Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan: Self, Culture and Society 9811906831, 9789811906831

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Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan Self, Culture and Society Edited by Ananta Kumar Giri · Su-Chen Wu

Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan

Ananta Kumar Giri · Su-Chen Wu Editors

Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan Self, Culture and Society

Editors Ananta Kumar Giri Madras Institute of Development Studies Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Su-Chen Wu Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures Fo Guang University Yilan City, Taiwan

ISBN 978-981-19-0683-1 ISBN 978-981-19-0684-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Alex Linch shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

Life is a journey. This journey makes us meet with each other and the world which then becomes sprouting grounds for new collaborations and co-thinking. In January 2011, the co-editors of this volume Ananta and Su-Chen met in a seminar in Chennai on new horizons of cultural studies. We then continued our collaborative engagement and dialogues—SuChen contributing a chapter to a book on Practical Spirituality and Human Development that Ananta had edited. Then Ananta undertook a study of “Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: India, China and the Calling of Planetary Conversations,” which was supported by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi. Ananta sought the help of Susan to co-edit this book, Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan: Self, Culture and Society as part of this project. We both have nurtured this project for the last three years. It is with great joy that we are now able to offer this to our world. We are grateful to all the contributors who have contributed essays to our volume. We are also grateful to the Indian Council of Social Science Research for the research grant for the project “Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: India, China and the Calling of Planetary Conversations.” We are grateful to friends in Palgrave Macmillan especially Sandeep Kaur and two anonymous reviewers for their review of this work. We are also grateful to Justin Hewitson, National Yang-ming University, Taiwan, and Indra Ramaswamy, Chennai, for their help with the project. We are grateful to our Madras Institute of Development Studies and Fo Guang v

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PREFACE

University for their support of our works. Finally, we hope that this work helps us understand contemporary Taiwan and deepen and widen our universe of social theorizing in our contemporary world. Chennai, India Yilan City, Taiwan

Ananta Kumar Giri Su-Chen Wu

Contents

1

Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan: An Introduction and an Invitation Ananta Kumar Giri and Su-Chen Wu

1

Part I Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan: Classical Roots and Contemporary Reconstructions 2

3

4

5

A Scientific Interpretation of Confucian Theorizing on Self-Cultivation Kwang-Kuo Hwang

13

From Self to Self-Nature: Buddhist Self-Enlightenment Theory Yung-Jong Shiah

35

Wisdom Consultation: Application of Yang-Ming’s Nousology in Indigenous Psychological Consultation Rong-Rong Liu and Chen Fu

57

The Solution for Hwang Kwang-Kuo Problem: Constructing the Theoretical Basis of Chinese Indigenous Social Science Chen Fu

67

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CONTENTS

Part II Social Theorizing in Contemporary Taiwan: Glimpses from Some Contemporary Movements and Socio-cultural Initiatives 6

7

8

9

10

The Social Transformation from Labor Movement to Political Movement—The Praxis of Committee for Action of Labor Legislation and People’s Democratic Political Movement Yen-Tang Ho, Tseun-Chyi Jeng, and Lin-Ching Hsia Another World is Possible: Abandoning the Hegemony of Global Capitalism in the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan Yao-Hung Huang Culture, Land Reclamation Movement, and Property Relations in Indigenous Mapping Projects in the Contemporary Truku Society Ching-Hsiu Lin Countering Prejudices with Uncanny Strangeness: Taiwanese Children’s Books About Southeast Asian Marriage Migrants in Taiwan Chen-Wei Yu Gastronomic Fusion and Flexible Culinary Citizenship of Southeast Asian Female Migrants in Taiwan’s Public TV Programs Han-Sheng Wang

83

107

131

155

171

Part III Ethics and Other Issues of Cultural Creativity 11

12

An Inclusive Theory of Ethics Based on Chinese Culture: The Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers Chih-Hung Wang Through the Compound Eyes: The Ethical Dynamics of Wu Ming-Yi’s Materialistic Literary Vision in the Man with the Compound Eyes and the Stolen Bicycle Laurie Jui-Hua Tseng

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CONTENTS

13

14

15

16

17

18

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Affect and the Virtual: A Deleuzian Reading of a Taiwanese Film: Kano Catherine Ju-Yu Cheng

227

Articulating Ecological Ethics and Politics of Life in Ming-Yi Wu’s The Land of Little Rain Yi-Jen Chang

241

Breathing Between: Making a Sensory Ethnographic Film on Freediving Spearfishing with the Amis in Taiwan Futuru C. L. Tsai The Life Education of the Protect Life Relief Pictures in the Buddha Museum, Taiwan Yung-Dong Shih The Combat and Compromise in Taiwanese Puppets as a Body Without Organ: Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe as an Example Yi-Jou Lo Engaged Buddhism, the Six P¯aramit¯as, and Yuanmen’s Collective Social-Charity Practices Su-Chen Wu

Index

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275

301

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339

Notes on Contributors

Chang Yi-Jen received her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from National Taiwan Normal University in 2012, with the dissertation Hospitality and the Other: Cosmopolitan Novels and September 11. Her academic interest focuses on cosmopolitan, ethics and biopolitics, discourse on human rights, disaster and apocalypse study. She is currently an assistant professor at Fo Guang University. Recently, her research concentrates on the study of apocalyptic literature and its biopolitical implication in Japan’s contemporary popular culture, particularly cybernetics animation and manga. Cheng Catherine Ju-Yu received her Ph.D. in English from National Taiwan Normal University. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at Feng Chia University. Her main areas of research are postmodern novels, science fiction, contemporary European philosophy, and Buddhist philosophy. She serves as Secretary-General and Director of Taiwan Humanities Society. At the moment, she is co-editing a book with Joff P. N. Bradley. Her recent publications include The Virtual We: The Survivors, the Cities, and the Cosmos in Doris Lessing’s Shikasta in Tamkang Review (2015); Between Virtual Past and Actual Present: Cosmic Memory in Doris Lessing’s Shikasta in NTU Studies in Language and Literature (2016); Death and Event in Wei Te-Sheng’s Seediq Bale in Chung Wai Literary Quarterly (2016); Ecological Time in Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in NTU Studies in Language and Literature (2017); From Death to xi

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Cosmic Life: On Lessing’s The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 in Tamkang Review (2017); The Runaway from Hell: Mad/Sacred Space in Doris Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent into Hell in Review of English and American Literature (2018); Nature and the Smiths in Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke in Tamkang Review (2019); Wei Te-Sheng’s Kano: A National Allegory and a Story About Baseball in Taiwan Insight (2019), and The Posthuman Throw of the Dice in Cixin Liu’s Three-Body Problem in Humanitas Taiwanica (2020). Fu Chen is professor and director of the General Education Center from the National Dong Hwa University. He obtained his Ph.D. in History from the National Tsinghua University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Science Education Center from the National Taiwan Normal University. From 2015 to 2017, he was the director of the Liberal Arts Center at National Yilan University and the convener of the Life Education Research Office (2013–2019). Prof. Chen Fu also served as the chairman of the Cross-Straits Psychological Counseling Association (2012–2016) and honorary chairman of the Cross-Strait Psychological Counseling Association (2016–2020). He was awarded the honorary distinguished professor of the College of Chinese Study from the Hunan University of Science and Technology (2017). Currently, he is the vicechairman of the Chinese Indigenous Social Science Association where his main research interest is the nousology of Chinese philosophy to advocate nouslogical psychology in Indigenous Social Science, as the most avantgarde thoughts in Confucianism so as to solve the psychiatric problem of human beings. Giri Ananta Kumar is a Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India. He has taught and done research in many universities in India and abroad, including Aalborg University (Denmark), Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris (France), the University of Kentucky (USA), University of Freiburg & Humboldt University (Germany), Jagiellonian University (Poland) and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has an abiding interest in social movements and cultural change, criticism, creativity and contemporary dialectics of transformation, theories of self, culture and society, and creative streams in education, philosophy and literature. Dr. Giri has written and edited around two dozen books in Odia and English, including Global Transformations: Postmodernity and Beyond (1998); Sameekhya o Purodrusti (Criticism and Vision of the Future, 1999); Patha Prantara Nrutattwa

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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(Anthropology of the Street Corner, 2000); Mochi o Darshanika (The Cobbler and the Philosopher, 2009); Sri Jagannathanka Saha: Khyaya, Khata o Kehetra (With Sri Jagannatha: Loss, Wound and the Field, 2018); Conversations and Transformations: Toward a New Ethics of Self and Society (2002); Self-Development and Social Transformations? The Vision and Practice of Self-study Mobilization of Swadhyaya (2008); Mochi o Darshanika (The Cobbler and the Philosopher, 2009); Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons (2012), Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations (2013); The Calling of Global Responsibility: New Initiatives in Justice, Dialogues and Planetary Realizations (forthcoming); Philosophy and Anthropology: Border-Crossing and Transformations (co-edited with John Clammer, 2013); New Horizons of Human Development (editor, 2015); Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues (editor, 2017); Cultivating Pathways of Creative Research: New Horizons of Transformative Practice and Collaborative Imagination (editor, 2017); Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony (editor, 2017); Beyond Sociology (editor, 2018); Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary Conversations (editor, 2018); Practical Spirituality and Human Development: Transformations in Religions and Societies (editor, 2018); Weaving New Hats: Our Half Birthdays (2019); Beyond Cosmopolitanism: Towards Planetary Transformations (editor, 2018); Transformative Harmony (editor, 2019) and Practical Spirituality and Human Development: Creative Experiments for Alternative Futures (editor, 2019). Website: www.mids.ac.in/ananta. htm Ho Yen-Tang serves as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Work, Law School, Minnan Normal University, Fujian, China. He received his master’s degree in Sociology at Soochow University, Taiwan and holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Fu-Jen University, Taiwan. Ho is a grassroots activist for more than 20 years, active in the labor movement and movements for the marginalized communities in Taiwan. He has taught in Taiwan, at the Department of Psychology, Fu Jen University, and at the Department of Social Work, Soochow University. Hsia Lin-Ching is the Chair Professor of the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University. She has retired as a professor from the Department of Psychology, Fu Jen University in Taiwan. Trained by Chris Argyris and Donald Schön during her study in Counselling Psychology at Harvard University, USA, she applies Action Science to her activism and

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social practice and pioneered it in Taiwan. She identifies herself as a social educator, rather than a psychotherapist. Hsia is widely acknowledged as a distinguished scholar in practice-oriented methodologies across Taiwan, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Huang Yao-Hung received his Ph.D. from the English Department at the National Taiwan Normal University in Taiwan in 2016 with the dissertation Identifying with the Outcast: Reading Global Capitalism with Slovaj Žižek. His main research areas are Cultural Studies and Psychoanalysis. His paper Discussing Negativity in History: From Wei De-Sheng’s Haijiao qihao (Cape No. 7) and Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale was published by Chung-Wai Literary Monthly (2016) (THCI). His recent publications include Searching the Justice in Economic Exchange: The Way to break with the Tribal, Capitalist, and State Mode of Economic Exchange in The Merchant of Venice Review of English and American Literature (2016); Decoding Global Capitalism: Identifying with the Excluded Outcast in the Taiwanese Sunflower Movement in The Encrypted Constitution (2018); The Structural Violence in Neoliberalism: From Home to Homelessness in Andre Dubus III’s House of Sand and Fog in Review of English and American Literature (2019). Hwang Kwang-Kuo obtained his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii. He retired from National Taiwan University and is currently a National Chair Professor, awarded by the Ministry of Education, Republic of China. Professor Hwang has endeavored to promote the indigenization movement in psychology and the social sciences in Chinese society since the early 1980s. He has published more than 150 articles on related issues in both Chinese and English in addition to eight books including Foundations of Chinese Psychology: Confucian Social Relations (English) and Inner Sageliness and Outer Kingliness: The Accomplishment and Unfolding of Confucianism (Chinese) and is the past president of the Asian Association of Indigenous and Cultural Psychology (2010–2014), and the Asian Association of Social Psychology (2003–2005), and was the Principal Investigator of the research project In Search of Excellence for Indigenous Psychology, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Republic of China (2000–2008). Jeng Tseun-Chyi is a social activist in Taiwan and Convener of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). He holds a master’s degree in Education from Harvard University, USA. Jeng was not only a journalist with

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xv

China Times Daily before joining the labor movement full-time but also the Convener of the Committee for Action of Labor Legislation (CALL) before being appointed to the Labor Bureau Chief of Taipei City. Throughout his activism since the 1980s, Jeng has focused on participatory democracy exercised by the underprivileged. He initiated the Millions Spoiled Ballots Campaign, Everyone Can Be a Political Candidate and Boss Movement, as well as Everyone Can Be a Political Candidate and Boss Movement. They all demanded the return of political power to the people. These campaigns have empowered many marginalized groups, such as migrants and people who are physically challenged. Lin Ching-Hsiu received his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh in 2010 with the dissertation Women and Land: Privatisation, Gender Relations, and Social Change in Truku Society, Taiwan. His main research areas are social anthropology, kinship studies, and studies of indigenous people. His book chapter Pigs for Money: Kinship and the Monetisation of Exchange Among the Truku was published in the Living Kinship in the Pacific (2015). His current research focuses on the relationship between the management of natural resource and indigenous knowledge in Taiwan. He has published The Interweaving of Water Infrastructure and Society: A Case Study of the Construction and Management of Irrigation in Kalibuan Community, Taiwan in Taiwan Journal of Anthropology (2017). Liu Rong-Rong is a Lecturer at the School of Humanities, Xuzhou Institute of Technology and received her Ph.D. in Classical Literature from Shanghai University. She had been invited to the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica as a visiting student for six months. She is also a Contract Research Fellow of Life Education Research Office in National Ilan University, a visiting lecturer of Knowing and Action Academy in Shanxi province, and the president of Cross-strait Nousology Research Institute. Her research fields include literature of Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasty, Song and Ming Confucianism (Yang-ming nousology) and Chinese indigenous social science. Her recent publications include The Wisdom of Life and Death by Nouslogist Qian Xu-shan in Ming Dynasty, Journal of Hunan University of Science and Engineering (2015), Understanding the Influence of Yang-ming Nousology for Ming Dynasty’s Middle-Advanced Literary World from Zheng Shan-fu’s Literature Evolution, Journal of Changzhou Institute of Technology (Social Science Edition, 2016), Nousism: Exploring the Development Path Chinese Indigenous

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Social Science from Zhou Dun-yi’s Thought, The Research on Zhou Dunyi, (second author, 2018), The Narration of Qiu Chuji’s Travel Poems in the Western Regions, Journal of Jiangxi Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition, 2019). Lo Yi-Jou received her Ph.D. from National Kaohsiung Normal University with Native American Plays as her dissertation topic. Her research areas are North-American indigenous plays as well as Taiwanese puppet shows. Her recent publications include a monograph titled Daily Life in North American Indigenous Plays: The Star Quilter, The Indolent Boys, and Path with No Moccasins (2020) and journal papers such as Performing the Loss for Thirty Years?!: The Disabled Characters in Pili Puppet Shows (1985–2015) in Taipei City University of Science and Technology Journal of General Education (2013) and Advantages and Disadvantages of CrossDisciplinary Cooperation: A Study of Audience Comments in Gogoanime on Thunderbolt Fantasy, Episode 1 in Journal of Cultural and Creative Industries Research (2017). Shiah Yung-Jong received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. He is a pioneer scholar and has devoted much of his professional career to link Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism to social science and science. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles on related issues in both Chinese and English. He was a full-time counselor and director of counseling center in universities in Taiwan (1997–2002). He is the secretary-general of the Chinese Indigenous Social Science Association (2018–present) and was secretary-general of the Taiwan Guidance and Counseling Association (2015–2016). He was the associate editor of Chinese Journal of Guidance and Counseling (2017–2019) (TSSCI), also the guest editors of Frontiers in Psychology (SSCI) (2014–2017) and Indigenous Psychological Research in Chinese Societies (TSSCI) (2015–2016) and Taiwan Counseling Psychology Quarterly (2014–2015), and the acting editors of Journal of Kaohsiung Behavioral Sciences (2010–2014) and Journal of Counseling Psychology & Rehabilitation Counseling (2012–2017). He received the Excellent Research Award from the National Kaohsiung Normal University (2010–2021), Subsidies for Distinguished Scholars received from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (2013– 2021) and Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor (1997). His publications can be seen at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yung-Jong_Shiah.

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Shih Yung-Dong has been a Buddhist monastic in the Chinese tradition for more than 35 years. She received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of the West (Uwest) LA. USA. She has been the Director of the Female Chan College at Fo Guang Shan, Taiwan and the Dean of Studies at the Hsi Lai Buddhist College USA. Ven. Yung-Dong also has been a frequent visiting lecturer on diverse subjects at several universities in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines and Taiwan. She has been the Chair and Dean of Buddhist Studies College, Fo Guang University. She is now a full-time professor of the Graduate Institute of Religious Studies as well as the Dean of Student Affairs at Fo Guang University in Taiwan. She has published numerous papers and books including The Short March to Wisdom (2002), The Origin of Bodhicitta and Its Development in Chinese Buddhism (2006), The Buddhist Perspective of Human Nature and Healing (2009), The Developmental Tendency of Contemporary Buddhism in Taiwan (2011), A Textual Research of the Sutras Translated by Nie Dao Zhen in the Western Jin Dynasty (2014), World Vision of Humanistic Buddhism (2016), Record of Monastics’ Virtuous Deeds by Master Lianchi in the Ming Dynasty and Modern Examples (2017), and Construct the Mode of Simile Used by Master Hsing Yun Based on Between Ignorance and Enlightenment (2019). Tsai Futuru C. L. received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan in 2010. Futuru C. L. Tsai’s research interests are Visual Anthropology, Historical Anthropology, Ritual and Performance, ‘Amis People, Taiwan Indigenous War Experiences during the Pacific War (PNG), Indigenous Social Movements, and Maritime Culture among ‘Amis People. He has two books for public readers focusing on Anthropology and the Indigenous war experiences in PNG from 1943 to 1945. He also has published several award-winning documentaries. Currently, he is making a documentary on underwater spearfishing men among ‘Amis indigenous people in eastern Taiwan in the title of Breathing Between. Futuru C. L. Tsai’s full curriculum vitae please reach https://is.gd/etypfT. Tseng Laurie Jui-Hua received her Ph.D. in English Literature from the English Department of National Taiwan Normal University. Her dissertation, The Other Face in the Glass: Virginia Woolf’s Looking-glass Complex and the Mirror Images in her Works, was directed by Professor Frank W. Stevenson. Her recent interest is in the genre of science fiction,

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particularly in the works of Philip K. Dick and Liu Cixin. Her recent publications include From Historical Objects Collection to Cultural & Creative Commodities Marketing: A Study on the Industrialization of Historical Objects by Exploring the Dualistic Element and Capitalistic Logic in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (Chinese) published in Chungwai Literature (2018); In the Beginning Was Love: Love and Faith in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? published in Fiction and Drama (2015), and A Study on the Uncertainty of Small and yet Certain Happiness and Belief for the Contemporary People from the Perspective of Žižek’s Materialist Theology (Chinese) published in Chungwai Literature (2015). Wang Chih-Hung received his Ph.D. in Guidance and Counseling from National Changhua University of Education (NCUE), Taiwan. He is a professor of the Department of Guidance and Counseling and Director of Center for Indigenous Counseling Psychology, NCUE. He is editor in chief of the Journal of Indigenous Counseling Psychology and the current president of the World Indigenous Counseling Psychology Alliance and Chinese Indigenous Social Science Association. He was president of the Taiwan Association of Mental Health Informatics (TAMHI) (2012– 2015), and the Taiwan Guidance and Counseling Association (TGCA) (2014–2016). He was the chair of the ethics committee of TAMHI, TGCA, Taiwan Counseling Psychologist Union (TCPU), and Taiwan Career Development & Consulting Association (TCDCA), and the chair of the research ethics committee of NCUE. He was editor in chief of the Chinese Journal of Guidance and Counseling (2017–2019) (TSSCI). He received the Excellent Research Award from TGCA & NCUE and has published over 140 scientific journal papers and book chapters on counseling ethics, cybercounseling, internet addiction, assistance programs, and indigenous counseling psychology. His list of publications can be reached at: http://wang.heart.net.tw/article.htm or https://www.resear chgate.net/profile/Chih_Hung_Wang6. Wang Han-Sheng received his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from National Cheng-chi University in Taiwan in 2009 with the dissertation Narrating the Mobile: The Writings of Amy Levy, Dorothy Richardson, and Virginia Woolf . His main research areas are Victorian Studies and Women’s Urban Narratives. His recent publications include Observing the City: Dorothy Richardson and Her Film Criticism in NTU Studies in Language and Literature (2009); Consuming Fin de Siécle London:

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Female Consumers in Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage in Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture (2010); Women and London Poverty in L. T. Meade’s The Princess of the Gutter and Margaret Harkness’s in Darkest London in NTU Studies in Language and Literature (2014); Unsettling a Christian Hero: Narratives of Disease and Masculinity Crisis in George Leslie Mackay’s from Far Formosa in Foreign Language Studies (2015) and Observing Formosa: Savages in the Missionary Writings of George Leslie Mackay and William Campbell in Foreign Language Studies (2016). Wu Su-Chen received her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Tamkang University in Taiwan in 2009 with the dissertation A Spiritual Ecology in the Lan.k¯ avat¯ ara S¯ utra. Her main research areas are Religious Studies and Ecocriticism. Her paper Anthropocentric Obses¯ sion: The Perfuming Effects of V¯ asan¯ a (Habit-energy) in Alayavijñ¯ ana in the Lan.k¯ avat¯ ara S¯ utra, was published by Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal (2014). Recent publications include Exploring Roland Barthes in Henri Lefebvre’s ‘Abstract Space in Foreign Language Studies (2009); Recreating Our Reality: A Comparative Study between a ‘Perceiving Being’ in Amit Goswami’s Quantum Physics and Alayavijnana in the Lankavatara Sutra in Journal for Interdisciplinary Research on Religion and Science (2012); Tracing the Holistic Voice in Ecological Space: Exploring Theodore Roszak’s Ecopsychology in Henri Lefebvre’s ‘Differential Space in Philosophy Study (2013); Ecological Holism: Arne Naess’s Gestalt Ontology and Merleau-Ponty’s Bodily-Flesh Phenomenology in Gandhi Marg: Quarterly Journal of the Gandhi Peace Foundation (2015) and Spirituality and Vegetarianism in Thoreau’s Higher Laws in International Journal of Language and Literature (2017). Yu Chen-Wei received his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. He is an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures at Fo Guang University in Taiwan. His research interests lie in the field of children’s and young adult literature, narratives, and critical theory. His publications include Power and Its Mechanics in Children’s Fiction: The Case of Roald Dahl, published by International Research in Children’s Literature (2008); Mise En Abyme and Ontological Uncertainty of Magical Events in at the Back of the North Wind, in Papers: Exploration into Children’s Literature (2008); Childhood, Identity Politics, and Linguistic Negotiation in the Traditional Chinese Translation of the Picture Book The Gruffalo in Taiwan,

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in Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures (2011); and Reading Children and Human-Animal Relations in Charlotte’s Web and The One and Only Ivan, in Papers: Exploration into Children’s Literature (2016).

