Among Han Ethnic Groups

As the biggest ethnic group on the island, the Han people had complicated

relationships among these sub groups. In section one we have pointed out that categorization of Han people should use the criterion of language rather than their original hometown, for language is the most obvious and stable identity marker.

The relationship between the Han subgroups, though always complex, actually

changed over time. According to Yin Chang-yi (尹章義), in the beginning of

development, due to the great need for labor and skills, the relationship between various subgroups was that of cooperation. And Han immigrants from either the Hoklo or Hakka mixed with Pingpu people. Pingpu people owned the land, but since their labor force was insufficient and they knew very little about agriculture, they often recruited Han people to cultivate the land for them. On the other hand, due to the government’s immigration restrictions, Han immigrants usually came to Taiwan alone in the beginning and had to deal with the Pingpu people whom they were not familiar with. Under such circumstances Han people had strong motivation to cooperate rather than compete with each other.

After an area had been thoroughly cultivated, limited land and water resources would then lead to benefit conflicts among various ethnic groups, often known as

“armed conflicts” (分類械鬥). Through conflicts, the power hierarchy would be

rearranged. With assimilation through contact among groups, fighting would then cool down. There might be overlapping of these three stages, but generally speaking ethnic conflicts among the Han subgroups followed this pattern. Armed fights among various groups as recorded in Table III clearly demonstrate these changing patterns (Huang, 1992).

County(縣)/

Ting(廳)

Taiwan Feng-shan Jia-yi Chang-hwa Heng-cun Peng-hu Bei-nan Pu-li-she Hsin-chu Dan-shui Kee-long Yi-lan Total

The First

Table III The Trend of Armed Fighting in Taiwan during the Ching Dynasty (space)

In the first period (1694-1781), which covered 87 years, Taiwan only had three

fights, and all of them happened in Feng-shan County (鳳山縣) and Chang-hwa County (彰化縣), which were the earliest developing areas. The second period

(1782-1867) was the high season of armed conflicts. There were a total of 33 fights in this 85-year period. Twenty-three of them were in Dan-shui County and five were in Chang-hwa County. This period was also the peak of development in the north and central Taiwan. The years from 1868 to 1895 were the third period, and there were only two fights which happened in new Taiwan County and Hsin-chu County. Note that here Taiwan County referred to the new one which was in central Taiwan after

south.

Armed fights rearranged the power structure among different ethnic groups, and

indirectly promoted migration. Hakka people who dwelled in the Hsin-zhuang Plain (新莊平原) moved to the hill area of Tao-yuan, Hsin-chu and Miao-li, for they were inferior to Hoklo people in power. Only “San-shan Kuo Wang Temples” (三山國王廟)

were left to witness this history. Similar phenomena happened in central Taiwan as well. If we put table III and Table IV (Huang, 1992) together, we can see that there were severe fights in the Chang-hwa area, and place names like “Ho-mei” (和美, peace and beauty), “Yong-jing” (永靖, lasting peace) and “Tai-ping” (太平, peace) are

reflections of inhabitants’ wish that these tragedies would not happen again in the coming generations. Note that “Chang vs. Quan Armed Conflicts” (漳泉械鬥) can be seen as another kind of “Hoklo vs. Hakka Conflict” (閩客衝突). We have mentioned

in section one that there were quite a few Hakka speakers who came from Changzhou Prefecture (漳州府) of Fukien Province, especially from Zhao-an (詔安) and Ping-ho (平和) mountain areas. They made a significant contribution in the development of

central Taiwan. But since they were surrounded by Hoklo people, their mother tongue, Hakka, suffered severe loses. The Hakka language has totally disappeared in Chang-hwa, while a few Hakka “islands” that remain in Yun-lin area are quickly disappearing as well.

　Type Hoklo and

Table IV　 The Trend of Armed Fighting in Taiwan during the Ching Dynasty (type)

　 From Table IV we can detect a tendency, that is the grouping criteria became finer

and finer. In the beginning the fights occurred between “Hoklo and Hakka groups”

( 閩 客 械 鬥 ), for they spoke different languages. Then they happened between

“Chang and Quan groups of Hoklo speakers” (漳泉械鬥), for their Hoklo accents

were different. After that, they happened between people from different counties of origin (異縣械鬥) to be followed by conflicts happening between families of different names (異性械鬥). And finally, they happened between groups of different jobs (職業 團體械鬥). There were of course overlapping among these types of fighting, but this

tendency implies two things: first, the core of fighting was all for benefit, either land, water, or some business advantages. Differences in language, place of origin, family names, and vocation were simply identity markers. They were merely convenient labels whose function was to make people from the same side cohere. Normally this identity marker would choose the greatest common denominator within a certain

group. When the population increased with development, their composition would be more complex and this greatest common denominator would then be smaller, thus grouping criteria would become finer. Secondly, it indicates that beside communication, language also has the function of identification. It was frequently used as the marker of identity during the period of development, for a person’s mother tongue cannot be changed easily. However, this is a result of over-use of the identification function of language (Tsao, 2004). Linguistic variation in word usage or accent is a common thing that happens to all languages and dialects, and it has nothing to do with superiority. It might cause some inconvenience in inter-group communication or it may lead to misunderstanding, which might grow into conflicts, but it would be a big mistake if we attribute the core reason of armed fighting to language differences.