Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

In these troubled times, Taiwanese know they are different but they may not always be able to verbalize how different they are. From the Japanese era on, Taiwanese had begun to gain a unified sense of their difference. At that time, unlike under Qing rule, the Hoklo, Hakka and indigenous people realized that they should not let outside rulers play one group against the other. They became united in forging an identity. Thus, as Taiwan now distances itself from the martial law, propaganda and attempted indoctrination of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) one-party state, its citizens feel more free to claim their true identity;Taiwanese. In this process they should examine three terms, creolism, syncretism and hybridization.

What is Taiwan's identity? What does it mean to be Taiwanese? At a recent conference in Taiwan, "Democracy Building in Interesting Times" a speaker spoke accordingly, "Here we don't have the issue of one China, two systems; we have the problem of one China and two Taiwans." Mixing humor with reality he succinctly presented the current challenge of Taiwan's identity between its growing pro-independence minded democrats and the leftover unificationists of its one-party state days.