 Welcome to the Asian Review. I'm your host, Bill Sharpe. Our show today, Are You Chinese or Taiwanese? And our guest is Dr. Evan Dolly, Disney Scholar Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Seneca in Taipei, Taiwan. Evan, great to see you. I'm really glad you could be with us today. And I know your time at Academia Seneca is getting quite short, so you must be thinking about returning to the US and all that. So thank you very much for making time for us. Thank you very much for inviting me to talk to you, Bill. I really appreciate it and delighted to get the chance to do so. Great, great. Well, your research is really interesting, and this is really the kind of stuff that the Institute of Taiwan History really gets into, identity, Taiwanese identity, and what are all the ramifications of it? I mean, it's really a fascinating topic. You have a lot of concern differentiating between ethnic identity and nationalistic identity. And if I'm interpreting you right, you'll really come down on the side of ethnic identity. So why is that? Why is your focus on ethnic identity? OK, sure. It's going to be a bit of a long answer, as these things often are. But to sort of sum it up, I started with the sense that the general narrative of world history that people propose is this process of nation building, the nation-state as the sort of epitome of modernization in political forms. And the nation-state is this new thing, this new entity that combines people and government and territory in really a single unit that has no real parallel in a pre-modern era. And so the history of modern societies in general are talked about as sort of a progression along the road towards building the nation-state or imagining the nation-state. And that has also really been the way in which Taiwan has been studied. Most of the studies of Taiwanese identity have looked at nationalism and a process of imagining a Taiwanese nation. And I'm not really arguing against any of that. I don't think that those ideas or models are wrong. They certainly have been very powerful identities and structures in the modern world. But I did kind of want to look at alternatives to see if there are non-national identities out there. And as I started to think about the relationship between ethnicity and nationality, I realized that a lot of the scholarship on nationalism looks at ethnicity as this sort of pre-modern or primordial identity, something that's inherited, that is innate to people. But then when I was reading about scholars who look at ethnicity, they actually talk about it as constructed in the modern era through processes of border definition or political manipulation. So thinking of ethnicity as also a modern identity, I began to think about, well, what are the differences between ethnicity and nationality? Because they have a lot of things in common. They're both linked to space, territory. Yeah, it seems to me it's pretty hard to separate them. Right. Yeah, no, it does become very difficult to separate them. And really, the main thing that differentiates the two is this idea of the nation-state. The ultimate goal for national identities are creating an autonomous independent nation. But for ethnic identities, the ultimate goal is primarily the protection of the ethnic group, ensuring the survival of that group. It doesn't necessarily have to be connected to a national identity. It can, in fact, be either linked to or autonomous from a national identity. Great. I should really mention right here, right here in the very beginning of our talk, that our guest today has a book that will be coming out in a year or so. It's called Becoming Taiwanese, Ethnic Identity, and the Border of China and Japan. It's being published by Harvard University Press. And I'm certain it'll be available on Amazon and certainly at Harvard University Press this online and you have to make your order. Interesting. Now, I can say that the title might change slightly as it goes through production. But it will definitely be Becoming Taiwanese. So you can look for that. OK, OK, OK. And of course, there's so many people who study about Taiwan. This is a really hot topic. And for Taiwanese, this is a really hot topic. Because we see this sense of Taiwanese identity deep in and deep in and deep in. Now, what's really interesting to me in reading some of the notes that you sent me about your research is you focus a lot on the city of Jilong. Yes. I think it might be interesting to our listeners and our viewers to tell us why. Why is there this focus for Jilong? Yeah, sure, sure. All right, Jilong, any foreign visitors to Taiwan over the last several decades and many people who are permanent residents in Taiwan, natives of Taiwan, don't necessarily know why I would study Jilong either. Because it's not the most developed, exciting city in Taiwan these days. I recently learned that Jilong currently has the highest rate of