Some Considerations on the Social and Cultural Developments in Taiwan History (2002)

 

John Joseph Kehoe, MA School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

The “complex cultural configurations” found in Taiwan today, can easily be seen as “Chinese culture with Taiwanese characteristics”. The majority of people inhabiting present day Taiwan are descendants of Han Chinese who, beginning in the early 1600s, migrated to Taiwan from southern China.  Another significant group, also deriving from China, are the Republican loyalists, and their descendants, who fled to Taiwan with Chang Kai shek in the aftermath of the civil war.  Today, in Taiwan, one can find cultural attributes that attest to the influence of the various groups of Han Chinese, who have come to populate the island. These cultural attributes, which includes folk religion, the observances of holidays that center around community and family (Chinese New Years), as well as ritual practices, are defining elements in what anthropologists have come to agree as being the cultural basics of Chinese society. The early studies of James Waston were significant in establishing what is to be considered culturally Chinese. “‘To be Chinese is to understand, and accept the view, that there is a correct way to perform rites associated with the life cycle” (Watson and Rawski, 3). Rituals of marriage and death, as well as religious practices have been studied as representations of Chinese culture on Taiwan (Sangren, Ahern, Feuchtwang, Diamond among others). These cultural attributes may be seen as being fundamental to the cultural make-up and identity of Taiwan, existing within the universal of Chinese culture. The particular developments, which are found throughout Taiwan’s history, such as its frontier origins, and the Japanese colonial period, may be but a few broad strokes on a large Chinese tapestry.

However, there are some who see the distinct developments in Taiwan’s history as causing major fissures in the cultural continuity between Taiwan and China, thus fostering an individual cultural identity of Taiwanese. Beginning with the arrival of the Dutch, and the early economic development of Taiwan through to the end colonization by the Japanese, we see alterations to much of Taiwan’s landscape independent of China. These alterations are detectable physically, economically, as well as socially. Tu We Ming states that “…the recognition that there have been distinct Dutch, Japanese and American strata superimposed upon the Chinese substrata since the eighteenth…makes the claim of Taiwan’s Chineseness problematic.”(Tu, 10) The KMT’s subsequent arrival to Taiwan, after the Second World War, juxtaposed the former colonial subjects to Chinese from the Mainland, where political strife and lingering elements of feudalism were manifest.  Such a juxtaposition revealed vast differences between the two, which the KMTs cultural policy sought to remedy. These differences exemplify a cultural divide that came to exist between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits. By looking at the cultural formations that grew out of the pre-colonial and colonial periods, we will be able to better understand the cultural issues, which have plague Taiwan throughout the second half of the 20^th century.

The idea of a Taiwan culture, whether it is seen as a particularity of a greater Chinese culture, or an actual individual formation, is inextricably tied to the arena of identity formation in regards to the concept of cultural and national consciousness.[1] By consciousness we mean an understanding of a distinct shared culture among the people of Taiwan that can be seen in opposition to Japanese or Chinese, and which derive from identifiably distinct practices, beliefs or behaviors. It is believed that the appearance of a Taiwanese identity, or consciousness, first occurred during the colonial period, but its roots predate colonial Taiwan. Sung Tse-lai, writing in 1988, sees that a Taiwan ethnic identity developed out of “objective economic conditions” that gave rise to an “indigenous capitalist” character, which historically “can be traced back to the Dutch rule” (Ching, 68). As Sung argues that the maturity of Taiwan’s independent identity manifested itself during Japanese colonial rule, he states that such an identity is well rooted in the frontier era, going as far back as the Dutch presence in the late 1600s.

In the Dutch period Chinese from coastal Fujian and Kuangdong were recruited for settlement to farm the fertile soils of Taiwan’s western plains. Water conservancy was developed by the Dutch to assist in the cultivation of sugar, rice, tea, wheat, and hemp. The Dutch helped the Han in the farming and settlement of the land through the provisions of seeds, tools and currency. (Knapp, 99) These foreign influences, imparted to the early Han inhabitants of Taiwan, certainly had a cultural element, for culture has much to do with how a people interact with and shape their environment. Such an early exposure to foreign influences in a non-confrontational way, lead to the eventual formation of what Sung refers to as an ‘indigenous capitalist character’ and a ‘social community’ founded on ‘objective economic conditions’. In this regard Hill Gates points out that there was an economic prowess in the pre-colonial Taiwanese, which allowed for them to master the new economic opportunities at the time. Though Taiwan’s early formation was made up of communities based on place of origin and kinship, as well as sub-ethnic division between Hakka, Hokklo, and aborigine, economic patterns would eventually serve to bring these varying, and often conflicting communities together.

