Whether they had come to Taiwan to seek a haven or
just following military orders, mainlanders built new
lives on the island for themselves and their offspring.
Relations with the native Taiwanese have not always been
smooth, but the two groups are becoming more and more
integrated to create a new society.
It was 1946, one year after the end of the long war against Japan. Lo Huang, who was jobless at the time, traveled from his hometown in Zhejiang Province to Shanghai to visit relatives. During his stay there, he heard about a job opening at a military-run aircraft factory in the city of Taichung in central Taiwan. Curious and adventurous, the nineteen-year-old bought a ticket on a ship to Keelung, Taiwan's northern port, and after landing started to explore the town. "To me the atmosphere seemed totally exotic--Taiwan was just like a Japanese society at the time," Lo recalls. "I was at a loss when I stopped for a bite and was handed a menu written in Japanese. Since I couldn't speak either Taiwanese or Japanese, and the local people couldn't speak Mandarin, I just pointed randomly at items on the menu."
Lo set foot on the island earlier than most of the arrivals from the mainland. Military personnel and government officials from China started to be assigned to Taiwan after the Kuomintang (KMT) government took over the island in 1945, but they crossed the Taiwan Strait in large numbers only after the communists began solidifying their hold on the mainland in 1949. During the four years before the end of 1949, more than 900,000 people from all parts of the mainland came to Taiwan, boosting its population to 7.3 million. These new arrivals included more than 500,000 Nationalist troops, mostly privates and non-commissioned officers, some as young as sixteen or seventeen years old. These young men came to the island alone, unaware that they would be separated from their families for decades. Only gradually would they come to realize that their common political goal of recovering the mainland was merely a pipe dream.
As that background helps to explain, many of the newcomers married late. They expected to wait until they could be wed in their hometowns, where some of them already had girlfriends. Another reason is that the government discouraged military personnel from marrying in Taiwan in order to keep them focused on retaking the mainland. Prior to 1956, for example, military regulations prohibited all but officers above the age of twenty-eight from taking a wife. "The first-generation mainlanders were generally into their thirties before getting married, whereas male Taiwanese at the time usually wed between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-five," notes Wang Fu-chang, associate research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of Sociology.
An estimated 60 percent of the single male mainlanders married Taiwanese women, according to Wang's research, which was not surprising since only about a quarter of the mainlanders coming to Taiwan were female. Although around one-third of the mainlander men never married, the high rate of intermarriage among those who did find a partner is considered to have had a salutary effect on Taiwan society, gradually improving the mutual understanding between mainlanders and Taiwanese.
The influx of people from virtually every part of China has enriched Taiwan society over the past fifty-some years by incorporating a broad range of cultural backgrounds into life on the island. These cultural legacies included Peking opera, folksongs, and other music, works of art and literature, and most significantly the copious diversity of regional Chinese cuisines. Today, restaurants featuring the foods of mainland provinces--particularly the dishes of Sichuan, Hunan, Guangdong, Shanghai, and Beijing--are common throughout Taiwan, operated by both mainlanders and native Taiwanese.
A unique cultural phenomenon that grew out of the wave of arrivals in 1949 was the establishment of settlements populated almost entirely by mainlanders--the military dependents' villages that sprung up in many locations but especially in and around Taipei and other large cities. "At first, most housing units for military dependents were makeshift structures because their builders thought they'd be staying in Taiwan for only a short time before going back 'home,'" notes Fan Chung-ying, head of the Association for the Welfare of Military Dependents' Villages, a private organization established in 1998. Then in 1956, as a result of a campaign started by Madame Chiang Kai-shek to improve the living conditions of military dependents, more substantial dwellings began to be erected. The association notes that 1,134 communities of military dependents remain in existence, though some are now housed in high-rise apartment buildings and no longer resemble "villages."
Many of the 1949 arrivals, and even more frequently their offspring, have long since chosen to leave the villages and are now integrated into the general community. Better educated on average than other segments of the population, the "second-generation mainlanders" have tended to congregate in the big cities, where white-collar jobs are available. Explaining the propensity for educational achievement, Wang Fu-chang notes that "the first-generation mainlanders usually came to Taiwan alone with little in the way of assets--and since they had nothing to rely on but their offspring, they were very serious about their children's education." Wang estimates that mainlanders currently account for about 26 percent of the population in Taipei City, higher than anywhere else in Taiwan and nearly double the islandwide proportion of around 14 percent. "Mainlander" in this context refers to those born in mainland China as well as those whose fathers came from the other side of the Taiwan Strait. In Mandarin, these people are called waishengjen, which means "people from outside provinces."