unemployment and drug use of all of Taiwan's cities. So it's a bit of an economically depressed place now. But that wasn't the case in the first half of the 20th century, which is the period that I primarily focus on. During that period of time, Jilong was actually one of Taiwan's most important cities. It was the third or fourth largest. It was the focus of a lot of developmental projects, really actually going back to the late Qing and then the Japanese period and the nationalist period after. All those governments really focused on developing Jilong as a harbor so that they could then develop and modernize Taiwan as a whole. So Jilong once upon a time was really a significant place. And the processes that went on in Jilong were really both somewhat typical to Taiwan's other cities in this era, but also Jilong was really in the forefront, I think, in a lot of ways. Now at this particular time, and I think you cite the period 1880s, the 1880s and 1950s. Did I understand you right? Jilong is more important than Gaosheng because Gaosheng is usually, in today's world, is usually pointed to as Taiwan's number one port. Yeah, sure. The bedrock of heavy industry, shipbuilding, iron, steel, all that stuff. But in this time, in your time period, that you're concerned with, Jilong ups? Yeah, absolutely. Jilong was the focus for import and export under the Japanese. And then early after 1945, really until 1955 or so, Jilong had the largest volume of trade for Taiwan. Gaosheng sort of surpassed it for exports in the war years, in the late 30s, early 40s. But then Gaosheng was so heavily damaged by the Allied bombing campaign during the late stages of the war that Jilong again sort of resurfaced in the post-war period as the primary port of entry and exit for Taiwan's trade. You know another thing that just kind of jumps into my mind. From a military point of view, Gaosheng has always been very important to the Japanese, to the nationalists, to today's government. Was Jilong, in your period of focus, was it militarily more important than Gaosheng, or did Gaosheng have the advantage there? Gaosheng pretty much always had the advantage there. I mean, not in the very first decades, maybe the first 15 or 20 years of Japanese rule, Jilong was also the focus for military establishment. But because the Japanese focus was on expansion southward from really the 19 teens onwards, that's when Gaosheng became more important as a military installation. And then, as I said, eventually as an export for products heading towards Southeast Asia. And some of the notes you sent me, you talked about the process of identity construction. And there was one point that you mentioned elites and individuals and elites or leaders, leaders of any society helped to form the identity of that society. But one point that really sort of grabbed my attention was where you talked about state-sponsored religion. And I thought, well, I think he means doing Japanese colonialism the role, the importance of fixed to Shinto. Yeah, yeah. And you can still see some Shinto shrines around Taiwan kind of left over from the old days. Yeah, right. Many of them have been repurposed as National Martyr Shrines under the current, well, after 1945. Right. Okay, and okay, besides that, besides the use of Shinto and molding colonial identity by the Japanese, how did like the nationalists, when they first came to Taiwan, how did they use religion to mold an identity that was acceptable to the nationalists? Yeah, well, that's a really great question because religion is really at the heart of identity formation. It's really one of the most important features, if you will, of the way in which Taiwanese became Taiwanese. And if I can step back to give a little bit of background before I get directly to your question, this also relates to the title of the talk today is are you Chinese or Taiwanese? Because the religion or the aspects of religion that became sort of the core of a Taiwanese identity were temples and deities and festivals that came out of the Chinese religious tradition, right? They were brought to Taiwan by settlers during the Qing period and became important parts of their lives during the Qing period. And then during the Japanese period, those were really the institutions and the practices that people rallied around the most to differentiate themselves from the Japanese. Those the Japanese were trying to impose Shinto and also Japanese settlers were trying to institutionalize Japanese Buddhist sects. The people who became Taiwanese really held on to what had been parts of the Chinese religious tradition to define themselves as not Japanese and also as Taiwanese. And then after 1945, the nationalist government, when it arrived, it sort of looked at the religious practices that the people in Taiwan were engaged in and kind of viewed those as superstitious and backwards and unhygienic. These were the sorts of practices