Crystal Huang shared a
link.
about an hour ago
Pedagogical recipe Sharing!!! - at the end...
Could you believe it???
The attached song clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6_OwvyyH30 - which I compiled yesterday titled "My Hometown Is In China Mainland "
誰的家在大陸上- is one of my MOST favorite songs when I was a kid who is a 6th generation Taiwanese- in origin. People of my generation might also be familiar with songs such as 長城謠 (Ballads of the Great Wall) and 我的家在山的那一邊 (My home is on the other side of the mountains) which I might want to make into videos soon.
It needs a little patience for my twists and turns to reach the pedagogical recipe part! Though, this writing mainly is about songs, it also touched a little bit of other socio-cultural aspects.
There were 2 major types of Chinese songs popular in Taiwan during 50s, 60s and early 70s. One was nostalgic songs reminiscing China. The other one was military or patriotic songs to stir up the Will for fighting back to Reclaim China. The most prevalent sentiment during that time was that no one ever dared to ask - by whom, for whom, and of whom to get this holy task done!
These songs were composed by China-mainlanders. Many Chinese people followed the defeated Nationalist Government to Taiwan after they lost the civil war against the Communist China. Since then, Taiwan functioned as another military base for the Nationalist government's "Regain China Policy - 反攻大陸" after Japan’s colonialization in Taiwan for half of a century (1895-1945).
After this brief historical depiction, now getting into my focal point- in reminiscence, there were not many expensive, programmed, or chicken-cooped entertaining activities available, except the fresh air, butterflies, breeze, grass, dirt-n-clay, self-made rag dolls and so on when we were kids. For indoor activities, listening songs and learning to sing from our neighbors’ radios (my parents never owned a radio - a luxury item at that time- throughout our childhood) was a great treat. But, at school, you did not have much choice for songs which you needed to learn and sing. This could be one of the reasons I cultivated such a taste to listen and sing many Chinese Songs and loved them dearly. As a young kid, nice melody was always the first thing pleasing your eardrums that made you a day! Who cared the lyrics at that stage of life?
As growing a little bit older as a middle-school girl, then suddenly what the song trying to say did mean something. But they were almost the same, describing the wonderful things in China which we had never seen, never touched, or felt - from my reminiscence, in fact, it was quite a healthy way to cultivate the capacity of imagination as a young kid.
Furthermore, the war between the Nationalists and Communists caused the brutal separation of the new Immigrants' ties with China. They mainly comprised soldiers, bureaucrats, business people and commoners with an approximation of 2 million to swamp into this Island to be the Ruling Class during the chaotic transitional stage of 1949. It created a unique type of domination of low-quality Minority ruled the high-end majority due to the historical mischief and international irresponsibility. Any contact with people in China would be severely jailed or executed. Then you might be able to comprehend why these songs, poetry, and the rest of mind-feeders were so desperately needed with tremendous influence on people's daily thinking and behaving in Taiwan during those 4 decades (to Chinamainlanders and the rest of the populations). These happy and wonderful images typically depicted the OLD China's cornucopia with lovely 4 seasons, the magnificent landscapes, the sweet family, the sentimental love stories and so on so forth, and then suddenly the Communist Bandits destroyed everything….burring, looting, and plundering like the wild beasts… and we should be courageous to fight for the Nationalists to arrest and kill all the Communists, such as Sha Zhu Ba Mao (殺朱拔毛, slaughter Zhu Der and Pluck the hair of Mao Tse Dong)…
As an adult, recalling those various type of socio-economic-political domination and controlling both from Japan and China onto Taiwanese, one is hard to deny the power of Ideological manipulation via "Mandarinization" in addition to its predecessor of "Japanization" throughout Taiwan's modern herstory.
To understand the Mandarization process, it had better for me to brief the Japan's imperial-colonialism (1895-1945). In the early stage of Japanese oppression onto Taiwanese was brutally bloody to tame the socio-political dissidents (both the aborigines and the early immigrants). After the resistance was subdued, the Japanese colonial government implemented series of Japanization policies to transform/reform Taiwanese into the Emperor's loyal subjects. To render the few Taiwanese intellectuals, she prohibited the socio-cultural elites from studying Law, Politics and Economics. A tiny group of privileged Taiwanese were encouraged to study Science and Medicine and then selectively recruited or absorbed into the Japanese's system.
After World War II, a couple of unresolved Treaties from Japan's surrender suspending Taiwan's international status in uncertainty (the controversial issues of De Facto vs. De Jure status). The Nationalist Government left China after defeated by the Communists. As to the early stage of Chinese Nationalists' domination on Taiwanese (since 1947), it was not so well planned out as that of Japan's (a mutli-level socio-economic-cultural chasms and chaos resulted into a massacre with casualties of 20,000 Taiwanese. Majority were social elites. Detailed info could be found in my thesis -
A Multi-Level Analysis of 228 Social Movement (A Massacre) of 1947 in Taiwan, deposited in the General Library of UW-Madison, 1993. After the socio-econ-cultural clash was suppressed, the long term witch-hunting Taiwanese started resulting in the White Terrors era - the Chinese style of McCarthyism imposing on Taiwan for more than 4 decades.
Here is a snapshot to recall some tiny events that most of us experienced:
When we were young, we were not allowed to speak our mother tongue at school (Taiwanese which, in fact, could be traced back its root relating to Fujianese, a dialect of the Fujian province in China). Japanese was denigrated as some older generations were taught and sometimes deemed as disloyal or traitors for using a foreign language. Majority of the curricular subject matters were all about China and Chinese - in a nutshell, NOTHING about Taiwan.
