ZHONGZHENG DISTRICT, Chinese-Taipei — Musings sometimes come at the most unexpected times and places.

Like, in my case, during an innocent stroll in the park, decided quite haphazardly during a travel layover in a country I’d visited many times already, but had never expected to be where a rumination would come about how ‘little’ my country had become before my eyes, on years when they are about to fade with age and memories.

My views had been already jaded by past experiences that apathy, I think, had taken over my perspective of things, including simple decisions like what places to visit and which beer to drink.

But with this visit, decided quite on a whim to while the 14-hour stopover before a connecting flight to Vancouver, there was not much debate. I said yes to my kids, who were raring to go and not minding the red-eye flight that was to come later.

Their comparisons started right after the purchase of our train tickets, when my mind was still on how connected we are with the Chinese – Taiwanese, we call them, for distinction from their brothers in the Mainland.

Their tourism photos, splattered on the walls of their massive train systems, were not much different from ours.

Taipei is only 1,200 kilometers away from the Philippines. That’s about two trips — back-and-forth — from, say, Manila to Bicol, or about the same travel distance from Manila to Ilocos and back twice.

And so, when I first learned about the rice terraces in the Gongliao District in Taipei City, I braced myself for no surprises if we, as a people, are connected with the Chinese in culture, language and practices. Because we are.

Taiwan’s aborigines have preserved their culture and dances, very similar with our people from up North and way down South.

They used the same weaved clothing with almost identical patterns, the same weapons and perhaps the same hunting practices when life was easier, the same gongs for music and religious honorings, and alas, the same dances we did for school presentations in the past, when highlighting the Filipino was practiced like religion.

But the enervation to these things as we grew older and as we became consumed by daily life, put all these in the back of our thoughts. Mine was awakened by this walk in the park, which turned out to be harder than I had expected it.

First was the heat, which was not unusual. Taiwan, very close to the Philippines, shares the same weather and welcomes typhoons from the Philippines.

At times, it becomes the recipient of even bigger and more dangerous lashings. At other times, Taiwan thanks us for absorbing the beatings to mellow the typhoons when they reach its shores.

Saturday’s heat was similar to Manila’s when we left it. We share the same sun and the same rays, in case we have forgotten.

But sweat and all, the welcome arch to Taipei’s most recognizable historical landmark — similar to our Rizal park — led my small pack to a sight that was to behold.

Chiang Kai Shek’s monument is undergoing a facelift. The protective nets showed signs of present work, but the massiveness of the structures overshadowed these activities.

Outside of those nets are old people practicing tai chi, or taijiquan — the Chinese martial arts I am familiar with covering as a sport.

Also, we saw some people playing traditional musical instruments, young people dancing to pop tunes, bookworms glued to their reads and lovers walking handlocked as they should be.

But they were a blur to Chiang’s presence.

The monument honoring a seated Chiang Kai Shek is 76 meters tall. Designer Yang Cho-cheng made sure Chiang Kai Shek would be seen in all is 249-foot glory.

The Memorial Hall occupied by the monument is surrounded by the National Concert Hall and the National Theater. It sits by the east end of the Liberty Square. All sides can be seen in their gigantic glory from the middle of a huge park that could be the size of our Rizal Park.

We do not have complexes as big as this. Or maybe we have not thought of ourselves as a race as big as, say, the Chinese.

An archipelago with 7,107 islands, we do not have a structure like the Great Wall, which could be seen with bare eyes from space. But that is too big a dream to entertain, and maybe too late already to this generation that is seeing its mountains going flat and its shores expanding through landfills.

Back home, Rizal’s tallest monument was unveiled in 2011 during the Filipino national hero’s sesquicentennial birth anniversary. It stands at 72 feet in front of the new Calamba City Hall Complex in Laguna, his birthplace.

But Chiang Kai Shek’s seemed more massive — maybe because of its design, or the palace where his monument was placed, or maybe because of the two sets of white stairs with 89 steps (to represent Chiang’s age when he died) that led to it, or maybe because the Chinese had always built massive structures even way before we found ourselves as a people, forged only by the circumstances of our defeat at the hands of the Americans after three centuries at the hands of the Spaniards.

That the more massive structures in the Philippines are religious figures only reveals the Filipino’s attachment to religion than, say, patriotism. It is a giveaway to the difficulties of finding the chasm that separates the rules of the state with those of the churches. We have not gone too far away from Spain’s influence, really.

Chiang’s monument is clean ─ very clean despite the ongoing works.

Rizal’s? The last I went to Calamba, red tents housing food kiosks still offered fishballs, gulaman and tapsilog to visitors.

They still protest the sight of a building still taking away the glory and splendor that should have been Rizal’s alone in his national monument in Manila.

The people of Daet in Camarines Norte still pass the Rizal obelis k– the first monument built to honor the national hero — with reverence, though it is overly minute compared with Chiang’s here.

In February 2017, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture started plans to transform the hall housing Chiang’s monument into a national center for “facing history, recognizing agony, and respecting human rights.”

There is an effort to weaken the personality cult that once surrounded Chiang Kai Shek.

Times have changed even for the Generalissimo Chiang, whose image was backdropped with the words “Ethics, Democracy and Science.” These words have rallied the Chinese-Taipei people to unite against threats from their Communist rivals from the bigger China in the past. It seems they no longer do so now.

However grandiose Chiang Kai Shek was presented when he was living and way after his death in 1975, there is still a possibility the enormous sculpture would be removed as Taipei’s relations with the People’s Republic of China is warming up.

Most statues of authoritarian rulers have been pulled down around the world, anyway. So why not Chiang’s?

British colonialist Cecil Rhodes’ image no longer sits in Cape Town.

Statues of Lenin, Engles and many of those seen as political gods have fallen in Budapest, the former East Germany, Lithuania and in more places.

The British rulers of India have lost their colonial era images.

American confederate figures have been removed.

Alfredo Stroessner’s got crushed in the head in Paraguay.

Chiang Kai Shek could be evicted from his massive house, too.

Because no matter how big they have become after their death, they could not escape the sins of their past.

Meantime, Rizal — the tallest Filipino to have lived — clutches a book, observing his people enjoying their gulaman, kwek-kwek and tapsilog, in a manner not removed but close, real close with them.

As national heroes are. As national heroes should be.

Chinese had always built massive structures even way before we found ourselves as a people, forged only by the circumstances of our defeat at the hands of the Americans after three centuries at the hands of the Spaniards.