Chiang Kai-shek's legacy attracts Chinese tourists to Taiwanese park

TASHI, Taiwan (AP) - Transplanted statues of Chiang Kai-shek have been neatly spread along a verdant hillside in northern Taiwan, some showing him on horseback with his mustachioed face held high, others with him clutching a ceremonial sword or reading a classical text. Chiang is much out of favour on the island of 23 million people, his 25 years of dictatorial rule regarded by many as justification for the relocation of his once ubiquitous bronze images to an isolated site in Tashi, an hour's drive from the capital Taipei.

But in an ironic twist, they have now become a place of pilgrimage for tourists from mainland China - the country Chiang fled in shame in 1949 after his Nationalist forces were defeated by Mao Zedong's Communist Party in a bloody civil war.

Chiang is a contentious figure on both sides of the Taiwan Strait - though for very different reasons.

In Taiwan he is reviled by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party. Many of the DPP founders suffered imprisonment and worse under 39 years of martial law that began in 1948.

Even many younger members of Chiang's Nationalist Party, eager advocates of the democratic system that Taiwan now embraces, freely acknowledge the excesses of his regime.

But in mainland China he is seen as an avatar of the unification that has long stood at the forefront of Beijing's Taiwan policy - so much so that his ruthless pursuit of the Communist enemy during 23 years of on-again-off-again civil war has been conveniently shunted aside.

In the quiet hillside park in Tashi, some 120 Chiang statues dumped by schools, public parks and once reverential communities attract a constant stream of mainland tourists, now permitted to visit Taiwan despite lingering hostilities between the sides.

A local official says the park, and the sombre Chiang mausoleum which it abuts, appear to appeal to mainland visitors far more than the island's loudly trumpeted scenic lakes and mountains.

"Whether they respect or dislike Chiang, they see the man as a symbol of Taiwan's ties to the mainland," said Chang Ching-wan, of the Tashi town government. "We were surprised to see some of the mainlanders bowing before Chiang's coffin."

Last year, nearly 40,000 Chinese visited Taiwan, and Taiwanese authorities are hoping for a tenfold increase in the number of tourists from China after a deal is struck with Beijing on travel arrangements - a development that could easily turn the trickle of mainland visitors to Tashi into a flood.

On a recent weekday morning, a group of tourists from northeastern China's Liaoning province carefully inspected an oversized bronze statue showing a smiling Chiang in a traditional Chinese gown seated comfortably on a large chair.

The tourists - men in dark business suits and women with permed hair and bright jackets - appeared subdued as they posed quietly for photos with their digital cameras.

"We came here to get a touch of history," said a mainlander who identified himself only by his surname Zheng.

"Chiang was a man of a bygone age and my impression of him is neither good nor bad," he added.

Those sentiments are a far cry from the widespread Communist condemnations in the days following Chiang's ignominious retreat to Taiwan in 1949. Contemporary writings depicted him as a "bandit" and accompanying Nationalist troops as looters and thieves.

After retreating to Taiwan, Chiang built the island into an anti-communist bastion dedicated to re-conquering the mainland. That goal was pushed aside only in the early 1990s, and over the past seven years - since President Chen Shui-bian's DPP ended 50 years of Nationalist rule - the independence-leaning government has constantly attacked Chiang's legacy.

Recent DPP moves include removing hundreds of Chiang statues from military bases and erasing Chiang's name from Taiwan's main international airport.

Last month party leaders said they wanted to reconsecrate the mammoth Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in downtown Taipei, changing it into a monument to democracy.

The move provoked outrage from many nationalist officials, who revere the white, palace-like structure as one of the few examples of classic Chinese architecture in Taiwan's otherwise gritty capital.

Nationalist legislator Joanna Lei derided it as a cheap political ploy intended to curry favour among the DPP's core supporters ahead of legislative elections later this year and the presidential poll in March 2008.

"The DPP is mounting psychological warfare against a pseudo-target - all those who support the opposition - trying to blame them for past injustices," she said.

Communal politics often come to the fore during major Taiwanese elections.

In the coming presidential race, DPP candidate Frank Hsieh is set to face the Nationalists' Ma Ying-jeou, a Harvard-educated lawyer whose parents were among the two million people who followed Chiang to Taiwan in 1949.

Many of the families of these later immigrants support the Nationalists and their platform of eventual unification with the mainland.

But the majority of Taiwanese are descendants of Chinese immigrants from the 17th and 18th centuries. They form the DPP's core constituents and remain opposed to unification, without necessarily favouring formal independence.

© The Canadian Press, 2007