These were routine themes in daily learning of the curriculum, such as the Chinese style of Pledge of Allegiance to China, vows to reclaim China, recitation of National Zestiest, obeying all sorts of authority and doctrines. Had I ever questioned something??? Or anyone else? Ohhh, yes, ask those dare-devils (if still alive) who questioned, either disappeared from the community or found in the prisons. Silence was golden- a universal truth, as my mother constantly worried us children saying something wrong and innocent while persecuted. Thus, you saw, you listened, but kept mouth shut - there was never ever a question questioned by me throughout my student life in Taiwan for being such an "academically achieved one" and the winner of several great scholarships! Indeed, we lived in a question-free society!! What an out-of the-question wonderful world!
I was so good at learning about China, a pure successful product of the "Reclaiming Recovering China Educational Policy" - the poetry, literature, arts, music, history, geography, politics – all the 4000 years package of wonderful knowledge that instilled into me, I could regurgitate precisely as the teachers and all the tough exams wanted.
With so much great knowledge learned at schools, I barely knew the land, the culture, the history of this - Ilha Formosa - that kept me alive as a 5th generation Taiwanese.
Now I found this old and familiar song "My Home Is In China Mainland" that I sang it so often when I was a kid which indeed gave me lots of imagination yet without the required emotion or feeling about a great country that I should embrace dearly.
Now I am in the US, and I am trying to sing this song with feeling, just like other foreign songs that I love to listen and sing. I try to be mature enough to empathize the emotional part of those early Nationalist immigrants in Taiwan during those awkwardly separated time, just as I am here now. But listening and singing an another country’s song, you can be very much carefree and appreciate more in the melody, while those songs learned from early school days were so heavily loaded with socio-political ideologies foie-grased into the little brain so seamlessly, beautifully, and unforgettably. To songs, I was defenseless. Maybe, like most kids of my age, listening, singing repeatedly the songs with implanted love, imaginary care, and illusory ideologies, we might have become to believe - Yes, all the Taiwanese, one day, will reclaim China for Chinese! How glorious and grandiose mind-set it was that once occupied my tiny heart with such a strong belief :)!
By the way, why I sang and mentioned this song at this juncture? Well, here is the trigger in addition to the book that I just know a little bit- "The 400 Years Herstory of Taiwan" by Mr. Su Beng who is one of earliest "Questioners" and escaped persecution in exile for 6 decades. For these 2 weeks in my Diversity studies classes,
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we have been focusing on how Ideologies dominate the markets of thinking and behaving; why and how certain people purchase/sell, produce/consume specific types of ideologies to recognize or justify the constructed world.
This Unit is the toughest one among the all for this spring semester, because it deals with Ideologies!!!!!!!!
When I was preparing for my lesson plans, the tune of “My Hometown is in ChinaMainland” suddenly lingered in my ears. Then I got this uhha moment for this short writing as my teaching materials.
Now, getting back to the serious part: So what is ideology? Hard to find a consensus.
Here is only a general definition of ideology which is a widely shared belief or idea that has been constructed and disseminated by the POWERFUL that primarily reflects their experiences and that functions for their interests.
Ideologies are anchored in the experiences of their creators, thus they offer only a partial view of the world. An good example of Ideology is how popularly and deeply believed notion of “Meritocracy” ( I wrote a couple of synopses posted on my fb and blog before). The two legs of an ideology are Natural Law Language and Stereotypes which keep ideologies penetrating and mobile.
In the singing case, for example, if anything applicable, it would be the song and lyrics which were constructed by the ruling elites from China to “Educate” Taiwanese people for being patriotic to reclaim China regardless the Taiwanese were barely breathing from Japan’s occupation. The songs was so pervasive in the culture, in particular education and mass media, and then was carrying on the duty of being one of the hegemonic ideologies.
But the most pervasive power of sustaining ideologies’ fluidity is the omnipresent Social Institutions which echo natural law language and stereotypes. The major social institutions include the family, religion, law, science, politics, economy, military, medicine, pop-culture, and now the most powerful one- the mass/social media.
Taiwan's pan-military policy parented the rest of social institutions before the martial law was lifted in 1989. Some people might argue that “social stability” was the great virtue contributing to Taiwan’s economic success. Let me make this statement as a question to end this short writing.
IS IT an ideology?
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高德賢 likes this.
19 minutes ago ·
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Crystal Huang Thanks to 許馨尹, Lu LU and 高德賢 like this.
A friend (I know her British Ethnic Background as an American citizen) asked me "are you a Taiwanese or a Chinese - regarding the origin?" I jokingly said "how to count the 5th or 6th generation in Taiwan that thrive socio-politic-culturally self-sufficient and independent... well, just for fun- are you an Englishwoman or an American - regarding the origin?" !
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51 minutes ago ·
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Crystal Huang
道, 可道, 非常道; 史, 可史, 非常史-歷史啊,歷史-真是個剪不斷理還亂的 愁,惆,&籌.全世界也許再找不到比臺灣更有骨氣與精神 的國家!!!
The Whole World is Waaaaatching - Who is that Courageous and Strong ORPHAN of the Far-Eastern Asia, fighting her way against last 60 years' international and domestic repression and oppression; Who is that DAVID challenging the intriguing Goliath day by day??? Who has the collective GUTs to resist the deadly temptation of the world biggest Fly-Trap!!!!!!!!!!!!! She is - Taiwan - ILla Formosa! The democratic peaceful Warrior -defending humanity's liberty, freedom and justice - at the very FRONT LINE!
5 minutes ago ·
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Crystal Huang 騎強者, 既得利益者, 高枕無憂者, 隔岸觀火者, 米虫者, 危恐天下不亂者, 剝富罵街者, 暗渡陳娼者, 以及裡應外和者........也祝福您! To those coward, privileged, advantaged, fence-riders, parasites, blessing you - not to block the way that people are fighting for your freedom and democracy...
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