A Bridge Quite Near

Xiamen City, Fujian, China, formerly known as Amoy, as seen from fortified shores of the closest piece of Taiwan, on the Kinmen islands, formerly known as Quemoy. Photo by Reuters via Taipei Times.

The previous post originally went up under the headline "A Bridge Too Far", which couldn't have made a lot of sense (I've changed it). 

The headline belonged to a different piece that got longer and longer and more and more essay-ish and ended up in the Substack, where, as ever, you're welcome to have a look. The Bridge is a conservative intellectual you've never heard of—neither had I before yesterday—called Elbridge A. Colby, who's running the Republican Party's increasing anti-Chinese paranoia.

Public Art

Taipei Main Station, not by Jeff Koons but Tsai-chin Ni, who is not a knockoff artist (perhaps this piece is meant as a satire of Koons).

Little trick

19h-century carved glove puppet theater at Lin Liu Hsin Puppet Theatre Museum in Kaohsiung, via The Star (Malaysia).

I thought the official Chinese response to the President-Elect's little Taiwan phone escapade was pretty sophisticated, combining the expected formal protest from the foreign ministry ("solemn representations") with a display of fairly competent snark from the foreign minister, Wang Yi:

This is only a little trick put up by Taiwan, and it’s impossible to change the ‘One China’ pattern that has formed in the international community. I don’t think the US government will change the ‘One China’ policy it has insisted for years, which is the cornerstone of the healthy development of the Sino-US relations. (Quartz)

Or a "petty trick" in the translation offered by the South China Morning Post. Managing to disrespect President Tsai Ing-wen as a kind of spitballer, making trouble to no serious purpose, and Trump as a helpless simpleton for being gulled by her so easily.

And if you didn't get that last, China's English-language papers were happy to fill it in for you:

“Taiwan made a petty gesture before Trump is sworn in, and Trump responded to it,” state tabloid Global Times wrote, adding he is “not familiar with foreign relations.”

And the ministry got into the act as well, with the same tone of regretful surprise at finding itself involved socially with people who are really not of the better sort: