Linguist urges preservation of Taiwan’s Austronesian languages

The dispersal of the Formosan aborigines in Taiwan is illustrated in Paul Jen-kuei Li’s latest book. (Photo Avant Garde Publishing)


By June Tsai

The Formosan languages is the most important cultural heritage of Taiwan and is in dire need of preservation, according to Paul Jen-kuei Li, a Taiwanese linguist who has spent four decades studying Austronesian, the vast family of languages to which the Formosan languages belong.

“Most people don’t understand the importance of aboriginal languages in Taiwan, not even the aborigines themselves,” Li said in a Jan. 25 interview with Taiwan Today.

It is estimated that today more than 250 million people speak around 1,000 varieties of Austronesian—including Malay, Filipino, and Indonesian. It is spoken in such far apart places as Madagascar in the west and Easter Island in the east, from New Zealand in the south to Taiwan in the north.

Scholars believe that in the distant past, Austronesian speakers must have spread out from some common point of origin, and more and more of them now assert that it is in Taiwan.

One piece of evidence comes from a theory first proposed by the German-American anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir, who posited that a language family will have its source wherever it has the greatest internal linguistic variety.

Following Sapir’s insight, the American historical linguist Robert Blust proposed that Austronesian derives ultimately from Taiwan, according to Li.

“Formosan languages are generally believed to be the most diverse in the entire Austronesian language family,” Li said, noting that decades of research by international scholars has led to this conclusion.

“Drawing on evidence from linguistic studies, leading scholars from around the world are convinced that the Austronesian-speaking peoples dispersed from Taiwan around 5,000 to 4,000 years ago, and that the island is the closest thing to an Austronesian homeland,” he said.

Archeological excavations support this conclusion, Li said, adding that linguistics, along with archeology and genetics, holds the key to understanding a people’s remote past and the whence and whereto of a people.

Another important finding with the Formosan languages is that they have retained the most archaic features of Austronesian, and for this reason they possess a critical value for Austronesian researchers.

“If scholars are to reconstruct the ancient languages and trace the migration of the Austronesian-speaking peoples, they must make use of data and language phenomena found in Taiwan’s aboriginal tongues,” Li said.

“Thus any new discoveries with Taiwan’s Austronesian languages, even if they are descriptive, receive attention internationally,” he said.

Making use of his linguistic studies, Li has mapped the migration of the Austronesian peoples on Taiwan over the past 5,000 years, with his latest findings published in January.

Li, 74, has served in Academia Sinica since 1970 and helped establish its Institute of Linguistics. He was awarded Honorary Membership in the Linguistic Society of America in 2008. A year later he won the Presidential Science Award for significantly raising the visibility of Taiwan’s scientific achievements in the world.

Such recognition was totally unimaginable when Li first chose to focus on the study of the Austronesian languages. That was in the late 1960s, when he was a doctoral student at the University of Hawaii. During that time, he conducted field research in the New Hebrides, today’s Vanuatu, located in the South Pacific.

In 1969 Li was commissioned to prepare an indigenous language learning textbook in Micronesia’s East Caroline Islands.

The beginning was humble and difficult. “I became engaged [in the field] by accident,” he said. “But the more you study it, the more you understand; you feel interested and know the importance of your work.

“I live in Taiwan. When you possess the tools and knowledge of a specialized study, you want to apply them to things closest to you. For me, that was the various Austronesian languages, spoken for hundreds and thousands of years on this island,” Li said.

According to Li, the first comprehensive investigations into the Formosan languages were conducted by Japanese linguists Naoyoshi Ogawa and Erin Asai a hundred years ago, during Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan (1895-1945).

When he returned to work in Taiwan in 1970, Li was to become a local pioneer. Few linguists at the time chose to study Austronesian languages.

They are unwritten languages, and field studies were difficult considering the conditions of transportation and communications back then. For local scholars, it would have been easier to study Sino-Tibetan languages such as Mandarin and Holo, he noted.

The condition of the languages, which were rapidly disappearing, was not favorable. The living Formosan languages have now dwindled to around 14.

“Those languages facing immediate extinction were my priority,” Li said. He often packed up and went into mountains alone to meet tribal peoples. He sought out their speakers, put their words down and recorded their speech.

Recalling some of the difficulties he encountered, Li said, “Speakers were sometimes reluctant to spend time with you, having more important farm work to take care of. Those with time to sit down and talk were the elders, but then you needed an interpreter, mostly younger people in the tribe who spoke both the native language and Mandarin.”

Aborigines might even have questioned the value of preserving their languages, though they were happy some people from the outside world were interested, he said.

“I told them I wanted to record the languages, not just for their academic values, but also to let our children know that there once existed such languages and cultures in the world.”

Since 1970 Li has investigated almost all the living aboriginal languages, including Rukai, Saisiyat, Yami (Tao), Amis, Tsou, Atayal, Seediq, Kanakanavu, Saaroa, Bunun, Puyuma and Paiwan, mostly spoken by indigenous peoples living in mountainous areas.

The Formosan languages spoken by the plains-dwelling aborigines all disappeared two hundred years ago except Pazih, spoken around Puli of Nantou County, Kavalan, in northeastern Taiwan, and Thao, around central Taiwan’s Sun Moon Lake.

Beginning in the 1970s, Li worked with Japanese scholar, Shigeru Tsuchida, in trying to rescue these languages with few speakers left. They collaborated on Pazih and Kavalan dictionaries, which were published in 2001 and 2006, respectively. The last Pazih speaker passed away in October 2010.

Li has also made an effort to look for written documents of extinct languages. He helped uncover some tracing back to the 17th century, relating to Siraya, once spoken in southern Taiwan’s Tainan area, and Favorlang, in the coastal area of central Taiwan.

Of particular note, Li led a research team in the transcription and deciphering of the “Sinkan Manuscripts,” a batch of land deeds and documents written in Siraya between 1683 and 1818, using a system of Romanization introduced by the Dutch to the plains aboriginal group.

His work has been a race against time, as fewer and fewer people speak the Formosan languages in the now largely Han Chinese-inhabited country.

He began drawing attention to the rapid disappearance of Taiwan’s Austronesian languages in the 1990s. At the time, the country was undergoing a democratization process, and aboriginal activists rose to demand their rights covering employment, education, recognition and traditional lands.

The situation of the languages, however, continued to worsen.

“Language is the essence of a culture, and when a language becomes extinct, a whole culture and the system of knowledge implied in the language disappears,” Li said.

“Forty years ago, I could still hear children speaking their native tongues, but now this is impossible. It is sad to think languages that have existed for thousands of years should disappear on such a large scale in a few decades,” he said.

Government assimilation policies have played a major role in causing this to happen. Native languages were banned under the old Kuomintang government to promote the ubiquitous use of Mandarin.

More recently, television—where programs are mostly in Mandarin—has had an insidious influence as well, Li said.

In an age of globalization, Li lamented, the dying of indigenous languages seems an irreversible trend.

Over the past years, Li has urged the government and the public to do more to protect Taiwan’s aboriginal tongues, stressing that the Formosan languages are the nation’s and the world’s unique heritage.

“It is much easier for government policy to wipe out a language than to revive it,” he noted, adding that respect for other cultures and the willingness to use native languages at home might help.

“Rulers often prefer uniformity to differences, because uniformity facilitates policy implementation. But with regard to culture, diversity enhances its value,” he said.

“What is the value of Taiwan’s culture as a whole when the only language we speak is Mandarin?” he asked.

This article first appeared in online Taiwan Today Feb. 25.

Taiwan painter blends art and life in retrospective

"Hunted Bird and Still Life" (1967) suggests sacrificial rituals.

By June Tsai

For Taiwanese painter Liu Keng-i, there is no distinction between art and life—there is just the work he does.

