こんにちは。フォックス淳子＠香港です。今日の台湾では
「Enoura Maru」（江浦丸だと思います）撃沈６０周年の
追悼式があったようですね。近年（でもないのかな）台湾
でも、元連合軍ＰＯＷ（戦争捕虜）による式典の話をよく
見かけるように思います。さて。
台湾に龍應台さんという女性作家がいますが、ちょうど今
昨日の香港紙に彼女の寄稿があったのを見つけ、ついでに、
もう大分前ですが、うちの掲示板で、陳映真氏の話をして
いらした方がいたのを思い出しました。（谷口さんは当時
御覧になったと思いますが） 香港のバプティスト大学で
講演があるという話が出て、私も興味があったので「もし
講演に行かれるのなら」と、質問をお願いしてみたのです。
質問は以下のようなもので、本当に御本人から直接聞いて
きて下さいました。お願いした質問は、以下のものでした。
日本統治時代の「言語弾圧」は過酷なものであったのか？
陳映真氏は、戦前の台湾生まれの本省人というだけでなく、
かつて国民党政権下で投獄された経験もある作家という事
です。普通に考えればその辺で独立急進派にコロびそうな
ものですが、この人は全く反対なんですね。今でも中国を
祖国と考え、中国語、中国文学を愛する人です。ですから
両岸を分断する現在の陳政権は（たかだか中国の本を所有
していたというだけで投獄した国民党より）更に悪い者と
考えているそうです。また、当時はそこまで話に出ません
でしたが、かなり中間路線にシフトした陳水扁でさえこれ
ですから、李登輝氏などを見たら、正に谷口さんが最初に
仰ってらしたような反応を抱くと思われます。
尚、この方は魯迅の研究家としても知られ、過去に何度か
日本でも講演した事があるようで、ネットで探しても沢山
記事が出てきます。香港の講演では他にもいろいろ聞いて
きて下さったのですが、上記の質問に対する答えは
「学校なんかでミンナン語を話すと、日本人の先生から
『バカヤロ！』とどなられて、ぶたれて、大変だったよ」
という事でした。確か、李登輝氏の生い立ちにも、こんな
感じの、野卑な日本人教師の話が出てきたと思います。で
“二等国民”として、希望する学校に行けなかったことが
非常に口惜しかったというような話でした。
長くなりましたが、最初の龍應台さんの記事を以下に付記
します。
「Enoura Maru」（江浦丸だと思います）撃沈６０周年の
追悼式があったようですね。近年（でもないのかな）台湾
でも、元連合軍ＰＯＷ（戦争捕虜）による式典の話をよく
見かけるように思います。さて。
台湾に龍應台さんという女性作家がいますが、ちょうど今
昨日の香港紙に彼女の寄稿があったのを見つけ、ついでに、
もう大分前ですが、うちの掲示板で、陳映真氏の話をして
いらした方がいたのを思い出しました。（谷口さんは当時
御覧になったと思いますが） 香港のバプティスト大学で
講演があるという話が出て、私も興味があったので「もし
講演に行かれるのなら」と、質問をお願いしてみたのです。
質問は以下のようなもので、本当に御本人から直接聞いて
きて下さいました。お願いした質問は、以下のものでした。
日本統治時代の「言語弾圧」は過酷なものであったのか？
陳映真氏は、戦前の台湾生まれの本省人というだけでなく、
かつて国民党政権下で投獄された経験もある作家という事
です。普通に考えればその辺で独立急進派にコロびそうな
ものですが、この人は全く反対なんですね。今でも中国を
祖国と考え、中国語、中国文学を愛する人です。ですから
両岸を分断する現在の陳政権は（たかだか中国の本を所有
していたというだけで投獄した国民党より）更に悪い者と
考えているそうです。また、当時はそこまで話に出ません
でしたが、かなり中間路線にシフトした陳水扁でさえこれ
ですから、李登輝氏などを見たら、正に谷口さんが最初に
仰ってらしたような反応を抱くと思われます。
尚、この方は魯迅の研究家としても知られ、過去に何度か
日本でも講演した事があるようで、ネットで探しても沢山
記事が出てきます。香港の講演では他にもいろいろ聞いて
きて下さったのですが、上記の質問に対する答えは
「学校なんかでミンナン語を話すと、日本人の先生から
『バカヤロ！』とどなられて、ぶたれて、大変だったよ」
という事でした。確か、李登輝氏の生い立ちにも、こんな
感じの、野卑な日本人教師の話が出てきたと思います。で
“二等国民”として、希望する学校に行けなかったことが
非常に口惜しかったというような話でした。
長くなりましたが、最初の龍應台さんの記事を以下に付記
します。
（South China Morning Post 2005.01.08）
Lung Yingtai
I was 12 years old in 1964, living in a port city in southern Taiwan. Years later, when I learned the phrase "the third world" I had no difficulty associating it with my childhood experiences: cholera outbreaks would kill off one or two kids from the class you attend, every girl had lice in her hair, and small kids ran around with T-shirts ingeniously concocted from coarse sacks in which milk powder had been transported as American aid; printed over the chest of a child would be the picture of two masculine hands engaged in a shake, with the caption, "China-US Co-operation", or "net weight 30kg".
