Taiwan, Who's Your Mama?
Sunday November 25, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.
[A French translation by Jerome Besson is available at Taiwan 1st!]
Two separate and seemingly unrelated articles published this past week cast new meaning on the uniqueness of Taiwan's history and identity and provide further insight on how the Taiwanese character, by being more honest in analyzing and facing its past than the Chinese character, can be more open to many things including democracy. The first article relates to the discovery that jade artifacts quarried in Fengtian (present day Hualien) were found not only in Taiwan, but the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand indicating flourishing sea trade patterns going back some 5,000 years.
This article in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences points out how "Fengtian jade has a distinctive translucent green hue and black spots," and that "a huge workshop existed in Fengtian as far back as 3000 BC." The earliest pieces of Fengtian jade found outside Taiwan were unearthed in the Philippines dating back to 2000 BC. Hung Hsiao-chun of the Australian National University in Canberra goes on, "Before, researchers thought all the jade in the Philippines was from China or Vietnam. With our analysis . . . we found that most of the ornamental jade in the Philippines was from Taiwan."
Additional archaeological excavations in Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand found some 144 artifacts that could also be traced to the ancient Fengtian workshop; later from 500 BC to 100 AD, Fengtian jade was also shipped out to workshops in Southeast Asia.
Now Japan was the first country to control the whole of Taiwan (1895--1945).Since the eastern half of the island (where Fengtian is) had never been controlled by any previous outsiders, western or eastern including the late Manchu Qing Dynasty, immediate questions must follow the above discoveries. "Who was quarrying and fashioning this jade as early as 3000 BC? Who all was involved in the trade with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand? And what was their history?"
For one, there had to be serious involvement by Taiwan's aboriginal tribes. Some were seafarers and substantial theories already exist that the Maori of New Zealand are descendants of people from Taiwan. Some also had to be traders. To be sure, people from many other countries would have also been involved in the history of this flourishing sea trade and would have visited Taiwan, but this gives a totally different perspective on the diversity and character of Taiwan's aborigines that has yet to be explored. Some were headhunters, and some as I have written earlier still hunt boars in the mountains, but the jade industry indicates that all did not fit the "uncooked savages" description found in Qing Dynasty writings, and that Taiwan was not the "mud ball" it was made out to be.
Additional calculations must be made. What becomes evident is that this jade trade from Taiwan predates by thousands of years what Han Chinese like to tout as the King of Qin unifying a variety of continental, agrarian states and taking on the title of Emperor (Shih Huang-ti) in 221 BC. Seafaring aboriginal Taiwan was happening long before Huang-ti and long after him; it was never a part of his world. The unfortunate fact is that Taiwan's aborigines never had nor felt the cultural necessity to have court historians to write and rewrite history to glorify their rule and to present it as the foundation of the world. They also did not brand all different outsiders as barbarians.
Taiwan, who's your mama? The second article from this past week reveals that most Hoklo and Hakka in Taiwan have aboriginal genes. Mari Lin, medical research director of Mackay Memorial Hospital performed DNA studies on non-aboriginal ethnic Taiwanese and found that 85 percent have aboriginal ancestors. This study also found that only 1.5 percent of Taiwan's current population is pure aboriginal. There has long been the saying in Taiwan, that most people here have an Aboriginal grandmother and a Hoklo or Hakka grandfather; Lin's study supports this but further reveals that more than 90 percent of the Hoklo and Hakka additionally have some Southeast Asian Island ancestry and some Vietnamese ancestry. Their Vietnamese ancestry is genetically more similar to Southeast Asia than any northern Han Chinese.
DNA don't lie. When you add to all these DNA results, the fact that the official statistical population is 73.5 percent Hoklo, 17.5 percent Hakka, 7.5 percent Mainlanders (these are the ones that arrived after 1945 and tout their Han Chinese links) and 1.5 percent Aborigines, you get a totally new picture of Taiwan's ethnic background. Even the 7.5 percent of recent Mainlanders (not covered in the study) would begin to intermarry with Taiwanese and aborigines. Additional information on Taiwan's diversified ancestral roots and DNA can be found at this website http://www.taiwandna.com
The tail should not wag the dog. However for Taiwan, the 7.5 percent Mainlanders who arrived after 1945 sought to do that and succeeded for a while. They brought with them the Chinese emperor-like mentality of rewriting history so that even in defeat they glorified and idealized the sordidness of their own past and their loss of China. By controlling the media and schools for over fifty years they indoctrinated their own and tried to indoctrinate the Taiwanese to believe that Han was better, that size was important and that Taiwan's history should be Han history. Fortunately many Taiwanese resisted.
