Mon, Mar 01, 2004 page3

• Revenge or reconciliation?

  Differences of opinion over Taiwan's history and future relations with China have once again appeared in the election, prompting fears that politicians will stir up ethnic rivalry for their own gain. But some believe that the divisions are now more blurred than ever and increasingly irrelevant to society

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  When internationally renowned film director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) formed the Coalition for Equal Opportunity (族群平等行動聯盟) last month to promote reconciliation and harmony among all ethnic groups in Taiwan, it caught the public's attention and stirred up quite a commotion.

  The coalition's main aim is to urge local politicians to stop "manipulating provincialism and ethnic topics" for partisan interests.

  

  Participants join hands Saturday on Hoping Island in Keelung City, where the 228 Hand-in-Hand Rally began. Some 2 million people took part in the rally, forming a human chain 500km along the length of Taiwan down to Pingtung County. While the rally was intended to unite Taiwanese, it has also stirred up ethnic conflict. Film director Hou Hsiao-hsien, founder of the Coalition for Equal Opportunity, warns that politicians can use such events to divide ethnic groups.

  PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES

  It also called on local news media to monitor political parties' and individual politicians' actions instead of merely giving sensationalist coverage to their ethnically biased comments and behavior.

  The coalition itself seems to be a mixture of people from different backgrounds. On its Web site (www.handinhand.org) it lists several well-known figures as its founders. There are Mainlanders like Hou, writers Chu Ten-wen (朱天文) and Chu Ten-hsin (朱天心), who are sisters, National Taiwan University professor Hsia Chu-joe (夏鑄九), notable Hokkien people such as Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) founder Lin Hwei-min (林懷民) and women's group Garden Of Hope Foundation director Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容), and neo-Marxist pan-purple alliance members such as its convener, Chien Hsi-chieh, and the Awakening Foundation.

  Mainlander's Anxiety

  Yet it is Hou who speaks up most of the time for the coalition, and it was he who told the public not to join the 228 Hand-in-Hand Rally.

  "Feb. 28 is a day of ethnic historic tragedy and not rites of celebration," Hou said. "Both camps should halt all campaign activities and face the unjustified suffering of history. If we cannot stop campaign activities on that day, the two camps should refrain from attacking their opponents with vicious speeches. There should be no discrimination, manipulation, and no ethnic division; do not add more sadness to a day of sadness."

  Hou has always prided himself in making films like A City of Sadness (悲情城市), in which he said he approached the 228 Incident with a sympathetic eye for what the Hokkien people had suffered, and it indeed won the hearts of many Taiwanese, Hokkien and Mainlanders alike.

  But his public announcement on the 228 Incident this time was not so welcomed by the Hokkien group, and his Mainlander identity was questioned right away.

  DPP campaign headquarters spokesman Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁) attacked Hou, saying that Germans would never ask Jews not to hold memorials for the Holocaust.

  "What would really constitute damaging ethnic harmony is for the perpetrators and their descendents to point fingers at the victims and their descendents," Wu said.

  Hou has since been labeled as a unificationist and his true intentions were questioned by the pro-independence groups, with some even accusing him of accepting funds from China for his movies.

  Several critics, including Academia Sinica sociologist Michael Hsiao (蕭新煌), have accused the coalition of talking about ethnic equality while largely ignoring Aborigines and Hakka people.

  Hsiao said the coalition avoided talking about the conflict between the Mainlanders and the Hokkien and promoted a concept of ethnic equality without real content.

  "They should be talking about the current problems faced by the Mainlanders, yet they don't talk about it," Hsiao said.

  "They are actually trying their hand at the de-Taiwanization of Taiwan. They are afraid of de-Sinicization of Taiwan, and this highlights the anxiety of the Mainlanders. They are anxious that Taiwan is becoming more and more like a country," Hsiao said.

  "A major problem faced by the Mainlanders now is related to the election: they can only vote for the pan-blue camp and won't vote DPP, while Hokkien and Hakka people are more willing to make a choice between different parties. The Hokkien and Hakka people are enjoying democracy more," Hsiao said.

  The coalition also appears to have some communication problems.

  When Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容), one of the coalition's supposed founding members, was asked about her role in the alliance, she was surprised to hear she was even listed as a founder.

  She explained that she went to only one coalition meeting and decided and then decided not to join the coalition.

  "Ethnic education and social movement take a long time, yet these people do not have a long-term strategy and seem to be just trying to influence this election," Chi said.

  Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康), Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator and the convener of the party's New Tide faction (新潮流), disagrees with the coalition's concerns about the divisions between Mainlanders and Hokkien people.

  As a second-generation Mainlander and a founding member of the Mainlander pro-independence group Goa-Sen-Lang Association for Taiwan Independence (外省人台灣獨立促進會), Tuan has a powerful say in the DPP and society about the conflict.

  "I feel that the conflict between the Mainlanders and the Hokkien people is calming down, and polls tell us the same thing," Tuan said.

  "But the issue of the conflict between the two sides will always heat up during an election, and Hou's problem is that he does not understand the situation, the fact that the ethnic group most sensitive to the conflict now is the one with the worst anxiety, the Mainlanders, with them being the minority group in Taiwan," Tuan said.

  Tuan said that when the coalition wanted to oppose the division between the ethnic groups, it should not aim at only one camp, the DPP, when the other side was actually playing at the same thing.

  Like Chi, Tuan also thought that wounds took a long time to heal.

