Why Sunflowers?

You might be wondering: You’re a political scientist, not a botanist, so why are you studying sunflowers?

The simple answer is, the “Sunflower Generation” refers to the generation of Taiwanese that led the 2014 Sunflower Movement. In the wake of the movement, we’ve been referring to young Taiwanese as Sunflowers. But there’s more to the story, of course.

In the spring of 2014, protesters – mainly young people – gathered in downtown Taipei to voice their opposition to the majority party’s efforts to push through legislation authorizing a trade deal between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. They objected to the specifics of the deal, but they were galvanized to action by what they saw as the devious and undemocratic way the majority was moving the legislation. That’s why the movement is also sometimes called the “Anti-Black Box Movement.” On March 18, protesters rushed into the legislative chamber and occupied it for a month, departing after the speaker of the legislature agreed to a compromise that met some of the protesters’ demands.

The protests got the label “Sunflower Movement” after a florist delivered a thousand sunflowers to the demonstrators, but a botanical-themed name was the movement’s destiny. The 2014 protests were built on the legacy of two previous waves of youth protests, the Wild Lily protests of 1990 and the Wild Strawberry protests of 2008.

The Wild Lilies protested for democracy, including direct election of the president, in 1990. For six days, they occupied the main symbolic space in Taipei, then known as Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Square. (Today it is called Liberty Square.) When the protests began, Taiwan was on the cusp of a transition from single-party authoritarianism to democracy; the Wild Lily Movement was an important catalyst pushing that transition forward. Many of the Wild Lily leaders became scholars and political activists who play a big role in Taiwan’s democracy today. They borrowed “Wild Lily,” from literature, where it symbolized purity and strength. As a plant native to Taiwan, the name also reflected the growing willingness of Taiwanese activists to call attention to Taiwan as their homeland – something they had been forbidden to do during the authoritarian period.

The issues that animated the Wild Strawberry protests illustrate Taiwan politics’ transition from a focus on democratization to a preoccupation with warding off pressure from Beijing. What touched off the 2008 youth protests was a visit by a high-ranking PRC official to Taipei. During the visit, Taiwanese (ROC) flags were removed in order to avoid embarrassing the visitor. Protesters were furious that the government would hide symbols of Taiwan’s identity in order to pander to a PRC official, but their concrete demand was for changes in the law governing public protests.

The choice of “Wild Strawberries” as the name for the movement was a nod to the Wild Lilies, and a reference to an insulting nickname for Taiwanese youth at the time: The Strawberry Tribe (草莓族). The critique of young Taiwanese in the early 2000s was similar to how many Americans stereotype Millennials: They were viewed as cosseted, lazy, and soft – unsuited for the hard work that had built Taiwan into an economic powerhouse. Like strawberries, it was said, young people were delicious to look at, but squishy and quick to rot.

My last round of field research in Taiwan focused on the Strawberry generation. I didn’t find them squishy, rotten, or lazy at all. I found the challenges facing them real and daunting, and I admire their determination to prove their detractors wrong.

I’m eager to see how the Sunflowers compare.

For more about what I learned about the Strawberries, click here or read my paper, “Strawberry Jam” (a version of the paper was published in The Changing Dynamics of the Relations Among China, Taiwan, and the United States, edited by Cal Clark).