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Were My Great Grandparents Bad Parents For Leaving Their Daughters Behind?

A Portrait of Ama’s adopted mother hanging in the gods’ room, by Wei-chen Li

It’s no secret that my Ama was adopted. For as long as I can remember, there’s been a black and white portrait of my adopted Great Grandmother hanging in the gods’ room. In the picture, she wore a Buddhist robe and held rosaries. Her face was kind, but her expression was stern, with a hint of a smirk like she was pretending to be serious just for the photoshoot. Though I don’t remember meeting her, her face is familiar—I’ve been looking at her portrait my whole life. Yet I know almost nothing about her, except that she was a devout Buddhist whose husband died young, she was friends with my Great Grandmother and was childless until Ama came into her life. Other than that, I learned that she was born in 1903 and that she was illiterate—information I gleaned from a 1950-era household registration within Ama’s archives.

Sometimes I feel like I recall memories that are not mine. They’re my Ama’s, so I have to imagine what she went through and try to see the events of her life from her point of view and in the context of Taiwanese history. I will probably never know precisely what happened to my grandmother and how she felt about her life, but I can use reimagined memories to try to understand my Ama as a woman of her time.

I don’t know how old Ama was when her parents gave her away. I asked my father, but he didn’t know. “Didn’t you ask Ama?” I asked.

“Of course I did!” my father said. “But she’d just yell at me and told me not to bother with the past.”

Ama (bottom row, far left) and her adopted family, 1930s. I believe her adopted mother was the first woman on the left in the second row.

I know almost nothing about Ama’s adopted family except the snippet I learned about my adopted Great Grandmother from Ama’s archives. From how fondly my father spoke of her, Ama loved her adopted mother very much. Allegedly, one of the reasons Ama chose Agon, my grandfather, was that Ama wanted to have the means to take care of her widowed adopted mother and live with her. Agon was a handsome and successful obstetrician who was thirteen years her senior and already married. Perhaps Ama believed that she couldn’t live with her adopted mother and care for her if she had married because it was standard Taiwanese practice for a wife to move into her husband’s ancestral home and care for his parents. Perhaps Ama feared that no husband would allow her to bring her adopted mother into their marital home, so she chose a married man instead.

I will never have the answer to my burning questions about her birth or adopted family and why she chose a life of a mistress instead of a wife. I wish I had asked her more questions when she could answer them. However, I am thankful that in a rare moment when Ama still had her mental faculties, she brought down her box of photographs. This is the only reason I know what Ama looked like as a child—it was the only reason I could identify her in these almost-a-century-old photos.

Ama (far right) and her siblings, 1930s. I’m unsure if this picture was taken before or after the family uprooted to Vietnam.

My Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother share seven daughters and two sons. The firstborn, a daughter, died as a child. When my Great Grandparents moved to Vietnam, they took both sons and some of the daughters, leaving behind the second sister, who was probably married off, the fourth sister, and Ama, the fifth sister. Ama’s fourth sister was two years older, and the two girls were given away to be raised by different families. I don’t know if Ama was the youngest at the time of my Great Grandparents’ departure—I don’t know if the sixth and seventh sisters were born in Taiwan or Vietnam. However, I know that the youngest two children, a son and a daughter, are born to my Great Grandfather’s second wife after my Great Grandmother’s death. They also adopted another son.

In the 1930, my Great Grandparents moved to Vietnam at the height of Japanese colonialism as it tried to expand its territories across Asia. My father guessed that her family probably left Taiwan when Ama was old enough to be out of diapers but still young enough to be moulded into someone else’s daughter. I understand why Ama’s parents took the boys—sons carry the family name in a patriarchal society. But I can only guess why they gave away the three daughters. Perhaps there were just too many children, so my Great Grandfather gave away some of his daughters to whoever would take them. Regardless of the reasons, Ama must feel abandoned or traumatized knowing that her parents didn’t want her or couldn’t take her to their new home.

Ama and her sisters as adults, 1950s. From left to right: Second Sister, Fourth Sister, Daughter of the Fourth Sister, Ama, and the Seventh Sister.

My Great Grandfather did eventually return to Taiwan in the late 1940s or early 1950s. It was a turbulent time in Taiwan. World War II ended with the Japanese surrendering, and they lost control of Taiwan and all its colonies. The United States negotiated with the Republic of China (ROC) and gave control of Taiwan to its ruling party, the Kuomingtang (KMT). My Great Grandfather and his new life moved back to Taiwan as it was going through massive changes in governance and a shift in allegiance.

