MEDIAFAIL: Taiwanese are not "ethnic Chinese"

Housing for aboriginal people.

One of the ways the foreign media serves Beijing is by recapitulating its propaganda frameworks -- in this case, that the Taiwanese are "Chinese" and there is no such thing as "Taiwanese". This claim is a standard claim of those who would annex Taiwan to China. Indeed, China's claim on Arunachal Pradesh in India is supported by official claims that the area's Tibetan people are "Chinese" and thus the region is "China".

Local media worker Ralph Jennings is one of the chief purveyors of this nonsense. See for example, this transcendentally stupid article on Chinese tourists,

Tourists from China eagerly report that strangers politely stop to give directions and shopkeepers respond professionally to inquiries. This treatment compares to China where an annoying number of strangers are surly or vague when interrupted by a question. The level of courtesy found in Taiwan fosters an appreciation of the location itself as well as a reminder that ethnic Chinese on either side easily have it in them to be polite.

.... "ethnic Chinese on either side" is a pro-China frame, reductive and wrong. There are many other examples: here, here, here, and here.

Reuters seems to have picked this up as well. In an article on how Taiwan's economic policies are its own worst enemy, it claims....

The capital of Taipei shows what an advanced ethnically Chinese economy can achieve under a democracy: a comfortable, low-key lifestyle.

This may come as a shock to the media, but Taiwan does not exist so the media can make smug contrasts between democracy in "ethnic Chinese" cultures. We have democracy here in Taiwan precisely because locals resisted the Chinese culture brought over by the KMT, with its authoritarianism and authority-based values, fake family values, empty democratic values, Confucianism bereft of humanity, and violent suppression of dissent.

The basis of their resistance was, of course, Taiwaneseness.

This "culture iceberg" is a common image, with many variations. But note that when people talk about "culture" they are usually referring to the parts that are easy to see: language, food, holidays, dress (though even in Taiwan they are different). The parts that are below are difficult for the untrained to see or think about and so are never referenced in discussions like those in the media. Wouldn't it be awesome if the media consulted anthropologists the way they consult financiers?

For Taiwan, for example, one might add...

• the experience of Dutch, Qing, Japanese, and KMT colonization, the experience of being settlers, being a settler region, and interactions with and resistance to the distant, different state
• the existence of the frontier and the Other in the interactions between aboriginal peoples and the incoming Hoklo and Hakka settlers, and its shaping of culture, building forms, and landscapes in Taiwan, and the continued existence of aborigines as distinct Other in the present day
• the ideal of democracy and its application in resistance to Japan and the KMT. Remember the first elections were held under the Japanese.
• democratization and the lived experience of democracy
• steady and rapid long-term capitalist economic growth and relative affluence
• Pervasive Japanese influences in food, hygiene, expectations of social progress and order, and so forth
• Pervasive US influence via increasing globalization and close economic, social, political, and military ties.
• the experience of China's desire to annex Taiwan and suppress local identity via both KMT colonization and PRC aggression

...that is only a small sample of the vastness of the differences in Taiwan experience. I haven't even addressed defining "ethnic Chinese" since the constructs we generally use to discuss "Chineseness" are themselves the result of Beijing's propaganda as the Imperial Capital struggles to suppress local cultures and languages across its vast empire via the creation of a common "culture".

Hence, the categories ordinary people use to think about and define "what's Chinese?" are usually categories constructed by expansionist politicians in Beijing. While it might be entertaining to imagine international media workers struggling to define "ethnic Chinese", it would not be very enlightening (it is never defined in the text, of course).

The short form of this is: Taiwanese are "ethnic Chinese" to the extent that Americans are "ethnic United Kingdomers".

But another way to think about it is provided by Geert Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions, widely used in business and other research as a shorthand for describing cultural patterns. Hofstede has surveyed the world's nations to develop a crude way to compare them on several dimensions of deeper behavioral attitudes. Anthropologists laugh, but it is a useful shorthand for twenty years of fieldwork and does enable comparisons, since the surveys are the same for all people surveyed.

