Guowen diyi--the literacy crisis in postwar Taiwan

Below I mentioned Gao Ming's article "Guowen diyi" from Weixue pian. The text of Chiang Kai-shek's message about the importance of studying the National Language has somehow managed to hide from me so far, although I've looked for it in several collections of his speeches (general speeches, speeches on education, etc.). I imagine (though I can't be 100% sure) that Chiang refers to the influence of Japanese language and culture on the people of Taiwan. This is mentioned by Gao, and it was something of a commonplace among representatives of the Nationalist government that the Japanese language and culture that was leftover from the time that Taiwan was a Japanese colony was something of a pollutant or infection that needed to be eradicated in order for Taiwanese people to become fully Chinese (again).

Hsu Hsueh-chi, in her article "The Language Problem in Postwar Taiwan, 1945-1948" (台 灣光復初期的語文問題), cites several sources from the period immediately preceding and following Japan's surrender where Taiwanese people are characterized as "slaves" of Japan. She quotes a 1944 letter from Chen Yi (陳義), infamous for his role in the 228 Massacre, to Chen Lifu (陳立夫), which demonstrates Chen Yi's strong desire to use the National Language policy to "uproot 'the old enslaved psychology and build a revolutionary psychology'" (根絕「奴化的舊心理,建設革命的心理」). Evidently, by the time of Gao's article (1955), despite 10 years of carrying out the National Language policy in Taiwan, government representatives still considered the Japanese language a threat to the Sinification of the Taiwanese people.

In "Guowen diyi", Gao argues that using the same writing system gives people from different parts (東西南北各地區) a unified ethnic/national (民族) identity (意識) (39), and that the same writing system gives people from different historical periods a unified ethnic/national spirit (一貫的民族精神) (39). He argues that occupiers and traitors all know that in order to conquer (征服) their subjects or enemies, the language and writing of the conquered needs to be exterminated. He continues,

日本人佔領臺灣的期間，不准我們的臺灣同胞學習中國文字，並用 種種方法(或鼓勵，或強迫)促使我們的臺灣同胞學習日文，便是這種作用。……現在臺灣從日本人的手上，回到祖國的懷抱，已經十年了。但是日文在民間，不僅 沒有絕跡，還相當的流行。我們總感覺到，過去一個侵略者的幽靈， 時時在威脅我們。(39-40)

Roughly, Gao is arguing that when the Japanese occupied Taiwan, they didn't permit the Taiwanese people ("our Taiwan compatriots") to study Chinese writing, and used various methods (encouragement and coercion) to make the Taiwanese learn Japanese. When Gao was writing this, Taiwan had already "returned to the mother country's embrace" for 10 years, but, he claimed, Japanese had not only not been exterminated, it was still popular. "We constantly feel the ghost of a previous invader threatening us." (Gao goes on to speak favorably of how the Korean government had outlawed the Japanese language after the Japanese invaders left.)

But Eika Tai argues that Japanese language and culture had not "enslaved" nearly as many people as the KMT believed. In fact, she limits the kinds of people who were really proficient in Japanese to the elites:

To be sure, many Taiwanese elites did learn to use Japanese superbly. Yet, even for those people, whether as a result they were Japanized is a different issue. They studied Kokugo [(Japanese) National Language] as a language of civilization so that they could acquire modern knowledge and succeed in colonial society to the fullest extent possible. But there were also Taiwanese who used their competence in the colonizer's language to liberate themselves and to challenge the goal of assimilation that Kokugo education was supposed to achieve. (529)

The use of Japanese, then, rather than being simply the sign of a "slave mentality" or a colonized psyche, became for Taiwanese people a tool for resisting domination by the KMT government. As Jiu-jung Lo notes, there is some irony in the fact that "many Taiwanese forged a close bond under political symbols smacking of Japanese colonial rule, an experience that was by no means wholeheartedly embraced by all the Taiwanese throughout fifty years of Japanese occupation" (280).

Mei Wen-Li, writing in 1963, also points to older Taiwanese intellectuals as the primary users of Japanese--in this case to point out how these people were the victims of the anti-Japanese movement in postwar Taiwan because of their lack of access to sources of knowledge. Of these older intellectuals, she writes:

Their first difficulty is language. With restricted imports of Japanese language publications these intellectuals, most of whom were educated in Japanese and can read neither Chinese nor English well, have been living in something of an intellectual vacuum. Moreover, they have no rich intellectual tradition from which to draw. When part of the Manchu empire Formosa was one of its acknowledged underdeveloped areas. Under the Japanese the percentage of Formosan students who received higher education was extremely low and those who did receive higher education were discouraged from developing an interest in the humanities or the social sciences. Many of the most talented intellectuals later sacrificed their lives in the cause of self-rule either in the struggle with the Japanese or in the massacre following the February 28th incident of 1947.

