收藏
二手徵求有驚喜
Foreword to the Special Issue on Taiwan's Island Vision
Kuo-ch'ing Tu
Geographically, Taiwan is located in southeast Asia, separated from mainland China by the Taiwan Strait to the west while the Pacific Ocean lies to the east. To the south, the Bashi Strait runs between Taiwan and the Philippines, and to the north is the East China Sea. The Ryukyu Islands are situated to the northeast. Taiwan’s total area is 36,188 square kilometers, with a length of 394 kilometers from north to south, mountains and hills accounting for about two-thirds of the total area. The island is long and narrow from north to south, with a topography that is high in the east and low in the west, as the central mountain range runs from north to south. The east coast has steep mountains and the west coast is dominated by hills, basins, plateaus, and plains. On a map, Taiwan looks like a sweet potato standing upright from north to south. Viewed from the east-west direction, it looks like a whale swimming leisurely in the sea. In literary works, sweet potatoes and whales are often used as symbols of Taiwan.
Since the opening of connections between the East and the West, Taiwan has been part of the important sea route that must be passed through when traveling north and south to the surrounding lands. Taiwan is separated from mainland China by just a narrow strip of water. The Taiwan Strait is about 300 kilometers long from north to south, with an average width of 180 kilometers and about 130 kilometers at its narrowest point. Historically, Taiwan and China have had a shifting, difficult relationship, which has been a focus of research in Taiwan studies.
In July of 2003, this journal provided an overview of the historical background of Taiwanese literature in the special issue“Taiwan Literature and History” (No. 13). To put it simply, in addition to the Indigenous peoples who have lived in Taiwan for six to seven thousand years, the residents of Taiwan are mainly Han (ethnic Chinese) people who have immigrated from mainland China since the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. It is generally believed that Taiwan first entered the world’s field of vision when Portuguese sailors suddenly saw it during a northward trade voyage in 1544 and exclaimed, “Ilha Formosa!” (Beautiful Island). This was later followed by the arrival of Spanish and Dutch merchants, after which Taiwan served as a base for colonial trade operations.The Spanish controlled northern Taiwan for sixteen years (1626–1642), while the Dutch first occupied southern Taiwan before moving north to expel the Spanish and occupy northern Taiwan as well, ruling for thirty-eight years. Dutch colonial rule (1624–1662) can be considered Taiwan’s first experience of foreign power.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Zheng Chenggong expelled the Dutch and established Taiwan as a base to fight against the Qing Dynasty in his effort to restore the Ming. In 1662, Zheng Chenggong died, and his son Zheng Jing succeeded to the throne, styling himself the “King of Dongning.” This can be said to be the first and only dynasty established in Taiwan by the Han people in the history of Taiwan. This Zheng dynasty comprised three rulers and lasted for twenty-one years (1662–1683). In 1683 (the twenty-second year of the Qing Emperor Kangxi’s reign), Taiwan was incorporated into the territory of the Qing Dynasty. After the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the defeated Qing government ceded Taiwan to Japan, after which Taiwan became a Japanese colony for fifty years until 1945.
With his invasion of Taiwan in the mid-17th century, Zheng Chenggong brought tens of thousands of troops and dependents, as well as a large number of Han people, including Hokkien and Hakkas, to Taiwan. This represented the first phase of Han immigration to the island. During the Japanese colonial period, these Han people were generally called “Taiwanese,” in contrast to the Japanese colonizers. Aside from Indigenous peoples, Taiwan is a society of immigrants. Most of the early Hokkien and Hakka people came from Fujian and Guangdong in mainland China. Due to Taiwan’s geographical location, so close to mainland China, there was constant exchange between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait in early times and no significant differences in living customs, language, and culture. However, during the fifty years of Japanese colonial rule, the Taiwanese people participated in Japan’s modernization process and also created a history of anti-colonial struggle, events not experienced by people of the same culture and ethnicity in mainland China. This is a difference that cannot be ignored when discussing the relationship between Taiwan and China.
The second wave of immigration to Taiwan occurred in 1949. With the retreat of the Nationalist government from the mainland, about 1.2 million soldiers and civilians representing ethnic groups from other provinces of China fled to Taiwan. These mainlanders included ethnic minorities, which further contributed to the ethnic and lifestyle diversity of Taiwan’s population, enriching Taiwanese society. In this way also, Taiwan differs from mainland China. After two or three generations, these people from other provinces left the military villages where the Nationalist government had settled them and began to speak Taiwanese, gradually integrating into Taiwanese society and assuming Taiwanese identity.