that actually the nationalists had been fighting against in the mainland during the 1930s through their new life movement or their new life campaign. So when they arrived in Taiwan, finally, sorry for that long background there, they tried to modify local religious practice, shall we say. They tried to encourage people to practice Buddhism, follow Confucian ideals more closely and also maybe to adopt or to convert to Christianity because that was seen as a modern rational religion instead of an old superstitious religion. Let's try to be a little specific here. Catholicism, Protestantism. I don't suppose the nationalists would have been too big on Presbyterianism because that was sort of the religious bedrock of the Taiwanese liberation movement. So I don't think they would be too interested in that other than to maybe besmirch it. But how about like Methodist Episcopalian? So, right, so the Presbyterians, of course, have had a long established tradition in Taiwan going back to the 19th century. And as you say, it became a key location for the Taiwanese independence movement to develop in Taiwan during the 60s and 70s, even a little earlier. But the nationalists in this case were sort of hamstrung by their own policy, right? Their national policy was for freedom of religion. So they couldn't crack down on the Presbyterian church. They could, however, encourage people to maybe Methodist, I think was seen as a good one to go into. It's not that the nationalists really promoted Christianity the same way. Let me jump in here. I'm being told that we need to take a break, okay? So we'll take a one minute break and we'll be right back and we will continue this conversation exactly from the point where we're leaving off here. Absolutely, thank you. You're watching Asia in Review. I'm your host Bill Sharp. Our show today is Are You Chinese? Are You Taiwanese? Our guest is Dr. Evan Dolly, visiting scholar at the Institute of Taiwan History at Academia Seneca in Taiwan. And we'll be right back, so don't go away. I'm going to the game and it's gonna be great. Early arrive and for a little tailgate. I usually drink but won't be drinking today because I'm the designated driver and that's okay. It's nice to be the guy that keeps his friends in line, keeps them from drinking too much so we can have a great time. A little responsibility can go a long way because it's all about having fun on game day. I'm the guy you want to be. I'm the guy saving money. I'm the guy with the H2O and I'm the guy that says, let's go. It's from The Foundation for a Better Life. Welcome back to Asia in Review. I'm your host Bill Sharp. Our show today, Are You Chinese or Taiwanese? And our guest is Dr. Evan Dolly. He is a visiting scholar at the Institute of Taiwan History at Academia Seneca in Taiwan. Back here in the US, he's an assistant professor at Delta College. And just before the break, we were talking about how the nationalist government, when it first came to Taiwan in 1949, how it's sought to use religion to mold an identity amongst the Taiwanese population that was, shall we say, politically acceptable to them. And it looks like we're sort of gotten to the point where we thought they were putting a lot of emphasis on the use of Methodism. Am I saying that right? Wayley, it's easier to say Chinese. Isn't he out? And so I think we'll pick it up from there. Okay, sure, sure. So I was beginning to get into our saying. Because that was the religious bedrock of the Taiwanese independence movement, which they were adamantly averse to. Right, right, right. A different branch of the Protestant tradition was the bedrock of the independence movement. Whereas the Jiang family themselves were Methodists, had been for, well, I guess Jiang Kai-shek had converted for his wife. And that sort of became the family practices of war. But they couldn't, again, because the Constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, they couldn't really overtly push people into particular churches or particular branches of Christianity, Protestants, Catholic, whichever. But what they could do was encourage the formation of Christian organizations that were nominally private, but also could get closely linked to the state. They did the same with Buddhist organizations that would have state support. And then they could use, and then through that state support, they could sort of encourage the growth of particular types of belief, perhaps. And again, direct the popular religion away from the focus on worship of a range of deities and sacrifices at their festivals and other sorts of things that were seen as superstitious. This is a very interesting point. And the communists, the CCP, did the same thing on the mainland. They were very, very adverse to these superstitious beliefs and just wanted to get rid of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really amazing. I'm not sure that the KMT and the CCP