Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate for president, swept through New Taipei on Sunday with a well-attended rally meant to rejuvenate a campaign that has shown recent signs of stalling.

Notably absent were incumbent New Taipei mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and previous mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), along with KMT power broker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平). The KMT did deploy most of its bigwigs, with former New Taipei county magistrate Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) receiving a particularly warm welcome.

Former President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), on the other hand, was heckled and jeered by the fervent crowd as the faces of KMT heavyweights alongside him visibly contorted with discomfort, possibly speaking to a divide between the party’s traditional identity and Han Kuo-yu’s passionate fan club.

Han, who became mayor of Kaohsiung after winning the seat last November, made his most forceful statements yet on the ongoing Hong Kong protests which observers say have aided the re-election campaign of incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), accusing Tsai of using the protests to “gain popularity” while claiming to support them himself.

“They say ‘Today, Hong Kong; tomorrow, Taiwan,’” Han said. “That’s nonsense. They’re just gloating. My stance is very clear: I urge the Hong Kong government to listen to its people. I support Hong Kongers’ pursuit of democracy. I hope Hong Kong will soon return to stability.”

Despite Han’s office expressing concerns over turnout at what it had called a crucial rally, he drew a sizable crowd to New Taipei’s Sweet Ripples riverside park. Estimates from the organizers seemed overly optimistic, peaking at 350,000 shortly before Han took the stage. Apple Daily, on Monday’s front page, used the Jacobs method of crowd counting to put the attendance at closer to 100,000. The crowd, with no such tools at its disposal, responded enthusiastically every time a rise in numbers was announced.

Many participants came from central and southern Taiwan in organized groups, arriving on coach buses and assigned blocks of reserved seating throughout the park. Closer to the stage, pathways were jammed with people, presumably not in delegations, trying to get to the front. Onlookers packed an overhead bridge and the nearby Sanchong MRT station, clamoring for a closer look as the crowd quickly swelled.

The setup was pretty slick. Giant screens were set up about halfway through the crowd and on either side of the stage. The crowd, clearly excited about hearing Han speak later in the evening, was cheerful and friendly. It was a sea of red and blue: Republic of China (ROC) flags, many customized with Han’s image and the bearer’s hometown, waved madly and most participants were decked out in ROC-themed clothing. People certainly dressed for the occasion, with some donning costumes or fancy headgear.

Although the rally was officially scheduled from 4 to 9 p.m., many attendees in the first 10 or so rows said they had arrived at 9 a.m. to secure their coveted front section seats.

Most participants said they were long-time Han fans who had traveled around the country to various rallies to show their support. However, they were firm that, as Han’s first rally after he officially became the KMT presidential candidate, this one was different.

“Han will protect us,” explained a lady in her 60s from Zhudong in Hsinchu County. “We love Han Kuo-yu. Han Kuo-yu! Dong suan! Dong suan! Dong suan! [Elect him!]”

“The most important [thing] is safety and money!” she said. “Can you read the slogans up on the stage? Only Han can do this. Han will do the right thing.”

The usual electioneering speeches from local politicians were interspersed with performances from a rock band, break dancers, and older generation pop singers. It quickly became clear that these were highlights for many of the attendees. When the music started playing, the crowd would jump up and ecstatically party along to the upbeat music.

Charlie Yang, 70, who returned to Taiwan from Missouri five years ago, slept at the venue the night before the rally after driving up from Kaohsiung to make sure he was right up front. He estimated about 20 people had tried to stay overnight and had spent the night cheerfully chatting about the upcoming rally, with some locals drifting off home when it rained a little.

Although clearly a firm fan of Han, Yang was one of the few attendees I spoke to who mentioned Han’s flaws. “Han isn’t perfect,” he said. “I’d rate him at about a 9 [out of 10]. Sometimes when he speaks there is a little problem, he isn’t very careful when he speaks.”

When asked about Han’s approach to diplomatic relations with the United States as a former long-term U.S. resident, Yang said: “I think it would be better than Tsai Ing-wen. We have lost diplomatic allies since she has been president.” Asked how Han might achieve this, or if he was concerned about Han’s relative lack of experience at a high level of government, Yang replied confidently: “He has his team. His team will help him. It will be okay. If people can make money, everyone will be happy. We can be peaceful. We won’t have any problems at all.”

As another entertainment act came onstage, Yang added “In the last election, we never had a party like this. Never. It’s a real party!”

Despite a notable lack of youngsters in the crowd, there was an appearance by the Han Youth, numbering about 25 people aged around 25 to 30. As they took the stage, an elderly man leaned in and shouted approvingly in my ear: “This is the Han Youth! Han’s army! Like we are!”

