Plains-tribes Austronesians make up the majority of Taiwan's population

This week I visited the Taiwan Shop in Taipei across from National Taiwan University and I found many books about the Austronesian plains tribes that were eventually forced to assimilate with the Han immigrants under the Manchu empire. They often are called the Pingpu.

If one actually stopped to consider, almost all of the Hoklo Taiwanese and Hakka Taiwanese have Pingpu ancestry. The majority of people in Taiwan today are descendants of the Austronesian whether Pingpu or East Coast and High Mountain peoples. Why are Austronesians in Taiwan only numbered at 2 percent of the population? Did they stop having children? No. But those who lived among the Han peoples on the west coast in the past 300 years and also those moved to the cities and began going to Mandarin language schools in the past century eventually were assimilated into the dominant culture.

Some of these descendants of Pingpu peoples are trying to regain their cultural distinctives. An article in the Taipei Times this week shows how the recognized Austronesian tribes would like to welcome them, but certain government officials are trying to drive a wedge between the plains tribe Austronesian descendants and the Central Mountain and East Coast recognized tribes.

Part of the motivation may be to try to discourage identification with a non-Chinese culture because that would expand the legitimacy of Taiwan's distinct status and make it clear to the world that China has no right to claim Taiwan. Imagine if Taiwan were classified at 60 percent Austronesian (genetic studies would put the number higher). That would leave the "pure-blood" Han Chinese as an ethnic minority and people would start thinking of Taiwan as they think of Malaysia or Indonesia that has a large ethnic Chinese minority. No one believes China has a right to claim these countries.

Also found at the Taiwan Shop was a new work in the plains-tribe Austronesian Siraya language published in 2002 by Edgar Macapili. Mr. Macapili writes his own version of the story of Noah's Ark in the Siraya language, called "Ta Avang ki Noe-an." The book also carries Mandarin and English translations. His story concludes with a hopeful tone of a new earth to live in. One can understand this hope in the hearts of the assimilated Pingpu plains Austronesian tribes: that one day they may walk this land with the names and languages of their ancestors instead of always being under a forced alien culture and language.

I quote the opening:

"Ka si-uru-uru tu naunamu ki way k'ata, nipey-ring-ey pa-ilpugh ta ti Alid ki vulu-vulum ka nay apa. Ni pakavantaw tin k'ana ta imεd ki kamamangka aku-kawagh-εn: ki irang, usi-using apa, ni-maran, ni-munonang ka ni-saw-abigh-apa. Ni murila ka pa-kaw'h-'mha-ato k'ana tu purugh tumang ka na vavare ki mariang-amighki vare, ka ududo ki matikanagh ku ralum."

The name for God is: "Meirang Alid"

English: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth. He filled it with life that jump, walk, hop and fly; green, red, short, long, circle and all kinds of colors and shape. They all dwelt and grew in the land where blew fresh cool breezes and flowed clean ocean water. Blossom and fragrance of grasses filled the air. There were sweet as well as sour fruits, also all kinds of vegetables grew in different seasons. All things were good and beautiful."

... [full text; this story was turned into a musical to be performed at schools; see the song lyrics; blog of the struggle of the Siraya people]

Both at the Taiwan Shop and at the nearby SMC Publishing there are dictionaries of some of the plains tribe languages now almost lost -- including Siraya (Sinkang dialect), Pazeh, etc. Also there are many language resources for the Austronesian languages in Taiwan -- all of them are endangered because of the government of Taiwan's insistence on using Mandarin as the only language of instruction in the public schools.

Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan's current president, has moved recently to downgrade even the one-hour per week "local" language class. Now these classes have been classified as extra-curricular languages -- like foreign languages and have been put into competition with English. Faced with the decision of whether to have one's child learn English or some rapidly disappearing language, what would most parents in Taiwan choose? Without actually abolishing the classes, Ma's government has taken steps to destroy them. Without a consistent steady class offering, those language teachers who teach these local languages will not be able to earn enough to make a living and so basically there will be fewer teachers able to teach the languages in future years as we begin to see losses from the current group of language teachers.