In the decades just prior to colonization, Taiwan became integrated into the ‘world system’ as camphor and tea production excited the interest of foreign traders (Sangren, 87). The pressure from foreign interests resulted in the Treaty of Tientsin, which was to greatly hamper the Ch’ing government’s attempt at monopolizing trade between Taiwan and the outside world, and thus further detaching Taiwan from the cultural center of China by allowing foreigners to trade directly with Taiwan. American and European traders looked to Taiwan, where, according to Hill Gates, the Chinese of the island where able to “organize rapidly to meet the new demands…. to maintain control over. …profitable new export trade” (Gates, 36).  The growth of commodity exchange benefited Taiwan’s Han Chinese population, which had grown significantly through the 1700s and early 1800s, outnumbering the aborigine population.  In regards to the ethnic division between Hakka and Hokklo,  “expanded economic opportunities and the increased need for cooperation among Taiwan’s Chinese inhabitants reduced the incidence of Han subethnic strife.” (Gardella, 178). The Han sub-ethnic boundaries were lessened, as class appeared as a newly emergent defining feature of the social landscape, and an ‘indigenous capitalist character’ appeared.  The integration of Taiwan into the global market exposed the Taiwanese to international capitalism and nurtured industrious habits.

Although the softening of ethnic boundaries between sub-ethnic groups happened as a result of the economic changes in the 1800s, it was not until colonization by Japan that the formation of a political composite as ‘Taiwanese’ unfolded. (Winkler, 1988). This follows the logic of Sung’s idea that Taiwan consciousness is rooted in earlier formations, but came to maturity during the colonial period.  During colonial rule the ethnic differences receded further, allowing for the divergent groups of Han Chinese to fall under a definition as Taiwanese  “…local boundaries and loyalties of local communities were somewhat weakened and the cultural differences that expressed and reinforced those differences were correspondingly blurred at the edges.” (Harrell and Huang, 3).  Once under colonial rule the Han Chinese on Taiwan, whether Hakka or Hokkien became united as the subjects of Japanese. It is during the Japanese colonial rule that the Han Chinese came to form a singular social configuration as Taiwanese, which unfolded in a matrix of industrialization, urbanization, and social development.

Japanese colonial rule brought dramatic changes to Taiwan, which represented, according to Shih Ming, author of ‘The Four- Hundred Year History of the Taiwanese’, a fundamental factor alienating or separating Taiwan from the mainland. (Ching, 2001) For, while the mainland struggled politically, and much of its rural landscape remained tied to agrarian ways, Taiwan was being modernized through its incorporation into the Japan empire.  With economic industrialization and Japanese capitalism, the population saw the transformation of their built environment with roads and transportation infrastructure. The Japanese developed the productive forces agriculture, focusing on rice and sugar, which were exported to Japan. Taiwan, becoming financially independent from Japan by 1905, was able to support a market for the industrial goods produced in Japan. Industrial manufacturing was also developed, and by the 1930s nearly 20 percent of the income at the national level was due to the industry sector (Galenson, 1979).  Nonagricultural infrastructure, such as power and transport was also developed.  With industrial growth urbanization began to take root.

The urban environment was scene to accommodation by the Taiwanese, who mingled between elements of Japanese culture and modernity. Bicycles were fixtures on the streets as were telephones in the home. Taiwanese speech was peppered with elements from Japanese, as well as other foreign languages. (Lamley, 99) Urbanization of the population was significant. In 1895 the urban population on Taiwan was just 5 percent of total population, by 1943 the urban population grew to represent 15 percent of the total population. (Knapp, 1999)

The social development of Taiwan during the colonial period was significant as well. Modern health care in Taiwan became second only to that of Japan’s in all of Asia. Since education was necessary to support the modern economy, schooling at the primary and secondary levels was implemented. The use of Japanese was part of colonial education. Although there was no uniform language policy implemented, a significant portion of the Han population could speak Japanese to one extent or another. The Japanese brought law and order to Taiwan, as well. The justice system was efficient and fair. The Japanese did not greatly disrupt the cultural structure of Taiwan. Although temples were burned, due to their conduciveness to opposition formation, the Japanese left alone marriage and religious customs, as well as inheritance patterns (Gates, 1987) While retaining an underlay of heritage representing south China Hakka and Hokklo culture, the Taiwanese absorbed the cultural elements of a modern and civil nature, and industrial production. The indigenous capitalist character was not lost, but strengthened. Hill Gates states that life for the Taiwanese under Japanese rule was “much safer, healthier, a bit more comfortable”(Gates, 41).

Did the experiences of colonial rule, and changes brought to Taiwan in the colonial era transform the cultural lanscape translating into the notion of a Taiwanese cultural identity? We can see a negotiation portrayed in the Angelina C. Yee’s reading of Wang Changxiong’s ‘Benlui’, a story written in Japanese in 1942, by The story, displaying the struggle with ‘self and national identity’, charts a negotiation of identity with competing identity constructs.  In the beginning a boy, named Benlui, a Taiwanese, is captivated by a Taiwanese teacher, who exhibits a pride in qualities of his own to Japanese. Such pride is in harsh contrast to the antithesis found in the local Taiwanese, who harbor an apprehensiveness concerning colonial rule. This, Yee states “points ironically at the author’s own shameful use of the Japanese in writing the text”(Yee, 88). The Taiwanese teacher namedIto and a Japanese woman, whom he is in love with, presents the complimentary perfections of feminine and masculine, yet through this association Ito feels unworthy in the women’s eyes, hence exemplifying the colonizer and the colonized.

Eventually, Ito becomes torn between Japan and Taiwan, but resolution is offered when he takes up samurai sword fighting, with the intention of using the skill in “serving his native place”.  In the last scene of the story the narrator is overtaken by the beauty of Taiwan, and looks to the opposite side of the Taiwan Straits, which is “asleep”. Yee states that this “is an oblique reference to the dormant mainland relegated to the past, whereas the palpable life is here and now in Taiwan” (Yee, 91). Through Yee’s reading of Wang Changxiong’s story near the end of colonization, it is quite clear that for the individual Taiwanese were experiencing interceding realms of differing constructs representing the native, the colonial, as well as the historical.

At the close of the Second World War Taiwan was reverted to its status as a territory of China. The difference being that China was now a Republic. The people of Taiwan had been exempt from the struggle and the political turmoil that enveloped China in the first half of the twentieth century. The modern development that the Taiwanese had been engaged in contributed much to the way their world was constructed, and had little to do with the formation of a Chinese national identity. During the time it was a minority of elite who had contact with China.  Concerning the Chinese cultural underlay, the Japanese did not subject the Taiwanese culture to a significant repression. Temples were destroyed in some cases due to their potential use for organizing opposition.  Also foot binding and minor marriages were discouraged as the Japanese saw them as feudal remnant. Overall the Japanese colonial authority “did not attempt to alter radically Taiwanese culture and social structure”(Gates, 41). This being the case cultural elements and practices remained as a reminder off the shared heritage with China, but can one say that this heritage signifies a cultural identity? Thomas Gold refers to a Taiwanese culture during this time that is a “hybrid of the Chinese outback and the Japanese imperialism…”(Gold, 60). This definition resemble our ideas above, which sees a pre-colonial and colonial coalescence in regards to culture, while of course retaining the heritage of southern China.  How strong was the affinity of this heritage, which originated across the Straits?

The jubilant hope of union with the arrival of the Chinese ‘brothers’ faded quickly as differences between the two sides of the straits became apparent. And were not these differences cultural?  Shih Ming sees that the “latent identification with the Chinese was fragile and short-lived” (Ching, 72). The identity based on a mythic singular race united by blood lineage was supplanted by “an identity produced from a common fate and common psychology”(Ching, 72) Accordingly, Shih posits that the affinity between Taiwanese and Chinese by the closing of the Second World War in regards to culture was only pertinent to studies in anthropology (Ching, 72).  Allen Chun reminds us that the Taiwanese “had been left out of the Nationalist experience that gripped China in the early 20^th century…” (Chun, 56).  Changes on both sides of the straits contributed to the cultural and social divide.

