The pace of change in Taiwan can be simultaneously heady and unsettling. Rapid changes to the physical environment tend to be exhilarating. It is fun to be in a vibrant swiftly evolving metropolis. Taiwan’s major centers all fit that bill. I recall a friend who went to his home country for summer break. Upon returning to Taipei, two months later, he couldn’t find his apartment. A new building went up beside his home during his absence. The skyline’s change disoriented him and for a few minutes he couldn’t situate himself and find his house. That doesn’t happen in Saskatoon.

The pace of physical change is part of the charm of living in a major Asian city. In Taiwan, seismic social changes parallel the changing cityscape. Sociologists, social psychologists, and other social researchers have been studying Taiwan because of its brisk pace of social change. Taiwan offers an interesting case study of sudden modernization. Taiwan has endured very swift industrialization and subsequent transition to a post-industrial society. Concomitant social trends have proceeded apace and likewise strained Taiwanese society; urbanization, democratization, social justice, demographic shifts, etc. The stresses this places on Taiwanese social institutions and the family is interesting for academics.

Take my family as an example, my father-in-law is the oldest of three boys. Twelve years separate the oldest and youngest. They are an interesting example of rapid industrialization’s affect on family. They were all born on the farm, but each in turn experienced, and was shaped by a different period of Taiwan’s industrial progression. My father-in-law, though he eventually came and worked in the city, absorbed, believes, and keeps trying to transmit, the agrarian mores of his upbringing. The second brother’s perspective was shaped by the first stage of Taiwan’s rapid industrialization—the growth of factories (for low-end products) and OEM production. The third brother was shaped by his experiences in the high-tech industry. These are three brothers, born not that far apart, who have experienced Taiwan in wildly divergent ways, each brother representing an important stage in Taiwan’s economic evolution.

If we extend the example a bit further to include my wife—the first-born son’s youngest daughter—she works in present day Taiwan’s postmodern globalized economy. In one generation they went from a subsistence farming mentality to my wife’s extremely urbane, modern, international outlook. She is hardly unique among middle-aged and younger Taipei residents. My wife and father-in-law exist in a totally different time and place. She is a multilingual, globe-trotting, independent, modern woman, and her father seems to believe he’s living in the Qing Dynasty. Imagine the strain that puts on a family.

Taiwan is rife with examples of the pressure rapid change causes people and their beliefs. Also, the social contradictions created by speedy societal shifts. Martial law was lifted in Taiwan in the summer of 1987 after 38 years. When I first came to live in Taiwan a couple decades ago I met many people in their late twenties who regarded students at that time as being from a wildly different generation, because much their schooling was done in the relative freedom of the post-martial law period. Though chronologically close in age there was a wide chasm in their experiences. Because of my age (50-ish) and the time I arrived in Taiwan, I have a lot of politically regressive, borderline anti-democratic—martial law wasn’t so bad—Taiwanese friends. I arrived in a period of sweeping political transition, so many of my (often slightly younger) Taiwanese friends have a very democratic outlook, no matter which party they support. As you move toward the next generation, who have never known an undemocratic Taiwan, the difference becomes more stark.

Some of those differences were on vivid display during the Sunflower Movement of 2014, which saw a coalition of student groups and civic activists protest attempts by the Kuomintang (KMT) government to pass the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement without a clause-by-clause review in the legislature. Basically the KMT tried to do an end run around democratic procedure.

What interested me was the reaction of my, generally older, KMT-leaning, friends. Many of them displayed a stunning inability to understand democracy, despite having lived in a democratic country for a generation. They kept referring to the Sunflower Movement as “undemocratic” because it was working to subvert the will of President Ma Ying-jeou the duly elected leader—a total misinterpretation of democracy. Another common refrain among this group was, “What about social order?” They seemed to regard the Sunflower Movement as an affront to politeness and knowing your place in the social order. They hearkened back, with fondness, to the well-ordered society of martial law times.

There are many other examples of intense societal paradigm shifts in Taiwan, each creating pressure on Taiwan’s social institutions.  Generational changes are normal in all societies, the generation gap exists everywhere because it is a natural part of an intergenerational society. Taiwan takes this normal phenomena and puts it on crack cocaine.