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

11.1 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 17.6 17.7

Map 1 Map 2

The Confucian ethical system of benevolence-righteousness-propriety (source adapted from Hwang 1995: 233) Mandala model of self (Hwang 2011) Buddhist Self-Enlightenment Theory (adapted from Shiah et al. [2018]) Psychological functioning of the self-nature and self (adapted from Shiah [2016]) Structure diagram of “Chinese learning as the essence; western learning as the application” (adapted and modified from Chen Fu 2019) Schematic diagram of “interactedrealism’s research method” (adapted and modified from Chen Fu 2018) The duality model of professional ethics for helpers The sealed edition of Sakra (Di Shi Tien) The holistic edition of Sakra (Di Shi Tien) Zhu Bajie—the Pig Iron-crutch Li The Four Buddha Kings A column for fans Princess Taiping Fushih Village The distribution of occupant lands for the Truku landowners in the Asian Cement Company, made by the ROLSA in 2005

16 41 43 47

72 76 192 307 308 310 310 311 312 313 133

141 xxi

List of Tables

Table 7.1 Table 16.1

Strategies of transformation A comparison of the “Gulls can be summoned” relief of the Buddha Museum and the original paper version of the “Group Gulls”

121

288

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CHAPTER 1

Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan: An Introduction and an Invitation Ananta Kumar Giri

and Su-Chen Wu

Taiwan is just off the coast of Mainland China. In this book, we present some aspects of cross-currents of theorizing of self, culture and society in contemporary Taiwan. Theorizing is a dynamic movement of self, culture, society, and the world as it is related to our actions, reflections, and meditations to understand the world more meaningfully and holistically as well as to transform it. But much of social theorizing in the modern world is primarily Euro-American and despite the so-called globalization of knowledge, this condition of one-sided Euro-American valorization of knowledge and neglect of others continues unabated. There is very little attention to theorizing about the human condition emerging from other

A. K. Giri (B) Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India e-mail: [email protected] S.-C. Wu Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Fo Guang University, Yilan, Taiwan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_1

1

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A. K. GIRI AND S.-C. WU

parts of the world such as Taiwan and its global implication. Our book is a humble effort in this direction. Though Taiwan is related to mainland China in many ways including both sharing the flow of Chinese civilizations, for geopolitical reasons and other aspects of modern history and the consequence of the Chinese revolution which led to the birth of the Peoples’ Republic of China and Republic of China which is present-day Taiwan, it is important to understand creative theoretical works from Taiwan autonomously though in relationship with Chinese and global trajectories of thinking and theorizing. In this context, what Gunter Schubert writes in his introduction to The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan deserves our careful consideration: Today, Taiwan is challenging China on many fronts. It is certainly small, cannot avoid being drawn into China’s economic orbit and would not be able to withstand Chinese military force (at least not alone) if that were a Chinese choice one day. Yet, Taiwan is a moral challenge to China, which is, for all its economic prowess, political influence and military might, considered by most Western observers a weak giant as long as it cannot do away with the repression of regime critics, media control and corruption throughout its party and government apparatus. (Schubert 2016: 2)

This is what we do in our book. Part I of our book, “Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan: Classical Roots and Contemporary Reconstructions,” begins with Kwang-Kuo Hwang’s essay: “A Scientific Interpretation of Confucian Theorizing on Self-Cultivation.” Hwang’s study provides an interpretation of Confucian theorizing on self-cultivation by focusing on the structure of the “Doctrine of the Mean” (zhongyong 中庸), the universal Confucian concept of the “Way of Humanity” (rendao 人道), its related ethical system of benevolence (ren 仁) and righteousness (yi 義), the three virtues of wisdom (zhi 智), and courage (yong 勇). The theoretical foundations of this study are “cultureinclusive theories” of social interaction and self-nature and Hwang’s “Face and Favour” model (Hwang 1987), which he uses to analyze the framework of Confucian classics and the Confucian cultural heritage. He points out that Confucian social relationships are based on the two cognitive dimensions of intimacy/distance and superiority/inferiority. In this context, the individual needs to understand the ethical system of

1

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benevolence, righteousness, and propriety to correctly engage in interpersonal relationships, as it constitutes the core concept of the “Way of Humanity.” In his article, Hwang argues how it is the individual’s responsibility to engage in self-cultivation in order to benefit society instead of focusing on personal material prosperity. Hwang’s essay is followed by Yung-Jong Shiah’s essay, “From Self to Self-Nature: Buddhist SelfEnlightenment Theory” in which Shiah contrasts the notion of “self” in Western psychology with the Buddhist concept of “non-self” (wuwo 無我) and “self-nature” (zixing 自性). While the former encompasses a hedonic principle that leads individuals to pursue various desires, thus fostering the construction of a permanent “self,” the latter aims at understanding and overcoming the illusion of the “self” by cultivating “non-self,” leading to awakening—or Buddhahood. From the perspective of Chinese indigenous psychology, Shiah applies the four concepts of the Mandala Model of Self (MMS), i.e., biology, ideal person, knowledge/wisdom, and action, to analyze and conceptualize a “Buddhist Self-Enlightenment Theory” (BSET). The three-leveled BSET model adopts a “non-self” approach to point out how the individual can attain enduring happiness by renouncing worldly desires and focusing on compassion, meditation and Buddhist wisdom. Shiah’s essay is followed by Rong-Rong Liu and Chen Fu’s essay, “Wisdom Consultation: Application of Yang-ming’s Nousology in Indigenous Psychological Consultation.” Although the transformation of the Chinese society from an agrarian society to a modern society brought about prosperity, wealth, and economic freedom within a few decades, Rong-Rong Liu and Chen Fu observed a rapid emergence of psychological problems that followed this economic development. Western psychology has been introduced to address the problems. As the authors point out, however, Chinese counseling psychologists trained in Western psychology have neglected the cultural differences between Chinese and Western culture, thus, not appropriately addressing the psychological problems in Chinese society that resulted from rapid economic growth accompanied by a feeling of moral decline. In their essay, they, therefore, propose “wisdom consultation” by applying the nousology of the NeoConfucian scholar Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529) to psychological consultation. The authors believe that because Wang Yangming’s discussions of the mind are grounded in Chinese culture, the counseling process can be more beneficial to Chinese people.

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The succeeding essay by Chen Fu, “The Solution for Hwang KwangKuo Problem: To Construct A Bridge for the Interaction Between China and the West by Clarifying the Nousism,” addresses what he calls the “Hwang Kwang-Kuo Problem” that results from two contradictory theories of Hwang Kwang-Kuo: “The Mandala Model of the Self” and the “Face and Favor Model.” Chen Fu argues that the contradiction results from the fact that the former only includes the “social ego” not the Chinese notion of the “self” and the latter only discusses “interest relationalism” but neglects “moral relationalism.” By applying “Nousism,” he tries to solve and clarify this theoretical problem in order to contribute to the construction of Chinese indigenous social science. Fu’s essay is followed by Lin-Ching Hsia, Yen-Tang Ho, and LinChing Hsia’s essay, “The Social Transformation from Labor Movement to Political Movement: The Praxis of Committee for Action of Labor Legislation and People Democratic Political Movement,” which also initiates the Part II of our book, “Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan: Glimpses from Some Contemporary Movements and Socio-Cultural Initiatives.” In this chapter, the authors focus on the empowerment of the powerless in the context of the transformation from the Labor Movement to the Political Movement in Taiwan during the period 1980s to 2010s. The chapter specifically discusses the perspective of the leader of the labor movement, Tsuen-Chyi Jeng, and tackles the issue of social and political control under the KMT regime and nowadays capitalist democracy. Tsuen-Chyi Jeng and Lin-Ching Hsai, both active members of Taiwan’s political and social movements and trained counseling psychologists, contextualize their professional training and activism in the socio-political realities of Taiwan that they view as a method to liberate the mind, spirit, body, and communities at large. Hsia et al.’s essay is followed by Yao-Hung Huang’s essay, “Another World is Possible: Abandoning the Hegemony of Global Capitalism in The Sunflower Movement in Taiwan.” Similar to the political perspective of the last chapter, in this chapter, Huang discusses the Sunflower movement (2014) in Taiwan and its push toward abandoning the hegemony of global capitalism. Huang approaches this movement by applying the theory of “socially constructed desire” by the British sociologist Nikolas Rose and Michel Foucault’s notion of governmentality. Huang uses these perspectives to explore how Taiwanese society has been disciplined through free consumption but pushed toward resistance by the

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impacts of a free trade agreement with mainland China in 2014. The emergence of the Sunflower Movement, as Huang observes, aroused the interest of the public in inequality, exploitation, and violence of global capitalism, thus, creating a fissure between reality and what the government tried to achieve. He argues that this movement might challenge and possibly abandon global capitalism (Russell 2014). Huang’s essay is followed by Ching-Hsiu Lin’s essay, “Culture, Land Reclamation Movement and Property Relations: Reflections on the Language of Property in Indigenous Mapping Projects in Truku Society, Taiwan” in which Lin takes us away from the political center in Taipei into the heartland north of Hualian of the Taiwanese indigenous Truku people and their struggle to reclaim the land of their forebears. Due to governmental policies, the privatization of land ownership, and the modern legal system, the Truku people continuously lost land since the 1960s. Consequently, Truku land reclamation movements have arisen to map out indigenous land and communities. Lin notes that these movements either focus on contesting the legal rights of landownership or on resisting governmental institutions that “occupy” indigenous lands, such as the Taroko National Park. In this context, Lin analyzes the different notions of the property of the Truku people and how they shape the narratives of the two land reclamation movements “Return Our Land Self-help Association” and “Truku Indigenous Mapping Project.” The narratives used in both movements, as Lin writes, are often related to the memories of the past at both the individual and collective levels of the Truku people. Lin’s essay is followed by Chen-Wei Yu’s essay “Countering Prejudices with Uncanny Strangeness: Taiwanese Children’s Books about Southeast Asian Marriage Immigrants in Taiwan” which examines the change in the social discourse of so-called “marriage migrants,” that is, women from Southeast Asian countries—mostly Vietnam and Indonesia—who migrated to Taiwan through marriage since the 1970s. These migrants were often subject to social stigmas and discrimination. In this study, Chen-Wei Yu looks at children and young adult literature that addresses the problems and tells the stories of “marriage migrants” in order to make younger Taiwanese generations aware of these. Yu applies Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytical concept of “uncanny strangeness” to demonstrate that social norms portrayed in these books construct the marriage migrants as they are, reshape the public perception, and integrate them as an essential part of Taiwanese society.

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Yu’s essay is followed by Han-Sheng Wang’s essay, “Gastronomic Fusion and Flexible Culinary Citizenship of Southeast Asian Migrants in Taiwan’s Public TV Programs” in which Han-Sheng Wang continues the discussion of Southeast Asian immigrants in Taiwan. Han-Sheng Wang, however, addresses this topic from the perspective of gastronomic fusion and “culinary citizenship” of migrants in popular Taiwanese TV shows such as The Taste of Nyonya and Papaya Love. These TV shows visually represent the migrant’s negotiation and search for identity in a foreign country through culinary arts. Wang analyzes how the craft of cooking incorporates the challenges and problems of the foreign “other” and essentially become a cultural register of ethnic boundary-crossing. Considering this topic from the perspective of food, as Wang demonstrates, enables us to see the power structure of race, class, and gender that the migrants from Southeast Asia encounter when coming to Taiwan. With this, we come to Part III of our book, “Ethics and Other Issues of Cultural Creativity.” It begins with Chih-Hung Wang’s essay, “An Inclusive Theory of Ethics Based on Chinese Culture: The Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers.” As values and ethics are closely connected to the cultural history of each society, Chih-Hung Wang reminds us that counseling psychology needs to reflect and consider the specific realities of different societies. Wang points out that the current international research on psychology is substantially outbalanced by research from the United States, which lead to a phenomenon that has been called “WEIRD” (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) by various scholars. In order to correct this imbalance, Wang, therefore, strives to construct a culture-inclusive psychology that reflects the particular mentalities of the people in different cultures. In this chapter—from a Confucian view of Chinese culture—Wang discusses the “Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers” to integrate Chinese and Western culture. This approach, thus, combines a reading of Chinese ethics as based on “inner subjective self-cultivation” and Western ethics grounded in external, objective, and rational regulations. Wang’s essay is followed by Laurie Jui-Hua Tseng’s essay, “Through the Compound Eyes: The Ethical Dynamics of Wu Ming-Yi’s Materialistic Literary Vision in The Man with the Compound Eyes and The Stolen Bicycle.” In this chapter, Laurie Jui-Hua Tseng brings our attention to Wu Mingyi 吳 明益, one of the few internationally renowned contemporary Taiwanese writers whose works have been translated into other languages and have won several international awards. Although Wu’s works primarily focus

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on environmental and ecological issues, the central concern of Tseng’s study is to discuss the function and form of literary representation of Wu’s two novels The Man with the Compound Eyes and The Stolen Bicycle. In this context, Tseng explores the ethical dimension expressed in Wu’s materialistic writings, its dynamics, and how the force of materialism may liberate us from an anthropocentric structure to treat all beings equally real and significant. Tseng’s essay is followed by Catherine JuYu Cheng’s essay, “Affect and the Virtual: A Deleuzian Reading of a Taiwanese Film: Kano.” Following Tseng’s analysis of Taiwanese literature, Catherine Ju-Yu Cheng discusses Taiwanese cinematographic art in this chapter. Cheng focuses specifically on Wei Te-Sheng’s 魏德聖 historical drama Kano that is based on a true story portraying the multiracial Kano baseball team from Japanese-era Taiwan that against all odds was able to represent Taiwan in the 1931 High School Baseball Championships in Japan. Cheng shows how Wei Te-Sheng depicts his wish to transcend the dichotomies between Taiwan and its former colonizer, Japan, in the film. For her analysis, she uses French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s (1925–1995) concepts of the “virtual” which is the condition for real experience and “affect” to demonstrate how the Kano baseball players resolve their paradoxical relationship with Japan on an individual and societal level and transform themselves from accomplices of colonial rule to subjects of the “virtual.” Cheng’s essay is followed by Yi-Jen Chang’s “Articulating Ecological Ethics and Politics of Life in Ming-Yi Wu’s The Land of Little Rain.” In this chapter, Yi-Jen Chang chooses the same author Ming-Yi Wu as Tseng does, but turns to Wu’s concerns for ecological issues in Taiwan, in particular, the relationships between humans and animals. In her reading of Wu’s latest short-story collection The Land of Little Rain, Chang aims to discuss how humans and animals are implicitly connected, though the two are usually hierarchically divided in Heidegger’s famous definition of animal’s poverty in the world as deprivation, through the biopolitical governance by the anthropological machine. Chang attempts to explore the ethical response-ability articulated through Wu’s human characters marginalized from the mainstream society and the animals on the verge of extinction as a possibility to suspend and disrupt the anthropological machine that constantly produces less-than-human beings. Chang’s essay is followed by Futuru C. L. Tsai’s “Breathing Between: Making a Sensory Ethnographic Film on Freediving Spearfishing with the ‘Amis in Taiwan’.” In this chapter, Futuru C. L. Tsai reflects on his ethnographic

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film titled “Breathing Between” depicting the tradition of freediving spearfishing of the indigenous Amis people of Taiwan. His reflections not only concern his role as an ethnographic filmmaker engaging with the Amis’ embodied practices but also how ethnographic filmmaking can represent these practices and present the adaptation of the Amis’ ancient knowledge to the changes of material culture. Tseng argues that sensory ethnographic films need to find a balance point between the aesthetic aspect of cinematography and a holistic view of what is being recorded and how it should be arranged for different screening environments. Tsai’s essay is followed by Yung-Dong Shih’s essay, “The Life Education of the Protect Life Relief Pictures in the Buddha Museum, Taiwan.” In this chapter, Shih brings our attention to the “father of Chinese cartoons,” Feng Zikai (1898–1975), who began creating artworks in the late 1920s under the title “Paintings on the Preservation of Life” (husheng huaji 護生畫集), portraying straightforward messages about the virtues of not killing animals for food and cultivating compassion for every sentient being, benevolence, and inner peace. Shih explores the use of Feng Zikai’s paintings as religious murals decorating the walkways up to the Buddha Museum of the Taiwanese Buddhist order Fo Guang Shan in Kaohsiung. She discusses the motive of the Buddhist order to choose a selection of 70 paintings for educational purposes, whether religious murals differ from the original paper versions and its relation to the museum’s role in promoting Humanistic Buddhism through culture. As is shown in her study, the 70 murals can be divided into three categories: (1) life and death, (2) morality, and (3) internalization of ethical values. Shih’s essay is followed by Yi-Jou Lo’s essay, “The Combat and Compromise in Taiwanese Puppets as a Body without Organ: Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe as an Example.” In this chapter, Yi-Jou Lo focuses on a group of enthusiasts called Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe whose passion for puppetry has helped to spark broad interest in this traditional form of contemporary Taiwanese art. Glove puppetry, which originated in the seventeenth century in Fujian, China, saw a decline of interest in recent years but many groups revitalized this tradition by creating TV shows, puppet animations, and performing all over Asia and Europe in the native language of the country where they performed. Lo analyzes the reinnovation of tradition and applies the idea of “body without organs,” a concept used by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, to understand how puppetry creates its own world of legends and narratives by giving Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe as an example.

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The book concludes with Su-Chen Wu’s essay, “Engaged Buddhism, the Six P¯aramit¯as and Yuanmen’s Collective Social Charity Practices,” in which Wu discusses practices of Engaged Buddhism in Taiwan. Wu here discusses the works of Yuanmen collective social charity practice (a Taichi marital group) as an example of Engaged Buddhism. The term Engaged Buddhism was coined by the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thích Nh´ât Ha.nh in the 1960s. Engaged Buddhism is founded on the belief that genuine spiritual practice requires active involvement in society. It views social situations as opportunities to subvert greed by focusing on issues concerning the individual, such as how people relate to the world and each other both personally and communally. It refers to Buddhists seeking ways to apply insight from dharma teachings to suffering and injustice in the social, political, and environmental realms. The Yuanmen Taichi Martial Arts Center, established in 2007 in Taiwan, mainly offers its members Tai Chi Chuan courses. Yuanmen also has a series of charity and self-cultivation events that its members participate in regularly. Yuanmen tackles social issues by working to improve society, acting constructively, and helping people in useful ways. In this study, the author examines how Yuanmen’s altruistic collective social charity work is endowed with the spirit of Engaged Buddhism and the six p¯aramit¯as, which are discussed in the Lotus Sutra. By Yuanmen’s example, the author concluded that promoting one’s self-cultivation and his/her own welfare is not possible without cultivating altruistic virtue and being involved in social charity work. Thus our book engages with different dimensions of social theorizing of contemporary Taiwan. We hope this work helps us in a better understanding of contemporary Taiwan as well as some theoretical works here which contribute to widening and deepening our contemporary discourses and practices of social theorizing.

Reference Hwang, Kwang-kuo. 1987. Face and favor: The Chinese power game. American Journal of Sociology 944–974. Russell, R. (2014). Exclusive: Taiwan occupation turns into “Sunflower Revolution”. Occupy.com, [online]. Available at: http://www.occupy.com/article/ exclusive-taiwan-occupation-turns-sunflowerrevolution#sthash.yqkd1zjj.7BO pexOv.dpbs [Accessed 15 Feb 2017]. Schubert, Gunter. 2016. The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan. Oxon: Routledge.

PART I

Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan: Classical Roots and Contemporary Reconstructions

CHAPTER 2

A Scientific Interpretation of Confucian Theorizing on Self-Cultivation Kwang-Kuo Hwang

In my key book: Inner Sageliness and Outer Kingliness: The Accomplishment of Confucianism and Its Unfolding (Hwang 2018a), I indicated that my epistemological epistemology for constructing culture-inclusive theories consists of two steps: First, construct universal models of social interaction (Hwang 1987) and self (Hwang 2011), the later one can be conceptualized as a part of the psychodynamic model of Self-nature (Hwang, 2018b). Second, use these models to analyze a particular cultural heritage (Hwang 2015, 2019). Here in this article, I would like to demonstrate my approach by using those models to interpret Confucian theorizing of self-cultivation, then I will discuss the implications of my scientific approach for inheriting Confucian cultural tradition in contrast with other approaches in the light of developing Chinese indigenous social sciences.

K.-K. Hwang (B) Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_2

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2.1

The Structure of Zhongyong

Confucian theorizing of self-cultivation is well-documented in a chapter of Zhongyong (中庸 or The Doctrine of the Mean), one of the four major pre-Qin Confucian classics, written by Zisi (子思), grandson of Confucius. Zhu xi (朱熹) cited Chenzi’s (程子) saying in its preface: ‘zhong (中) means being without inclination to either side (不偏); yong (庸) means admitting of no change (不易),’ the whole book addresses itself on how to practice universal principles with an unbiased mental state which had been taught by Confucius to his disciples. When it was handed down to Zisi, he feared that misunderstanding might be aroused about it in the course of time, so he committed it to writing and delivered it to Zisi. The book of Zhongyong contains thirty-two chapters which are divided into two parts: the twenty chapters of the first part begin with a heading of ‘All that is destined by the Heaven is called nature’ (天命之謂性) in its first chapter which proposed the Confucian cultural ideal of ‘Reaching Equilibrium and Harmony’ (致中和), the other chapters are Confucian sayings about zhongyong recorded by Zisi. The 12 chapters of the second part are all from Zisi who tried to elaborate the meaning of sincerity (誠) as a key concept for connecting the relationship between human beings and the Heaven (天人關係) mentioned by Confucius in the 20th chapter of Zhongyong . Compared with other chapters, the 20th chapter is the longest one in the whole book. It recorded Confucius’s answer to Duke Ai (哀公) asking about governance and was named ‘哀公問政’ accordingly. But its writing style is very different from other Confucian sayings recorded in the Analect which are mainly his dialogues with disciples.

2.2 Chapter on Duke Ai’s Asking About Governance Duke Ai was the feudal prince of State Lu, when Confucius returned to his home state at the age of 68, the government of Lu was controlled by three powerful ministers. The feudal prince Duke Ai treated Confucius with great courtesy and asked him about governance several times. As a repay to Duke Ai’s hospitality, Confucius presented the most important principles of his thoughts which had been summarized by Confucius himself at his old age. Therefore, chapter 20 of Zhongyong provides the best point of the first cut for understanding Confucian morphostasis.

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At the beginning of Confucius’ dialogue with Duke Ai, after saying that ‘the administration of government lies in getting proper men (為政 在人), such men are to be got by evaluating their characters (取人以身),’ Confucius proposed the most important rule of thumb for his theorizing on self-cultivation: ‘One should cultivation oneself with the Dao (修 身以道), and the Dao must be cultivated by following the principle of benevolence (修道以仁).’1 This rule had been elaborated by Confucius with a paragraph in Chapter 20 of Zhongyong : Benevolence (ren) is the characteristic attribute of personhood. The first priority of its expression is showing affection to those closely related to us. Righteousness (yi) means appropriateness; respecting the superior is its most important rule. Loving others according to who they are, and respecting superiors according to their ranks gives rise to the forms and distinctions of propriety (li) in social life.2

It seems to me that this statement is the most important clue for us to understand the relationships among benevolence (ren), righteousness (yi), and propriety (li) in Confucian ethics system (Hwang 2019). I constructed a universal Face and Favor model for explaining the mechanism of dyad social interaction (Hwang 1987), then used it as a framework to analyze the content of Confucian classics (Hwang 1988), eventually, I found an isomorphic relationship between Confucian ethics and Face and Favor model (see Fig. 2.1). In other words, the Confucian ethics of benevolence (ren), righteousness (yi), and propriety (li) are rooted in the deep structure of the human mind for social interaction. I will elaborate on the meaning of Confucian ethics in the second section of this article. Here I would like to indicate another paragraph in Zhongyong Chapter 20 to show the unique feature of Confucian ethics and morality: The broad Dao for practicing duties of universal obligation are five (天下之 達道五)” and the virtues of Dao herewith they are practiced are three (所 以行之者三). The relationships between sovereign and minister, father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger, and the intercourse of friends, those five are broad Dao in the universe (君臣也, 父子也, 夫婦也, 兄弟也, 朋友之交 也。五者, 天下之達道也).

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Fig. 2.1 The Confucian ethical system of benevolence-righteousness-propriety (source adapted from Hwang 1995: 233)

Wisdom, benevolence and courage, those three are grand De in the universe (知, 仁, 勇三者, 天下之達德也). The means for carrying those virtues into practice is singleness (所以行之者 一也).3

It should be noted that, in the Chinese language, the term morality (道德, daode) is composed of two characters, Dao (道) and De (德), each of them has its own meaning, both of them originated from the following passage of Daodejing (道德經), an ancient classic of Daoism: Dao bears them (道生之), De nurtures them (德畜之),

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The material world shapes their form (物形之), The circumstance of the moment make them complete (勢成之), Therefore, all things in the universe honor Dao and exalt De without exception (是以萬物莫不尊道而貴德), Dao is honored and De is exalted (道之尊, 德之貴), Everything happens naturally which is not the result of any ordination (夫 莫之命而常自然).4

But, Confucius modified their meaning in his dialogue with Duke Ai. For Confucius, Dao (道) is a field phenomenon. It expresses a field of reality that is pregnant with rich and dynamic possibilities of innovation and transformation. De (德) is the human agency in virtue and power; it is the human’s disciplined and cultivated ability to participate in and activate the potentiality of the Dao-field (Ames 1986). All the five fields of the relationship must be cultivated by the three virtues of wisdom , benevolence, and courage, while the single principle for carrying these virtues into practice is Rendao (仁道, dao of benevolence) which can be elaborated as the ethical system of benevolence-righteousness –propriety.

2.3

The Way of Humanity: Rendao and Shudao

Now we may go back to Fig. 2.1 for my scientific interpretation of Confucian ethics in terms of my universal Face and Favor model. Specifically, Confucius proposes that in interacting with other people, one should begin with an assessment of the role relationship between oneself and the other along two cognitive dimensions: intimacy/distance and superiority/inferiority. The former refers to the closeness of the relationship while the latter indicates the relative superior/inferior positions of the two parties involved. Once the assessment is made, favoring people with whom one has a close relationship can be termed benevolence (ren), respecting those for whom respect is required by the relationship is called righteousness (yi), and acting according to social norms is propriety (li).

2.4 Procedural Justice: Shudao and the Principle of Respecting the Superior Confucius considers the relationships between father and son, sovereign and subordinate, husband and wife, elder brother and younger, and friends to be the most fundamental relationships in society and termed

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them the five broad Ways (五達道) or five cardinal relationships (五倫, wulun). According to Confucius, each pair of relationships in the five cardinal relationships has an appropriate type of interaction in accordance with the relative superior/inferior positions as well as with the intimacy/distance of the relationship. But, he specified no substantial value the dyad interaction for any of thos five cardinal relationships. On the contrary, he proposed the importance of Shudao (恕道) in addition to Rendao (仁道) as parts of his Way of Humanity (人道) in his dialogue with disciples: Zi Gong asked, “Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?” The Master said, “It must be compassion! Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.” 5

Since compassion (恕, shu) ‘may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life,’ the fact implies that it is universal and can be used to deal with anybody in any situation. Nevertheless, there is another dialogue between Confucius and his disciples: Zeng Shen (曾參), author of the Great Learning, was a young and bright follower of Confucius. Once the Master said, “Shen, my doctrine is an all-pervading unity.” The disciple Zeng replied, “Yes.” The Master went out, and the other disciples asked, “What do his words mean?” Zeng said, “The doctrine of our master is loyalty (忠) and compassion (恕), and nothing more.” 6

Zhu Xi (朱熹) interpreted loyalty as ‘to exert oneself to the principle of sincerity’ (盡己) and compassion ‘to exercise the principle of benevolence to others (推己及人).’ Only if one is able to practice loyalty (忠) and compassion (恕) in any situation of dyad interaction, his/her behavior will comply to the requirements of the Confucian ethical principle of benevolence (ren). This dialogue is very important for us to understand Confucian thoughts. For Confucius, loyalty (忠) and compassion (恕) are also rules of ‘an all-pervading unity’ that can be applied to everybody. Conceiving in terms of Western ethics, ‘Do not do to others what you do not want to be done to yourself’ is a negative duty or duty of omission, ‘to exert oneself to the principle of sincerity’ and ‘to exercise the principle of benevolence

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to others’ are positive duties or duties of commission. Both of them constitute the so-called Confucian Shudao and Rendao are supposed to be universal and should be conceptualized as the morphostasis of Confucianism. It is Mengzi who first specified substantial value for dyad interaction between each of the five cardinal relationships: Between father and son, there should be affection: between sovereign and subordinate, righteousness ; between husband and wife, attention to their separate functions; between elder brother and younger, a proper order; and between friends, friendship.7

Among these five dyadic relationships, Mengzi most emphasized those between father and son, and between sovereign and subordinate: ‘In the family, there is the relation of father and son; abroad, there is the relation of prince and minister. These are the two important relations among men.’ These two relationships provide examples of the way Mengzi determined the various ethical rules for different role relationships. For a son, his father is his most intimate relationship along the dimension of intimacy/distance and also is his senior along the dimension of superiority/inferiority. As there is no intimacy to be attended to, Mengzi proposed only righteousness between sovereign and subordinate. Similar principles may be applied in determining the various ethics for other relationships. Though Mengzi’ viewpoints about those substantial values are very similar to that of Confucius, any of his modification on Confucius’ original position should be viewed as morphogenesis of Confucianism.

