Taipei              One lesson that seems unavoidable in Taiwan, at least from our readings and our early days, is how history is built on shifting sand, as much as hard rock.  We also could not avoid this feeling in our visits to the both the National Museum and the Museum of Natural History.  We might have wanted to assume that these were places where geopolitics had to park at the door, but that would be naïve in these fraught times, even if their intrusion is subtle.

There’s little question from the books and articles we read before traveling with the Organizers Forum to Taiwan, that both the claims from China that Taiwan was always part and parcel of the mainland, or from Taiwan that it was always autonomous from China, are both inaccurate historically.  Certainly, China in the last one-hundred years has been part of the Taiwan story, but so has Japan, which held the island as a colony for fifty years until after the war.  At one point the Dutch also called Taiwan, or at least parts of it, a colony and trading port.  Then called Formosa, as it was when I was taking geography in my school days, the country had often been seen by China as little more than a pile of rocks.  European interest from Britain, France, and Holland as they tried to implement their commercial and imperial dreams ended up increasing the value of Taiwan, as a key port to facilitate business with the mainland and the rest of Southeast Asia.  It was Japan’s first imperial acquisition, which started out controversially, but quickly made them big money as they expanded the arable land for rice production.

One contradictory through line in the historical record is both the amount of continued resistance and collaboration with the different overlords, then and likely now.  Aboriginal groups, especially in the mountains, were never easily subdued, and often continued to control large parts of the country against the invaders.  Some collaborators with the Japanese made fortunes.  The political parties today are still divided on whether they see China as inevitable or independence as permanent.

Both the National Museum and the Museum of Natural History date their origins to the Japanese period.  Interestingly, the Japanese role is treated very positively in the museums.  Former Japanese directors, scientists, and others are lauded with whole exhibits.  The basic construction following the Japanese model has been retained during numerous renovations.  Many Taiwanese credit the introduction of the Japanese educational system as an important legacy in the achievement of the high educational standards the populations continues to maintain and tout.

It is impossible to miss the political and propaganda impact of such left-handed praise.  Foregrounding the Japanese time and looking past the colonial brutality and autocracy of their reign in that time, allows Taiwan to subtly remind their people and others that China’s influence and claims really only date to post-war treaties where they were not essential parts.  The end of war politics that put Chiang Kai-shek near the table in the settlements with Roosevelt and Stalin, despite Churchill’s objections, loosened the ties from Japan to see Taiwan as part of the Kuomintang civil war resistance to Mao’s Communists victories on the mainland since 1949, just 75 years ago.  The National Museum has one display off to the side of the pen for the signing of the treaty.  All of this history is equally wrapped up and warped with the US history of the Cold War and big power rivalries and positioning, both then and now.

We’re just visitors here.  We walk carefully, knowing there’s no solid ground, and we need to travel on a fine line.  We may see and start to understand bits and pieces, but we “say less.”