Talk:Taiwanese people/Archive 1

message: I have moved the content from Taiwanese which was an overloaded disambiguation page.  I have marked it POV, which does not mean I disagree with the whole of the content, but that it is not "neutral" in the Wikipedia sense.  I think the original author tried too hard to make a case which could be easily made in a more elegant way. – Kaihsu 17:56, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not that TI people refuse to learn to read Chinese characters, they refuse to learn simplified Chinese characters(used in China). They know how to read traditional Chinese characters(used in Taiwan and most Chinese speaking countires). Mshih 20:07, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

text: What the devils are you talking about? lol. Don't you know anything about Taiwan? It's government and academic institutions all use the term "Han Chinese" or "Chinese" to describe Hoklo, Hakka, and mainlander groups. Go check it yourself. Pulling out the PRC card is starting to get old and ridiculous. So many political lunatics out there... — Nrtm81 20:03, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Section Break 

message: These should be included as listed for the following reasons:
1) During the Treaty of Shimonoseki Kinmen and Matsu were not included as Japanese posessions and thus could not form an ideneity as a part of Japanese Formosa, the event which gave rise to a common feeling of Taiwaneseness among colonial subjects. 
2) These terms are used officially by the R.O.C. in international organizations.
3) Only after 1949 were the four island groups united under a single polity.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Maowang (talk • contribs) 01:15, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu

message: Thanks for making the changes. Appreciate your consideration on this sensitive matter. However, by labelling all Taiwanese as Chinese, you are continuing the propaganda started by KMT that have indoctrinated the islands people for the past 50 years. If you could just use what is listed on the CIA World Factbook, that would be the best. There, they list Ethnic groups as follows: Taiwanese (including Hakka) 84%, mainland Chinese 14%, aborigine 2%. Here is the link if you want to see. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tw.html That is the most neutral position. Labelling Taiwanese as Chinese only plays into the hands of the mainland Chinese on Taiwan who desire reunification and the People's Republic of China who want to take over the island and expand their Chinese hegemony. Had the Japanese won World War II, most Taiwanese would probably be Japanese today. In fact, many Taiwanese before WWII were already speaking Japanese at home and had changed their surnames to Japanese. So it all depends on who the colonizers are. But as a native Taiwanese who speaks the language fluently, let me just say that linguistically, Taiwanese is so different from Mandarin that the speaker of one cannot comprehend the other. The difference is greater than that between Spanish and French, or English and German. For example, Hoklo language uses 8 tones and uses a lot of nasal sounds while mandarin uses only 4 tones and no nasal. Completely different language. So if language is a major part of culture, it is hard to make the case that Taiwanese are Chinese. Before the end of World War II, the majority of people in Taiwan did not speak Mandarin. They spoke Taiwanese. So their original ethnicity is Taiwanese, even though the KMT colonizers forced the population to learn and speak Chinese. I guess we will have more of this discussion in the future. -- 71.106.149.53
:There are many people in the Fujian province, mainland China who also speak the so called Hoklo language, but they never doubt the truth that they are Chinese. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sinolonghai (talk • contribs) 00:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, saying that only Taiwanese aborigines can be called the Taiwanese people is just like saying only the native Americans can be called the American people, which is not true.--Jerrypp772000 12:08, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Taiwanese are not Chinese 