I compared China and Taiwan using his tool. Note the blindingly obvious differences in everything except "long term orientation" (definitions are onsite).

You want to claim Taiwanese are "ethnic Chinese?" Evidence please. Otherwise, stop saying what isn't true.

UPDATE: An anthropologist observed to me:

The idea that "Taiwan proves Chinese people can be X" (polite/democratic/etc.) is just racist. The use of the term "ethnic" in there just serves to hide the implicit racism.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Contested History, again

A cha hua, camellia blossom.

This week saw two struggles over Taiwan history. The first took place at National Chengkung Universty, where the students voted to name a square after Deng Nan-jung, the pro-democracy and free speech advocate. J Michael Cole had excellent coverage last week. The Taipei Times editorialized the other day:

While the university administrator’s move to dismiss the vote betrayed the spirit of democracy, the arguments of history professor Wang Wen-hsia (王文霞) in expressing her opposition to the naming of the plaza underestimated Deng’s efforts and ignored the importance of the power transition in Taiwan’s democratic development. Wang had described Deng’s self-immolation as a radical way to cope with challenges in life, and compared him to Islamist bombers who “end their lives and put others’ lives in danger when things did not go their way.”

I suspect there's a sly reference here in "putting other's lives in danger" -- it's a claim of KMT propaganda attacks on Deng that he put his young daughter in danger when he burned himself to death, thus showing he had no morals (commenter below). Deng's widow ripped Wang in an interview. Wang spewed the usual denials and backtracking, but the students had uploaded both transcripts and video to the internet. No escape.

The other is more attacks on Taiwan history via textbook changes by the Ma Administration. A DPP legislator criticized them:

According to Cheng, during a public hearing held by the Ministry of Education’s National Academy for Educational Research in Taipei on Friday, Fo Guang University professor Hsieh Ta-ning (謝大寧), who is also a member of the curriculum outlines adjustment task force headed by National Taiwan University professor Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波), said that the adjustments mainly focused on changing incorrect words in the curriculum, making information presented by the curriculum more complete, and making sure that the content was in accordance with the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution.

The article points out that Hsieh Ta-ning is also the head of Chinese Integration Association. Heh.
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Kerim on Seven Ways to Talk to a White Man

Peanut seller, Chiayi city.

Kerim Friedman, an anthropologist at Donghwa and all around cool guy, has an interesting piece up at Savage Minds on Seven Ways to Talk to a White Man:

Fifth is “disbelief.” Sometimes one’s interlocutor is so convinced that they won’t be able to speak to you that even evidence to the contrary doesn’t help. Sometimes, after about five minutes the realization that you might be speaking Chinese will slowly dawn and the person will look at you and ask: “Do you speak Chinese?” as if you’ve been talking to them in English all this time. I once heard a story of a scholar in China in the 80′s who was fluent in Cantonese and asked two farmers in Guangzhou for directions to XX village. They just stared at him, silent. Eventually he gave up and walked away, only to hear one farmer say to the other: “Funny, it sounded just like he was asking directions to XX village!”

If you've lived here any length of time you've probably encountered them in all their variations. The "foreigner talk" is downright nasty -- I have had university freshmen males do it -- always engineering or business students, never my medical students.
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Daily Links:

• Taiwan hedges its bets on China
• Land expropriation is robbery.
• Taiwan plans to build six minehunters
• ANZ cuts Taiwan econ growth forecast to 2.4%
• According to poll, KMT county and city heads suck. Not that this will stop them from getting elected again. 
• Manufacturing continuing to fall

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

The Paradox of Ranks and scores in Taiwan

Here's a culture that's obsessed with ranks and scoring. Companies proudly display awards. Bushibans advertize student scores. Schools rate professors based on publications in prestigious journals with high impact factors. A nation awaits, eagerly, for the latest rankings in competitiveness, math education, and a thousand and one other topics.