The relationship between the waishengjen and the local population began to deteriorate shortly after Taiwan's return to Chinese rule in 1945. Initially overjoyed by the end to the Japanese occupation, the Taiwanese were soon disillusioned by the corruption, inefficiency, and harshness of the provincial government established by the KMT, the undisciplined behavior of the Nationalist troops, and the avarice displayed by carpetbagger businessmen arriving from the mainland. That animosity often carried over to attitudes about mainlanders in general. The situation worsened after the occurrence of the February 28 Incident in 1947, sparked when a mainlander policeman pistol-whipped an elderly woman who had been selling contraband cigarettes. When an angry crowd gathered, the police opened fire, leaving one person dead. Riots ensued in which a few mainlanders were killed and others roughed up, followed by a series of orderly but insistent demonstrations in which the Taiwanese demanded greater home rule. But that peaceful political movement was put down in bloody fashion a week later when troops brought in from the mainland engaged in the indiscriminate slaughter of Taiwanese civilians. The number of deaths has generally been estimated at 10,000 to 20,000. For decades, until after the lifting of martial law in 1987, public discussion of the event was taboo--but the festering resentments poisoned relations between mainlanders and Taiwanese for years. Many waishengjen who came in 1949, just two years after the massacre, were initially puzzled as to why they were received by the Taiwanese with such disdain.
Decades later, as Taiwan's economy began to prosper, the educational attainments of the second-generation mainlanders ensured that they were heavily represented in the broad middle-class that was emerging for the first time--and some developed a sense of being a cultural elite. Such an impression was reinforced by the comparatively high percentage of mainlanders who had chosen to study liberal arts and journalism and then found work in educational institutions, the news media, and the civil service. Government policies also contributed to giving mainlanders a feeling of cultural superiority, notes Wang Fu-chang. In reaction to the prolonged Cultural Revolution that raged on the mainland starting in 1966, relentlessly destroying much of China's links with its once-cherished past, the Taiwan government launched a Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement to emphasize Taiwan's contrasting role as the guardian of the Chinese cultural legacy. The program included the promotion of the Mandarin language, Peking opera, calligraphy, and the artistic styles inherited from ancient China. "The mainlanders, due to their closer association with traditional Chinese culture, benefited from this policy in gaining a higher social status," Wang Fu-chang suggests.
The cultural orientation fostered by the government caused smoldering resentment, however, among the native Taiwanese, who viewed their own cultural background as being marginalized if not ignored. The Taiwanese also felt politically disadvantaged as a result of the dominant presence of mainlanders in the KMT-led government until the accession to the presidency of the first native son, Lee Teng-hui, in 1988. A particular target of criticism was the composition of the parliamentary bodies, especially the Legislative Yuan, in which a majority of the members had been elected in mainland China in 1948 and retained in office indefinitely by judicial ruling pending new elections after "recovery of the mainland." After more than four decades in office, these aged lawmakers, many of them doddering, were finally eased into retirement in December 1991.
Public expressions of discontent with the concentration of political privileges in the hands of mainlanders began to be voiced with the rise of the opposition movement in the 1980s. "The most common objection at the time was that a minority group of mainlanders was governing by suppressing the more numerous but politically and culturally disadvantaged native population," says Wang Fu-chang. The main instrument of that suppression was seen as the "emergency decrees," more widely known as "martial law," which were finally lifted in 1987.
In the post-martial law period when the society started to reconsider its history, the Lee Teng-hui government actively promoted "nativist consciousness" in various aspects, and late in his presidency Lee referred to the KMT as an "alien force" at the time it began its rule over the island--developments that caused many mainlanders a sense of unease. So did the rise of the opposition movement, which in 1986 coalesced to form the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) with a charter committed to the goal of ensuring Taiwan's permanent separation and independence from China--a stance that would have invited imprisonment for sedition just a few years earlier. With rare exceptions, the core of the DPP support came from native Taiwanese. Most mainlanders, maintaining deep-seated feelings of Chinese nationalism though staunchly opposed to communism, remained devoted to the idea of eventual unification between Taiwan and China, and they blanched at the DPP's open calls for independence. The pro-independence/pro-unification split intensified the sense of division along "ethnic" lines.
"Before that period, the culture represented by the mainlanders was generally accepted on the island. But the DPP clearly categorized the population into four ethnic groups and tended to emphasize their cultural differences," maintains Chang Mau-kuei, another sociologist from Academia Sinica. The four groups are the Holos, Hakkas, mainlanders, and aborigines--with the term "native Taiwanese" used to refer to the Holo people, whose ancestors hailed from the southern portion of China's Fujian Province, and usually to the Hakkas as well. "Today, people in Taiwan have become more conscious of their ethnic identities," but it is hard to assign blame for who instigated the stirring-up of ethnic discord, says Chang. "There's no definite answer because for a long time people of different ethnic backgrounds, knowingly or unknowingly, have been sending messages of ethnic discrimination."
The situation is complicated by the shadow cast by the long-ago February 28 Incident, known for short as "2-2-8" after the date of its occurrence. "Now 2-2-8 tends to be used as a tool to play up ethnic sentiment to win votes from native Taiwanese, though few people are serious about looking into the truth of what actually happened in 1947," says Chang Mau-kuei. "As a result, Taiwanese are often led to the conclusion that mainlanders are bad guys and bullies, and that makes it impossible to achieve lasting harmony in Taiwan society. Both native Taiwanese and mainlanders need to try to undo the cover-up and get at the truth of the Incident. Then blame can be pinpointed at those who gave the order to shoot, and the stigma that's been attached to a whole group can be removed." It should also be remembered, he said, that in the confusion of the event not all the victims were Taiwanese and not all the culpable parties were mainlanders.
The period before major elections is often the time when ethnic sensitivities are most aroused. As an example, Wang Fu-chang cites the 1998 election for Taipei City mayor, when the KMT-nominated Ma Ying-jeou a mainlander, defeated the DPP incumbent Chen Shui-bian, a Taiwanese. Though Chen had enjoyed high approval ratings during his tenure, polls showed that he was disadvantaged by the nearly universal support for Ma among the city's mainlanders. Many mainlanders who had previously been avid backers of another party, the New Party, deserted its candidate in order to vote for Ma as a way of blocking Chen, a man they regarded with suspicion because of the DPP's association with the Taiwan independence issue. "Chen's loss came as quite a shock to many native Taiwanese, and it heightened their sense of ethnic consciousness" and resentment toward mainlanders, says Wang.
But the same election campaign also brought an example of reaching out to breach the rift and foster a spirit of unity. President Lee Teng-hui, while campaigning for Ma Ying-jeou in his capacity as KMT chairman, coined the term "New Taiwanese" to cover all those who live on the island and love Taiwan. Considerable anecdotal evidence also indicates that inter-group conflict is far less serious than some observers would suggest, and certainly not all Taiwanese hold the mainlanders collectively responsible for the tragedy fifty-five years ago. Even in 1947 there were many examples of goodwill across ethnic lines. "My Taiwanese colleagues knew where I was, alone in hiding, but they kept silent to protect me," recalls Lo Huang of the 2-2-8 Incident that occurred three months after his arrival in Taiwan. "I still keep in touch with those friends today." As to the second- and third-generation mainlanders born on the island, they find it much easier than their parents or grandparents to blend into a society that is embracing "nativism" with regard to language and culture. "I don't find any problem getting along with friends or colleagues because of ethnic differences--in fact, in many cases I don't even know their ethnic backgrounds," says Chen Chan-huan, whose parents both came from the mainland. "I voted for Ma in 1998, but I would've voted for him too if he'd been a native Taiwanese as long as he was against Taiwan independence."
Feeling a stronger identification with Taiwan, their place of birth, than do their elders, the offspring of the first-generation mainlanders fit less easily into generalizations regarding the ethnic divide. Many of them can speak fluent Taiwanese, and "some dislike ethnic categorization and refuse to be labeled as mainlanders," notes Wang Fu-chang. That attitude is also reflected in the declining participation in the numerous associations that had been formed by first-generation mainlanders to promote communication among people hailing from the same town or province. "Most of their children don't feel close to the association, considering it merely an organization for old people to share nostalgia about the old days," says Hung Hsin-lan, the secretary to the chairman of the Association for Natives of Jiangsu Province. Besides holding such social functions as Chinese New Year gatherings, these organizations offer scholarships and help members try to reestablish contact with relatives in China or Taiwan.
The increasing complexity of the mainlander population is underscored by the existence of an organization called the Gaosenglang (meaning waishengjen in Taiwanese) Association for Taiwan Independence, established in 1992. "By setting up this organization we tell both native Taiwanese and mainlanders that not all mainlanders are pro-unification," notes Hsu Teng-kun, chairman of the group, which has around 200 members. But Hsu, who adopted a pro-independence viewpoint ten years ago, concedes that it is quite difficult to persuade others to join his cause. He estimates that only 10 percent of mainlanders are sympathetic to Taiwan independence. "At first I was called a traitor by my brothers and friends, and I even had fierce arguments with them," says Hsu. "Now they still don't listen to me, though they show more respect for my choice."
Although a longterm connection with Taiwan does not necessarily translate into support for independence, it certainly will be harder and harder for future generations of mainlanders in Taiwan to claim that they are waishengjen. Intermarriage between mainlanders and Taiwanese is becoming increasingly common--and generally no longer opposed by the parents on both sides as it might have been a generation ago. At the same time, the typical military dependents' villages are disappearing one after another--either torn down or rebuilt as modern structures--and some now also have native Taiwanese inhabitants. In order to preserve a record of the unique social environment that the original villages represented, the Taipei City Government has commissioned Lian Yi Planning/Design Services, a private consulting company, to survey the city's military communities in cooperation with the Association for the Welfare of Military Dependents' Villages. "This is an urgent task that needs to be undertaken now while typical military communities still exist and many first-generation mainlanders are still alive to be interviewed," notes Chen Chau-hsin, the general manager of Lian Yi. "I find the stories of the village residents to be fascinating, but I prefer to look at these people as a collection of unique individuals rather than a monolithic group."
Perhaps that is the best way to view the mainlander population. Ethnic background might be one significant aspect of a person, but its influence can be overemphasized, especially at a time when mainlanders and native Taiwanese are interacting to a greater extent than ever before. Whatever connotations the word "mainlander" might have conjured up in the past, their descendants will all sooner or later count "Taiwanese" among the terms most suitable to describe their identity, and the expression waishengjen will come to sound anachronistic. As to the exotic Taiwan society encountered by Mr. Lo, it now belongs only to memory.