As far as I could tell from Ama’s records, the only ones that returned to Taiwan with my Great Grandfather were the second and third son, the adopted son and possibly Ama’s cousin. None of the daughters came back to live in Taiwan. I also found some records that indicated that Great Grandfather came back as Ama finished nursing school and was working at a hospital where she contracted a serious illness. Great Grandfather took care of her, provided her with Chinese medicine, and nursed her to health.

When Saigon fell in 1975, the remaining Wu family fled Vietnam—some to France and others to the U.S. I don’t know precisely where the Third and Sixth sisters relocated to, but the Seventh sister, who moved to France, visited Taiwan regularly. Her sons, who are about my father’s age, studied in Taiwan. She was the only one of the sisters who grew up in Vietnam who showed up in Ama’s photos.

Sometimes I wonder if my great-grandparents were terrible parents for leaving their daughters behind. If they hadn’t left Ama as a child, perhaps she would have married and led a more conventional life—but I wouldn’t have existed. So the point of this exercise isn’t to judge my ancestors or scrutinize their decisions—instead, I try to see them as people through a compassionate lens—I try to see them as people from different eras and try to learn about them in the context of Taiwanese history.

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Pictures from Pre-Lockdown Sri Lanka

In an attempt to control the spread of the COVID 19, the Sri Lankan government imposed a strict island-wide curfew on Friday, March 20th from 6 pm until 6 am on Tuesday, March 24. Though the official curfew only started two days ago, Derek and I been working from home since Monday. During the workweek, our jobs are keeping us busy. This weekend, we have been productive with creative projects. Derek has started Aod MasterChat Podcast series. I have been working on several short stories and developing a business plan for a jewellery business. Reach out to me if you are interested in hearing about my projects.

Since we have been spending a lot of time on our phones, I found some pictures I took during our day trip to Colombo last weekend when we visited the Colombo National Museum and the National Museum of Natural History. Here are some highlights.

The beautiful colonial building that houses the National Museum of Colombo.

As a part of the research for my jewellery brand, I’ve always wanted to visit the National Museum of Colombo for its collection of Kandyan jewellery from the 18th and 19th centuries. Kandy was the last remaining Ceylon kingdom that finally succumbed to British control in 1815. Kandyan jewellery is renowned for its intricate craftsmanship–the most iconic pieces consist of curvy filigree motifs made of gold plated silver.

Kandyan jewellery from the 18th century.
Kandyan hairpins, earrings, and brooches from the 18th and 19th centuries.
The agasthi maalaya, made of orange agate beads and gold or silver, is one of the 27 pieces of bridal jewellery Kandyan brides wear on her wedding day.
It wasn’t just the women who had all the jewellery–these hefty bracelets were worn by Kandyan noblemen.

I enjoyed looking at the jewellery but I wish there was more information about the actual pieces (besides the small label that says ’18th-19th century jewellery from Kandy’). I also would have liked to know about the craftsmen who made the jewellery and the people who wore them. Despite my disappointment, Derek and I were pleasantly surprised that the museum has substantial holdings on other artifacts, such as religious sculptures, remnants of buildings and plaques, weapons dating back thousands of years (they had clubs, arrows, etc.), and daily objects such as vases and glassware. Though we were delighted with our visit, we had to leave after a couple of hours– the charming colonial-style building had no air conditioning and we were soaked through.

As we were exiting the compound, we walked by the National Museum of Natural History. An enthusiastic Sri Lankan man stopped us in our tracks and cajoled us to visit his museum. Derek and I shrugged and followed him inside.

It was another old building with no air-conditioning. The man explained that the Natual History Museum opened in 1986–and from the looks of it, it has not been updated since. The walls have not been painted and the badly taxidermied animals of birds, rodents, and mammals looked like they could be put to rest for the second time. We would have dismissed the whole museum if it weren’t for its original hand-painted signs scattered throughout the building. Walking through the space was like going through a time capsule–I guess that’s one of the perks for under-funded museums.

Sri Lanka has three official languages: Sinhala, Tamil, and English. Some of the signs include all three:

For many other signs, however, there are only in Sinhalese and English, plus the Binomial Nomenclature derived from Latin:

Derek and I are totally in awe as we hadn’t visited a museum that still has handpainted illustrations and labels. After looking at every exhibit in the building, we tipped our over-eager guide and went in search of lunch.

We found a Korean restaurant that served authentic bibimbap and kimchi soup. They were delicious and we were so happy. We haven’t had Korean food since leaving Hong Kong in mid-December of 2019. It was such a treat to our already fantastic Saturday.

Well, folks, it will be a while before Derek and I will enjoy another excursion in Sri Lanka. It’s a strange world we are living in these days. Take care of yourself and each other–we will have some tough times ahead.

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The Forgotten 30 Houses

Originally published in Photography is Art, Issue 12, December 2018, pp. 118-125.  Photography by Johnny Gin. 

The original emerald windows are one of the unique features of tong lau from the post-war era. They give us a glimpse of Hong Kong’s past.

Tucked behind the trendy restaurants and bars on Staunton Street in the Central District of Hong Kong is a piece of history the rest of the city has forgotten. I climbed several sets of steep steps behind the Police Married Quarters (PMQ) to find a quiet, shaded neighbourhood of low-rise buildings, “tong lau,” arrayed around a network of granite steps, airy terraces, narrow lanes, ancient trees, and quaint little shops. Tong lau –literally “Chinese buildings” –were built in the late 19th century to the 1960’s. They were used as tenement housing in southern China, Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

In the middle of the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong, 30 Houses is a charming neighbourhood that is only accessible by foot. The area’s core is Shing Wong Street, named after the guardian god of cities whose temple once stood on the current site of the PMQ. There are tong lau on both sides of Shing Wong Street, most being two or three storeys tall. Facing Staunton Street stands a taller grey building. Between Staunton Street and Caine Street are many small lanes that consist of tong lau and vacant lots. Once upon a time, tong lau stood in these lots. The ground floors were used as storefronts for print shops and other small businesses while the shop owners and their families lived in the upper floors.

Folding gates made with corrugated iron emblazoned with floral patterns is a common feature of tong lau in the 30 Houses neighbourhood.

The name “30 Houses” likely originates from an earlier 19th-century development destroyed by bombing during World War II. After the war, the government and local landowners redeveloped the area, and it became a vibrant working-class neighbourhood. Over the years though, the tong lau were torn down to make room for modern high-rises. As these new residential developments sprung up in the area, the “kai fong,” the neighbourhood residents started to move away.

I learned about this alluring and nostalgic area from Katty Law, a neighbourhood activist serving as the convenor of the Central and Western Concern Group. As a kai fong, she grew up on Caine Road and has watched her home neighbourhood transform.

“I’ve lived in the neighbourhood for over 40 years,” Ms. Law mused. “When I was young, there used to be a lively street market on Staunton Street. Now people see little trace of it.”

Not only are the original grocery shops, and dai pai dong, traditional open-air food stalls, have gone years ago, many of the remaining tong lau have also become dilapidated shells of their former glory. The Hong Kong Urban Renewal Authority (URA) has been planning to tear down the tong lau to build luxury apartments. But 30 Houses isn’t just any neighbourhood: with 19th-century layout and building orientation and early 20th-century architectural style and construction techniques it represents something unique in the city. The tong lau are rare examples of the post-war urban residential neighbourhoods built between 1948 to 1958. They make a striking contrast with the surrounding high rises, built in the more recent years. Once these historic structures are destroyed, a part of Hong Kong will be lost forever.

Human memory is faulty and ephemeral; it only remembers what the eye sees. Once a building is gone, it fades away and eventually disappears from the collective consciousness. Fortunately, photography has been a medium to document and preserve buildings and communities in the brink of disappearance. In 1967, American photographer Danny Lyon made images to give testament to the transformation of lower Manhattan. He was able to record the process of turning an abandoned mid-19th-century working district of markets, warehouses, showrooms, and hotels, to complex high-rises that eventually became the heart of the financial district, where the World Trade Center once stood. Lyon’s work was turned into The Destruction of Lower Manhattan (1969), which seized the rare moments before the disappearance of a neighbourhood.

The curved balconies of 88-90 Staunton Street can be seen while climbing the steps on Shing Wong Street. They add to the structure’s old-timey charms.

Johnny Gin is a Hong Kong-based photographer. His interest in buildings, and specifically, how the built environment and vernacular landscapes inform the identity of a city led him to photograph the 30 Houses area.

