The Guomindang Cosmography of Street Names

The Guomindang Cosmography of Street Names

if.iAPPENDIX C The Guomindang Cosmography of Street Names IT IS EVIDENT from the naming patterns still visible that deeply significant arrangements of space are not limited to choreographic movements before temples. Every Taiwan town carries a message of Guomindang ideology in its street names: (a) identifying Chiang Kai-shek, Zhongzheng, with his prede­ cessor Sun Yat-sen, Zhongshan (in Taipei, however, Chiang was represented by Jieshou Road near Jieshou Hall, the re­ named Japanese government center, Jie being part of his personal name, and shou meaning "longevity"); (b) identifying Chiang's ideas and the Nanking government with Sun Yat­ sen's Three Principles of the People (sanminzhuyi); (c) identify­ ing Guomindang authority in Taiwan with the moral purposes . of Nanking government (1928-37) and earlier revolutionary events and organizations; (d) identifying Guomindang author­ ity with specific Confucian values and universalistic standards of peace and impartiality; (e) recalling Chineseness with such names as Zhonghua Road and the names of mainland cities; and (f) carefully limiting Taiwanese symbolism. Neutral names and local names are interspersed but never for important streets. Very few leaders are so memorialized. Lin Sen Street could refer to Lin Sen (1868-1943), the dignified and powerless chief of state in the Nanjing regime, or to his Appendix C 319 eponymous county of birth in Fujian. Keqiang Road in Shilin may be named for Huang Xing, the early Guornindang leader. In Taipei, as is so often the case, the Three Principles of the People are used to name parallel streets in the same order as Sun used, with Nationalism first: Minzu, Minquan, and Min­ sheng. As one drives west to east along Minsheng Road, one crosses in tum Zhongshan, Linsen (for the politician), Xin­ sheng (for the failed moral rearmament movement of the 1930s), Songjiang (the place), Jian'guo (Restoration), and Fu­ xing (Revival). With the luxury of a great many street names, Taipei, unlike other cities, has been able to represent much of the map of China on its roads, with province and city names set roughly in their appropriate places. Note that Roosevelt Road runs off to the southeast, never making it near the center or crossing auspicious streets as it goes into the suburbs. In Tainan city, travelers from the station can go to the city government building on Zhongshan Road, and after a very confusing roundabout find that it has become the Zhongzheng Road, much as Jiang (Zhongzheng) after the warlord period was able to continue Sun's (Zhongshan's) ideals. The roads representing the Three Principles of the People are, as usual, parallel, running in the same direction. Traveling in another direction from the station, along what used to be the old north wall, is the Chenggong Road, named after the university and the patriotic opponent (a.k.a. Koxinga) of Taiwan's incorpora­ tion by the Qing. This road has no important government buildings and leads nowhere. In Xuejia, in Tainan county, there is another Chenggong Road that, though central, is blocked in on both sides: a dead­ end as a symbol of localism. The wide Zhongzheng and Zhongshan streets cross each other at right angles, the former in a north-south axis. In Madou, the east to west Zhongshan Street becomes Restoration Street, identifying the National Father with the revival of Guornindang power in Taiwan. Similarly, Zhongzheng Street, running, as so often, north to south, be­ comes Xingguo (Revive the Country, moving from north to .

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