Here is a culture where scores and ranks are so often assigned, not on merit, but are handed out based on seniority. Or arbitrary quotas unrelated to performance. Or teachers are told to have all grades averaged out to 80, or no scores over 90 will be given. Or scores and awards are rotated among individuals and departments, so that they have no meaning. Or awards are bought, not earned in any way.

Reconcile, please.
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Daily Links:

• James Holmes on the ROC's claims in the South China Sea
• Life in Tamsui in 1867
• Pingtung elementary school sells surplus solar electricity, makes profit.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Norma Diamond, RIP

Norma Diamond, a pioneering anthropologist who has done work in China, Taiwan and elsewhere, has passed. Very sad. This made the rounds:

+++++++++++++++

Dear Colleagues,

It is with sadness that I announce that Norma Diamond, Professor Emerita, Anthropology, of the University of Michigan, has died. Originally from New York, Norma was living in retirement in Gainesville, Florida, but her heart remained in her adopted home town of Ann Arbor, where her ashes will be placed.

I'm sure many of you knew Professor Diamond's sparkling and insight-filled work on Chinese women, economy, minorities, and religion. She leaves many students in the field of China studies to carry on her legacy of courageous truth-telling.

In 2005 a panel at the American Anthropological Association was devoted to Norma's work. Titled ender, Power, and Ethnicity in China: Papers in Honor of Norma Diamond,?the panel featured several former students who presented work inspired by Norma's example.

Norma was a broadly trained social scientist and Sinologist who read extremely broadly and wrote extremely cogently. She earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin and taught at the University of Michigan for more than thirty years, where she was a pioneer in women's studies, as well as Asian studies. She wrote a single-authored monograph, K'un Shen: A Taiwan Village and many seminal articles such as "The Status of Women in Taiwan: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back," "Collectivization, Kinship, and the Status of Women in Rural China," Women Under Kuomintang Rule: Variations on the Feminine Mystique," "Model Villages and Village Realities," "Taitou Revisited: State Policies and Social Change," "Rural Collectivization and Decollectivization in China Review Article," he Miao and Poison: Interactions on China Frontier?(winner of the Murdock Prize), efining the Miao: Ming, Qing, and Contemporary Views,?and hristianity and the Hua Miao: Writing and Power.?/span> Her book reviews were models of clarity and sometimes wry forcefulness.

Norma never shied away from honest criticism, even of her own earlier positions. She followed the news of contemporary China with love and often disappointment; her hopes had been high for this other homeland of hers. A fierce believer in equality and justice, she found all too much inequality and injustice.

Her voice will never be imitated. But it will be missed.

* * *

A Partial Bibliography:

Diamond, Norma. 1969. Kun Shen: A Taiwan Village. Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
__________ . 1973. The Status of Women in Taiwan: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.?In Marilyn B. Young, ed. Women in China: Studies in Social Change and Feminism. Pp. 211-242. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan.
__________ . 1975a. Collectivization, Kinship, and the Status of Women in Rural China.?span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. Vol. 7 no. 1: 25-35. Also published in Rayna R. Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women. Pp. 372-395. New York: Monthly Review Press.
__________ . 1975b. Women Under Kuomintang Rule: Variations on the Feminine Mystique.?span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Modern China vol. 1, no. 1 (January): 3-45.
__________ . 1983. Model Villages and Village Realities.?span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Modern China vol. 9, no. 2 (April): 163-181.
__________ . 1984. aitou Revisited: State Policies and Social Change.?span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> International Journal of Sociology Vol. 14, no. 4 (Winter): 77-100.
__________ . 1985. "Rural Collectivization and Decollectivization in China Review Article." Journal of Asian Studies vol. XLIV, no. 4: 785-792.
__________ . 1988. The Miao and Poison: Interactions on China Frontier.?Ethnology. Vol. XXVII No. 1 (January): 1-25.
__________ . 1991. Security and Alienation in Contemporary China.?span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Reviews in Anthropology. Vol. 17, pp. 123-130.
__________ . 1995. Defining the Miao: Ming, Qing, and Contemporary Views.?In Cultural Encounters on China Ethnic Frontiers, ed. by Stevan Harrell. Pp. 92-116. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
__________ . 1996. Christianity and the Hua Miao: Writing and Power.?span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> In Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. by Daniel H. Bays. Pp. 138-157. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Is this really necessary?