2.5 Distributive Justice and the Principle of Favoring the Intimate After considering a role relationship along the dimension of superiority/inferiority, resource allocators should then choose an appropriate rule for exchange or resource distribution. Proper assessment of the intimacy/distance of the relationship corresponds to benevolence (ren), choosing an appropriate rule for exchange according to the closeness of the relationship corresponds to righteousness (yi) and acting properly after evaluating the loss and gain of exchange corresponds to propriety (li).

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In the Confucian model of social interaction in Fig. 2.1, a diagonal bisects the rectangle corresponding to benevolence (ren). The shaded section represents the expressive component and the white portion represents the instrumental component. This division implies that the Confucian idea of benevolence contains the principle of favoring the intimate. Instead of treating everyone with equal affection, the intimacy of relationships is considered and affection is given accordingly. The same rectangle denoting guanxi (interpersonal relationships) is also divided into three parts (expressive ties, mixed ties and instrumental ties) by a solid line and a dotted line. These parts are proportional to the expressive component. The solid line separating expressive ties within the family and mixed ties outside the family indicates a relatively impenetrable psychological boundary between family members and people outside the family. Different distributive justice or rules for exchange apply to these two types of relationships during social interactions. According to my theoretical model of Face and Favor (Hwang 1987), the relationships between father and son, husband and wife, and elder brother and younger are ruled by expressive ties. In these relationships, the need rule for social exchange should be adhered to and people should try their best to satisfy the other party with all available resources. The relationship between friends makes use of mixed ties and follows the renqing rule. Between the ruler and ordinary people, there is scarcely any direct interaction and ordinary people often have little choice but to obey the ruler. Confucians did not set up specific ethical principles for strangers beyond the five cardinal relationships. When individuals want to acquire a particular resource from someone with whom they have instrumental ties, they tend to follow the equity rule and use instrumental rationality.

2.6 The Ethical System of Benevolence–Righteousness–Propriety (ren–yi–li) Our discourse so far is supported by various passages in classical Confucian works. Benevolence (ren) is recognized as the perfect virtue of the mind and the ontology of moral principles that exceed personal interest. Righteousness (yi) and propriety (li) are derivatives of benevolence (ren) and extend to other secondary moral rules. Together they

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constitute the complex ethical system of benevolence–righteousness – propriety. All major interpersonal relationships in one’s lifetime should be arranged with reference to the deep structure of this ethical system. To illustrate the significant features of Confucian society, it is necessary to expound upon the structural relationships among the three core concepts of Confucianism : benevolence , righteousness, and propriety.

2.7 Benevolence: From the Intimate to the Distant Confucius defined benevolence as ‘loving all men’. He thought that a person who truly knows how to love all people can put himself in another’s position. ‘Wishing to be established himself, [he] seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge others.’ Confucius knew very well it is not easy to love all people. When people try to express love or benevolence to others during social interactions, they often have to give away some of their own resources. As people possess only finite resources, it is not realistically possible to lavish infinite benevolence upon others. Confucius seldom praised individuals for being benevolent (perfectly virtuous). When asked, ‘Is someone perfectly virtuous?’ his response was either ‘I don’t know’ or ‘How can we know that?’ One of the main reasons for these answers is the difficulty of truly loving all people. When Zi Gong asked Confucius whether a person could be called benevolent (perfectly virtuous) if that person ‘extensively confers benefits on other people, and is able to assist all’, Confucius answered, ‘Is such a human considered merely virtuous? He can almost be called a sage! Even Yao and Shun are still striving to achieve this.’8 Mengzi maintained that to practice the virtue of benevolence, one should start with service to one’s parents. ‘There has never been a benevolent person who neglected his parents.’ ‘Of services, which is the greatest? The service of parents is the greatest. There are many services, but the service of parents is the root of all others.’ Only after fulfilling the duty of serving their parents can people then practice the virtue of benevolence to others in the order of intimacy. Confucius proposed that:

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A youth, when at home, should be filial, and, abroad, respectful to his elders; he should be earnest and truthful; he should overflow in love to all and cultivate the friendship of the good.9

These directions suggest a sequence for performing benevolence. Confucius perceived filial piety as the root of all benevolent actions. ‘In carrying out the virtue of benevolence, one should first bend one’s attention to what is radical.’ That is, people should practice filial piety and the service of their parents, and thereafter heed other benevolent actions.

2.8

Righteousness: To Dwell in Benevolence and Pursue the Path of Righteousness

Mengzi shared Confucius’ view on righteousness and gave the most elaborate account of righteousness of all Confucian scholars of the pre-Qin period. He often put his teachings on benevolence and righteousness side by side and thought that the judgment of righteousness should be based on the concept of benevolence, which he labeled dwelling in benevolence and pursuing the path of righteousness. Benevolence is the human mind, and righteousness is the human path. How lamentable is it to neglect the path and not pursue it, to lose this mind and not know to seek it again! Benevolence is the tranquil habitation of humans , and righteousness is the straight path.10

Mengzi also agreed that the performance of benevolence and righteousness should begin within the family. ‘The richest fruit of benevolence is this, the service of one’s parents.’ Yang Zhu, a contemporary of Mengzi, promoted the competing idea of ‘every man for himself.’ He said that though he might have benefited the whole kingdom by plucking out a single hair, he would not have done it. Another philosopher, Mozi, proposed the idea of universal love, suggesting that one should love others’ fathers as one’s own. Mengzi criticized them: Now, Yang’s principle is ‘every man for himself’, which does not acknowledge the claims of the sovereign. Mo’s principle is ‘to love all equally’, which does not acknowledge the particular affection due to a father.11

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Yang’s and Mo’s propositions are contradictory to the Confucian principles of having the mind dwell in benevolence and of the differential order of love. Mengzi denounced both of them as beasts. Although Confucians maintained the idea of the differential order of love and believed that the exercise of the Way of Humanity should start within the family, the performance of benevolence did not end there. Especially for scholars, who are endowed with more social and cultural obligations, Confucians thought the practice of the Way of Humanity should start within the family and then extend to other relationships along with the differential structure of intimacy: ‘He is lovingly disposed to people generally, and kind to creatures.’ ‘Beginning with what they care for, proceed to what they do not care for.’ This point has an important implication for the understanding of Confucian thinking and will be further examined in the later section, ethics for scholars.

2.9

Propriety: Interaction in Line with Propriety

No matter which rule of exchange resource allocations use during social interactions, Confucians maintained that they should always heed the principle of propriety when choosing an appropriate response after the evaluation of loss and gain. Propriety (li) initially denoted religious etiquette in the East Zhou dynasty, but lost its religious connotation and gradually became a tool for maintaining political and social order in the West Zhou dynasty. The concept of propriety (li) contains three elements according to classical Confucian works. I. Etiquette is the procedures or steps that should be taken in a ceremony, i.e., what participants should do during the ceremony. For example, there are detailed accounts of proper etiquette for occasions such as visiting the emperor, employing officials, funerals and wedding in Li Ji (禮記), Yi Li (儀禮) and Zhou Li (周禮). II. Utensils are the tools needed for completing a ceremony. These include carriage, clothing, flags, seals, bells, vessels, jade and gems. III. Titles indicate a person’s status as well as the degree of intimacy of the relationship between the host and the participants of the ceremony. Examples are family titles such as father and son, and political titles such as Son of Heaven, feudal princes and officials.

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There are detailed accounts and regulations for both the titles (名, ming ) and utensils (器, qi) that aristocrats were entitled to use under the feudal system of the East Zhou dynasty. Confucius himself also stressed these regulations of propriety. Zi Lu once asked Confucius about the priority of government, and Confucius replied that what is necessary is to rectify names. Zi Lu made fun of Confucius’ obstinately observing the old rules, but Confucius responded: ‘If the names are not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language is not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs can not be carried to success.’ One time, Jonhshu Yuhsi rescued the commander of Wei, General Sun, in the battle between the states Qi and Wei. The prince of Wei intended to reward him with land. Jonhshu declined with thanks and instead requested to use the music band and carriage that only feudal princes were entitled to use when he paid a visit to the emperor. The prince of Wei granted his request, for which Confucius felt sorry. He thought that it was better to have given more land to Jonhshu and gave a lecture about not lending titles and utensils to others. Witnessing countless battles and annexations, and the killing of rulers by feudal princes, Confucius responded: ‘“It is according to the rules of propriety,” they say. Are gems and silk all that is meant by propriety? “It is music”, they say. Are bells and drums all that is meant by music?’ The superior person considers righteousness to be essential in everything. He performs it according to the rules of propriety. He brings it forth in humility; he completes it with sincerity. This is indeed a superior human.12

According to Zhuzi’s annotation, the essential mentioned by Confucius is the kernel of things. Confucius held that a superior person’s mind dwells in benevolence. A superior person considers righteousness to be essential in everything, performs it according to the rules of propriety, brings it forth in humility and completes it with sincerity. When the mind of benevolence no longer exists and a person is without the virtues proper to humanity, the empty form of propriety and music do not embody any meaning. Confucius proclaimed: ‘If humans are without the virtues proper to humanity, what has he to do with the rites of propriety? If humans are without the virtues proper to humanity, what has he to do with music?’. Before the Shang and Zhou dynasties, propriety was the only restriction and regulation imposed externally. Confucius combined the concepts

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of propriety, benevolence, and righteousness, and transformed the external ritual of propriety into a cultural psychological structure. He expected that humans, based on the mind of benevolence, could make moral judgments in line with righteousness after assessing the various role relationships in social interactions, and then act according to propriety. The integration of benevolence (ren), righteousness (yi) and propriety (li) is the most significant feature of Confucian ethics.

2.10 Using the Way of Humanity in Self-Cultivation Confucian ethics, based on benevolence , righteousness, and propriety, are at the core of the Way of Humanity, which is known as rendao (仁 道) or dao (道) in Chinese. The Way of Humanity is the path toward fulfilling one’s destiny as designated by the heavens. Confucianists temper themselves with it through a refined set of practices. Self-cultivation was foundational for everyone from the emperor to the peasant.13 Self-cultivation, achieved by applying the Way of Humanity through the vehicle of the five cardinal relationships, implies a devoted effort to learning about the Way of Humanity, its spirited practice in everyday life and shame upon failing to meet its standards. Such methods are not considered virtues, but they constitute the essential process for achieving the three virtues, wisdom (智, zhi), benevolence (仁, ren) and courage (勇, yong ).14 A person who is willing to assume the responsibility of self-cultivation is called a jun zi (君子, true gentleman). People who do not accept this responsibility may be denounced as xiao ren (小人, small-minded people).15

2.11 Fondness for Learning Leads to Wisdom (好學近乎智) Confucius put great emphasis on learning and often mentioned it in his daily teachings. The Analects of Confucius begin with the saying, ‘To learn and in due time to repeat what one has learned, is that not after all a pleasure?’ As he looked back on his life, Confucius said he had his mindset on learning at the age of fifteen and ever since then has been learning without satiety and instructing others without becoming weary. As a learned scholar, Confucius stressed that he was not born with his

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knowledge. He talked about learning and studying, saying, ‘I am one who is fond of antiquity and earnest in seeking it there’, and ‘when I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers’. Confucius recommended asking for information and not being ashamed to learn from one’s inferiors when encountering incomprehensible things. Commenting on his own attitude of acquiring knowledge, he said, ‘eager pursuit of knowledge makes one forget food, the joy of its attainment makes one forget sorrows and not perceive that old age is coming.’ A set of Confucian theories on learning is recorded in The Golden Mean. Confucian disciples are required to learn the proper ways of extensive study (博學), accurate inquiry (審問), careful reflection (慎思), clear discrimination (明辨) and earnest practice (篤行). Most importantly, if disciples encounter anything in what they have studied that they cannot understand, in what they have inquired about that they do not know, in what they have reflected on that they do not apprehend, on which their discrimination is not clear, or if their practice fails in earnestness, they should not give up easily. Instead, they should persevere with the spirit that ‘if other people succeed by one effort, I will use a hundred efforts (人一能之, 己百之); if another person succeeded by ten efforts, I will use a thousand’16 (人十能之, 己千之), until what they strive to learn is crystal clear. Confucius thought that spontaneous interest leads to the most efficient learning. ‘To prefer it is better than to only know it. To delight in it is better than merely to prefer it.’ Disciples should embrace the attitude of ‘learning as if you were following someone with whom you could not catch up, as though it were someone you were frightened of losing,’ and become ‘widely versed in letters.’ During the process of learning, one should ‘from day to day be conscious of what one still lacks, and from month to month never forget what has already been learned.’ Disciples should strive to ‘reanimate the old and gain knowledge of the new’. Memorizing itself is not sufficient for learning. Confucius said, ‘He who learns but does not think, is lost (學而不思則罔). He who thinks but does not learn is, in great danger (思而不學則殆).17 If one only achieves the parts without comprehensive integration, learning will result in confusion.’ Confucius encouraged his disciples to abstract from the learning materials some fundamental principles so that they could ‘have one thread upon which to string them all,’ and then when he ‘holds up one corner it can come back to him with the other three.’ Students should apply and make use of what they have learned.

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2.12 Vigorous Practice Leads to Benevolence (力行近乎仁) Confucian education consists mainly the implementation of its ethical system. According to Kant’s philosophy, the Confucian ethical system is a kind of practical reasoning that can be acquired only through the process of actualization and doing, or knowing by practicing. For this reason, Confucius stressed vigorous practice in his teachings. For Confucians, knowledge is useless when it can only be talked about but not implemented. Confucius demanded that his disciples should be ‘slow in word but prompt in deeds,’ and ‘only speak of what it would be proper to carry into effect.’ Mengzi also stressed the practice of ethics. He thought that humans innately possess benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom. These things are ‘the knowledge possessed by humans without the exercise of thought’, and ‘the ability possessed by a person without having been acquired by learning’. The practice of the Way of Humanity should be as easy. If someone says, ‘I am not able to do it’, it is actually ‘a case of not doing’ instead of ‘not being able to do’. Any person who focuses attention on the practice of the Way of Humanity is able to become the same type of person as the Sage Shun. Xunzi, who believed human nature to be evil, did not agree that humans are born with a conscience. He thought that the Way of propriety and righteousness is learned from the sages or kings of antiquity. Nonetheless, he also put great emphasis on the practice of the Way of Humanity (dao). ‘Though the road (dao) be short, if a person does not travel on it, he will never get there; though a matter be small, if he does not do it, it will never be accomplished.’18 Sincerely put forth your effort, and finally, you will progress. Study until death and do not stop before. The art of study occupies the whole life; to arrive at its purpose, you cannot stop for an instant. To do that is to be human; to stop is to be a bird or beast. Kant suggested, the Confucian ethical system uses practical, but not theoretical reasoning. Confucian scholars insist that one must not only learn, but also practice the way of benevolence for one’s whole life. Practice of the Way of Humanity was a criterion for differentiating human beings from beasts.

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2.13

Sensitivity to Shame Leads to Courage

The ethical system of benevolence, righteousness and propriety entails the belief that people should feel ashamed when their words exceed their actions, and when they deviate from the Way of Humanity. Confucius said, ‘The superior human is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions. The reason the ancients did not readily give utterance to their words, was that they feared lest their actions should not come up to them.’ Mengzi also maintained that people should abide by ethics through action instead of with empty words. ‘A person may not be without shame. When one is ashamed of having been without shame, he will afterwards not have occasion to be ashamed.’ The sense of shame is of great importance to humans . Those who form contrivances and versatile schemes distinguished for their artfulness, do not allow their shame to come into action. When a person differs from other men in not having this sense of shame, what will he have in common with them? 19

Confucians assigned scholars different goals and standards than ordinary people. The conditions under which they were expected to feel shame also differed. For example, scholars were given the specific mission of benefiting the world with the Way of Humanity. The life goal for scholars is the actualization of that mission instead of the pursuit of material prosperity. ‘A scholar, whose mind is set on truth, and who is ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with.’ Confucius praised Zi Lu for ‘[dressing] himself in a tattered robe quilted with hemp, and standing by the side of men dressed in furs, unashamed.’20 However, the Way of Humanity does not require an unconditional acceptance of poverty. According to the Confucian ideal, the purpose of a person’s occupying an official post is to benefit the world with the Way of Humanity. When the country is governed with the right principles, one should work for the government. In this case, poverty and a mean condition should be considered something to be ashamed of since they indicate a person’s inability to serve well in the government. On the other hand, when the nation is ill-governed, and yet a person gains wealth and honor from his official post, he should feel shame for ‘standing in a prince’s court, and not carrying principles into practice,’ and even for acquiring a reputation beyond one’s merits.

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2.14 Jun zi (a True Gentleman) vs xiao ren (a Small-Minded Person) Confucians promoted self-cultivation by the means of love of knowledge, strenuous attention to conduct and sensitivity to shame. The goal was to develop people into jun zi (true gentlemen) who abide by the Way of Humanity. The term jun zi originally denoted a person with the status of nobility. Confucius changed the meaning and used it to denote a person with moral cultivation. It is this second meaning that is applicable in most of the passages in the Analects of Confucius. The concept of jun zi was often mentioned in Confucius’ daily teachings. For example, when Tszehsiâ came to follow Confucius, the Master said, ‘be a scholar after the style of superior humans, and not after that of mean humans.’ Confucius constantly discussed the distinction between jun zi and xiao ren with his disciples. Confucius attempted to illustrate the difference between jun zi and xiao ren from every perspective with the aim of guiding his disciples into being jun zi. A jun zi is a human whose mind dwells on benevolence and he is familiar with the ethical system of benevolence–righteousness –propriety. He not only follows the principle of dwelling in benevolence and pursuing the path of righteousness in dealing with his daily life but also humbles himself and abides by the virtue of propriety. Unlike a xiao ren, who focuses his eyes on the gains and losses in this secular world, the major concern for a jun zi is the moral principles founded on the ethical system of benevolence–righteousness–propriety. ‘The mind of a superior human is conversant with righteousness; the mind of a mean human is conversant with gain.’21 ‘The superior human thinks of virtue; small humans think of comfort. Superior humans think of the sanctions of law; small humans think of the favors that they may receive.’22 ‘The superior human may indeed have to endure want, but the mean human, when he is in want, gives way to unbridled license.’23 Confucius observed that a jun zi, who adheres to the Way of Humanity and has his mind dwelling on benevolence, not only makes demands on himself, asking himself to actualize the ethical system of benevolence –righteousness – propriety. He also ‘seeks to perfect the admirable qualities of men, and does not seek to perfect the bad qualities.’24 Consequently, a junzi can be completely at ease and free from perturbation. During interaction with others, he can be ‘affable but not adulatory,’ ‘catholic and not partisan,’ and display ‘a dignified ease without pride.’25 These actions are in contrast to those of a xiao ren, who strenuously pursues personal interest.

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2.15

Confucian Ethics for Scholars: Benefiting the World with the Way of Humanity

According to Confucian thinking, the tranquility, order, and harmony in society are founded on each individual’s moral cultivation. Every person, therefore, has the responsibility of learning to become a jun zi. This responsibility and the self-cultivation of virtues is the fundamental demand Confucians made on people. Ordinary people are required to practice the Way of Humanity in their family and community life, but scholars, who are endowed with cultural missions, were given even higher standards of moral practice.

2.16 Scholars Dedicate Themselves to the Way of Humanity Confucian ethics are status ethics. Confucians endowed scholars with the mission of benefiting the world with the Way of Humanity. Confucians expected their disciples to practice the principles and not to use them as a means of enlarging their personal reputation. The pursuit of the Way of Humanity has intrinsic value and takes a lifetime to accomplish. Confucius said, ‘If a person hears the right way in the morning, he may die in the evening without regret.’26 Both Mengzi and Zengzi expounded on this ideal of Confucianism. The philosopher Zeng said, ‘The officer may not be without breadth of mind and vigorous endurance. His burden is heavy and his course is long. Perfect virtue is the burden that he considers it is his to sustain - is it not heavy? Only with death does his course stop - is it not long? 27

According to the Confucian ideal of governing with virtue, a ruler is obliged to govern his country in the Way of Humanity, so that his people can be bathed in benevolence. This is done, he must expand from making his own country prosperous with benevolence to achieving the ideal of letting benevolence prevail in the world. Scholars play an important role in this process. Once given an official post, a scholar should adhere to the ideal of the Way of Humanity, serve the sovereign with the Way of Humanity, ‘practice his principles for the good of the people,’ confer benefits to them, and even ‘[make] the whole kingdom virtuous.’28 The larger the scope in which a scholar exercises the Way of Humanity, the higher that scholar’s moral performance is.

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Confucians believed that leaders should cultivate themselves, manage their families, govern the nation, and bring tranquillity to the world. In contrast, when a scholar’s desire for office is disappointed, he ‘though poor, does not let go his righteousness.’ He should ‘[attend] to [his] own virtue in solitude,’ and ‘[practice] [his] [principles] alone,’ in order to ‘became illustrious in the world.’ Only by ‘holding firm to death [in] perfecting the excellence of his course,’29 and striving to be above the power of riches and honors, and beyond letting poverty and mean condition’s temptation to swerve from principle 94 can a person be called great.

2.17

Conclusion

Confucius said to Duke Ai at the very beginning of Ch. 20th in Zhongyong : The governance of Wen and Wu is displayed in the records. (文武之政, 布在 方策) Let the right men in position, the government will flourish. (其人存, 則其政 舉) But without the men, the government decays and cease. (其人亡, 則其政息) The administration of government lies in getting proper men. (為政在人) Such men are to be got by means of the ruler’s own character. (取人以身)30

This position is very different from that of Plato. The major concern in his works The Republic is how to actualize the ideal of justice in various domains of social life, including politics ethics, economics, and so on. Because Confucius argued that ‘the administration of government lies in getting proper men,’ ‘such men are to be got by means of ruler’s character,’ he encouraged his disciples to learn and to practice various means of self-cultivation to become a junzi, especially those who decide to become a Confucian scholar (士) with an expectation to occupy a position in the government. They are educated to acquire an ability to make self-reflection toward the goal of ultimate Good (至善), in sharp contrast

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to the Western ideal of Eudaimonia which had been elaborated in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics . I do believe that Confucian theorizing on self-cultivation may enable us to see the most dramatic difference between these two great civilizations.

Notes 1. Zhongyong, Ch. 20 (佚名) (戰國):《中庸》 。 見宋. 朱熹 (集註) 、蔣伯潛 (廣解):《四書讀本》(台北: 啟明書局, 1959年) 。 Translated by the author. 2. Zhongyong, Ch. 20 (佚名) (戰國):《中庸》 。 見宋. 朱熹 (集註) 、蔣伯潛 (廣解):《四書讀本》(台北: 啟明書局, 1959年) 。 Translated by the author. 3. Zhongyong, Ch. 20 (佚名) (戰國):《中庸》 。 見宋. 朱熹 (集註) 、蔣伯潛 (廣解):《四書讀本》(台北: 啟明書局, 1959年) 。 Translated by the author. 4. Daodejing, Ch. 51 老子,《道德經》 王弼注本 (台北: 中華書局, 1985年) 。 5. Analects, Wei Ling Gong, Ch. 13 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注 疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 6. Analects, Li Ren, Ch. 15 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注疏》(台北: 新 文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 7. Mengzi, Teng Wen Gong, Part I, Ch. 5 漢 趙歧注, 宋 孫奭疏,《孟子 注疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 8. Analects, Yongye, Ch. 30 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注疏》(台北: 新 文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 9. Analects, Xue Er, Ch. 6 漢 趙歧注, 宋 孫奭疏,《孟子注疏》 (台北: 新文豐 出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 10. Mengzi, Gaozi, Part 1, Ch. 11 漢 趙歧注, 宋 孫奭疏,《孟子注疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 11. Mengzi, Teng Wen Gong, Part II, Ch. 14 Ch. 11 漢 趙歧注, 宋 孫奭 疏,《孟子注疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 12. Analects, Weilinygong, Ch. 18 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 13. The Great Learning, ch. 1.《大學》 。 見宋. 朱熹 (集註) 、蔣伯潛 (廣解): 《四書讀本》(台北: 啟明書局, 1959年) 。 14. Zhongyong, Ch. 20 Zhongyong, Ch. 20 (佚名) (戰國):《中庸》 。 見宋. 朱 熹 (集註) 、蔣伯潛 (廣解):《四書讀本》(台北: 啟明書局, 1959年) 。

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15. Zhongyong, Ch. 20 Zhongyong, Ch. 20 (佚名) (戰國):《中庸》 。 見宋. 朱 熹 (集註) 、蔣伯潛 (廣解):《四書讀本》(台北: 啟明書局, 1959年) 。 16. Zhongyong, Ch. 20 Zhongyong, Ch. 20 (佚名) (戰國):《中庸》 。 見宋. 朱熹 (集註) 、蔣伯潛 (廣解):《四書讀本》(台北: 啟明書局, 1959年) 。 Translated by the author. 17. Analects, Wei Zheng, Ch. 15 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 18. Xunzi, Self-cultivation《荀子集釋》 (台北: 台灣學生書局, 1979年). 19. Mengzi, Jin Xin, Part I, Ch. 7 漢 趙歧注, 宋 孫奭疏,《孟子注疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 20. Analects, Tze Han, Ch. 17 Analects, Weilinygong, Ch. 18 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段 標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 21. Analects, Li Ren, Ch. 16 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注疏》(台北: 新 文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 22. Analects, Li Ren, Ch. 11 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注疏》 (台北: 新 文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 23. Analects, Wen Ling Gong, Ch. 21 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注 疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 24. Analects, Yan Yuan, Ch. 16 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 25. Analects, Zi Lu, Ch. 26 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注疏》 (台北: 新文豐 出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 26. Analects, Li Ren, Ch. 8. 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注疏》 (台北: 新文豐 出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 27. The Analects, Tai Bo, Ch.7 魏 何晏等注, 宋 邢昺疏,《論語注疏》(台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 28. Mengzi, Jin Xin, Part I, Ch. 9 漢 趙歧注, 宋 孫奭疏,《孟子注疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author. 29. Mengzi, Jin Xin, Part I, Ch. 9 漢 趙歧注, 宋 孫奭疏,《孟子注疏》 (台北: 新文豐出版社, 國立編譯館 《十三經注疏分段標點》 本, 2001年) 。 Translated by the author.

