They say that "the 21st century is the people's century." But unfortunately Taiwan history has always been treated too academically. It's true that academic research is systematic, but it's hard for professional historians to be objective when politics exert so much influence. Because of my personal interest in collecting, I've spent over 20 years doing field research. I've come in contact with a lot of extremely valuable first-hand materials and seen many aspects of our past that don't get mentioned in formal historiography. As a result, I've come to feel strongly that history doesn't really come alive unless you approach it from a lot of different angles and look at historical development as something pushed forward by an entire people.

There are countless anecdotes to illustrate that history is written to suit the needs of those in power, or that it's distorted by ideology. Take the Taiwanese New Literature movement of the early 1920s, for example. Just because a famous scholar of Taiwan history branded the movement as leftist, people were afraid to even research this period, and the name of Lai Ho, who led the movement and is known as "the father of Taiwanese literature," was removed from the rolls of those honored at the Martyrs Shrine. This has really been a bum steer when it comes to the direction in which Taiwan's culture has developed.

A little while back the authorities announced that they had declassified historical materials related to the Kaohsiung Incident. But Shih Ming-teh, a key figure in the incident, reacted by asking: "Why only declassify materials relating to certain figures? Why have they been so selective?"

It all makes me think that you're bound to be misled if you look at history from the perspective of the leaders. You might be able to get a bit closer to the truth if you take the perspective of the common man.

The "perspective of the common man" can be observed in lots of different media, including songs, images, and mundane things like the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the homes we live in, and the means of transportation we use. Taken together, these things make for vivid history.

Take Taiwan's songs, for example. The lyrics of many folk songs tell us a lot about the past.

I like this one: "He tippy-toes across the sticky asphalt / and asks his papa to buy some pig's knuckles. / The hungry boy, with his mouth watering..." When you picture that boy scampering across a freshly laid asphalt road, can't you just see life back in the 1960s, when the economy was just starting to take off, and more and more people were able to afford things like pig's knuckles, but the infrastructure was still lagging behind and of low quality? And I think a lot of people from that generation must share the memory of fashionable young women in high heels picking their way cautiously across a hot, sticky stretch of new road; just like poets had to wade through snow looking for plum blossoms, we had to tread through sticky asphalt to get where we are today.

Advertising flyers are just trash for most people, but for me they're one of the best sources of history. After you've collected real estate flyers for five or ten years, you can see the course of urban development. If you collect election leaflets, you can see very clearly what positions candidates have taken in past elections, and you can measure their words against their actions. For example, everyone in Taipei is quite enamored of the convenience of the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system, and the government points to it when counting off its accomplishments, but it's interesting to see that some of these same politicians in past mayoral elections advocated scrapping the whole project or turning land set aside for the MRT into huge parking lots!

I have a 1927 tax receipt issued by the Japanese colonial government. The margins of the document are printed with public service messages written, surprisingly enough, in Taiwanese! From that one little detail you can see that the Japanese worked very hard at the administration of Taiwan. This debunks the common myth that the Japanese were always forcing their own language on the Taiwanese people. Leaving motives aside, just the fact that the Japanese published a Taiwanese-Japanese dictionary in the early years of their colonial rule here ought to make our own government want to hide its head in embarrassment. The usage of Chinese characters in written Taiwanese should be standardized by the government, but in fact the government has not gotten involved at all, so each individual just uses whatever character he thinks appropriate. You can see incorrect usage wherever you look.

I'll give you some examples. After mainland tour groups started coming to Taiwan, I was hired to train local tour guides. I advised them to be sure that visitors from Shandong Province wouldn't be offended by the ubiquitous shop signs advertising lu rou fan (rice topped with chunks of pork stewed in black bean sauce). The problem with those signs is that the character for lu that is commonly used in Taiwan is actually an alternative name for Shandong. The proper character for stewed pork is different, so why does everybody go and use the lu meaning Shandong? If you took the name of the dish literally, you'd think folks in Taiwan were cannibals with a taste for people from Shandong!

And when noodles are vigorously boiling, we describe the sound as qiang qiang gun. The problem is that when you pronounce in Taiwanese the characters that are used to write this phrase in Chinese, the meaning is that the noodles aren't boiling at all! The expression should be written using different Chinese characters, but nobody knows it.

