On est vendu sans le savoir?

[這篇文章的重點是在質疑說,很奇怪為什麼今年我從法國寄回來的包裹,在國名TAIWAN的旁邊竟被法國郵政加註了Province de chine 即 中國的一省 字樣? 以前我用同樣的郵寄服務並沒有加註這樣的字眼. 聽住宿家庭說,我在2008年8月寄過去的信也被加了. 美國的寄來的郵件也是. 一直到2007年他們政府機構寄給我親戚的信一直是以 TAIWAN為國名,但在 2008年7月寄來的信卻也在台灣旁邊加註 province of china的字眼,為什麼會有這樣的改變? 我們怎麼都不知道? ]
On est vendu sans le savoir?
After coming home for a week, after enjoying the familial comfort and having my nostalgic taste bud satisfied, I start to look around me, on the society and on the people of my country. A prevalent panic seems to seize them; not just panic that composes of the distress of losing jobs and insufficient funds for end-year shopping, but panic of greater consequences, whose scope far beyond any personal capability to assess or to overcome: the losing of one's nationality.

Media speculations aside, a personal incident today has left me with great uneasiness and lead me to reconsider this possibility. This afternoon I received a packet which I had sent from France addressed to myself. On the packet I was surprised to find a tag sticker of destination, which prints “TW-Taiwan-Province de Chine” (translated into English is evidently: Taiwan: a province of China). I was thinking, since when had we become a ‘province of China’? And ‘La Poste’ of France, is it not a national institution? This tag sticker reminds me of a letter sent from the U.S. government to one of my relatives in Taiwan in mid 2008, which marked the same ‘mistake’: a few words ‘a province of China’ was added to ‘Taiwan’ in the address line. After all these years of communication between this relative and the related U.S. governmental institution, this addition was unprecedented, as normally it had been: Taiwan, R.O.C. We had wondered why they took such pain to print these letters? Who had authorized them to do so? How come as a Taiwanese, I had not known such a change made of my national status? This incident had been long forgotten until today, the 7th of January, 2009, I saw the same mark on my packet from France.

Now all the mysteries seem to be unveiled before me, the mysteries about how I had had no choice, when I tried to open a bank account in France, but to choose the pre-programmed ‘chinoise (Taïwan) in the column of nationality. For as though the word ‘Taïwanais’ exists in the French language, it does not constitute a nationality option. Same thing with the confirmation sheet about my course inscription and student card: my nationality is always ‘chinoise (Taïwan)’ and not ‘Taïwanaise’. So all this time when I was in France I had been a Chinese from the Taiwan region, not a Taiwanese. That is why the lady of my host family always asked me “Quand est-ce que tu vas rentrer en Chine? (when are you going back to China?)”

Are we sold without knowing? I bet if you ask most people around you, ‘blue’ or ‘green’, they would tell you Taiwan is not a part of China (as of present). But why, why have the foreign countries started to use such stranger term on us. The last time I checked, we were still to remain the status quo with China, aren’t we? Who can tell me what is going on?