A Sister’s Rise and a Brother’s Obsession

At 56, Annette Lu has never married. But she did have a very important man in her life--her older brother, Lu Chuan-seng.

He helped her avoid an arranged marriage when she was just 4 years old. And he was her earliest role model on her way to taking office this month as Taiwan’s first female vice president.

These days, though, the 64-year-old lawyer has little influence on his sister, a feisty feminist and former political prisoner who is both a poster child for women’s progress on this island and a misfit in a society still uneasy with unconventional personalities.

As new President Chen Shui-bian takes a more centrist position, Annette Lu has been increasingly vilified as the standard-bearer for Taiwanese independence by a hostile mainland that claims Taiwan as an undeniable part of China. Critics on the island have not been much kinder to her, with some publicly describing her as an egotist and a political liability. And even the brother who has seen her through thick and thin is suspicious of the independence cause.

While she thrives on the role of political lightning rod, he says it breaks his heart to hear her called “scum of the nation” by Chinese authorities and a “loose cannon” by members of her own party.

The rift between these siblings epitomizes the deep divisiveness that relations across the Taiwan Strait have given rise to here. The question of whether Taiwan is or should be part of China remains a threat to peace not only between rival governments but also among intimate relatives.

“Whenever there’s an election, there will be family fights,” said Yung-tai Hung, director of the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University in Taipei, the capital. “It’s a serious problem, especially with more and more marriages between people with mainland backgrounds and native Taiwanese.”

That’s not the issue for the Lu family. All its members were born and raised on the island. The problem is, the brother fell in love with the mainland and his sister didn’t.

After his first visit to his ancestral homeland, the elder Lu recalled the other day, “I came back from China and asked people to guess the population of [the metropolitan area of] Chongqing. They could not get it right. I told them 34 million. That makes our [former] President Lee Teng-hui only mayor of a small Chinese city. How can you talk about ‘two Chinas’?”

Easily, according to his sister.

“In Taiwan, we have a saying: We don’t care how big or small, only if the pepper is hot or not,” said Annette Lu. “In terms of size, we are tiny. But in terms of democracy, freedom, human rights, prosperity, high tech--what Taiwan’s 23 million people have, China does not have.”

The elder Lu knows it’s hard to win arguments with his sister. He didn’t teach her to lose.

Only Daughter to Become a Professional

The youngest child of a pig-feed merchant, Annette “Hsiu-lien” Lu was the only one of the family’s three daughters to become a professional. Her sisters married and stayed home. Their father died the year she graduated from college, and their mother died when Lu was in her mid-30s. Her brother has always been more like a parent to her.

After helping her escape a fate as a child bride--running away to the countryside with her when prospective in-laws came to call--her brother shared with her all the knowledge and drive expected of him as an only son. He told her stories of great heroes, most of them male politicians: Washington, Churchill, Sun Yat-sen. He taught her how to climb mountains and overcome her fear of snakes. She followed him into debating, academic distinction and then a career in law.

In 1979, however, the Nationalist regime charged her with sedition after she gave an anti-government speech at a pro-democracy rally. And even though they do not see eye to eye on all political issues, her brother immediately jumped in as her defense attorney. The subsequent trial was a watershed that galvanized Taiwan’s opposition movement and politicized President Chen, who was also one of the defense lawyers. But it ended with a guilty verdict and a 12-year prison sentence.

“When she was in prison, she knitted sweaters for my daughter. But when she was finished, my daughter had already grown too big,” said Lu Chuan-seng, whose ulcer began bleeding after he heard the charges against his sister, which during the days of martial law could mean the death penalty. “The whole family still tears up thinking about that time.”

But that’s where the emotional connection between brother and sister ends.

The brother has had a relatively smooth private life as a local lawyer and political independent. He practices from the ground floor of the house in his hometown, Taoyuan, where he lives with his wife and two of his five daughters. He ran once for county magistrate but lost, partly due to his sister’s anti-government stance, he says. But he is a respected figure in the suburb west of Taipei. While his sister was in prison, he built an impressive Buddhist temple where the Lu clan can worship ancestors who came to Taiwan from China more than 260 years ago.

Annette Lu has endured a much stormier public life--radicalized as a feminist during graduate studies at the University of Illinois and Harvard, imprisoned after her sedition trial, and released after five years and placed on medical parole because the thyroid cancer that had struck her earlier in life had resurfaced. (She has since recovered.)

