Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) on Oct. 9 made a rebuttal to President William Lai’s (賴清德) Double Ten National Day gala speech, which was given on Oct. 5, saying that “the Republic of China [ROC] is the motherland of Taiwanese” and “every Taiwanese citizen is a Taiwanese, and also a descendant of the [mythological Chinese] Yan (炎帝) and Yellow emperors (黃帝).”
That is just plain nonsense.
Through the most basic understanding of history, Chu’s hometown in Taoyuan’s Bade Township (八德) was originally the Ketagalan settlement of Siaoli (霄裡).
At the beginning of the reign of the Qing Dynasty’s Qianlong Emperor (乾隆帝), Siaoli’s headsman and official interpreter for the Qing, Zhimuliu (知母六), assimilated into Han Chinese culture. He was given a Chinese name: Hsiao Na-ying (蕭那英). His children and grandchildren grew up primarily speaking the Meixian dialect of Hakka, having learned it from settlers who migrated to the Taoyuan foothills from Mei County in China’s Guangdong Province.
Because of this, when the ROC government was exiled to Taiwan, it rewrote the family’s ancestral lineage, grafting Zhimuliu’s ancestors into the “official” lineage of the Hsiao family of Mei County, as it was allegedly recorded.
Zhimuliu’s family were from that point apparently the descendants of Xiao He (蕭何), who was recorded as having helped establish the Han Dynasty.
If Zhimuliu’s “roots” were traced back even further, perhaps his descendants could claim themselves to be the direct descendants of China’s mythological first emperors. With history so easily and brazenly rewritten, what is to stop the revision of other histories?
By the Japanese colonial era, Zhimuliu’s descendants living in Taoyuan’s Dasi Township (大溪) spoke Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese). Japanese officials categorized them in the household registry system as belonging to the “civilized [indigenous] Formosan” or “Hoklo” ethnic group.
When one of the descendants worked in a hospital, he saw how the ROC kept up with the lineages charade and publicly shared his family’s Japanese-era family household registry. He is living proof that Pingpu people were assigned three different ethnic ancestries, but only one of those lineages is accurate.
With so many different conflicting lines of “evidence,” it is a massive feat for Taiwanese to do genealogical research and untangle the knots in the tapestry. All Taiwanese share similar stories.
When Chu served as commissioner of what was then Taoyuan County, the county included Siaoli Township and the other historic Ketagalan area of Parricoutsie (南崁社), now Nankan (南崁), and Kulon (龜崙社) — present-day Gueishan District (龜山).
New Taipei City’s recorded indigenous communities, settlements and lands also include Pulauan (武?灣社), which evolved into today’s Sinjhuang (新莊) and Sanchong districts. Peitsie (擺接社) became Banciao District (板橋), while Parrigon (八里坌社) is now Bali District (八里). The village of Sinack (雞柔社) is now Tamsui District’s (淡水) Gueiroushan (圭柔山). Touckenan (屯山社) on the western side of Yangmingshan is now Tunshan Township (屯山). Siaojilong (小雞籠社) is now Sanjhih District (三芝). The Basay settlement of Senar — among other names — is now Tamsui. Quiware (瓦烈社) is also a part of present-day Sinjhuang, and so on.
It should not be hard for Chu to grasp this history since he was once New Taipei City mayor.
Sim Kiantek is a former associate professor of business administration at National Chung Hsing University.
Translated by Tim Smith
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS