Reconstruction of "Chinese Identity" after restoration

After the restoration of Taiwan, culture and education under the rule of the Kuomintang undertook the task of decolonization, "eliminating the poison of Japanese rule," and rebuilding "Chinese identity." In a letter to Chen Lifu on May 10, 1944, Chen Yi also pointed out: "People under the age of fifty in Taiwan have almost no opportunity to understand Chinese culture and the Three People's Principles, and naturally they are at a loss. It's really dangerous. After the recovery, the most important thing is to eradicate the old mentality of enslavement and the psychology of building revolution, and then the main thing is to rely on education. Therefore, cultural re-"de-Japaneseization and re-Sinicization" became an inevitable choice for the administrative authorities after the restoration. On March 23, 1945, the Outline Plan for the Takeover of Taiwan stated that the primary goal of the administration was to "enhance national consciousness and eliminate the idea of enslavement." On the one hand, it banned and punished acts that glorified Japanese rule and burned relevant publications. For example, on February 11, 1946, the Chief Executive's Office issued a proclamation calling for the sale of books, magazines, and newspapers that praised the achievements of the "Imperial Army," encouraged people to participate in the "Great East Asia" War, reported on the occupation of Chinese land, and preached the "ImperialIzation" campaign of the Gonggong Brigade, ordered all bookstores to inspect and seal themselves and then hand them over to the government for unified burning, and threatened that those who violated the order would be regularly inspected and severely punished. On the other hand, the Chief Executive's Office has also taken a series of specific measures, including the use of national or approved textbooks, the implementation of the Chinese campaign, etc., and the establishment of the Chinese Daily in 1948 as a Chinese in primary and secondary schools. In order to further eliminate the bad influence of "imperialized" education on Taiwan, in 1954, the Taiwan Administrative Authority Compilation Hall hired professors from National Taiwan University and Taiwan Normal University to write standard history textbooks -- junior high school Chinese history, junior high school foreign history, high school Chinese history, and high school foreign history. Clarify the four educational objectives of the History Department: first, the evolution of the Chinese nation and the harmony and interdependence between various clans; second, the trend of political, economic, social, and cultural changes in China throughout the ages, paying special attention to the glorious and great historical facts, so as to enlighten the way to rejuvenate the nation and its due efforts; the third is the history of the evolution of the world's major nationalities and their mutual influence; and the fourth is the evolution of world culture and the general trend of modern internationality. Although the set of teaching materials has been changed several times since then, the standards of the curriculum have remained basically unchanged. At that time, history education played a huge role in cultivating the Chinese national outlook on history among several generations of Young People in Taiwan. Therefore, to this day, most Taiwanese who have received this historical education have a deep-rooted identification with China and Chinese culture. Zhou Yuanxin, the second generation of the province who grew up in Taipei, described the huge impact of national education on his life at that time:

The education received by our generation of children from other provinces in Taiwan is laid on the foundation of "lively and good students, upright Chinese." The place of origin on the ID card is Li County, Hunan, even if I drink Taiwan water and eat Taiwan rice, I have never been to Hunan, and in my bones I am a "Hunan person".

Strong Chinese feelings and cultural genes are deeply flowing in our blood. Junior high school students like to take geography classes the most, and they yearn for the land incomparably; from the Daxing'an Mountains to the Pamir Plateau, the Yellow River to the Yangtze River, the geographical environment and humanistic characteristics of each province are a beautiful picture in my mind. Countless longings: What kind of richness is the land of fish and rice on the shore of Dongting Lake? Are the villagers in Hunan really eating chili peppers raw and born with mule temper?

However, the emphasis on the narration and study of Chinese history has adopted an attitude of neglect of Taiwan's local history, "the atmosphere of Taiwan history research has been almost suppressed and cannot develop freely", and the so-called "Chinese history is orthodox, and Taiwan history is on the margins". As a result, many students did not know about Taiwan's famous historical figures Jiang Weishui, Yang Kui, and Wu Turbiliu, and even "some students at that time only knew the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, and never knew that Taiwan had the strange phenomenon of freshwater rivers and turbid water streams." Later, the work of "de-Japaneseization" was expanded, and even Taiwan's native culture was banned. In 1951, the Taiwan Education Authority ("Ministry of Education") ordered that the use of languages other than Chinese be banned in schools at all levels, and its prohibition extended to dialects such as Hokkien and Hakka, as well as indigenous languages such as Bunun and Taiya, and de-Japaneseization extended to restrict the development of indigenous cultures. In the 1960s, after years of promoting national education and Chinese, the number of people using Japanese in Taiwan had decreased dramatically, and the government's cultural governance direction no longer emphasized de-Japaneseization and instead emphasized the legitimacy of Chinese culture (which was also to show the separation from the "cultural revolution" on the mainland). By 1973, the authorities had approved the Constitution of the Steering Committee for the Promotion of Chinese in various counties and municipalities in Taiwan Province, and Taiwan's education authorities (the "Ministry of Education") had promulgated a more radical "Measures for the Implementation of Chinese", requiring all educational units, down to every class in primary schools, to set up "Chinese Implementation Committees" to strictly prohibit the use of dialects (including dialects from various provinces, Hokkien, Hakka, and indigenous languages), and if they accidentally spoke dialects, they would be fined, physically punished, and hung up with the words "I do not speak dialects." The cards are shown to the public for a day and so on for punishment.

