CONTINUUM OF TIME 時間連續體 (112)

READING （EAST/WEST） 閱讀 （東西)

Interactional Fields 互動領域

Posted February 14, 2022

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Wind will not cease, even if trees want to rest.

— Mao Zedong (1966)

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Dec. 29, 2021, 5:02 AM PST

By Reuters

BEIJING — China will take “drastic measures” if Taiwan makes moves towards [declaring] independence, a Beijing official warned on Wednesday, adding that Taiwan’s provocations and outside meddling could intensify next year.

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and in the past two years has stepped up military and diplomatic pressure to assert its sovereignty claim, fueling anger in Taipei and concern in Washington.

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Beijing has sent repeated air missions over the Taiwan Strait in recent months to pressure Taiwan [which] has said it will not give in to threats.

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The defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949* after losing a civil war with the Communists, who established the People’s Republic of China.

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CAUSA Editor’sNote

Taiwan has a long history of colonial rule. It had primarily been the domain of Austronesian Indigenous peoples until the Dutch established a trading outpost there in 1624. In 1662 the Dutch were driven out by forces led by the warlord/pirate Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) who was loyal to the recently fallen Chinese Ming dynasty. After Koxinga’s descendants surrendered to the Manchu empire in 1683, the island became part of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty. The Manchus maintained control of the lowland areas of the island (the mountainous regions remained under Indigenous control) until it was ceded to Japan as part of reparations for the Sino-Japanese War in 1895. At the end of World War II, the armies of the Republic of China were directed by Allied command to accept the Japanese surrender of Taiwan, and when the Chinese Communist Party forced the Republicans, led by Chiang Kai-shek, out of mainland China, Chiang established a government in exile on the island. By the 1980s it was obvious that the Republicans would never return to govern China. As the result of considerable internal and external pressure, they gradually relinquished their power to allow the institutions of democratic governance to replace their authoritarian rule. Taiwan is now considered to the most “free” and democratic nation in Asia.)

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Chen Hongshu, Landscape (China, mid-17th century). Folding fan mounted as an album leaf: ink and colour on gold paper.

Curatorial Record: 

Two gentlemen sit in a waterside pavilion. One has a stack of books by his side; the other holds a fan as they converse.  Attendants come and go with wine or tea and a zither (qin), the musical instrument considered most appropriate for use by scholar amateurs. Although the landscape beyond shows a broad river bounded by distant hills, the scene strongly evokes the atmosphere of a garden, in which strategically placed pavilions served as stage sets for elegant gatherings.

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Painting, if it is to be independent of all that is not painting, inevitably reveals the inmost being of the man whose hand and brain drive the brush.

— Georges Bataille (1955)

Earnestly avoid seeking without, lest it recede from you.

— Ch’an master Dongshan Lianjie (d. 869 CE)

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sew  whn is smooth  sailing  yu ask  oh fervent 

bill bisset

2022

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