subtitle

-- Working draft for upcoming book by Mark Caltonhill, author of "Private Prayers and Public Parades - Exploring the religious life of Taipei" and other works.

Monday, 31 January 2022

Guan Yu (關羽)

Guan Yu (關羽) was a Chinese general who lived at the end of the Eastern Han dynasty (東漢; 25~220 CE). He fought primarily for warlord Liu Bei (劉備), to whom, along with Zhang Fei (張飛), he swore allegiance, and assisted him to found the state of Shu (蜀) during the Three Kingdoms Period (三國時代; 220~280). He was eventually captured by Sun Quan's (孫權) forces of the state of Wu (吳) and executed.

He was reputed for his loyalty and worshipped as a deity, being formally inducted into the Daoist pantheon some 400 years after his death in 220 CE, as well as being adopted by folk Buddhism as a boddhisattva.

Over subsequent centuries, the myths surrounding Guan Yu's exploits proliferated, culminating in the 14th-century novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (三國演義), and leading to his further enhancement as a paradigm of loyalty and righteousness.

He is worshipped by Chinese people around the world, often by the names of Guan Gong (關公; "Duke Guan"), Guan Di (關帝; "Emperor Guan") and so forth. As the patron deity of business people, small statues of him are found in shops and restaurants. At folk / Daoist temples, he frequently appears as a door god to ward off evil spirits, often with Zhang Fei. Guan Yu is easily recognized by his beard and often red face, and by his weapon of choice a 偃月刀 (Mdn. yanyuedao; lit. "supine [cresent] moon blade"), which is more commonly known as a 關刀 (Mdn. Guan dao; lit. "Guan's blade").



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Sunday, 30 January 2022

Checheng (車城) Township, Pingtung County

Checheng (車城; lit. "Vehicle City") was formerly Paiwan aboriginal territory known as Kabeyawan, which was transliterated by Han-Chinese immigrants as 龜壁灣(Hoklo: Ku-piah-wan; Mdn. Guibiwan; lit. "Turtle Wall Bay").

After Koxinga ejected the Dutch from southwestern Taiwan and established the Zheng-family Tongning Kingdom, his son, Zheng Jing (鄭經; r.1662~81) sent soldiers to set up a garrison-farm in this area. Over time, this attracted other immigrants and gradually became a village known as 統領埔 (Mdn. Tonglingpu; lit. "Commander's Plain").

During the Qing dynasty (1683~1895) as aborigines sought to take back their lands, wooden fences were built, for which the township became known as 柴城 (Mdn. Chaicheng; lit. "Firewood Wall"). As to how this transformed into 車城 is not clear, a couple of possible explanations are (source here):
i) carts (車) filled with charcoal were used to defend the town against aboriginal attack; or [MC: more plausibly, surely]
ii) 柴城 was pronounced something like Tsa-siaⁿ in Hoklo Taiwanese, which was similar to the pronunciation of 車城 in the Hakka language used by many families in this area.




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Tucheng (土城) District, New Taipei City

Tucheng (土城; lit. "Earthen [City] Wall") derived from exactly what it means, an embankment of earth constructed around a community. In this case, as elsewhere in Taiwan, it was intended to defend immigrant Han-Chinese from aborigines, who presumably were not happy about encroachment into their traditional territories.

Abe Akiyoshi (安倍明義) in his 台灣地名研究 ("Studies on Taiwan's Place Names"; 1938) lists as names deriving from features constructed to protect against attack from aborigines:
i) 土城 (Mdn. tu-cheng; lit. earthen wall");
ii) 土牛 (Mdn. tu-niu; lit. "earthen ox" - because piled up earth looked like a line of oxen sitting down);
iii) 石城 (Mdn. shi-cheng; lit. "stone wall"); see Shicheng (石城), Yilan;
iv) 石圍 (Mdn. shi-wei; lit. "stone enclosure");
v) 木柵 (Mdn. mu-zha; lit. "wooden fence"); see Muzha (木柵), Wenshan District, Taipei City;
vi) 柴城 (Mdn. chai-cheng; lit. "firewood wall", but probably similar to 木柵); see Checheng (車城) Township, Pingtung;
vii) 銃櫃 (Mdn. chong-gui; lit. "gun cabinet"); and
viii) 隘寮 (Mdn. ai-liao; lit. "pass office", which were constructed at each pass where aborigines could enter immigrant areas from the "Barbarian Territories"); see Jiji (集集) Township, Nantou.