This innocuous comment represents the self-reframing of Han’s fans into a “Han army”⁠—and one has to wonder if the campaign will increasingly focus on the ‘fight’ for the ROC. Although Han supporters are often dismissed as being elderly⁠—and indeed those in their 50s to 70s were heavily represented⁠—it is worth bearing in mind that the type of rally Han holds is very appealing to an older demographic; the voters who actually live where their household registration is and can easily vote. They make for a smart target.

There were occasional young professionals around such as a 25-year-old office worker who gave her name as Lucie. Asked why she supported Han, she replied: “Han will keep the country safe and help us make money.” She didn’t offer any insights into how things might improve for the younger portion of Taiwan’s workforce.

Asked if she’d seen any other people around her age at the event, she shrugged and replied: “Maybe the young people are at the back.”

One 54-year-old Han supporter, however, blamed the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for Han’s low popularity among young voters.

“The DPP is the reason why the rivalry between the KMT and the DPP has intensified, and the rift between generations has widened,” she said. “Young people nowadays depend on the Internet. They get their news there. The DPP has a lot of money. They hire cyber operatives and spread fake news and disinformation. Young people only read headlines, so they’ll easily believe anything they read. That’s why they all think Han is a fool and doesn’t do anything.”

While there has been no evidence supporting her claim that the DPP has hired “cyber operatives,” some of Han’s online support has been identified as less than organic. Han’s popularity may have benefited from Facebook groups run by Chinese nationals, according to a report in Foreign Policy, and reports by Financial Times and Reuters have found that news outlets in Taiwan, including some which have backed Han Kuo-yu, have received direct instructions from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.

As the evening wore on, the ante upped in terms of speakers. Former New Taipei county magistrate Chou Hsi-wei was rapturously received, and as the seniority rose, the speeches became more polished, with soft background music playing as the speakers exhorted the attendees to get out and vote for Han while excoriating the DPP. Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), removed as KMT presidential candidate in 2016 due to concerns over her pro-Beijing views, was also listened to attentively.

KMT chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) was particularly popular and handled the crowd with expertise as he coaxed and cajoled them by criticizing Tsai and touting Han as the savior of the ROC. The crowd was transfixed as Wu threw his whole body into the speech. Every appeal he made was met with roars of approval and the chanting was strong. The masterful speech seemed to have set the table perfectly for a triumphant Han to come on and blow them away.

But then Ma Ying-jeou came on stage.

The organizers talked up Ma, wearing a KMT T-shirt, as the Superman theme blared⁠—top notch respect for the former two-term president and party chair. At first, all seemed well.

Unlike Wu, and later Han, Ma spoke from behind a podium surrounded by KMT bigwigs, with party chair Wu to his left. Ma started off with a greeting in Taiwanese, Hakka, Mandarin and then Amis, which he then quipped most of the attendees wouldn’t understand. Using a tried and tested tactic of the evening, he spoke for a short while in Taiwanese and then switched back to Mandarin. As Ma spoke, the atmosphere began to noticeably sour. He quickly lost the attention of the crowd and people started chatting among themselves. His pitch appeared to be largely about how well he had done while in office. Within two minutes, people sitting nearby started grumbling that they would slap him if he didn’t shut up soon.

Ma rambled on with none of the spirit of the previous speakers and the podium symbolically cutting him off. Shortly thereafter, heckles started coming from the crowd. Undeterred Ma, droned on, with Wu and Chou beginning to look increasingly uncomfortable as Ma undid their cheerleading efforts of the day. As Ma talked about tourism numbers, the crowd became more vocal with their discontent, with whistles and non-supportive fog horns sounding. Someone pointed a laser pointer at the podium.

The crowd became extremely restless and the MC cut in with a round of ‘Kuomintang jiayou! Ma Ying-jeou jiayou!’ Ma tried to recover by leading a round of ‘Han Kuo-yu dong suan!’ But even that was received tepidly by the crowd.

To the evident disbelief of those on stage, Ma ignored the exit music that had begun to play and tried to resume his speech. The crowd, however, had lost its patience. The MC desperately tried to recover the situation with a round of ‘Han Kuo-yu dong suan!’ as Ma stood at the podium, wearing the same tight smile displayed when, as President, he squirmed through an interview with The Economist at the height of the 2014 Sunflower Movement.

Ma anxiously looked to the MC with a genteel smile, perhaps expecting to be given the nod to carry on, but his speech was cut short with the MC directing the crowd to thank Ma. He finally seemed to get the message, thanked the crowd, and made a hasty retreat.

