Tell you something funny about the garbage trucks in Taipei — something nice: Instead of going beep-beep-beep when they back up or stop, they sing out this very pleasant song. The song can get a little tiresome — maybe it changes by the week or something? — but it’s much better than the beep-beep-beep. Civilized.

Oh, and here are links to the previous parts of this journal, if you need them: I, II, III, IV, and V.

‐A woman asks the million-dollar question, or whatever we should call it: “Do you think America will help us if China commits aggression against us?” I find it hard to answer in the affirmative.

You may remember that, very early in his presidency, George W. Bush said, yes, America would come to Taiwan’s defense. This was a departure from America’s long-stated policy of “strategic ambiguity” (“Will we or won’t we?”).

Shortly after, I asked a national-security official, “Did the president simply make a slip, or did he mean to change U.S. policy?” The official fixed me with an amused look and said, “Only his hairdresser knows for sure.” (Old advertising slogan, as you may remember.)

‐Another woman — another Taiwanese woman — says, “After your experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don’t think you’ll do anything, much . . .”

‐I pay a visit to the Jing-Mei Detention Center — the old prison, where opponents of Taiwan’s authoritarian regime were kept. Kept and brutalized. Sometimes executed. I’m told that at least 2,000 were executed. This was about 8 percent of all the political prisoners.

The prison is now a museum, remembering the dark past: the period of “the White Terror,” as it’s known.

You’ve been to one of these prisons — I’ve been to many — you’ve been to them all. Man’s inhumanity to man is amazingly unvarying. Dictatorial regimes do the same things to their opponents in country after country, all over the world.

Here at Jing-Mei, we see the shackles, we see the interrogation rooms, we see the cells — the whole nine yards. Everything has been preserved. There are old recording devices, for listening in on prisoners’ conversations. There are bed mats, paper-thin. There are objects sinister and banal — and even the banal ones, such as clocks, become sinister, somehow.

In lucky circumstances, relatives of prisoners could visit their loved ones. Sometimes they passed fruit with notes stuffed inside. Mothers told sons, wives told husbands, to stay calm, hang on — survive.

The details of this prison, like the details of such prisons everywhere, are hard to bear.

Jing-Mei once contained a future mayor of an important Taiwanese city, and a future vice president. I think of something George W. Bush said in his second inaugural address: “Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country.”

I don’t think a country (or an individual) should dwell on past injustice. But sweeping under the rug is no good either. As far as I can tell, Taiwan has done a very good thing in creating this museum. I think of some words from “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” (once known as “the Negro National Anthem”):

“. . . Out from the gloomy past, / ’Til now we stand at last / Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.”

‐You want to hear something funny, especially after a report about a political prison? I find the Chinese thank-you — “Xie xie” — quite hard to say, accurately. Been practicing; not sure about progress.

Someone calls to me, “Bye-bye!” I call back, “Bye-bye, xie xie.” I then ask my young Taiwanese companion, “How was that? How was my pronunciation?” She says, “The ‘bye-bye’ was good.”

‐You will want to meet Chong-Pin Lin, a man who has done many things, in Taiwan, America, and elsewhere. He is currently a professor in the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies at TamKang University. He earned his Ph.D. at Georgetown. His mentor, he tells me, was Jeane Kirkpatrick.

“She looked me up and down, and then accepted me as a long lost child.”

Is not Taiwan further proof of Kirkpatrick’s famous contentions in “Dictatorships and Double Standards”? (One of these contentions is: Authoritarian regimes can give way to democracy, particularly with the right coaxing from free countries.) Oh, yes, says Lin.

‐I ask the tiresome, though important, question: Do you consider yourself Taiwanese, Chinese, some mixture? Lin says that, culturally and ethnically speaking, he’s Chinese. But he has spent most of his life in Taiwan. So if we force a “simplistic” answer, we distort the truth.

He then discusses the national surveys, taken since the early 1990s. It used to be that about half the people considered themselves Chinese. Between 15 and 20 percent considered themselves Taiwanese. The rest — a mixture. These days, however, about 50 percent consider themselves Taiwanese. Those considering themselves Chinese are down in single digits.

What happened? Well, several things, but, for one thing: the missile games that China played in 1995 and 1996. For another thing: the Hong Kong handover in 1997.

Taiwanese, by and large, did not want to go Hong Kong’s way. “One Country, Two Systems” might have been fine for Hong Kong, but Taiwan was something else: not a crown-jewel colony but a proper country, dammit, with an army.

Lin says that some Taiwanese who go to China to do business feel more Taiwanese than ever: feel more keenly the differences between the two places.

Another thing that affects this question of identity? If Beijing frowns at Taiwan — behaves nastily — the people in Taiwan feel all the more Taiwanese. If Beijing smiles, makes nice . . . well, the feeling softens.

‐For many years, the people on this island have been asked about six choices — six possible futures, or fates, for Taiwan. Six possible relationships with China (although “relationship” might not be the right word in every case). Forgive the below shorthand — and here we go:

1) Status quo, decision later (i.e., a decision regarding the ultimate and enduring status of Taiwan).

2) Status quo forever.

3) Status quo, unification later.

4) Status quo, independence later.

5) Unification ASAP.

6) Independence ASAP.

No. 1 has long been the leading choice of Taiwanese — the choice of a strong plurality. But No. 2, calling for the status quo forever, has come on strong in the last few years. It is now around 30 percent.

A free and prosperous present has its appeal, as against an uncertain future . . .

‐I ask Chong-Pin Lin, “Are closer, warmer relations with the PRC good or bad for Taiwan?” Both, he answers. On the plus side, the likelihood of war is diminishing, “to the point of approaching zero.” On the negative side: “Buying Taiwan is cheaper than attacking Taiwan.”

Lin believes, and most everyone believes, that the independence of Taiwanese media is being compromised, as the PRC exerts its influence.

I will write more on this theme in due course.

‐Another question: The Chinese government, which is to say the Chinese Communist Party, makes a claim on Taiwan. The Party asserts that Taiwan belongs to China, plain and simple. Taiwan is like a renegade province, to be brought to heel sooner or later. But how do ordinary Chinese people feel (to the extent one can know)? Do they go along with the government? Are they “nationalist” on this question, as on Tibet?

Lin says that, in China, there is no independent public opinion. For decades, public opinion has been shaped by the state media. So “the Chinese people largely reflect the party line.”

At the same time, says Lin, the CCP leadership is becoming more sophisticated, shrewder, less militant about Taiwan. They follow an “absorption” strategy, rather than one of outright belligerence.

‐Say, back to those garbage trucks — the ones that sing. A local explains to me that the singing lets people know to bring out their garbage. A smelly version of the Good Humor Man?

See you tomorrow, dear readers and (in a sense) fellow travelers.

To order Jay Nordlinger’s new book, Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World, go here. To order his collection Here, There & Everywhere, go here.