Gin’s lenses captured various stages of development and decay in the area. Wing Lee Street, made famous by the 2010 film, Echoes of the Rainbow is one of the few to have escaped demolition. The tong lau on this street have been restored by their owners but are missing many of their original details, such as emerald iron balcony fences, matching window frames, and folding gates made with corrugated iron emblazoned with the name of businesses.  They now look uniform, stripped away of the eccentricities that made them intriguing.

Behind the tong lau on Wing Lee Street is a massive retaining wall—another marker of Hong Kong history. Since the original City of Victoria –the colonial name for Hong Kong –sits on a steep slope, 19th-century engineers dug an “L” shape onto the side of the hill to clear flat land to build on. On the long end, they used locally sourced granite to construct a sturdy retaining wall, matching the flagstones on the neighboorhood’s stairways. Trees have sprung up in the gaps in the wall, their unruly roots stretched out like spider webs across the wall, leading locals to call them “wall trees.” (石牆樹)

Wah In Fong West is a narrow street, one side facing a row of tong lau across from a stairway. This arrangement reflects the original orientation and plot size of first and second-generation tong lau in the Tai Ping Shan area, a densely populated zone struck by the plague of 1894. Nowadays, it is the only remaining two-storey tong lau built alongside the granite steps in Old Central. Tragically, these unique homes are among the most deteriorated structures in the 30 Houses area. Their facades obscured in bamboo scaffold and mesh, the upper floors are barely perceptible from the street. Even so, remnants of their past are still evident: the emerald balconies with their original plant holders and the storefront signs mark what once was a print shop near the top of the alley.

This concrete building features the ventilation shafts in the staircases, providing airflow in the hot and humid summers.

My favourite building in the area is the imposing four-storey concrete building at 88-90 Staunton Street. Rusty metal gates obscure the store sign, but the ground floor might have been a “Cha chaan teng,” a traditional café that served affordable Hong Kong style western food. I imagine this is where the kai fong gathered for breakfast before work. One of its most striking features, common in neighbourhood buildings, are the long vertical ventilation shafts carved at the front of the building. These provide much-needed airflow through the staircases, especially during the hot and humid summer months. Rounded balconies, visible from the Shing Wong Street steps, add to the old-timey charm.

The best-preserved tong lau can be found on Shing Wong Street, three-story structure split through the middle with ventilation shafts. The owners kept all of their original features through recent restorations, including balcony railings, window fixtures, and folding iron gates. Storefronts occupy ground floors, while upper levels are reserved for rental properties.

As a long-time resident of Hong Kong, I probably walked by this hidden architectural wonder hundreds of times on my way to the bars and restaurants in the area. However, the tong lau, sitting halfway up the hill, are very easy to miss. They have been tucked away, decaying while their surrounding areas develop rapidly. With photographic evidence created by Gin, it is easy to see that though the tong lau are in a terrible and potentially dangerous condition, they embody the passing of time and tell the stories of Old Hong Kong.  Even though they can be seen as an eyesore to those who don’t understand their history, there is a potential to restore and repurpose these old tong lau and turn them into social housing that Hong Kong desperate needs, artists’ residences to allow creative pursuits, and retail spaces to attract tourists. Ms. Law and her group are advocating to preserve them as part of Hong Kong’s history.

“It is so important to keep the original character of these buildings, as they are a culmination of history,” Ms. Law said, “Perhaps Shing Wong, the guardian god of the city, is protecting our area. After all, the buildings still stand today.”

Notes:This text is based on the research done by Katty Law, Charlton Cheung, and Sjoerd Hoeksta for the Central and Western Concern Group.

The author has read The Life and Death of Buildings: On Photography and Time by Joel Smith (Princeton University Art Museum, 2011) to learn about Danny Lyon’s work in The Destruction of Lower Manhattan (1967).

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Dewey Visits Cao Fei’s “A hollow in a world too full” at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong

Dewey Punk Pickles doesn’t understand art. She’s never studied art in school though she was a librarian at an art and design university. She goes to art exhibitions because it seems like the cool thing to do. All the cultured, intellectual, creative types, the type of people she associates with, are all going to drink wine at the art opening.

