming soon)

travel:
Tryin' to Get to Mexico
Freedom in Cambodia
Saigon Gary
Pedalling Taipei
Tofu Culture
Urban Betel Adventure: Sex, Drugs, and Spitting
Cambodia, Freehand