They seem to have so much contempt for Hokkienese that they’d rather surrender to Beijing than lose their power to them.
Or may they’re jealous that the Hokkienese and even many Hakka have more respect for the ideals of Dr. Sun Yat-sen than they do.
Bit of a generalization, don’t you think?
Some are - some aren’t. I have met Waishengren, who told me that Taiwanese and Hakkas were the scum of the earth, and also others, who seemed to do their best to learn Taiwanese and in general fit in with the majority.
A certain degree of contempt will in general be visible, though.
[quote=“Mr He”]Some are - some aren’t. I have met Waishengren, who told me that Taiwanese and Hakkas were the scum of the earth, and also others, who seemed to do their best to learn Taiwanese and in general fit in with the majority.
A certain degree of contempt will in general be visible, though.[/quote]
My in-laws are from Beijing and Shandong Province… came here in 1949.
They have lived in the south since they arrived in Taiwan and both of them, now in their 80s, speak Taiwanese. My FIL was a teacher and then principal of two high schools, both of them private (Catholic) … thus he doesn’t receive the 18% interest on his savings… nor any government retirement. My MIL toiled as a teacher at a public grade school and over the years became godmother to approximately 60 Taiwanese children… all grown now. She spent much of her free time tutoring these kids in her home when they were children and now they all visit and seek consultation on various life matters.
My wife speaks Taiwanese and very much enjoys doing so. I have NEVER heard either my in laws or my wife express any contempt for the Taiwanese as an ethnic group.
Then you are lucky tigerman. I have met adorable young women here - who turned into foam-mouthed cursing creatures once you mentioned something like that Taiwanese were human beings as well.
Many of them live happily together, intermarry etc, but for instance my former waisheng boss told me that Taiwan would descend into chaos, if the Taiwanese were allowed to continue to rule - very colonial attitude.
Off course lots of waishengren harbor no animosities against Taiwanese, hakkas etc.
My wife is waishengren - her grandfather came from Nanjing - and her father speaks Taiwanese better than Mandarin. My wife’s Taiwanese is also flawless. And I have never heard her say a word about anyone because they were Hakka, or any other Chinese minority. I have heard her say all kinds of things about Lien Chan in the last couple of months, but I’m afraid this post would get floundered quickly if I repeated them here. 
So no, I don’t think all mainlanders are racist. And as far as the word pertains to Taiwan, I think “mainlander” is becoming more and more meaningless…
Absolutely. My wife wasn’t born on the mainland. She was born in tiger tail village down in the south of Taiwan.
Agree with Mr. He and have met some Taiwanese-speaking offspring of mainlanders doing their best to fit in. However, they are in the minority and you do notice from the polls and election results that an extremely low number of waishengren vote outside of pan-blue. The number of times I’ve heard the opinion expressed that the Taiwanese cannot be allowed to rule the island…
OTOH, I’ve met a lot of Taiwanese women who were strictly forbidden from fraternizing with children of mainlanders or Hakka from school age and would probably be disowned for dating one. A bignose yes, but a waishengren no… go figure.
My girlfriend, here in the US, is from the Mainland. It has been hard at times to understand some of her (sometime hateful) feelings towards some groups. I have come to realize it is just the indoctrination from the gov’t in china. (Too easy to just say due to the “Communist” gov’t as here in the US we have our own ways of doing the same).
From her almost disgust for all things Japan to firmly believing Taiwan is part of CHina…I’ve learned groing up there you don’t have much disent of opinion…thus the prevailing thought is carried in many…unless you are brave/bold enough to form your OWN opinion.
[quote=“IamtheWalrus”]
From her almost disgust for all things Japan to firmly believing Taiwan is part of China…I’ve learned groing up there you don’t have much disent of opinion…thus the prevailing thought is carried in many…unless you are brave/bold enough to form your OWN opinion.[/quote]
I find that Taiwan and overseas mainlanders are usually more nationalistic than mainlanders of comparable education back in China. I think this might be because overseas mainlanders feel a bit insecure since they’re in an environment where they aren’t the bosses. I know a lot of mainlanders who don’t agree with the party line on Taiwan and who have no problem with Japan. They are careful about expressing dissenting opinions in public, but will often share nonconformist views with you in private once they get to know you. In contrast, it seems that overseas mainlanders always have something to prove.
It also seems to me that educated mainlanders are more tolerant of different provincial cultures than waishengren in Taiwan are of Taiwan culture. The PRC government, unlike the KMT, did not push so hard to replace dialects with Putonghua. While there is resentment between southerners and northerners, etc, it is something that the party strongly discourages. They don’t try to use high culture as an excuse for snuffing out local culture like the KMT has. Most of the speak Putonghua campaigns focus on using it as a tool for strengthening unity; they generally don’t come out and say things like “everyone should speak Putonghua because dialects are inferior and anyone who speaks dialect is a dumb fuck bumpkin.” Sure, many people have that attitude, but it is not the party’s attitude. In our factory in Dongguan, the majority of northerners who’ve been there more than a year have learned enough Cantonese to get by; some of them are quite good at Cantonese, although it is entertaining to hear someone speak it with a Haerbin accent. After more than fifty years, there are still plenty of waishengren in Taiwan who turn their noses up at the local language.
