Wiki: Map of highland tribes

Reviving Ethnic Diversity:

Preserving Taiwan’s Austronesian[1] Aboriginal Languages

“Language is much more than collections of words with meaning that can be translated – they embody whole perspectives on meaning which are not readily capable of translation, and they are a key resource for understanding culture.”

“Taiwan has been colonized by the Spanish (1626-1642), the Dutch (1624-1662), Ming Dynasty loyalist Koxinga (1662-1683), the Ching Dynasty (1663-1895), the Japanese (1895-1945), and the Republic of China (1945 to the present).”[2] As a result Taiwan’s Austronesian Aboriginal population have suffered injustice, hardship, subjugation, and forced cultural assimilation. Today they represent less than two percent of Taiwan’s 22 million people, a similar proportion to that of Canada (3%) and Australia (1.8%).[3]

The Aboriginal population was divided, by colonisers, for convenience, into two groups the Pingpu (plains) people and Kaoshan (mountain) people.[4] These two groups were further divided into nineteen groups, twelve of which are now officially recognised by the Taiwanese government. The colonial classifications are rejected by some and are just one of many issues contested by the island’s 400,000 Aboriginal people in their fight to reassert their cultural identity.[5]

Today their cultural loss is exacerbated by widespread societal discrimination that assists in maintaining inequities in employment and education. “Household incomes of Taiwanese Aboriginal peoples are less than 40 percent of the national average and Aboriginal unemployment is significantly higher than the national average.”[6]

Due to forced relocations of aboriginal communities and decades of forced cultural assimilation the indigenous cultures and languages of Taiwan are seriously endangered. “A recent survey found only 10 percent of Aboriginal children are fluent in their respective Native languages, a particularly worrying fact given the large number of Aboriginal languages, especially those of the plains groups, that are either extinct or severely endangered.” [7]

Wiki: Rukai Chief

Present day causes for the decline include pressure on children, from parents, to adopt the language of the dominant Han culture, or a foreign language, in order to assist them in adapting to mainstream society. Among Taiwanese aboriginals there is no perceived competitive advantage in indigenous languages; they come a distant fourth after Mandarin, Ho-lo[8] and/or English. This combined with widespread societal discrimination has led younger generations to abandon their native tongues. The languages have also been susceptible to decline because none of Taiwan’s Aboriginals had a written language.[9]

Social change

“The starting point for cultural recovery is clear cultural identity.”[10] Language recovery is an essential part of this process. If Taiwan’s aboriginal population is to become an empowered part of modern day Taiwan they must first revive their language, cultural roots and sense of community.

If cultural identity can be asserted it can be used as the basis for learning about all aspects of cultural heritage such as; environmental knowledge, land management practices, dance, traditional medicines, traditional foods, traditional building practices and traditional art and crafts.

The self confidence gained through the assertion of cultural identity can also be used to gain political access which is “important both because it is the basis of a group’s sense of worth and effectiveness and because it affects its economic prospects”[11]. It also strengthens a group’s ability to defend itself against injustice.

Through language recovery the disadvantaged groups can begin to “shed their inferiority complexes, regain their self-esteem, and inject their respective cultural heritages with a new vitality.”[12] In Taiwan’s case, the newly revived ethnic diversity can help ease ethnic tensions in order to focus on the national goal of self-determination and international recognition.

Who would benefit?

Who would benefit from preserving Taiwan’s Austronesian Aboriginal languages is a fascinating question in terms of Taiwan’s fight for self determination and international recognition. It is clear that the indigenous populations would benefit from a cultural resurgence after centuries of oppression. In addition to this the nation also benefits from a more inclusive national identity and because it is Austronesian heritage that now serves the “Taiwanese as a cultural and racial emblem of self-identity to distinguish them from the Chinese mainland.”[13]

Institutional and other arrangements to facilitate social change

1. Teaching of the vernacular languages should be started in kindergarten. The concept should be the same as the successful Kohango Reo (language nests) set up to save Maori language in New Zealand, in 1982.[14] Supporters of initiatives such as these argue that “vernacular languages should be used in the teaching of the national language… and other subjects until students’ command of Mandarin is good enough to use it as a medium of instruction.”[15] Studies by UNESCO have found that “the mother tongue was the best language for literacy”[16] and recommended “that the use of mother tongue in education be extended to as late a stage as possible.”[17] It was also proven “that the teaching of a mother tongue in the way proposed will not slow down students’ acquisition of a national language.”[18]

2. Adapt the current education system, at all levels, to become more multicultural. This would begin changing the ingrained views about minorities in Taiwan and foster a more inclusive society.

3. Require that all national level exams, i.e. civil service exams, have an optional local/indigenous language component. This would provide a competitive advantage for indigenous languages. It would also require the Examination Yuan to hire/come in contact with aboriginal people. (The Examination Yuan is considered by many to be a very conservative bureaucracy run by ‘Mandarin monoglots’ from the previous regime.)

4. Pass the Linguistic Equality Law. The bill is designed to give all native languages equal legal status with Mandarin Chinese.[19]

Update September 2008: The Linguistic Equality Law has yet to be passed. It was drafted in 2004.

5. Preserve indigenous languages by promoting written versions of them employing some form of phonetic script.[20]

6. Promote autonomous development of aboriginal languages. Include incentives for aboriginal parents to teach the language at home. Provide resources relating to native culture, language and history.

7. Cultural exchanges between ethnic groups should be encouraged at all levels. Ethnic and linguistic diversity should be promoted as a national asset.

8. All forms of media should be used to raise the profile of indigenous languages. To enable indigenous people to reassert their cultural identity, on their on terms, they should be encouraged to produce their own programs. Music production should also be encouraged.

9. Widen political access for indigenous people. Raise awareness among indigenous people about the need to be politically active in order to protect their culture and language, and improve educational and economic prospects.

Related stories: Taiwan’s first Aboriginal ambassador

Found a link at David on Formosa to Documenting and Revitalizing Austronesian Languages: free online book

Traditional Tao (Yami) boat

]]> http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/09/28/preserving-taiwan%e2%80%99s-austronesian-aboriginal-languages/feed/ 95 http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/09/14/penghu-casinos-not-the-answer/ http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/09/14/penghu-casinos-not-the-answer/#comments Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:10:48 +0000 kang-wei http://mandarinscholarship.wordpress.com/?p=130

A letter I wrote to the Taipei Times was published today:

Here’s a story I wrote about the issues:

Penghu: Cultural Heritage Tourism vs Casino Tourism

Today is a Typhoon day. That means that all schools, government offices etc are closed and it’s recommended that you stay indoors for your own safety. Typhoons frequently hit Taiwan between July and September, often causing casualties in mountainous regions prone to landslides and flash floods.

Today’s typhoon is called Sinlaku, which refers to the legendary Micronesian Goddess Kosrae, is packing winds of more than 100 mph and is expected to bring 1000mm of rain.

Update Sept 15 2008: International Community Radio Taipei reports, Typhoon Sinlaku ended up leaving twelve dead, ten missing, and 17 injured. It also forced the evacuation of more than 2,000 people and left some 36 thousand residents in northern Zhanghua without running water.

International Community Radio Taipei (ICRT), operated by the Taipei International Community Cultural Foundation (TICCF), is a good source of information if your Mandarin is limited. Personally I can’t stand their DJs. You can just check their website for updates and avoid their hideous programming.

On a positive note, ICRT does have a lot of give aways. I have friends who always seem to be eating out for free because they won prizes on ICRT. For Mandarin scholarship students it could be a way to improve you standard of living. Good luck!

Other useful Typhoon links:

http://www.typhoon2000.ph/

http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V6e/index.htm

http://www.hko.gov.hk/contente.htm

Taipei city has hundreds of kilometers of dedicated (i.e. no cars) bicycle paths. I believe that Taipei and Taipei county are the best places in Asia for urban cycling.

Recently bikes have been allowed on selected MRT stations and special carriages are now provided for bikes on, as I understand it, selected days. All in all, great efforts are being made to make Taipei more bike friendly. Just one more reason to study Chinese in Taipei! Although, to be fair, I think riding on the roads is still very risky.

Below is a map of Taipei’s bike paths. You can pick up the map at MRT stations and some cycling stores:

From David on Formosa: http://blog.taiwan-guide.org

David on Formosa wrote about Taipei’s bike paths in 2005.

Dominican Republic has maintained diplomatic relations with Taiwan for 63 years.

The Rotary International Youth Program allows thousands of teenagers worldwide to attend a year long exchange program in the country of their choice.

Mads Meoller, the Danish student, made some interesting comments regarding the,

written agreement between the exchange students and the organizers of the program that discouraged them from learning about Taiwanese politics, and matters concerning the weaker or stronger sex, which limited their interaction with their Taiwanese counterparts. “It was a fight to learn about culture,” he observed.

I can understand discouraging learning about politics in China for example, as it may get you in trouble, but in a free society like Taiwan it seems overly paternal. Would an exchange student going to Australia be obliged to follow similar guidelines?

And this, “discouraged…from learning about…matters concerning the weaker or stronger sex”. What does this mean exactly? Male exchange students can not have female friends and female exchange students can not have male friends? That’s what it sounds like.

The net result for our Danish friend, “It was a fight to learn about culture,”.

Having participated in four different exchange programs, I feel that my exposure to different political systems and building friendships with both sexes made the experiences life changing. Of course just attending the institutions was valuable but having restrictions like these does seem to be a contradiction in terms.

Note: The article has not yet been put on the China Post’s website.

Quote from the article, thanks for being honest Patty:

“I was worried at first!” said Patty, 16, who recalled her yearlong experience with foreign students at her senior high school in downtown Taipei. She believed that all foreign teenagers liked smoking or hanging out in bars, the opposite of how “normal” Taiwanese students behave. Patty was in for a pleasant surprise when Aude Gery joined her class in August 2007.

On the 20th of June 2008 the Taipei Times reported that Kinmen and Matsu can be used by foreign nationals to enter China:

Effective immediately, Taiwanese and foreign nationals holding valid travel papers will be allowed to enter China via the outlying islands of Kinmen or Matsu, the Executive Yuan announced yesterday.

Previously, only certain Taiwanese residents were allowed to visit China via the “small three links.” They had to be either Kinmen or Matsu residents for more than six months, civil servants working on the islands or relatives and spouses of Kinmen or Matsu residents working in Taiwan. Taiwanese nationals meeting certain other requirements were also allowed to use the links.

I visited Kinmen a few years ago and tried to get a ticket to board a ferry to Xiamen in China’s southern Fujian Province (only 20mins, 2km to the coast). Of course they said no.

If you are a Mandarin scholarship student this is good news as it’s much cheaper to　visit China this way. It’s also much more interesting．　Best to wait till you have a multi-entry visa (ARC).

Kinmen island is about 33 km from Xiamen City and 296 km from Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. Matsu is a group of 36 isles about 28 km from the Fujian coast and 211 km from the main Taiwan island.

Update

For more information you can have a look at the Taiwan Journal’s article:

Cabinet expands mini links with mainland

Also, this ongoing discussion at forumosa.com has some interesting information:

Ferry from Jinmen/Mazu to Xiamen/Fuzhou

Q. Can anyone confirm whether or not foreign nationals can actually use these ferry services to travel from Taiwan to China.

A. Yes. That’s what the Chairwoman of the Mainland Affairs Council reported to the ECCT at a meeting this afternoon, as I translated for her yesterday. But she also added that, since Beijing still hadn’t adjusted its position on the status of the three small links, foreigners would not yet be able to make the journey in the other direction, though it was hoped this could be changed through future cross-strait talks.

If the information above is correct going from Kinmen to Xiamen or Matzu to Fuzhou should be possible although returning to Taiwan the same way could be tricky, if not impossible for now. Another poster brought up fact that obtaining a Chinese visa in Taiwan is very expensive. I got some quotes for Chinese visas which ranged from NT$2500 (US$85) to NT8500 (US$285)!

The only problem with travel in any direction, however, is that visas are still not issued in Taiwan. Going to China via Kinmen (Jinmen) will be very cheap but not if travel agents still have to apply for your visa through the Hong Kong visa office. Furthermore, if you have to fly back to Taiwan via HK, you might as well fly via HK, as the price for a one-way or return is about the same. This is just more empty symbolism from the Ma admin.

Update: Just came accross the information below about a new ferry from Kinmen (金門) to Xiamen (廈門). The new route, opened on August 31 2008, is only 13 kilometers and is the third to be opened between Kinmen and Chinese mainland.

New ferry route opens between Kinmen (金門) and Xiamen (廈門)
Golden Star ferry operates the ferry services on the new route which links Shuitou wharf on Taiwan’’s Kinmen Island and Wutong wharf in Xiamen, southern China. This new route which was launched on August 31st will reduce the travel time between Kinmen and Xiamen from one hour to thirty minutes. Wutong is only a 10-minute ride away from Gaochi International Airport in Xiamen from which passengers can fly to other Chinese cities. A normal China visa will still be required for foreigners traveling this route.

New bus routes have been added in order to provide passengers easy access to downtown Xiamen, the Convention Center, railway station, and its main bus station .

Robin Ruizendaal, a Dutchman, is the unlikely Director of the Lin Liu-hsin Puppet Theatre Museum*.

The Mandarin speaking, betel nut chewing Dutchman is a genuine doctor of puppetry, whose graduate thesis focused on Chinese marionette theatre.

Opened in 2000 with the generous support of several private donors, the museum is located in Taipei’s historic Da Daocheng neighbourhood, where puppet troupes once thrived, and is housed in a well preserved 4-story manor house built in 1946.

Today, the museum boasts a collection of some 7,000 puppetry artifacts from across Asia and is home to an internationally renowned troupe of theatrical puppeteers.

The troupe features Taiwanese puppet master Chen Xi-huang (陳錫煌), son of legendary puppeteer Li Tien-lu (李天祿), Chen’s protege, Massimo Godoli Peli of Italy, and a crew of narrators, light and stage designers, and a puppet maker.

In a recent interview with the Taipei Times, Ruizendaal lamented local indifference to this aspect of Taiwan’s rich cultural heritage.

…not unlike other Asian countries heavily influenced by Western pop culture, Taiwan is facing a lack of interest among young people in traditional puppetry.

“There are people coming from France and Spain to study Taiwanese puppetry at our museum, but local youth think it’s more sexy to become film makers, video artists or disc jockeys,” he said. “It seems crazy to them to study the obsolete puppetry. There is a crisis to pass on the craft if nobody wants to learn it.”

Ruizendaal hopes the puppet museum can attract new blood by offering free puppeteer apprenticeships.

Hand glove puppet shows are a regular event across Taiwan. They are generally sponsored by local temples and everyone is welcome to watch for free.

[youtube=http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=kvj-O4QWnFc]

*The museum was previously known as Toa-Thiun-Thian Puppet Centre

Sources

Department of Information, Taipei City Government. (2001). Taipei’s Museums: The Doors are Open.

Taipei Times report: Dutch man attempting to revive a dying art

www.taipeipuppet.com

Related story

Penghu: Cultural Heritage Tourism vs Casino Tourism

MANDARIN COURSES: The education ministry is working with several US colleges to attract US students to take part in its three learning programs.

The Ministry of Education has set up new scholarship and study programs to attract more US students to study Chinese in Taiwan, the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) in Washington announced yesterday.

Taiwan’s deputy representative to the US, Tung Kuo-yu (董國猷), told a press conference that the ministry, in cooperation with several US colleges and universities, has launched three projects to facilitate and attract American students to participate in short-term and year-long language programs in Taiwan.

Local universities

Tung said that National Taiwan University, National Taiwan Normal University and Ming Chuan University have invited 180 students from 10 US colleges to study Mandarin here.

Each of the US colleges would send a group of students to study at a Taiwanese college of their choice, and each group would receive US$5,000 in grants. The University of North Carolina has already formed a group.

Sisterhood ties

A second program would allow US college students from states that have sisterhood ties with Taiwan to spend a summer studying in Taiwan.

Under the terms of the program, 20 US university students from 12 states will take part in a two-month Chinese-language course at National Pingtung University of Education.

Students under this program will each receive a monthly stipend of NT$25,000 while they are in Taiwan, Tung said.

Full-year courses

A third project sponsored by the ministry involves scholarships for select US students to participate in three-months to full-year courses to learn Mandarin.

TECRO has to date chosen 10 students from the University of North Carolina, Georgetown University and University of Maryland to take part in the specially designed Mandarin programs.

Web site

For more information on scholarship programs for American and other foreign students, see TECRO’s Cultural Division Web site at www.tecro.org.

]]> http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/06/01/ministry-offering-new-scholarships-to-foreign-students/feed/ 64 http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/05/18/taiwans-first-aboriginal-ambassador/ http://mandarinscholarship.com/2008/05/18/taiwans-first-aboriginal-ambassador/#comments Sun, 18 May 2008 12:18:18 +0000 kang-wei http://mandarinscholarship.wordpress.com/?p=41 Taiwan is utilizing its shared Austronesian heritage to gain more influence in Fiji.

There is currently a huge uproar over Taiwan’s dollar diplomacy strategy. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was duped out US$30 million while attempting to restore diplomatic relations with Papua New Guinea.

I think capitalizing on shared heritage could be much cheaper and more sustainable. Yohani Isqaqavut, the new Ambassador, recounts how while visiting New Zealand, two Maori ministers broke protocol by attending a Taiwanese function. They said they usually wouldn’t attend events held by Taiwan’s diplomatic mission because of pressure from China but they wanted to come that night because there were Taiwanese Aborigines and they felt there was a special tie between us, Yohani said.

You can read the whole story at the Taipei Times.

Related story: Preserving Taiwan’s Austronesian Aboriginal Languages