With public attention focused on the recent blockbuster movie Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale, descendants of Yang Yu-wang (楊友旺) lamented that their ancestor’s act of great heroism and altruism was never recorded in the history books other than at the gravesite of the murdered Ryukyuans in Pingtung County’s Checheng Township (車城).
Seediq Bale is a big-budget epic based on the Wushe Incident — an Aboriginal uprising against occupying Japanese forces in 1930 led by Aboriginal Seediq hero Mona Rudao.
However, Paoli Community Development Association chairman Yang Hsin-te (楊信德) said that the actions of Yang Yu-wang in assisting the Ryukyuans in 1871 was just as notable, but very few Taiwanese had every heard about it.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsien, Taipei Times
According to information gathered by the Paoli Community Development Association, a group of Ryukyuan sailors returning from Naha in 1871 were blown off course near the southern tip of Taiwan.
On arriving in Taiwan the Ryukyuans approached Paiwan Aborigines in search of food, as a result of which 54 of their group of 66 were killed.
The remaining 12 Ryukyuans were saved by Yang Yu-wang, at the time the local Han village chief, who interceded on their behalf and bought their lives and the corpses of the slain with money, oxen and cloth, Yang Hsin-te said.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsien, Taipei Times
Yang Yu-wang later sent the survivors to Fujian Province from where they returned to the Kingdom of Ryukyu — now called Okinawa Prefecture — and buried the dead beside the Han village, which is the current-day Tongpu Village (統埔) in Checheng Township.
The initial killings led to the Mudan Incident (牡丹社事件) of 1874 — which took place before the Japanese colonial era began in 1895 — with the Japanese Empire taking punitive action against the Aborigines over the killing of the sailors.
Yang Hsin-te said Yang Yu-wang did not know the Ryukyuan sailors and yet he was willing to help them at his own expense, as well as help them bury their dead, showing the kind and -sincere -nature of Taiwanese.
The altruism of his ancestor should be held up as a role model for posterity, he added.
“Hopefully, the government will be able to put an emphasis on Taiwan’s past heroes and take the chance the popularity of the film Seediq Bale has given us,” Yang Hsin-te said.
Translated By Jake Chung, Staff Writer
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