Heaven speaks

November 1, 2020 @ 11:31 am · Filed by under Language and politics, Signs

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Taken in Jiaoxi, Yilan County, Taiwan:

The large characters on the big blue sign say:

Tiān miè Zhōnggòng
天滅中共
"Heaven will destroy the Chinese Communist Party"

Bàozhèng bì wáng
暴政必亡
"Tyranny must perish"

The small hashtags at bottom left:

Zhè shì tiānyì
這是天意
This is heaven's will

Shùn tiān zhě chāng
順天者昌
Those who follow heaven will prosper

Gǎicháohuàndài
改朝換代
Change the dynasty

Chí Xiānggǎng
持香港
Support Hong Kong

For those who are curious, the red signs to the right and left advertise Yílán bǐng 宜蘭餅 ("Yilan cakes"), a local snack.

Selected readings

[Thanks to Mark Swofford, who supplied the photograph]

November 1, 2020 @ 11:31 am · Filed by under Language and politics, Signs


5 Comments

  1. AntC said,

    November 1, 2020 @ 5:12 pm

    Jiaoxi is a spa town: there's hot springs and many huge hotels catering for busloads of tourists coming for the pools.

    Yes Yilan cakes are yummy. After a hard few hours combatting the swirling jets of water, you feel sufficiently virtuous you've earned one.

    Those tourists are largely international: Japanese, Korean, Chinese mainlanders. And indeed many of the hotels are foreign-owned. The Covid closure of travel is hitting hard.

    I was in Jiaoxi in February. We stayed in a gargantuan Japanese-owned hotel that was nearly empty — this despite them slashing their room rates, to try to encourage Taiwanese visitors. I had six jacuzzi's and a whole swimming pool to myself.

    Interesting there should be an anti-CCP banner so prominent. In the Presidential elections in January, the major difference between the candidates was attitude to the CCP: should Taiwan cosy up to them for the sake of the economy? The PRC's 'contribution' to the debate was to greatly restrict mainland tourism to Taiwan, so Jiaoxi was already hurting before the Covid.

    Overwhelming, the vote supported incumbent Tsai Ing-wen's stance against the CCP. And this was well before the CCP showed its hand in Hong Kong. Attitudes against the CCP have hardened a lot since then.

  2. David Marjanović said,

    November 1, 2020 @ 11:09 pm

    Was heaven always so anthropomorphic (having a will, about to destroy stuff…), or are we looking at Christian influence (over the past century or two)?

  3. Twill said,

    November 1, 2020 @ 11:32 pm

    @David M Heaven hath given and taken away the mandate of rulers for millennia in China, so I don't see how this would be a novel sentiment.

    The most remarkable part of the sign is one that isn't noted at all in the post: the 共 is not only in red (can be taken as offensive in a Sinosphere context), but is rent in two, a very graphic representation of what it is claimed Heaven wills to do to the CCP.

  4. Keith said,

    November 3, 2020 @ 1:32 am

    @Twill

    The first thing I noticed about the sign was the 共 that you mention.

    I can recognise a few characters, but not many, so I didn't notice that it was a single character "rent in two" as you so neatly put it.

    I thought that there were two characters that had been drawn in such a was as to show a dagger on the left and a drop of blood on the right, and that it was the drop of blood that give the red colour to them.

  5. Richard Futrell said,

    November 3, 2020 @ 2:58 pm

    Are 共 and 亡 meant to rhyme here?

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