2010年4月29日 星期四

In search of the Tung-luo clan 東螺社人

Immediately after the surrender of Ming-Cheng or Tung-Ning Dynasty, turncoat 施琅Shi-lang (1621-1696) began ruling Taiwan as 福建水師提督Admiral of Hokkien Navy. This position continued for 37 years from 1684-1721 and it was held by 施琅, 張旺, 吳英, and 施世驃 (施琅's son). The 施 father and son governed Taiwan for a total of 25 years, who, together with their cohorts, took over huge tracks of land as war spoils and levied exorbitant taxes on the residents of Taiwan. Confiscatory taxation, started by 施, was the fundamental reason why there were one uprising every 3 years and one revolt every 5 years during the Qing rule. 施琅 alone amassed 7,500甲 of tillable lands (1甲 =9,699 square meter) or half of southern Taiwan. The yearly 1,200 silver taels of licensing fee from the fishermen in PengHu paid to 施 did not end until 1737, 41 years after his death. And those lands were known as 施侯租田園, the rental harvests collected from generations of tenant farmers and sent to the 施 family in Beijing continued until the Japanese colonial gov't abolished this archaic practice and nationalized their lands.

The Ming-Cheng dynasty lasted 22 years, most of which under Koxinga's son 鄭經. The Chengs' mission of re-taking the Ming territories from the Manchurian Qing required that the military machine be well-oiled. And to generate revenues for the preparation for wars, trading with Japan and SE Asia was vital. This became increasingly difficult after the Qing shut down the east coast of China where valuable merchandises must pass through. Export of sugarcane sugar, deer hides, and other commodities from Taiwan became a major source of income. Locally, a taxation system was also instituted. To increase productivity and tax receipts, the gov't encouraged migration of Han Chinese to Taiwan and its own soldiers were also allotted lands to inhabit and develop (known as the 明鄭屯墾部隊) - often at the expense of the Aborigines. These settlements were quite extensive with the bulk in southern Taiwan stretching all the way north to Danshui. The Han population of 100,000 at the end of the Dutch period increased to 200,000. In other words, 施琅 had inherited a vast tax base, not a sparsely populated island with only Aboriginal subjects that paid token tributes.

For the especial interest of this blog, we should point out that in Taipei County area, the following Ming-Cheng sites survived to this day: 桃澗堡 (the first settlement), 南崁港, 芝蘭三堡(i.e., 淡水港), 芝蘭二堡(唭哩岸), and 芝蘭一堡(大直).

In 1684, the Ming-Cheng soldiers and military-settlers (totaling about 10,000 men) were forced back to mainland China and the latter's lands taken over by the so-called "Hoklo-speaking Pinpu tribesmen or 閩南語化平埔族人". Thirty seven years of Dutch rule had failed to produce any identifiable Dutch-speaking Aboriginal groups and yet in 22 years of Ming-Cheng, they not only battled the Ming-Cheng soldiers but also learned to speak Hoklo at the same time? Based on this improbable scenario, some have postulated anyway that all Han-people then in Taiwan, not just the military, were all repatriated back to China, the Hoklo-speaking Aborigines [note: more likely Han in disguise] were therefore able to multiply quickly and populate all of Taiwan. They also cite the first of the Five Bans by the Qing, in support:

1. 渡台之禁 (no migration to Taiwan - more below)
2. 入蕃界之禁 (no entry into Aboriginal territories)
3. 冶鐵之禁 (no ironworks - except the officially sanctioned 27)
4. 竹筏之禁 (no bamboo raft construction)
5. 官吏攜眷之禁 (no families of the officials allowed - so that in time of trouble, the officials do not seek to protect their families first)
2-4 were unenforceable and were unceremoniously lifted in 1874 on the eve of the Sino-French war.

There has been quite a bit of misunderstanding as far as Ban No 1. First and foremost, it was not a total ban. It was immigration by permits and indeed only men were allowed. The purpose was to continue the Qing's Han-controlling-Han policy, for the newcomers to replace the original settlers. It was during this period that some of the Han-Chinese, known as the 羅漢腳 (temple-dwelling homeless bachelors), intermarried with the Aborigines, more for the latter's property rights than love. [And in a different vein, some propose that their offspring were the ancestors of the modern-day Taiwanese.] This, however, is not to say that no others showed up in Taiwan at the same time.

The first Qing royal inspector to Taiwan 黃叔璥 reported that "終將軍施琅之世,嚴禁粵中惠、潮之民,不許渡台。蓋惡惠、潮之地素為海盜淵藪,而積習未忘也。瑯歿,漸弛其禁,惠、潮之民乃得越渡。" Essentially, after 施琅's death, the ban was loosened and even the previously forbidden Cantonese Hakkas were moving in. The ban was never effective in the first place. Even during 施琅's time, there were many ways of circumventing the ban, thanks to the corrupt Qing officials who regarded Taiwan as a gold-mine to get rich from:

1. The time-honored bribery at one's hometown or port of origin for a permit
2. Bribery at the port of entry
3. Smuggled in via flat-bottomed junks
4. Landing at remote areas/sites
5. Using forged permits

There have been studies on the ancestry of Han-assimilated Aboriginal clans. The one by Prof 張素玢 is particularly enlightening. [Much more can be found in this publication, Section 2. In her exhaustive search of the 東螺社人, she has discovered the first male ancestor of the 茆Maw family in 二水Er-shui, Changhua, was a Mr 茆芽, born 1649 and died in 1694. His original name was actually 王Wang. He was from 漳州府詔安縣甲二社 in Hokkien arriving in Taiwan in his 30s [probably as a follower of the Ming-Cheng]. His name change indicated that he was either adopted by the 茆s or had assumed it through marriage. It was most likely the latter as most of his descendants had moved to 埔里Pu-li area in Taichung in 1827 and were identified as Aboriginal in the local registers. So Mr 茆's was a perfect example of the Han-Aboriginal intermarriage. 茆 is not a Chinese name, BTW; it is a shortened phonetic version of the original Aboriginal name. The 茆 family rule prohibits marriage to any 王s, a Chinese custom of no same-name marriages that also indirectly confirms 茆芽's origin.

And the reason why the 東螺社人 migrated out? Loss of ancestral lands to the Han-people. One such Han family is the 陳Chens who chose to settle in 二水 from nearby 田中Tian-jhong, having bought several parcels of land from the 東螺社人 (with the purchase agreement to prove) some 200 years and 7 generations ago. They were the Han-Chinese migrants arriving in Taiwan for a better life, not Aborigines who had adopted a Han name.

The Chens and numerous other Hokkien and Hakka immigrants who arrived in the 18th century from China with or without their families were the reason why the subsequent population increase in Taiwan. The plains Aborigines lost their homelands to the Han people and moved away in two large-scale migrations, the first in 1804 to 宜蘭Yi-lan followed by another in 1823 to 埔里Pu-li, but ultimately they were all absorbed, culturally, by the ever-expanding Han immigrant population.

10 則留言:

  1. Cited: 'Thirty seven years of Dutch rule had failed to produce any identifiable Dutch-speaking Aboriginal groups and yet in 22 years of Ming-Cheng, they not only battled the Ming-Cheng soldiers but also learned to speak Hoklo at the same time?'

    This argument is very persuasive. However, to make it even perfect, please note the different cultural mindset of the Chinese and Dutchmen.

    Of course, they both treated the aboriginals in Taiwan as more or less barbarians and needed to be civilized in that time. The Chinese brought their Confucianism and the Dutchmen Christianity. Nonetheless, they show very different attitudes to the aboriginal languages. The Sinograph-centric Chinese do not acknowledge the aboriginal cultures and languages at all. They always consider themselves the Middle Kingdom with a heavenly emperor, and completely Sinicization is the only way to civilize the barbarians. On the other hand, Dutchmen wanted to Christianize the aboriginals but preserve the aboriginal languages and cultures at the same time. These two different mindsets can be well observed from the literature left by them.

    Remember the first ever writing system of Taiwanese aboriginal was designed by the Dutchmen (Siraya新港文書). The Dutchmen taught the aboriginal children to write in their own languages. In addition, they proffered the aboriginals Gospels and catechism in the aboriginal languages. It is usually the Dutch missionaries learned to speak aboriginal languages but not vice versa.

    What about the egocentric Chinese? Even today, we still have no Chinese classics translated into aboriginal languages in Taiwan, do we? (I believe that, for some Chinese, they would even think to translate the holy Chinese classics into aboriginal ‘barbarian’ languages is kind of profaning or at least bothersome. It is the barbarians in ‘their’ territories obliged to learn the Chinese languages but not vice versa). Moreover, all the colonial rulers, except the Chinese ones, systematically designed writing systems and compiled dictionaries of aboriginal languages. Do these mean nothing at all? And do you really think that the different mindsets of rulers would not bring up different linguistic motives among the aboriginals?

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  2. Very good and insightful comments. Thank you very much.

    番仔契 is a kind of Rosetta Stone; although not quite as decipherable. I often wonder why the Aborigines turned against European priests at the first opportunity. To wit, when they formed alliance with Koxinga, they immediately attacked the Dutch clergymen. Apparently there was always percolating resentment, plus Catholicism could never replace the Aboriginal shamanism. As for the Ming-Cheng who had regarded Taiwan only as a temporary base, fostering the Aboriginal culture would not have even been on the priority list. Instead, Ming-Cheng, like the Dutch, waged several wars against the non-allied tribes. My original statement was really to point out the Aboriginal resistance to subjugation by foreign powers/cultures. It was doubtful, at least to me, that a significant number (10,000?) of Aborigines would accept the enemy's Hoklo language. The Japanese actually had succeeded in forcing them to speak Japanese but that was based an entirely different set of colonization rules.

    It maybe helpful to define the Chinese in the "egocentric Chinese". They can be the generic imperial Chinese who still regard China as the center of the universe. Luckily they all reside in China. In Taiwan, it may just be a simple practicality issue, i.e., a question of "what's in it for me if I were to translate the classics into Aboriginal languages (or compile dictionaries etc)", rather than organized arrogance. These are worthy research projects that can be proposed by Aborigines themselves.

    I am also not sure the Aborigines were/are called "barbarians" by the Hokkienese. The Huan-a番仔 in Hoklo means someone who cannot be reasoned with, not 原始人 or 野人. There is a certain measure of respect in their dignity (in refusing to negotiate). I remember as a child touring Taitung and discovered that the Aborigines conversed in Japanese, a language of the more educated at that time. I was very impressed - somewhat tempered when told later of their head-hunting custom.

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  3. Very interesting stuff.

    I think there is a lot of stuff that is still unclear.

    It is not known how Dutch interference with indigenous age-grade customs altered the populations of the indigenes on the plains. The Dutch sought to promote live births and marriage among young people in the southwest core. Prior to this the Siraya/Makado and other groups and sub groups within the Dutch sphere of influence practiced abortion and prohibited live births until couples were in their thirties.

    The Dutch promoted marriage and live child birth after puberty. Many of the young people may have gladly accepted Dutch customs to leap-frog the age-grade systems and take a shortcut to positions within the community that had previously been the domain of older people with status. It is unclear how this may have altered the population of the plains to represent an "increase" of people in successive generations and how this increase may have influenced the number of available partners for Han migrants.

    The alteration of family size also corresponds with rapid changes in the economy of plains villages as deer stocks dwindled and traditional economies were replaced with more alternatives. A switch from a lifestyle of hunting to a farming lifestyle would have favored Han culturalism in plains villages.

    There a record of an extant trade imbalance at the onset of Dutch colonial activity as some villages had greater access to trade goods than others, so many plains indigenes may have become Han to take advantage of Han representative power.