“Painting is my life. I have tried to capture the scenes in my life as they pass in front of me,” the 72-year-old artist said Jan. 20 at the opening of “Aria of Life,” a retrospective on his art and life at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

Sixty oils and pastels as well as dozens of pieces of handcrafted furniture, on view in the TFAM through April 3, provide a glimpse into the mind of this visionary artist.

Images in his works appear blurred, in a manner reminiscent of impressionism, to the extent that human expressions cannot be read and objects and natural forms have more shape and shadow than detail.

Upon a closer look, the objects give way to the exercise of color and composition: shades of brown, red, green, white or blue begin to play a greater role than the objects in reaching the aesthetic goal Liu has in mind.

“Trends in art come and go, but I chose to follow on what the preceding generation of Taiwanese painters accomplished, trying to improve my skills from that basis, broaden my vocabulary and enrich the connotations of each painting,” Liu said.

Son of the renowned Taiwanese painter Liu Chi-hsiang (1910-1998), Liu Keng-i acknowledged the lifelong influence of his father, who was representative of the Japanese-educated generation of Taiwanese painters. Liu Chi-hsiang studied art in Japan when Taiwan was under its colonial rule (1895-1945), marrying a Japanese woman.

At the end of World War II, the Lius moved back to the family home in Tainan, southern Taiwan. The homecoming did not prove to be blissful for an ambitious painter such as Liu Chi-hsiang.

“The February 28 Incident in 1947 and the white terror rule that followed led the country into isolation and cut off the cultural resources most needed for a spiritual life,” Liu Keng-i wrote in an article commemorating his father.

He described his father as a quiet man who loved nature and freedom. In the turmoil of the transition from colonial rule to the Kuomintang government in postwar Taiwan, the family lost its land, allegedly to a government agent. Liu Chi-hsiang then took his wife and children to Kaohsiung, where they settled down in a small village. He was admired as “the father of Western painting in Kaohsiung.”

The younger Liu began painting under his father’s tutelage at the age of 18. Music had been his first love. “I enjoyed Bach’s music. His pieces create a musical church, and I felt the peace and comfort inside it.”

Religious architecture made a similar contribution to his pictorial art. In a dimly lit local temple he discovered a brown tone that fit his expressive purposes. Liu used this color to probe the effects of light and shadow, and he immediately knew that the element of contrast was what he wanted to grasp.

With this epiphany, around 1960, he knew that he would always be a painter. He spent the 60s in a brown period that has influenced all his later work. “It took me almost 30 years to realize that my personal style and interest in the twilight zone of the mind had already emerged at that early stage,” he wrote later.

A typical example of the period is “Self-Portrait” (1963), in which layers of brown in varying shades and thicknesses outline a male profile with one hand holding a brush, half raised to a canvas. It seems all outlets for the painter’s expression are stopped up by thick clay.

Besides the exercise of color for self-expression, exhibition curator Liu Yung-jen detected a theme of death and ritual in his “Hunted Bird and Still Life,” painted in 1967. This image evolves in later works exploring the dialectical relationship between life and death.

In 1969, Liu moved to Hengchun in Taiwan’s southernmost county of Pingtung, where he began working as a crafts teacher in a local school.

During this time he was inspired by his father’s ardent pursuit of joy in the contemplation and depiction of nature. The experience of living in the tropics, where things grow—and decay—quickly left a lasting mark on his art. “I’ve been trying hard to make what is transient in life permanent,” he said.

It was also during this time that Liu first tried his hand at making furniture. Most of his pieces are wood, made using mortise and tenon joints, and show the precision of which the artist is capable.

In the beginning, Liu only wanted to make furniture for his apartment. He took to the activity, however, applying his art training to woodworking and sourcing local timber. In the process, Liu said, the furniture went beyond being merely functional and took on the character of sculpture.

Another turning point came when he married Tseng Ya-yun, also a painter. With her support, he quit teaching, moved to Kaohsiung City and became a professional painter in the early 1980s.

