Who are Taiwanese anyway

[A map of Aboriginal tribal areas in Taiwan including both Plains and Mountain tribes.]

Here is a view from Danshui:

It is interesting to see the search for Taiwanese identity continues in earnest. Some in Taiwan now disclaim their Han heritage and embrace ever so tentatively that of the Aborigines. While there is a true desire to know, there is also a separatist political undercurrent in both inter- and intra-national senses.

This disclaimer, however, seems to have built upon a deliberate misunderstanding of the terminology used in a 1905 census survey - the first of several conducted by the Japanese.

There were several people categories in this census: (1) Japanese from mainland Japan; (2) residents of Taiwan (based on domicile and residence history); and (3) foreigners and others. Category (3) included "清國人Qing Chinese" and Koreans. It is the designation of this "Qing Chinese" that has prompted some to declare that it means the Han people then residing in Taiwan were foreigners. And according to the census, these people were very few in number (8,083). The vast majority in category (2) therefore can be presumed to be Aboriginal.

To support this Aboriginal theory, it is necessary to minimize the number of the Han people. More theories therefore must be and have been created. To name a few:

(1) Taiwan residents' being originally from Hokkien or Canton was a fraud perpetrated upon the Aborigines by the Qing;
(2) When the Ming-Cheng soldiers were being exiled to the penal colonies in China, 12,724 of them were too destitute to go, hence the Han population in Taiwan should start with this number;
(3) Because of the ban by the Qing on the Han family/female immigration to Taiwan, the 2,979,018 Taiwanese by 1905 must be of Aboriginal descent (i.e., how else could the Han men propagate);
(4) The arrival of any number of Han Chinese during the Qing era is deemed unlikely because of the difficulties in crossing the Taiwan Straits;
(5) The prefectural archives in Hokkien show only a handful of emigres to Taiwan during Qing rule;
(6) A white-cell HLA antigen study suggests that 85% of Taiwanese have Aboriginal genetic markers; and so on.

Despite these arguments, however, the "清國人" fundamentally can only refer to those arriving from China after the Japanese take-over in 1895, i.e., they were citizens of the then 大清帝國, the Qing Empire.

The 1905 Japanese survey was based on three administrative levels of (1) 廳 (prefectures); (2) 堡/里/市/嶼/澳 (cities and towns), and (3) 街/庄/村/社/鄉 (neighborhoods), all of which inherited from the Qing era. A survey done in 1893 (光緒十九年) showed a total population of 2,545,731, up from 1,944,737 in 1811 (嘉慶十六年). The surveyed areas were nearly identical, i.e., the central highlands and Taitung were excluded [except Taitung was included in the aforementioned 1893 census with a total of 6,000]. The map below is from the Japanese colonial period showing mountain Aboriginal territories in different colors - census-taking was conducted outside of these areas. The boundary markers between the Han and the mountain Aboriginal regions throughout Taiwan, etched in stone, were in existence since 1722 (康熙六十一年) if not earlier. In other words, the census data were a collection of both Han people and Plains Aborigines with Han surnames. It has long been argued that the Plains Aborigines lived among the Han. This is true but it only applies to the occasional few as individuals. The reality is that villages in Taiwan were segregated starting in the Ming-Cheng era.

(Source: http://taipics.com/aboriginals-set-6 - this site hosts a huge collection of old photos, pics, and maps of Taiwan.)

During Ming-Cheng, the administrative districts of southwest Taiwan [the Greater Tainan area] actually separated the Han settlements [民社] from the Aboriginal hamlets [番社]. A Ming-Cheng study map copyrighted by Academia Sinica can be found here. [Note: The lone Han settlement in northern Taiwan was Danshui, then called the "上淡水城".]

This distinct segregation, especially in the rural areas, has continued throughout Qing and Japanese rules up until today. Urban areas eventually grew from Han administrative/population centers; however, there have never been any cities dominated by the Aborigines. It is questionable if inter-marriages were necessarily wide-spread or even necessary at all in the first place. In 1666, between 150-200,000 Han people had already settled in Taiwan. This number would change owing to the many subsequent wars but certainly not to the paltry 8,083 by 1905.

Here is a good example accounting for the arrival of Han settlers: "Research on the Development of Niu-Ch'ou River Basin Before 1895" a PhD thesis by 黃阿有, NCKU, 2007. [Note: the Niu-Ch'ou牛稠溪流域 refers to an area northeast of Chia-yi City.] A direct quote from the summary: "...There were some Chinese villages in the 17th century and by the start of Ch’ing’s rule, it was estimated that there were 32 Chinese villages and 8 garrisons. Land developer villages grown to 100 in 1683-1722, and 76 added in 1723-1795. In the end of the 18th century, approximately 97% of the villages had Han developers. This revealed that the quarantine policies in the early Ch’ing rule didn’t work well." This was the general trend of the Han population growth in Taiwan, i.e., a vast influx of Han immigrants over time.

Our simple-minded observations:

(1) While intermarriages between the Han and the Plains Aborigines clearly had taken place - to what extent and whether confined to a certain era/area, however, are all still unknown;
(2) The request for adopting a Chinese surname by the Aborigines had been officially granted during Qing, but not the ancestral family history lock stock and barrel, that was not part of the deal;
(3) The immigration of Han Chinese after Shi-lang's death is also a historical fact notwithstanding the potentially unkept archives in the war-torn Hokkien during the Qing era; and
(4) The HLA antigen study simply means that most Taiwanese have Southern Mongoloid traits; unfortunately the data have been used, erroneously, to imply an Aboriginal ancestry of the Han Taiwanese - these two groups merely share some of the same traits as do many other southern Chinese/Asian peoples.

Have we forgotten anything? Ah yes, the 1905 survey questionnaires also included an item on foot-binding - strictly a Chinese custom. Maybe the number of females with bound-feet can provide much more reliable information on the proportion of Han vs that of the Aboriginal women. Of course, we suppose the quarrelsome ones can still argue that the Plains Aboriginal women (and the Hakka women) were foolish enough to submit to this barbaric practice.

In the long history of the Taiwanese, there have been many groups each dominating at a different time and/or place. And one can always cite numbers and records [including this blog] but that may pertain to only one specific part of the history. Indeed the Indian fable of the blind men and the elephant comes to mind.

Still, incessant discussion without any hard evidence is counter-productive. For those who can trace their family origin unequivocally, the heritage is never an issue. Others especially those who own a Chinese last name yet were/are from an Aboriginal 村 or area may still need a definitive answer. A large-scale forensic DNA analysis (preferably mitochondrial), to resolve who the great great great great-grandma really was, should be done to remove all lingering doubts.

(An elderly Aboriginal woman in Han dress wearing a wrist bracelet sitting in a wicker chair. She was probably of the 賽夏 - not the 泰雅族 - identified by the tattoos on her forehead but none on the cheeks. It is difficult to see her unbound feet in this photo taken in the 1950s in 苗栗Miaoli.)

This still will not be the end, though. Little realized is a much bigger issue with two opposing views: One side proposes that the Aboriginal land ownership can go all the way back to before the Dutch occupation, and the other advocates that the Aborigines were slaves with no property rights who were shipped in by the Dutch. In other words, the question of "who are Taiwanese" will eventually escalate into "who owns Taiwan". Then all of a sudden we will be confronted with China's asserting her sovereignty rights over Taiwan. The consequence can be a very unpleasant 鷸蚌相爭,漁翁得利. The intensity of the separatist debate now will certainly pale in comparison.