Who's on First?

Dear Editor:

Hello! In the September 1999 Southeast Asian edition, the story about the Hakka movement in Taiwan said that once at a press conference, when the sponsors spoke in Hakka, many of the reporters walked out in protest. The sponsors should themselves be responsible and rethink their own chauvinism. At such events, because few people understand Hakka, the organizers should use Mandarin or Taiwanese, since these are the most widespread languages used in Taiwan.

Also, the article "Four Centuries of Taiwanese Hakkas" says that historians, based on the construction of temples to the Three Mountain-Kings, argue that Hakkas may have arrived in Taiwan even earlier than Fujianese. This turns history upside down.

Although belief in the Three Mountain-Kings did indeed originate in Guangdong, it spread across China, and there were also believers in Fujian. Most of the Three Mountain-Kings temples in Taiwan were built by people of Fujianese origin. Before Taiwan was made a separate province in the late 19th century, it was under the jurisdiction of Fujian; the two places are separated only by a strip of water, and, naturally Fujianese were the first to come to Taiwan, and constituted the bulk of early pioneers. In the 17th century, life in the Fujian area was very hard. It is undeniable that after the ban on travel to Taiwan was put into force, only Fujianese-as "natives of the same province"-were allowed to go to Taiwan. After all, Taiwan was then a "prefecture" of Fujian. Given the close relations between the two sides, naturally Fujianese were especially encouraged to pioneer Taiwan as a way of resolving the food shortage in Fujian.

In Malaysia, Fujianese is widely used in the northern part of western Malaysia and in the southern part of Malaysia, in some places in eastern Malaysia, and especially in Penang, the small island that constitutes the major Chinese settlement in all of Malaysia. I've never heard anyone call Fujian-ese fulaoren (literally: "Fujian old chap"), because the character lao has a derogatory meaning among Chinese speakers in Malaysia. I hope in the future you will be cautious in using this term.

Editor's Reply: According to the book Taiwan Hakkas, published by Tangshan Publishing, while the belief in the Three Mountain-Kings did spread across all China, new temples still traced their "authenticity" back to temples in Guangdong; Taiwan's earlist Three Mountain-King temple was an offshoot of the Lintian Temple in Jieyang County in Guangdong.

As for the term fulaoren, we thought carefully before using it. We could have used terms like holoren or minnanren, but both of these describe places in mainland China, and are objectionable to many people with a strong Taiwanese consciousness. The term taiwanren, on the other hand, obscures the fact that there are four main ethnic groups in Taiwan. The term fulaoren is less ideologically charged, so we opted for it instead. If we have offended anyone, please forgive us.