Toward A Taiwanese Theology of Liberation (part 1)

A few years ago, some of my parents' friends from Taiwan invited my family over on their family vacation.  They weren't just any friends - the family ran a biomedical company that supplied some of the treatment medicine for my dad's cancer.   But back to the trip, the idea was awkward - it was, after all, their family vacation - who were we to intrude?  But my mom insisted on going, largely for... ahem.... "my" interests.  (Those of you who don't get it - my mom was trying to set me up with a lady... against my will, if I may add).  We went down the Eastern seaboard of the island, a rocky, mountainous, but very scenic part of Taiwan.  It was also relatively sparse.  Only one highway cuts through the region, passing through Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung.

We stopped at Hualien for a night and, per Taiwanese tradition, headed to the night market.  Being used to the gigantic gastronomic bonanza known as the Shihlin Night Market in Taipei, Hualien wasn't much of night market.  But there was one uniqueness to it: the traditional shan-di-wu performance, or "indigenous people dance".  Apparently, the indigenous people were known for their parallel-pole dances.  Judging by their costume, I assumed they were indigenous folk, even though they looked very much Chinese.  The next day, we traveled to Chih-pen (zhi-ben, in Pinyin), an area of Taiwan near Taitung known for the hot springs.  It was nice and very relaxing, and a good way to take our mind off, for the moment, the fact that our dad passed away only a month ago.  The evening we arrived, we were invited to - you guessed it - another shan-di-wu performance.  It was more interesting - there were stories of the indigenous people, dances that spoke to daily life - the rhythmic pounding of rice grains to remove the husk, the celebration of the harvest, etc.  Of course, there was the obligatory parallel pole dances, this time involving two sets of parallel poles!  That evening, after a quick game of badminton between my brother and I, we retired for the night.  Again, I assumed they were indigenous folk, despite looking very much Chinese.

The next morning, I went down to the very nice hotel for a huge spread of continental breakfast.  As I finished my first plate, one of the very polite waiters came to pick it up.  She was darker skinned, and looked more like someone from Micronesia than Taiwan.  I remarked to my mom, "Wow, I didn't know Micronesian migrants come all the way to Taiwan to work."  To which she responded, "Micronesian?  No - they're shan-di people."  They are the indigenous Taiwanese.  And then I noticed - all the waiters were shan-di people.  All the janitors were shan-di people.

The memory of seeing the real shan-di people remained fixed in my mind, although I wasn't sure what to really think of it.  Something just did not seem right, but I was unable to articulate it.  Along the way back to Taipei, I noticed many graves along the highway with crosses on them.  The eldest daughter, whom my mom demanded that I sit with on the car ride back (see parenthetical notes in first paragraph), explained to me that many of the shan-di people were Presbyterian, having been some of the first to receive Christianity many decades ago (she was, by the way, not Christian).  A few months later in March, during my several-week visit to Chicago, I purchased a copy of James H. Cone's A Black Theology of Liberation.  I read it, but didn't quite get the full thrust of the message.  Having now been at Princeton for two years, having understood the premises of Gustavo Gutiérrez's liberation theology and the theological interventions behind James Cone's black theology, I think it is high time there is a Taiwanese theology of liberation.

Now, I sense many of my readers are thinking of Taiwan as a nation-state.  Thus, those who are born in Taiwan are Taiwanese, and the theology of liberation applies to a quest for freedom from mainland China.  That is pretty much the opposite of what I'm trying to assert.  The Taiwan I refer to is not the Taiwan of today, but the Taiwan that belongs to the shan-di people.  This is the shan-di Taiwan.  This is the true Taiwan.  Thus, despite the fact I was born in Taiwan (at the Zhongxiao Hospital, I believe...), I am not, nor can I ever be a true Taiwanese.

Why I would claim that?  At the heart of this assertion is the fact that Taiwan had a history of being colonized, first by the mainland Chinese (largely from Fujian, which is why "Taiwanese" is really a linguistic derivative of Fujianese), then by the Dutch, followed by the Qing Chinese, and then by the Japanese, before the Kuomintang Nationalists fled to Taiwan and established the Republic of China.  With each successive colonization, the shan-di people were forced to assimilate by giving up their lands.  The burden was hardest when the Chinese asserted control over the island, as Chinese became the enforced national language.  Today, more than half of the original thirty aboriginal languages have been rendered extinct.  Indigenous peoples were derided as "backward" and as barbarians in Chinese history textbooks.  In modern times, despite efforts to reverse the sad history of discrimination against them, they remain vastly in the lower echelons of society.  Poverty and unemployment among Aboriginal tribes are higher than those among the Chinese living in the more populous West coast.  Many resort to prostitution to earn extra income.

The claim could be made, especially from the earliest Chinese settlers of Taiwan that over time this Taiwan become theirs, as much as it belonged to the indigenous peoples.  But for them to be truly Taiwanese would be to work with the aboriginal people and to partner with them in exercising stewardship over the land.  That is not the case today - in fact, descendants of the Chinese control the political, social, and economic engines of Taiwan.  These are the "Taiwanese" who have access to vast resources, who are able to emigrate to the UK, to the United States, and fly their patriotism for their "native Taiwan".  Yet, they give nary an attention, neither any jot nor tittle, to the plight of the aboriginals who, for all they care, are just interesting cultural relics.  "Token Taiwanese" if you will.  Perhaps, in their downtrodden state, by the fact that a vast, vast minority of them enjoy post-secondary education, much less completed it.

I understand that the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan has been instrumental in introducing welfare programs for the aborigines.  That's nice, but it's simply just that - nice.  What we need is not just another nice gesture of niceness, to show that we care about them in a patriarchal sort of way.  No.  Such a posture asserts the fact that the Chinese still are overlords to the vassal aborigines.  We don't need such kowtowing.  Rather, the true Taiwanese stands with the aborigines in ensuring that the socio-political structure of Taiwan serves aboriginal tribes as equally as the Chinese majority.  In fact, the true Taiwan incorporates aboriginal philosophies, it celebrates aboriginal traditions, it integrates aborigines with glad liberty into a structure that truly takes seriously the notion of freedom, liberty, and justice for all.

For the Church, this presents a unique theological opportunity to respond to what I regard as "Chinese racism" that infects and pollutes all aspects of Taiwanese society.  This is a racism that imposes Chinese philosophies, Chinese ways of thinking, Chinese customs, and Chinese languages upon the aboriginal people.  It is a racism that elides the distinctiveness between aboriginal groups, places them on a stage, and has them do parallel-pole shan-di-wu to assuage the deeply-seated moral crisis waging in our souls that, in reality, we have reduced these people to being mere curiosities.  It is an imposition of systems and structures that privilege those of Chinese descent by virtue of them being born in the right place, at the right time, and with the right people and skin color.   The theological opportunity that this presents to the church is to give voice to a silenced people, to breathe life into dead bones, to infuse energy and power into a people long bereft of it because it has been unfairly wrested from them.   This is a social opportunity for the Chinese to be Taiwanese - to be aboriginal in spirit.  It is not to simply provide them with welfare, but to build social structures that reverse the sad history of discrimination against these people.  It is not to just name streets in Taipei after them, but to give them the tools and the opportunities that the rest of us Chinese enjoy, so that they can walk those same streets with pride and dignity that the rest of us Chinese enjoy.  For the Church in Taiwan, this is a theological opportunity to allow Christ to speak to them not through the mouth of the West, or through the minds of the Chinese, but through the unique lens of the aboriginals.