agreed on much, but on this point, they did seem to agree. They certainly had a lot of similarities, except for two things happen. One, I think the nationalists were not quite as, they definitely were not quite as zealous as the communists on the mainland were. And then two, in the 1960s and 70s, there was an interesting switch or an interesting shift. As sort of a response, a reaction against China's cultural revolution, the nationalists began to promote Taiwan as sort of the bastion of Chinese culture. And one of the ways in which they did that was by allowing a lot of the popular temples to begin to flourish again. So it's in the 70s and 80s that a lot of the temples that are really one of the defining characteristics of Taiwan today, right? All these popular deities, Madzu, Guandhi, there's a huge list and I can't even begin to do it justice. But temples to those gods really began to flourish in the 70s and 80s as part of this effort to portray Taiwan as the real China. So some of the restrictions that the nationalists had placed on those practices in the 50s and 60s began to be lifted. And this is why still today in Taiwan, you see elaborate Madzu festivals and people go and light incense at temples to deities all the time. Well, let me ask you this. Now, this is a subject that just really fascinates me. What's the difference between Chinese and Taiwanese? In other words, where does Chinese culture stop and where does Taiwanese culture take over? Yeah. Any particular characteristics that you can attribute to each? That is a particularly difficult question because as I said before, so much of what has become or what the Taiwanese have used to identify themselves originally came from Fujian and Guangdong provinces, from the Southeastern coast of Taiwan. Languages as well, right? Taiwanese primarily based upon Min An Hua or the Fujianese language spoken in parts of Fujian. So finding the exact divide between Taiwanese culture and Chinese culture is difficult, maybe even impossible, but that doesn't mean that they share the same identity if that makes sense. Well, now that you've ordered up, go with that a little bit further. Then I have a follow-up question to ask you. Yeah, absolutely. So this is where a definition of ethnicity that is seen as historically constructed and contingent on particular circumstances becomes important because as the Taiwanese use these religious features to define themselves first against the Japanese and then against the nationalists, they began to identify those features particularly with the island of Taiwan. Even if there might have been similar practices still going on in China and even if to this day some temples in Taiwan make pilgrimages to temples off the coast of Fujian, they still see those deities as rooted in some ways in Taiwan and their temples certainly is rooted in local settings. So that's sort of how these religious features became localized to Taiwan and associated with the Taiwanese identity as the state from a Chinese identity. You know, I sometimes think, I think of America's experience. America was 13 British colonies and the culture sort of high culture was all British culture, right? And then America became independent and there began to be the evolution of American literature and American ideas and American values and an American identity. And I sort of see Taiwan on the same light. I mean, Taiwanese identity was suppressed for so long by the nationalists. You know, school books were all about China and some obscure river in China where people didn't know about major rivers in Taiwan. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous in a way. And then you see this kind of like identity begin to bubble up. And then the other thing that kind of occurs to me maybe it's because I lived in Japan for about eight years but I see a lot of Japanese influence in Taiwan. And in the culture, especially in Taiwanese people. A lot of the day-to-day cultural life, I think, of Taiwan is influenced by the Japanese experience. And certainly, even when you look at the government, the electoral system of Taiwan is a Japanese import, basically. And a lot of the ways in which the government is structured is sort of very similar to the structure of South Korea. I mean, both were Japanese colonies and a lot of the structure was left over and built on by a South Korean government or a Republic of China government. Yeah, sure, sure. So I don't know. I often sort of bounce back and forth between these two ideas. Well, what's Chinese, what's Japanese? And how are Taiwanese different? I mean, this is kind of an interesting question. Now, I had this experience in Taiwan last year. Everywhere I went, you know, asked people, are you Chinese or Taiwanese? Let me see what this is. You know, I did my own kind of polling. And so many people would say Taiwanese, Taiwanese definitely. And it was sort of like, I got the sense that it