Taiwanese 29September2021 DAY028 Corn dog in the Sea

Taiwan or Lewchew is a place we would like travel to now that boba tea rules the land. Start of the Boba Dynasty – 1980’s.

Ezra Ten Words and Phrases

1. Have you eaten? – 你食飽未？ (lí chia̍h pá bōe/bē) lee-cha-PAUB-way
2. I have eaten (“I am full”) – 食飽矣 (Chia̍h pá-ah) cha-PAAA
3. How are you? – 你好無? (lí hó-bò) LEE-hobo
4. What’s your name – 請問，你貴姓？ (chhiáⁿ-mn̄g, lí kùi-sèⁿ?) CHA-mon lee QWEE fay
5. My name is Ezra – 我姓 … (góa sèⁿ …) Gwa-saya Ezra
6. Sorry – 失禮 (sit-lé) Sheet-Lay
7. My hovercraft is full of eels – 我的氣墊船充滿了鱸鰻 (góa-ê khì-tiām-chûn chhiong-boán liáu lô͘-môa)
8. Thank you – 多謝 (to-siā) DOE-geea
9. I don’t understand – 我聽無 (góa thiaⁿ-bô) gwa-TA-bo
10. Have a good journey – 順風 (sūn-hong)

Viena 10 Words:
What? – Tsong sia
Hello – Le hi
Sorry – Pai se
Thank you – Do sia
Awesome – Shui o
Sure! Ok – Hao o
Uh-huh. Yeah – En dui a
Don’t worry – An la
Really! Seriously! – Zhen de jia de
Unbelievable! – Kua zhang

Viena 10 Phrases:
It is okay – Bei yao gin
I don’t understand – Wa tia bo
What are you doing – Li vei ki do wi
Have you eaten – Jia ba bue
It’s so true – Zhen de
No way! – Pi la
So cute – Hao ke ai
So delicious – Hao hao chi
An annoying person – ji che
Where is the restroom please? – Quig wen ce suo zai na li?

HISTORY

Taiwan was first inhabited by indigenous peoples who have closer links to Filipinos, Malays, and Indonesians.

The Taiwanese have closer ethnic bonds to these surrounding islands than to the people in China. China did not have any influence on the island of Taiwan. Taiwan was a paradise for the indigenous people. The Atayal (Chinese: 泰雅; pinyin: Tàiyǎ), also known as the Tayal and the Tayan, are a Taiwanese indigenous people.

The Atayal people have a creation myth story that goes like this …

“In antiquity, on Ye-mi-ba-lu mountaintop, there was a huge rock. After it cracked, out came many people. Among them, a man named Da-gei-duo-luo and another named Da-gei-ba-ka are our ancestors. Soon, a great flood took place. Land was turned into ocean. The people all ran to Jade Mountain to avoid the flood; in so doing, they could survive. Later, a giant snake fought with a giant crab. The giant snake was defeated and ran away. Its escape routes all became rivers, so the flood receded. People then descended from the mountain, came to the plains, and went to various places. They built up tribes that became the clans of today. It is commonly believed in all aboriginal clans, including the Atayal, that human beings are generated out of cleft rocks.”

For many many years 1000 years, 10,000 years who knows, the people of Taiwan were left alone. They could hunt, fish, dance, farm, and build their traditional houses.

Then in 1542 the Portuguese European imperialists arrived and changed everything.

The Portuguese named the island Formosa which means beautiful, but if the Portuguese would have had a drone and seen the island from above they would have called it the big corn-dog in the sea.

And if the imperial invaders would have cared enough to ask the local people they might have been told the place was called “Liuqiu” Lewchew, and now leave us alone. The Dutch (1600’s) soon found the “beautiful island” and The Portuguese were beaten. The Dutch came to the island on a boat and they thought “wow! what a beautiful Island! it is now ours.” The Dutch sailed from the Netherlands in Europe which coincidentally looks like a corn dog as well.

The Dutch kicked the Portuguese out and then the Dutch set up sugar plantations and decided they did not want to do the work because they was tired, so they went over to China and grabbed/kidnapped/abducted a ton of Chinese people and brought them over to work for them 24/7 at the Sugar factories and other stuff.

And along came Ming.

Actually Ming was a little while back, but Ming Dynasty loyalist Koxinga defeated the Dutch in 1663. This marked the first Chinese government on Taiwan and led to mass Chinese immigration and settlement. At this time, Taiwan’s indigenous population was around 100,000 and it did not take long before 100,000 Chinese ventured over from the mainland. You can see the problem happening.

Chinese rule continued until the Japanese came.

The 1894 Treaty of Shimonoseki was at the end of the China(Sino)-Japanese War and “gave” Taiwan to Japan, without Taiwan indigenous people participation. Much like the French “gave” the Louisiana Purchase Land to the United States without American Indigenous people participation after the French and Indian war. We lost the war now you can have this land we do not really own in the first place.

The Japanese occupation from 1895 until 1945 began with the suppression of both Taiwanese-Chinese and Taiwan First Nations military resistance. Police outposts were created against the indigenous people of Taiwan – Atayal (Tayal), Bunun, and Taroko. Guess what a few more wars shaped Taiwan’s history. Japanese Lost World War II and China had a Civil War. The loser of the Chinese civil war was Chiang Kai-shek.

The winner was Mao Zedong.

The real loser was the Indigenous People of Taiwan because Chiang Kai-shek took his followers to the island of Taiwan. Who came up with this solution? and why was this allowed by the other world powers? You just lost a civil war, why don’t you leave and go invade somewhere else. That’s what Chiang Kai-shek did. In 1949, Chiang’s government and army called Kuomintang retreated to the island of Taiwan. Chiang imposed martial military law with guns as support and persecuted critics. Over 140,000 Taiwanese were imprisoned for being called bandit spies (匪諜), meaning spies for Chinese Communists.

Now things are much better in Taiwan, except the indigenous people still are discriminated against and fighting for their land back. But they do have great beef noodles, nice smartphones, and boba (bubble) tea.