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Letter: The roots of identity

Dan Bloom's "Goodbye to the `Taiwan Province' of the Roads" (Jan. 4, page 8) touches on the idea of a nation that is beginning to realize its true identity. But by focusing on the removal of the words "Taiwan Province" from license plates, he merely scratches the surface of what's in a name or phrase.

Nonetheless, this fact alone is ringing alarm bells in Beijing because now the cat is getting out of the bag!

Simply put, language equals culture, for without a language there can be no culture. In Taiwan's case, this concept has two very important lenses: the micro and the macro. From the micro side of the lens, we see Taiwan as a nation that is struggling with its self-identity, hindered or ameliorated by its acceptance or rejection of sinicization.

From the macro we see the world wondering just what Taiwan is.

However, one can bet Taiwan is largely, if not officially, seen through a Chinese lens.

How many Chinese language schools are going up around the world? How many Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese) schools are doing the same?

Taiwan now finds itself trying to take off a label without taking off any of the fabric. If Taiwan's official language is Hoklo, why does it use Chinese? Even though Taiwanese is not a written language, it can be made into one by unifying a code of writing similar to pinyin. Language is key. Why did the Japanese forbid Taiwanese from speaking their mother tongue? It was largely for control and repression of identity.

As a Canadian I can easily put my country's flag on my backpack and virtually everyone will know my identity, or at least assume they know it. However, if I were to walk around any other country with the Taiwanese flag, no one would react.

A knowing observer wishing to engage me in conversation would probably initiate it by speaking in either French or English -- my assumed identity would prompt a geography-based linguistic response -- if not for the international language of English itself. So language is key and it is the the flag of (assumed) identity.

China is the internationally recognized center of the Chinese world. So is Taipei the center of Taiwan. But it is not a "Taiwanese" Taipei -- it is a "Chinese" Taipei. The focal lens /flag is Chinese. The fact that few people in Taipei speak Hoklo when their brothers and sisters in the south do speaks volumes, if not reams from the Book of the Dead. Lose a language and you lose a culture.

Bring Hoklo back into the schools and the workplace and give it a space on the world stage. Taiwan should seek to become a World Heritage site and to that end elicit the help of Taiwanese aboriginals in laying a foundation to a true Taiwanese identity.

Kevin Larson
Chiayi City
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