When I first came in touch with the concepts of colonialism or imperialism, I also had no difficulty drawing references from my childhood memories: the US soldiers, having fought in the rice fields of Vietnam, were sent to Taiwan for vacations. Young, blond American men in shiny, white navy uniforms put the dark-skinned rickshaw "coolies" on the backseat and rode the rickshaws down the broad street in a frantic race, while "native" bargirls in Qi Pao waved on the sidewalks. Later on, the Pearl Buck Foundation was going to care for many abandoned children of American fathers and Taiwanese mothers.
And where was China in the picture? One did not ask such a question because we were China. When you are the centre, you don't ask where the centre is. The "venomous communists", aided by the "big nose" - the Russians - had stolen our motherland and it was our duty to rescue our fellow countrymen who were reduced to eating banana peels and denouncing their parents.
By age 12, I had played five times in theatre performances, always as one of the female soldiers in uniform, thrusting bayonets against the communist bandits while at the same time singing patriotic songs.
Taiwan is surrounded by more than 1,566km of coastline and I grew up by the sea, yet my association with the word "coast" was not one of white sandy beaches and green palm trees with coconuts, but the image of a mainland frogman in combat suit, a knife clenched between his teeth, advancing at night. Beaches were military zones. Beyond the dark, sinister, incomprehensible water was the dark, sinister, incomprehensible "mainland", the land that was both dear and deadly.
I met a mainland writer in Zurich on a winter's day in 1996, the time when Beijing was shooting missiles near Taiwan in an effort to influence the local election there. Over a glass of wine we began to compare our biographical sketches and make discoveries.
Born in the same year as I was, he also played in school theatres, taking up the role of the little soldier thrusting bayonets at the enemy, singing patriotic songs and delivering emotional speeches on how to "liberate" Taiwan. However, similarities stopped here. Soon enough we discovered that his heroes were my traitors and his criminals my martyrs. The historical figures condemned as tyrants in my history lessons were lauded in his as great nation-makers.
The great writers enshrined in his museums I had never read, and our respected writers were on his censored list. He had no association whatsoever with the songs of, say, Bob Dylan, who we had embraced under heavy American influences, and I'd never heard of The Night of the Moscow Suburb, a song which would bring tears to his eyes. When he used the term "left" he meant a stubborn conservatism hostile to openness, progressiveness and reform, what we called "right", or even worse, "fundamentalist". His "rightist" was my "leftist".
Thus when we entered a serious discussion, we realised that we were dancing on slippery ice: be it radicalism, liberalism, nationalism; be it revolution, evolution, modernisation; be it democracy, liberty or equality. Words didn't carry the same nuances of meaning and didn't generate the same associations or imagery. It was, to use a Taiwanese expression, as if the chickens tried talking with the ducks.
How slippery the ice really is I had yet to learn.
In short, I attacked a weak and incompetent Chen Shui-bian for manipulating ethnic conflicts and pursuing confrontation with the mainland at the cost of national security and international relations, all for the immoral purpose of securing votes.