A couple of weeks ago Canadian Lindsey Craig published an article in a Canadian paper detailing the complete flop that was her teaching experience in Taiwan, as well as confessing to a few personality foibles. Her article (linked below) also had a few good pointers about how you might prepare for teaching overseas. I thought it was quite brave of her to publish that, and also useful: teaching here is not for everyone.

As it turns out, some weird Canadian Taiwanese are trying to organize a protest because gasp it said something bad about Taiwan. Stop the presses! A clear case of media bias! Taiwan Introspective has the call (and thanks for all the links, man!).

Lynch mobs, I mean... protest groups have now taken up the cause against Lindsay Craig's article on her cultural shock during her time in Taiwan. A "“226 protest of media bias Gazette in Montreal” has been set up on Facebook "calling on foreign nationals living in Taiwan teaching foreign languages to contact the group to lodge a protest against the newspaper." I wonder what kind of response they will get. Apparently this has become a big news item in Taiwan (as anything slightly anti-Taiwanese does.) Here's the story in the Taipei Times.

The Facebook protest group is here. Taiwan Introspective also discusses the letter that TECRO sent on Ms. Craig's article. Even TECRO got involved. The horror! Taiwan Introspective remarked:

I also laughed at the comparisons to the Taiwanese community in Montreal. People have no idea of the differences in visa requirements, access to language (different education systems) and culture (monocultural vs. multicultural). Whatever happens to you is your fault and if you don't like it, go home. It's funny that were the situation reversed, (saying that about someone who immigrated to Canada) it would be out and out racism. And it stands in stark irony to what Canadians tend to do for others who come here in terms of language support, acculturation and general volunteer services.

That paragraph raises an important issue. The two cultures handle foreigners in wildly different ways. Canada is a Low Context culture in which information is fluid across social boundaries and things are clearly explained for newcomers. In High Context cultures like Taiwan, you're expected to know. This can drive newcomers crazy. Hence the uninformed way that many Taiwanese view the US and Canada: it's so easy for us to move there, how come you're having a problem here? (you must be stupid!).

UPDATE: Good words in the comments.

Craig responds. Shame on the jerks who contacted her schools.

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Daily Links

• Project 2049's Links to Under the Radar Stories. Including Russia's deployment of missiles in the Kuriles
• Ted Galen Carpenter from CATO on China's Soft Imperialism
• Ben runs down two articles on the DPP's current situation
• Drew on his awesome new titanium Seven
• China's self destructive coal policies
  

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

The Latest Fad: Glasses w/o lenses

What's wrong with this picture? Yes, one encounters them everywhere. Over the last year or so a new fad has emerged: people wearing glasses without lenses. I suppose it's harmless -- it's not lethal like those witch shoes that were popular five years ago, nor offensive like the Great Butt Crack Plague of 2006-7. But....couldn't we have a more reasonable fad? Maybe one memorizing English vocabulary, or a foreign policy fad? Or a pick up litter fad? Or....
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Taiwan's Napa Valley of Tea

A dear friend flipped me this link to an excellent and appreciative article on Taiwan's tea drinking and growing culture:

That growth is due in part to the nearly missionary zeal of merchants like Lee. During the early 1980s, he would travel to different Bay Area supermarkets, set up a table with two chairs and brew tea for shoppers. He would patiently explain to Westerners unaccustomed to Asian tea that their brew, full of complex flavors, does not need milk and sugar.

"We emphasize the aroma, the taste," said Chen Hsuan, deputy director of Taiwan's Tea Research and Extension Station in Yangmei, while sipping high-mountain oolong, the signature Taiwan tea.

The government facility, which employs some 60 researchers, contains tasting rooms, labs and small patches of land lined with neat rows of knee-high tea plants. In addition to providing the latest research on tea cultivation, government scientists are continually developing new strains of the crop.

