I humbly submit that 台端’s point is 部分有理由，部分無理由。
Yup. It died when the KMT retreated. CCP killed it in the mainland while the people in Taiwan has developed culture of it’s own since. I have no desire like the PRC to re imagine the 5000 years of chinese culture they themselves destroyed as their own. Not to mention it’s more like 4000 as the Xia dynasty probably was a myth imo.
I just like to say it, because it’s something that messes with the CCP since it’s true Taiwan has maintained more of the Chinese culture of the past than they did.
I think you put it better than I did. China no longer exists. Most traditions were destroyed in Mainland China. They built a whole new system.
I like the way you write 
This is also not a good analogy since Hong Kong was part of “China” for a much longer time. Like I said the “ China” concept is complicated. And as I was trying to explain the logic behind “Taiwan is more China than China”, I couldn’t really avoid using such analogy, could I?
No you didn’t got me right. And btw not all simplified Chinese are 異體字, some of them are made up. And sometimes they’d just kill the word that was believed too complicated for chinese to learn. 後來 =>后來/ 頭髮=>头发
“Afterwards” becomes “here comes the queen”, “head hair” becomes “head happens”.
This is more unacceptable than spelling color instead of colour. ( this is a joke of course , and my phone just autocorrected colour into color lol)
Mainstream religions are also harassed by Chinese government. Doesn’t matter what religion you believe in, it only matters if it has a good connection with the government. And the temples you see there, are more of a tourist spot than a temple. If you’ve been to a Taiwanese temple or actually any other temple in Asia, you could tell if the gods are being worshiped.
And if you’re in CCP you are not allowed have a religion. you know what that means in China? Lots of people joined CCP just so they wouldn’t have any problem when they’re getting promoted. Or just to avoid trouble.
Most Chinese people are atheist now. And why is that so? Were there that much atheist before PRC? This have something to do with the cultural revolution.
It’s called cultural revolution for a reason. They get rid of the culture, and religion is part of culture.
You know they actually do list some legal religions that’s allowed in China. one of them is called Islam and we all know how that goes.
I read a news about how Chinese government harasses Dalai Lama s reincarnation so much he decided not to do it anymore. And China wouldn’t even give him that.i didn’t write this to prove a point, I just thought it was funny.
They try so hard to show the world how “chinese” they are, while they continue destroying everything that’s traditional in their country.
Judging China by what they say instead of what they do is how we got ourselves here in this crazy pandemic.
thanks for the input. do you know of other historical sites in kaohsiung?
it’d be quite interesting to learn of more places.
i’ve been to cijin quite a few times but if you don’t know what to look for, it’s easy to pass by those little gems. looking at the pictures from this particular temple i would’ve never guessed it was that old.
Here is 300 years old, short walk from the temple Cihou Fort - Wikipedia
Not as old: 150+ year, but worth a visit:
Former British Consulate at Takao - Wikipedia
In Tainan, built by the Dutch: Fort Zeelandia (Taiwan) - Wikipedia
What Taiwanese person thinks they descended from the Tang? Taiwanese all have detailed genealogies.
No they don’t
Whom do you hang out with? Both sides of my family can easily trace to when they left China, and beyond. That’s the rule not the exception. Genealogy is a common cultural practice.
In China, they were destroyed in the cultural revolution.
The only issue is it only follows male lines.
To when they left China isn’t exactly a strong genealogy is it.
That’s a good question. I don’t know of anyone. Ming, yes. I think the association with the Tang is vague and folkloric, but persists in some linguistic grammatical forms. In any event, some Taiwanese will mention the association to “prove” Taiwan is more authentically “China than China”. It’s a bit of nonsense really, or a construction of reality, but isn’t everything?
The Cultural Revolution gets a bad rap, and for good reasons. At the time, it was considered a brave experiment by many on the left. It seemed to quickly lapse into a moronic personality cult with all reason out the window. What is interesting, however, is that despite the lamentable dictatorship of the CCP a lot of what we might call “Chinese culture” persists in China. One example is Chinese scholarship. Scholars in China are in many ways the conscience of the country, which is why they were and are targeted by political authority. But they are very good. There are a lot of decent people in China. They are Chinese culture, OK.
You missed the “and beyond” part. It goes back 200-300 years.
Anyway, “Tang people” is an alternative appellation for “Han people.” So all Chinese people are “Tang people.”
Chinatown is called 唐人街。
That’s not how Tang is used in this context. Don’t be obtuse. 
I don’t think this is quite an apt analogy. Orientals value the past a lot more.
i agree with everything else you say but this is simply not true. its a lot of chinese, and a little bit of japanese. and the chinese part can now be identified as taiwanese. nothing wrong with that.
And as for the topic, yes china is china, so sure, you can say china now has every right to claim they are the true chinese culture. i do believe though that they lost a great deal after the ccp came to power. theres some great footage from the 1950s and 1970s and the difference is depressingly obvious.
The vast majority of Taiwanese do not have a detailed genealogy because the majority of them are sinicized Plains Aboriginals. Most of them have some form of genealogy, but those were usually fabricated for the family to blend into a Han dominant society.
As a result most of them sounds incredibly generic. Sometimes with place names that doesn’t and didn’t exist in China. Even for those with a traceable “ancestral home” in China, it often ends with the first person that came to Taiwan. If they have anything beyond that, it defaults to some famous historical figure bearing the family name, and becomes incredibly generic.
To be honest when I said this I didn’t think of the proportion…
I was just saying that we’re Taiwanese, not chinese not Japanese nor any other things.
I only agree with the statement “Taiwan is more China than China”, not because we are very much like China, but because PRC is waaaaaay too far from China.
I too personally don’t know anyone identifies as a descendent from the tang. Both sides of my family could trace back to the first person that came to Taiwan. My moms side is particularly “pure bred”, although I really doubt that since her side of the family somehow looks Caucasian… my great great (great?) grandpa was said to look like ronald Reagan. I think I’m the 23 generation in my family. So it probably dates back to the Míng dynasty. But nothing more than that. Now my family goes to China every few decades to 祭祖. And from their we find the full genealogy, that is, if not destroyed during the cultural revolution.
I think the character “tang” in 唐人街 has a different meaning. Just like 老 in 老師、老虎 doesn’t actually means “old”. 唐 could mean 唐山, originally a place in China, now refering to the whole China region. We also have the saying “唐山過台灣“, describing how our ancestors came through everything and finally got here.
Yea if you ever wonder why Taiwan doesn’t call Chinese “Chinese”. It’s called “national language”.
Simplified Chinese is a CCP perversion of Chinese, both because Mao thinks Chinese culture holds back the communist utopia, but also they hoped to promote literacy by making Chinese easier. But it just ends up becoming a mess of a language where the word for dry, do, and f*** are all one word, leading to some funny translations by lazy bosses who doesn’t want to pay for a proper translation. Anyone in China who cares about looks will not write in simplified so a number of people still know traditional Chinese (particularly artists). Like you don’t see Chinese people ever tattoo simplified Chinese onto their bodies… only Westerners do that.