Having missed Taiwan’s 10/10 Day last year (known as ‘Double Ten Day’), months ago I decided to cover it locally and write a big giant blog post about it with tons of photos and pictures.

For me, 10/10 day started yesterday evening when I set my alarm clock for 4:25am and tried to sleep.

The plan was to get up at 4:25am, have a quick shower, take Leela for a walk, jump on the scooter and head to Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, find a park and cover the whole day of celebration as best I could.

Despite going to bed ridiculously early, I managed to get a decent enough nights sleep having woken up only once around midnight. When my alarm kicked in at 4:25, whereas usually I’d be dead tired… this morning I was actually excited.

Four hours later, here I am back home with a bitter taste in my mouth. Despite my planning and best of intentions to celebrate Taiwan’s national day with the locals and feel some Taiwanese pride… Double Ten Day couldn’t have been a bigger waste of my time.

After getting ready we jumped on the scooter and touched down at Chiang Kai Shek around 6am. The crowd had only just started to build on the back side of Ketagalan Boulevard and we weren’t entirely sure what was going on.

Apparently there was a flag supposed to be raised at 6am and we figured the crowd was there to watch it.

Joining the crowd it didn’t take much to get towards the front and from there it was evident nothing much was going on.

There were military police everywhere and between 6:15 and around 7am or so they let us advance forward twice, each time about 50 meters.

While we waited the crowd entertained themselves with cheers as various people put up and waved Taiwanese flags they’d brought with them. At one point a whole bunch of scouts rocked up and a path was made through the crowd to let them in.

Then, out of the blue people started being herded back towards Chiang Kai Shek Hall, away from the Presidential Palace.

We eventually heard a police officer on a portable megaphone repeating to just follow everyone as they were all heading towards the parade area.

So that’s what we did.

Walking down ZongShan South Road, we weren’t exactly sure where we were going so we asked a policeman (there were tons of them everywhere). He told us there’d be some stuff to watch at Chiang Kai Shek Hall across the road… and that he wasn’t sure where everyone else was going.

Coming to the intersection of AiGuo West Road, we crossed ZongShan South Road to see what was happening at Chiang Kai Shek Hall.

After we crossed the road, I noticed that most of the crowd were heading down AiGuo West Road;

Again not sure what we were doing we asked another policeman what where they were going only to be told they were heading to the Presidential Palace to watch the morning show.

That show (or parade or whatever it was) being exactly what I’d come to see, we waited for the traffic lights to turn before crossing over ZongShan South Road.

As we crossed this convoy of army trucks rolled past;

Initially we were in the big swell of the crowd but it had thinned out a bit now. Still following it though, we walked down AiGuo West Road and were then stopped at the first set of traffic lights.

Apparently they’d reached their quota (a few hundred people) and were now letting nobody through.

What?!

Apparently, unless we had some badge that you had to organise earlier, no more members of the general public were being allowed through. All this because we stopped to talk to a policeman for 2 minutes and crossed a road.

We stood there for a few minutes trying to reason with the guy (‘but we were told to come here by the guys over there!’) but it was no use. Even after us there were still people streaming down the same foothpath obviously directed there by the same police who told us to ‘follow the crowd’.

Turning back towards Chiang Kai Shek Hall we then heard the same story all the way back. Unless we had those passes we weren’t getting in.

I wasn’t going to create a scene at this point… but I was fucking furious at the general lack of communication and government incompetance which had subsequently ruined my plans.

A few hundred people out of  a city of over 2 million get to watch the National Day celebrations, are you fucking kidding me Taiwan?

Apparently there was some parade starting at 9 or 9:30… but having missed out on the early morning stuff, I figured ‘fuck it’ and headed home. I wasn’t in any mood to sit around for two hours doing nothing.

As a final kick in the teeth, walking back to the scooter along Chiang Kai Shek Hall we saw hordes of tourist bus groups walking past us. Apparently they were overseas visitors who all had passes.

It appears that National Day in Taiwan is more about putting on a show for foreign visitors to the country rather than the locals. Apart from a few hundred people in the crowd we were in, nobody else in Taiwan got to see anything.

Coming home we flicked on the television and ironically there was a report about other locals complaining about not being let in and standing around barriers.

They also stated that 20,000 or so international visitors were attending… a huge contrast to the few hundred locals let in. Seriously, this has got to be the biggest joke of a national day in any country I’ve ever heard of.

I know there’s supposed to be some parade on about 1pm or so and fireworks tonight, but after the complete fuck up of a morning… I’m not sure I can be bothered going to cover it.

10/10 Day in Taiwan: What a fat fucking waste of time that turned out to be.



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