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
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations