In a year where Taiwan's social and political system experienced significant change, an online contest has determined that the Chinese character for 'overturn' or 'flip' best represents 2018.
Taiwanese publication has organised the annual contest of selecting the character of the year since 2006, and this year a total of 53 Chinese characters were voted during the preselection phase.
The nomination for “overturn” received 10,929 votes out of 57,748 in the online contest, making it the most popular choice.
The winning character was entered by a judge named Shengxing Zhang from the Taichung Local Court.
He cited a host of political shifts on the island as his reason for the nomination.
“Pension reform has overturned the trust from public servants, the transitional justice movement has overturned the historical memory, ill-gotten party assets settlement investigation has overturned the rule of law,” he said.
“Hegemonism has overturned the free trade, superpowers have overturned consensus, and turmoil has overturned well-beings that you enjoyed,” he added.
“what can we do?”
Among the top-10 were characters which had negative outlooks, only one positive one which can be interpreted as “change” or “moving forward”.
Supporters of Taipei city mayor and city mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je cheer in Taipei, Taiwan, Saturday. Source: AAP
Political turn over in Taiwan
In a media conference, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office commented on the character saying: “Taiwanese people’s vote speaks for itself.”
Taiwan experienced a crucial local election in November.
The ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its President Tsai Ing-wen were defeated in most of Taiwan’s prefectures and major cities by more conservative pro-China Nationalist Party, also known as Kuo Min Tang, who vowed to improve the bilateral relationship with the mainland and boost Taiwan's local economy.
Since Taiwanese leaders openly declared their political stand of establishing an independent state more than two years ago, the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China has become progressively strained.
Taiwanese voters overturned the DDP’s ambitious denuclearisation process and rejected same-sex marriage in the referendum which ran alongside the election.
Chinese character of the year
The Chinese character of the year is an annual event held in many Asian countries which use the language.
The event originated using Kanji characters in Japan in 1995. Now it's held in China, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
At the end of every year, the general public selects a character that can sum up key events or main thoughts of the year.
Japan on Wednesday selected , while Malaysia picked “change” to express hope for a better life and improved governance of the newly elected government.
As the official character looks to be selected in China, self-mocking netizens created their own to describe 2018.
The pronunciation of the character invented by the netizens was “qiou”.
The character is a combination of three characters, namely穷 (qiong), meaning poor, and 丑 (chou), meaning ugly, and 土 (tu), meaning earth.
Pronounced together, the character essentially means “dirt-poor and ugly”, according to .
Though it cannot be typed out on a computer keyboard, the picture of the character has become viral on Chinese social media network Weibo.
Some users post pictures of their empty wallets online and share the comment ”I am so qiou” to describe their current situation as they struggle with high house prices and increasing living costs.
