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Consider German philosopher Philipp Mainländer, who after receiving the first copies of his magnum opus on pessimism in 1876, stacked them up on the floor, climbed to the top of the pile and hanged himself.

I visit often enough to feel a sense of stewardship, yet my mainlander status keeps the islands just unfamiliar enough to never lose their getaway feeling.

Under the authoritarian rule of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, who lost the civil war to the Communists, mainlander families received preference for civil servant jobs and government positions.

Now 68, Chou appears to have been fairly typical of the “second generation mainlander” cohort who never fully integrated into Taiwanese society or came to see the island as anything other than a province of the China they continued to identify with.

Many mainlander youth, who were concentrated in the major cities, joined violent organized crime gangs with ties to the military and Chinese secret societies, in part to defend themselves against Taiwanese rivals.