What needs to happen is what happens in Ireland and Wales: Elementary schools for each township with its local language should be offering at least half of all academic instruction in the local language. Signs in the communities should be bi-lingual -- the local language and also Mandarin. These non-Mandarin languages and cultures need to be shown respect.

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The following video shows Edgar Macapili's performance of a Siraya song, "Spring forth Siraya":




Pictures from the 2008 Siraya conference: (You'll notice how the Siraya from this township had already taken on many of the dominant Han culture -- Hoklo's -- cultural elements including architecture and way of life:



News report on the Siraya dictionary compilation. The language had been basically extinct with the Siraya people using Hoklo Taiwanese. TITV reports that the only extant remnant of the language was that a few old folks remembered a few expressions in Siraya.



Children's Choir singing in Siraya:




On their fight for recognition. (Notice that many in their discussion are speaking Taiwanese and Mandarin.)



One Siraya interviewee said that the government's "Council for Indigenous People" under the current Ma administration has a function to "eliminate" indigenous people. Some Seediq peoples and other recognized Austronesian groups joined the protest. One of the Pazeh Pingpu people also was interviewed:

The real story of the settlement of Taiwan's peoples

Many people have been taught the often repeated myth that goes like this: The Austronesian aboriginal tribes used to live in the plains of Taiwan. But then the Hakka came across the Taiwan Strait from China and pushed them back to the foothills. Then the Fujianese (Hoklo) came and pushed the Hakka to the foothills and the Austronesians to the mountains where they began to be called the "mountain tribes." This simplistic myth was probably pushed by the KMT dictatorship era to safeguard the prestige and claimed ethnic superiority of Han Chinese, to somehow say that the Chinese-derived language speakers of Taiwan have always been "Chinese," "blood is thicker than water," and all those claims to somehow say that Taiwan belongs to China.

This whole caricature of Taiwanese history is simply not true. Recent genetic studies have shown that 80 percent of Taiwan's population also have Austronesian ancestry (basically all of those who did not come over with the Chinese refugees in 1949).

Here is a more accurate account of Taiwan's history. Before Chinese immigrants came to Taiwan, Taiwan's mountains, foothills and plains were already populated by a multitude of Austronesian tribes and languages. Population density was varied, but there were settlements in every type of area of Taiwan.

First the Dutch came in the early 1600's and began to exert control over some parts of western Taiwan. They wanted a steady tax base, so they imported mostly Fujianese (Hoklo) laborers along with water buffalo to create an intensive rice agricultural economy in the flatlands. Before this time, there was no significant Chinese presence. Chinese pirates maintained a few bases in estuaries on the west coast.

At the end of the Dutch era, along with Koxinga, Hoklo immigrants came in greater numbers. By the 1700's Taiwan's west coast had come under the control of the Manchu empire. The Manchu regime did not want Chinese immigrants to settle in Taiwan so they only allowed men without their families to cross the Taiwan Strait to work. So naturally these men took Austronesian wives. Also, as the Chinese population grew in Taiwan, it became the dominant culture and the plains tribes gradually were assimilated and took on Chinese surnames. Various Hakka groups also crossed the Taiwan Strait and as they were already used to an upland economy based on mining and indigo and the farming of other upland crops, they came and settled the cheap wastelands of the hills, but were able to make them productive. There was some dislocation of Austronesian tribes, but on the whole the Austronesian plains tribes did not move to the mountains; they assimilated and became what is now the Hoklo and Hakka speaking populations of the majority of the people of Taiwan, now called "Taiwanese". Examples include the Siraya, Pazeh, Ketagalan, Kavalan, etc. to name a few.

Here is an article about how the Pazeh Austronesian tribe that assimilated in the early 1900's is seeking now to take back their language and culture.

A similar thing is happening in Tainan with descendents of the assimilated Siraya tribes who took on very unique Chinese surnames when they lost their own cultures. On July 4-7, 2008, they gathered to plan on reviving the now dead Sinkang Siraya language that their ancestor's spoke. They have begun publishing material in Siraya. You can see here how they realize that a language in these present times must be written, not just spoken, to have a hope of being revived. [Contact information: Uma Talavan (06)580.0992 , musuhapa at hotmail.com]


Here is a link to the map of Taiwan showing the distribution of Austronesian languages, even the ones that were culturally obliterated by Sinification.