In Scanning Taiwan, which I put together back in 2000, I introduce items collected by myself and several others over the years. I did the book partly as a trip down memory lane for people in my generation, and partly to help the pampered younger generation understand the tremendous hardships that previous generations have gone through.

The following are a few little objects and images that offer a peek into the past.

"Program for Administering the Savages" and Chieftain's Medal

The "Five-Year Program for Administering the Savages," adopted by the colonial government in 1910, ushered in a period of harsh repression of Aboriginal peoples, though it also often cost the Japanese dearly. In their military campaign against the Taroko tribe in Hualien, for example, the Japanese suffered severe casualties, including the death of Governor-General Sakuma. The photo at left shows a memorial wooden column erected by the Japanese after their punitive campaign against "the Taroko savages." The precipice across from the column is the spot where Governor-Sakuma suffered his mortal wound. The Chieftain's Medal (pictured above) was what the colonial authorities awarded to Aborigines who accepted Japanese rule. The picture below is of Japanese police with Amis Aborigines.

Righteous Medal

Standing in opposition to the medals awarded by the Japanese, the Righteous Medal was awarded by the local Taiwanese to their own heroes. In the 1920s, intellectuals such as Lin Hsien-tang and Chiang Wei-shuei launched the Campaign for a Taiwan Parliament. Activists petitioned the Japanese government to keep in line with what then appeared to be a global trend toward greater recognition of equality of civil rights. In repeated trips to Japan, they asked for the establishment of a Taiwan parliament with representatives elected by the Taiwanese people. In 1923, an alarmed colonial government arrested everyone involved in the campaign on the grounds that they had "violated the Police Law for Maintenance of Order."

The case was appealed to the highest court, which set the stage for some stirring courtroom arguments. Attorney Yeh Ching-yao asked the Japanese prosecutor: "You say we're engaging in rebellion, but all we've got in our homes is meat cleavers. How are we going to rebel?" And Chiang Wei-shuei lamented: "The judgment you render upon us is a judgment upon the five million Taiwanese people." The Righteous Medal demonstrated the respect Taiwanese felt for these persecuted heroes.

Gentleman's Medal

The Gentleman's Medal was an award given to Taiwan's educated elite during the Japanese colonial period. The Japanese faced fierce resistance in the early years of the colonial period, especially in the central and southern parts of the island. Many administrative orders went ignored outside of Taipei's walled district where the colonial government was headquartered, and the post of governor-general changed hands in rapid succession. Relative stability was not achieved until Gentaro Gotama took over and appointed Shinpei Goto as his chief administrator. The building housing today's Taiwan Museum was originally built in memory of these two men. Shinpei Goto, asserting that the Taiwanese people suffered from three basic weaknesses of cowardice, greed, and vanity, played on the weaknesses by strict punishments, giving people ample opportunity to engage in business, and handing out the "Gentleman's Medal" to selected individuals. Many Taiwanese naturally understood that the Gentleman's Medal was created to coopt them, and privately derided it as the "Stinking Dog Medal."

Taiwan's first paper money

Paper money was poorly re-ceived when first issued during the Japanese colonial period. People back then only trusted silver coins and considered the paper notes worthless.

All the new notes, regardless of denomination, featured the Japanese-built Taiwan Shinto Shrine, located at the site of today's Grand Hotel, on the front. The shrine was the center of efforts by the colonial authorities to get Taiwanese to worship Japanese deities; it was also dedicated to a member of the royal family who had died during the conquest of Taiwan, whom Taiwanese were also supposed to venerate there.

There's an interesting story connected with the Taiwan Shinto Shrine. It was built from imported stone and cypress logged on Mt. Ali in central Taiwan. When colonial rule came to an end following Japan's defeat in World War II, new rulers came in from China and the shrine was slated for dismantling. For the mere cost of the transport, painter Li Mei-shu had the priceless building materials carted off to Sanhsia south of Taipei, where he used them to renovate the Tsu Shih Temple. Li paid only NT$2,000 for his fabulous haul!

The back of the paper notes issued by the colonial authorities featured the lighthouse at Oluanpi, the southernmost point in Taiwan. The lighthouse was deeply symbolic for the Japanese, who cherished ambitions of pushing their empire from Taiwan into Southeast Asia. The back of the note also carries the following lines: "Ascending the lighthouse at Oluanpi to gaze south ignites the ambition of southward expansion."