Works Cited

Gao, Ming 高明. "Guowen Diyi" 國文第一. Weixue Pian 為學篇. Taipei: Ziyou Qingnian Chuban, 1958.

Hsu, Hsueh-chi 許雪姬. "Taiwan Guangfu Chuqi de Yuwen Wenti" 台灣光復初期的語文問題 ["The Language Problem in Postwar Taiwan, 1945-1948"]. Si yu Yan 思與言 [Thoughts and Words] 29.4 (1991): 155-84.

Lo, Jiu-jung. "Trials of the Taiwanese as Hanjian or War Criminals and the Postwar Search for Taiwanese Identity." Constructing Nationhood in Modern East Asia. Ed. Kai-wing Chow, Kevin M. Doak, and Poshek Fu. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001. 279-315.

Mei, Wen-Li. "The Intellectuals on Formosa." China Quarterly 15 (1963): 65-74.

Tai, Eika. "Kokugo and Colonial Education in Taiwan." Positions: East-West Cultures Critique 7.2 (1999): 503-40.

[updated 1/4/05, 12:26 a.m.; 1/17/04, 2:15 a.m.]

Wei xue pian (為學篇)

This book, published in 1958, is part of the Ziyou qingnian xiuyang (自由青年修養) series published by the Ziyou Qingnian Magazine Press. (Ziyou qingnian, or Free Youth, was a magazine founded in Taiwan in 1950.) The 26 essays in this book, which seem intended for college-age readers, were taken from the "Qingnian Xiuyang" columns in the magazine. They include essays by Tseng Yueh-nung, Liang Shiqiu, Mou Zhongsan, Gao Ming, among others. A couple of interesting essays that I need to look at:

"Guowen diyi" (國文第一 ) by Gao Ming (高明), pages 39-42

Briefly, this article takes as its title Chiang Kai-shek's exhortation to the people of Taiwan to improve their Mandarin. Gao divides the concepts of Guowen into 3 parts: Chinese writing, Chinese discourse (中國文章), and the Chinese culture that is expressed through Chinese discourse. It contains some of the usual denunciations of what the Communists were doing to the Chinese language, and also comments on the continuing threat of the Japanese language to the complete Sinification of Taiwan. Seems to have been written in 1955.

"Zenyang tigao ziji de Guowen chengdu (怎樣提高自己的國文程度) by Zheng Mingdong (鄭明東), pages 43-48

This article reasserts the need to view Chinese as "the mother of all studies" (國文為各學科之母). Zheng covers intensive reading (精讀), extensive reading (略讀), writing, and calligraphy.

"Lun Guowen chengdu de diluo yu tigao" (論國文程度的低落與提高) by Du Chengxiang (杜呈祥), pages 49-54

This article begins with the much-bewailed "literacy crisis" that scholars claimed was facing Free China in the 1950s.

"Bianlun yu minzhu" (辯論與民主) by Wang Shoukang (王壽康), pages 76-77

The author begins by asserting an intimate connection between debate and democracy. He argues that promoting debate is the most fundamental task for promoting democracy and ridding people of pre-democratic, autocratic ways of thinking because debate can help people develop their own opinions and accomodate others' opinions.

More later...

[updated 12/10/04, 3:45 p.m.; 12/11/04, 9:37 a.m.]

Tseng on the goals of general education

Below I was thinking about Tseng Yueh-nung's view of rhetoric education as expressed in his "Simple Explanation of General Education." I need to say more about that article. It gets cited in the History of Tunghai University, 1955-1980 (Tunghai Daxue xiaoshi 東海大學校史) as representative of the philosophy of education that Tseng brought to Tunghai. The History says that Tseng' s essay compares Western and Chinese thought and develops an explanation of the "true meaning" of general education.

About halfway through Tseng's article, he gets to the point. (OK, that's just testiness on my part.) On page 5, he observes that one of the keys to general education is to train students to "observe by themselves, collect information on their own, rely on themselves to make distinctions, study by themselves, draw to their own conclusions, and form their own judgments." (宏通教育中，每一重點，必使學生：自行觀察，自集資料，自力鑑別，自加研究，自作結論，自下批評。)

Tseng divides into five groups the kinds of training needed to meet the goals of teaching students to seek knowledge for themselves. These kinds of training (specific areas of study are mentioned in parentheses) will help students work toward the following goals:

1. reasoning can be correct and rigorous (logic)

2. expression can be clear and fluent (language, math, and other media for expression, such as lines and colors are used for expression in the arts)

3. research can be high-quality, careful, and objective (natural sciences, social sciences, and methodologies, such as history, philosophy, and literary methods)

4. appraisal can be wise and impartial (humanities and sciences, including the evaluation of cultural products)

5. the result of study can be harmoniously blended and thoroughly grasped, taking a complete and "synoptic view" (history, philosophy, theology)

Tseng goes on to say that the first two items relate to courses that equip students with tools (為工具性學科), and from the perspective of general education do not exist for their own sake, but rather for the sake of the other courses or areas of study (不為其本身而存在，乃為其他各科而設...). This is the "language is a tool" school of thought that governs, in Tseng's view properly governs, the way in which general education curricula are established. Invention, critical thinking, and even taste are separated from "expression."