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30. Zhongyong, Ch. 20 (佚名) (戰國):《中庸》 。 見宋. 朱熹 (集註) 、蔣伯潛 (廣解):《四書讀本》(台北: 啟明書局, 1959年) 。 Translated by the author.

References Ames, R.T. 1986. Taoism and the nature of nature. Environmental Ethics 8 (4): 317–350. Hwang, K.K. 1987. Face and favor: The Chinese power game. American Journal of Sociology 92: 944–974. Hwang, K.K. 1988. Confucianism and the modernization of East Asia (in Chinese). Taipei: Chu-Liu Book Co. Hwang, K.K. 1995. Knowledge and action: A social psychological interpretation of Chinese cultural tradition (in Chinese). Taipei: Psychological Publishers. Hwang, K.K. 2011. The mandala model of self. Psychological Studies 56 (4): 329–334. Hwang, K.K. 2015. Cultural system vs. pan-cultural dimensions: Philosophical reflection on approaches for indigenous psychology. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 45 (1): 1–24. Hwang, K.K. 2018a. Inner sageliness and outer kingliness: The accomplishment and unfolding of Confucianism. Taipei, Taiwan: Psychological Publishing Co. Hwang, K.K. 2018b. A psychodynamic model of self-nature. Counselling Psychology Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515070.2018.1553147. Hwang, K.K. 2019. Culture-inclusive theories: An epistemological strategy. Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 3

From Self to Self-Nature: Buddhist Self-Enlightenment Theory Yung-Jong Shiah

3.1

Introduction

In response to Hwang’s (2019) call for the adoption of an epistemological approach to theorizing, psychologists from non-Western societies have been analyzing their cultural systems by constructing theories that follow a key tenet of cultural psychology: “One mind, many mentalities; universalism without uniformity” (Shweder et al. 1998). This euphemism means that underlying structures and functions of the mind are the same in every culture, but the cognitive processes through which they manifest differ across cultures. This feature enables people from different cultures to adapt to their social environments. In this chapter, I report a “cultureinclusive theory” (Hwang 2015a, 2015b, 2019) of self that I developed

Y.-J. Shiah (B) Graduate Institute of Counseling Psychology and Rehabilitation Counseling, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected] Undergraduate Degree Program of Rift Valley Interdisciplinary Shuyuan, Hui Lan College, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_3

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for the purpose of analyzing Buddhism by employing a universal model of self to interpret the self framework of Confucianism. The chapter is composed of three sections. The first compares how the self is described in Buddhism with how it is described in Western psychology. It also explains how the goal in Buddhism is to reach the self-nature state of consciousness, called the nonself or Buddha state (無我/佛). This is a state of complete wakefulness that one achieves by applying the principles of Buddhist wisdom to the process of developing self-enlightenment. To illustrate the application of an epistemological approach, I provide a scientific interpretation of Buddhism by explaining its transcendental, formal self structure. First, I analyze this self structure by drawing on the four concepts of the universal and formal Mandela Model of Self (MMS) (Hwang 2011; Shiah and Hwang 2019b): biology, ideal person, knowledge/wisdom, and action. Second, I describe the psychological functioning of self-nature and the self. Third, I examine possible applications and theoretical directions for future research.

3.2

Two Types of Self

The self is a key construct in Western psychology and is strongly associated with egoism (Dambrun and Ricard 2011; Shiah 2016). The self applies the so-called hedonic principle to fulfill its desires. Western psychology has sought to explain the functioning of the self in the context of individualism (Hwang et al. 2017; Triandis 2001), stressing the individual’s compulsion to maintain and strengthen the self by satisfying its desires (Burke et al. 2010; Dambrun and Ricard 2011; Deci and Ryan 2008; Greenberg et al. 1990). In Chinese culture, there are three principal traditions: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism (Hwang and Chang 2009; Shiah and Hwang 2019a), each of which describes the self differently. By the onset of the Song Dynasty in China (960–1279 A.D.) the three traditions had merged to form Neo-Confucianism (Wu 2017). Buddhism offers a most sophisticated theory of non-self and a detailed description of self-cultivation (the process to achieve self-enlightenment) practice (Shiah 2016). Both are of interest to academics. The chapter is focused mainly on Buddhism. The ultimate aim of Buddhism is to overcome the pain and emotional disturbances caused by life’s difficulties, challenges, and stressors and to attain authentic,

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durable happiness by cultivating a transition from the self state to the selfnature state (自性) (Hwang 2018; Shiah and Hwang 2019a). In contrast to the self, self-nature involves renouncing worldly things, particularly those that are attractive because they spring from egoism and desires, while transforming the self (Shiah 2016; Shiah and Hwang 2019a). This process leads to total liberation (Shiah and Hwang 2019a; TsongKha-Pa 2000), a concept in Buddhism that is complex and transcends psychology. Nonetheless, the self-nature has consequences in the psychological domain, such as authentic and durable happiness (Dambrun and Ricard 2011). Only these psychological consequences are discussed in the present chapter.

3.3

Definitions of the Self and Self-Nature

The self is the locus of empirical experience and the self-cultivation process. It performs various actions, the nature of which depends on the social context (Hwang 2011). I propose in my theoretical model two kinds of self: the self and the self-nature. They are endpoints on a continuum. Each of us falls at a certain place on this continuum. I define the self state as the self’s awareness or consciousness of existence of itself and its desires (Albahari 2014; Hwang and Chang 2009; Shiah 2016). The psychological functioning of the self is characterized by processes such as biased self-interest, self-centeredness, and egocentrism, leading to the fluctuation of happiness (Dambrun and Ricard 2011). Thus, the self is the central point of reference for psychological activities, which follow the hedonic principle of pursuing stimulus-driven pleasure (Dambrun and Ricard 2011; Shiah 2016). Great importance is given to the proposition that the self emerges mainly from its connection with self-centeredness or egoism (Dambrun and Ricard 2011). The hedonic principle codifies a very intense desire-driven way of relating to objects, events, situations, substances, the body, and even life itself (Dambrun and Ricard 2011; Shiah 2016). In accordance with Buddhism, I define self-cultivation as the process by which the self transforms itself to become the self-nature (Hwang 2018; Shiah and Hwang 2019a). The concept of self-nature originated in Chinese Buddhism (漢傳佛) (Hwang 2018). The first Buddhist scripture, the Altar-Sutra (壇經), was written by Chinese scholars to record the history of Huineng (惠能) (638–713 A. D.), the sixth Patriarch of Ch’an Buddhism (禪宗). When Huineng followed a hint from his master,

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the fifth Patriarch, to meet him at midnight, the fifth Patriarch recited the Diamond Sutra (金剛經) to him. When the Patriarch came to the sentence, “You should cultivate your mind to be free from any attachments and to have bodhicitta (應無所住而生其心),” Huineng became thoroughly enlightened, and said: Who could have expected that one’s self-nature could be pure? (何期自性 本自清淨) Who could have expected that one’s self-nature could be free from birth and extinction? (何期自性本不生滅) All the principles of the universe are within one’s own self-nature. (何 其期自性本自具足) Who could have expected that one’s self-nature could be changeless? (何期自性本無動搖) Who could have expected that one’s self-nature could create all the principles of the universe? (何期自性能生萬法)

The self-nature has been of particular interest to academics who specialize in the study of Neo-Confucianism as practiced during the Song and Ming dynasties and beyond. These scholars further have specialized in either of two divisions of Neo-Confucianism: the Li school (理學) led by Zu Xi, (朱熹) and the Xin school (心學) led by Wang Yang-Ming (王 陽明). According to Buddhism, the self’s personal identity is delusional (Hwang and Chang 2009; Joshanloo 2014); the self is assumed to not actually exist, or not to be permanent (Shiah 2016). The self-nature is the realization by the enlightened self that the self, or “I,” as previously experienced lacks intrinsic existence (Dalai Lama 2017; Shiah 2016). The end point of the self’s transition from the self state to the self-nature state is termed self-enlightenment (Dalai Lama 1995a; Shiah and Hwang 2019a). 3.3.1

Why Does the Self Cause Alternation Between Happiness and Suffering?

Western psychologists recognize the self as one of the basic motivating forces of the human mind. It desires pleasure and has an aversion to pain (Dambrun and Ricard 2011). As mentioned before, the purpose of selfcultivation is to attain the self-nature state and experience authentic and durable happiness. One might ask the basic and important question: Why

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does the self cause happiness and suffering to alternate? There are four answers. First, as long as we have the self, we will be egoistic and have desires (Dalai Lama 1995a; Shiah 2016). Suffering and unhappiness are caused by these desires (Dalai Lama 2001). Clinging to the self is mainly an attempt to satisfy our desires (Dalai Lama 2017). When we crave something pleasant, we tend to reject its opposite. Second, the self structure is fully dedicated to a person’s likes and dislikes, which are referred to as “defilements.” They cause us to become obsessed with things being a certain way, and this makes us suffer whenever our desires are not fulfilled (Albahari 2014). This fulfillment depends upon the presence or absence of certain stimuli that, if present, satisfy the desire. These stimuli can come from the physical environment, from engagement with other people, or from physical and mental activity (Dalai Lama 1995a). The presence of such a stimuli cause us to experience pleasure, but soon the pleasure subsides because of habituation, or “hedonic adaptation” in Buddhism. We rapidly become acclimated to the stimulus and return to our baseline level of happiness (Dambrun and Ricard 2011). The stimulus is soon replaced by another stimulus, which may not be so pleasant. In other words, the pleasant (or unpleasant) experience evoked through the application of the hedonic principle is fleeting or unstable; it is like that of an object that one sees but does not own (Dalai Lama 1995a). Third, in Buddhism, the self is considered to be illusory (Dalai Lama 2017; Shiah 2016). Therefore, attempts to capture the self inevitably fail. Fourth, Western psychology, which seeks to explain how the self copes with the threat of death, holds a similar view. There is no doubt that death is the paramount threat to the self or to one’s identity. Our awareness that we will eventually die is a tacit recognition that life is fragile and that the self will someday disappear. Therefore, the self must find a way to deal psychologically with the prospect of death. A very sophisticated explanation of how the self accomplishes this feat is provided by Terror Management Theory (TMT) (Greenberg and Pyszczynski 1986, 1997; Pyszczynski et al. 2015). According to TMT, self-esteem is a feeling of significance or personal worth that comes from the conviction that our culturally based worldview is valid and from our efforts to live up to its standards (Pyszczynski et al. 2004, 2015). Thus, the precise definition of self-esteem is different in different cultures. Regardless of culture, selfesteem is what we employ to cope with life’s adversities (Park 2010). It

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provides us with information about patterns of expectations and behaviors in the environment that are stable and coherent (Heintzelman and King 2014). Accordingly, most importantly, self-esteem plays a crucial role in overcoming the fear of death, which according to TMT is the strongest human motive and drives all human behavior, although it is usually disguised as some other motive. Death anxiety activates the defense mechanisms we employ to sustain our worldview as well as our self-esteem (Burke et al. 2010; Pyszczynski et al. 2015). Unfortunately, we often replace a stimulus that gives us a positive view of ourselves (self-esteem) with one that we see as posing a threat. Thus, we feel we must constantly take steps to nurture and strengthen the self so that we can cope with both death anxiety and unhappiness. Even though happiness is fleeting, we feel we must continue to pursue it.

3.4 Mandala Model of Self and Buddhist Self-Enlightenment Theory 3.4.1

Mandala Model of Self (MMS)

Although the MMS was inspired by Buddhism, my description of it below is based on both Buddhist teachings and Western psychology. The MMS was constructed to provide a formal and universal model that describes the well-functioning self in all cultures (Hwang 2011; Shiah and Hwang 2019b). According to MMS, the end goal of the self in all cultures is to attain authentic and durable happiness. People living in their world are symbolized by a circle surrounded by a square (Fig. 3.1). The circle represents the most important aspect of life, which is the (wellfunctioning) self. The self exists in a wide range of contexts, such as sun worship by primitive peoples, modern religions, myths, and dreams, the mandala of the Tibetan lamas, and the planar graphs of secular and sacred architectures in every civilization. The square, in contrast, symbolizes secularism, the flesh, and objective reality. Therefore, the mandala can be viewed as a symbol or prototype for the deep structure of the self. According to MMS, the self is influenced by four forces: the individual, knowledge or wisdom, action, and the person (Hwang 2011). The individual is biological and desire-driven. This biological individual initially gives the self its personal identity or uniqueness, a feeling of ownership of various phenomena in the mind, body, and external world (Albahari 2014). The person is cultural or sociological; it acts to attain certain

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Person

Knowledge (Wisdom)

Self

Action (Praxis)

Individual

Fig. 3.1 Mandala model of self (Hwang 2011)

goals in ways that are in accord with the culture’s norms for appropriate and permitted behavior. Accordingly, the person is the ideal person as so defined. Knowledge, or wisdom, is the personal stock of knowledge that leads a person to act appropriately in various social contexts. Each class of actions is endowed with a specific meaning and value that is transmitted to the individual through various channels of socialization. The self is psychological, the source of daily life experience. In the conceptual framework of Fig. 3.1, the self is the locus of empirical experience; it can perform various actions depending on the social context, and it engages in self-reflection when blocked from attaining its goals. Note that all four of these terms are located outside the circle but within the square. This arrangement means that the self is being influenced by forces from the individual’s external environment. In general, the self is formed from the perceptions, desires, needs, and psychological functions of the biological individual; these functions are conation, motivation, attention, cognition, emotion, and behavior (Dambrun and Ricard 2011; Shiah 2016). Based on Buddhism (Shiah 2016; Shiah et al. 2018), this sense of self is part of a hedonic principle and a deep-seated, reflexive false belief. According to the theoretical model shown in Fig. 3.1, the social praxis of the self in a given context is pulled by two forces: the person as a social

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agent and the individual as an organism. To act in a manner accepted by society, individuals who want to satisfy their own desires must learn how to act in accordance with the sociomoral order, using the process of socialization guided by their wisdom. As Hwang (2011) put it, the self possesses socialized reflexivity, the ability to reflect upon the meaning of life, spirituality, and morality. When a person plans to act, his or her action may be influenced by all four forces. The person needs to think about how to behave like the ideal person as defined by his or her culture. The self also possesses the important capacity to exert great effort to overcome difficulties and achieve goals in different social contexts, to behave as an ideal person. Specifically, when people intend to act and overcome barriers or conflicts arising from the biological individual, namely various desires, they employ information available in their stock of knowledge. If the barrier or the conflict continues, the socialized reflexivity of the self takes further steps to pursue a solution based on the knowledge or wisdom. Because the MMS proposes a dynamic interaction involving self, individual, knowledge/wisdom, and action/praxis, I draw on these four concepts to describe the process of self-cultivation that transforms the self to the self-nature, emphasizing the roles of knowledge or wisdom, the person, and one’s actions to conquer the individual. 3.4.2

Buddhist Self-Enlightenment Theory

My Buddhist Self-Enlightenment Theory (BSET) (Fig. 3.2) is based on six Madhyamak¯a doctrines (中觀理聚六論), as presented in the Abhisamaya-alank¯ ˙ ara (現觀莊嚴論), the Bodhipathaprad¯ıpa (菩提道炬 論), and the Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (菩 提道次第廣論), as well as related publications. These four books are well known to represent a complete view of Buddhist wisdom and a detailed description of the self-cultivation process. The BSET presents a new, three-level MMS, along with a modified definition of the self-nature and a series of specific self-cultivation processes that lead to the Buddha or non-self state (佛/無我). Following the teachings of Buddhism, there are three levels of self-cultivation, of modest scope (下士道), medium scope (中士道), and high scope (上士道) respectively (Shiah et al. 2018; Tsong-Kha-Pa 2000). The first level is non-Buddhist cultivation. The second and third levels are Buddhist cultivation practices leading to the Buddha state, nirvana, the state of attma-graha, or the non-self, all

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Fig. 3.2 Buddhist Self-Enlightenment Theory (adapted from Shiah et al. [2018])

equivalent to a state of total liberation (Dalai Lama 1995a; Shiah et al. 2018; Shonin et al. 2014). According to MMS, at the modest first level of self-cultivation, the most important concepts are karma (業) and avidya (惑) (Shiah et al. 2018). The doctrine of karma states that every event in nature, now and forever, whether it is physical or mental, causes every subsequent event. The doctrine of Avidya refers to the (current) inability of most humans to grasp Buddha’s wisdom. Desires are innately linked to karma and avidya (Dalai Lama 2017; Shiah 2016). Desires are inevitable and reflexive. Like seeds, they are the source of all mental functions (attention, motivation, and emotion) and physical behavior (Shiah 2016). As specified by the doctrine of karma, every desire causes every subsequent desire. Buddhism stresses that every attempt to destroy a desire must be completed. The main principle of Buddha’s wisdom as applied to the world we ordinarily experience (世間正見) is that we must pursue Buddha’s knowledge of the

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association between the doctrine of karma and the doctrine of dependent origination (Shiah 2016; Shiah et al. 2018). Both doctrines maintain that every occurrence causes every subsequent occurrence (Allen et al. 2015; Dalai Lama 2017). Every event is composed of multiple stages and every object is composed of multiple parts; a cluster of events (objects) may cause (produce) a single future event (object) or vice versa (Dalai Lama 2017; Kelly 2008). In reality, nothing has an intrinsic identity or substance. Phenomena are outside of and independent of the self, and all things are in a continual process of arising and passing away. The failure to understand these facts is the root cause of suffering (Shiah 2016). This is because we pursue those things that our body desires. Our desires are nearly always aimed at the happiness of the self (hedonic principle). Acting in accordance with the hedonic principle makes a person more selfish and thereby has a negative effect on the well-being of others (Dambrun and Ricard 2011). The remedy is to perform ten good deeds (Sheng-Yen 1999): refraining from killing, taking things not given to you, sexual misconduct, speaking falsehoods, speaking provocations, speaking abusive words, speaking rhetorical words, greed, hatred, and avidya. Performing good deeds also keeps us from pursuing desires. According to Buddhism (Dalai Lama 2017; TsongKha-Pa 2000), pursuing desires not only creates a lack of awareness, but it also projects onto both the self and the external world something that is not there—this is what is meant by emptiness. This will be explained further in a later section. At the second level (medium scope) of self-cultivation, the concept ´ avaka of the mind making the body is added. The ideal person, the Sr¯ (聲聞)/Pratyeka (獨覺) Buddha, can use his or her mind to make a body (Shiah et al. 2018). As an ideal person, one realizes that ignorance of Buddhist wisdom leads to enhancement of the self, which in turn leads to suffering (Dalai Lama 2017). This pain and suffering can be so severe that the person tries desperately to get rid of it (Alt 1980; Shiah et al. 2018). This insight into Buddha’s wisdom is termed supra-mundane-mind renunciation (出離心) (Shiah et al. 2018). In addition to wisdom of karma mentioned in an earlier section, Buddha’s wisdom contains three other primary principles or truths: impermanence, suffering, and emptiness (Shiah 2016). Impermanence refers to the fact that all compound objects, living and non-living, sooner or later disintegrate, decay, or die. This is what it means to say that in reality everything is emptiness (Dalai Lama 2017) and everything that we

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perceive as real is impermanent. Impermanence helps to create suffering, because suffering arises from craving objects or events we find desirable; these cravings spring from the self in the sense that our desires cause great suffering only because the self is attached to them (Dalai Lama 1995a, b). The reason for this suffering is that these cravings are impermanent and always changing, and thus reflect the emptiness of nature. Our cravings help us to eventually realize that impermanence and the actions that are motivated by it are in fact associated with the non-self (Shiah 2016). Life is replete with suffering. We suffer all the way from birth to death. We suffer both from fulfilling our desires and from not fulfilling them. We suffer from getting sick and getting old. Recognizing that we will inevitably die causes much terror and pain, which in turn strongly motivates us, especially our non-self, to understand the meaning of death (Shiah and Yit 2012; Zopa-Rinpoche 2019). To attain this goal, we must understand Buddha’s wisdom. From the behavioral standpoint, we must stop trying to fulfill our desires, act compassionately, and practice some form of meditation (Shiah 2016). At the third or highest level of self-cultivation, the concept of Buddha’s three bodies is introduced. This means that Buddha (the ideal person) manifests in three ways (Shiah et al. 2018): as the self-nature; as a blissful, clear light; and as an incarnation of the historical Buddha. Another way to define Buddha’s wisdom (bodhicitta in this context) is knowledge of the self as seeking self-enlightenment and behaving compassionately to benefit all living beings (Dalai Lama 1995b; Shiah et al. 2018; Zopa-Rinpoche 2019). From a behavioral standpoint, one must demonstrate (a) the six perfections (六度) as defined in Buddhism: generosity, good deeds, endurance, effort in Buddhist practices, meditation, and following Buddhist wisdom; and (b) the four dharmas of attraction (四攝) aimed at helping us achieve self-enlightenment and eventually Buddhahood: generous acts, intelligent acts, insightful teaching, and altruism-plus-compassion (Shiah et al. 2018). Put simply, the BSET adopts a non-self approach that involves the execution of the self-cultivation principle. The execution consists of four steps: giving up desires, displaying compassion, practicing meditation, and seeking understanding of Buddhist wisdom. These steps have the goal of seeing through and overcoming the illusion of the self to achieve a deep transformation integrally connected to the experience of eliminating the sense of self and its psychological structures.

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3.5 Psychological Functions of the Self-Nature and the Self In this section, I explain how Buddhism helps us to eliminate unhappiness caused by maintaining the self, and how it strengthens the self and elucidates the psychological transition from the self state to the selfnature state (see Fig. 3.3). The self engages in psychological activities to gain strength by applying the hedonic principle for the purpose of avoiding the pain caused by desire-driven pleasure. However, it does not do so successfully. In contrast, self-nature aims to overcome this suffering directly and does it successfully. It employs self-cultivation to see through and overcome the delusion of the self, leading to a profound transformation integrally connected to the experience of eliminating the sense of self and its psychological structures. The psychological processes of selfcultivation transition from the self state to the self-nature state through the practice of compassion and the renunciation of things we desire. There is a sense of egolessness that reflects awareness of the (causal) non-self-universe connection, compassion, and awareness of the interdependence and impermanence of all things, leading to the absence of a sense of self identity (Shiah 2016; Shiah et al. 2018). On the contrary, individuals who apply egoism consider themselves as being fundamentally separated from others, autonomous in the world, and relatively unique (Dambrun and Ricard 2011; Shiah 2016). One derives authentic and durable happiness as a result of applying Buddhist teachings and practices. On the other hand, the desire-driven pursuit of happiness can lead to such negative emotions as cruelty, violence, pride, and greed, which in turn cause happiness to fluctuate (Dambrun and Ricard 2011; Shiah 2016). Egoism employs the hedonic principle in a desire-driven way, leading to negative emotions and fluctuations in happiness (Dambrun and Ricard 2011). The Buddhist critique of desire-driven pleasure has been indirectly supported by recent research demonstrating that the hedonic principle does not predict lasting happiness (Crespo and Mesurado 2015; Deci and Ryan 2008). Finally, why does the perception of the self-nature, or the self-nature state, lead to authentic and durable happiness? In addition to the explanations mentioned in an earlier section, the TMT states that the prospect of death cannot threaten self-esteem if there is no self or identity, because there is no self-esteem that death can threaten. There would be no anxiety and no unhappiness, but rather the greatest happiness, contentment, and

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Self

Approach:

Self-cultivation principle

Hedonic principle Self seeks to attain pleasure and avoid pain

Aims to attain self-enlightenment by transitioning from self to self-nature through avoidance of desired pleasurable stimuli

Performance of negative duties by Psychological activities: Pursuit of self-enlightenment

Dissolving/extinguishing

avoiding the harming of others and

maintaining/boosting self

following associated Buddhist laws

Self-nature plus compassion (altruism)

Non-self or self-nature state. As life’s setbacks and dying no longer threaten the self-nature, one experiences positive emotion and genuine lasting happiness.