But, I added, what actually enabled Mr Chen to keep me "hostage" was the threat the Chinese dictatorship posed on the democracy of Taiwan - the policy of military threat as well as international isolation against Taiwan was the real source of oppression that the Taiwanese suffered from.
The series of articles along this vein touched off a storm of debate both in Taiwan and on the mainland. Mainland readers are blocked from the web world outside and most Taiwanese readers are not in the habit of surfing mainland sites; the debates therefore were carried out simultaneously, but were divided like two parallel lines which never meet.
The Taiwanese readers who disagreed with my position tended to stress their "Taiwanese-ness", which had suffered during the rule of the nationalist Chinese for four decades.
One wrote: "I am 40, but a childhood memory stayed with me to this day: the night some strangers broke into my home and took away my father. A month later he came back, a changed man.
"Even after I'd turned 30, I still had haunting dreams of being pursued, I ran in despair, not knowing when and where to stop ... I grew up, built a career and family, and made up my mind to never fall into this dark pit called China again; it is a world of hypocrites. The night when I learned that Mr Chen won the election, I broke into tears ... Ms Lung, he did not hold me `hostage', he is me."
Many readers expressed a distrust of the utopia of independence and an unwillingness to cut the cultural bond to the mainland: "I don't see the benefit of independence, [yet] re-unification also seems remote - therefore I prefer to keep things the way they are. In my mind, nothing is more important than peace, where ordinary people can carry on with their ordinary lives. And deep inside me there is a hidden, delicate place that is called Chinese culture - the Tang poetry, the ancient literature and history, the beautiful calligraphy, which is so much part and parcel of me."
"You are one of those miserable creatures who take advantage of Taiwan and pay secret loyalty to China; you are parasites. Taiwan can do without you miserable Chinese creatures."
The predominant responses from mainland readers of my articles were passionate calls of nationalism:
"I cannot accept the term used by Lung Yingtai - she spoke of a `Chinese world' as if Taiwan were a part of a neutral `Chinese-speaking world'. What is a Chinese-speaking world? Of Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Singapore there are only two countries, that is, China and Singapore; the rest is simply part of China. If Lung does not accept this, then she is nothing but a national traitor."
A college student wrote: "The media says 46 per cent of [mainland] Chinese support reunification with Taiwan by force, and I can assure you this: if you do a poll of the younger generation, the number would be more than 90 per cent. In fact 99.9 per cent of [mainland] Chinese would not hesitate to use force, because this is a historical current which no one can stop. My generation was born with this mission of unifying with Taiwan, at any cost."
An ex-soldier felt like this: "I don't like to change the way I live, but if it comes to Taiwan independence, I am ready to go to war any time. Anyone who tries to separate Taiwan from the Chinese people is the enemy of all China. And do you know what one does to the enemy? Destroy him, eliminate him, erase him."
The nationalistic frenzy apparently made the Chinese intellectuals uneasy and many of them felt compelled to write in defence of my"Defence of Taiwanese Democracy".
Against the official propaganda and the website nationalism, mainland writer Liu Xiao Po wrote: "Compared with [mainland] China, Taiwan has built up a system which guarantees basic justice and freedom: free elections, independent media, freedom of expression etcetera.
"As a contrast, we in [mainland] China still live in shame and bleeding: the mothers of the 1989 massacre victims, the followers of Falun Gung, the numerous dissidents, countless peasants and labourers are all brutally silenced. The judicial system serves as a tool of oppression and the media speaks the tongue of the oppressor."
Before I had the chance to finish reading the essay, another e-mail came in: "Miss Lung, stop using the Chinese language because you dirty our Chinese ancestors. After we take over Taiwan, Lung Yingtai, I will kill all your family members, not one will be spared. Traitor!"
While printing out the letters for this story, I felt that the vague memory of that uneasiness suddenly creep back after so many years - uneasiness over something that is dark, sinister and incomprehensible.
There is one difference, though. Today I realise what is dark, sinister, incomprehensible is not that particular mass of land beyond the ocean; it lies deep in the hearts of human beings desiring power over others, any place, any time.
The nationalistic zealots contrast so poignantly with the free spirits of the critical intellectuals on both sides. Thus the "borders" that I am crossing are cut not so much along national or ethnical or religious lines - they are actually demarcation lines of reason.