THE BEIPU UPRISING was the first example of armed resistance against Japanese rule in Taiwan, but for a century the incident has been distorted and disregarded.
On the evening of Nov. 14, 1907, Tsai Ching-lin (蔡清琳) organized a group of insurgents to seize weapons in Beipu Township (
In retaliation, the Japanese military and police massacred more than 100 Hakka, especially in Neidaping (
During Japanese rule, families of victims did not dare look for the remains of their loved ones and eventually the bodies could no longer be located.
Liu A-chun (
After 100 years, the memory of the Beipu tragedy is still fresh as family members continue to seek justice. Last year, an association for victims of the Beipu Uprising was established. With the assistance of local village leaders, the remains of the victims were uncovered and a religious ceremony was held to commemorate the dead.
After I transferred to Neifong Elementary School in the Neidaping school district in 1979, I started to shed light on the Neidaping massacre by writing a book titled Neifong Disaster after investigating household records from the Meiji period and drawing up a list of the victims. This list turned out to be of great help in seeking justice for the victims.
In 2002, Peng Sheng-yung (
As the Historical Research Commission of the Taiwan Provincial Government was unable to provide historical material corroborating the incident, I submitted my list of victims to the government. The list was approved by MOFA and was transmitted to the Japanese Foreign Ministry. The case was dealt with and finally settled.
For a long time, Hakka people have not had the right to interpret history or to control their own culture. Since the compilers of the Taiwan Province Chronicles and the Hsinchu County Chronicles were not Hakka, they recorded untrue facts about the incident, especially in the Hsinchu County Chronicles, where inappropriate comments insulting to the victims have deeply hurt their family members.
A clear example of this is an article titled "Centennial chants for the young victims of the Beipu Uprising" published in Yuan magazine last year, in which the author clearly does not want to make any changes to the county chronicles. The victims association launched strong protests and the dispute remains unresolved. We can see that the official chronicles that copied documents from the period of Japanese rule have had long-lasting consequences.
In order to improve the situation, the Hsinchu government should remove all inappropriate records in the chronicles and apologize to the victims' descendants.
Resentment and disputes over the Beipu Uprising still fester.
In 30 years of looking into historical materials regarding the uprising, I have found a story worth pondering: the son of the Japanese head of the Beipu Subprefecture was ordered to kill captives during the Second Sino-Japanese War, when his superiors said: "Your father was killed by the wicked Chinese. Now the time for revenge is here." But he refused to follow the order because killing captives was against the law and he did not want revenge.
We should remember this when we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Beipu Uprising. Although the resentment and animosity might disappear with the passage of time, the historical facts remain.
Yang Ching-ting is director of the Hakka Taiwan Culture Academic Society.
Translated by Ted Yang
China’s supreme objective in a war across the Taiwan Strait is to incorporate Taiwan as a province of the People’s Republic. It follows, therefore, that international recognition of Taiwan’s de jure independence is a consummation that China’s leaders devoutly wish to avoid. By the same token, an American strategy to deny China that objective would complicate Beijing’s calculus and deter large-scale hostilities. For decades, China has cautioned “independence means war.” The opposite is also true: “war means independence.” A comprehensive strategy of denial would guarantee an outcome of de jure independence for Taiwan in the event of Chinese invasion or
A recent Taipei Times editorial (“A targeted bilingual policy,” March 12, page 8) questioned how the Ministry of Education can justify spending NT$151 million (US$4.74 million) when the spotlighted achievements are English speech competitions and campus tours. It is a fair question, but it focuses on the wrong issue. The problem is not last year’s outcomes failing to meet the bilingual education vision; the issue is that the ministry has abandoned the program that originally justified such a large expenditure. In the early years of Bilingual 2030, the ministry’s K-12 Administration promoted the Bilingual Instruction in Select Domains Program (部分領域課程雙語教學實施計畫).
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) earlier this month said it is necessary for her to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and it would be a “huge boost” to the party’s local election results in November, but many KMT members have expressed different opinions, indicating a struggle between different groups in the party. Since Cheng was elected as party chairwoman in October last year, she has repeatedly expressed support for increased exchanges with China, saying that it would bring peace and prosperity to Taiwan, and that a meeting with Xi in Beijing takes priority over meeting
Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman for maritime affairs Rogelio Villanueva on Monday said that Manila’s claims in the South China Sea are backed by international law. Villanueva was responding to a social media post by the Chinese embassy alleging that a former Philippine ambassador in 1990 had written a letter to a German radio operator stating that the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) did not fall within Manila’s territory. “Sovereignty is not merely claimed, it is exercised,” Villanueva said. The Philippines won a landmark case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 that found China’s sweeping claim of sovereignty in
RSS