Immunization records and health workers

The certificate shown at top lefton the opposite page is my immunization record from when I was two years old. The colonial authorities required all children to be inoculated against smallpox at age one and again at about age ten. If you did not get inoculated according to schedule your parents would be fined.

In the early period of the Japanese military occupation of Taiwan, they had serious problems with epidemics, so that they always devoted a great deal of effort to epidemic preention and public health. Later, among the soldiers and citizens who came to Taiwan with the Nationalist regime, many had faces covered with smallpox scars, because they had not been inoculated when they were kids. Also, a number of communicable diseases that had been virtually eradicated in the Japanese colonial era-like smallpox, plague, and others-resurfaced in the 1950s. The photo above, which was taken at the time of a cholera epidemic in Chiayi in the late Japanese era, shows Youth Corps members accompanying health workers as they prepare to undertake prevention tasks. (certificate courtesy of Chuang Yung-ming; photo courtesy of the Hsingchung Primary School in Chiayi)

Bombing of Taiwan by the US Army Air Force

Toward the end of the War in the Pacific, strategic targets in Taiwan-from ports, train stations, and factories to population centers-were repeatedly bombed by US planes. On May 31, 1945, the entire island was heavily bombed, with Taipei suffering the most damage. The Office of the Governor-General, Imperial University Hospital, the famed railroad restaurant... not one escaped. The city's infrastructure was virtually destroyed, and the number of killed has never been known for sure.

Another incident of a similar nature was the attack on and sinking of the ferry Takachiho-maru, which operated between Japan and Taiwan. More than 1700 people were killed, more than on the Titanic, including a number of outstanding Taiwanese such as sculptor Huang Ching-shui and many students who had been studying in Japan. But because the Japanese government covered up the sinking, there has never been any record of this incident in the history of world maritime disasters.

More Taiwanese were killed during World War II than in 228 incident. But very few people commemorate them or reflect on their deaths. I hope that society will think as much about historical issues related to World War II as we do about 228. (courtesy of Li Chung-yao)

Flyer for the "Taiwan Exposition"

By 1935, with Japanese rule entering its 40th year, full military control had been assured and civil rule was functioning stably. Those in charge of Japan were bent on expanding its empire, and Taiwan was in a critical strategic position for the dream of an "East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere." In order to glorify their colonial achievements in Taiwan and demonstrate the power of their empire, the Japanese held a "Taiwan Exposition to Commemorate 40 Years of Administration." It was enormous-on the scale of a world's fair in the US or Europe. At that time Taiwan had a population of only six million, of whom more than two million attended the exposition. The top image, a flyer for the event, shows a bird's-eye view of the grounds. The postcard below it has a quite novel design; it appears that Mt. Fuji in the distance is remotely controlling Taiwan, thousands of kilometers away!

The 228 Incident: From taboo memory to memorial tablets

Huang Jung-tsan's engrav-ing, entitled "Investigation into Terror" (above) depicts government troops during the bloody repression surrounding the 228 (February 28) Incident. This major ethnic clash between newly arrived "mainlanders" and native-born Taiwanese, set off by an altercation over attempts by police to arrest someone who was allegedly in violation of the government monopoly on tobacco sales, was set against the background of the social turmoil and political instability of the early years after the arrival of the ROC authorities from China. You could describe it as a case of disaffection turning into outright resistance, but it was not a revolution or rebellion per se.

For 40 years the authorities labeled this tragic historical event as an uprising against legitimate authority. It was only in 1987, after the lifting of martial law, with the formation of the "228 Peace Promotion Association," that efforts got underway to reverse unjust verdicts, rediscover the historical truth, and achieve reconciliation in society. In 1994 the Legislative Yuan passed a law providing compensation for victims of the incident, and the following year President Lee Teng-hui, speaking on behalf of the state, formally apologized to the victims. (engraving courtesy of the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum; sticker courtesy of Chuang Yung-ming)

