Blue Taiwan

Unbeknownst to me I named my blog Green Taiwan simply because green is my favorite color and Taiwan is the place I knew that I would be blogging most about. Well, it turns out that Green Taiwan actually means something over here. Recently, as in yesterday, we had the presidential elections. There is the Green party 1 and the Blue party 2. I'm sure they have different names but that is the colors they choose. Pictured below you can see the Green party. Basically from what I have gathered they support breaking from China officially and allowing Taiwan to become their own independent country. The man on the left is the presidential candidate and the one on the right I believe is the VP candidate. Other than that I can't give you any more information because I don't speak enough Chinese to know what is going on.

Below you can see the presidential candidate for the Blue party. No idea what his name is but apparently he is hard at work doing something important. The Blue party wants better relations with the mainland and my knowledge ends there, so I'll stop.

One thing that I did find fascinating is the way they choose to campaign. Of course there are banners on every street corner, banners every way you turn really. I have never seen anything like that in the United States, but apparently they are a little freer here. They do love putting up these signs everywhere. Green is on the right and blue on the left. This was in the countryside on the way to the Buddhist monastary we went to recently.

Then of course you have the mass political rallies everywhere that people love attending. Last week after church on the way to the bus we had to walk through a great crowd up people supporting the Green party and I took a video of the madness. If it ever finishes uploading then I will post it, otherwise I'll have to forgo the video.

But people are crazy over here. The top picture was taken on our way home from Costco Friday night and the street were packed like crazy. I believe it was the Blue party that was going crazy that night. There was a huge concert in the park, or rather rally in the park. I wanted to go inside but I didn't want to press my luck and we had important food to carry home like chocolate muffins and rolls. We have also had random parades which I don't know that they have anything to do with the election, but they didn't really make sense either way. Well I suppose I should get back to the title of the blog so I can end it. The Blue party swept the elections gathering up nearly 60% of the vote. That means we probably won't be going to war with China. I thought about renaming my blog, that I figured I'd continue to root for the underdog. U.N. for Taiwan!