message: * Taiwanese language is a misconception. It is actually Hokkien language (閩南語) which is a Chinese language (dialect/language, whatever people like to call it).
* Language/Culture/Religion of Taiwanese (Hoklo & Hakka) is Chinese language, Chinese culture, Chinese religion.
* "Taiwanese person" (臺灣人) is no different than "Cantonese person" (廣東人), "North-easterner" (東北人) who do not deny being Chinese. Thai-Chinese and Singaporean-Chinese  who are closest to Taiwanese (Hoklo & Hakka) people, also identify themselves as Chinese. They do not deny being Chinese.
* Technically, "Taiwanese person" should only refer to the aboriginals who are the true Taiwanese. The word "Taiwan" comes from their (aboriginal) language as do many places in Taiwan such as Wanhua district which comes from aboriginal word Bangka (Chinese transliteration of this word uses the "boat" radical (舟) and phonetics 艋舺).
* The aboriginals are the only ethnic group that is actually non-Chinese, their language is not Chinese, their culture is not Chinese, and their religion is not Chinese (Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc). They have a seperate identity from "Taiwanese" (Hoklo & Hakka).
The only reason Minnan has been referred to as a Chinese dialect is because the Taiwanese continued to use Han characters for their written language, having not established a written language of their own(the Taiwanese Romanization System is still being developed as we speak). However, since Japanese in the 17th century also used exclusively Han characters, why not call Japanese a Chinese dialect. As I said earlier, Hoklo language is totally different from Mandarin just as Japanese is different from Mandarin. Of course, like Japanese, there are some loan words from Chinese, but many Taiwanese words include loan words from Japanese as well. In fact, most of the terms relating to politics such as Democracy or freedom were first invented by the Japanese.
Also, most Taiwanese 20 years ago did not like to call themselves Taiwanese. They wanted to call themselves Formosans. So maybe we should use the term to describe Taiwanese, if you want to call aboriginals Taiwanese.
Finally, as genetic research would show, the aboriginals also originally came from the mainland and were also one of the Yueh tribes. The only difference between the aboriginals and the Hoklo/Hakka is that the aboriginals arrived in Taiwan 6000 years ago whereas the Hakka/Hoklo probably 1000 years ago. So, in a sense, the aboriginals and the Hakka/Hoklo share distant relatives of the Yueh. Remember, the Yueh people were seafarers, so the immigration of Hoklo/Hakka to Taiwan (Formosa)began much earlier than people think. When the Portuguese discovered Taiwan, there were already many Hoklo and Hakka settlements and who knew how long they had been there. Perhaps the people were already there 500 to 600 years prior to the Portuguese in 1600s.
:Yes but we need to provide the sources of such research. We can't just say "oh I read it somewhere so it must be true". Who wrote the research? Who published it? Is the source reliable? Is the source neutral or politically motivated?
:Oh and by the way, that Taipei Times article  is not acceptable because it is an "editorial" i.e. user opinion. A "Patrick Cowsill" wrote his opinion "Research tells us that 88 percent of the population has some Aboriginal blood, so we know that there is no pure Han super-race here." What research? Also "Han Chinese" is not a race. I've said it before, how can 1.3 billion Chinese be one race? It's an identity to do with Chinese culture, writing, language, etc. Why are Hoklo and Hakka seperate? Are they not mixed with each other and aborigines? It's funny that an identity of Taiwanese has to distinguish the Chinese as three groups. In the politically motivated sense, Hoklo think they are the only Taiwanese because Minnan dialect is called "Taiwanese", despite Hakka and aboriginal languages. Very weird if you ask me. — Nrtm81 09:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We need to make a distinction here between huaren (Chinese in culture / ethnicity) and zhongguoren (Chinese in nationality). There is no dispute as far as the former is concerned, in fact Taiwanese consider Taiwan as a sort of refuge of Chinese culture away from the communist onslaught. The real dispute is with the latter. All those surveys are also about the latter: are you zhongguoren or taiwanren or both? If the survey was changed to huaren, the results would be completely different... in fact the pro-unification people would probably reject huaren because it sounds like "Overseas Chinese". -- ran (talk) 19:07, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

text: De-sinicization? You've gotta be joking. That would mean you completely abandon Chinese culture. Only 原住民 can demand de-sinicization. They don't want you 98% Chinese in Taiwan in the first place. You hijacked their native land and identity. What's this bullshit about 臺灣話? You use 閩南語 (Chinese dialect) and call it Taiwanese (language). What a slap in the face to everyone in Taiwan. You have just admitted you are here for political reasons. Go write in your blog instead of messing around in Wikipedia. "Taiwanese nationalism"? lol, more like Hoklo hijacking of Taiwan as usual. — Nrtm81 00:08, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Identity

message: Please help improve this article. Yes, I agree the terms "pure" is biased (It has been in this article since its creation). We need to reflect the present view that Hoklo, Hakka, Mainlander are grouped together under Han Chinese (Both the ROC governmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Taiwanese_people&action=edit#ent, and all academic institutions use this view). We also need to reflect the movement for Taiwanese national identity and independence and the arguments they use against being identified as Chinese as a result of differing colonial periods (Dutch, Tungning, Qing, Japanese, KMT) and the social interaction/integration of the four ethnic groups to create a local Taiwanese cultural identity. I found this article  which touches upon these topics. — Nrtm81 09:49, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: Let's do us all a big favor and start including sources. I recognize Taichungren's argument as being of the David Chou/Richard Hartzell ilk, but I am tempted to erase it without sources. If we can back up our contributions with GOOD sources, we can diffuse many of the arguments that arise when discussing a subject that cuts so close to so many people... especially identity and colonizing identities. See you at P.J.'s! ;)
If anyone is in Taichung, I'd be happy to open my library.Maowang 06:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources 

message: I think this page has achieved a degree of neutrality to get rid of the POV tag. It is always difficult when dealing with national, ethnic, self identity and colonizing identities. 
We have since opened up the page to the understanding of identity and added solid sources, studies, dates and poll figures. I think this greatly reduces POV conflict. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Maowang (talk • contribs) 00:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutrality 

message: Excluding an estimated 1,000,000 non ROC nationals in the population of the "People on Taiwan" not only renders this page inaccurate, it is also racist.
There is no place for racism on Wikipedia! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Taichung Ren (talk • contribs).
:I removed the stuff about the disenfranchisement, since countries usually don't allow non-citizens to vote. Jumping cheese Cont@ct 06:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New Taiwanese

message: Some time in the next 2 or 3 weeks, I would be happy to standardize the refs on this page using the same templates used on Taiwanese aborigines. Any objections...? --Ling.Nut 23:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  standardized refs using templates 

message: I moved the "Maowang" subpage of this article, which apparently wasn't even created by Maowang, to User:Ling.Nut/Taiwanese people/Maowang. :-) 
The main reason I did so is 'cause I'm anal about not having subpages in mainspace (es ist verboten). It does have a graphic on it and perhaps some useful info.. (?) --Ling.Nut 11:19, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moved the "Maowang" page 

message: Ummm. This is news to me:
"...heavy grammatical influence from indigenous Austronesian languages."
Cites, please? I'm removing it until someone can verify.
--Ling.Nut 20:04, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "heavy grammatical influence"