What do these jade and DNA studies have to do with Taiwan's identity and its openness to democracy? Enough Taiwanese were able to see through the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) propaganda. They found that true Taiwanese are those that remained proud of their island and their heritage. They did not need to claim some bogus link to the "Yellow Emperor" or his successors to fill their pride. Taiwanese are an island people and long used to the influx of and interaction with many cultures and even suffering the unfortunate colonization by many of those past cultures.
The Chinese character is different from the Taiwanese character. True Taiwanese do not need size to give them a sense of self worth and validity. They can be proud of their aboriginal ancestry, of their island, and of its accomplishments and that is enough. Most Chinese on the other hand like high school boys suffer from a fixation on size and from the steady indoctrination of past court historian style writing and re-writing of history. For them only bigger is better. The self worth of Han Chinese remains in size and acquisition. The Mongolian Empire is rewritten to be the Chinese Yuan Dynasty; the Manchu Empire is rewritten to be the Chinese Qing Dynasty. Only bigger can be better. Mongolian and Manchu land and boundaries must be claimed as Chinese land and boundaries. This is why they cannot let Tibet be free. This is why they must control Xinjiang. This is why they had for a long time striven to control Mongolia and were satisfied only when a buffer state of Inner Mongolia possessed by them was created. This is why they remain the only rapacious neighbor that Taiwan has. They want to claim Ihla Formosa as part of their sacred Han soil. Surprisingly the biased, one-sided "court historian theories" have been able to be foisted off onto some gullible western historians.
Who has not heard the maudlin sentimental expressions of Han-centric Chinese bemoaning the past glories of their fictitious imagined community and how "they cannot accept the bitter pill of a divided motherland?" Who has not heard the alternating threatening and whining justifications of China for their rapacious actions?
Taiwan had already suffered and endured a similar maudlin sentiment and propaganda in the past. The Taiwanese were regularly told by Chiang Kai-shek (CKS) that it was their glory and destiny to retake the Mainland (under him of course) from the People's Republic of China (PRC). They were forced to be part of a civil war that took place on distant shores and had nothing to do with them. All this was a pretense to forestall democracy and ensure that Chiang could justify and prolong his claim to be the "emperor," the leader who would take them back to the Promised Land. Across the Strait, the same tactic is being used to indoctrinate and protect the control of China by a like-minded few.
Taiwan who's your mama, your real mama? Look to the recent archaeological and DNA discoveries and not the propaganda of the KMT or the PRC. Look at all the countries whose flag has flown over Taiwan. If any country would have claim for Taiwan to be a part of its "sacred soil" it would be the Japan. Japan is the first country that controlled the whole island. Yet Japan and all the more mature countries that once ruled Taiwan do not indulge in such maudlin sentimentality of bemoaning lost sacred soil. They can discern the difference between real and imagined communities and they do not share China's acquisitiveness and need to control all.
Taiwan's ability to work its way to democracy has been found by acknowledging and not glorifying or singling out its many diverse histories; it allows all citizens to elect its president. It avoids the trap of trying to rewrite its history like the KMT or PRC to favor a select group. Democracy is based on principle and not race. Democracy is based on self-respect, honesty with the past, and participation of all. Taiwan knows this and China does not. That is why Taiwan has become a democracy and China until it learns this will not.
A free Taiwan is crucial to a free Asia. Taiwan has faced its past and accepted it. Ironically now, a Hong Kong born, son of a Mainlander, with his veiled pro-Han Chinese unificationist position wants to tell Taiwan that its mother again is across the Strait. Who's your mama Taiwan? Taiwan is your mother. Don't forget it, and don't let any outsider tell you otherwise.