is a world in Taiwan. It's politically correct to say you're Taiwanese, even if you might consider yourself Chinese. And some people, they were sort of hem and haw. Well, I'm sort of Taiwanese, but my mother came from China. So I'm kind of back and forth, you know. I don't know if you had a similar experience. I don't even know if that's a solid observation. Let me see a couple of thoughts on sort of the comparisons to Japan and this questions of Chinese or Taiwanese. So first, there's definitely, I think, still a strong awareness of cultural connections with China. That was certainly the case in the period where I studied and I think that that has still continued in some ways, perhaps in some cases, also family connections. But Chinese identity has become so strongly national identity. And that's one that the people in Taiwan are not really a part of, right? So that, and that became apparent actually in 1945. Say that again, cause I wanna make sure I got that right. I think I missed part of that. Sorry. Okay, Chinese identity, if I heard you right, has become so much, how should I say, nationalistically tinted. Yes, yes. Okay, and we're talking about mainland China here, right? Yeah, and also about the nationalists when they arrived in 45, right? Their Chinese consciousness, their Chinese identity was very much a national identity. Okay. No, are you saying that still exists today? Oh, sorry. Does that still exist today? Does that phenomenon still exist today? There's probably a small segment of people who sold all of onto that. But it's a, surveys at least suggests it's a very small minority of people who still see themselves as linked to a Chinese nation state in Taiwan. Okay. And partly that has to do with the experience of Japanese rule. I mean, those 50 years, maybe not so much for the remnants of Japanese culture that were left in Taiwan, but for the experience of being within a different political context, national context that is the Japanese Empire, that separation sort of forced people who became Taiwanese to deal with a different context, if you will, and to develop their identities along paths that were different than the paths that the Chinese were developing their identities on. I agree with you. I agree with you quite wholeheartedly. And my personal view is we never discussed this in Taiwan a bit. I think any kind of unification between Taiwan and China is pretty difficult because both societies have evolved in totally different ways. Yeah, they really have. They really have. And that has been apparent to pretty much anyone I've spoken with who has been both on the mainland and here. They see immediately differences in just the way people interact with each other and maybe sort of the pace of life around each other. Yeah. I don't know, this might seem a little bit harsh to say, but hey, we're seeking truth, so here we go. Being in Taiwan last year, I thought I could after a while tell the difference between a Chinese person and a Taiwanese person. And the giveaway was the Chinese person was far more aggressive. Yeah, that's sort of the, I've heard a lot of people say that as well. That's sort of one of the signs to look for, waiting in lines or not waiting in lines, things like that. Okay. Well, I'm getting the signal here that we're down to our last minute. Oh dear. Is there any, that's the trouble with the show, the time goes so fast. Yeah, there's so many interesting avenues to take. Everything you want to get in here in our last 45 seconds? Well, let's see. One final thought. So let me talk a little bit about the memory of the past. So this past that I've been searching. Remember we only got 30 seconds now. What, sorry? I'm sorry, but we've only got 30 seconds. I hate to do that to you, but that's the problem. So the memory, the way in which the past that I've studied has been remembered is largely through rose tinted glasses, right? People often look back on the Japanese era in particular as a better time, but that is entirely a post-45 reimagining of the Japanese period. So I want to sort of stress that really what happened was Japanese colonization followed by Chinese recolonization caused people to view the Japanese period in a different way than they had viewed it when they were in the middle of it. So if that could be my final point, that's where I'll leave off. Great. Well, just a reminder. I guess today has a book coming out. It's going to be a little while, but keep it in mind. The page by 19. Becoming Taiwanese ethnic identity at the border of China and Japan. I want to thank our guests for joining us today from via Skype, from Taipuan. And I want to thank you for viewing. Next week, we'll see you again. My guest then will be US Navy captain, retired Carl Schuster, who teaches at Hawaii Pacific University. And it's also a defense analyst. We'll see you then. Thank you very much, Bill. I appreciate the opportunity. You're welcome.