62 Chapter 4 From "Free China"to Democratic Taiwan 63 the sobriquet "Free China."The label seemed a cruel joke to many Tai- sive view:Chen Chu was the first girl in her family to attend high school, wanese,but its designation as part of the "Free World"forced the KMT-led and she graduated from a technical college in 1968. government to justify the glaring discrepancies between its democratic Even in an era when it was dangerous to speak against the government, promises and authoritarian practices. Ilan sheltered an abiding resentment of the KMT and the ROC government, The Cold War itself provided the most potent rationale for the ROC's whom many in the county saw as outsiders who had imposed themselves retreat from constitutional government:rescuing mainland China from the on Taiwan by force.Chen Chu's clan shared that tradition:one biographer clutches of the "Communist bandits"(gongfei)who had seized the moth- calls the family "pioneers of the democratic movement."Her older brothers erland.From the moment he set foot on Taiwan,Chiang's battle cry was kept Chen Chu supplied with dissident literature from the big city while she "Fight back to the mainland!"For the 2 million Chinese soldiers,officials, was in school,stoking her passion for justice.When she was nineteen years and refugees who moved to Taiwan from the mainland,recovering the old,Chen Chu went to work as a secretary to llan's most famous indepen- mainland was a personal mission as well as a political mandate.They had dent politician,Kuo Yu-hsin.Her life in politics had begun. left behind their homeland,their families,their property,their ancestors' As far as the ROC government was concerned,segregating Mainlanders bones.Recovering the mainland was a matter of desperate urgency. from Taiwanese was a matter of national destiny.The government that The newcomers were mostly men,including thousands of soldiers,but moved to Taiwan in 1949 never accepted defeat;it planned to continue the there were women and children,too.One tiny refugee,born in Beijing less civil war until the ROC battled back to power in the mainland.It might be than a year before the Communist victory,was Jason Hu.The second son cut off from most of its territory,but the state itself was intact:the National of a mid-ranking military officer,Hu grew up in Taichung.A shy boy with Assembly and Legislative Yuan were meeting in Taipei,the ROC's bureau- a slight stammer,he was one of thousands of Mainlander youths who grew cratic agencies had set up shop in offices built for Japan's colonial officials, up surrounded by reminders that the mainland-not Taiwan-was their the armed forces were fortifying their defenses-and President Chiang Kai- true home.Theirs was a life of privileged isolation that brought many op- shek oversaw it all from the grand Presidential Office at the west end of portunities,but also cut them off from the everyday life around them. Hsinyi Road.As long as those institutions were operating,the Republic of The logic of segregation was rooted in history.The wave of Mainland- China was alive,and Mainlanders were its leading citizens. ers arriving in Taiwan in 1945 came not to settle,but to reincorporate the Taiwanese were citizens of the ROC too,of course,but in the regime's island into the Chinese nation.They were soldiers and administrators- eyes,they were citizens of a single,Johnny-come-lately province.Mainland- agents of a government headquartered on the mainland.Their job was to ers,in contrast,were a microcosm of Chinese society,including people from rule the local people,not to integrate with them.When the mainland fell, China's many provinces and ethnic minorities.They regarded themselves as a second wave of Mainlanders arrived who were no more interested in be- the representatives of a past and future Chinese nation;they felt obligated coming "Taiwanese"than were the first.Mainlanders were planning to go to their compatriots in the mainland to preserve the diversity of China's home;relationships with Taiwanese would only complicate their eventual population within the ROC state.To fulfill their duties to the Chinese na- departure.Nor were many Taiwanese enthusiastic about assimilating the tion,they held themselves apart,resisted the temptation to settle down in Mainlanders.Both groups saw the other as far too alien to be absorbed. Taiwan,and took upon themselves the job of governing the nation. Growing up on the Taiwanese side of this social divide was a little girl What did these duties mean in practice?To begin with,ROC citizens were named Chen Chu,born in 1950 to a large farming family in Ilan County. required to be vigilant about protecting their Chinese identity.The province Ilan is on Taiwan's northeast coast;as the crow flies,it is not far from Tai- of one's birth became a key demographic datum,recorded in household pei,but until recently it was remote and rural.High mountains cut llan registries and on identity cards.Children born in Taiwan inherited their off from Taipei and the broad western plain where most Taiwanese live; fathers'provincial origins,allowing diversity to survive through time and it would take a very high-altitude crow to make that direct flight.Ilan's intermarriage.Even if they had never visited their erstwhile hometowns, remoteness preserved its wild natural beauty and rich Hokkien culture. Mainlander children were raised to think of themselves as "Hunanese"or Few Mainlanders ventured over the mountains to live there,and the young "Shanghaiese"who shared their parents'responsibility to rescue the mother- Chen Chu grew up immersed in her Hokkien heritage with its unique lan- land from Communism.Their duty to govern the nation meant Mainlanders guage,stories,beliefs,music,aromas,flavors,and outlook.Her grandfather trained themselves and their children for government service.Preparing for was a traditional Taiwanese patriarch who maintained a household of up to government service was exactly how Jason Hu spent his youth.He attended forty people,but when Chen Chu was ready for school,he took a progres- National Chengchi University,a training ground for future KMT leaders,and