Psychological reactions and happiness

Egoism

Egoism. Life’s setbacks and dying can threaten the self, leading to negative emotion and intermittent happiness.

Fig. 3.3 Psychological functioning of the self-nature and self (adapted from Shiah [2016])

equanimity with no capacity to suffer the pain caused by life’s adversities. The concept of self-nature provides information about the presence of reliable patterns and coherences in the environment and also helps one cope with these adversities.

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3.6

Future Directions

The BSET is a theoretic model that logically and coherently elucidates Buddhist teachings. This is especially true regarding the transitioning from the self state to the self-nature state. Current psychological research offers preliminary confirmation of Buddhist teachings that can be explained by the BSET. For example, many of the emerging Buddhismrelated findings demonstrate that mindfulness (Dunning et al. 2019; Khoury et al. 2015), compassion (Hofmann, Grossman and Hinton 2011; Marsh, Chan and MacBeth 2018; Shonin et al. 2015) and meditation (Lee et al. 2015; Luberto et al. 2018; Sedlmeier et al. 2012) lead to enhanced positive emotions, attention, and subjective well-being. According to BSET, these positive effects can be explained primarily by the self-nature or non-self construct. This is because the BSET practices lead us away from our desires, and thus, from suffering and distractions. This in turn leads to heightened positive emotion, subjective well-being, and attentiveness. The BSET also offers explanations for the effects of self-nature-plus-altruism. One of these effects is the promotion of altruism and helping behavior, which according to the concept of self-nature, leads one away from desires and self-centeredness. Moreover, the BSET postulates that self-nature-plus-altruism conquers the fear of death through a process of self-cultivation that attains the self-nature state by minimizing the self state. The BSET provides a novel perspective on the meaning of death. Appealing to self-nature-plus-altruism, the BSET also provides a plausible explanation for mystical and peak experiences. A mystical experience is a sudden, all-encompassing sense of the unity underlying all things, often mediated by an experience of light or of pure luminosity and felt as having its source in a universal love and compassion that eternally pervades the physical universe (Hunt 2006). Peak experiences are those “rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter” (Maslow 1964, p. 245). In the same way, the BSET provides an explanation of the principles of moral conduct overwhelmingly endorsed by most cultures and religions. Buddhist practices traditionally take place in the context of spiritual development leading to enlightenment in the form of experience of the self-nature, a state of total liberation and authentic and durable happiness. Thus, Buddhist teachings can be used to help people maximize their full

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human potential. In fact, it has long been believed and testified to that Buddhist teachings and practices successfully remove pain and suffering, implying that they can be used to deal with all psychological problems (Dalai Lama 1995a, 2017; Shiah 2016). This has practical implications for psychotherapy. Over the past 30 years, a growing number of psychotherapists, counselors, and mental health workers have been engaged in various forms of Buddhist psychotherapy. The core idea of Buddhist teachings is not to be attached to the self. As noted before, altruism is considered an authentic form of wisdom and a way to attain the state of self-nature. The Buddhist construct of non-attachment or self-nature-plus-altruism is not inconsistent with Western psychology’s construal of attachment in the context of certain relationships (Shonin et al. 2014). However, there is a strong and urgent need to ground Buddhist psychotherapy and psychology in more evidence-based research. The BSET as described in the present chapter provides theory-based directions for the accumulation of such evidence-based data for use in Buddhist psychotherapy and psychology. Similarly, Buddhism has adopted an approach to the concept of self that differs from that in Western psychology. There is a need to construct psychology based on the self-nature construct. Obviously, it would take much effort and time to fully describe how one can achieve the ideal state of self-nature through Buddhist cultivation and the avoidance of hedonic activities. In the present chapter, only a very basic and initial framework of the self-nature and the psychological processes that create it has been described. One application of this framework is the widely used and practical mindfulness-based meditation technique (Dunning et al. 2019; Khoury et al. 2013, 2015) that forms a foundation of the Buddhist process of self-cultivation. In the West, mindfulness is used as a technique to enhance subjective well-being because it is associated with optimization of moment-to-moment experience (Brown and Ryan 2003). However, according to BSET, the main purpose of meditation is to get rid of desire conation and behavior rather than to create the positive effects of mindfulness. More sophisticated and detailed empirical research is needed on procedures for attaining the state of nonself, including the three methods of obeying precepts, meditating, and absorbing Buddhist wisdom. Though the BSET is very much in its infancy, it is built on the very robust cornerstones of Buddhist teachings that have been applied and tested for more than 2500 years. It also suggests a number of opportunities for further investigation. First, both contemporary and Buddhist texts

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describe the self-nature state in valid and illuminating ways that provide a different perspective on human beings than does the Western concept of personality (Hwang 2011, 2018; Johnson 2015; Shiah and Hwang 2019b). For example, the answers that the BSET provides to profound questions about the true nature of the whole person might lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the meaning of life and its ultimate goals. Second, research indicates that the application of Buddhist beliefs leads to positive subjective well-being and adjustment (Shiah et al. 2015, 2016). Future research should also examine how the principles in the BSET can be successful implemented in the form of adjustment and coping strategies. Such research would have important implications for understanding the nature of these adjustment processes and mental health generally. Questions remain about how the self-nature develops and what psychological and social conditions support and hinder the fulfillment of the goals of the self-cultivation process. The BSET offers ideas about how self-cultivation can be used to attain the ultimate state of self-nature. From the ethics perspective, the selfnature state can be regarded as a very high standard of morality and a high level of moral expertise. It has been suggested that this moral expertise emerges from the interactions among beliefs, desires, and moral actions (Hulsey and Hampson 2014). Little is currently known about these interactions. The BSET not only offers insight into how these interactions work, but it also explains why we need moral codes and where they lead us to. For example, according to BSET, moral actions lead us away from desires and suffering and toward the self-nature state. This line of future research also could include the effects of giving up desires by practicing altruism, compassion, and moral actions. Given that Buddhism was developed and is practiced mainly in Asia, one might ask whether it is suitable for other cultures. There is good reason to believe it is. For example, Buddhism’s core concept of avoidance of desire-driven pleasure can be found across cultures (Joshanloo 2014; Joshanloo and Weijers 2014). Other concepts similar to self-natureplus-compassion, such as altruism, mindfulness, mediation, mystical/peak experience, death anxiety, moral conduct, and spirituality are arguably found across cultures. This also applies to claimed psi abilities, which consist of extrasensory perception and psychokinesis (Shiah et al. 2010). Buddhism claims that attaining the self-nature state leads to psi abilities

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(Shiah et al. 2013, 2010). The BSET provides a sophisticated framework to explain a possible mechanism for these universal effects and phenomena.

3.7

Concluding Remarks

In summary, the present chapter has introduced the BSET, which is based on Buddhist teachings. The end goal of the self is to attain authentic, durable happiness by cultivating a transition from the self state to the self-nature state. The psychological functioning of the self-nature consists of two types of self-cultivation: the practice of self-enlightenment and the absorption of Buddhist wisdom. The transition from the self state to the self-nature state is a deeply transformative experience of eliminating the sense of self and its psychological structures, seeing through and overcoming the illusion of the self as real. In contrast, the psychological function of egoism is to strengthen the self by applying the hedonic principle to pursue desires leading to fluctuations in happiness. There have been very few empirical studies or theories directly targeting Buddhist teachings. One of my goals for this chapter was to postulate an academically respectable model based on a full consideration of these teachings that links Buddhism to Western psychology. Using broad definitions of self, egoism, and self-nature familiar to psychologists has allowed me to link the BSET to both psychological research and Buddhist teachings. It also demonstrates that the BSET can be tested using the methods of psychological research. Future studies are needed to elucidate these complex concepts of self, egoism, and self-nature, as well as their implications. I also hope that the present chapter has helped to fill these conceptual gaps by explaining how Buddhism provides a reliable and useful way to cope with life’s adversities. It guides us toward authentic, durable happiness, and it contributes to the solution of a variety of mental health problems. It can help those who are happy and those who are unhappy. People who are happy with their self-centered behavior emphasize the need to satisfy, maintain, and strengthen the self. They want more happiness. Unhappy people who suffer from unsatisfied needs because of the desire-driven sense of self also want happiness. In conclusion, my intention for this chapter was to offer a theory to guide future and innovative research into the potential mutual enrichment of Buddhism and current psychological theory, research, and practice.

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Although more research is needed on this front, it is hoped that the BSET will open significant new avenues for mental health research and unravel the secret of why Buddhism has lasted more than 2500 years.

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CHAPTER 4

Wisdom Consultation: Application of Yang-Ming’s Nousology in Indigenous Psychological Consultation Rong-Rong Liu and Chen Fu

4.1

The Origin Concepts and Cultural Basis of Wisdom Consultation

The emergence of civil society, on the one hand, means that people are freed from the traditional family structure and gain personal freedom through economic independence, thus enabling the independence of personality and the legitimacy of human rights to be respected; on the other hand, means that people no longer have deep emotional ties with their family members, and mechanism to protect his life is not the bond

R.-R. Liu School of Humanities, Xuzhou Institute of Technology, Xuzhou, China C. Fu (B) General Education Center, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_4

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of the family but the norm of the law. However, in the fast-paced and fastchanging environment, although personal rights are protected by law and ego is given an opportunity to show infinitely, it often makes the spirit feel wandering and helpless, and the independent relationship between people produces an isolated state of mind, which makes life lose the feeling of deep connection and breeds all kinds of physical and mental illness. With the prominence of growing social and psychological problems, the Chinese society turns its attention to the field of psychological consultation that is in the ascendant in Western society, positively learns Western-style psychological consultation, and hopes to find a cure for Chinese psychological problems. However, when Chinese people learn Western psychological counseling techniques, they cannot fail to notice the difference between Western culture and Chinese culture. Western psychological counseling originated from the confession of the believers to the priest in the Catholic Church. The believers told their confessions to the priest and prayed the priest to forgive their faults, Christianity upheld the “theory for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” which was also the source of regarding mental problems as the mental illness. However, this way of thinking does not have a foundation in Chinese culture. In traditional Chinese culture, there is also a dialogue mechanism based on emotion and trust to explore psychological confusion, that is, the seminar of neo-confucianism of the Song and Ming Dynasties. In the Song and Ming Dynasties, Confucian scholars and students held lectures and seminars in academies, which is a dialogue mode of common discussion and common interpretation of mind. If the dialogue mode can be transformed into a “psychological consultation” with the modern significance, it can more accurately cure the various psychological problems in Chinese society. Chen Fu is committed to studying traditional Chinese thought in Taiwan, with more than twenty years of practical experience in academy education, and is willing to separate Confucianism from the concept of traditional Chinese studies to make it face the psychology and spirit of the public. This kind of practice is more in line with neo-confucianism of the Song and Ming Dynasties (especially the nousology trend of thought after the middle period of Ming dynasty) that has the pro-people interest in daily life, and can better implement the practical spirit of inner cultivation and exterior action of Confucians, avoiding the Confucianism with the traditional Chinese meaning becoming no longer practical for life-like “Egyptology.”

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Chen Fu combines the philosophical connotation of mind in the neoconfucianism of the Song and Ming Dynasties with Western psychology to produce the psychological consultation suitable for Chinese, namely, wisdom consultation. As the earliest developer of wisdom consultation, he first worked in Taiwan, and later started practice in the mainland China. Why is wisdom consultation more suitable for treating Chinese psychological problems than Western psychological counseling and what is the foundation of it? This important issue needs to be discussed from the differences between Chinese culture and Western culture. The core topic of traditional Chinese thought is the “inner cultivation and exterior action” with “mind cultivation” and “social practice” as the main body, of which “inner cultivation” is the foundation of “exterior action.” “Mind cultivation” is a kind of thinking mode based on the “unity of heaven and humans” in Chinese culture, which is different from the thinking mode of “opposition of subject and object” generated by the Western cultural tradition of “opposition of heaven and humans” (there is an eternal gap between heaven and humans). The core of the self-cultivation formed in the Chinese culture based on the tradition of “unity of heaven and humans” is “the Self” (Chen Fu 2016a). Why does the Self become the core self-cultivation and learning essentials in Chinese traditional culture? First of all, “self-cultivation” is an important topic in traditional culture. As early as the pre-Qin period, Duke Zhou proposed “only virtue can get the providence,” that is, providence is granted to a virtuous man (Chen Fu 2016b), which means that people are intrinsic to their own beliefs about “heaven,” holds a cautious attitude toward their inner virtue, which is the beginning of the consciousness of the human being to be detached from the ghosts and gods and consciously has the consciousness of “selfcultivation.” This tradition has been more fully demonstrated after the development of Confucianism. The Great Learning goes: “From the emperor to the ordinary people, all are based on self-cultivation” (annotate by Zhu Xi 2016: P4). The Confucian tradition of self-cultivation has been interrupted by the development of the study of Confucian classics of Han Dynasty. Later, Buddhism became a prominent school in China precisely because it absorbed the Confucian doctrine of inwardness, formed the cultivation of inner cultivation, and met people’s needs for the cultivation of inwardness under the background of the time when Confucianism was becoming rigid. By the Song and Ming Dynasties, Confucian began to interpret the philosophical connotations of mind with the neoconfucianism of the Song and Ming Dynasties, which made Confucianism

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flourish again. The Taoist thought derived Taoism, and developed the internal alchemy cultivation method during the Tang and Song Dynasties, which was also the cultivation method based on the cultivation of inwardness. It can be seen from the above that the Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in Chinese tradition may have a mutual influence in the historical process, but the rise of any one of these thoughts is due to its interpretation and expansion on the level of philosophical connotations of mind. Since the cultivation of inwardness is the core topic of Chinese traditional thought and a universal tradition of Chinese society, then we must not regard the “cultivation of inwardness” as the core topic in the development of “wisdom consultation” derived from traditional thought.

4.2

Theoretical Concept of Wisdom Consultation

Wisdom consultation should first be distinguished from the concept of pathology of human problems highlighted by Western psychological counseling. In Chinese medicine, there is a saying that “the same disease is treated differently, and the same disease is treated in the same way,” which focuses on “regard the symptom and regardless of the disease,” that is, not observing the patient through the disease but observing the patient through the symptoms, and observing the individual differences of the patient. Psychological consultation developed in the context of Chinese culture should not be classified into the medical field unless it is at the level of organic lesions. Otherwise, the psychopathological thinking should be removed to stop the various complex psychological phenomena from being put on a certain disease name; in this way, the influence of such religious factors on Chinese indigenous psychological consultation can be completely removed from the perspective of cultural psychology, and the core significance of life cultivation to Chinese indigenous psychological consultation can be restored. In this sense, the purpose of the wisdom consultant is to lead the person concerned to know his/her own mind, also known as the Self. In the traditional Chinese Confucianism, the most thorough interpretation of the topic of mind is the Yang-ming’s nousology of the Ming Dynasty. Wang Yang-ming was a great Confucian scholar in the Ming Dynasty and founded Yang-ming’s nousology. The Yang-ming’s nousology stands out with the valuable point that different from the ancient Greek philosophy developed by the opposition of subject and object, and different from the purely theoretical speculative philosophy

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after Kant, it is an inseparable knowledge from the real-life experience of human beings, which can be seen from Wang Yang-ming’s experience of enlightenment. Wang Yang-ming’s first enlightenment is believed to have been completed during his stay in Longchang, Guizhou. He was banished to Guizhou for offending the eunuch Liu Jin, and at that time, Guizhou was very desolate. Wang Yang-ming could only stay alone without books, and looked at the mountains and jungle, beasts and monsters all day long with all kinds of malaria and viruses destroying his body, could not find people to communicate except the local natives or escaped local bullies and loafers. Born in a government official family, he was originally conceited, but now he lost all his fame and fortune in this wicked environment, so what else does he need to persist in addition to being alive? The experience of falling to the bottom from the top made him desperate, and he could only face the stone pier and declared to himself: “I can only wait for the God’s will”. Every morning and evening, he sat quietly and kept the mood clear and quiet, and his whole inwardness felt free and easy for a long time. Therefore, the cause of the Enlightenment in Longchang is not to create any great philosophical theory, but to solve the crisis of Wang Yang-ming’s existence. The content of Wang Yang-ming’s enlightenment is the inspiration of “the Self is in my heart.” Compared with the source of creation— “noumenon of the Universe” (Hinduism called it “Brahma”), everyone’s mind has a noumenon given to the life given by noumenon of the Universe, which is “noumenon of the Self.” The Self is inside the body not outside the body, but when noumenon of the Self is comprehended, there will be no difference between inside and outside, but integrated as one, which is a more refined understanding of “unity of heaven and humans.” We think this is more subtle, because the general agreement experience is often only to comprehend the sense of ablation of the self, which is a very low-level (universal) experience, the deeper agreement experience begins to grasp existence of the Universe (or may have different cognitive paths according to the hints of each religion; for example, Christian believers will look up to God), and the more deeper agreement experience can comprehend that there is the noumenon of Self in the body and life has its integrity without external dependence. Therefore, the wisdom consultant should help the person concerned to comprehend the Self without external dependence.

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Chen Fu concluded six procedures from this: dialogue-speculation-effortnous-practice-transformation, that is, through the dialogue between the consultant and the person concerned to generate the person concerned’ s speculation of problem; after the process of speculation, the person concerned will make efforts to practice and gain the consciousness of nous, and the consciousness of nous will generate the practice willingness of the person concerned, thus making people have deep transformation in the process of continuous practice.

4.3

Practical Concept of Wisdom Consultation

There are three basic characteristics of wisdom consultation based on the Yang-ming’s nousology concept (Chen Fu 2019): (1) The consultation ethics of confusion between “scholarly people” and “ordinary people”: wisdom consultation has a very high social universality, which means that the person concerned may not have a profound knowledge background or philosophical training, as long as a clear spirit and the attempt to save themselves, they can enter the treatment process of wisdom consultation. Firstly, the universality of wisdom consultation is first reflected in “everyone has a conscience” emphasized by Wang Yangming. Wang Yang-ming once said: “all the ordinary people and the saints have conscience” (Wang Yang-ming 2011: 56). However, the difference between saints and ordinary people is that saints can maintain their own conscience and ordinary people may blind their conscience. Solving the psychological problem of the person concerned is to break the blindness and restore the conscience of their own. Secondly, although Yang-ming’s nousology teaches people to keep their conscience to be a “sage,” the standard of sage is not quantitative and unified, and people only need to cultivate their own minds within the limits of their respective boundaries, “If we take action, we simply do it to the extent of our talents. If our conscience finds this, then we just do it to the end with the conscience; and if our conscience has new finding tomorrow, then just do it with the tomorrow’s conscience” (Wang Yangming 2011: 109). Just like refining gold, only pay attention to the color and not the weight, so everyone can be sanctified. Thirdly, Yang-ming’s nousology eliminates the difference between “ethics of scholarly people” and “ethics of ordinary people.” In the early traditional society, scholarly people and ordinary people had clear class boundary but in the Ming Dynasty, a large number of scholars

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could not be officials, and even had an ambiguous boundary with businessmen (Yu Dehui 2011). Wang Yang-ming once criticized the readers for indulging in the imperial examinations, and believed that “scholars are noble and businessmen are humble” in their concepts just to satisfy their own desires. On the contrary, if “scholars, peasants, workers, and businessmen” are able to “do their best” in their own professions; “scholars govern the country relying on their self-cultivation, farmers feed their families relying on the farming tools, workers earn to survive relying on their capabilities, and businessmen make transactions relying on goods,” all of them “work hard on their positions,” so the “morality” they follow is actually the same (Hwang Kwang-Kuo 2015: 442–443). Wang Yangming followed this concept in his own educational practice: his students contained both government officials and the underlying ordinary people, and Yang Ming treated them equally. Therefore, it can be said that in Yang-ming’s nousology, the boundary between “ethics of scholarly people” and “ethics of ordinary people” is not divided by social class. Although the two are confused at the social level, but are hierarchical in the spiritual level, as long as who has a “ambition of sanctification,” he can practice the “ethics of scholarly people” of “sanctification,” which means that “everyone is equal before the sanctification.” (2) Consultation relationship of “foresight” inspiring “hindsight”: since “everyone is equal before the sanctification,” it means that any person concerned is equal and the consultant and the person concerned are equal, but it is not a quantitative equality. Based on its individualistic tradition, Western philosophy emphasizes its quantitative equality in philosophical consultation: “a real philosophical dialogue requires not only that both parties are equal, but also that they are equal in terms of the weight of their opinions” (Prins-Bakker Anette 1995: 136–137). The consultants need to fully take care of the feelings of the person concerned, but the wisdom consultation requires them to pay more attention to the relationship with the person concerned to form a co-construction relationship of self-surpassing and blending of subject and object (I–you). In this kind of relationship of blending of subject and object, there is no need to specifically quantify each other’s equality, but to form a communion in the context of the current dialogue. For example, the person concerned raises the confusion of life, and the consultant lays out the dialogue according to the problem; under the guidance of the consultant, the person concerned puts the consultant’s advice into his/her own life situation to judge seriousness; if the person concerned and the consultant

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think that the core of the problem has been found, even the problem has been answered at the tacit point, then it means that they complete the blending of subject and object. From the perspective of Yang-ming’s nousology, this is also the relationship of “foresight” and “hindsight”: “Yin Yi said, ‘The creation of the people is to enable those who know what’s what earlier to awaken those who know what’s what later, and enable those who grasp the truth earlier to awaken those who grasp the truth later; I belong to the people who grasp the truth earlier, so I should use this principles to awaken people, isn’t there anyone else?’” (Wang Yang-ming 2011: 895). “Sight” represents the spiritual awakening of the person concerned after the inspiration and guidance of the consultant. In the state of “self-emptying” and “blending,” both parties jointly “study” the problem of the person concerned, the solving of the problem is the completion of “completeness” for each other. (3) Consultation method of “reality” opposite to “presentation”: the existing historical documents record a large number of dialogue situations between Wang Yang-ming and other people, all of which are directly discussing the topic of inwardness, so it is of great significance of psychological consultation. These dialogues show that Wang Yang-ming is good at guiding people to understand the inwardness in specific life situations and details, that is, “see the forest from trees.” Sometimes, the “presentation” is directly torn to reveal the “reality” to make the person concerned immediately enlightened; sometimes, the essence is revealed through layers of questioning. For example, the following is an excerpt from the official case of Xue Kan Weeds recorded in Instructions for Practical Living: Xue kan weeded the flowers and sighed: “Why is it the good in the world can be well cultivated and evil hard to be removed?” Yangming answered: “When creating all things, the Heaven treated flowers and glass equally, where is the difference between good and evil? If you want to appreciate flowers, so treat flowers as good and grass as evil; if you need the grass, then you treat the grass as good; the good and evil are generated from your heart.” Xue Kan asked: “Is there no difference between good and evil in the world?” Yang-ming answered: “Neither good nor evil in mind, is the rest energy of rationality; have good and evil in mind, is the release of your emotion. When you control your emotion, then you reach the highest good.” Xue Kan asked: “Buddhism also has a saying of ‘neither good nor evil’, how is it different from that of Confucianism?” Yang-ming answered: “For neither good nor evil, Buddhists believe that they should do nothing, so they cannot govern the country,

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while Confucianists only chooses to meet the needs of things, and does not specifically think about doing good things or doing bad things.” Xue Kan asked: “Since grass is not evil, then it should not be removed.” Yangming answered: “This returns to the thought of Buddhist that if the grass is obstructive, why not remove it?” Xue Kan asked: “Isn’t that to do a bad thing?” Yang-ming answered: “The difference between good and evil is not in appearance, but in principles. You only need to follow the original principles to do things, no need to care about the appearance.” Xue Kan asked: “Why dose weeding follow the original principles, not persist in the good and evil attached to the appearance?” Yang-ming answered: “Grass is a hindrance to you at this time, and it should be weeded in the original principles, but you shouldn’t keep in mind after weeding it; if you always think about whether is it right to remove it, then you release your emotion.”

4.4

Conclusion: Two Directions of Philosophical Speculation and Self-Cultivation

This paper explains the application of Yang-ming’s nousology’s philosophical connotations in the field of “psychological consultation,” and emphasizes the two directions of philosophical speculation and mind cultivation: in the development of neo-confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties, there is a school of Chen and Zhu who highly promoted the “focusing on knowledge” and a school of Lu and Wang who highly promoted the “treasuring innate virtues.” Wisdom consultation mainly integrates the self-cultivation theory of Yang-ming’s nousology, and also emphasizes the importance of knowledge and speculation, which not only include knowledge accumulation, but the speculative method of Western philosophy emphasizing the opposition of subject and object. In the specific wisdom consultation practice, the time of each consultation is limited to 1.5 hours (mainly measuring the integrity of the conversation); the consultant needs to determine, based on the situation of the person concerned, whether the problem of the person concerned needs to be clarified at the level of logic and speculation or to lead the person concerned to understand the nous (self) through the efforts of selfcultivation, thus initiating the internal kinetic energy of the self-healing of the person concerned. The core of Chinese traditional Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism is self-cultivation; to open the self-awareness of individuals through the cultivation of mind will allow people to choose

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the right part from a mass of theories and thoughts. There is no tradition of pursuing truth in Chinese culture, and more is the wisdom of “harmonious practice,” so at the ultimate level, Chinese people pursue “wisdom,” not rational knowledge. The Chinese society, which is dominated by the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, has high expectations for economic development. However, in the presentation of material prosperity, the Chinese people are generally psychologically subject to tremendous repression and sacrifice. Observing the current society, there are more and more social problems and even crimes that come from the problems of human life, which, in fact, are the evil consequence we are bearing from only focusing on economy not on the humanity. The crux of many social chaos in the Chinese society is that the human spirit has no way out. Our vision for developing wisdom consultation ultimately aims to heal the lives of Chinese people who are generally traumatized in the cultural context, and its research results are of unparalleled significance for both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

References Chen, Fu. 2016a. Hwang Kwang-Kuo problem: How to unhitch the Gordian Knot for Chinese culture. Indigenous Psychological Research 46: 73–110. Chen, Fu. 2016b. Discussion on the transformation of the Hinge of Chinese culture: From the ghosts-gods beliefs of Shang Dynasty to the humanistic spirit of Zhou Dynasty. Guizhou Culture and History 4: 32–40. Chen, Fu. 2019. The concept and practice of wisdom consultation: Inspiration of Yang-ming’s nousology for psychological consultation. Journal of Guiyang Teacher’s College 3: 7–15. Hwang, Kwang-Kuo. 2015. Do your best with Conscience: Break Weber’s Maze. Taipei: Psychology Press. Prins-Bakker, Anette. 1995. Philosophy in marriage counseling, essays on philosophical counseling. Boston: University Press of America. Wang, Yang-ming. 2011. Nousology: Development of Chinese id psychology. Indigenous Psychological Research 15: 271–303. Yu Dehui. 2011. Fourteen lessons of living with death. Beijing: China Chang’an Publishing House. Zhu, Xi. 2016. Chapter and sentence variorum of The Four Books. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company.