Credited With Starting Women’s Movement

She is credited with starting the women’s movement on the island and was a founding member of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, which took power May 20 after more than 50 years of Nationalist rule. She is also the driving force behind Taiwan’s bid to join the United Nations, a measure backed by controversial former President Lee, who sent cross-strait relations into a tailspin last year by proposing that the two sides deal with each other on a state-to-state basis. She has served in the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s chief lawmaking body, and was the first woman to be elected county magistrate in Taoyuan.

It is her brother who, turning tradition on its head, opted for duties of the home.

“My concern is with the whole world, not with family. That’s why I’m the elected vice president and he’s not,” said Annette Lu, who rarely smiled as she rushed through an interview at a Taipei hotel over a lunch of shark fin soup and braised sea cucumber prepared by her personal chef.

In strong contrast, her brother has a much softer demeanor and reveals a very different set of emotions when it comes to China.

When he was a child, his father made him memorize the address of their ancestral home in Fujian province, about 90 miles across the Taiwan Strait. Like a nursery rhyme, the names of the province, county, district and village were passed down from son to son for eight generations. When Lu finally set foot on Chinese soil about 10 years ago, the address popped out like a reflex.

A taxi driver actually knew where it was.

“My heart was so happy. More than 200 years passed, the address has not changed!” said the older Lu at a restaurant near his home.

For the next three years, he organized tours for the Lu clan in Taiwan to the old Fujian village, visiting with strangers who shared their family name and blood. The first time, 20 went; the second time, 75, then 100. He and his wife have since toured 16 of China’s 22 provinces and can’t stop singing the land’s praises.

“For more than 200 years, we lost contact, but they were so warm to us,” he said. “What’s more, I found out they completed an ancestral temple for the Lu clan on the exact same day and year we finished building ours in Taiwan. We are truly brothers across the strait. How can we say we didn’t come from the mainland?”

His sister’s reply is, “We are Chinese ethnically but not politically.” She is interested in forging a new identity for the people of Taiwan. She sees her brother’s obsession with family linkage as playing into Beijing’s hands.

“The concept of family heritage is absolutely a patriarchal concept,” she said. “That’s something I fight against. My brother is crazy about it, but not me. It’s OK for him to return to where our ancestors come from, but to surrender to the rule of Communist China is another matter.”

In fact, the Lu family tree that hangs in the hall of ancestors of the Taiwan clan’s temple is filled with hundreds of male descendants’ names. But there is no record of a single female--not even Annette Lu, the most prominent woman in the family’s history. Her brother has attempted to make that up to her by hanging two extra-large wooden plaques on a separate wall. They are carved with her name and titles, one as county magistrate, the other as vice president.

The larger-than-life Annette Lu has always had trouble fitting into traditional molds. Being single is another one of her marks of rebellion.

“I’ve never known anything about her emotional life,” said her brother.

According to a 1996 biography by Li Wen, in college Lu was in love with a man who was studying for his doctorate in France. But she abandoned a plan to meet up with him in Europe in favor of a prestigious scholarship to study in the U.S. By the time she realized she was heartbroken without him and wanted him back, it was too late.

In the book, she says the experience taught her that men can rationally appreciate strong women but that it’s hard for them to tolerate them as lifetime companions.

There is some irony, then, that at the pinnacle of her career, Taiwan’s outspoken vice president has stepped into a role not unlike that of a silent, supportive wife.

She even resembled a bride when she walked down the aisle next to Chen during their inauguration and stood by him without saying a word. Out went her trademark outfits of bright colors and clashing patterns. In came a whisper of pastel pink so subdued that she looked more like a Japanese princess than a convicted powerhouse agitator.

Her Public Complaints Have Provoked Jeers

But she might need to do more than change her costume to boost her popularity. Already her public complaints that Chen is not including her in discussions about major decisions have provoked jeers from critics who say she doesn’t understand the basic role of a leader-in-waiting.

Jokes about her abound, but she shrugs them off, calling them proof of the island’s lively democracy.

“The vice president has expressed that, after the inauguration, she’ll play a more low-key role,” said Jaw-ling Joanne Chang, professor at the Academia Sinica in Taipei. “But her personality is hard to change. She’s a straight shooter, and China will have to realize there are lots of different views in a free society.”

Some observers say Lu’s uncompromising views may be more than an extension of her personality. She and Chen could be playing good cop/bad cop to appeal to an electorate torn over the issue of independence. Others say Beijing is helping Lu dig her political grave by portraying her as an extremist beside the increasingly conciliatory president.

But she is unlikely to remain silent for long, even as she struggles to fit into her new persona as second in command.

“My mother said a woman should do a woman’s business at home and do a man’s business outside,” she said. “I can cook, I can sew, I can fight, and I can speak.”