Experiences of Being a 'Native'

            In Keelung Hong’s article “Experiences of Being a ‘Native’: Observing Anthropology” he talks about growing up in Taiwan when it was then a Japanese colony and then the experience of it becoming a Chinese colony. He makes reference to Native Americans and their experience during the time of residential schooling in Canada, looking at how classmates were turned into spies and would turn on them if they dare speak their native language and not acculturate to speaking Chinese (1994:6). They were striped of not only their language but also of their identity, cities and villages were renamed, punishments were enforced if someone dare spoke their native language even simply to pronounce a friends name or their own name. The Chinese people who took over Taiwan ensured that there would be no remnants of Taiwanese society when they were done, acculturation was in full force and it became important that people learned to obey by the new laws (1994:6).

 

For most Taiwanese people the only means of having a better life is to leave Taiwan in order to get away from the oppressive Chinese oligarchy, in the case of Keelung it meant immigrating to the United States once he had completed his mandatory military service. Once he began his study in the United States he was able to get a hold of ethnographies written about Taiwanese villages, much to his surprise the ethnographies although written about Taiwan were actually looking at ‘traditional Chinese culture’, most ethnographers did not actually look at Taiwanese culture but rather would go to Taiwan in order to study what they felt was Chinese culture (1994:7). Keelung explains that one of the reasons behind most ethnographers going to do fieldwork in Taiwan about Chinese culture was because China was closed to researchers, however, when research became available in China most of them flocked to China in order to have a large study population. One of the main points in his article is about Margery Wolf’s research, which he calls into question because he feels like a lot of her research was romantized and wasn’t accurately portrayed (1994:7).

Keelung Hong’s view of Taiwan is quite interesting because unlike ethnographies, which give an outsiders first hand experience of a culture, he is able to give outsiders a real look and feel for what Taiwan culture rather then Taiwan culture through the Chinese cultural scope. Hong’s outlook made me as an anthropology student reconsider all of the ethnographies I have read over the course of my schooling, it makes me think perhaps how skewed what I’ve read really is and how those cultures must feel when they read such things. The notion that perhaps not all ethnographies accurately portray the society properly brings up the issue of how as a reader we’re supposed to know if the information being presented to us is correct and actually factual regarding the society.

 

Image Sources:

Taiwan Retrocession 1947: http://65th.tpg.gov.tw/history-pic/glorious-moment/images/6-37.jpg

Book: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516KT681BHL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

References:

Hong, K. 1994. “Experiences of being a ‘native’: observing anthropology”. Anthropology today. 10 (3): 6-9.