Of particular note in the exhibition are some works with his wife as the model, including “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife” (1984) and “Woman in Red” (1985). In these paintings he began exploring the symbolic possibilities of the color red.

To fend off the pettiness and atrocities he saw in the human world, Liu said, he sought elegance, nobility and spirituality in red.

At the time Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s No. 1 port city, was booming with the expansion of heavy industry and an export processing zone. While huge foreign reserves piled up, the countryside was scarred by heavy pollution.

“Natural landscapes swiftly disappeared and became only memories,” Liu said. “In the meantime, in the 1980s and 1990s social movements such as environmental protection picked up strength as people struggled for a more livable world.”

Affected by the social atmosphere, Liu put his longing for nature, expectations for change and political criticism into his art. The faceless figures in “On the Way to Execution” (1992), for example, seem to represent a victim and his persecutors, making a statement about human rights violations.

Having lived in different cultures, moving among the Taiwanese, Japanese and Mandarin languages, Liu has also been particularly absorbed in the issue of identity.

“On the Bridge” (1993), for instance, expresses hesitation about which way to go, as well as a desire to return to nature.

In “Crying Dawn” (1996), a shadowy person dressed in red holds a body covered in white cloth against a blue and brown backdrop, forming a highly symbolic image: something unknown is taking shape.

This work in a way represents the general sentiments of the time, Liu said, as Taiwan was holding its first direct presidential election. It was a critical crossroads, as a person or a country without a clear identity is at the juncture of death and rebirth.

The issue of identity has continued to preoccupy Liu since he began spending most of his time in New Zealand more than 10 years ago.

“Nature is my spiritual homeland, and not much is left of it in Taiwan anymore,” Liu said. The south Pacific country offers many quiet moments in which he can reflect and paint, in contrast to the hustle and bustle of Taiwan.

Liu’s art, consistent in style throughout his career, exudes pensiveness, perplexity and great expectations with regard to life and society. Taken together, his work amounts to a metaphor for an artist who is continually asking questions about his life and art.

This article first appeared in online Taiwan Today Feb. 18.

Former Vice President Lu talks Taiwanese politics

By June Tsai

In a Dec. 30 interview with Taiwan Today, former Vice President Annette Lu spoke on a variety of issues, including Taiwan’s policy toward mainland China and how the opposition Democratic Progressive Party should choose its 2012 presidential candidate.

Q: Do you agree with the view that the Nov. 27 elections can be seen as a broad assessment of President Ma Ying-jeou’s policies?

A: I do not agree with the view that the election results are a reflection of what the electorate thinks about President Ma’s economic or cross-strait policies.

The KMT had a huge win in Taipei City, just as the DPP won by a landslide in Kaohsiung City. But neither victory was really related to the policies of the current administration.

What was important was the two NT$10-billion (US$312-million) events. I mean the Flora Expo in Taipei, and the World Games in Kaohsiung.

These events were what made the difference. A clear proof of this is that just a few months before the election, incumbent Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin’s governing competence was put to a grave test over the Xinsheng Overpass reconstruction project scandal [in which several high-ranking city officials were allegedly involved in financial improprieties]. The opening of the Flora Expo Nov. 4 helped Hau’s shaky image, and he won out in the election three weeks thereafter.

In Kaohsiung, though the World Games took place one year ago and were not coordinated to take place around election time, their success helped make incumbent Mayor Chen Chu more popular.

Both the World Games and the Flora Expo can be considered international events. They fit in with the wish of the Taiwanese people to become a part of the world. That’s what helped the mayors win their re-elections, if you ask me.

By the way, I don’t think the shooting that injured Sean Lien [the son of KMT Honorary Chairman Lien Chan] really had an effect on the elections, either.

The shooting might have been a catalyst for what I call “centrist nonvoters.” Such voters usually don’t bother going to ballot boxes because they don’t think their votes will make a difference. But the incident brought out these lukewarm supporters.

I would say the shooting might have benefited the KMT in the north and the DPP in the south. But overall, I don’t think it had an influence on the elections, except perhaps in Taichung City [where the margin of victory was 2.24 percent].

However, I strongly believe that learning the truth is very important. I have suggested to the DPP legislative caucus that it propose a bill [which has been referred to party-to-party negotiation] to set up a national-level committee and investigate both this incident and the March 19, 2004 shooting incident [in which former President Chen Shui-bian and Lu, then presidential and vice-presidential candidates, were injured] to find out the truth.

Such cases, if unsolved, only give rise to more speculation and mistrust in society. The 2004 shooting case has not been closed. In the latest case, the gunman was caught on the spot, there were plenty of witnesses, and evidence in the form of a gun. But as of yet the results of the criminal investigation have still not been made public.

Criminal cases involving politics in Taiwan tend to remain unresolved. This is very bad for a new democracy.

But to return to our topic. At first glance, the political landscape in Taiwan has not changed too much after the election. But the total ballot counts of previous major elections tell another story.

I would say the DPP won 100,000 more votes than the KMT, not the official figure of 400,000. This is because there was a three-way race in Kaohsiung City, involving the DPP, the KMT, and former Kaohsiung County Magistrate Yang Chiu-hsin, who ran as an independent.

In the end, Yang received 410,000 votes. But if he had not run, 300,000 of the votes he won would probably have gone to the KMT candidate. I have consulted with former Magistrate Yang on this matter. He said he agreed with my observation.

Now let me remind you that in the 2008 presidential election, the KMT candidate won 2.1 million more votes than the DPP nominee. In the 2009 elections for chiefs of the country’s 17 cities and counties, the DPP caught up with the KMT by losing only about 110,000 votes in total. This year, the results have been reversed, with the DPP beating the KMT by the same number of votes.

A more significant result is the DPP made huge progress in the city councilor elections. It actually won more seats in total than the KMT. Also, for the first time in history DPP councilors have been elected to deputy speaker positions—though they still have not captured the speakership role—in Taipei and Kaohsiung cities. In Tainan, the city council’s speaker and deputy speaker are both DPP members.

I think that is one reason foreign observers advised paying attention to the possibility of a DPP comeback. The opposition party really does have a chance to become the ruling party again in 2012, provided it follows the right course and performs well in the 2011 legislative elections.

Q: After the election, many observers, domestic as well as foreign, are expecting the DPP to overhaul its platform toward mainland China. DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen has announced the establishment of a think tank to help create a “peaceful and stable framework for interacting with China” and the rest of the world. What is your take on this?

A: I urge the public and all DPP members to read again the party’s carefully written resolutions published over the past two decades. These resolutions became part of the party’s platform, and have remained very consistent over the years.

The first resolution is the “Taiwan Independence Clause” of 1991. Then there is the “Resolution on Taiwan’s Future” of 1999, the “Creating a New Situation for Taiwan’s Economic Resolution” of 2001 and the “Multiple Ethnic Groups, United Country Resolution” of 2004. Finally, there is also the “Normal Country Resolution” of 2009.

The 1999 resolution was made public ahead of the 2000 presidential election. In Part II it states, “Taiwan is an independent and sovereign country and change to the ‘status quo’ of independence should require the approval of the people of Taiwan in a national referendum.” It also says that Taiwan does not belong to the People’s Republic of China, and that the country should reject the “one-China” principle so that the global community will not feel confused as to Taiwan’s position.

Article 7 says, “Taiwan and China should conduct across-the-board dialogue to reach a deeper understanding of one another, create mutual economic benefits, and establish a framework on which to build long-term stability and peace between the two sides.”

The 2001 resolution puts emphasis on the economy, stating that the DPP as the ruling party should proceed to “incorporate China’s market and resources as part of Taiwan’s global strategy for trade and economic development” on the basis of the 1999 resolution.

Some have accused the DPP of not having a China policy. This perception is biased. The DPP was in power between 2000 and 2008, and its China policy was implemented consistently. In dealing with China, the DPP government followed the model of “proactive opening and effective management,” as stated in the 2001 resolution.

Chairwoman Tsai was then Minister of the Mainland Affairs Council and many policies of opening to China in terms of trade went into effect under her directorship. Unlike the Ma administration now, the DPP government was proceeding on a principled basis.

The media may be expecting certain moves from politicians, such as Tsai leading a DPP delegation to visit China. But didn’t Lien Chan make a “historic” visit to China on behalf of the KMT in 2005 after losing the presidential election? What has been brought about? Party-to-party dealings have replaced nation-to-nation engagement. The KMT needs to be watched over, so does the DPP, and the general public has to play the watchdog.

Q: You have been proposing a “1996 Consensus” as the foundation for Taiwan to engage the world. What is the main idea behind it?

A: On March 23, 1996, Taiwanese citizens cast ballots to elect their president for the first time in history. Only citizens of an independent and sovereign country have such a privilege. Prior to the elections, the People’s Liberation Army conducted a series of missile tests targeting Taiwan. The PLA even lobbed four missiles into ROC territorial waters, in an attempt to intimidate the electorate.

In response, the US sent two carrier battle groups led by the USS Nimitz and Independence to waters near Taiwan in defense of a people freely exercising their political rights. The election went on smoothly, and in accordance with the law. Such an election should be used as proof of our sovereignty.

Since 1996, presidential elections have been held consistently and freely in Taiwan. Each election is a reconfirmation of our sovereignty. We can thus claim Taiwan is, de facto and de jure, a sovereign country, and we must say this to ourselves and to the world.

With everyone acknowledging what already happened in 1996, which is a fact, a consensus will be formed. With such a consensus Taiwan can reposition itself in the world and toward China.

On the basis of this 1996 consensus, China is not our enemy, as was declared by former presidents Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo. Nor is it a nation that we should kowtow to. Instead, the two countries should be like neighbors and relatives, and engage with each other on an equal basis. China will have to change its attitude toward Taiwan, and Taiwan must try to persuade people on the mainland that it is not a part of China.

Taiwanese have shaken off their identity as a people who have always been colonized, suppressed, divided and manipulated. We are now a nation with confidence and dignity. Look at today’s young Taiwanese, their fine qualities, their outstanding performances in international tournaments, the patriotism they have shown!

Second, the country must work harder to cultivate a new worldview among its people, by educating Taiwanese to become citizens of the world and deepening their global perspective and connection with international society.

Our China policy cannot be one that is ingratiating, provocative, or made out of fear. Such a policy would lead to a type of interaction that can really benefit both sides.

Q: As someone who was involved in the historically important 1979 Kaohsiung Incident, and as a leading member of the DPP, who has served as vice president twice, what are your expectations for the DPP? What are your future career plans?

A: What is good for Taiwan is good for me. History is always moving forward, and I think the time for the Kaohsiung Incident generation has already gone. It’s time for us to pass down our experience to the younger generation within the DPP. Party members are now discussing how they should go about choosing the party’s 2012 presidential candidate. I would like to remind everyone how the DPP chose its first presidential candidate in 1995.

At the time, 49 public debates were held throughout Taiwan—two in each of Taiwan’s 25 cities and counties, with only one cancelled due to a typhoon. In those debates candidates talked about their beliefs and platforms. Following each debate party members voted to select the one they thought was best for the party. Both party members and candidates were serious about the debates and there was no political showmanship.

I think the DPP should follow that good example. When continued over a period of time, debates can expose problems, set the agenda, and make voters understand what their potential national leader has in mind for the country.

I think the worst thing about the five special municipality elections was that there was more political showmanship than debate from candidates of both parties during election campaigns. Merging and upgrading the cities and counties into special municipalities could create many problems. More debates should have been held.

An edited version of this article appeared in online Taiwan Today Jan. 14, 2011.