During the public hearing convened on Thursday last week at the Legislative Yuan for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party bloc’s proposed impeachment of President William Lai (賴清德), Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Yi-chuan (王義川) delivered an address in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese). Less than 30 seconds into his remarks, he was interrupted by the KMT’s Chang Ya-chung (張亞中), Sun Yat-sen School president, who demanded that Wang speak “Guoyu [國語, Mandarin Chinese]”. After a moment’s surprise, Wang said he had the right to use the language of his choosing, telling Chang that, “if you can’t understand it, go find an interpreter.”
Chang holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Hamburg in Germany. Yet, in the eyes of this so-called elite intellectual, Taiwanese are forever destined to be second-class citizens. Deigning to try and prevent a legislator from speaking Taiwanese, he is stuck in the Martial Law era. The incident has circulated online, evoking memories for many of being punished for “speaking dialects” in elementary school.
My parents are Taiwanese, and Taiwanese is my mother tongue. I was often subject to the NT$1 fines for speaking in Taiwanese in school. Back then, NT$1 was a lot of money. When I asked my parents for pocket money, they would usually give me NT$0.5, enough to buy five biscuits.
However, much worse than the NT$1 fines was having to wear a cardboard sign around your neck, mockingly called a “dog tag.” The sign would read: “I did not speak Mandarin today.” It was humiliating. I remember my deskmate in fourth grade being punished this way; she was a shy girl, and was too afraid to leave the classroom all day, even to go to the toilet. At 4pm, when everyone stood up for the flag-lowering ceremony, she suddenly wet herself. She was overwhelmed with shame, and I was frozen in shock. At 10 years old, with a mind full of questions, I began to sense that something was deeply wrong with the adult world.
More than half a century has passed, yet this scene remains clear in my mind. It is why, when I entered graduate school and my Taiwanese consciousness began to awaken, I was fully in favor of democracy pioneer and reverend Kao Chun-ming’s (高俊明) “A Declaration of Human Rights by the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan” in 1977, which called for Taiwan to become a new and independent country.
Chang might be full of a lofty moral rhetoric, but he is utterly steeped in the ideology of unification. Despite having lived in Taiwan for more than 70 years, he still neither understands nor speaks Taiwanese. He is the type that fancies himself a superior “Mainlander,” but is unwilling to integrate into the Taiwan in which he was born and raised. The arrogance of this Chinese mindset is akin to what the Taiwanese phrase refers to when it talks of beggars moving into a temple and driving out the temple keepers. He will not last.
Sophia Lee is a member of the Taiwan Association of University Professors.
Translated by Gilda Knox Streader
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