  "The healing of the wounds from past oppression takes a long time, and forgiveness also takes time. The Hokkien people need to understand why the Mainlanders are so united and anxious, while the Mainlanders need to understand the Hokkien people's hostility toward them. The country should make the majority group feel safe, and the minority group feel at peace," Tuan said.

  Undercurrent of Conflict

  Wu Nai-te (吳乃德), another Academia Sinica sociologist, said that he found the ethnic issue had declined in importance from the previous election.

  "It is a bit confusing why Hou and the coalition tried to speak up in this election because compared with four years ago, the conflict between the ethnic groups is not as fierce," Wu said.

  Wu pointed out that conflict between the Mainlanders and the Hokkien people now was in politics, and it was not visible in society because of the lack of a cultural division of labor.

  "Intermarriages, other frequent social exchanges between the ethnic groups and the lack of the cultural division of labor smoothed out the hostility between the groups," Wu said.

  "Access to education is not so different between the two groups and Taiwan's fast economic growth has made the two groups not so unbalanced in economic and social status," he said.

  "However, although the social gap has started to disappear, the political division has not gone away. It has remained and gained a new theme. Democracy has switched the political position of the ethnic groups, and now it is the Mainlanders, positioned on a politically disadvantaged side, asking for respect and recognition," Wu said.

  Wu said the 228 Incident was pivotal in the conflict between the Mainlanders and Taiwanese.

  "The problem with the 228 Incident is that it has not been properly dealt with. The government only tried to pay off the victims and thought it would pass," Wu said.

  "There were thousands of victims in the incident, yet there is no mention of any perpetrator. The past government did not want to reflect on the issue, and that's one of the greatest problems of the Lien-Soong ticket: they were part of that past," he said.

  "However, at the same time, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is taking sides with former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who also belongs to that past, so Chen cannot deal with the problem outright either," Wu said.

  Yang Wei-chung (楊維中), a 27-year-old second-generation Mainlander living in the Mainlander community Chengkung Public Housing Complex (成功國宅 ) in Taipei, showed that while the politicians might be still using the 228 Incident to achieve certain political aims, it actually did not affect ordinary people's daily lives.

  "For young people like us, we did not experience the incident personally, so we do not have that tragic feeling. Instead, we just feel curious about it," Yang said.

  Yang pointed out that in daily life he did not feel any problem raised by his Mainlander status, and there is seldom argument about the 228 Incident between him and others.

  Mainlander's Nostalgia

  But the Mainlanders have reasons to identify with China. After all, it was where they were born and grew up, and most were forced to retreat to Taiwan without a choice after the KMT lost the civil war to the communists.

  Kenneth Pai (白先勇), son of KMT general Pai Chung-hsi (白崇禧) and one of the most respected writers in Taiwan, was born in Guangxi Province in 1937.

  He came to Taiwan in 1952 and graduated from National Taiwan University's Department of Foreign Languages and Literature in 1961. He continued his study in Iowa University in 1963 and started to teach at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1965.

  In recent years he has been traveling between China, Hong Kong and Taiwan from his home in the US and has been energetically promoting Kun Opera (崑曲), with Kun (Yunnan Province) being where he spent part of his childhood.

  In Pai's stories, Hokkien and Mainlander elements are often intertwined. In his 1983 gay classic Crystal Boys, the gay hero was a second-generation Mainlander called Li Ching (李青), who was banished from home because of his sexuality and hung out in Taipei's New Park, a favorite stamping ground for the gay circle back then.

  With a twist Pai could not have predicted, New Park later became the 228 Memorial Park.

  Pluralistic Identification

  Stephane Corcuff, a professor of political science specializing in Mainlanders' issues from the University of La Rochelle, pointed out in his book Light Wind, Warm Sun: Taiwan's Mainlanders and the National Identity Transition (風和日暖: 台灣外省人與國家認同的轉變) that many Mainlander identify with more than one thing. Their identification with Taiwan does not prevent them from identifying with China or the other way around.

  Corcuff said in an earlier interview that if the Mainlanders' concern with Taiwanese domestic politics and unwillingness to give up their pro-reunification stance was a contradiction, it could be explained by "the remaining impact of past political socialization and electoral politics."

  "One of the main findings of the research is that the Taiwanization of Mainlanders in Taiwan cannot be denied and it is an inevitable process. It's a natural movement, but politics constantly interferes with it," Corcuff said.

  "Mainlanders have a pluralistic national identification, which comprises of China and Taiwan both at different degrees, changing from one person to another, but changing also in the same person at different moments," he said.

  Wu Nai-te also considered the mainlanders to have pluralistic identifications, although he pointed out that the identification with China would be cultural rather than political, while the identification with Taiwan is a political one.

  Michael Hsiao said that many mainlanders may not identify with China, and even if they do, they do not necessarily identify with the People's Republic of China, but rather the culture of greater China.

  Tolerant society

  Meanwhile, Chi Hui-jung is promoting a society that tolerates and appreciates pluralism.

  "I hope that Taiwan can try to become a `salad bowl' like New York City, which contains different people and cultures with all keeping their own original faces rather than being a melting pot which devours and blurs the faces of different cultures," Chi said.

  Yang Wei-chung agreed.

  "I feel Taiwanese because I am living a Taiwanese life. Say if I should return to China now, I would not be able to adapt to the life there. However, it is hard to cut Taiwan completely from China; Taiwanese writing has often been influenced by Chinese writing. Taiwan is a tolerant place, and I would identify with a Taiwan that's inclusive of Chinese culture," Yang said.

  Also See Story:

  Editorial: What is a "New Taiwanese?"
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