Otherworldly engineering on the Central Cross-Island Highway

In the Japanese colonial era, transportation to the east of the Central Mountain Range was cut off from that to the west of those same mountains. (The area to the east-today's Hualien and Taitung counties-was aptly known as "behind the mountains," while that to the west was called "the front of the mountains.") The Japanese governor-general, besides building a coastal highway southward to connect Suao to Hualien, also began work on a cross-island highway that would link up with the coastal highway "behind the mountains" in Hualien. The eastern section of this cross-island road was to follow the narrow gorge along the Liwu River, with the western section to follow the Tachia River Valley, but work, which began during the War in the Pacific, was suspended shortly thereafter. This immensely difficult project only resumed after the ROC government took charge of Taiwan. In the 1950s, when Taiwan had little equipment or materiel, the government built the road by employing large numbers of army veterans from mainland China, equipped only with hand tools and explosives. Because explosives techniques were primitive, many men were killed during construction. The incredible engineering feat of the Central Cross-Island Highway today still amazes visitors, but besides admiring its beauty, can we not give that page of our history the respect it deserves? (courtesy of Committee of Party History, Kuomintang)

Recover the mainland!

"Defeat the Soviet imperial-ists, oppose communism, oppose communism! Eradicate Zhu and Mao, kill the traitors to China, kill the traitors to China! Recover the mainland, liberate our compatriots, obey the leader, complete the revolution..." During the era of "recovering the mainland," everybody knew this song, with its anti-communist/resist-Russia message-a message that could not be questioned or discussed-and its obey-the-leader ideology. A lot of people will remember that when we wrote essays in school, we had to leave a space before the name "President Chiang" as a symbol of esteem, and all students had to stand at attention when the teacher spoke of President Chiang. This wedding invitation (right) from the 1960s reflects that atmosphere in which everything had to be subordinated to the policy of anti-communism. The upper photo, meanwhile, shows soldiers on Tachen Island preparing to launch propaganda balloons into China in the 1950s. (invitation courtesy of Chuang Yung-ming; photo by Chin Pin-yen, courtesy of the Central News Agency)

Bamboo rafts and "junks"

Before the opening of the railroads, waterborne transport on rivers and along the coast, though by no means efficient, still played a critical role in moving goods and people up and down the island. Because Taiwan's rivers are shallow and heavily silted, and there are frequent typhoons and storms, deep-draft boats were ruled out, but bamboo rafts (above) could operate freely. These were not only suited to riverine transport, but were popular for coastal transport as well, especially in areas with sandbars and lagoons. You could navigate through shallow coastal waters with just a single bamboo pole. Round barrels on the rafts served as seats and prevented passengers and luggage from getting wet.

The Chinese term jong-ko comes from the English word "junk," which referred to Chinese flat-bottomed sail-powered craft (left). It would've been better to simply use the Chinese term for "Chinese sailing ships" rather than translate the word "junk" phonetically. These light and maneuverable craft began sailing the Taiwan Strait, with its unpredictable waves, in the 19th century. In those days many merchants had their own personal junks for commercial purposes.

Junks carrying passengers from China to Taiwan also carried tangshanshi, a special kind of stone from the mainland used in temple sculptures. This not only provided ballast but could also be sold to temple artisans in Taiwan.

The handcar era

In the early 20th century, the main mode of land transportation for ordinary Taiwanese was the handcar, powered only by human muscle. It's basic construction was very simple-you only needed a board, two sets of wheels underneath, a wooden box on top as a seat, and four bamboo poles (two up front for passengers to hold on to, two in the back for the driver to grasp for propelling the car). These could be taken anywhere on the handcar rail network. Passengers had to pay a fee for using the tracks to the Light Rail Corporation.These handcar railways, known as "light rail," were set up all around Taiwan once the main north-south and east-west lines of the railroad were completed in the early Japanese colonial era. Because the handcar railways required little overhead, and could cope with all kinds of terrain, they not only ran in the plains but also into the mountains. Most of the handcar tracks started out at train stations, thus creating a network linking all urban and rural areas. It was only in the 1950s that the handcars finally served out their purpose and became just a part of history.

Cow manure blocking traffic!

Automobiles became more common in the 1930s, and concrete highways were built over the handcar tracks. But because there were few bridges over Taiwan's many rivers, no public bus line ran for more than 10 kilometers.

Back in the 1950s, scenes like this one in the photo below juxtaposing old and new forms of transportation were by no means rare. Back then, air pollution was not as serious a problem as cow manure.

