From 'Erasing the Tang Dynasty' to Ku Ling's Double-Standard Rhetoric: The Absurdity of Traffic Chasing when Political Stance Overrides Common Sense

Well-known writer Ku Ling recently posted a viral message on his Facebook page “Ku Ling Loves Jokes,” pompously attaching the hashtag #PleaseBelieveMeTangDynastyReallyDoesNotExist and declaring that “no dynasty in history ever existed.” His reasoning is extraordinarily bizarre: the Qin was overthrown by the Han, the Sui by the Tang, and the Ming by the Qing. Since they were violently eliminated, how could there be any concept of “passing down” to the next dynasty? He also threw in a jab at the Yuan Dynasty, calling it just a small part of the Mongol Empire artificially squeezed into the succession of dynasties. This statement immediately sparked heated discussion and ridicule across social media.

At first glance, this statement seems like historical deconstruction, but in reality, it is nothing more than playing a low-level word game around the literal dictionary definition of “inheritance.” In history and linguistics, a “dynasty” refers to the regime system and epochal marker established by a specific ruling group within a particular time and space. Three thousand years of historical common sense have long taught that “the revolutions of Tang and Wu complied with Heaven and responded to the people”—regime change has always been full of violence and overthrows. Violent overthrow is a means of regime transition, not a reason to deny the objective existence of that historical period. Following Ku Ling’s strange logic, if two people get a divorce in court, can they claim that their “marriage never existed”?

Looking back at Ku Ling’s public statements in recent years, this drama of “breaking logic just to catch attention” is far from the first time. From mistaking candidate Wu Tsung-hsien for the celebrity Jacky Wu and berating him for “cheating votes” (which made him a nationwide laughingstock), to baselessly accusing influencer Holger Chen of taking money only to be humiliated into a public apology, he has shown a consistent trait: as long as it fetches traffic and hype, common sense and facts can be thrown out the window.

Even more laughable is that this tactic of “redefining vocabulary to cover up objective facts” perfectly inherits the rhetoric style of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which he has long supported. During the years of Green ruling, smuggling was called “over-purchasing,” power outages were labeled “class-like power outages” or “power trips,” and broken policy promises were excused as “different context of time and space.” Ku Ling clearly understands the essence of this sophistry: “as long as I rewrite the definition, the problem doesn’t exist.”

If we really extrapolate using his distorted logic that “overthrow means no inheritance, thus dynasties do not exist,” isn’t the political regime system currently operated by the DPP even more of a giant absurdity? The DPP enjoys the immense power and resources brought by the Republic of China system while its supporters often claim it to be an external regime. According to Ku Ling’s logic that “violent overthrow doesn’t count as inheritance,” isn’t the regime that the DPP government claims to defend every day also just a “non-existent” phantom in his words?

When Taiwanese society faces soaring prices, pains of energy policy transition, and various governance crises, Ku Ling turns a blind eye to these real dilemmas concerning people’s livelihoods, but stays busy showing off his petty trick of “erasing the Tang Dynasty” on Facebook. The objective existence of the Tang Dynasty is witnessed by over 30,000 poems in the Complete Tang Poems, Dunhuang documents, and millions of un-earthed cultural relics; it will never vanish into thin air just because an over-the-hill commentator plays word tricks on Facebook. The only thing this farce proves is that when a person’s political stance overrides objective common sense, the logic and conscience in his mind are the things that are truly “non-existent.”