Taiwan Today

A memoir of mid-nineteenth century Taiwan shows that the conflicts of interest among the island's contemporary inhabitants have deep historical roots. Pioneering in Formosa: Recollections of Adventures among Mandarins, Wreckers, & Head Hunting Savages. By W. A. Pickering. London: Hurst and Blackett, Ltd., 1898. 283 pp., including an appendix and twenty-five illustrations from photographs and sketches by the author. William Alexander Pickering (1840-1907), an adventurous Englishman, lived among Chinese and mixed populations in Asia for nearly thirty years. He is best remembered as the first Protector of Chinese in the Straits Settlements, a post he held from 1877 until his retirement in 1890. Prior to his service in that British colony, Pickering spent nine years in China: two in the southern coastal province of Fukien, and seven more in Taiwan, where he also made a name for himself. Some time after his retirement in England, he recorded the highlights of his early career in the book, Pioneering in Formosa. Pickering's career in Asia began in 1862, when he joined the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service at a station on the Min River just below Foochow. He was twenty-two at the time, and had already spent six years at sea aboard British trading ships. In 1864, when the customs service was expanding its operations to the new treaty ports in Taiwan, Pickering transferred to posts established in the southern portion of the island. He was employed briefly as a tidewaiter at Takao (Kaohsiung), then as a customs agent at Anping the following year. Thereafter, he managed the branch offices of two British firms, McPhail & Co. and its successor Elles & Co., located nearby at Taiwan-fu (present-day Tainan city) until his departure from Taiwan in 1870. Pickering was one of a small group of Westerners attracted to Taiwan during the early 1860s after the island was opened to foreign residency and trade. With the exception of the Spanish Dominican and English Presbyterian missionaries, most of the foreign community generally stayed close to their treaty-port confines at Tamsui (Hobe) and Keelung in the north and Takao and the Anping-Taiwan-fu area in the south. But the young and energetic Pickering was not to be restrained by treaty-port demarcations. He was also exceptional in his readiness to associate with a broad assortment of Chinese and indigenous inhabitants. In Taiwan, he eventually gained wide-spread recognition because of his ability to speak Mandarin and several Fukien dialects, as well as his eagerness to explore and make contact with remote mountain tribes. Nevertheless, like the other foreign residents, Pickering was deemed a "barbarian" and kept at bay from most of the Chinese population by ethnocentric pressures, and sometimes through the exhortations of local officials. In effect, Pickering lived on the fringe of established Chinese society, centered in the Western coastal plains, while most of his adventures occurred in areas on the periphery. In his book he tends to focus on the marginal groups that he encountered there. He provides colorful accounts of the pirates and shipwreckers who operated along Taiwan's western shoreline, including the band of wreckers he confronted on occasion a few miles north of Taiwan-fu. He also devotes whole chapters to his experiences among indigenous tribes inhabiting the lofty Central Mountain Range near the slopes of Mt. Morrison (Jade Mt.), a hitherto unexplored area he twice visited in 1865 and 1866. Pickering discusses as well the so called acculturated natives he met during his journeys. These villagers also led a marginal existence vis-a-vis the dominant Chinese population, no matter whether dwelling in scattered communities within the coastal plains or inhabiting distant settlements in the rugged interior. Pickering even had a chance to travel about the southernmost part of Taiwan when, in 1867, an American bark, the Rover, was wrecked at South Cape (Oluanpi) and the survivors were killed by the Koalut tribe or held captive. In that remote and little-known region he encountered still other indigenous tribes and villagers, as well as Chinese settlers who likewise lived beyond the jurisdiction of Ching dynasty rule. Pickering tends to pass judgment on these various groups depending on the treatment they accorded him or the way they related to Western interests. At the time, pirates and shipwreckers were a great menace, for they plundered Chinese and foreign vessels lost in the treacherous Formosan Strait and dismantled many of those wrecked along Taiwan's shallow western shores. Pickering portrays the cruel ways of the pirates and other local seafarers, but registers greater indignation against the band of shipwreckers he encountered along the mudflats to the north of Taiwan-fu. These "wild and lawless" sorts once, before his very eyes, tore apart a beached sailing vessel that his firm had purchased. Nonetheless, he found that he could bargain profitably with these wreckers over instruments they had stripped from his firm's vessel. On one occasion he even hired members of this band to carry belongings from his stranded craft to a nearby town. His impressions of the Hakka Chinese who inhabited the mountainous frontier were more positive, but also varied in the course of his travels. Pickering describes them as a most enterprising, although exceedingly quarrelsome people, who constantly infringed on tribal lands. He seems to have been on his guard against armed Hakka bands during hi first excursion to the interior in 1864. Later on, following the Rover incident, he became acquainted with Hakka as well as Hoklo (Fukienese speaking) settlers in southernmost Taiwan. The headmen of these rival Chinese groups were exceedingly hospitable to Pickering. They wanted him to intercede with the military commanders dispatched to chastise the Koalut tribe and to persuade these officials not to lead unruly Chinese troops into the unclaimed region. Although Pickering had misgivings about the fierce Koaluts, he was sympathetic on the whole to the indigenous tribal people. During his expeditions in the Central Range, he ascertained that the mountain tribes were indeed headhunters, yet found that they were neither inhuman nor as ferocious as the Chinese alleged. Altogether, he claims to have contacted around twenty tribes inhabiting the southern ranges between Changhua and the South Cape. Judging from their locations and his descriptions, these tribe were mainly of the Bunun, Tsou, and Paiwan cultural groupings. The tribes he visited in the vicinity of Mt. Morrison