Sinorama was in the forefront of the print media in Taiwan in being the first to report directly from mainland China, with our earliest field report coming in 1990. Sinorama staff know first-hand what it has been like going from those pioneering days, when mainland public security personnel monitored our every move and treated us as if we had hostile intentions, to today’s much more relaxed and open atmosphere. Over the years, we have provided penetrating analyses of the latest developments of the lives of Taiwanese in the mainland and told countless moving stories, for which we have repeatedly won the Mainland Affairs Council’s “Cross Strait Relations and Mainland News Reporting Award.”
July of 1989 was a dramatic month, as the world witnessed the tragic Tiananmen Incident. Shortly thereafter, Sinorama ran a cover story entitled “Journey to Tiananmen,” in which we strongly criticized the Chinese Communist authorities for violently suppressing the popular democratic movement. One year later, our staff returned to Beijing and the scene of the crackdown, and, finding themselves surrounded by a surface appearance of humdrum calm, wrote the poignant piece “June Memorial—From Opium War to Tiananmen.”
You can go home again, but…
In 1993, the ROC government began permitting old veterans not only to visit their families, but to relocate permanently back to their native places. The problem was that after four decades, “home” was no longer what it once had been. For our 1995 report “Home to an Uncertain Welcome,” our reporters visited Zhoushan in Zhejiang Province, which had more returned veterans from Taiwan than any other place in the mainland. There were some joyous cases in which men remarried the wives they had left behind with lavish weddings, but there were also many cases in which they opted to just walk quietly away rather than disrupt their wives’ new families. There were also cases in which old veterans filed lawsuits to try to get back their spouses, and still others in which they angrily repudiated their wives. It was heartbreaking to see how the grand events of history had played havoc with the lives of these ordinary people.
For the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China in 1997, Sinorama reporters visited Hong Kong in two consecutive years to file reports about the transition in the former British colony. Feelings there were very mixed: It was the end of colonial rule, but it meant trading in one regime that had become normal life for another that was completely unknown. But there was one thing that all residents of Hong Kong—where Cantonese is the native language—shared in common… they all began studying standard Mandarin Chinese!
In 2000, our reporters visited the small city of Dongguan in Guangdong Province to report on an amazing development: Investors from Taiwan, who were heavily concentrated in that locale, had generated more exports and foreign exchange than any other single city in the mainland save Shenzhen and Shanghai.
Where money goes, culture follows
Eventually, the culturati began to follow in the footsteps of the more commercially minded in heading over to mainland China. A 2002 report, “Transplanted from Taiwan—Yam Culture Catches On in the PRC,” covered this breaking situation, describing how culture and entertainment from Taiwan—everything from pop music to publishing to performance art—was making inroads into the mainland.
And of course let’s not forget food! Naturally Taiwan’s restaurant industry did not fail to make their own invasion of the mainland, as attested to by the 2003 story “Biting Off as Much as They Can Chew—Taiwanese Restaurants in the PRC.” Pearl milk tea, beef noodles, soybean milk…. Restaurant chains serving these and other delights that were already a hit in Taiwan were proving to be just as successful with mainland palates.
Yet even as Taiwanese businesses covering virtually every aspect of daily life were proving themselves capable of making a go of it in mainland China, there was one glaring exception. Our 2005 account “Living in Shanghai—A Good Doctor These Days Is Hard to Find” chronicled the difficulties Taiwanese businesspeople were having finding adequate medical care. It was an especially interesting account in that it not only provided a look at healthcare shortcomings in the mainland, but also drew attention to a new investment opportunity.
Over time, the number of Taiwanese business owners and managerial staff moving to the mainland mushroomed, and more and more Taiwanese wives were going with them. In fact, quite a large number of single Taiwanese women were also relocating there to make their careers. The 2007 report “Taiwan Women and Their ‘New Shanghai Dream’” recorded this developing phenomenon.
Moreover, it was not long before thoughts turned from the parents to their children. In 2008, our reporters filed a story describing the education of the children of Taiwanese businesspeople in the mainland, and their experiences revolving between Taiwanese schools, international schools, and local mainland schools.
Taiwan Panorama also took note of the fact that it was not only labor-intensive industries that were moving to the mainland: Taiwan agriculture was also planting seeds there. We carried one especially unique chronicle on investment by Taiwan fruit growers on Hainan Island. However, that particular tale did not have a happy ending, as orchard operators faced confiscation of their land when the island’s authorities decided they wanted the local economy to be oriented toward tourism. Be that as it may, our journalists who went there in 2012 proved that they weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty getting the inside scoop.
People come, people go. That has been the cross-strait theme. There has been friction and disappointment, there have been positive interactions, there has been complementarity, there have been ebbs and flows. We can say with pride that Taiwan Panorama has been there to provide information that generally has gone under the radar of other news sources (especially in English), and that helps paint a more complete picture of what people from Taiwan have experienced in mainland China.
The people of Hong Kong had one shared hope at the time of the return to Chinese rule in 1997: that everything would go smoothly and with minimum disruption to their daily lives.
Over time, Taiwanese businessmen investing in China have with increasing frequency been taking along their families, bringing to the fore the problem of finding schools for their kids.
Many of Taiwan’s cultural and creative enterprises have successfully staked out a place for themselves in the mainland market. The photo shows the splendid building belonging to Liuli Gongfang, a contemporary glass-arts studio.
