Ah Q and persimmons

In my previous post, I argued that persimmons are a lousy way to decide who to vote for.  From the depths of my memory, another reference to persimmons bubbled up.  This is from Lu Hsun’s classic work, “The True Story of Ah Q.”  I found the Chinese text on the internet; the English version is from the translation by Yang and Yang.

 

這几日里，進城去的只有一個假洋鬼子。趙秀才本也想靠著寄存箱子的淵源，親身去拜訪舉人老爺的，但因為有剪辮的危險，所以也中止了。他寫了一封“黃傘格”的信，托假洋鬼子帶上城，而且托他給自己紹介紹介，去進自由党。假洋鬼子回來時，向秀才討還了四塊洋錢，秀才便有一塊銀桃子挂在大襟上了；未庄人都惊服，說這是柿油党的頂子，抵得一個翰林；趙太爺因此也驟然大闊，遠過于他儿子初雋秀才的時候，所以目空一切，見了阿Q，也就很有些不放在眼里了。

These last few days the only one to go to town was the Imitation Foreign Devil.  The successful county candidate in the Chao family had thought of using the deposited cases as a pretext to call on the successful provincial candidate, but the danger that he might have his pigtail cut off had made him defer his visit.  He had written an extremely formal letter, and asked the Imitation Foreign Devil to take it to town; he had also asked the latter to introduce him to the Liberty Party.  When the Imitation Foreign Devil came back, he asked the successful county candidate for four dollars, after which the successful county candidate wore a silver peach on his chest.  All the Weichuang villagers were overawed, and said that this was the badge of the Persimmon Oil Party equivalent to the rank of Han-Lin.  As a result, Mr. Chao’s prestige suddenly increased, far more so than when his son first passed the official examination; consequently he started looking down on everyone else, and, when he saw Ah Q, tended to ignore him.

The translator explains in a footnote: The Liberty Party was called the Tzu Yu Tang.  The villagers, not understanding the word Liberty, turned Tzu Yu into Shih Yu, which means persimmon oil.

 

The simple villagers in Weichuang could not understand an important idea and trivialized it as persimmons.  The voters of Taiwan seem to think that something as trivial as the price of persimmons is extremely important.

Persimmons? Really?

It’s pretty clear by now that Tsai Ing-wen has taken a fairly serious hit in popularity over the fruit fiasco.  Both China Times and TVBS have now released polls that show her support levels have fallen quite a bit from their previous polls.  Meanwhile, the KMT continues to gleefully bash her over the head with this issue.

Other people can debate the actual price of persimmons and what that says about the KMT’s agricultural policy.  I just want to point out how ridiculous this particular controversy is.

As we all know, the Tsai campaign released a calendar with a fruit for each month, accompanied by a very low price.  The KMT has argued that these prices are too low and thus drives down the actual market price, and the DPP is sacrificing farmers’ interests to score political points.  The DPP replies that it posted the price of a cheap variety of persimmon next to a picture of an expensive variety, so this was just a mistake.

What I want to point out is that this is fairly unrelated to public policy.  Does anyone think that President Tsai’s agricultural policy would be to deliberately drive down prices?  You might argue that de-emphasizing trade with China will, in fact, lower prices, but that is not what the current controversy is about.  Rather, the current fiasco is simply that Tsai has inadvertently done something that hurts farmers.  However, Candidate Tsai has not argued that lower prices are good; she just thinks they are too low and wants to change policy in some way because she believes that will raise prices.  From the other side, Ma doesn’t seem to think that President Tsai would systematically go about trying to talk prices down; she has just done it once.

One might argue that this shows that Tsai is incompetent.  I don’t really think that’s a good argument.  Candidate Tsai has a team of volunteers and advertising people putting together campaign literature; it’s not that surprising they made a minor mistake.  President Tsai would have the Council on Agriculture at her disposal; they probably know the difference between persimmon varieties.

You might also argue that this shows that Tsai and the DPP are willing to sacrifice farmers’ (and by extension, any of their supporters’) interests in order to score political points.  I also don’t buy this.  Imagine what that requires.  Someone creates the calendar and presents it to Tsai.  “This calendar will drive down fruit prices, they explain, but you will score political points.  Are you willing to make that deal?”  Tsai nods, not caring at all about the consequences of her campaign literature.  “Screw the farmers,” she sneers dismissively.  This just doesn’t seem plausible to me.  If Tsai believed the calendar would affect fruit prices, she would have also seen the potential for it to backfire.  No rational candidate would make that choice, no matter how callous.  And I don’t think Tsai is a particularly callous politician.

Finally, you might argue that Tsai’s unwillingness to apologize immediately or sincerely shows her stubbornness, and good leaders are not overly stubborn.  (This also has the advantage of equating Tsai and Chen Shui-bian, who the KMT also hung the S-word on.)  Of all the attacks, this may be the only one that I consider to have even a bit of merit.  However, Tsai did apologize, even if the KMT wasn’t satisfied with her sincerity.

 

Of course there are fundamental differences in the two sides’ agricultural policies.  If this argument were over those differences, I wouldn’t be so perplexed.  Instead, this is really a fight over candidate image.  Which candidate is more compassionate about the plight of the weak?  That’s also not a bad argument.  But is the best way to discern who is more compassionate to argue about whether persimmons currently cost NT2 or NT42?

In the end, I don’t expect this fiasco to have much lasting effect.  There simply isn’t enough substance underpinning it.  Tsai’s poll numbers have fallen quite dramatically this week, but I think they’ll bounce back gradually as we moving on to other topics.  I just don’t think such a superficial controversy will have a decisive effect on the race.

I’ve been wrong before, though.