“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,” Thomas Gray points out in his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, “And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,Awaits alike the inevitable hour.The paths to glory lead but to the grave.”Perhaps President Chen Shui-bian hasn’t read that classic poem in English.But he certainly enjoys childish “boast of power,” because he has no noble ancestry to boast of, nor enough pomp to show his power, unless he goes abroad on a state visit to a tiny, fence-sitting diplomatic ally of Taiwan.
President Chen thoroughly enjoys it.When an unemployed petty exporter-importer selling sunglasses at an exhibition in Taipei openly chided the government for getting it harder and almost impossible for many more people to live from hand to mouth, the president pointed out the protester must be a fake who was well off enough to buy an expensive admission ticket.Before a crowd of supporters at Miaoli, Chen told anybody dissatisfied with the life on Taiwan to swim across the Pacific Ocean, which “is not covered by a lid,” to the coast of mainland China.Of course, he made a slip of the tongue.If one could ever swim across the vast Pacific, one would reach the United States.One commonly used curse in Hoklo is: “Jump into a river (or a pond or a lake or the seas), which is not covered with a lid.”
But the consummate boast of power needed a toady to praise the president.Chen posted on his Web-site a message from a college student in the United States who worships him as a great and sagacious president for ignoring all the protests against him.We do not know whether that student is a fake.He may be a genuine Hoklo supporter of the Hoklo president, who was once proclaimed as the “son of Taiwan” a la the “son of Heaven,” the title a Chinese emperor used to claim for he was supposed to have received the “mandate of Heaven.”
Actually, it doesn’t matter whether the toad eater is an authentic admirer or a fake.The fact that the president put that message online proves beyond any doubt that he loves to enjoy the boast of power to which he believes he is entitled.Moreover, the possibility exists that he himself made it up.At any rate, we hope he would read Gray’s Elegy.He would then know he also “awaits alike the inevitable hour” and his “paths to glory lead but to the grave.”
（本文刊載於96.11.19 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