were invariably friendly. They readily accepted the trinkets he distributed as gifts, and admired his modem firearms. Pickering was able to observe their village life and the feasts, accompanied by singing and drinking, held when ever honored guests appeared. He also mentions houses built of slate and stone slabs in some villages and the raised, thatched sheds where the unmarried men and boys slept and the heads of the vanquished heads were hung. Pickering noted as well that the women performed most of the work and played important roles as priestesses. Some who had married out side their tribe, or had relatives in other villages, acted as emissaries with the neighboring tribes. A few traded at the Hakka and native settlements situated at lower elevations. Such types, he found, made excellent guides, as did old and experienced warriors. Thus, even though remote, these mountain tribes were by no means isolated. Of the half dozen Pickering visited, most belonged to a confederation opposed to a more powerful tribe which inhabited the eastern slopes of Mt. Morrison. These tribes also maintained friendly or hostile relations with other nearby tribes as well as with the Hakkas and acculturated natives. Pickering discovered that he like-wise had to gauge his action on the basis of these complex relationships. Pickering was most attracted to the acculturated natives. These people were prone to accept him as a fellow "barbarian," a term of pride among their group. He considered them to be morally superior to the Chinese and on a par culturally with the lower classes. They were tolerably good farmer and fond of hunting, he observed, and not much addicted to opium. In certain villages Pickering was acclaimed a "red-headed relation" by those till familiar with the stories of Dutch missionary effort among the Taiwan native during the seventeenth century. He was pleased that missionary work was being undertaken once again in some of their communities, this time by the Dominicans and Presbyterian. His introduction to acculturated Taiwan natives came about when he topped at a Dominican mission nestled in the foothill to the east of Takao. Later on, he visited an old native village near Taiwan-fu, and learned that the majority of the tribe had migrated to the interior and were scattered as far as the east coast. He relied more heavily on members of that tribe for guidance and shelter during his extensive journey to the Central Range. Pickering' travel accounts disclose that a widespread network of acculturated villager existed in southern Taiwan. Those located on the coastal plain were the most Sinicized in respect to their speech, dress, and religious observances. Other further inland tended to retain some of the language spoken by their forefathers, while those inhabiting the lower range spoke Chinese imperfectly and mainly relied on their native languages. The latter type lived in settlements close to Hakka frontiersmen and the mountain tribes. In such remote areas the acculturated native were apt to be more in sympathy with the mountain tribes than with the Chinese, and intermarried with friendly tribe. From Pickering' perspective, the groups on the periphery began to relate more meaningfully with the dominant Chinese core, and even with the Western presence in Taiwan, as a result of the Rover shipwreck. He had responded to that incident by joining an American landing party at South Cape. After being driven off by the well-armed Koalut tribe, however, Pickering came to favor negotiations rather than further warfare. He was also influenced by the Hakka and Hoklo headmen he met. They assured him that they could assist in bringing about a peaceful settlement because the southern tribes were entirely dependent on local Chinese trader for firearms and salt. Subsequently, Pickering was instrumental in arranging for a treaty by becoming a sworn brother of the Koalut chief, the leader of an eighteen-tribe confederation. The treaty was signed in that chieftain' village, amid great rejoicing, by a minor Chinese official, the American consul from Amoy, some Hakka and Hoklo headmen, Pickering, and the Koalut chief. Pickering regarded this 1867 treaty as his major accomplishment in Taiwan. In his estimation it saved the live of many shipwrecked crew - at least until 1871, when fifty-four Ryukyuan survivors were massacred by another southern tribe. However, the glory he won for his part in that "diplomatic triumph" soon evaporated when he became embroiled in a "camphor war" with the Taiwan intendant or tao-tai. That ranking official controlled the island' camphor monopoly, and reacted sharply after Elle & Co. and other Western firms began to trade actively in the product. Pickering' blustering method failed, hi firm' camphor deposits were confiscated, and mob action incited by the official led to anti-foreign incident throughout the island. In response, a British naval force seized Anping in November 1868. Soon there after, the Ching authorities and the British consul worked out an agreement which guaranteed that Western firms could trade in Taiwan camphor in accordance with the Tientsin Treaty provision, as Pickering had insisted all along. Things seemed to be working out for Pickering and hi firm. But quite suddenly, in 1869, Great Britain adopted a more conciliatory policy in respect to China, and the period of gunboat diplomacy virtually ended in Taiwan. Then the intendant was encouraged to protect his monopoly more vigorously. The next year Pickering, sick and discouraged, left Taiwan with his firm's camphor business in ruin. His departure came at the dawn of a new era. In 1874, a Japanese military expedition was sent to southernmost Taiwan in retaliation for the 1871 massacre of the Ryukyuan crewmen. As a result, the Ching government was induced to extend its jurisdiction over the entire island. Chinese governance and penetration in the remote regions had a profound impact on some of the marginal groups, especially the mountain tribes such as those Pickering had visited a few year before. Meanwhile, the Western community grew and prospered in Taiwan without recourse to force after 1875. Yet Pickering continued long thereafter to urge that Great Britain revert back to the old gunboat policy in coping with local officials in China due in part, evidently, to his early experience in Taiwan.-Dr. Harry J. Lamley, professor of Chinese history at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, is writing a series of reviews for the Free China Review on "oldies but goodies, " early books on Taiwan that still deserve scholarly and popular interest.