The good old days on Chungshan North Road

In the Japanese colonial era, today's Chungshan North Road consisted of three parallel strips, and was the broadest avenue in Taipei. Known as Chokushi-do in Japanese but simply as "Sanhsien [Three-Lane] Road" in Chinese, it was built to connect the city center to the Taiwan Shinto Shrine in Yuanshan. Because there were few vehicles in those days, only the middle lanes were for motorized traffic. The side lanes were exclusively for pedestrians and bicycles. At dusk you could see many citizens taking the air here, and such was the atmosphere that it even inspired the romantic song "Moonlight Shines on Sanhsien Road."The picture above gives an idea of the scale of urban life in Taiwan in those days. People could get to most places in their cities on foot. Even in Taipei City there were few public buses, and these could only hold a dozen or so people. (photo by Teng Hsiu-pi; courtesy of the Central News Agency)

Stages for modern style

The Taiwanese restaurant Chiangshan Lou, located in the Tataocheng district, with its dignified exterior and luxurious interior, was an important venue for established literati, gentry, and other social elites to hold formal gatherings. Figures like Lin Ya-tang, Lin Hsien-tang, and even members of the royal family of Japan all came here.

While traditional literati frequented the Chiangshan Lou, writers and artists associated with the "new literature" circulated around the Sanshuiting and Bolero. The boss of Sanshuiting, Wang Ching-chuan, was himself an artist and deeply interested in artistic trends. He spared no effort to see that his establishment played the role of cultural gathering place. The play Capon, which sparked a new movement in theater in the 1940s, was rehearsed here.

The Western-style Bolero restaurant featured Western classical music. It was the premier cultural venue of its day, and was often chosen by wealthy families as a meeting place for arranging marriages for their children. It is still in operation, on track to celebrate its 70th birthday in 2004. Two or three generations of people in a single family may share the collective memory of dishes like "French Provincial Duck," which have changed not at all since the 1930s. The restaurant also continues its tradition, dating back to the Japanese colonial era, but having all male staff. One change, however, is that the waiters no longer are required to have their heads shaved, though they still sport uniform hair styles.

Arcades and commercial high-rises

The arcade was a type of ar-chitecture devised by the Japanese colonial authorities to cope with Taiwan's climate of frequent rainstorms and intense sun. Buildings were built out over the sidewalks, buttressed by square beams or curved arches, with businesses downstairs and residences upstairs. This is the most characteristic architectural form shared by all of Taiwan's cities and towns, north and south. Even though today Taiwan's cities are defined mainly by high-rise office buildings, people still place high commercial value on a street level storefront.

These arcaded buildings, with ground floors set away from the street, were designed to shelter people from the rain or sun. But later these spaces were taken over by hawkers and shops of all varieties. These interactive urban spaces, which are widely seen as defining traditional local atmosphere and style, now house everything from clothing boutiques, eateries, and general stores to scantily clad "betelnut babes." The photo at left, taken in the 1990s, shows an arcaded building on Hukou Old Street. (photo by Yueh Kuo-chieh)

Tataocheng and Sakae-cho

This glue painting by Kuo Hsueh-hu, entitled South Street Business Contributions to Famine Relief, depicts a lively scene during Ghost Festival in the Tataocheng district of Taipei. During the Japanese colonial era, Taiwanese businessmen and gentry concentrated their activities in the Mengchia and Tatocheng commercial districts, which were packed with countless shops selling items like tea, clothing, dry goods, and items imported from the West. Tataocheng's Eiraku-cho (today's Tihua Street) was even more the cradle of modern Taiwanese enterprises: Men who would eventually run future giant corporations-such as Shin Kong, Kuang Chuan, Taiwan Pineapple, and the business group known as the Tainan Gang-were in those days working here as clerks, laborers, and the like, cutting their business teeth.

In those days the main center of life for Japanese was the area known as "inside the wall." Known in Japanese as Sakae-cho (today the area around Hengyang Road), it was that part of the city formerly enclosed by the city wall. This was the Ginza of Taipei in the Japanese colonial era, home to clothing boutiques, general stores, Chinese medicine shops, department stores, theaters and playhouses. Though the colonial authorities had long before dismantled the original city wall, there remained an invisible wall separating the lives of Japanese from Taiwanese.(courtesy of the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts)