Taiwan’s China Post puts forth the notion that Taiwanese traveling to China to find ancestral graves and meet distant relatives constitutes proof that Taiwan is an indivisible part of China:
…President Chen’s own relatives have taken ancestry research experts to his ancestral hometown in mainland China in an effort to seek out the roots of Chen’s family heritage.
If DPP leaders really want to stress our separateness from the Chinese mainland, we suggest they cease all contacts with relatives on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
For that matter, our leaders should truly put their money where their mouth is by changing their surnames and "starting" their own "new" family traditions.
Why not rap Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton for visiting THEIR European relatives, too? Poor fools never realized how deeply their little family reunions were undercutting the argument for American sovereignty!
(Not to mention that Washington fellow. If he’d REALLY been committed to American independence, wouldn’t he have changed his name to cut all ties to the mother country?)
I know that the China Post bills itself as "bridging the gap between East and West," but this is definitely one argument that’s not likely to impress too many of its Western readers. Give it a try sometime. Next time you talk to the folks back home, inform them that the bones of your ancestors are interred in the Old Country, and for that reason, you owe your allegiance to the Principality of Liechtenstein.
Let me know how that works out for you.