“I think it’s just a process of life. School, army, work. We just have army in between.” Cheng-han pauses for a moment from eating his noodle soup. “I feel like it’s the least you can do for the country. I’m not really a super patriotic person. I’m very politically aware. But then it’s four months, just give it to them.”
In five days’ time, Cheng-han, a 23-year-old recent graduate from Taipei, will leave home to begin his mandatory military service. “I’m really very lucky,” he says. “My grandfather did two years, a lot of my elder uncles also did two years, my dad also did two years.”
He is remarkably calm about the prospect of conflict. Taiwan, after all, is still claimed by China as part of its territory, and Cheng-han joins the military at a moment when the stakes for the island nation could scarcely be higher. While in Hong Kong the Chinese government faces the biggest domestic challenge to its authority since 1989, Taiwan heads to the polls this Saturday in an election pitting the Chinese nationalist pan-Blue coalition against the incumbent Taiwanese nationalist pan-Greens.
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