Thousands of Pingpu (平埔), or “Plains” Aborigines, rallied in front of the Presidential Office yesterday demanding that the government restore their Aboriginal status. With many dressed in traditional outfits and holding traditional instruments, they chanted slogans and sang as they marched from the Legislative Yuan to Ketagalan Boulevard.
Rather than constituting a single Aboriginal tribe, Pingpu refer to between nine and 14 tribes — depending on the type of classification — that once inhabited flat lands across the country.
However, these people gradually “disappeared” over the course of time, largely because of interaction with Hoklo and Hakka settlers who began coming from China in large numbers about 400 years ago.
“To interact and trade with newcomers, Pingpu started to learn to speak Hoklo [also known as Taiwanese] and Hakka, and adopted Chinese names and surnames,” said Chan Su-chuan (詹素娟), an assistant research fellow at Acadmia Sinica’s Institute of Taiwan History.
Aside from business connections, intermarriage between Pingpu and Hoklo or Hakka also became common, Chan said.
“The interaction and cultural assimilation strengthened especially after the Qing government took over Taiwan in the 17th century,” she said.
In some instances, Pingpu who had made special contributions to the Qing government were honored by being granted Chinese surnames by the imperial court.
With Chinese surnames came with family books in which the origin of each surname is recorded.
Such family books contributed to the loss of Pingpu identity.
“In the family book of a Pingpu family with the surname Tuan [段] living in Tainan County, it is written that the Tuans are descendents of Bigan [比干, a Chinese official from about 3,000 years ago],” Chan said. “But in fact, Pingpu with the surname Tuan have no biological connection whatsoever with the Tuan family from China.”
Results of censuses conducted during the Japanese colonial period in 1935 showed that more than 57,000 people still identified themselves as Pingpu, while in 1956, another census — this time conducted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government — showed that 27,000 people identified their ethnic group as “others” from a list including “Taiwanese,” “Mainlander” and “mountain compatriots,” or mountain Aborigines.
Comparing the censuses, geographer Yap Ko-hua (葉高華) said that parts of the country where people referred to themselves as being of unknown ethnicity more or less coincided with areas occupied by Pingpu in the 1935 survey.
“When the [KMT] government set up a new ethnic classification system after World War II, it did not leave room for the Pingpu,” Yap wrote on his Web site. “As a result, [the Pingpu] became people ‘of unknown ethnic origin’ in official records.”
In addition to the critical condition of their culture, Pingpu have completely lost their legal status. Pingpu descendents have gradually forgotten who they are — until 10 or 20 years ago, when some decided to fight back.
Sixty-year-old Aylian Hsiao (蕭愛蓮) lives in her native Puli Township (埔里), Nantou County, did not know she was a Pingpu Aborigine from the Kahavu tribe until 10 years ago when her mother created a Kahavu Culture Association and asked Hsiao if she wanted to be a member.
“I said ‘sure, but why?’” Hsiao said, adding that “all my life, people have told me that I look like an Aborigine and asked if I was one. I always told them that I wasn’t.”
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