Dear Child of Taiwan,

Searching for a better life, some ancestor of yours left his homeland in the
Chinese empire and risked punishment for even thinking to defy his emperor’s heavy
hand by slipping out of territory under imperial control. Trusting in the care of the
goddess Matsu he crossed the dangerous black water ditch and arrived on Taiwan like
an Israelite entering Canaan. He sought to make a living from this land flowing with
milk and honey by hunting and farming. Like those ancient Israelites, he struggled
with the people he encountered, (who themselves had arrived thousands of years
earlier), killed the men among them and took the women as wives. Eventually he
established ownership. His mixed-blood offspring came to identify themselves not as
immigrants, but as masters of this land.
This mastery did not come without a cost. As the native peoples of Canaan were
subdued or destroyed, so to were Taiwan’s aboriginal inhabitants subdued, destroyed
or assimilated by immigrant power. Then, seeking to enlarge the territory that their
immigrant fathers had seized, your fathers’ offspring fought against your mothers’
offspring. As Canaanite cultural forms were absorbed into those of the Israelites, your
mothers’ cultures were subsumed within a new mixture skewed towards that of that of
your fathers. But even in this, as yeast leavens dough, the cultures of the mothers
subtly but significantly altered the nature of that which had absorbed them.
Unsatisfied with what their greed had gotten them by conquest, those who won
the struggle against the original inhabitants turned against each other, clan against
clan, village against village. A new and strong self-identity was forged in the heat of
conflict. When in its waning years the imperial government of China eventually
asserted control over Taiwan it found here a people who were not the same as those it
ruled on the Chinese mainland. A small insurrection occurred every three years, a
large one every five. The empire barely held on in the face of non-cooperation on the
part of the peoples it ruled here. Eventually, when it suited the culturally familiar (but
not culturally identical) emperor, Taiwan was forsaken into the hands of a totally
foreign emperor and his minions. The transition was traumatic. It was met with
resistance.
But your ancestors had no say. The new sovereign arrived with military might
and subdued all resistance. Operating similarly to the Greek empire that absorbed
Palestine in 332 BCE, it brought new cultural raw material into Taiwan. Aping
European imperialists, the Japanese imposed their language, thought patterns and
ways of operation on your ancestors. They eventually attempted to impose the
imperial religion and take away your names to be substituted with more suitable ones,
names similar to those used in THEIR homeland. By these means they changed again
the rich mix of what in its totality came to be Taiwan Identity, distinct from that of
any of the ancestral bloodlines or cultural streams that contributed to it.
Before you were born there had come into being a people who, having been
ruled by two empires, resembled neither so much as they resembled themselves. The
mix of multiple Aboriginal strands with Hakka, Hoklo, and Japanese cultures created
something unique in Taiwan. Then the empires played another game of musical chairs
and your homeland’s rulers changed again.
As s Europeans in the 16th century went throughout the world claiming lands and
their occupants for the kings of European nations, so did the new rulers in 1945 lay
claim to Taiwan and its people in the name of their Generalissimo. As the Europeans
of the 16th century imposed languages, thought forms and commercial patterns on
conquered lands for their own profit, so did the KMT government and its lackeys seek
to derive personal gain from Taiwan by imposition of their language, ideology and
patterns of operation.
Though your ancestors approval of this handover was not sought, they initially
aimed to make the best of it, welcoming the newcomers and their government in the
hope that they would be less foreign than the Japanese colonists. Their
disappointment was bitter. The “new” was equally foreign as the “old”. Besides that,
it was less effective, less just and more oppressive. The inevitable clash was bloody
and left clear cleaving scars across Taiwan’s social fabric.
The “rulers” were identifiable by their ethnicity and their possession of the barrel
of the gun, from which their political power emerged. The “ruled” were similarly
identifiable by ethnicity, but they lacked armament, and political power. The rulers
sought to stamp out the sense of selfhood of the ruled. They claimed “We are all sons
of the yellow emperor.” The Christians who threw in their lot with the rulers preached
“Oneness in Christ” and “The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man”.
They considered it sinful to make note of distinctions or disparities if one was “ruled,”
and thought it charitable to preach oneness to inferiors if one was a member of the
rulers.
Decades have passed. The culture, already a rich mix, has absorbed another
invader. The people of Taiwan today, including you, yourself and the descendants of
the KMT colonialists, speak a mixed language, unique to this place, identifiable by its
particular accent and syntax. The language of the conquerors has changed by
exposure to the language of the conquered. The language of the conquered has
changed too. Even as it absorbed Japanese words during the suzerainty of that
emperor, it has absorbed North Chinese words, phrases and syntax from the most
recent colonial overlords.
Now sons and daughters of Taiwan, not of other places, hold the highest
positions in the land. But the hearts of many still turn to foreign places for inspiration
and the sense of identity. Whether leaning to China (the homeland of some ancestors)
with its long rich culture and language, or to Japan (the former colonial overlord with
its popular culture and wealth) or to the West (the center of world power in recent
centuries), the hearts of many sons and daughters of Taiwan are not bound to this
place, their identities are not rooted in this soil. Sadly, some have no identity of their
own.
Christians in Taiwan look outside for patterns by which to interpret their
experience and the manifestations of God’s Kingdom on this soil, but the music of the
churches comes from Europe, North America or Korea. The theologies articulated are
similarly foreign. That which is local is distrusted, or considered inferior, or regarded
as polluted. The unreliability, dubious quality and pollution of the “imported goods”
go unquestioned. The possible (if not probable) inapplicability of foreign
prescriptions for local maladies is unquestioned.
Families in Taiwan, wanting the best for coming generations, seek from outside the
definitions of what is best, and what will help. Children are sent to study English on
the possibility that it will enable them to earn more money in the future. They do not
study Hakka, or Hoklo, or Aboriginal languages, at least not to any great extent. Only
that which can be tested and scored and used to gain rank over others is valued.
Sometimes the excuse given is that English is needed for foreign travel, even when
we know that most Taiwanese will only spend a few, if any, weeks of their lives
overseas, and those will probably be part of touring groups or visiting compatriots
overseas.
Politicians in Taiwan, claiming to want the best for society, seek patterns of
operation from outside. European, American and Chinese patterns, not Taiwanese
ones.
Young people from Taiwan, seeking advanced education and degrees, do not seek
local graduate schools when there are foreign institutions reaching to take their tuition
dollars. Admissions fairs for American, British, Canadian and Australian schools are
common and well attended. Parents’ money is spent on travel, equipping and paying
for the school fees of their children going overseas. Whereas a 4-year undergraduate
education in Taiwan costs about the same as a house, the same in North America costs
about as much as 4 houses. Why send Taiwan’s resources abroad to places which do
not value your homeland and identify it over and over as a “Province of China”?
Child of Taiwan, seek your identity first here. Only in finding yourself first in the
local environment can or will you survive in the world that seeks to squeeze you into
its mold.
Sincerely,
Your Uncle who Loves You