Post-Election Post-Revolutionary Blues

by Brian Hioe

The time between the Western New Year and Lunar New Year is always a strange interregnum for me. Dead time, between the changing of years in one system of time to another.

I spent much of the Lunar New Year being sick, however, managing to catch three different colds in three weeks. It was the end result of weeks, months, spent stressing out about the 2024 Taiwanese election—a personally meaningful milestone, marking ten years since I became a journalist.

The Sunflower Movement of 2014 involved the youth-led occupation of the Taiwanese legislature; it was a generational moment for Taiwanese young people, marking the entrance onto the political stage of many activists who later became politicians. But the movement is worth remembering in its own right. Those were revolutionary times, it felt like.

We’re all ten years older now. How many friends have kids now, or are married? The number keeps growing.