Hearted Youtube comments on Asianometry (@Asianometry) channel.
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Whilst it can be said that many Han Chinese people live in various regions overseas but have never lost their Han Chinese identity, it can also be said that these people have never experienced the same kinds of cultural pressures as the Taiwanese. Whilst most Overseas Chinese have been persecuted or discriminated against by foreigners for being Han Chinese, naturally making them gravitate towards the Chinese Motherland, Taiwanese people have, throughout history, been persecuted for being Taiwanese; first by the Japanese Colonisers, and later by the Chinese Mainlanders (Waishengren) who came to Taiwan as refugees in the 1940s-1950s. And whilst the other groups of Overseas Chinese have always been united by their Han Chinese identity, persecuted by local majority groups such as the Indonesians and the (White) Americans, the Taiwanese have always been united by their shared Taiwanese identity throughout their island's tumultuous history, and the Han Chinese identity has only been drifting further and further away after more and more decades of separation from Mainland China.
This separation has been further exacerbated by the oppression instigated against the Taiwanese by the Mainlander Chinese immigrants during the 1940s-1990s, and the hostile threats by the Chinese Communist Party against the Taiwanese people over the decades have also not done a good job of convincing them that they are Han Chinese. "You are Han Chinese, or else!" The impression which Taiwanese people get from the Chinese Communist Party is that it's illegal for the Taiwanese to maintain their individual identity, which involves being a settler people living on a beautiful island, and also being forced to live under Japanese rule, under a Kuomintang Dictatorship, and now as a Democratic State which lacks recognition from the international community. So, this is why the Taiwanese people are not keen on reunification with China, and this is why the Taiwanese people would prefer to maintain their unique culture, identity, and way of life, which is similar to Mainland China's, but also quite different, and distinctly Taiwanese.
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@Asianometry Good idea. Except that I don't live in Taiwan.
My maternal grandmother's paternal grandfather and mother were both born in Taiwan, in ~1880 and 1918, respectively. However, my maternal grandmother was born in Australia in 1944, in a POW camp for Japanese people. She was then, in 1946, repatriated to Taiwan, under the rule of the Republic of China, where she witnessed the February 28 Massacre. Then, her family migrated to Indonesia, where they had been living prior to having been captured and imprisoned during WWII. My grandmother then traveled to China and lived through the Cultural Revolution, where she met my maternal grandfather, who was a Chinese man who had been born and raised in Burma. They were married in Yunnan Province and then migrated to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, my grandmother discovered that she had possessed Australian citizenship for her entire life, due to possessing an Australian birth certificate. She contacted the Australian Embassy in Hong Kong, and they informed her that she was a full Australian citizen and that she could return to Australia. So, she returned to Australia in 1978 with my maternal grandfather and my young mother, and so my mother has grown up in Australia for most of her life, though having been born in China and having spent her early childhood living in Hong Kong. My father migrated to Australia in 1990 from Shanghai, People's Republic of China, and so I have visited China several times because of him, and I learnt about Chinese culture to a small degree as a young child. However, I have never been to Taiwan, Indonesia, or Burma. I have been to Hong Kong, though.
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@Asianometry I recently traveled to Hong Kong, where I met my grandmother's cousin, who is in her early-50s, I believe. She is half-Taiwanese and half-Chinese from Beijing. She was born and raised in Mainland China, before migrating to Hong Kong; her husband's family has been living in Hong Kong since the early to mid-1900s.
My relative in Hong Kong is pro-Chinese Unification, though none of her ancestors has ever lived in Japanese Taiwan, because her father grew up in Indonesia and Australia, whereas her paternal grandparents emigrated from Taiwan in 1895, in order to escape Japanese rule. So, none of her ancestors has ever lived under Japanese rule in Taiwan. At the same time, her mother comes from Beijing, and would have had a strictly-Chinese upbringing.
Edit: According to my relative in Hong Kong, our family has lived in Taiwan for 35 generations, though these claims seem rather dubious.
The only person within my family who lived in Japanese Taiwan was my maternal grandmother's mother, who was born in Japanese Taiwan in 1918, and who emigrated from Taiwan in 1936. She is the only person who would have been directly affected by the experience of living under Japanese rule.
I met my great grandmother when I was a young child. I was born in Adelaide, South Australia, whereas my great grandmother was living in Sydney at the time of my birth. My immediate family migrated to Sydney when I was young, and I met my great grandmother again in 2007; at this point, I was old enough to remember meeting her.
According to my grandmother, who lives nearby to me in Sydney, my great grandmother hated the Japanese. However, she knew how to speak the Japanese language. And, when my grandmother was a young child living in Taiwan and later in Indonesia, my great grandmother tried to teach her to speak Japanese, though she was apparently "lazy" and didn't end up learning Japanese.
I believe that my great grandmother might not have hated Japanese people as much as my grandmother seems to think. Or maybe, she was using the logic that "to defeat your enemy, you must understand your enemy". She managed not to strangle any Japanese to death in the internment camp, so that says something, at least. Apparently, she spent her time in the camp polishing the floorboards of her living quarters with butter.
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