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My Turnby Dmae Roberts |
 |
From The Asian Reporter, V20, #14 (April 19, 2010), pages 6 & 7.
"Other Asian"
When I filled out the Census 2010 form, I checked "other" yet again. It seems I’m forever destined to check "other." Even though this year’s form had a multiracial or mixed-race category, I opted for "other" in order to "Write in Taiwanese" after I watched a video about how Taiwanese are undercounted in America.
The creators of the video on the <www.taiwaneseamerican.org> website estimate there are more than 1 million Taiwanese in the United States, but the 2000 Census recorded less than 150,000 of them. Produced and endorsed by several Taiwanese-American groups, the video was created to motivate a more accurate head count for the 2010 Census and possibly make more community services available to Taiwanese Americans.
The call to action reminded me of my relationship to the small island where I was born and my past ambivalence about identifying as a Taiwanese American.
It’s always seemed like few of us would identify as Taiwanese, opting for the more understandable Chinese. Through the years, I searched for an identity I could call myself, including half Asian, biracial, multiracial, mixed race, Amerasian, Asian American, Chinese American, biracial Chinese American. Adding Taiwanese to the mix seemed more confusing and especially difficult for non-Asians to grasp.
When I was growing up in Oregon, my family would drive 100 miles so my mother could speak with another Taiwanese. None of my white friends knew where Taiwan was, except in relation to manufactured products. I used to joke that I was "Made in Taiwan" because that was the only reference people would understand in relation to the country or the ethnicity. If I said I was Taiwanese or born in Taiwan, people would confuse it with Thailand.
"Taiwanese? What’s that? You mean Thai, right?"
Then I’d have to explain that Taiwan is a sub-tropical island off the coast of southern China that China still considers a province while Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China. I’d explain that since the 1920s the communist and nationalist parties of China fought a civil war that ended in 1949 when the nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fled the mainland to Taiwan after Mao proclaimed the birth of the People’s Republic of China. Taiwan had been under occupation by the Japanese from 1895 until the end of World War II. Chiang Kai-shek easily occupied Taiwan, became the elected president (he was the only one running), remained in power until his death in 1975, and left the presidency to his son. Taiwan then became the Republic of China (or "free China") and still considers the mainland to be part of Taiwan and vice-versa.
That’s an awful lot to explain when you’re just trying to let people know your ethnicity.
Currently, Taiwan has an estimated 23 million industrious people who have yet to be recognized by many Americans and was described by the District of Columbia’s U.S. Court of Appeals as caught in "political" purgatory" with no formal recognition by the United Nations or the World Health Organization.
I’ve visited Taiwan several times in my life and feel a connection there that ties me to my roots and my memories as a child and later as an adult. I witnessed a massive protest in Taiwan in 1979 when the U.S. dissolved ties to establish a relationship with mainland China. Feeling betrayed by the American government to whom it had been loyal, Taiwanese protesters burned effigies of then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter with chants of "No more peanuts" — a reference to Carter’s Georgia peanut farm — as all U.S. armed forces stationed in Taiwan quickly vacated.
It’s difficult for me to distinguish between nationalism and ethnicity sometimes. Am I Taiwanese by ethnicity or because I was born there? The original Taiwanese were aboriginal Austronesian peoples. The Dutch colonized the island in the 17th century and named it Formosa. That’s when immigrants from southern China settled in Taiwan, so really most of the people in Taiwan are of Chinese ancestry either from early immigration following the Dutch colonization or more recent immigration following World War II. The people of Taiwan speak two languages: Taiwanese ("Hokkien" is a dialect from Chinese settlers) and Mandarin Chinese (from mainlanders who immigrated), which is now the official language of Taiwan.
In America, there are famous Taiwanese Americans such as filmmaker Ang Lee and film star Lucy Liu and, of course, our own David Wu, an Oregon congressman. I know only a handful of Taiwanese Americans in Oregon. It might not be because there aren’t any Taiwanese, but because it’s often easier for us to tell people we’re Chinese when explaining our ethnicity.
The recent "Write in Taiwanese" campaign for the 2010 Census has inspired me to renew efforts to identify myself as a Taiwanese American. If you feel the same way, let me know. I’d love to hear from you and meet more Taiwanese Americans in Oregon. Maybe next time, "Taiwanese" won’t be listed as "Other Asian."