The 228 incident, and the subsequent repression and sinification by the KMT regime certainly attests to Shih Ming’s reasoning. The “fossilized” Chinese heritage, which the Taiwanese shared with the arriving Chinese forces, meant little compared to the more immediate customs that were formulated and imparted to them during the colonial period. Clearly this points to a major fissure between the cultural continuity of Taiwan and China, and it was a fissure which the Nationalists exerted much effort in mending during the second half of the twentieth century.

Nationalist rule on Taiwan saw the implementation of a cultural policy, which was consciously engineered to unite an otherwise incongruent majority population of Taiwanese with a Chinese national cultural narrative that, according to Alan Wackmann, was that of the gentry and elite nature. This was not necessarily in accord with the lingering elements of peasant Hakka and Hokklo culture. The KMT had self-designated itself as the guardians of cultural China. The ‘cultural reunification’ was aimed at ridding Taiwan of the “vestiges of Japanese influence from fifty years of colonial rule and …suppressing any movement toward local Taiwanese expression” (Chun, 56). Through martial law the KMT regime kept a tight grip on all sectors of society.   Allen Chun refers to KMT policy as “…a kind of colonialism which was no less ‘foreign’ than the Japanese interregnum that preceded it.”(Chun, 56).

In order to mend the fissures in the continuity between Taiwan and China, the KMT presented the myth of a ‘continuous history’ of Chineseness. What this meant for the Taiwanese was the imposition of a reconstructed culture, and repressive measures towards elements of localism, or what we may call Taiwan culture.  The policy of strict standardized Mandarin, which disallowed the use of Japanese, as well as Taiwanese, was just one element in a grand cultural engineering policy that ran through the institutions of education, news media, entertainment, and communications. The supposed ‘reconstruction’ or mending was based on fabrication, as the majority of Taiwanese and their ancestors spoke Minnan hua, or what is now known as Taiwanese. As Chun states, “The dictatorship of a unified language became in turn the precondition for the widespread inculcation of Chinese traditional history, thought and values, or culture in the broad sense.”( Chun,12) Taiwanese folk religion, a remnant of the south Chinese Minnan tradition, were also discouraged by the KMT, as they saw it these as representing loaclaism, and viewed it as being subversive to the greater nationalist project. The KMT’s policy towards folk religion can be traced back to the May 4^th Movement, and the years of Republican formation, when local cults were viewed as being superstitious, archaic, and feudal. The repression of Taiwan’s local cultural expression was part of a cultural policy that was closely tied to the Republic of China’s efforts to survive. The erection of the National Palace Museum represents a most tangible example of this imposition of the mythic continuous historical Chineseness, since much of the museums collection was the ‘national treasure’, which the Nationalists horded from China. Is such an act a metonym of the grand hording of a cultural narrative founded on classical gentry culture?  Overall, we see an attempt at national survival in a geographical location with a people who were entirely divorced from national formation.

 

The political developments of the past few decades have been quite contentious in regards to the cultural issue on Taiwan. Joseph Bosco sees the “sense of Taiwanese identity” coming from two junctures in the past century. The first that he states is very near to what has been stated above, which is the juxtaposition of the Taiwanese and the Mainlanders during retrocession. The second “growth” which he describes occurred when martial law was dismantled, and travel to the Mainland by Taiwanese allowed. During this time again the Taiwanese were juxtaposed to the Mainland Chinese, and again, what could be call cultural differences, became salient. Visiting Taiwanese to the Mainland found that PRC was “…sufficiently different from their society…”(Bosco, 393). Thomas Gold sees the emergence of a “unique Taiwan identity” during the 1970’s when the tangwai emerged as a political force, and modern cultural forms were created in the area of the arts, film and theatre. Regarding this late blooming of Taiwanese cultural and identity Alan Wackmann uses the word “invented”, and sees it as a response to the harsh repression, which “inadvertently” fueled a perceived distinct identity. Alan Wackman States, “we cannot deny that Taiwanese culture is an extension of Chinese culture…”(Wakeman, 49). This seems all to simplistic, and in disregard to historical reality. But it does add a new dimension to our discussion, namely that of invented culture.

The Dutch, the foreign markets of the 1800s, and the Japanese colonilers all interceded with the continuity between China and Taiwan, but since this was a continuity stemming from the local cultures of the Fujian Hokklo and the Kuangdong Hakka, it was a limited one. The cultural influences imparted to the people of Taiwan through these historical events are were not invented, but have been used as well as forgotten in order to invent notions of shared identity. The KMT invented the myth of Chineseness, in its efforts in maintaining the national narrative on Taiwan. Furthermore “The universal assertion of a ‘Chinese consciousness’ is a response to the real danger posed by the equally universalizing tendency of Western imperialism” ( Ching, 66). National Chineseness grew from China’s painful encounter with the west at the turn of the century. Is this not invention?