[Updated 12/10/04, 4:03 p.m.]

Some books by Tseng Yueh-nung that are at Tunghai's library

• 曾約農校長/陳瑞洲, 謝鶯興合編 (1998; Dewey #782.886 8025-1) [Dec. 6 Update: Found this book; it contains some of the articles mentioned below: 曾約農(一八九三至一九八六), by 吳化鵬, published in 中外雜誌 vol. 63.1 (Jan. 1998): 80-81; 曾約農 (1893-1986), by 李爾康, pub. in 傳記文學 vol. 50.5 (May 1987): 139-40; and 敬悼曾約農先生, by 李爾康, pub. in 傳記文學 vol. 50.2 (Feb. 1987): 39-42
• 曾約農先生言論集/林景淵編選 (1970; Dewey #073.8 4463)
[Dec. 6 Update: Couldn't find this on the shelves]
• 漫談繙譯與寫作/曾約農撰 (1971; Dewey #811.7 8025)

Tseng also has a book called 中西文化之關係 that's available at some libraries. Will ILL it. [Dec. 6 Update: ILLed it.]

Some articles by or about Tseng Yueh-nung

Somewhere there's got to be a bibliography of Tseng's works... (Note: check the Tunghai archives on Monday.) Some articles, gleaned from 中華民國期刊論文索引影像系統:

• 曾約農(一八九三至一九八六), by 吳化鵬, published in 中外雜誌 vol. 63.1 (Jan. 1998): 80-81; 96-98 (THU library gets this)
• 曾約農 (1893-1986), by 李爾康, pub. in 傳記文學 vol. 50.5 (May 1987): 139-40 (THU library gets this)
• 敬悼曾約農先生, by 李爾康, pub. in 傳記文學 vol. 50.2 (Feb. 1987): 39-42 (THU library gets this)

By Tseng:

• 原仁, in 湖南文獻 9.4 (Oct. 1981): 5-9 (THU library gets this)
• 中西文化之比較, in 新知雜誌, vol 3.6 (Dec. 1973): 16-22 (THU library gets this)
• 漫談儒家的教育觀, in 東亞季刊, vol. 3 (Jan. 1970): 13-15 (does THU library gets this?)
• 中西文化之比較, in 公教智識, 436 (Nov. 1969): 20-21 (THU library gets this)

Other places where Tseng is mentioned:

• This article by Suncrates, which is a translator's note to an article by Lewis E. Hahn (published in Comprehensive Harmony: International Journal for Comparative Philosophy and Culture 1.2 [2003]), contains a footnote that describes Tseng's teaching style when he was teaching translation at National Taiwan University in the 1950s:

When teaching as Professor of English Literature at the National Taiwan University, Professor Tseng still adopted the British system of tutorship in higher education. Students assigned to him as tutor are welcome to have the afternoon tea at his house, once a week, as I recall. Then he would advise you on life experience as well as on study progress, thus encouraging free discussion in an informal atmosphere. He was a gracious exemplar of edification, in words and in deeds. On my work in his translation class, I remember, he put such encouraging comments: "Gifted with good ways of thinking, you will have a bright future ahead (as translator)." "Remarkable! I am pleasantly surprised that you have translated this article in the classical Chinese style (wen yen); far superior to any colloquial version (bai hua). " Once he asked me the works I was reading. I replied with Matthew Arnold's critical essay "On Englishing Homer." He was quite impressed, saying "Studying Matthew Arnold carefully, you may grasp the know-how in translation as an art."

A few notes about Tseng Yueh-nung

Tseng Yueh-nung (photo from the Tunghai University website)

Tseng Yueh-nung's English name was Beauson Tseng. He was a great-grandson of Zeng Guofan (曾國藩), best known for his role in the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion. Tseng was born in 1893 in Hunan Province.

Tseng studied mining at London University (graduating in 1916) and at the Royal School of Mines. He returned to China and, with his cousin Zeng Baosun (曾寶蓀), established the Yifang School for Girls in Changsha.

He came to Taiwan by way of Hong Kong after escaping from mainland China in 1949. At first he taught English literature at National Taiwan University, then he came to Taichung to become the first president of Tunghai University in 1955. He retired from Tungahi in 1957, going on to take roles in government and education.

I'll add more to this as I have time. Here is some information on Tseng (from which much of the above was taken) can be found here (in Chinese).

Tseng seems in some ways to be a symbol of Tunghai. The main road into Tunghai is named "Beauson Road" (or 約農路). A bust of Tseng is situated in the entrance to the university's library. Tseng seems to be a locus of public memory about Tunghai, particularly in the way that the university has traditionally been viewed as a place where Chinese and Western cultures mix.