Dewey goes to the JC Contemporary at Tai Kwun to see Beijing-based artist Cao Fei’s show, A hollow in a world too full. Tai Kwun used to be a prison complex back in the colonial days of Hong Kong. The Jockey Club spent a fortune restoring and renovating the previously abandoned space. Dewey thinks it’s ironic that the institution that makes its bucks luring Hong Kongers with horse racing and gambling is now the city’s peddler of art and culture.

The entrance of JC Contemporary and its lobby is full of pretty, well-dressed people.  They stand in clusters, chatting while sipping on their wines and beer. Dewey stands with her husband, Mean Dean, while drinking a glass of white wine. For free wine, it isn’t bad at all, she thinks to herself. She says hi to some friends, people she knew when she was a librarian. Then, with Mean Dean, she walks up to a grand staircase leading to the exhibition space. The place still smells like fresh paint. She has no idea what to expect.

Rumba (2015-2018). Video capture from the exhibition. 

The first things Dewey encounters are some seemingly mindless yet hyper-aware disc-like robot cleaners roaming on a minimalistic landscape. They navigate the narrow passageways from one island to the next without aim but always swivel at the edge of the raised platform.

“I don’t get it,” Dewey thinks to herself, “what are these Roomba vacuum robots supposed to say?”

She keeps these thoughts to herself as she doesn’t want the people around her to hear her stupidity and ignorance. She clutches her exhibition catalog, hoping to glean some insight from it. But she has trouble reading while walking, and Mean Deans has already moved on to the next room.

The next room is a darkened theater. On the wall outside, it has a sign indicating that only those over the age of 18 are allowed to enter. The film shows a post-apocalyptic fantasy world filled with miniature architectural sets and figurines. Dewey sees the derelict golden arches of MacDonald’s restaurant and abandoned Porsches. There are people in this film too, and they look scared, in pain, or like zombies.  Then, the scene changes and a man and a woman start to have a conversation in French. Dewey feels a little voyeuristic at this point as she stares at a pair of figures fucking on the screen. The woman is on the top riding the man. Dewey can’t help but notice that it looks like the woman is riding a metal rod, the rod is the man’s dick. Riding a rod doesn’t sound like a pleasurable experience.

Dewey is not bashful or anything, but while the film is fascinating on some level, it lacks plot. It doesn’t have a beginning or an end, and things are happening randomly. Sitting there in the dark room, she starts to feel sleepy. She curls up next to Mean Dean and falls asleep.

Prison Architect (2018). This is a close-up of one of the installations.

She wakes up when Mean Dean stands up to go to the next room, which has distressed walls with grey, peeling paint. Close to the back wall is a desk with an old-timey lamp on it. The lamp is on. Dewey sees a black rotary phone, a glass ashtray with two boxes of matches, and a file on a prisoner open for all to see. Behind the desk is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II hanging crookedly on the wall.

“Ah,” Dewey thinks to herself, “this must be one of the offices when Tai Kwun was still a prison.” This she understands and thinks is interesting. She feels that she understands culture and history better than art.

At this point, the exhibition space has closed. Dewey Punk Pickles and Mean Dean leave the exhibition, having seen only half of it.

A week later, Dewey returns to the JC contemporary. This time, she reads the exhibition catalog before going to the show, so she has some vague idea of what to expect.  After seeing the vacuum robots, the film with the zombies and the fucking couple, and the prison room, she finds herself on the top floor.  There are two screens flashing with animations. She looks at one of them for a while. It looks like a city in China but like a Chinese city on crack. It has a crazy, over-the-top color palette, and the perspective spins as if we are seeing the city from a drone.  At one point,  Dewey sees Tiananmen Square. In the place where Mao’s portrait should have been is a picture of a panda. She chuckles.

She doesn’t bother to look at the other screen in the same room. Instead, she climbs down the grand staircase and continues the exhibition.

Prison Architect (2018). This is the space where the film is shown.

The next exhibition is another film, and according to the catalog, it is called The Prison Architect, a newly commissioned work. The film is only a part of the work, as it also includes installations that span three floors. The film takes place in Tai Kwun in the past as Victoria Prison and in the present as Hong Kong’s hub of art and culture. The protagonists of the film, a female prison architect and a male poet-prisoner, exist in parallel realities–she lives in the present while he stays in the past. Cao creates illusions in the physical space by installing prison-style bunk beds, the same ones from the film, in the theatre, which allows Dewey and the other people watching to immerse themselves in Cao’s imagination.

