This is a NTU website documenting Taiwan’s ethnological collections in oversea museums. The link I provided is filtered by the collector, Charles Le Gendre.
It’s too bad Le Gendre only collected 2 artifacts over his 8 trips to Taiwan. Both of them seem to belong to one of the Pingpu tribes that no longer exists.
I was wrong. There are more stuff collected by Le Gendre. It’s just hard to find them all with one filter.
So, I just ran into the topic of the Camphor War, and learned that William Pickering and La Gendre were also key figures in starting the Camphor War.
In 1863, Qing realized how profitable camphor trade actually is, and since Taiwan has the largest camphor export in the world, the Qing government wanted a larger piece of pie. At the time the British had a camphor trade monopoly on the island, and the locals weren’t happy about that and demanded the government to do something. So the Qing declared all camphor trade will have to go through the Qing government.
The British, including William Pickering ignored the new decree for as long as they could, but eventually Qing soldiers began seizing camphor from the British. William Pickering and Qing soldiers were injured in the process.
This is all before the Rover incident, which took place on March 12 1867.
By 1868, things got so bad, when Charles W. Le Gendre came to Taiwan, he tried to mitigate between the Qing and British, but the talks fell apart.
So the British decided to force the issue, and sent Lieutenant Gurdon to take HMS Algrine and HMS Bustard from Hong Kong to Takao. The ships then moved to Anping (former Dutch Fort Zeelandia) and opened fire on the fort on November 25 1868. Qing forces in the area rushed to reinforce the defense of the fort, but the British forces landed at night took the defending Qing army by surprise. The rout was so complete that the Qing commanding officer Jiang Guo-zhen took poison to avoid capture.
After the British sacked Anping, the British informed the Qing government that if they can not freely conduct camphor trade in Taiwan, then they would annex the entire island. The Qing was forced to sign the Camphor Treaty on November 29 1868.
Kinda wish Qing had insisted not opening up camphor trade. History would have been very different.
Quick update for all of you interested in this project. We are still shooting all over the Kenting area. It’s tough sledding as the weather can really play havoc with the schedule. We’ve been at it for over 3 months and so far, I only have 10 days of actual shooting in the can.
The cast is incredible. They are acting the shit outta this beast. Forrest (Dieh Mei) and Sean (Wen Jie) are speaking 5 and 4 languages respectively. Andrew (Pickering) and Fabio (LeGendre) rock every scene. But it’s the actors playing the main aboriginal chieftains, wives and warriors that are stealing the show. Shout out also to all the extras who arrive for makeup at 3AM, and spend the day carrying my fat ass back and forth over slippery, rocky terrain (and have yet to drop me) that are the true heroes.
That all said, the crew outshines us all. Dedicated, efficient and seemingly tireless as, each and every day, they slog booms and dollies up and down precarious slopes all over the jungles of PingTung county. The stress on them must be intense, but you wouldn’t know it from their work ethic.
All and all, even though getting to work requires more than 5 hours of travel each way, this is the greatest adventure of my long life.
And that’s a wrap. It was a long slog with far too much time spent travelling but ultimately worth every second of it.
Viewers should have fun watching for the continuity of my gut. Back in early September, after our fitting, I got a message from the casting people that the costume department requested I lose 10-15 kgs. Slighty insulted, I basically ignored them, knowing they would adjust the costumes to fit me.
Then, on my 2nd day of shooting in mid-September, we spent the day on a little creek deep in the hills of central Kenting. Le Gendre and I were being carried up the creek in a bamboo sedan chair. I would guess that the two extras playing my litter coolies had to hoist me up about 40x that day.
So I get another message from casting telling me that my front coolie quit. Now I felt really bad. so I changed my diet to one large salad a day and lots of coffee.
Anyway, I have managed to drop about 12 kgs. My friends tell it me it is very noticeable. So watch for that. Should be quite remarkable.
All that aside, this will be a remarkable show. 99% sure it will be carried on Netflix and released in December.
I also seem to have been in many shots bent over with my ass facing the camera. Might be a fun drinking game.
Yes and no. I seemed to have crushed my meniscus during the first day of shooting during which we spent the better part of the day running around in thigh deep water. 3 steroid shots and a draining of 50ccs of bloody fluid later, I am slated for surgery in 5 days. If it weren’t for the Tramadol, I never would have made it through.
For some reason, the drama decided to change its name, mainly its Chinese name. Apparently for whatever reason, some people took offense to the name 傀儡花.
PTS is holding a public naming competition.
One possible reason I heard is that at one time, Qing Chinese people applied the name 傀儡 to pretty much all Aborigines living in the mountains of Southern Taiwan, even though the name is a translation for a Paiwan tribe Karisi. Therefore the Rukai people have a strong dislike for the name 傀儡. Although in a historic context, especially when talking about the Rover incident, the name is totally valid. As most Aborigines involved are Paiwan, and only Paiwan in the play would be referred to as 傀儡.
I have a jokey one. It can be renamed as “A-Tok-A”… hear me out…
The leader of Seqalu, the 18-village Paiwan Alliance, is called Tok-a-Tok in the treaty that the US signed with him. His name in Taigi at the time was Tok Kí-tok (卓杞篤). His actual Paiwan name is now read as Cuqicuq (IPA:/tsuqitsuq/) Garuljigulj. Given that /t/ → /ts/ sound change is incredibly prevalent, it is likely that at the time his name was pronounced as /toq-i-toq/. If a Taigi speaker were to given him a nick name, it could easily be A-tok-a.
The drama also happened to feature a bunch of foreigners in Taiwan. So, it’s fitting?