The third immigration wave occurred after the lifting of martial law in 1987. With political democratization and social opening, Taiwan began to accommodate new immigrants, mostly from Southeast Asia, to meet the economy’s need for labor. Through intermarriage and community participation, these new immigrants broke through language barriers and gradually integrated into Taiwanese society. They began to distinguish themselves in various fields and communities, injecting new vitality into Taiwan’s immigrant society. According to statistics, at the end of February 2023 the population of new immigrants in Taiwan was 579,861, close to that of Indigenous peoples.
These three waves of immigration are ample proof that the island of Taiwan, surrounded by the sea, has always been an open immigrant society with an obvious island character, which is completely different from mainland culture. Exploring the island character of Taiwanese people and elucidating the characteristics this island culture has contributed to Taiwanese literature, adding nuance to our understanding of Taiwanese subjectivity in the global perspective. This is a subject worth exploring in depth. The works selected and translated in this special issue of the Series serve as a starting point from which we hope to provide new perspectives for the international study of Taiwanese literature, i.e., using Taiwan’s island perspective to explore the uniqueness of Taiwanese literature and island culture.
This series has always emphasized the subjectivity of Taiwanese literature, which is based on the subjective consciousness of the Taiwanese people. The cultural background to the development of that consciousness, as well as the formation and changes in Taiwan’s immigrant society, can be observed from a historical perspective and, as mentioned above, the relationship with mainland China cannot be denied. In this special issue on “Taiwan’s Island Vision,” we have switched from a historical perspective to the geographical perspective of Taiwan as an island to select and translate works representing island consciousness.
This conception of the island perspective highlights Taiwan’s geographical characteristics and aims to provide a new landscape and a new domain for the study of Taiwanese literature. Professor Huang Mei-e points out in her introduction that the re-exploration of Taiwanese literature from an island perspective was inspired by the “Island History of Taiwan” advocated by Taiwanese historian Ts’ao Yung-ho (1920–2014), who used island studies as a methodology to highlight the geographical characteristics of islands, and the way in which exchanges and connections with the world are facilitated using the ocean as a medium.
In terms of text selection, Professor Huang’s island perspective is not limited to the main island of Taiwan, but also includes the outer islands of Penghu, Orchid Island, Kinmen, and Matsu. It is based on the political territory of the Republic of China and is significant in that it reflects the actual territorial extent of Taiwan and demonstrates the island consciousness of Taiwan and its outer islands. Her introduction further quotes the island theory of French poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928–2011). Based on the concepts of “archipel” (archipelago) and “poétique de la relation” (poetics of relation), Glissant advocated the “archipelagoization” of mainland culture. In this way, literary space is built upon the relationship between island cultures, and the mixing, interaction, and integration of those cultures, as well as highlighting differences. Regarding the issue of islands and archipelagos, the introduction also quotes the theory of another Pacific Island scholar, Epeli Hau’ofa (1939–2009), who replaced the concept of “islands in a far sea” with the idea of “a sea of islands.” In short, when applied to Taiwan’s islands, the three scholars have common and overlapping views. That is, they would place Taiwan in an international framework and see the ocean as an intermediary to connect the islands with the outside world. Through the ocean, Taiwan can extend its horizons to the world at large and look forward to new prospects on Taiwanese literature and cultural research.
As cultural studies theory, this macroscopic research perspective reminds us of the prehistoric relationship between Taiwanese aborigines and other Austronesian island people. But historical development does not proceed according to theory, and
if we focus on the study of literary history, we may not achieve practical results. The reason is that literary research must be based on the existence of literary works. Without works, there is no way to study them. The island vision of Taiwanese literature must be supported by works of quality and merit. This issue in our series opens a window on the sea. It is expected that more Taiwanese writers will continue to create works with Taiwanese island characteristics. By “wandering from one island to another in the archipelago,” they may break through the geographical restrictions of center and periphery, cross borders, cross oceans, to join the world. This perspective, highlighting Taiwan’s “island character,” can serve as a reference for Taiwan, which is facing globalization, and demonstrate the infinite possibilities of interaction and exchange with the world’s cultures.
2024專利防護中