The list does not include the very widespread 竹圍 (Mdn. zhu-wei; lit. "bamboo enclosure"), however, which Abe explains as a means of protecting against the wind rather than aborigines.

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Saturday, 29 January 2022

Qishan River (旗山溪)

Qishan River (旗山溪; lit. “Flag Mountain River) flows through Chiayi, Kaohsiung and Pingtung for 117 km before entering the Gaoping River (高屏溪). It is also known by its earlier name of 楠梓仙溪 (Mdn. Nanzixian River), though its Hoklo pronunciation of something like Lam-tsu-sian suggests this may be a transliteration of the older Tsou aboriginal name for the river and hence the lands around it in today’s Kaohsiung City and, since 2008, for the local Namasiya District.

The Liberty Times records a Kanakanavu (卡那卡那富; formerly considered a subgroup of the Tsou, now recognized as an individual and independent ethnic group of around 400 people) legend: Hundreds of years ago, a 15-year-old boy named Namasiya finds a giant mottled eel (鱸鰻) blocking the river, endangering his whole tribe. Hurrying back to the village he informs them of the problem but, due to fright he fell ill and died a few days later. Tribespeople join forces with a wild boar to kill the eel, relieve the problem, and for a long time afterwards they gave up hunting boars.



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Namasiya (那瑪夏) District, Kaohsiung City

Being somewhat isolated and inaccessible in the mountains of southern Taiwan, aboriginal Maya Township had managed to maintain its independence and, with that, its traditional name, long after most others had lost theirs.

Thus, even after 17th-century Dutch colonial activities based in not-so-far-away Tayouan (Tainan); Han-Chinese territorial expansion throughout the 17th-century Zheng-family’s Tongning Kingdom and 18th- & 19th-century Qing dynasty; and even the ultimately complete rule over Taiwan by the Japanese, this area had managed to retain its indigenous name of Maya, albeit transliterated into Chinese as 瑪雅 (Mdn. Ma-ya).

This ended in 1957, however, when the KMT-led ROC government decided to bring order and civilization to the “Mountain People” (山地人), which included changing the township’s name to Sanmin (三民; “Three People[‘s Principles]”; see here), based on the political philosophy proposed by “Father of the Nation”, Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Furthermore, its three villages were renamed after each of the principles: Minzu (民族; “People’s Nationalism”), Minquan (民權; People’s Rights) and Minsheng (民生; “People’s Livelihood”).

Despite some Han-Chinese immigration, most inhabitants were still Aborigines (though the previously predominant Tsuo 鄒 ethnicity had been reduced by epidemics and replaced somewhat by Bunun 布農 people). Thus 50 years later, when legal changes under the DPP-led central government allowed them to campaign to change the township’s name, members of the local council voted unanimously to rid themselves of the Sanmin moniker (see Taipei Times).

Instead, from January 1, 2008, the county township (later reorganized as a city district) would be known as Namasiya (那瑪夏) and its three villages as Nanisaru (南沙魯), Maya (瑪雅) and Takanuwa (塔卡努瓦). “Namasiya” was the original Tsou ( or Kanakanvu) name for Nanzihsian River (楠梓仙溪) (now officially 旗山溪 Qishan River) and, therefore, the land around it. In addition, it sounds similar to a Bunun expression meaning “Tomorrow will be better”.



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Friday, 28 January 2022

Sanmin (三民) District, Kaohsiung City

Like many streets, villages and other places throughout Taiwan, Kaohsiung’s Sanmin (三民; lit. “Three People(s)”) is an abbreviated form of Sanmin Zhuyi (三民主義; the “Three Principles of the People”), the political philospohy espoused by Dr. Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) and later promoted in Taiwan by the KMT-led ROC government, particularly in the period before the first hand-over of presidential and central government power to an opposition party in 2000 (for more details, see San Min Zhuyi).