The ideation of Taiwanese cultural identity, or consciousness, was invented in response to the ever-present universalized ideation of Chinese. Leo T.S. Ching sees that Taiwanese cannot be negated or ”sublated by a universal Chinese consciousness nor reduced to a particularistic Taiwanese consciousness.” ( Ching, 79 ). Taiwan identity must exist in both regions simultaneously, but outside of conflicting polarity, and embracing the historical and cultural reality of “nationalist China, colonial Taiwan, and imperial Japan.” ( Ching, 80). Adding to this matrix Bosco states that the battle “between orthodoxy of the center and heterodoxy of the periphery has given way to the unorthodox cosmopolitanism of Taiwan popular culture.” ( Bosco, 394 ).

The discourse concerning Taiwan’s cultural identity has predominately come to exists as a dichotomy between Taiwan identity as a distinct expression, indicative of Taiwan’s unique development, and Taiwan identity as being derived from, or a particular expression of, a greater universal Chinese culture. Here, it would be a good to recall the words of Talcott Parsonsconcerning culture. He stated that “culture is transmitted…. it is not a manifestation, in particular content, of man’s genetic constitution…”(Parsons, 15). Culture is not static and stationary, but is constantly evolving and intersecting.

Bibliography

 

1. Ching, Leo T.S. (2001). Becoming Chinese, Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. Berkeley, University of California Press.
2. Edmond, Richard Louis and Steven M. Goldstein. (Ed.). (2001). Taiwan in the Twentieth Century: A Retrospective View. Cambridge University Press.
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10. Sangren, Steven P. (1987). History and Magic in a Chinese Community. Stanford, Stanford University Press.
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12. Tu, Wei-ming. (Ed.). (1991).  The Living Tree, Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today. Stanford, Stanford University Press.
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19. Chun, Allen (2000). ”Democracy as Hegemony, Globalization as indiginization or the “Culture” In Taiwanese Nationalization. Journal of Asianand African Studies, vol.xxxv., No. 1,
20. Garadella, Robert. (1999). From Treaty Port to Provincial Status, 1860-1894. In Rubinstein, Murray A. (Ed.). (1999). Taiwan, A New History. Armonk, M.E. Sharp.
21. Gates, Hill. (1987). Chinese Working Class Lives. Ithica, Cornell University Press.
22. Gold, Thomas B. (1994) Civil Society and Taiwan’s Quest for Identity. Harrell, Steven and Huang Chun-chieh. Cultural Change in Postwar Taiwan.  Westview Press.

 

23. Harrell, Steven and Huang Chun-chieh. (1994)  Introduction: Change and Continuity in Taiwan’s Cultural Scene. In (Ed.). Harrell, Steven and Huang Chun-chieh. Cultural Change in Postwar Taiwan.  Westview Press.

 

24. Liu, Lydia H. (1995). Translingual Practice, Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity China, 1900-1937. Stanford, Stanford University Press.

 

25. Tu, Wei-ming. (1991). Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center. In Tu, Wei-ming. (Ed.). (1991).  The Living Tree, Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today. Stanford, Stanford University Press.

 

26. Watson, James L. (1988).  The Structure of Chinese Funerary Rites: Elementary Forms, Ritual Sequence, and the Primacy of Performance. In Watson, Jamse L. And Evelyn S. Rawski. (Ed.). (1988). Death Ritual in Late Imperial China. Berkeley, University of California Press.
27. Yee, Angelina Chun-chu. (2001). Constructing Native Consciousness: Taiwan Literature in the 20^th In Edmond, Richard Louis and Steven M. Goldstein. (Ed.). (2001). Taiwan in the Twentieth Century: A Retrospective View. Cambridge University Press.

 

 

[1] Wenhua did not take its modern western connotations until the twentieth century, when, via Japan, many otherwise nonexistent notions from the west were introduced into China. The western concept of culture in China, growing out of China’s encounter with the west in the late Ch’ing period, became part of an “ideological struggle in twentieth century nation building”(Liu, 239).