CHAPTER 5

The Solution for Hwang Kwang-Kuo Problem: Constructing the Theoretical Basis of Chinese Indigenous Social Science Chen Fu

5.1

How to Define Hwang Kwang-Kuo Problem

One hundred and sixty years ago, Chinese society was bullied by Western powers, and Chinese intellectuals ignited a strong desire to save the country. Scholars at that time generally believed that if they wanted to completely eliminate malady in Chinese politics and society, they must use Western culture to oppose traditional Chinese culture. From then on, China began the era of wholesale westernization. Wholesale westernization means Chinese losing the subjectivity of Chinese culture and learning from Western culture in all aspects. When Chinese no longer believe in their traditional academics, they can no longer take root vertically from

C. Fu (B) General Education Center, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_5

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Chinese culture, but transplant horizontally from Western culture. This phenomenon has turned Chinese scholars engaged in academic work into writing papers instead of doing research, and academics have become increasingly superficial. When the government of the Republic of China moved to Taiwan in 1949, a large number of intellectuals with scientism ideology came to Taiwan, also profoundly affecting the development of Taiwan’ s psychology. For example, Hu Shi, the ancestor of the “wholesale westernization”, profoundly led and influenced the academic thoughts of the Chinese, and kept on talking about the scientific spirit and scientific methods from the perspective of positivism after he coming to Taiwan. His main point was ultimately only a simple slogan of “providing evidence”, and its influence on Taiwanese psychology became what Hwang Kwang-Kuo calls “native-positivism” with only “real evidence” and no “logic”, that is, it only uses foreign research tools to translate scales and questionnaire into Chinese, and tests the reliability and validity of a very subtle phenomenon to obtain a trivial conclusion of “no cognitive significance”, without theoretical framework and logical thinking process, let alone facing the society and solving the problems it faced (Hwang Kwang-Kuo 2011: 112–119). Scholars in Taiwan’s academic circles have long noticed this problem and set out to construct “Chinese indigenous psychology”, looking forward to changing the dilemma of indigenous psychology. Professor Hwang Kwang-Kuo is also a giant in the field of indigenous psychology, and his important contribution to indigenous psychology is that he refers to the deep structure of common human psychology contained in this universal psychology as “relationalism”. Hwang Kwang-Kuo hopes to, using Confucianism as the main body, integrating the three religions and absorbing the essence of Western social sciences, expand the dimension of “interaction Between China and the West” in the new concept interpretation, reshape the academic tradition of “Confucian humanism”, and construct the Confucian values with “universality” into a formal theory, that is, constructing the “Culture-inclusive Theory” from the perspective of multiple philosophical paradigms. Based on this concept, Professor Hwang Kwang-Kuo has proposed the famous “mandala model of self” and “theoretical model of Face and Favor”. However, Hwang KwangKuo’s theories have serious problems: (1) the mandala model of self contains only the social “ego”, but lack of the “self” in the meaning of Chinese culture; (2) the theoretical model of Face and Favor prefers “interest relationalism” rather than “moral relationalism”.

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The above problems exposed the contradiction between the theoretical model constructed by Hwang Kwang-Kuo and his consistent academic propositions. Hwang Kwang-Kuo advocates reshaping the academic tradition of “Confucian humanism”, but he does not have enough in-depth understanding of the core spirit of Confucianism. Throughout history, Confucianism declined from the Eastern Han Dynasty because of its self-styled Confucian classics. Until the Tang Dynasty, it still had only social significance and no ultimacy significance, making the decline of Confucianism more and more serious. During the Song and Ming Dynasties, neo-Confucianism revived; Zhou Dunyi, the first ancestor of the Northern Song Dynasty, first merged the two thoughts of Buddhism and Taoism to propose the ultimate meaning of Confucianism about heavenly principles and the will of the people, then Chen Hao and Chen Yi deepened it, and until the Southern Song Dynasty proposed the neo-Confucianism, thus finally establishing the high-minded meaning of Confucianism, which made Confucianism prosper. The essence of Confucianism is the practice of cultivation of mind based on the tradition of Chinese culture “unity heaven and humans”. In my opinion, the crux of this problem lies in Hwang Kwang-Kuo’s profound knowledge of “Western learning”, which made him unable to get rid of “the frame of Western learning” to face up to the most important characteristics of Chinese thought in the process of transforming Chinese and Western learning and creating Chinese indigenous social science, but continued to construct his theory with the thinking mode of “opposition of heaven and man”. Hwang Kwang-Kuo can’t completely accept the idea that Chinese culture has the concept of “unity of heaven and humans”, and constructs corresponding theories from it. He does not know that Chinese thought is different from Western thought, that “heaven” has never been “far away” from “man” and is not “unreachable”. “Man” and “heaven” have a natural spirit of flowing and communicating with each other, there is an intersubjectivity of “man and heaven constitute the main body” between them, and the “ego” and “relation” of life developed by this intersubjectivity are obviously different from the western culture. Therefore, Hwang Kwang-Kuo agrees with the concept that the “heaven” is unknowable, and “lateral uses” it into Chinese ideology and culture, making his “realism” in the “constructive realism” that he has long advocated is also unknown. If the “realism” in Chinese culture is also

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unknowable, then the “enlightenment” and “sanctification” in Confucianism are out of the question. It is a paradox for Hwang Kwang-Kuo to construct Chinese indigenous social science without accepting the essence of Chinese thought, which I call “Hwang Kwang-Kuo Problem”. Hwang Kwang-Kuo’s interpretation of self is confined to social meaning, and he interpreted Confucianism from the perspective of interests, he failed to see the unique nousism and kungfuism that exist in Confucianism. Moreover, we should solve this problem in order to promote the Chinese indigenous social science to complete its modernization milestone.

5.2 The Positioning of Chinese Learning and Western Learning In addition, if Hwang Kwang-Kuo wants to expand the dimension of “Chinese learning as the essence; western learning as the application”, he should first understand its connotation. When I wanted to understand the “the view of foundation and consolidation” in Hwang Kwang-Kuo’s thought, I repeatedly ask Huang Kwang-Kuo what the “essence” in “Chinese learning as the essence” refers to, and he said, “The ‘essence’ refers to the ‘inherent ethics and morals of China’, because everything can be lateral used through the process of westernization, and only ethics and morals can not be lateral used finally”. This makes the view of essence and consolidation a major proposition in the Hwang KwangKuo Problem, where I reserve different opinions. If the “essence” means “inherent ethics and morals of China”, but the “ethics and morals” are not changeless, and are adjusted constantly according to different space–time background. I think if we consider the viewpoint of “Chinese learning as the essence; western learning as the application” from a higher perspective, then the “essence” can only be Nous. Western culture has a tradition of believing in God, and the use of science to explore truth comes from the exploration of God. Chinese culture does not have the tradition of believing in God, and since the Western Zhou Dynasty, it has turned “God” into “heaven” and rationalized its meaning. From the preQin period to the late Ming Dynasty, although ideologists have always had different opinions, the main core viewpoints are only the other claims of the Self. The Nous that I am talking about here is the Self, which means beyond the true face of the Ego. Everyone’s Ego is often obscured by various material desires, which makes Ego subject to worldly pollution; if measures can be taken to prevent Ego from being polluted by the world,

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keeping it quiet, then the essential Self can be obtained after getting rid of the external fame and fortune. At present, mainland China is working hard to carry out the “reversed engineering”, which is to disassemble the original things according to the rigorous procedures, actually experiences the acquired knowledge through the embody in the process of observation, then assembles it back to its original state step by step, and finally through the improvement of key points, it becomes a more advanced research and development achievement. If the researchers themselves do not have self-cultivation and strong belief of governing and benefiting the people, even up to ardent practice, can they create such a huge breakthrough? This is what Mencius·Kao-tzu puts forward the “maintain a strong will even if the heart is impacted, and ultimately strengthen the ability” for the topic of “Heaven will give somebody an important mission” (complied by Xie Bingying et al. 2002: 599). This shows that after carrying out the reform and opening-up policy after deep consideration after the 40 years of the Great Cultural Revolution, mainland China feels that it can no longer be separated from the maternal nourishment of Chinese culture. However, the wave of revival of literature and art, which has sprung up in various fields of society, cannot be easily understood from the perspective of nationalism. Therefore, when we conceive a scientific philosophy that reflects the consolidation and foundation relations, we should create a scientific philosophy system of “interaction of benevolent and wise” (which is not only a kind of epistemological system, but also a kind of methodological system), letting “the benevolent see benevolence and the wise see wisdom”. The transformation of Western culture’s ontology should include the consolidation and foundation relations of Chinese culture, so that Nous develops the corresponding “cognitive mind” to engage in scientific research, and can not just think about academic issues by bluntly copying its philosophy of science to Chinese society and believe that the Chinese indigenous social science of the interaction Between China and the West has been completed. After all, it is still a fundamental proposition that which “using Western to transform Chinese” or “using Chinese to transform Western” is the main body. If this problem is not precisely grasped, then “Chinese tradition as foundation, and Western science and technology as consolidation” is tantamount to the slogan without implementation, that is, “Chinese foundation” and “Western consolidation” cannot obtain deep links, let alone construct Chinese independent academics. This is what I want to propose that to

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construct the micro world of Nous with the method of philosophy of science to correspond to the daily life world; to apply the micro world of Nous with the practice of philosophy of science to influence the daily life world; both of which form a two-way virtuous circle through the philosophy of science, which is the deep meaning in response the “gentleman’s doctrines” described in The Book of Changes·Copulative. This can be more clearly understood through Fig. 5.1. Some people may have this doubt: does the author not understand the meaning of “philosophy of science” and confuse it with the concepts of “science” and “philosophy”? “Philosophy of science” is a philosophy rather than a science, and in the field of “philosophy of science”, there is no “method of philosophy of science”, even “practice of philosophy of science” (unless regarding the research on “philosophy of science” as the “practice of philosophy of science”). Science encompasses “scientific methods” and the term “scientific practice” usually refers to scientific research. I would like to point out that the research orientation or

Fig. 5.1 Structure diagram of “Chinese learning as the essence; western learning as the application” (adapted and modified from Chen Fu 2019)

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research paradigm of philosophy of science is regarded as a methodology that is exactly the point raised by Hwang Kwang-Kuo (he regards it as the “world view” of Western philosophy of science co-constructed in “ontology”, “theory of knowledge” and “methodology”). (Hwang Kwang-Kuo 2018: 10–13). I only disagree to continue to use “ontology” and continue the path of philosophy at the application level along with the latter two. Based on this path structure, even military, astronomy, industry, engineering technology and even the political and religious system are influenced by Western culture, and are presented in the daily life of the Chinese people, which can be regarded as nourishment in the vision of interaction Between China and the West and is good for our modern civilized life. However, we need to be more clear that in spiritual thinking, do we have the consciousness of Nous (the Self), face and practice our own life with a self-cultivation attitude, not to be ingested by material desires so that we can govern and benefit the people at work, making the life full of meaning? After all, the current social issues require us to take a more serious view of the impact of globalization on climate change. If this can be done, then “Western as consolidation” or “Chinese as foundation” is no longer a contradictory proposition, or even “Western as consolidation” can be transformed into “Chinese as consolidation” under the influence of Chinese as foundation. For example, instruments from the Western Regions such as Erhu and Dulcimer can be integrated into Chinese music to enrich the Chinese music. When we grasp this core perspective to discuss the issues of Chinese and western ontology, we can resolve the differences between them. Therefore, the “essence” of “Chinese learning as the essence” can only be “the Nous”, and I propose the “nousism” based on this concept. Different from idealism and materialism, Chinese thought has a core claim about inner world of human. This claim develops various philosophical ideas in China. These ideas have the same point in that they recognize the nous and believe that the nous is active. What is “Nous”? Nous means the inner world of human mind. It makes a person have accurate judgment and practical ability. Although Chinese thinkers have different metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, pedagogy and political opinions. They believe as the inner world, its content will affect the external world and form a mutual relationship. Hwang Kwang-Kuo’s interpretation of self is confined to social meaning, and he interpreted Confucianism from the perspective of interests, he failed to see the unique nousism and kungfuism that exist in Confucianism. “Kungfuism” means that Chinese

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thinkers pay great attention to how to work to be one with the Nous. It is a skill to help people understand the nature of the universe and obtain peaceful mind from it. This made Chinese thought develop a realism that is completely different from idealism and materialism. For Chinese thought, the controversy between idealism and materialism is meaningless, because the origin of the universe is not in ideal and material, but in the Nous. It has much value to talk about with the views of quantum mechanics from the twentieth century till now. It is a long research tradition and thinking style, so that I use “nousism” to call the study of the inner world of human mind. Put another way, the word expression of “Nous” is “the spirit as the entity”, which is the ultimate reality. The sages of Confucianism in different periods have different titles for this, such as benevolence’s “benevolence”, Mencius’s “good in nature”, Zhou Dunyi’s “integrity”, Lu Jiu-yuan’s “Inventing the original mind”, and Wang Yang-ming’s “conscience”. The reality links the two ends of “heaven” and “humans”, so the discussion of the opposition between subject and object can be carried out from the research level, and the practice of the integration of the subject and object can be carried out from the level of self-cultivation. In this kind of experience, the feeling of communication between the individual and the universe can only be understood when the Self is realized. At this time, there is no limit from the heaven to the man. This is the actual experience of “unity heaven and humans”. “Human” is the source of the creation of intersubjectivity co-constructed with “heaven”. This source is the spiritual entity. Only this can reflect the humanistic spirit of Confucianism that has always been oriented toward the Tao of heaven, and it is the true academic tradition of “Confucian humanism”. If we think about realism from this broad perspective, we can use the substantive connotation worthy of reference in constructive realism and critical realism as a supplement to the new realism thought, and no longer subject to the original concept, so as to truly implement the vision of “Chinese learning as the essence; western learning as the application”.

5.3

The Nousism to Construct the “Paradigm Structure”

I propose a new “double realism” from the perspective of the nousism to construct the “paradigm structure” of “multiple philosophical paradigms”. This dual realism is the “interactedrealism” of interaction

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and mutual influence, both from the nousism of Chinese thought. I hope to focus on the dialogue between the two-way co-construction subject of “heaven” and “humans” from the perspective of “transcendental argumentation” to explain how Nous acts as the reality. The first is “spirical realism”, which is internal realism, that is, confirm the existence of reality from the inner mind and body. We hope to infer the structure of “variation” and “invariability” from happened phenomena, and its argument for “reality” is as follows: (1) the instantness of reality: when the human spirit is conscious of reality, the reality exists in the moment when people get the current mental state during the birth and death of each consciousness, the longer the consciousness lasts, the longer the reality; (2) the permanence of reality: the spirit of reality itself is an eternal existence, human beings are willing to carry out various verification or practice on reality, and the human spirit hopes to eventually acquire the reality itself. The next is “historicalrealism”, external realism, that is, to confirm the existence of reality from external phenomena. We also hope to infer the structure of “variation” and “invariability” from happened phenomena, and its argument for “reality” is as follows: (1) the instantness of reality: people from different backgrounds have discussed the meaning of reality, and the reality exists persistently at the moment of each discussion when the discussion of these language constructions has not been cut off; (2) the permanence of reality: the human symbol recording tool constantly records various representations of reality, and the record itself makes the forms of symbols used by reality eternally spread, thus making the reality persists. Spiritual realism focuses on the “spatiality of reality”, and human beings’ consciousness of the spirit generates the sense of space of reality. Historical realism focuses on the “timeliness of reality”, and human beings’ record of language produces a sense of time in reality, both from a common ultimate philosophy. If a person does not have a spirit entity, not only the spiritual realism and the historical realism will have no basis for existence, but the reality itself cannot exist without spirit, so “Nous is the reality”. This can respond to the words in the 32nd section of History of the Han Dynasty·Sima Qian Biography quoted from A letter to Ren An of Sima Qian: “I hope to explore the relationship between the heaven and man, to understand the changes from ancient times to the present, thus forming my own theory” (Ban Gu and Yan Shigu 2002: 2375). Spiritual realism is to “explore the relationship between heaven and man”, that is, to explore how the spirits are connected in the universal; historical

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realism is to “understand the changes of the past and the present”, that is, to explore how the history of the human world is connected; the roots of the connections are all from reality. Conforming to the reality, it will return to the “normal situation”, and it will flourish from the individual to the whole society; not conforming to the reality, it will enter a “turbulent situation”, and it will be dispelled from the individual to the whole society. Only by first acknowledging “the scope of reality”, can we recognize “the scope of truth”. Although reality itself has the meaning of “heaven” and exists independently beyond “humans”, everyone has spirit in life, making “the Ego” destined to be “the co-construction subject of heaven and humans”. Please see the Fig. 5.2. This is “the realism rooted on the tradition”, the dotted line between spiritual realism and historical realism means that the two complement each other and jointly construct space and time complete the “reality” that “heaven” and “humans” originate and belong to. This is a meaningful interpretation of “Nous is reality”. The biggest feature of the above figure is that the “life world” no longer needs any realism as a bridge to communicate with the “micro world”. Life world comes from the Nous, and directly selects corresponding micro world in practice

Fig. 5.2 Schematic diagram of “interactedrealism’s research method” (adapted and modified from Chen Fu 2018)

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to interpret the understanding of Nous through the verification (practice) of “the scope of reality”, “the scope of truth” and “the scope of fact” of spiritual realism and historical realism, which can go back to the three principles of authenticity and unperturbedness Chao Chin-Chi, Chen Fu 2011a: 3–28) mentioned in the previous paper. In daily life, individuals should follow the three principles of “expressing your feelings with all your heart”, “using everything appropriately” and “attitude must be reasonable”. The spiritual state of these three principles in life is the “authenticity and unperturbedness” that Chao Chin-Chi first referred to (Chao Chin-Chi 2011b: 220). From “the scope of reality” to “the scope of truth”, then to “the scope of fact”, and constantly examination through these three principles, it can be said that this process is “the process of authenticity and unperturbedness” and also the process of Confucian sanctification. This figure no longer specifically marks the critical realism emphasized by Hwang Kwang-Kuo, mainly because spiritual realism and historical realism have integrated the three scopes of transcendental argument into themselves. For example, Zengzi’s mother heard somebody calling “Zeng Shen killed a person”, and misunderstood that it was true, so she got rid of the weaving shuttle to escape from the wall, which was “the scope of fact” she received from others. However, based on “the scope of truth”, there were two people having the same name “Zeng Shen”, one of them killed somebody, but not the Zengzi who was known as “Zongsheng”; unfortunately, his mother escaped for hearing three times of “Zeng Shen killed a person”, creating the event that escape by mishearing rumor. Based on “the scope of reality”, “Zeng Shen killed a person” did happen, but this Zeng Shen was another man with the same name, and if the mother clarified the truth and judged the fact based on her understanding of her son’s calm spirit, then she would not have the recognition of “my son killed somebody”, and even escape. Zengzi’s mother could not truly recognize the facts in the face of the confusing phenomenon, and shook her consistent understanding of her son; obviously, the truth she obtained did not come from the spirit of “co-construction subject of heaven and humans”, which ultimately made her recognition and the fact are irrelevant to the scope of reality. Another example, “Yang-ming killed persons” is a case that I have been thinking about: Wang Yang-ming is a unique thinker and strategist of the Ming Dynasty (Chen Fu 2012), and constantly eliminated bandits from inside and outside the country. The war itself has to kill, so “Yang-ming

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killed persons” is a matter of fact, but this incident comes from his longcherished wish to defend the country; this long-cherished wish colliding with the object—bandits—makes him need to kill. This long-cherished wish and the object jointly construct the scope of truth of “Yang-ming killed persons”. Therefore, he not only eliminated the bandits at home and abroad, but also the bandits inside and outside his heart. Every life practice came from his lifetime deep recognition and dynamic interpretation of nousology, making “Yang-ming killed persons” to be the scope of reality of co-construction subject of heaven and humans, which is in line with his proposition of “the unity of knowing and doing” (both knowledge and action come from Nous). Before his death, he said leisurely, “I have perfectly opened in all my actions, so I have no regrets” (Wang Yangming 1995: 1324), which was the natural expression of his Nous. “Zeng Shen killed a person” and “Yang-ming killed persons” has the same superficial phenomenon but completely different inside phenomenon; only by examining the scope of reality can we have a deep understanding of the scope of truth and the scope of fact. Hwang needs to first solve its plight before he can solve his problem. Hwang Kwang-Kuo is a master of Chinese indigenous social science, and has an indelible historical contribution to the theoretical development of this field. However, in his attempt to integrate various concepts, he has not yet solved the two major dilemmas “Interaction Between China and the West” and “Interaction of Confucianism and Buddhism”, unwittingly making the settlement of the “Hwang Kwang-Kuo Problem” fall into the puzzle. We should absorb and modify the essence of constructive realism and critical realism, develop spiritual realism and historical realism from the perspective of Nous, and carry out the corresponding philosophy of science to face the life world, so as to complete the philosophical connotations of “Interaction Between China and the West” and “Interaction of Confucianism and Buddhism”, maturely develop the inherent Chinese social science with the Chinese intellectual nature, and let Confucian psychology gain the opportunity to complete the integration of theory and application. If Westerners want to talk with Chinese, it is necessary for Westerners to understand the focus of Chinese attention when they think about any issue. In my opinion, the construction of nousism will be able to propose effective solutions to the “Hwang Kwang-Kuo Problem”, and will give the Chinese indigenous social science a strong foundation. That is why I wrote this Scholarly paper.

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References Ban, Gu (author), and Yan Shigu (annotator). 2002. History of the Han Dynasty. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company. Chao, Chin-Chi (interviewee), Cheng-fan (Chen Fu) Chen (interviewer). 2011a. Chao Chin-Chi’s memoirs. Taipei: National Taiwan Normal University Science Education Center. Chao, Chin-Chi. 2011b. Chao Chin-Chi’s science and education collection (I). Taipei: National Taiwan Normal University Science Education Center. Chen, Fu. 2012. Wang Yang-ming’s interpretation and practice of the meaning of life. Research of Life Education 4 (1): 27–54. Chen, Fu. 2018. Confucian psychology: Maze and breakthrough confronted by Hwang Kwang-Kuo problem. Indigenous Psychological Research in Chinese Societies 49, 3–36. Chen, Fu. 2019. TIyong concept of Hwang Kwang-Kuo problem: Resolving the differences between Chinese and western’s ontology. Philosophy and Culture 46 (10): 29–48. Hwang, Kwang-Kuo. 2011. Scientific revolutionary program for psychology. Taipei: Psychology Press. Hwang, Kwang-Kuo. 2018. The logic of social science (Fourth Edition of CAPASUS). Taipei: Psychology Press. Wang, Yang-ming. 1995. Wang Yang-ming collection. Shanghai: Shanghai Chinese Classics Publishing House. Xie, Bing-ying, Yany-uan Lai, Xie-you Qiu, Zheng-hao Liu, Li Xian and Manming Chen. Compiling. 2002. Textbook of The Four Books. Taipei: San Min Book Co. Ltd.