Due to half a century of colonization, Taiwan was deeply immersed in Japanese song culture, so after the restoration, in the face of the threat of the influence of Japanese songs, the administrative authorities in addition to language and history to correct the chaos, but also made some efforts in music education, but the effect was not ideal, and ultimately failed. On February 11, 1946, the Chief Executive's Office issued a proclamation that did not explicitly prohibit Japanese songs, but also included inspections of Japanese songs in the censorship of books and newspapers. For example, on June 9, 1946, the Kaohsiung Municipal Government "dispatched Tang Shi, a member of the Education Section of the Kaohsiung Government, to handle the case with the police department in order to completely ban the drugs left behind by Japanese people and all kinds of obscene songs." But the effect of the execution does not seem obvious. On June 26, 1946, the Office of the Chief Executive of Taiwan Province again issued a directive stating that "all the song scores declaring the achievements of the Imperial Army and the Imperial Nationalist Movement have been automatically burned by order", but "there have been Japanese military songs and various record scores praising the achievements of the Imperial Army in recent days" and continue to require the county and municipal governments to strictly implement the contents of the February 11 announcement. On February 14, 1947, the Propaganda Committee of the Office of the Chief Executive of Taiwan Province quoted in a telegram the contents of the official letter of the Police Department of the Office of the Chief Executive of Taiwan Province in February: "The Japanese records of the Cha-Ri people who preached their imperialist and militaristic aggression during their rule of Taiwan have still been circulated among the people since their restoration. For example, the Taitung County Government dismissed Chen Wenzhao, who taught students to sing the Japanese national anthem during the incident, and Chen Yi, who was then the chief executive of Taiwan Province, asked all schools in the province to "stop singing Japanese songs" in the future. By 1948, the influence of Japanese songs had not yet diminished, the ban on sales and censorship had not seen obvious results, and there were also cases of singing in public places: "However, there are still a few counties and cities that have not only not banned the sale of this record, but also allowed it to be sung in various restaurants and public places... It is not true. "In order to eliminate the Japanese atmosphere, the Japanese records of general songs are generally publicized, and those who are in public places or places where the public enters and leave are not allowed to sing, and they are dissuaded at any time, with the importance of correcting the audio-visual." This made the Kuomintang government gradually realize that the reason for the long-term prohibition of Japanese songs was "the lack of creation of spiritual food for various books, songs, movies and dramas", so it tried to remove the influence of Japanese songs with alternatives. In January 1950, Chiang Kai-shek, who had just arrived in Taiwan, again proposed an alternative plan in response to the threat of Japanese songs: "In order to avoid dissonance, the Central Propaganda Department has initiated the compilation of a large number of anti-communist and anti-Russian songs." Therefore, it is suggested that "the cultural and educational organs grasp the psychology of young people and make all kinds of spiritual food to expound the national and ethnic books, songs, movies, and dramas." In a telegram from the Taiwan Provincial Police Department on April 14, 1952, an alternative to the chinese military song was proposed in response to the practice of folk orchestras playing Japanese musical scores. In fact, the ban on Japanese songs never had much success until 1950 and 1952, when incidents of recruits joining the army, teahouses, and orchestras singing Japanese songs continued to occur. In 1952, the Kuomintang regime "resumed diplomatic relations" with Japan. On December 8 of the same year, the Fourth Group of the Kuomintang Central Committee, which was in charge of press and propaganda affairs, convened all relevant units and held a "group meeting on the import of Japanese books and periodicals", and decided to allow private individuals to bring within a dozen Japanese records with "no problems" in content. After discussions by the Information Department of the "Taiwan Provincial Government", the Department of Education, the Legislative Affairs Office, and other units, the "Taiwan Provincial Government" finally reported to the "Executive Yuan" on May 25, 1953, a plan to import records of "noble" Japanese songs. This loosening completely announced the failure of the nearly decade-long policy of banning Japanese songs.

It is worth pointing out that Taiwan's Hokkien songs are also banned, in addition to the reason that "the so-called Taiwanese pop songs that are popular in this province today and broadcast on the radio are self-composed, and the songs are more performed in Japanese songs, and whenever there are new lyrics in Japan, the province will have a copy, the content is despicable, and it is enough to affect national consciousness", there are also some political reasons, such as "Four Seasons Red" was forced to change to "Ballad of the Four Seasons" because of the suspicion of innuendoing the Red Army, and "Roast Meat Dumplings" and "Patching up the Net" because the Taiwan authorities believe that the lyrics allude to the incompetence of the government There is also a folk song called "Catching Loach", which originally had the lyrics of "Xiao Mao's brother, take him to catch loach", because the word "Xiao Mao" would be associated with Mao Zedong and changed to "Maverick". Under decades of martial law, under this harsh cultural policy, the Fulao ethnic group that was banned from speaking Hokkien was naturally full of resentment.

But in any case, "re-sinicization" did cultivate the Chinese complex of Taiwan's 1950s and 1960 generations, "from an early age to receive the Kuomintang's national spiritual education, there is no doubt about their own Chinese", it can be said that from 1949 to the 1970s, despite the "228" incident and the rule of the Kuomintang's white terror, the "Chinese identity" of the Taiwanese people was unbreakable. Although the 1950s and 1960s generations of Taiwan "learned the history and geography of China is the untouchable 'Shenzhou Mainland' on the other side of the Strait." This untouchable feeling, this opposition, was also known for a long time. ...... The isolation and antagonism between the two sides of the strait were etched in this way at that early age. But the touch did not weaken the love for the "Shenzhou Mainland", just like the popular song "My Chinese Heart" sang: "Although the rivers and mountains are in dreams, the motherland has not been close for many years, but no matter what, it can not change my Chinese heart." ”