Deep in the forested hills of Taiwan's central mountain ranges, there is a little aboriginal village of a mere thousand people named Fuhsing. A winding paved road pass through its main tourist strip where urbanites with cars stop over before heading further into the mountains to see lakes and waterfalls. There on the strip is a small hole-in-the-wall serving up hearty portions of stirred-fried wild boar meat. Its relatively dark interior and rather run-down facade compared to neighboring restaurants made it rather unpopular with the tourist crowd used to Taipei's bright lights.
When the author strolled in for a quick dinner after climbing the mountains, he was the only customer in the store. While the female proprietor of the restaurant quickly took the author's orders and began cooking, the proprietor's elderly father slowly stumbled out from the back for a chat. With a wide smile, he spoke. But from his mouth with a few lost teeth came out a language that the author has never heard of before. It was not Taiwanese or Hakka, the languages even the uncomprehending has familiarized with by listening to bus and subway announcements. The author had to shake his head.
The elder man, as if expecting the author's reaction, apologetically nodded his head, and switched over to his rather unpolished Mandarin. It turns out he was speaking the local language of the Taiya people, the aboriginal tribe making up of most of Fuhsing's native population. Apparently the author's relative darkness and difference in physical looks from most of the visitors caused the elder man to think that he was coming across a young tribal man coming for a trip. The author felt a bit sorrowful to disappoint the family's patriarch.
And the disappointment is not merely just because the author is incapable of speaking the local language...it is more because not even many of the younger locals can. The pre-teens and teens of town, while physically looking like ethnic cousins of Malays and Filipinos, behave no differently from townies in Taipei. They wear the same jeans and shirts, use the same phones, and speak the same Taiwanese-accented Mandarin as any kids would at the coastal areas. The penetration of popular entertainment and goods into the mountains have integrated them into society.
The elder patriarch is anxious, and for a good reason. The more these kids are directly exposed to the wealthy ethnic Hans who come for the rural sights, the faster the uniqueness of the local Taiya identity is lost. For the elderly, their efforts to teach the young of the tribal cultures are all-roundly dwarfed by the power of mass media, the Internet, and the everyday education system. These are institutions that ceaselessly communicate to the youth of this remote corner of the island, broadcasting strange values in a strange language, generating fantasies and ideals of better lives outside the mountains.
It is all the more heartbreaking when such tribal identity is being quietly pushed into obscurity among the Taiwanese public. Even academic researchers here, like the author himself, only see the modern identity of the island as a tussle between "Taiwanese-ness," "Chinese-ness," and at most, both. "Neither" has been sent to the ranks of "statistical outlier," something that is so numerically and demographically insignificant that completely ignoring it would not bring out any perceivable social and political consequences in related studies.
While the tiny population of the aboriginal tribes is an unfortunate reality, there lack of presence in the group consciousness of the Taiwanese populace ought to still be considered politically motivated above anything else. For Chiang Kai-shek and his Chinese nationalist cohorts, suppressing aboriginal identity may have been an obvious choice, but there is also failure of the Taiwanese nativist movements of the past decade to reinstate aboriginal representation when crafting a unique Taiwanese identity entirely separate from the Chinese one. The political mainstream has not helped the aboriginal cause.
The question is by no means a uniquely Taiwanese one. Maoris, Native Americans, and various other previously persecuted minorities face the same situation. Their tiny physical presence prevented them from enjoying democratic representation and enough media exposure to constant poke at public conscience. Their daily plight of a slow death of identity goes unnoticed. As the night falls at Fuhsing's little aboriginal restaurant, the author felt that as a firsthand witness, he felt completely helpless and unable to come up with recommendations against the encroaching tide of wholesale tribal destruction by assimilation.
When the author strolled in for a quick dinner after climbing the mountains, he was the only customer in the store. While the female proprietor of the restaurant quickly took the author's orders and began cooking, the proprietor's elderly father slowly stumbled out from the back for a chat. With a wide smile, he spoke. But from his mouth with a few lost teeth came out a language that the author has never heard of before. It was not Taiwanese or Hakka, the languages even the uncomprehending has familiarized with by listening to bus and subway announcements. The author had to shake his head.
The elder man, as if expecting the author's reaction, apologetically nodded his head, and switched over to his rather unpolished Mandarin. It turns out he was speaking the local language of the Taiya people, the aboriginal tribe making up of most of Fuhsing's native population. Apparently the author's relative darkness and difference in physical looks from most of the visitors caused the elder man to think that he was coming across a young tribal man coming for a trip. The author felt a bit sorrowful to disappoint the family's patriarch.
And the disappointment is not merely just because the author is incapable of speaking the local language...it is more because not even many of the younger locals can. The pre-teens and teens of town, while physically looking like ethnic cousins of Malays and Filipinos, behave no differently from townies in Taipei. They wear the same jeans and shirts, use the same phones, and speak the same Taiwanese-accented Mandarin as any kids would at the coastal areas. The penetration of popular entertainment and goods into the mountains have integrated them into society.
The elder patriarch is anxious, and for a good reason. The more these kids are directly exposed to the wealthy ethnic Hans who come for the rural sights, the faster the uniqueness of the local Taiya identity is lost. For the elderly, their efforts to teach the young of the tribal cultures are all-roundly dwarfed by the power of mass media, the Internet, and the everyday education system. These are institutions that ceaselessly communicate to the youth of this remote corner of the island, broadcasting strange values in a strange language, generating fantasies and ideals of better lives outside the mountains.
It is all the more heartbreaking when such tribal identity is being quietly pushed into obscurity among the Taiwanese public. Even academic researchers here, like the author himself, only see the modern identity of the island as a tussle between "Taiwanese-ness," "Chinese-ness," and at most, both. "Neither" has been sent to the ranks of "statistical outlier," something that is so numerically and demographically insignificant that completely ignoring it would not bring out any perceivable social and political consequences in related studies.
While the tiny population of the aboriginal tribes is an unfortunate reality, there lack of presence in the group consciousness of the Taiwanese populace ought to still be considered politically motivated above anything else. For Chiang Kai-shek and his Chinese nationalist cohorts, suppressing aboriginal identity may have been an obvious choice, but there is also failure of the Taiwanese nativist movements of the past decade to reinstate aboriginal representation when crafting a unique Taiwanese identity entirely separate from the Chinese one. The political mainstream has not helped the aboriginal cause.
The question is by no means a uniquely Taiwanese one. Maoris, Native Americans, and various other previously persecuted minorities face the same situation. Their tiny physical presence prevented them from enjoying democratic representation and enough media exposure to constant poke at public conscience. Their daily plight of a slow death of identity goes unnoticed. As the night falls at Fuhsing's little aboriginal restaurant, the author felt that as a firsthand witness, he felt completely helpless and unable to come up with recommendations against the encroaching tide of wholesale tribal destruction by assimilation.
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