In this thread:
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … highlight=
LittleBuddhaTW said:
WTF? You have to be born in Taiwan (or for some bizarre reason, have immigrated prior to 1949) to be Taiwanese.
What a crock of shit.
Anyone with ROC Citizenship is Taiwanese.
Do you think people who emigrated to the US after WW2 are not American?
Brian
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]
Anyone with ROC Citizenship is Taiwanese. [/quote]Hmm. What about those overseas Chinese who’ve never even been here, are they Taiwanese? What about all those 49’ers who still define themselves as from some province of China, are they Taiwanese? Very few seem to define themselves as such…
If your referring the common Taiwan usage of the term Daiwanlang, then yes your lineage must be Hoklo and been around during Japanese colonialization period. If you lineage is mixed Daiwanlang, you will be commonly referred to as a Taro-Potato.
Even Hoklo that immigrated from the mainland with the KMT are not referred to as Daiwanlang. They are WSR.
If you referring the the KMT version of Taiwan ren, then all you need to qualify was be around post 1949 and qualify for a ROC passport.
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]In this thread:
forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … highlight=
LittleBuddhaTW said:
WTF? You have to be born in Taiwan (or for some bizarre reason, have immigrated prior to 1949) to be Taiwanese.
What a crock of shit.
Anyone with ROC Citizenship is Taiwanese.
Do you think people who emigrated to the US after WW2 are not American?
Brian[/quote]
First of all, your attitude is really unnecessary.
Secondly, there has always been a distinction between “benshengren” and “waishengren” … by definition, Bo Yang is a “waishengren” who emmigrated to Taiwan. Having ROC citizenship does not make one “Taiwanese,” as there are many waishengren who would not consider themselves to be as such, and many Taiwanese who would not consider them to be as such either. They are ROC citizens living in Taiwan. But this is really a pointless debate, so I see no need in carrying on further with it. Feel free to comment and toss around rude comments as much as you like, but I won’t be responding.
identities are always in flux. What is a Taiwanese? There will never be a real answer. The ethnic issue is not as cut and dried as the GIO would like to promote as the degree of mixing and evolution of identity skew the result of any study. The topic of Taiwanese “one-ness” will always be a part of public discourse…that said… it may be possible in the future for a honkey from souf (south) London to be recognized as a Taiwanese based on a yet to be defined idea…
currently
Anyone can be a citizen of the ROC providing they renounce their citizenship and have no prior criminal record etc…
Taiwanese does not equal Benshengren.
It seems obvious to me that those with citizenship are Taiwanese. Sorry, if I was rude (was I that rude really - I attacked your statement, not you) but I do find it quite bizarre, and even offensive to think that only those whose anscestors have been in Taiwan for more than 50 years can be considered Taiwanese.
Is there anything wrong with my reasoning here? Once again I ask, would someone who emigrated to the US after WW2 not be thought of as American?
Brian
Whilst legally speaking, yes, anyone with Taiwanese citizenship is Taiwanese, I think the crux of the disagreement here is in the definition of “Taiwanese”. Do you mean as a personal identity thing, or in a purely legal sense? Because I’d wager that there’d be a lot of people in Taiwan - Chinese or otherwise - who may well have Taiwanese citizenship but identify more with a different label. Not a majority, by any stretch, but a lot. For example, I know a good number of people back in New Zealand of Chinese or Polynesian heritage (for a start) and NZ citizenship, but who identify more with their ancestry than their passport, and would call themselves Chinese/(insert Polynesian nation here) first rather than New Zealanders. Christ, I know a lot of Maori folk back home who identify themselves as Maori first and New Zealanders second.
I think it was clear from the original context (someone lving outside of Taiwan was enquiring about the 'Taiwanese intellectual Bo Yang), that he was talking about nationality not ethnicity. Sure, a Samoan NZer might say he’s Samoan (ethnicity), but this doesn’t mean he’s not a NZer (nationality).
Brian
If you’re going to play semantics, isn’t it impossible for anyone to have Taiwanese citizenship? I thought the locals here were all citizens of the Republic of China.
I was just gonna say the same thing myself. 
Taiwanese if different than Taiwanese citizenship for many people.
My family doesn’t even consider KMT and after people really “Taiwanese.” Quite complicated eh. Something that had to do with people dating back to the wave of immigration at the Qing dynasty takeover.
Saying someone is Taiwanese or not to what degree or whatever is just a band-aid. It’s coving the animosity that is still remembered. It is a bit like what the African-Americans with enslaved heritage feel that cause them to ask for repayment…perhaps. I wouldn’t know becuase I’m not African-American. Or maybe it is like saying that I’m not a true Californian because I’m not a die-hard liberal supporting Kerry.
::shrugs::
And to Bu Lai En.
I’m USA born and raised.
Visited NY this summer. Met this guy who who was peering at me. Then he walked up to me and bluntly said, “Where are you from.” I said American. He was like, " No, really, where are you from." That was after he got over his initial shock–probably from me speaking fluent English.
So I guess no, people that immigrated to the USA after WWII aren’t always thought of as American. And if that is an isolated incident… it really isn’t. I grew up having people ask me how long I was in America.
Or maybe it is just America, but I think that any minority group is questioned–doesn’t matter what they act like, dress like, think like, etc. Just matters what their ethnicity looks like. It has nothing to do with where one’s loyalty lies. If it did, everyone would only have one citizenship. But here I am, actually considering getting Taiwan citizenship while keeping my USA one. I should probably drop my USA one because I would choose Taiwan over the USA (at this moment. I’m loyal to both but just a twinge more Taiwan loyalty because of all the family there. the USA doesn’t really consider Taiwan a country anyways so it isn’t really dual citizenship [ can’t be a citizen of something that doesn’t exist] )… but its useful when China does eventually take over Taiwan.
So I guess my point… (i did lose it up there in the rant, didn’t I) is that being Taiwanese and having citizenship is different. I have American citizenship, but I’m not “American.”
oh yeah. “Sure, a Samoan NZer might say he’s Samoan (ethnicity), but this doesn’t mean he’s not a NZer (nationality).” But the first time that a Samoan bombs a train station in NZ, all the Samoan NZers would be put under close watch. Probably something like distrust and harrasment by all the nonSamoan NZers. All the non-bomber Samoan NZers wouldn’t be considered really NZer.
First: Tetsuo, You may want to substitute your terms 'Chinese" and “Polynesian” with “Han” and “Austronesian”. “Chinese” is not an ethno-cultural group, but rather “Han” is the largest ethno-cultural group of China. Polynesia is an area of Pacific islands inhabited by people of the Austronesian cultruo-linguistic group, acompanied by Micronesia and Melenesia. Hence-Polynesians, Micronesians and Melenesians are all part of one culturo-linguistic group.
Second: Since the 1990’s when the influence of the KMT regime on identity politics started to wane and the Taiwanese were given the freedom to openly challenge the status quo, the concept of a Taiwanese identity has moved into the realm of public discourse. It is not that the concept of a seperate Taiwanese identity was a new concept, as it had been articulated in many ways since 1895, but it had reached the political mainstream. In 1992 President Lee Teng Hui articulated his term “New Taiwanese” to describe all residents of Taiwan who love the island and consider it home. Lee’s “New Taiwanese” was meant to breach the cultural divide between China-Born Taiwanese and native Taiwanese under a common experience and identity as residents of Taiwan. Lee’s remarks were quickly adopted by the younger KMT party stars like James Soong and Lien Chan to appeal to the Hoklo vote. Soong even incorporated Lee’s “New Taiwanese” concept into his stump speech for Taiwan Governor, saying, " I am a New Taiwanese, raised on Taiwan’s water and rice". Following Lien Chan’s defeat in the 2000 election and his ascention to the Chairmanship of the KMT, Lien rejected Lee’s “New Taiwanese” concept for an “unhypothesized theory” model of national identity to be defined in the future when a clear consensus can be reached.
The DPP has often been criticized for exploiting the ethno-cultural divide between Taiwanese. Seen as a pro Taiwanese party to combat the Chinese Nationalist hegemony in the government, the DPP exploited the numerical disparity between Taiwanese and Chinese Nationalists in the central government. The DPP and the TSU have actively persued a policy aimed at expanding the nation building policies initiated by Lee in the years following the end of martial law in 1987. Taiwanese identity and Taiwanese nationalizm are not new concepts, but rather dormant aspirations of the Taiwanese people, stifled by the KMT’s White Terror and unpolular efforts at promoting Chinese identity and nationalizm.
Currently, over 80% of the people on Taiwan identify themselves as Taiwanese and less than 10% identify as Chinese.
There are rumors that the Chen administration is interested in including a new definition of “Taiwanese” in the new constitution (re-drawing of the constitution) to include foreign born spouses and children of mixed couples, again redrawing the meaning of Taiwanese identity as an inclusive rather than exclusive identity based on experience and place rather than genes and blood.
The issue runs even deeper when the concept of imagining a community of “one” vs. “other” or “same” vs. “different” lies in the views of the people of Taiwan. Until Taiwanese can view “foreigners” as “one” and not “other” in an imagined Taiwanese community based on a common experience and a relationship to the island of Taiwan, a foreign-born Taiwanese is still a distant, but not impossible idea.
See: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … &&start=60
Wachman, Alan M. 1994. Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization. New York, M.E. Sharpe, Inc. ISBN 1-56324-399-7
Ed. Rubinstein, Murray A. 1999. Taiwan: A New History. New York, M.E. Sharpe, Inc. ISBN 1-56324-816-6
Ed. Ahern, Emily Martin & Gates, Hill. 1981.The Anthropology of Taiwanese Society. California, Leland Stanford Junior University Press. ISBN 957-638-401-X
Leo T.S. Ching. 2001. Becoming
Cheers to that, good article. But let me summarize the problem, using the definition of “Taiwanese” that I’ve learned from daily life, into a slightly shorter sentence:
I’m white, I can never be Taiwanese*
*for the foreseeable future. This taps into the same vein as why a person who has some Han ancestors who immigrated to NA 150 years ago, but has almond eyes, says they’re Chinese, or is considered huaqiao. Or this whole idea of a “One Chinese Nation”.
:fume: Utterly ridiculous drivel that will continue until the ignorant people of the world (and many governments, you know who you are… cough…China…Japan etc.) wake up and realize your facial features or where your parents were born in no way defines who you are. Whoo, that’s enough, rant over.
And yes I realize this skips the WSR vs pre-KMT conflict. But really, if someone can’t adapt after 50 YEARS living somewhere, they have a whole lot more problems than who they identify themselves as, which would explain the idiotic actions of Lien Chan. 
[quote=“Freakin’ Amazing”]I’m white, I can never be Taiwanese*
*for the foreseeable future. This taps into the same vein as why a person who has some Han ancestors who immigrated to NA 150 years ago, but has almond eyes, says they’re Chinese, or is considered huaqiao. Or this whole idea of a “One Chinese Nation”.[/quote]
Wrong - you can be Taiwanese in terms of citizenship, just like some of the people on the board. However, if you’re white, expect to be asked by other Taiwanese “where you’re from” for the foreseeable future. This attitude from the “real” locals is in the same vein as why a person who has some Han ancestors who immigrated to NA 150 years ago, but has almond eyes, still gets asked, “so, what are you?/where are you from?/are you Chinese or Japanese or what?”. It’s a natural question - and more likely the Taiwanese will have a harder time getting their heads around the concept simply because very few non-Asian folk want to get Taiwanese citizenship.
[quote=“daasgrrl”]
Wrong - you can be Taiwanese in terms of citizenship, just like some of the people on the board.[/quote]
See Maoman’s post above, Taiwanese citizenship is something that doesn’t exist. Should, but doesn’t.