    Many of the plains indigenes values military power and were keen to change allegiances to whomever was dominant in military prowess. It is likely that many plains indigenes quickly adopted Han customs as it represented the power they valued. How far this influenced the population numbers of Han... I don't know.

    It is known that many Han men took up residency in the mens houses of indigenous villages. Dutch sources note this as a problem. It is likely, but unknown, if the Han men had their children raised as Han to reflect the father's desire to be worshipped by his sons after his death.

    There is also a problem of figuring how far the mixed children mixed with other mixed children and so on and so on.

    There was quite a bit of illegal immigration, but the sex ratio in many places was heavily male and led to frequent conflict.

    Adoptions cloud the waters even more as adoption was a common way to acquire a male heir or female labor. How much interethnic adoption went on is unclear.

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  4. Dear Andrew: Indeed "a lot of unclear stuff".

    Clearly you are far more knowledgeable in this field than most in Taiwan. I haven't even thought of the change of the indigenous way of life in terms of generation gaps. Which would explain the seemingly grudging acceptance of foreign cultures by some segments of the Aborigines. The warrior class had no problem adopting the Japanese Bushido. They fought in the Pacific war gallantly, when asked to, thereby earning the respect of the Japanese military, for example.

    The particular European brand of preaching under the auspices of the military, not only in Taiwan but also in S America (the Conquistadors) usually met with native revolts, in no small part might be owing to the atrocities committed against the native religions. This is the simmering resentment that I was referring to.

    And the number of the mixed blood will remain unknown at least for the foreseeable future. It is a politically exploitable issue, the truth is therefore irrelevant. Nonetheless, whatever it is, waves of Han immigrants arriving in Taiwan in the 18th century had changed the demography of Taiwan forever.

    These are all topics worthy of more comments/posts.

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  5. This is a great post; it adds to the very thin account of what went down in the last 17 years of the 17th century. Taxation was an important concept going back to the Dutch. We shouldn't forget that one of the terms of the Dutch surrender to Koxinga in 1662 was that the books be handed over, much to the chagrin of the settlers who imagined they'd get their debts scrubbed with the arrival of a new government. It's one of the reasons they threw in with Koxinga against the Dutch.

    Your #1 on immigration is also of interest. The reason the Ching limited female immigration (you call it a migration), as far as I know it, was that they hoped to control rebellious factions in Taiwan. Simply put, if you choose to rebel while abroad in Taiwan, you might want to think twice, as we're holding your wife and kin hostage here in Taiwan.

    What was the deal with "bamboo raft construction"? Or how about "flat bottomed junks." Once again, good work. This is very informative.

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  6. Here in Taiwan = Here in China, not a Freudian slip in any sense

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  7. Hi Patrick, it could have been an eye-hand
    slip. I of course know you are a true Taiwanese.

    Ban No 1 was later altered to allowing those over 40 years old yet still without any heir to bring their wives. This had opened the floodgate as Chinese laws were often interpreted liberally.

    The ban on bamboo rafts - so that they won't fall into the hands of the "pirates" (i.e., those who smuggled everything including people). The rafts were used for ship to shore transportation.

    I'll post the structure of the junks at some point soon. Ship building during the Ming Dynasty actually rivaled or was even superior to that in contemporary Europe.

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  8. "I'll post the structure of the junks at some point soon. Ship building during the Ming Dynasty actually rivaled or was even superior to that in contemporary Europe." I'd definitely say more advanced - much more advanced. And I'd dare say the history of China and the world, especially in the 19th century with the Opium Wars and China being viewed as a melon for the carving by Western countries, could've been quite different if the Emperor Xuande 宣德 and his son, starting in 1425, hadn't ordered a retreat from the sea and burning of the ships.

    The other side of the argument is that no other emperor really seemed to pick up the pieces later on. But a lot of time was lost. The Portuguese, the first of the Western naval powers, didn't start exploring the west coast of Africa until the 1440s. The Chinese had already sailed all the way to Africa by that time. Some have also argued the made it to Australia and California.

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