Something about Jian dao(Gando)

Hey Gubukjanggoon,

    If you're talking about the flag with five stars, then yes, the five stars represent the five major ethnicities.

Peace,

Michael

8-30-2004

I don't just love to hate it, I hate to love it as well.  It's more like a love hate relationship.

Hey Hansioux,

    I like the flag you hate =P  I think the basic premise behind it is cool.  Very poetic and revolutionary.  Anyway, are most of the Han-cultured Ping Pu intermarried with Chinese from China?

Peace,

Michael

8-30-2004

It should be 'Han', I think.  Huns already disppeared in history. Maybe can find some in Hungary......

To Mengtzu..

Well, in Taiwan aboriginals gets some special previliages like in education or job security and stuff.

That is why the government recognize that there are two types of aboriginals.  Ping-Pu tribes who consist of most of the Han-cultured Taiwanese people are not a part of this aboriginal count.  They are counted separately from those who still retained their language and culture.

What's left are 11 tribes, soon to be 12 that will be recognized as aboriginals that still retained their language and culture for the most part.  They are 2% of the population.

However counting in the Ping-Pu aboriginals, which can be traced through family names, family history, religion and DNA, the both aboriginals comes up to be 80% of the Taiwanese people.

Hey I/eye,

    The thing is Taiwan does have a flag and an anthem.  I love the old Nationalist (not the crazy "nationalists" that I decry, but an actual party with that name) flag (the one Hansioux is using.)  It's "Ching Tian Ba Yi Wan Di Hung," "The blue sky, white sun, and the red field," the red field, if I'm not mistaken, symbolizes the blood of the martyrs who fought against Ching dynasty.  It might be an allusion to the "Red Flower Society," a secret society that fought against Ching (please correct me if I'm wrong here, cuz I'm not entirely sure if the Red Flower Society was real or fictional.  In any event, though, I think the Nationalists were associated with the Triads, and I think Sun Yat Sen was a Triad member himself.) 

    My own family has something to do with the Nationalist party.  We used to fly their flag (way before I was born though.)  And, no, as far as I know, my family was not gang related.  Would be cool if it was though.

    The reason that the Taiwanese aren't supposed to use their anthem and flag in the Olympics is because of China, really.  The UN only recognizes Mainland as China (they used to only recognize the Republic of China in Taiwan instead.)  Now we can't call Taiwan China cuz we'd have two Chinas, but we can't call it Taiwan cuz then we'd be recognizing its independence, and doing either of this would piss off Mainland.  Like I said, those poor Taiwanese bastards.  One should note that Taiwanese teams in the Olympics represent "Chinese Taipei" or something.  That's part of the PC talk described above.

Peace,

Michael

8-30-2004

Currently, the Taiwanese government only admits people from 11 tribes to be aboriginal.  These people have already stopped living in tribes.  There is no more tribe's common wealth.  There is about 432,667 aboriginals in the year 2001, that makes up about  2% of the total population.  37% of them live in the mountain still, but also 33% lives in the cities.  They are losing their culture fast.  Eventhough the Taiwanese government are doing a lot to reverse the process, but I think the trend will continue.

I am one of the Han-washed Taiwanese who actually loves aboriginal culture.  I love their music, love their legends, love the connection to the other Austronesians.  There are a lot of legends that Taiwanese and the austronesians share.  I have an interest of collecting them.

So called Taiwanese language is a term given by the Japanese and continue to be used by the Chinese colonialists.  Two major groups of Fujian language combined to form this language.  It is similar to the language used in �H��Xiamen, in Fujian China.  It is a combination of the �s�w Zhang Zhou and �u�w Quan Zhou dialects of Fujian.  People migrated to Taiwan from this two different parts of Fujian used to have large mob fights.  Now, few people even remember which one of these they are. 

Fujian has so many different dialects due to different eras of Chinese  migration to avoid invasions.  These languages have also mixed in the �V Yue aboriginal languages already existing in Fujian.

The Taiwanese using this dialect actually refer to this language as Holo.  They write it as �e�� (The Luo river next to the ancient capital of ���� Luo Yang), implying their ancestor came from the ancient capital.  However there are other Chinese dialects used in Taiwan, such as �Ȯa Hakka (meaning Guest, obviously also migrated to the south to avoid invasion).

The aboriginal languages now is still used.  The few PengPu (Low land) aboriginal language still being used.  Katagelan is one of them.  Others Mountain tribes such as Atayal, Amei, Bunun, Puyuma, Paiwan, Tsou, Sasiat, Tao, Chou and several more are used but in the brink of extinction.

Thanks to the effort of foreign linguist such as the Japanese, many of the already extinct Peng-Pu languages were recorded.  There were as many as few hundreds of different austronesian languages existing in Taiwan along.  Studies on Taiwanese languages led to the Australia linguist Peter Bellwood to theorize that the Austronesians actually spread to the pacific islands from Taiwan.  Since the origin of a language contains more diveresed forms of the language.

My father's family have heritage from the Taokas tribe, and my mom's family has heritage from the Silaya tribe.

People in Taiwan have been pushing the word Taiwanese to be used to refer to Austronesian languages and call the current title holder Holo again.