Dewey recognizes the prison office where the poet-prisoner is getting yelled at by a crude, mango spewing guard. She becomes excited that the exhibition is coming together through this film. The open file she saw during her last visit must belong to this poet-prisoner.

In another scene, she notices that the prison architect is slicing her mango carefully in her modern Hong Kong apartment, and placing them in a bowl. Later on, there was the poet-prisoner, holding a half-peeled mango.

She wonders about the mangos.

Dewey has her Eureka moment in the scene that takes place in a starkly white room that looks familiar. There are three ghost-like prisoners with painted faces that are spinning around the poet-prisoner as if trying to suffocate and swallow him.

“Oh! That’s in the same room where the Roomba cleaners are!” She shouts inside her own head, “the robots might be a representation of the prisoners prowling in a random yet cognisant way.”

Dewey feels pleased about making this connection.

The rest of the exhibition doesn’t interest Dewey Punk Pickles as much, now that she feels like she’s figured it out. She walks down the grand staircase and notices fake mangos dangling.

At home, Dewey tells Mean Dean about the exhibition and what she figured out. Then she remembers the mangos.

“What is up with the mangos?” She asks.

Mean Dean tells her that there used to be a massive mango tree in the Victoria Prison complex, and the guards used to eat the sweet, meaty fruit from it.

How does Mean Dean know this? Dewey has no idea.

A Solo Exhibition by Cao Fei, A hollow in a world too full @ Tai Kwun, Central, Hong Kong. On view until December 9, 2018. 

 

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Do You Speak Chinese?

There are many different Chinese languages with up to 200 dialects, and most of them are mutually intelligible. Illustration by Ahmara Smith.

With Beijing’s growing influence, its dialect, Mandarin, also known as Putonghua (the common language), has become the most dominant Chinese language. But this wasn’t always the case, not according to the speakers of other Chinese languages.

In the late 80’s, my family moved from Japan to Taiwan. This was just a few years after the Taiwanese government finally lifted the martial law. I was six years old.

Let’s quickly revisit Taiwanese history and its languages: Historically, at least up to the 1940s, most people in Taiwan spoke Hokkien, which is a version of a southern Chinese language from Fujian province, where many Taiwanese people came from during the 1700’s. During the Japanese occupation, some Japanese words and expressions were integrated into the Taiwanese Hokkien language. I remember clearly my grandparents speaking this Japanese-fied version of Hokkien.

When the Kuomintang (KMT) took control of Taiwan, they made Mandarin the official language and forced everyone to learn it.

I spoke neither Hokkien or Mandarin.

This is me as a Kindergartener in Japan.

Regardless, my parents threw me into a local school.

During class one day, I needed to use the toilet. Unable to communicate with the teacher verbally, I stood up and made my way towards the washroom. I only made it halfway down the hall when my teacher caught up with me, led me back to the classroom and sat me back down in my little wooden chair at my desk. A few moments later, I got up again and made another attempt. The teacher got me again and scolded me as she led me back to my seat.

I didn’t know exactly what she said, but I understood that she was displeased with me. I didn’t dare to get up again. Instead, I sat in my chair and concentrated on holding it in.

Eventually, a warm stream trickled down my legs and created a large, dark stain on my pleated navy blue skirt and a yellow pool around the legs of my little wooden chair. I burst into tears—I was powerless without speaking the language.

This sad little story is a segway to discuss the power of language, and specifically, the Chinese language. Spoken Chinese is organized into five main groups, Mandarin, Yue, Min, Wu, and Hakka. These languages are mutually intelligible.  Within those groups, there are hundreds of dialects, limited to small geographical areas.

Mandarin is only one of the hundreds of spoken Chinese languages. The Beijing dialect is the most common, spoken by approximately two-thirds of the Chinese population. At 55 million speakers, Cantonese, which is part of the Yue family, is the second most common Chinese language.  Hokkien, a language that is common in Taiwan and other countries where Fujan ancestry is common, is part of the Min language family.

How did Mandarin become “Putonghua,” the common language of China?

When Sun Yat-Sen overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911, Beijing became the capital of the new China. After some debating, the leadership decided that Mandarin is the official language of the new republic (This is strange because Dr. Sun and many of the leaders of the new republic are from Guangdong Province, and their mother tongue would have been Cantonese).

In Taiwan, Mandarin is known as “Guóyǔ”, literally translates to “the national language.”

During the occupation, the Japanese didn’t force the Taiwanese people to learn the language of their colonizers.** However, when the KMT arrived, they did. Baba told me a story of how his classmates were punished for speaking Hokkien at school. They had to wear a humiliating sign that said, “I spoke Hokkien” for the whole day for speaking the “uncivilized” tongue.

Here in Hong Kong, 97% of the population speaks Cantonese. If Beijing had their way, they would eliminate Cantonese completely. However, that would create an outcry that Beijing is not prepared to deal with. Instead, they slowly influence the educational curriculum in Hong Kong, to teach the next generation their version of the history.

The truth is, Mandarin is already common in Hong Kong. When my parents passed through Hong Kong in the early 90s, they said people didn’t speak Mandarin and yelled when spoken to in Mandarin. Thirty years later, the majority of people still speak Cantonese, but I can now get by speaking Mandarin if English fails.

Hmm. I wonder what the common language will in Hong Kong in another thirty years.

**As it turns out, The Japanese implemented an imperialist movement during their occupation. It was an assimilation initiative that forced Taiwanese people to adopt Japanese names and learn to speak Japanese.

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Is Taiwan Part of China?

A crash course on modern Taiwanese history. Illustration by Ahmara Smith.

In my last post, I pondered whether Taiwanese people are ethnically Chinese. The answer to that is complicated and requires a crash course on Taiwanese history.

Taiwan is an island off the east coast of mainland China. Historically, it was part of the Middle Kingdom territory up until the Qing dynasty. My ancestors and many other people immigrated to Taiwan in the 1700’s, mostly from the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong.  Most likely, they intermarried with the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan, who are a part of the Austronesian ethnic family, which are related to the peoples of the Philippines, Malaysia, and other South East Asian countries.

In 1895, the Middle Kingdom lost the First Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese Empire demanded control of Taiwan as a part of the peace negotiation. As a result, the Japanese occupied Taiwan for the next 50 years, under the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

The Japanese made huge impacts on the Taiwanese psyche during their occupation. They modernized Taiwan by developing its infrastructure,  building roads, government buildings, hospitals, and schools. Furthermore, their language and culture also permeated Taiwanese culture–many Japanese words were absorbed into Hokkien, which was one of the main languages of Taiwan.

Meanwhile, in China, Sun Yat-Sen overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and established the Republic of China (ROC). His political party, Kuomintang (KMT) became the official ruler of the new Republic.

The world turned up-side-down for many nations in East Asia in 1945. The Japanese Empire fell when they lost World War II. They lost all their colonies and returned the control of Taiwan to the Republic of China. At the time, Chiang Kai-Shek was in charge of the KMT in mainland China. He set up a provisional government in Taipei, in order to gain control of the island and its populace.

The KMT eventually set up the official government of the ROC in 1949, when they were defeated by the People’s Communist Party (CPC), led by Mao Zedong. The Taiwanese suffered greatly during the transitional period between the end of Japanese occupation in 1945 and when the KMT officially took control of the island.

The transition between Japanese colonialism and KMT rule was bloody. The KMT government enforced martial law in 1947 after Taiwanese people rebelled against inflation. This is the start of what is known as the White Terror– the KMT government arrested, imprisoned and executed dissents who opposed them.

Many Taiwanese people who opposed the KMT government were arrested. This image is from Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film A City of Sadness, in which Tony Leung’s character was imprisoned due to his friends’ political activities. .

The martial law was finally lifted in 1987. A couple of years later, my parents moved back to Taiwan from Japan. I was six, and my brother Davis was four.

My family history is intertwined with Taiwan’s.  My ancestors moved from Fujian Province in the 1700’s. Also, we are a product of Japanese colonialism: Both sets of my grandparents spoke Japanese fluently; my parents and many of their siblings were educated in Japan; I was born in Japan.

Taiwan’s history is complicated and this is why there are so many debates about whether Taiwan is part of the PRC. Depending on who you ask, you will get a different answer.

To answer my own question, I suppose I am mostly ethnically Chinese (my ancestors may have intermarried with the aboriginal people of Taiwan), but I am Taiwanese through and through.

However, the more interesting question is whether or not the Chinese ethnicity is one ethnicity. That’s one more complicated question for another time.

Illustration by Ahmara Smith.