If it did, then I think I’d probably still be right as the majority would still refer to it as an ethnicity, as I stated my locally encountered definition is 
Note that how one identifies themself and how others identify them are two different questions, but they both have the above problem.
Daasgrrl, you are right, I too am sick of too many people assuming an asian face means you can’t be Canadian/American/etc and vice versa. Wondering where ones ancestors come from shows your interested in their history. Assuming they, or their parents, are immigrants is downright ignorant.
To answer the communities of Hua Qiao or Overseas Chinese communities…
Those are imagined political communities of people who have perceived themselves as a “threatened” minority and have sought protection and political (small p) strength in the form of a group. They have opted to overlook differences and identify with the similarities for the purpose of support against an often hostile majority. Examples of hostility could be in the forms of the Chinese Exclusion Act in America ( 1882), The brutal Spanish massacre of “Sangleys” (Traders from Fujian) in the late 17th Century, British colonization of Hong Kong and the New Territories etc…
Each of these examples contributed in the desire of the persecuted or degraded groups to unite and vie for political (small p) power against the “other” group. People who practiced Han customs of filial piety, writing and hair style, shared a similar fate as second class citizens or persecuted people, making the perception of a common destiny in a struggle for political power the one uniting factor in the dispora of ethnic and cultural groups.
Taiwan’s modern history is a prime example of this grouping as the emergence of a distinct Taiwanese identity followed a similar path of different cultures uniting under a common experience under perceived internal and external threats…
Well, while you’re being picky, I have alternative points - firstly, at what point did I say these Chinese were even specifically Han? Sure, the odds are good, but not all Chinese are Han, right? And go ask the many many Pacific Islanders in New Zealand if they’re Austronesian. I doubt you’ll find a single one who identifies with that label. While scientifically you may be right, I think the point of this whole thread is that scientific definitions may not necessarily apply in real-world situations.
Even Han is a sticky one as it could be the ethnicity or culture as many non-Han people became identified as Han by adopting Han customs. Taiwan’s Hakka and indigenous plains people became Han through acculturation rather than ethnic mixing. By losing their distinctive traits that marked them as non-Han, those people could be identified as Han. The same process happened in China. The point is simply that “Chinese” is not in any way an ancient monolithic culture or ethnicity, but rather a modern invented identity subject to change. The idea of anyone becoming Taiwanese is not impossible, but actually, in view of human history, a likely development.
If Taiwanese citizenship does not exist, then people from the PRC, Vietnam etc. can also never be Taiwanese. It has nothing to do with being white. Therefore being white is irrelevant unless you are using the ‘ROC citizens are Taiwanese’ definition.
[quote]If it did, then I think I’d probably still be right as the majority would still refer to it as an ethnicity, as I stated my locally encountered definition is
Note that how one identifies themself and how others identify them are two different questions, but they both have the above problem.[/quote]
Now, if your point is that having acquired ROC citizenship, the other Taiwanese would still firmly believe that Taiwanese are Asian-looking, whereas fellow Americans are more flexible (but not completely, as I pointed out) then I’d agree. This is the ‘how others identify you’ question.
However, on the ‘how one identifies his or her self’ question, then you CAN be Taiwanese if you’re white, since you also assert that outward appearances “in no way” define who you are. By this logic there is absolutely nothing to prevent you being Taiwanese in your own self-identity and to hell with other people
I personally think one’s self-identity is naturally influenced to some extent by the opinions of the people around you, which includes feedback on your perceived appearance - whether that be white in Taiwan, or to a much lesser but not non-existent extent, Asian in North America.
[quote=“Bu Lai En”][quote]
It seems obvious to me that those with citizenship are Taiwanese.
Is there anything wrong with my reasoning here? Once again I ask, would someone who emigrated to the US after WW2 not be thought of as American?
Brian[/quote][/quote]
Glad to know you’ll always think of me as being Taiwanese. A lot of my friends here refer to me now as Taiwan Jim, to make the distinction from all the other Jim’s they know.