More than 16,000 Taiwan family farms grow tea, and the average plot size is no more than 21/2 acres. Tea farms in other countries typically are at least 10 times larger, Chen said.

Taiwanese were not always so high-minded about commercial tea production, which dates back hundreds of years to the early Qing Dynasty's rule over the island. During the 1970s and '80s, Taiwan transformed itself from an agricultural society to an industrial one.

Despite the shift to a high-tech economy, the government began promoting competitions to boost interest in the local produce and spur farmers to create quality tea. The tea industry, which struggled to compete with cheap teas from countries like Vietnam and Indonesia, invested in costly cultivation processes to grow crops that catered to the newly affluent citizens. Today, the more expensive oolong and paochong teas are picked and processed by hand.

The tea culture is indeed highly developed, and not well appreciated among foreigners, even those who have lived here for a long time. There are some excellent tea blogs out there, including Stephane's masterful Tea Masters.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Grade Quotas

From time to time I blog on the use of informal quota and rotation systems in grading and other "merit" driven aspects of the universities, a practice that appears to be widespread. For example, a couple of years ago I remarked to a colleague at a university graduation ceremony that it was notable that our department had won all the student awards that year, things like valedictorian, and was told that the award was rotated between departments. No merit involved. Today's piece in the Taipei Times on an article defending Kuo Kuan-ying gave a good example of these informal quotas at work:

The rebuttal, using Pan's byline, was titled “My Colleague Kuo Kuan-ying.” It dismissed criticism of Kuo Kuan-ying and explained why Kuo Kuan-ying received a “B” in his performance appraisal during his time at the GIO's Department of Motion Pictures.

The article said that as one of Kuo Kuan-ying's superiors responsible for evaluating his performance, he thought Kuo Kuan-ying should have received an “A.”

But Kuo Kuan-ying was willing to receive a “B” because of GIO conventions that limited the quota of “A” marks, which were usually given to younger colleagues, the author said.

In other words, the total number of A ratings is determined by an informal quota based on seniority.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Taiwan's Movie Industry Malaise

Looks like Krosa has downgraded to an ordinary typhoon, good news for the island....meanwhile Variety offers some typhoon relief in the form of a view of Taiwan's movie industry that blames the government's inability to back the industry as a major impediment to its expansion:

In 2003, following the rare B.O. success of Columbia-backed thriller "Double Vision," GIO said funding would favor bigger-budget and commercially oriented pictures and that it would open its Domestic Film Guidance pool to films that were international co-productions. Later, GIO minister Pasuya Yao switched the emphasis to quantity, setting out plans for 100 movies a year. More recently, another GIO minister, Cheng Wen-tsan, said the focus should be on big-budget pics and TV series.

In 2004, GIO talked of creating a tax-funding scheme similar to ones on offer in Europe (businesses producing films with one-third of the cast Taiwanese and using Taiwanese locations for one-third of screen time would qualify for income tax credits). But to date, the system has proved unwieldy.

Wang Ying-hsiang, who heads producer-distrib Long Shong Pictures and is also prexy of the Chinese Movie & TV Union Federation, says that, despite the muddles, the government is trying to help.

He adds that under the latest structure, the government has allocated a total of NT600 million ($18.2 million) over a five-year period for productions. Of this, $3 million will be given as grants with evaluation based on script quality. The remainder will be provided as loans with very soft repayment terms and no upper limit to the size of the advance. Co-productions will be eligible with funding provided through the Taiwanese shingle.

Some 500 projects have been submitted for funding approval, but a new hurdle is the ankling of GIO's Dept. of Motion Pictures director Peggy Chou, who has yet to be replaced.

"Our problems have much to do with the legacy of Taiwan's entry into the World Trade Organization," Wang says. "Our movies are classified as services, which limits the way that government can aid the sector. Our battle must be to have them reclassified as cultural goods in the way that they are in some other countries."

The government seems to have missed a good opportunity here to market Taiwan in ways that can reach millions.

[Taiwan]