People thought Ma was “going on about himself too much,” explained a steward sitting behind me. As the group retreated from the stage, he added: “Actually, we think he was not good at protecting Taiwan as President.”

The crowd were not in the mood for Ma’s brand of old-fashioned, facts-and-figures electioneering. They were here for slogans, chants and cheerleading about Han⁠—and when these weren’t delivered, they weren’t shy of dissing their former president and party chair. The crowd was far more fixated on their beloved candidate than the usual respect given to the party, suggesting that any attempt to replace Han as the KMT’s candidate would be fraught with danger. The KMT heavyweights on stage looked aghast as Ma bombed⁠—perhaps it began to sink in that by nominating the populist Han, the party has set itself on an entirely unpredictable path.

Despite news reports the next day suggesting the crowd’s dissatisfaction with Ma—which the former President’s office called “very regrettable”—was due to an intense desire for Han’s appearance and that Ma was immediately swapped out for Han, the crowd patiently sat through the cheerleader show and subsequent introduction of local candidates for around eight minutes. The crowd was eager to see Han⁠—who apologized on Monday for the cut-off, attributing it to a “tiny problem” with scheduling guest speakers⁠—but that was not their motivation in heckling Ma.

Fortunately for Han, the next item on the agenda was a group of local cheerleaders, and their accomplished athletics seemed to set things back on course. It was already 8:45 p.m⁠—a full 45 minutes after Han had been scheduled to take the stage. As a nod to the local crowd, the local KMT politicians for each borough were introduced one-by-one and the crowd began to get back into the swing of things.

Han was welcomed enthusiastically with huge rounds of “dong suan!” as he took the stage and gave a speech of around 45 minutes, accompanied by a theatrical keyboard/piano backing. Han knows his audience and worked them well, usually referring to himself in the third person, sticking largely to his campaign slogans and cornerstones and steering clear of saying how he would achieve any of them. He was careful to interact with the audience and intersperse his speech with opportunities for the crowd to join in a chant. While most of his speech was directed toward deflecting criticism and slinging mud toward the DPP, he also relied heavily on reiterating the importance of zhonghua wenhua, or Chinese culture, and preserving the Republic of China.

The preservation of the Republic of China was a popular rallying call with the crowd. The avid 54-year-old supporter, seated on an omnipresent red stool, accused the DPP of launching a campaign to stop the use of the ROC flag, which is the official national flag of Taiwan, and said changes to school curricula amounted to attempts to “brainwash” Taiwanese children since the DPP cannot declare independence. She claimed she had seen a video where, asked what the name of their country is, children answered “Taiwan” rather than “Republic of China”⁠—proof, to her, that young people have a “false national identity” and simply do not know about the ROC.

Along with preserving Chinese culture, another of Han’s campaign cornerstones is freedom and democracy. In the midst of attacking the DPP, Han declared his stance on Hong Kong.

Han declared freedom and democracy to be “the air that we breathe” in the ROC and the “foundation of our everyday lives… our greatest value.” He then accused Tsai of using injured protesters in Hong Kong “to gain popularity. Who does that?”

The DPP, he said, has “failed in domestic issues, ruined the economy, education, and foreign affairs. The tension between Taiwan and China has never been higher. They have done nothing.”

Han then returned to the subject of Hong Kong, accusing the DPP of “using the extradition bill and the sovereignty issue to win the election. We defend democracy and Taiwan’s sovereignty from our heart. We love the Republic of China from the bottom of our heart. We can’t use what happened in Hong Kong to win votes.”

Han did, however, go on to speak in support of the efforts of Hong Kongers to seek democracy and to be heard by their government.

“I wish peace and happiness for the 7 million Hong Kongers,” he said. “I’ve been clear with my position. We have firm belief in freedom and democracy.”

Han finished his speech 15 minutes later and the rally was rounded out with the crowd urged to hold up their phone lights to wave in time to yet another on-stage sing-along. The second song was a rather painful rendition of Teresa Teng’s “The Moon Represents My Heart,” with the mic being passed around the stage as people with varying singing capabilities belted out the 1987 classic.

Meanwhile, the crowd were streaming out, with many stopping at the numerous food stands set up at the back to grab a snack or a fresh sugar cane juice to finish off the evening. The atmosphere was jovial. The various groups waiting for buses back down south declared the event a resounding success, but had little interest in talking about about Ma’s bombing out or Han’s comments on Hong Kong. To them, those things were irrelevant—they seemed satisfied that they had achieved their mission of showing their support for Han and having a jolly good time.

All photos by Cat Thomas unless otherwise noted.