But Sanmin District in Kaohsiung has a somewhat older pedigree. From the 17th century until arrival of the KMT in the middle of the 20th century, its “three peoples” were the Wang (王), Tsai (蔡) and Zheng (鄭; often romanized as Cheng) families who had first immigrated to this area and built their homes here, for which it had been known for more than 300 years as 三塊厝 (Hoklo Sam-de-tsu; Mdn. Sankuaicuo ; lit. “Three Houses”).

In the postwar period, in order to “create a model district of the Three Principles of the People”, Sankuaicuo was combined with 6 neighboring areas to create Sanmin Township (now District). According to Wikipedia, these others were 大港 (lit. “Great Harbor”), 灣子內 (lit. “Within the Bay”), 寶珠溝 (lit. “Precious Bead Ditch”), 獅頭 (lit. “Lion’s Head”), 本館 (lit. “Original Mansion”) and 覆鼎金(lit. “Covered Tripod Gold”).



There was also a Sanmin Township (三民鄉) in Kaohsiung County (which merged with Kaohsiung City in 2010) but in 2008, after a campaign by its residents, most of whom are Bunun (布農), Kanakanavu (卡那卡那富), Hla’alua (拉阿魯哇; formerly considered a subgroup of Tsou 鄒) and Paiwan (排灣) aboringines, this “overly political’ name was changed to Namasiya (那瑪夏; see here).



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The Three Principles of the People (三民主義 Mdn. San Min Zhuyi) is a political philosophy developed by Dr. Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙; SYS) and adopted and widely promoted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (中國國民黨; KMT), particularly by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石; CKS) and particularly in the period following defeat in the Chinese Civil War and KMT's relocation to Taiwan. As such it is quoted as the first line as the ROC national anthem, and it, as well as its three constituant parts, were used to rename numerous towns, villages and streets around the country.

Also very numerous have been the Master’s and PhD theses written discussing what SYS meant, or could have meant, or should have meant by his Three Principles. The first two inspired, he said, by Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people”; the third by social welfare policies he witnessed in European countries during his travels to garner support for opposition to the Qing imperial state.

i) The 民族主義 (Mdn. Minzu Zhuyi), literally meaning something like “principle of [government] of the people(s)”, is usually translated as “nationalism”, since SYS clearly had the Chinese nation in mind, as opposed to the narrow Manchurian-led Qing court which, at least in part, stayed in power though promoting division between all other ethniciites.
Through this principle, he sought to promote commn cause, a “national consciousness”, for all of China’s diverse ethnicities, primarily composed of the “five main groups” (Han, Manchurian, Mongol, Hui (Muslims) and Tibetan ; [MC: as usual the “minority peoples” seem to be overlooked, just as Taiwan’s dozens of indigenous peoples would be half a century later]), who together were symbolized on the Five Color Flag of the early ROC (1911–1928). In short, SYS’s Principle of the Peoples was based on the idea that China’s various peoples had more that united them than divided them, that they were stronger together.

ii) The 民權主義 (Mdn. Minquan Zhuyi), literally meaning “principle of people’s rights”, that is, of “people power” or, in other words, of “government by the people(s)”, which is consequently usually translated as “democracy”.
From this simple statement of principle, SYS (and the generations after him) set about defining these powers / rights (election, recall, initiative and referendum) and working out how these could be applied through various institutions / branches (legislative, executive, judicial, control and examination) to create a fair and effective system of government.

iii) The 民生主義 Mdn. Minsheng Zhuyi), literally meaning “principle of people’s livelihood”, is therefore, “government for the people”, and is often translated as “livelihood” or “social welfare”. It was somthing of an afterthought from SYS, but, being rather socialist in nature, at least in the way he interpreted it, as well as the direction in which he initially led the KMT, made it perhaps the most radical of the Three Principles. It is also perhaps why it is the most disputed and, some would argue, the most ignored.

The strengths of the Three Principles of the People is evidenced, not just in that they were also prasied by the Chinese Communist Party (although, of course, its definitions of “people’s rights” and “people’s livelihood” in particular differ greatly from those of the KMT), but also in that in Taiwan’s post-martial law, multi-party, democratic period, even the bitter opponents of the KMT (which claims to have enacted five or more decades of one-party rule based on these principles) do not seek to serously discard most of SYS’s political foundation.



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