Significant Other’s family have mainland father, Taiwanese mother. (It was an arranged marriage.) Children all think of themselves as mainlanders, and not as mixed-ethnicity. During the election they were parroting whatever the other KMT people were saying, including the conspiracy theories, and insisting that I “didn’t understand” while they did.
About China (and I think this is typical of mainlanders) they see themselves as “Chinese,” but are in absolutely NO hurry to reunify. Certainly not under communism, and maybe not even after unless there was money in it (which seems doubtful). They’re practical people, and want to keep what they’ve got.
As for high/low culture, the father got drafted as a youth, the mother is illiterate. You could call them BOTH “bumpkins” if you were so inclined–they do go out to garden wearing those wooden farmers’ hats. But they worked hard together and made a lot of sacrifices over the years so their five kids could all go to university.
An interesting question is, what about the younger “mainlanders”? Will they even be interested in politics at all? (A lot of them would rather “vote with their feet,” which is fine.) Or am I basing my perceptions on too limited a slice of the population?
Some will be less interested in politics, but most are likely to back up the party of their ancestors.
Don’t blame her for her attitude to the Japanese. China suffered because of them. We wouldn’t blame someone from Poland or Holland, for example, for not being too fond of Germans. I’m guessing the Rape of Nanking would be pretty hard to forgive.
Interestingly, Europe has been able to let World War II slide into history, even though the horrors were just as great. Just recently somebody published a book about the (Russian) “Rape of Berlin” (don’t remember the title, sorry) but that didn’t have anything like the reception the book “Rape of Nanjing” did. Certainly one couldn’t imagine Germans, French, Poles, whatever using WW2 antagonisms as a political rallying cry as they do routinely in China, Korea, and Japan. An “East Asian” political community like the EU is all but unthinkable (except as a “lite” version like APEC), even though it would make a lot of economic sense. Why?
[quote=“Screaming Jesus”]Interestingly, Europe has been able to let World War II slide into history, even though the horrors were just as great. Just recently somebody published a book about the (Russian) “Rape of Berlin” (don’t remember the title, sorry) but that didn’t have anything like the reception the book “Rape of Nanjing” did. Certainly one couldn’t imagine Germans, French, Poles, whatever using WW2 antagonisms as a political rallying cry as they do routinely in China, Korea, and Japan. An “East Asian” political community like the EU is all but unthinkable (except as a “lite” version like APEC), even though it would make a lot of economic sense. Why?[/quote]Maybe because Germany has apologized and made amends, while Japan won’t even admit what happened ? Or is there more to it than that ?
Another interesting pointw ould be that most older Taiwanese don’t seem to harbor the same hatred towards Japan, as younger PRC/ROC citizens do.
Gernamy did make amends, paid reparations etc. and that helped a lot. An equally strong factor was the creation of nato and the EU, where Germany showed that they were not monsters and that they were genuinely willing to cooperate with the rest of Europe.
Sorry for the off-topic question, but do you really think there is much hatred to Japan in Taiwan? I can’t say I’ve seen it. If anything there is not the outrage I would expect when the “Comfort women” issue comes up. The attitude of most Taiwanese seems (to me) remarkably mild: “Sure, the Japanese raped our women, then Chiang murdered us by the thousand, but that’s history; I’m still going to vote KMT and buy that Sony laptop.”
My father in law lived under the japanese and don’t hate them, as he at least got enough to eat.
My sister in law has been filled with KMT propaganda and hates everything japanese.
I think it’s mainly older waishengren, the ones who were in China during the war, and their kids that they’ve brought up that way, who hate Japan. Older Taiwanese (the ones that often don’t speak Mandarin but Japanese as their second language) tend to think of the Japanese colonial regime as a good thing because life was better than under the KMT’s white terror. In fact, Taiwan was treated pretty good by the Japanese colonialists - better than this island has ever been treated by any overlords from mainland China, whether that be the Qing or KMT. Most younger kids of today seem to be Nippon-philes - they look towards Japan for their fashion and pop culture. Ask a random group of young Taiwanese people what their favorite country is it’ll be a 50/50 split between Japan and the U.S.A.
Sorry for the off-topic question, but do you really think there is much hatred to Japan in Taiwan? I can’t say I’ve seen it. If anything there is not the outrage I would expect when the “Comfort women” issue comes up. The attitude of most Taiwanese seems (to me) remarkably mild: “Sure, the Japanese raped our women, then Chiang murdered us by the thousand, but that’s history; I’m still going to vote KMT and buy that Sony laptop.”[/quote]
I don’t sense a hatred of the Japanese among most of my friends here in Taichung, in fact, many of them admire the Japanese. Occasionally, I will meet an elderly Taiwanese who doesn’t speak Mandarin and I have to get by with them with my high school Japanese. Surprisingly, it works— a little — when I am trying to get something to eat in my wife’s hometown.