From: wung@eecom.gatech.edu (Peter Wung)
Subject: Re: Oct. 1 or Oct. 10, which is the more i
Reply-To: wung@eecom.gatech.edu
Organization: School of EE, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 22:05:14 GMT

In article 25072@beaver.cs.washington.edu, chou@cs.washington.edu (Pai Hsiang Chou) writes:
>|In article <1992Oct13.213409.15531@ee.gatech.edu> wung@puttgen.ee.gatech.edu writes:
>|>In article 10018@zip.eecs.umich.edu, cyc@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Yi-Chieh Chang) writes:
>|>>|Two possibities, if Taiwan was ruled by Japanese after WWII, Taiwan will be
>|>>|close to what Japan is now, or if Taiwan was governed by U.S., Taiwan will
>|>>|close to what U.S. is now. Both possibilities are much better off than
>|>>|what Taiwan is now.  So, what is the point to thank old Chiang ?
>|>>|
>|>>|Yi-Chieh
>|>
>|>Either way, the people on Taiwan would be speaking a foreign language, 
>|
>|Under 50 years of Japanese rule, Taiwanese mothertongues
>|survived.  Yet under less than 50 years of Chinese rule,
>|Taiwanese mothertongues are dying.  Why?
>|
>|

In my albeit brief visit to Taiwan six years ago, I find Taiwanese the de facto
language of commerce and business.  So don't give me this dying of the mothertongue
BS.  Besides, it is in the same system as mandarin.  Whereas Japanes or English are NOT
in the same system.  In fact I was castigated by the cabbies because I did not speak Taiwanese.  This branded me as a mainlander, which gave them carte blanche to swindle
me out of the cab fare by taking me around the longest way possible.  It wasn't until after I said that I came from the US that they gave me any kind of a fair shake.


>|>living as second class citizens in a society where their needs are NOT 
>|>the primary concerns of the government,
>|
>|
>|In TV programs (even till this day!!) people speaking with
>|a non-Mandarin accent are portrayed as people with no
>|class, no taste.  People learn at least 6 years of English
>|in school, and some people start learning their ABCs in kindergarten;
>|yet there is still no official education in the mothertongues.

This I will agree with to a certain extent.


>|This is effectively forcing Taiwanese into second or third class
>|citizen status by imposing a linguistic and social handicap.
>|Taiwanese have been imposed a false identity which denies who
>|they really are.  Many grandchildren cannot communicate with
>|their grandparents.  The result is a cultural vacuum.
>|

By what I have seen, if you don't speak Taiwanese, you can not survive in Taiwan.
My experiences have been that almost everyone speaks Taiwanese.

>|
>|
>|>and any chinese heritage that 
>|>people on Taiwan has ever claimed would be forever lost.
>|
>|Without one's mothertongue, one loses the cultural link to
>|one's heritage.  Is Taiwanese heritage any less "proper"
>|than Chinese heritage?  Prime Minister Hao says "I love
>|Taiwan, yet I love China even more."  This is like saying
>|"I love my wife, yet I love another woman even more."
>|Is this not the attitude of a colonizer?

Well, looking at it from a purely historical viewpoint, the Taiwanese heritage 
you speak so fondly of is based, to a large part, on a chinese heritage that is 
5000 years old.  Now granted, the Taiwanese heritage has been developing on
its own for a few years now, but nowhere near the development where you can distinctly say that the Chinese and Taiwanese heritages are completely different.  Maybe
you should come back in a few hundred years and you might have a valid arguement.

---
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*Peter Wung			Email:wung@ee.gatech.edu	   * 
*Electric Power Laboratory	Snail mail: 33787 Ga. Tech Station * 
*School of Electrical Engineering	    Atlanta, GA 30332      *
*Georgia Institute of Technology			    	   *
*Atlanta, Georgia						   *
*   	"Pass, Set, CRUSH!"...					   * 
*  	Well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad for a short, fat guy. 	   *
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.taiwan