PART II

Social Theorizing in Contemporary Taiwan: Glimpses from Some Contemporary Movements and Socio-cultural Initiatives

CHAPTER 6

The Social Transformation from Labor Movement to Political Movement—The Praxis of Committee for Action of Labor Legislation and People’s Democratic Political Movement Yen-Tang Ho, Tseun-Chyi Jeng, and Lin-Ching Hsia

6.1 Introduction: The Praxis Approach in Political Activism---Its Origin and Context Taiwan, at the end of the 1940s, witnessed the defeat of the China Nationalist Party (KMT) from mainland China and its retreat to the island of Taiwan, as well as the party’s human rights violation, and oppression of

Y.-T. Ho (B) Department of Social Work, School of Law, Minnan Normal University, Fujian, China e-mail: [email protected] T.-C. Jeng People’s Democratic Party, Taipei, Taiwan

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_6

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the Taiwanese people. The most notorious was the ‘228 Event’1 and its reign of White Terror,2 as the party ruled Taiwan under martial law. The KMT military dictatorship had shrouded Taiwan behind the iron curtain of the Cold War. Taiwan then was a lonely island. The KMT government was swift to suppress any sign of dissent or rebellion. Consequently, no progressive idea nor radical thinking could reach the Taiwanese people, particularly leftist ideologies, such as socialism. Ideas of Karl Marx and Marxism were absolute taboos. Fast forward to 1980s’ Taiwan. It was a watershed as martial law was lifted. Jeng Tsuen-Chyi (鄭村棋, hereafter, Jeng),3 whom the first author of this paper has interviewed at length,4 and Hsia, Lin-Ching (夏林清, third author) were born and grew up in Taiwan. They became active members of Taiwan’s political and social movements due to their profound dissatisfaction and strong critique of KMT’s authoritarian rule. They were conscientized by Dangwai (黨外, the predecessor of the Democratic People’s Party, DPP), which led the liberal movement of right-wing democratization. Professionally, Jeng and Hsia were unique in their time. They were trained psychology counselors, a minority in Taiwan then. Their training helps them grasp the unique methodology of self-transformation through activism, and in turn, transformation of inter-personal, as well as group dynamics. From then on, they began to reach out to big and small groups, as well as organizations. Subsequently, they began to develop and systematize their unique methods of working with activist groups and political movements. Their intervention is based on the alternative, progressive philosophy of democratic emancipation that originated from the West between 1950 and 1960. In addition, they were inspired by, and they identify with the ideology and theories that are most suppressed and persecuted in Taiwan, i.e. Marxism. Their commitment to radical transformation of Taiwanese society and politics determines their unique perspective, approach, organizing methods and praxis, within the labor, social and political movements of a democratizing Taiwan. Jeng and Hsia are critical of KMT’s hypocrisy, for its rhetoric of democracy and totalitarian rule. They were also critical of the contradictions of

L.-C. Hsia Faculty of Psychology and Education, Sichuan University of Culture and Arts, Sichuan, China

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Dangwai activists active in the 1980s, in terms of their personal and organizational behavior. The inability of the opposition forces to practice what they preach was problematic. Jeng and Hsia are inspired by, and dream of a left-wing revolution in Taiwan that will bring true democracy to its people. However, rabid proliferation of anti-communist education and difficulty in accessing progressive information and material from abroad, had ruptured every possible connection with leftist influences of both the West and mainland China. Given the impossibility of learning from others’ experiences of actualizing socialism, Jeng and Hsia were keen to pioneer an emancipatory alternative to capitalism that will eventually lead to socialism for Taiwan. Their approach is to transform social and political structures through praxis, which is rooted in Taiwan’s social movements so that activists can emancipate not only themselves but also others, and organizationally as well. With this in mind, they contextualize their professional training within the socio-political realities of Taiwan to create a pathway for social movements’ activism that is radically different from existing ones. It is a pathway that truly liberates one’s mind, body, spirit and the communities at large. Their praxis aims to radicalize Taiwan’s social movements from within and without, ranging from the labor movement to movements of women, educational reform and sex workers. Their organizing methodology and praxis are based on the principle of ‘personal is political’. Hence, their techniques emphasize both personal transformation and political emancipation, as well as systemic/structural changes. Given the rupture in Taiwan’s left-wing tradition within social and political movements as a result of KMT rule, the organizing method and techniques, as well as the social-political praxis applied by Jeng, as a leader of the labor movement, is based on his understanding of western, capitalist/liberal democracy, combined with his training in psychological therapy, group dynamics and action-research. His praxis illuminates the Marxist principle of human emancipation through social justice based on class consciousness. He has through his decades of organizing, agitation and activism found a way to amalgamize radical theories with practice that empower the marginalized and the vulnerable in Taiwanese society.

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6.2 The Experimentation of Grassroots’ Democracy in the China Times Trade Union---Devolution of Power, Collective Discussion and Self-Responsibility In 1980s’ Taiwan, the KMT regime came under relentless attack by the Dangwai movement, an opposition force that similarly represented the interests of the capitalist class. Nonetheless, the space for activism gradually opened up and gave rise to a burgeoning labor movement. This labor movement, which emerged soon after martial law was lifted, tended to focus on ‘bread-and-butter’ issues of the workers. The movement hardly raised political demands. The Taiwanese labor movement then had prioritized the implementation of Taiwan’s new labor law—Labor Standards Act,5 aimed to protect workers’ legal rights, such as protection against non-payment of overtime work, legal guarantee of year-end bonuses, etc. At the same time, efforts were made by the labor movement to democratize trade unions by taking over ‘yellow’ unions that were previously controlled by the KMT. Where this was not possible, new trade unions were established (Ho Shut-Ying 1992). During this period, there were attempts from the left to form a Labor Party, to allow workers’ leaders to quickly position themselves for taking over political power through popular election. Jeng was involved in its formation and as a reporter on labor issues, he was actively publicizing the party’s development. However, given that the Taiwanese working class was only interested in economic demands and was hardly political, the Workers’ Party had suffered from lack of grassroots support. Consequently, the party went into a decline and eventually, dissipated. According to Jeng, it was premature to form a working-class political party at that time. He also realized that he had to begin from labor education to expand and strengthen the working-class base, if a workers’ party were to politically challenge the ruling elite. When Jeng joined China Times Daily as a reporter on labor issues, he consistently highlighted the emerging workers’ movement in his writing. Eventually, he became very involved in the formation of press unions and as a result, he was fired. From then on, he became a full-fledged labor leader. In April 1988, the owner of China Times Daily had instructed the management to form a trade union.6 To prevent the union’s autonomy from being compromised, Jeng, Wu Young-Yi and Chang Yu-Ching (吳 永毅及張玉琴), who were the Daily’s reporters then, began to mobilize

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typesetters and workers of the printing press to form a house/company trade union. When the owner of the newspaper got wind of it, it responded by leading a competing group of staff to do the same. It was a challenging time that lasted for seven months as the workers and management competed for control of the trade union. Even though the union was successfully established, it was eventually crushed by the management. The management had to give in to the workers’ demand to form a union, after an intense ‘slow-down’ campaign organized at the workplace in June 1988. It then took another three months before the union was established. However, the management immediately retaliated by dismissing the three reporters who had initiated the struggle. This had triggered another round of confrontation between the management and the union, which led to the workers’ struggle that took place between September and October of the same year (Hsia Lin-Ching 1993). 6.2.1 The Crocodile Tears of the ‘Little Boss’: Entrapment—formation of Union Saw the Escalation of Employer–Employee Conflict to Labor–Capital Confrontation 1988, as Taiwan’s autonomous workers’ movement was growing from strength to strength, the fight for forming a union at China Times Daily was an act of resistance by the workers against the management and owner. Even after the union was formed against all odds, the management tried to sow divisions among its members to weaken and suppress the union. Hence, the union had no choice but to mobilize another round of struggle to safeguard its rights. During the struggle, the workers resisted management control. It was a fight for union autonomy within the context of how production relations, and the relation between labor (employees) and capital (employers) was evolving in post-martial law Taiwan. During the fight to form the union, the CEO of China Times Daily, Mr. Y, gate-crashed an assembly of 250 workers. He is the heir of the newspaper’s founder, so the workers had nicknamed him, the ‘Little Boss’. His sudden appearance changed the dynamics instantly and led to the episode described below: The workers were used to listening to the management and Mr. Y had seized upon the opportunity to dominate the floor. His three main points were firstly, he was supportive of establishing a union so he would

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refrain from interfering in the union’s work. Secondly, the union had his full support. Then he quickly praised the proposal put forward by union organizers representing the management, which was to allow the management to become union members and that, he could not understand why the workers were resistant to the idea. To reiterate his point, the ‘Little Boss’ narrated his experience of growing up in the factory, and his affinity and familiarity with the workers, especially the senior ones. He insisted that there was no conflict between the management and the workers and that his father and him have gone through all the hardships of establishing the newspaper, together with the workers. Long silence ensued after his speech, no one responded. Jeng, as one of the union founders recalled that it was a crucial moment. He saw how the boss had deliberately crafted an image of a ‘benevolent and amiable parental figure’ for himself, thereby ‘blurring out’ the underlying relationship between the employees and the employer. The workers were silent due to the ambivalence they must have felt about the contradictions in their relationship with the CEO. Jeng waited for the silence to linger on for a while before speaking up. We are very grateful that you have come to talk to us. We can see that you are concerned, and protective about the workers. But forming a union is the workers’ prerogative. On this matter, as our boss, your position is different from us. In fact, your sincerity and good intention may unintentionally lead to an outcome that is unfavorable for the workers. This is not personal. It is the position you hold in the company. Since you are our employer, the workers may consider what you say as a command. Henceforth, the workers cannot dialogue with you on an equal footing on the matter. It is important at this critical juncture that as workers, we are given the autonomy to build our union. Any advice or suggestion from you, no matter how good or benevolent, interferes with our decision and action. You may consider management’s involvement in the union as positive but not so for the workers. The workers need to decide, without fear of repercussion or feeling of obligation, if they accept your proposal. We need such a space right now. More importantly, the workers need to have our own proposal on how to form the union. As responsible and law-abiding adults who are given the power by law to unionize, we shall face the consequences should we make any mistakes.7

After Jeng’s intervention, the workers began to express their opinion. Several senior workers in the typesetting and printing departments had

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expressed dissatisfaction about the company’s human resource policies. They had kept their grievances to themselves for a long time. Then, the ‘Little Boss’ broke down in tears and said, “I have never felt like I am the boss in the past forty years until now”.8 At this point, a few workers became affected and apologized to him. To Jeng, that was another critical juncture because the ‘Little Boss’ crocodile tears were to guilt-trip the workers, so much so that some of them even began to blame themselves. Jeng had to intervene again, We understand that this is a challenge for you – how to be an enlightened boss befit of this modern time. To face up to your challenge is difficult and arduous but it is a process that we must all undergo. This is the price you have to pay as a modern manager!9

Jeng’s intervention de-escalated the tension brought on by the tears of the boss. The latter realized that his posturing as the benevolent ‘parent’ vis-à-vis the workers no longer worked so he quickly left the meeting. And the workers continued their discussion without him. The above story shows that in an unequal power relationship, confrontation is a skill that the weak must have to safeguard their autonomy and subjectivity. This story illuminates the patriarchal model of management vis-à-vis its employees and how it is being challenged by modern industrial organizational relationship between employers and employees, that is more on parity. For the China Times Trade Union, learning to retain the union’s autonomy and strength while confronting the management within the employer–employee dynamics, is fundamental to the union’s capability in maintaining its autonomy vis-à-vis the management. This applies to the union’s day-to-day operation, and in its negotiation with the company. 6.2.2

Experimenting Internal/Grassroots Democracy in the Process of Forming a Union

In the process of unionization and after the union was established, Jeng was consciously working out a process of grassroots democratization in the union’s day-to-day work. He conducted education and training on democracy and conscientized the workers about their rights. He introduced ideas like exercising and sharing of power, accountability of power, and ways of putting democracy into practice. In those time, trade unions

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tended to simply abide by government rules and regulations. The union’s modus operandi tended to be formulaic; for instance, a union could simply be established within a month by organizing two preparatory committee meetings, thereby fulfilling its legal obligation. And this process could be undertaken by a handful of committee members without any training of union members on their role and responsibility. The leaders and members were not prepared for what was to come once the union was up and running. Jeng however, went out of his way and took time to organize a fullfledged preparation process that lasted five months. The union members were thoroughly trained in labor and labor rights issues. They learnt about the tension, contradiction and paradox of the need to practice structured participatory democracy on the one hand, and fight with the management effectively and collectively, on the other hand. In the process of their resistance, the workers learnt to devise and formulate union policies and strategies based on the realities of their struggles, particularly as they negotiated and confronted the management during disputes. Some highlights of the training: 1. Collective Discussion on Union’s Constitution 2. Discussion on membership fees and structure 3. Whether to organize a General Assembly or a Delegate Congress? 6.2.2.1 Collective Discussion on Union’s Constitution The process of learning how to put democracy into practice: democratic education (education about democracy), as well as the methodologies; in other words, ‘the nuts and bolts’ of democratization are more important than the outcome. What determines the process then? The steps that determine how such a process plays out are even more important than the process itself because the former shapes the latter, and the outcome. It is in fact, where the exercise of power begins. The preparation toward the formation of the China Times Trade Union was long and arduous. It was a critical period and an intensive process of working out, first, with the union members on how to move toward unionization including, preparing for the inauguration assembly and the process leading to it. At that time, most union constitutions were simply replicated from existing ones, treated as mere formalities. There was hardly any attention on how the drafting of the constitution is itself,

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a learning process of collective reflection and reflexivity, to allow union members to critically think through the kind of democratic trade union they want. A trade union should emancipate and empower workers. That implies the process of unionizing should allow workers to gain confidence, power and wisdom in themselves. And the realization that as workers, they are capable of fighting for and protecting their interests and well-being as a socio-economic class, i.e. the working class. Henceforth, Jeng incorporates workers’ education in the discussion of union’s constitution. Encouraging and challenging the workers to consider questions like, “what is a trade union?”, “What kind of trade union do you want?”, “Who are your members?”, “Should there be a General Assembly of members or should it be a Delegates’ Congress?”, “How much should the membership fees be?”, etc. The draft of the union’s constitution by the preparatory committee was discussed at length among the rank-and-file members before it was proposed at the inauguration assembly. Therefore, the workers were wellprepared before the constitution was proposed to the assembly. 6.2.2.2 How Much Should the Membership Fees Be? In the preparatory process toward formalizing the China Times Trade Union, its constitution must be accepted by the inauguration General Assembly. It lays out the basic law of how a union should operate and function. One of the stipulations is the amount of membership fees. At that time, the average union fees were about NTD five to ten dollars. The highest was twenty. There were unions that did not even require membership fees because they were funded by their companies. When Jeng was asked what should be the acceptable amount? Jeng advised that the members should feel the ‘pinch’ so that whatever the union did would matter to them because their self-interest was at stake. The workers should recognize that their interests are directly related to the union’s. Substantial membership fees would oblige the union leaders to take their roles and responsibilities seriously. The leaders must convince their members through their hard work and dedication that the union under their leadership deserves the support of the rank-and-file. The preparatory committee understood and agreed with his rationale. As expected, the members were initially resistant against paying such high union fees. It took much discussion before it was accepted by the General Assembly.

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6.2.2.3 Should It Be a General Assembly or a Delegates’ Congress? Another important constitutional issue was to hold an annual General Assembly or a Delegates’ Congress? Taiwan’s Trade Union Act provides for both. However, the larger unions avoided organizing General Assembly and chose to follow the government’s executive order: any union with more than 200 members can hold a delegates’ congress instead of a general assembly. In practice however, this guiding principle was misinterpreted as a ban against holding general assembly for unions of more than 200 members. The China Times Trade Union had more than 1000 members at that time. By this twisted logic, it would imply that it could only hold a delegates’ congress and not a general assembly. Jeng insisted that the trade union should be a platform for all rankand-file members to participate in decision-making. Therefore, a general assembly is more appropriate than a delegates’ congress. Under decades of control and suppression by the KMT regime, the workers’ knee jerk reaction was, “let us do as the government says, organize a delegates’ congress!”. Jeng then explained, trade unions should be participatory, inclusive and democratic. A general assembly allows all members to participate in decision-making. Since the China Times Trade Union was still in its formation stage, members’ expectation of the union and their motivation were high. A delegates’ conference would exclude the majority of our members and relegate them to the periphery. That would put the responsibility of running the union solely on the union leaders and cadres. Do not blame the members later if they become passive and unresponsive. The union leaders and cadres having understood this, accepted Jeng’s advice. However, there is another problem to overcome in holding a general assembly. Nearly a thousand workers had applied to be members. If all were to attend the assembly, the operation of the newspaper office would be affected that day. The impact would be like a strike. Would that not lead to a management backlash? How can this conundrum be resolved? How should the union respond to the repercussion? How should it deal with the management’s reaction? For this, Jeng suggested that they should refer to examples in the US where all workers leave work during the Christmas season. And in Taiwan, the newspaper office closes during Lunar New Year. So, why

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would our society not accept our workers, a one-day break to attend a union assembly when they can accept that during new year holidays, there is no newspaper? Our society must respect our rights and get accustomed to the exercise of our rights. Workers should not be timid and blame themselves, it is tantamount to political ‘castration’. Once the union leaders were won over, Jeng and the workers went on a protest at Taipei City Labor Bureau’s office, that approval should be given to hold general assemblies, citing trade union laws. And they won the battle. In order not to be misconstrued as a strike, the preparatory committee was especially careful in planning for the inauguration assembly. It went to great length to conduct the planning process meticulously. The quota for the assembly must be met for resolutions to be passed successfully. And at the same time, the meeting should allow all attendees to participate in the discussion and decision-making. And all these must be done without affecting the normal operation of the newspaper. Consequently, all cadres and members of the preparatory committee were mobilized. The process was serious and elaborate, it was nothing like simply going through the motion and fulfilling a formality. Jeng devolved his authority as a union leader and encouraged collective discussion on the basis that everyone was responsible for their action and role, collectively as well as individually. It is a unique organizing methodology in grassroots workers’ education and empowerment for democracy. The preparatory process of establishing the China Times Daily Reade Union showed and affirmed the importance of the democratic principle of devolution of power, collective discussion, self-responsibility and accountability, and most of all, the praxis of democracy in our day-to-day work-life as workers and activists. This was a successful case study of a militant trade union with the capacity to resist and fight the management without compromise. Jeng’s experience in organizing the China Times Trade Union has influenced his latter-day’s leadership, particularly during his time in CALL. His leadership style is underpinned by his insistence on developing and safeguarding workers’ subjectivity and agency. He also encouraged workers and activists to face up to and deal with the paradox between democracy and centralization of power. This eventually led him to initiate and lead the movement for participatory democracy in the form of Everyone can be a political candidate and boss Movement .

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6.3

The Praxis of Class-Based (Working-Class) Democracy: CALL’s Path of Activism and Social Movement Organizing

The Committee for Action of Labor Legislation (工人立法行動委員會, CALL) was one of the important and critical left-wing labor movements in Taiwan between 1990 and 2000. It was an alliance of grassroots trade unions, federations of trade unions, general trade unions at the district level, women workers, survivors of industrial injuries and diseases, migrant workers and sex workers.10 It was an alliance of Taiwan’s vulnerable and marginalized communities and advocated uncompromising for workers’ empowerment. CALL’s priority was to develop workers’ capacity in organizing through empowerment. It taught workers to deal with political parties based on the principle of “Diplomacy at a distance, Alliance as equals” (等距外交, 等比結盟). And it refused to rely on any one political party. CALL assisted workers in organizing resistance and protests and annually, it organized a march and mass rally in November known as, “The Great Autumn Struggle” (秋鬥). This annual event projected important labor issues of the year. It raised workers’ demands and challenged government policies that were detrimental to the workers. CALL’s organizers and activists were mostly graduates of the Department of Psychology at the Fu-Jen University, besides activists from the broader student movement. They chose not to climb the ‘political ladder’ and dedicated their lives to working at the grassroots, to organize the workers and the most vulnerable. They were trained hard in movement organizing, in the most disciplined, dedicated and meticulous manner. They were sensitized and taught to be detailed at every step of organizing and in working with people. It entailed critical reflexivity, as well as selfand group transformation so that the activists in their field of intervention, could grasp and empathize with workers’ interests in the most concrete manner. Organizing usually took place at the shop-floor and other workplaces. It required the organizers to react and reflect while organizing and mobilizing others. In the process, they learnt to exercise grassroots democracy together with the workers whom they were organizing. They also helped and supported vulnerable communities to transform themselves, and to cohere individual power into a collective, transformative force. Furthermore, the union organizers and activists learnt to challenge the system through

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articulating one’s grievances and mobilizing, thereby breaking the political apathy and fear of politics that have held the Taiwanese people back for so many years. 6.3.1

The Path of CALL—It is an Alliance, Not a Political Party; Neither Unification nor Independence, Consolidate Workers’ Subjectivity and Agency

The method and direction of CALL in developing workers’ subjectivity and agency, as well as the workers’ organizing capacity, rests upon the following four dimensions: 1. Establish Grassroots Trade Unions and Federations of Trade Unions so that they become part of a broader autonomous labor movement. Further, workers were to support each other under the slogan: “All workers unite, struggle and fight as one!” (工人鬥陣、車拼相 挺). Henceforth, CALL has succeeded in Taiwan’s labor and social movement history, to build a unique model of activist and workers’ mobilizing and organizing. By 1992, CALL has established the “Warehouse and Freight Union Federation”, which straddles across Keelung and Xizhi districts (Wang 1998; Huang 2012). 2. Grassroots Legislation Movement: The aim is to encourage workers to draft their own version of the labor law. CALL activists mobilized grassroots trade unions to reform Taiwan’s labor law and social policies. The workers were encouraged to fight against unjust practices at their workplaces, to overcome their experiences of exploitation and oppression. CALL proposed an alternative version of the labor law that safeguards workers’ rights and meets their needs. Even though the activists were aware that given the current political realities in Taiwan, it was difficult to push through labor law reforms, nonetheless, it was more important for workers to experience and learn through the process of fighting for their rights and power. It was a process of conscientization, to raise workers’ awareness about their subjectivity and agency and allow them to have a voice in Taiwanese society. And that their ‘voice’ emerges from their class consciousness; a voice that breaks the barriers stacked against the working class, imposed by the legislative and policy-making structures that have

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long been monopolized by our political and academic elites, as well as the capitalists. The working-class version of Taiwan’s Labor Law proposed by CALL consisted of four aspects: (1) Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) (2) Labor Union Act (工會法) (3) National Health Insurance Act (全 民健康保險法) (4) Act for Protecting Worker of Occupational Accidents (職業災害勞工保護法). 3. The Autumn Struggle (秋鬥) from 1992 to 2005. CALL organized ‘The Workers’ Autumn Struggle’ on 12th November every year. In 1993, CALL and the Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries (TAVOI) had jointly organized a march and rally to demand a monument be erected, in memory of workers who have sacrificed their lives and health due to work. It is known as the Monument of Mourning for Occupational Injury and Disease Victims (工殤紀念碑). The slogan was, “Death at work is national grief” (工殤即國殤) in order to highlight the seriousness of the issue (Lin Tsu-Wen 2004) 4. To develop an equal partnership between the labor movement and political parties, the former is to maintain its independence and not to be co-opted into a symbiotic relationship with the latter. As CALL’s leader, Jeng’s path in the labor movement is unique and challenging. It emphasizes praxis in the empowerment of the working class. It does not lose sight of consolidating workers’ subjectivity and agency so that the working class would not be co-opted nor annexed by political parties. At that time, the main political opposition was the Democratic People’s Party (DPP). In the 1990s, as the KMT martial law regime was loosening its grip, the DPP was quick to garner support from various social movements and forces of dissent by entering into alliance with them. Their goal was to undermine and eventually break KMT’s hegemony. Confronting the KMT regime head on, a faction within Taiwan’s emerging autonomous workers’ movement then, was inclined to attach itself to the DPP, in a bid to gain more power and popularity. An example was ‘Taiwan Labor Front’ (台灣勞工陣線) led by Chien HsiChieh).11 His organization advocated for a quantitative increase in

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workers’ membership and to change the DPP from within, by the workers capturing party leadership and power. Jeng was against such a strategy. In his opinion, the workers were not yet ready. Only when the workers are conscientized and empowered with their own subjectivity and agency, relying on or attaching to any political party can only lead to co-optation, or even annihilation of the working class. Hence, CALL adopted the strategy of “Diplomacy at a distance, Alliance as equals” (等距外交, 等比結盟) to maintain an equal, non-subservient approach vis-à-vis the political parties. It prioritized autonomous development and empowerment of Taiwan’s labor movement, which places, first and foremost, the empowerment of the working class. It advocated for strategic and pragmatic collaboration with political parties and not dependence. Further, on Taiwan’s relationship with China, CALL advocated for neutrality, i.e. neither unification nor independence on one hand, and on the other, unification and independence at the same time (不統不獨, 又統又獨). It advocates for the working class to be politically aware and decide for themselves, what nation-state system would best meet their expectations and needs. The working class should not ‘dance blindly’ with the capitalists by advocating for Taiwan independence or unification (Jeng, Tseun-Chyi 1993). Throughout the 1990s, CALL was exerting pressure on the state machinery to reform its policies and laws through social movement organizing. Simultaneously, its approach and posture toward all political parties was relatively passive to withstand co-optation of the working class by the status-quo and its capitalist opposition. And consolidate workers’ subjectivity and agency in the process. 6.3.2

Praxis and Realization of Class-Based (Working-Class) Democracy: Case 1—“Millions Spoiled Ballots” Campaign

However, at every general election, CALL faced the same issue and challenge. How should the working-class power have unleashed through social movements and organizing deal with political power? Should the working class be united and form a political party? What is the working class’ stance about elections? Should the working class run for elections? During the 1990s, the power of Taiwanese working class did achieve some consolidation but its demands have remained at the level of ‘breadand-butter issues’. It could not go beyond that to achieve a higher level of political consolidation or consciousness. In other words, the Taiwanese

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working class was in no condition to form its own political party. However, it still had to deal with co-optation and ‘divide-and-rule’ tactics of various political parties at every election. Particularly in 1994 after Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the star of the DPP got elected as the mayor of Taipei City. It was the beginning of the party’s success in capturing state power. DPP’s rise in political power has resulted in increasing pressure on CALL because the Taiwanese working class yearned for a new and different political power that can replace the KMT so that their circumstances could improve. Eventually, the DPP became the power that the working class looked up to, it was regarded as an emerging political force that could change the workers’ fate. When Ma Ying-Jeou (馬英九) became the Taipei City mayor after Chen Shui-bian was elected as the first President from the opposition, Ma invited Jeng to take up the position of the Labor Bureau chief of Taipei City. Jeng saw this as an opportunity to incrementally open some political space for the labor movement as a whole.12 And a form of resistance against co-optation and annexation of the working class by the DPP. In the 2000 presidential election, the DPP achieved a landslide victory and took over state power. Apart from a handful of workers’ leaders close to the DPP who got political power as a result, the lives of the working class did not change. On the contrary, they got even more caught up with the power struggle among the ruling elite; primarily between the Blue (pro-KMT) and Green (pro-DPP) camps. Since the working class is already marginalized and vulnerable within Taiwan’s socio-political structure, the workers have the tendency to attach themselves to the politically powerful. Under the Americanized system of representative democracy in Taiwan, the workers often have the illusion that their circumstances will improve if the leaders and political parties that they consider trustworthy and reliable are elected. However, they were time and again, disappointed and betrayed. Progressive leaders and cadres of the labor movement are aware that both the KMT and DPP are pro-corporates. That they would not hesitate to sacrifice the working-class interests and well-being for the sake of capital expansion and domination. Unfortunately, over time, the Taiwanese political system became increasingly bipartisan,13 with the two major parties monopolizing the political sphere. Under such circumstances, the working class is forced to choose ‘the lesser of two evils’, so to speak.

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CALL then decided that, given the unfavorable conditions against forming a political party of the working class, the most urgent need of the labor movement was to debunk the binary myth that Taiwanese politics is now divided into either the pro-Blue or pro-Green camps. A binary that is manipulated and forged by the ruling elite that the workers got caught up in. In order to consolidate the political power of the working class, CALL started the “Millions Spoiled Ballots” campaign in 2003, which appeals the voters to vote for neither of the candidates nominated by the DPP nor the KMT, targeting the presidential election of the following year. The rationale of the movement was to subvert representative liberal democracy that is controlled by the capitalist class. It was to be a left-wing, radical intervention to shake things up from within the election system. It was to be a wake-up call to the working class. Furthermore, to agitate and educate the workers so that they could see through the true nature of both the Blue and the Green bourgeoise (capitalist) parties. It was the working class’ refusal to be ‘hijacked’ by both camps. And in turn, to raise the political consciousness of the Taiwanese working class for an alternative political landscape. The “Millions Spoiled Ballots” campaign called upon the electorates to spoil their ballots at the 2004 Presidential Election to send a clear signal to both parties that they were equally bad. It was an act of protest and a declaration of the people’s stance. At the same time, they were urged to demand electoral reform by advocating for an additional category on the ballot, which allows the electorates not to vote for any of the parties, i.e. to have a ‘None of the Above’ option. CALL believed that this would truly reflect the political stance of all the electorates. The movement’s intention was to subvert the electoral system by taking realistic and concrete actions within the limitation imposed by the status-quo. CALL’s strategy was to highlight the domination by the two major political parties, i.e. the KMT and the DPP and their disinterest to defend or safeguard the working class, given that the current electoral system gives the working class no choice but to choose between ‘two rotten apples’. CALL’s strategy was to subvert the mainstream electoral system, as an act of resistance to prevent the working class from being hijacked. It was to incrementally consolidate and safeguard workers’ autonomy. This strategy might seem rather passive or defeatist but in practice, it was subversive and effective. However, the movement did not have the support nor consensus of the labor movement.14

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Nonetheless, the movement did achieve some success with more than 330,000 spoiled ballots cast, the highest of all past elections, accounted for 2.5% of the total votes, three times as much as the 2000 presidential election. It became one of the key influencing factors of that year’s election result.15 It was a legitimate act of people’s resistance against an unjust electoral system. The same tactic continued to be used in subsequent elections. 6.3.3

Praxis and Realization of Class-Based (Working-Class) Democracy: Case 2: To Empower the Weak and Marginalized by Capturing Political Power—Everyone Can Be a Political Candidate and Boss Movement (人民老大-人人參選運動)

Jeng as the main leader of CALL, has nation-wide popularity and influence. He is highly respected by the workers. After the success of the above-mentioned movement, CALL considered to nominate its candidate for future elections. It would have been without a doubt, Jeng himself. However, Jeng declined the idea. In his view, this would only replicate the existing power structure of Taiwan’s mainstream politics so that the weak and marginalized would hand over their power, thereby relying on the powerful for their rights. Such a relationship would only keep the weak powerless; to be time and again betrayed by the powerful. The mainstream Taiwanese system of bourgeoise representative democracy simply replicates the existing power structure. The power relation between the electorates and the elected can be described as, “people is boss for one day but slaves for four years”. After all, the people can only exercise their power on the voting day, just to transfer all their political agency and power over to the elected. The elected can then have a free hand in exercising that power, beyond the reach of the people who have voted for them in the first place. There is no accountability to the people. On the contrary, the people must appeal and beg the powerful once the election is over, literally enslaved by the system. Such power dynamics and structure only lead to the perpetual concentration of power in a handful of political elites while the people remain dispossessed and powerless; entrapped by a system that time and again, entices, coaxes, manipulates and, in the end, betrays them. After assessing CALL’s experience with grassroots’ participatory democracy in the formation of the China Times Trade Union, followed by the Millions Spoiled Ballots Movement, and CALL’s overall praxis and

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commitment in building an autonomous labor movement, Jeng proposed another campaign known as, Everyone can be a political candidate and boss movement (人民老大-人人參選運動). It advocated against playing the game of representative democracy but to return political power to the people. To do that, the people must learn new political experiences and engage in new politic discourses. The aim was for the powerless to run for elections to overcome its innate fear of politics. The movement encouraged direct political participation so that the people become accustomed to exercising political power, power that the system has long deprived them of. The powerless and the weak are to learn to analyze and act from a position of power, to grow politically from within, and emancipate from the vicious cycle of relying on the powerful, only to be betrayed. Such radical action is not easily understood within Taiwan’s context of bourgeoise representative democracy today. It was almost impossible for such an act of resistance to win electoral votes too. However, in order to pioneer a truly left-wing and democratic pathway that is committed to praxis and at the same time, capable of confronting the existing fake democratic system, Jeng had chosen a very difficult path forward. Since the lifting of martial law, Taiwan has undergone more than three decades of democratic politics. Yet, the majority of Taiwanese saw running for elections as a perilous undertaking, something to be avoided. This has henceforth, resulted in the monopoly of political power among a handful of political elites, not quite different from the past. Thus, the above-mentioned movement aimed to debunk and deconstruct Taiwan’s fake democracy and develop people’s democracy from bottomup. This democratization process should be a reflexive process that is also transformative, radicalizing people’s state of mind and political stance. The movement began by confronting the people with the question, “have you ever thought of running for election?” Most Taiwanese would say without hesitation, “No”. The next question would be, “why not?”, followed by more questions. Through this dialogue, we were able to step by step, reveal the people’s deep-seated fear of politics and their ‘spayed’ political aspiration. If we probed further, “if you have never been in the position of running in an election, how can you monitor, supervise and hold accountable, the candidate you elect?”. “You can only enhance the capacity of a legislator if you have been in that position, then you are ready to hold your elected candidate accountable for their action”. Such dialogue was to deconstruct the ‘brainwashing’ people have been going through. Moving forward, we

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then encouraged those who agreed to run for election, to go through a process of conscientization. They would eventually form a political caucus to collectively elect a representative who would register as a candidate for the upcoming election. However, in praxis, the candidature would be a collective effort with everyone in the caucus participating actively. In other words, everyone in the caucus was ‘the candidate’. This was to educate and train the caucus members to take on collective political responsibility and to work hard at dialoguing and discussing with one another in the process. In this politicization process, the members learnt to confront and deal with one another’s differences. They also learn to supplement and complement one another, going forward. All decisions were taken collectively, and they participated in the electioneering campaigns as a team. Once elected, every team member must assume the responsibility of the elected. This was led by Jeng, as an alternative, left-wing and radical pathway based on the collective participation of the minority. It is a thorough and progressive approach that may appear slow in progress with only incremental gains. Adhering to the principles described above, In 2007, CALL reorganized into Raging Citizens Act Now (人民火大行動聯盟, RCAN). RCAN ran for election in 2007, 2010 and 2012, then reorganized and registered as a formal political party—the People’s Democratic Front (人民民主陣線, PDF) in 2012. In 2014, there were 32 candidates under PDF flag to implement the Everybody Becomes a Candidate campaign. PDF changed its name to People’s Democratic Party (人民民主黨, PDP) in 2018. In 2018, One member of PDF was elected as the Chief of Yanshan Vil (岩山里), Shilin District(士林區) of Taipei City. She has retained this ‘collective governance’ approach to promote grassroots participatory democracy so that the community learned in praxis that ‘everyone is the government’.

6.4 Conclusion: Empowerment of the Weak and the Marginalized Through the Praxis of Left-Wing Democracy Empowerment of the weak and marginalized was put to practice in (1) direct democracy of the China Times Trade Union, (2) the autonomous labor movement of CALL, (3) the Millions Spoiled Ballots Movement whereby activists subverted the election system from within by promoting autonomous voting as an act of resistance, and (4) Everyone can be a

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political candidate and boss Movement , which advocated for direct participation in elections to debunk the myth of mainstream representative democracy. All these campaigns were to push the powerless to stand in the position of the powerful, in thought and action, by overcoming political apathy and their fear of politics. It was to restore the people’s aspiration for political autonomy by exercising their collective power and agency. And in so doing, capture state power and practice participatory democracy. This pathway of left-wing activism and organizing under Jeng’s leadership insists on confronting the dynamics and relationship between empowering the weak and the practice of democracy. This collective of activists have worked hard to develop and empower the weak and the marginalized within the Taiwanese social and power structures. They want to debunk the myth that the weak can only change their circumstances through the mercy and assistance of the powerful. Their activism has made the powerless aware that to overcome their situation, they must rely on themselves. They must be prepared to be their own boss through taking political actions. Therefore, in movement organizing and activism, it is not enough to transform the system or to re-distribute economic and political resources. It is to emancipate the weak and the oppressed through taking actions. It is also about personal and psychological transformation, particularly in terms of our consciousness about power and the exercise of power. And this can only be realized through the arduous process of continuous social action and political organizing. Despite the long history of anti-communism and authoritarianism in Taiwan, Jeng has successfully broken through by devising, organizing and mobilizing the working class and the grassroots. Given that Taiwanese politik has long been severed from left-wing traditions, Jeng’s method of conscientizing and empowering the marginalized communities is an indigenous and autonomous pathway of politicization and mobilization based on collective activism. By empowering the weak and the powerless in the Taiwanese society, this movement attempts to capture political power through social movement activism. It resonates with Lummis’ radical leftist idea of democracy in his book, “Radical Democracy”, in which he said, democratic power does not fall from above, it is generated by a people in a democratic state of mind, and by the actions they take in accordance with

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that state of mind. It is the possibility of this change of state that is the power of the powerless. (Lummis 1996: 35)

Notes 1. The 228 Incident was an important political event that took place in Taiwan between 27 February and 16 May 1947. The KMT government had just taken over Taiwan. A police raid against illegal sale of tobacco quickly escalated into a clash with civilians that resulted in deaths and injuries. This triggered a large-scale protest among the local Taiwanese people, which the KMT was swift to suppress brutally. The KMT government then imposed martial law on the island for the next 38 years. This incident has a profound impact on Taiwan’s ethnic relations and Taiwanese politics. 2. The ‘White Terror’ Campaign in Taiwan refers to the anti-communist policies and tactics deployed by the KMT government after it took over Taiwan. To prevent communist infiltration, island-wide arrests were made to imprison all suspected communists, which numbered tens of thousands including, deaths. Martial Law was declared, and freedom of speech curtailed, from then on, Taiwanese lived in perpetual fear of politics for three decades and more. 3. Jeng (1951–) was born into a farming family in Taipei. He graduated in 1974 from Chung Hsing University with a Social Work degree. He worked as a teaching assistant and counselor at the university, and also in human resource management. Between 1983 and 1986, he researched on Group Dynamics at the American University in the US. He later transferred to the College of Education at Harvard University to read, “Organization Development” for his master’s degree. Before he left for the US, he was already active in the ‘Dangwai’ (黨外) Movement with Hsia Lin-Ching. They were close to the ‘Dangwai’’s magazine, ‘Forward’ (前進). Jeng was introduced to international leftist history and began to study Karl Marx’s ‘The Capital’. Upon returning to Taiwan in 1986, with his Social Work background, Jeng was recruited by the KMT-controlled ‘Taiwan Province Confederation of Trade Unions’. He conducted education and training. A year later, he became a labor news reporter for the Political Section of the China Times Daily. After martial law was lifted in 1987, labor disputes erupted all over Taiwan, which ushered in the autonomous workers’ movement. As Jeng was committed to true reporting, he became friends with many workers and union leaders. To his surprise, he was nominated in 1988 as a member of the preparatory

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committee for the establishment of the China Times Trade Union. He was later dismissed from his job for his role in the trade union. The narratives involving Jeng Tsuen-Chyi were based on Ho Yen-Tang’s interviews with the former and subsequently edited by Jeng. In 1984, the Taiwanese government was pressured by the US and its protectionist trade policies, to raise the labor conditions of Taiwanese workers, which led to the institution of Taiwan’s Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法). The trade unions were controlled by the KMT. Only one union was allowed per industry, factory or company. And only one federation of trade unions was allowed per district, per city and even at the national level. Many newspapers were not unionized then. The KMT was weary of the autonomous trade union movement so newspapers management were told to set up trade unions to forestall the influence of the autonomous labor movement. The owner of China Times Daily was a member of the KMT Central Committee. The conversation quoted from an interview on Jeng during the organizational period of the China Time Trade Union in 1988, by Hsia, the third author of the present article. Ibid. Ibid. In 1997, the then Taipei City Mayor, Chen Shui Bian suddenly announced the immediate abolishment of the Licensed Prostitutes System in Taipei, amid a brewing political conflict. This led to loss of employment of more than 100 Licensed Prostitutes. CALL supported these women and began a two-year-long struggle (Wang 2009). Taiwan Labor Front was affiliated to New Tide faction (新潮流) within the Democratic Progressive Party. Jeng became Taipei City Bureau Chief in 1998 upon the invitation of Mah Ying-jiou, the then Taipei City Mayor. The achievement and outcome of his four-year term was recognized and praised. Even though Mah was elected Taipei City Mayor for another term in 2002 and he had asked Jeng to remain in his post, Jeng was determined to return to the social movement. In 2003, Jeng led CALL to initiate, the “Millions Spoiled Ballots” campaign (百萬廢票運動). As the background of KMT’s emblem is blue in color and that of DPP is green, the colloquial name for KMT is ‘blue’ and for DPP is ‘green’. In November 2003, CALL organized ‘The Labor Movement Summit’ and invited all forces of the Taiwanese Labor Movement to discuss strategies for the upcoming presidential election. The debate on whether to organize, “Millions Spoiled Ballots” campaign was intense and ended with

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no consensus. In the end, CALL went ahead and organized it with other groups. 15. In that year’s presidential election, the DPP won by a narrow margin of only more than 30,000 votes. It was popularly known that Chen Shui-bian being shot on 19 March 2004 was a determining factor of the outcome, along with the high number of spoiled ballots cast.

References Ho, Shut-Ying (何雪影). 1992. The history of Taiwan’s autonomous trade unions, 1987–1989. Taipei: Tonsan Bookstore. (In Chinese). Hsia, Lin-Ching (夏林清). 1993. A case investigation report on the struggle of an independent trade union: Structural conflicts and personal learning. In From practice orientation to social practice: A survey report on labor life in Taiwan (1987~1992), 211–240. Teacher Chang Press. (In Chinese). Huang, Hsiao-Ling (黃小陵). 2012. No surrender! A reflection on practices in anti-oppression movement of the occupational injured workers. Master’s Thesis, Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies, Shih Hsin University, Taipei. (In Chinese). Jeng, Tseun-Chyi (鄭村棋). 1993. What has workers got to do with the reunification-independent debate of taiwan? In Journal of Taiwan Labor Movement, Issue No. 1. Taipei: Taiwan Labor Movement Publishing House (In Chinese). Lin, Tsu-Wen (林子文). 2004. Autumn struggle: A collective action ritual of Taiwan’s labor movement. Master’s Thesis, Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies, Shih Hsin University, Taipei (In Chinese) Lummis, D.C. 1996. Radical democracy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. Wang, Fang-Ping (王芳萍). 2009. The politicization of a female activist: Documenting the campaign of ‘licensed prostitutes’ in Taipei, and the movement of the ‘Collective of sex workers and supporters’. Master’s Thesis, Dept. of Psychology, New Taipei City: Fu Jen University (In Chinese). Wang, Xingzhi (王醒之). 1998. Creating blue collars’ career: Looking at the limitations and myths of a blue collars’ career from a labor dispute process. Master’s Thesis, Dept. of Psychology, New Taipei City: Fu Jen University (In Chinese).

CHAPTER 7

Another World is Possible: Abandoning the Hegemony of Global Capitalism in the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan Yao-Hung Huang

7.1

Introduction

For decades, Taiwan has embraced global capitalism as a dominant economic system. Yet, in 2014, the government in Taiwan attempted to undemocratically pass a free trade service agreement with China. This resulted in students occupying the Taiwanese parliament. During this protest, Hong Kong citizens exchanged views with the Taiwanese students and activists about the problems Hong Kong’s free trade agreement with China had caused. They warned Taiwanese activists that not only did Hong Kong’s present situation represent Taiwan’s future, but that the Chinese government was a powerful economic and political entity of global capitalism that was authoritarian rather than democratic.

Y.-H. Huang (B) Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Fo Guang University, Jiaoxi, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_7

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The signing of the free trade agreement in 2014, which only profited large financial and manufacturing industries, could lead to devastating impacts on Taiwan’s small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME), democracy, and freedom of speech—similar to what Hong Kong’s citizenry had suffered. Due to the potential and imminent risks, Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement protesters demanded the clause-by-clause review of the agreement and later changed their demands to include the rejection of the pact. Throughout 23 days of occupation, the Sunflower Movement signifies the first time that Taiwanese citizens occupied the Taiwanese parliament and started to reflect on the risks and exploitations of global capitalism.

7.2

Literary Review

Concerning studies of the Sunflower Movement, critics have widely analyzed the social, political, and economic issues the movements brought to the forefront. Taiwanese scholars stress that the Sunflower Movement involves “opportunity, threat, and skilful movement” (Ho 2015, p. 94). Ian Rowen indicates that the “major cross-strait achievement to date may have … been an inadvertent unification” of the social movements in Taiwan (Rowen 2015). After the Sunflower Movement, Lau Ka-yee, a women’s rights activist from Hong Kong, said that “Today’s Hong Kong is today’s Taiwan is closer to the truth … People need to gain a sense of urgency” (Rowen 2015). Brian Christopher Jones and Yen-Tu Su underscore that the Sunflower Movement is a way of “defending democracy against China” based on “social economic justice in the age of FTAs” (6– 7). They also point out the different situations and obstacles in Taiwan. They claim that Taiwan’s dissidents still face the possibility of mass prosecution as a way for the KMT government to avoid future democratic conflict (9–12). In “Global Justice Movement after the Arab Uprisings,” Ikuo Gonoi compares the past violent demonstrations with the new phase of civil disobedience protests and online mobilization. Most of all, he emphasizes the importance of protest for real democracy that exposes global inequalities. The new trend of civil disobedience, “combined with the evolution of information technology,” allows protesters to “arouse compassions among global public opinions,” disrupt “the narrative of capitalism,” and uncover “the hollow centre of power” (14). In “Return to/of the Political Popular in Cultural Studies in Asia,” Cha Beng Huat studies the Sunflower Movement. He concludes that the Occupy Movements

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could offer us “substantive resources for inter-Asia referencing analysis to generate potentially new and different knowledge from conventional East–West comparisons with non-Asian locations” (Huat 2016, p. 19). While these critics point out the new untraditional form of democratic resistance and protest in Taiwan against social, political, and economic injustice and inequality, they rarely offer a detailed study on counterhegemony or any possible alternative. Therefore, in the paragraphs below, I will focus on the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan to explore how the new possibility of abandoning the exploitative working of global capitalism emerges in this social movement. I will first discuss the successful policy of capitalism in Taiwan, which later becomes the public’s “common sense” (Gramsci 1999, p. 349). This common sense allows the governments of Taiwan to generate the hegemony of global capitalism and further insert their implicit control on the public. In the name of reaching the goal of freedom, equality, and prosperity, the governments proclaim that global capitalism will continue to duplicate the successful history of a strong economy, good living quality, and freedom of movement—so long as Taiwan’s governments sign free trade agreements with the world’s second largest market, China. Then I will further apply Nikolas Rose’s analysis of the socially constructed desire and Michel Foucault’s concept of governing and governmentality to analyse how the public actively discipline themselves through consumption before experiencing the impacts of the free trade agreements. Yet, the unexpected breakout of the Sunflower Movement creates a fissure where the public can perceive the growing inequality, exploitation, and violence of global capitalism behind its sugar-coated veil. Erik Olin Wright’s analysis of transformation theories will then be applied to stress that these social movements open the way from “interstitial” to “symbiotic” strategies, paving the way to “ruptural transformation” and the possibility of challenging the hegemony of global capitalism in its neoliberal form. After 1990, countries throughout the world, especially most Asian nations, have embraced capitalism as the sole guideline to achieve freedom, equality, and prosperity. Yet, instead of reaching these goals, Asian nations constantly suffer from global financial turmoil, which exacerbate the domestic inequality in their economies. Therefore, through the analysis of the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan, I argue that it creates an alternative outside the undemocratic constellation of global capitalism. Most of all, it marks the idea of abandoning the hegemony of global capitalism.

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7.3

Case Study Section

Global capitalism as we know it today is a very recent phenomenon. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, the power of capitalism was still limited by the technologies of the time and the tyranny of geography. By the close of the twentieth century, capitalism became substantially more globalized than it was even fifteen years prior. As technology made the world smaller and more accessible, capitalism’s globalization accelerated. After the recovery from World War II, when many local markets had reached their limits of capital accumulation, large businesses started expanding internationally to locate new opportunities for capital accumulation. In 1990, one major historical event helped to bring about the domination of capitalism in the world. The fall of the Berlin Wall, and the demise of state socialism more generally, proved not only a decisive victory for the Western Bloc but also brought about the acceleration of global capitalism. Before 1990, the existence of a powerful Eastern Bloc during the Cold War promoted an alternative to capitalism. It increased fear among capitalists that their own working class could renounce capitalism and choose socialism. This fear had an impact on improving the regulation of capital and expanding social welfare. These measures, in conjunction with the marked economic superiority of North American and European capitalist states, led to Eastern Bloc socialism becoming widely viewed as outdated and impotent. By 1990, almost every state in the world accepted capitalism as the solution to reducing poverty and increasing their domestic and global power. As the Soviet Union and its allies crumbled in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, capitalism emerged victorious and began to expand across the globe. Globalization is interpreted as an increase in cross-border economic interactions, producing a qualitative change in the relations between national economies and nation states more generally (Baker et al. 1998). It promises not only the free exchange of merchandise but also capital. Yet while this offers great opportunities to ambitious businesses, it places many under increased pressure. In the era of global capitalism, large corporations and banks become comparatively smaller when they enter the world market. To compete in a global market, large banks and companies face “a daily battle for survival, which prevents attention to long-run considerations and which places a premium on avoiding the short-run costs of taxation and state regulation” (Kotz 2002, p. 69). Therefore, large corporations began embracing the economic rationalist rhetoric of

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neoliberalism. Neoliberals hold that the deregulation of capitalism (free market principles) is essential to achieve “efficiency, economic growth, technical progress, and distributional justice” (Kotz 2002, p. 64). Thus, for neoliberals, the state should constantly seek to curtail the tendency to place restrictions on corporate activity or distribute wealth. From an international standpoint, neoliberals ask for free trade of “goods, services, capital, and money” globally (Kotz 2002, p. 64). Neoliberalism asserts an economic policy of imperialistic capitalism, which chooses the large corporation over the individual (Karatani 2014, p. 278). Although it may seem like classical liberal policy that demands less state intervention and a much freer market, neoliberalism is in effect imperialistic capitalism in which states intervene to ensure the superiority of their industry in the production and circulation of capital globally. In Spaces of Global Capitalism, David Harvey indicates that the state of neoliberalism is “profoundly antidemocratic” and aims only to enhance “capital accumulation” (Harvey, Spaces, p. 27). In neoliberalism, “large corporate capitalist interests typically collaborate with government power in policy making as well as in the creation of new international institutional arrangements” (p. 26). Hence, when signing the FTAs with other nations, the government will put the financial interests of large multinational companies and industries in the first place while discarding those of the workers. In East Asia, most Asian nations and Taiwan have adopted neoliberal capitalism, which welcomes the privatization and rationalization of state companies as one of the causes of inequality. For Harvey, this kind of neoliberalism is “interdigitated with authoritarian centralized control” (p. 34). He sees South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore as the countries that have long established a combination between “dictatorial rule and neoliberal economics” (p. 34). And he stresses that China is an example where “dictatorship and neoliberalism” are compatible with each other. In 2004, the government allowed indigenous entrepreneurs to join the communist party, which opened the chance for a “‘public–private’ governance system that … is characteristic of [the] neoliberal state” (p. 40). China’s success in authoritarianism and neoliberalism may strengthen the momentum towards authoritarianism. As its neighbouring countries witness its economic growth, they may want to copy this kind of authoritative and anti-democratic neoliberalism where the interests of large entrepreneurs are put before labour rights and individual livelihoods. In the case of Taiwan, the KMT government privatized the toll collecting service in 2013 on the freeway and changed the service from

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a manual to an electronic toll collection system. Due to the transformation, laid-off workers from the toll stations were improperly treated and abandoned by the government and private companies. Originally, the government cooperated with the private companies to promise that they would offer workers additional compensation and assurances of help in finding new jobs. Yet, those laid-off workers were denied all these promises by the government and private companies after the end of the contract. As the state has withdrawn its intervention and influence, the government has failed to settle the problems and conflicts between private companies and labourers. The problem of neoliberalism lies in these deregulations of the capitalist system, promotion of the free market economy, and decrease of state intervention and social welfare. In neoliberalism, free individual choice puts the individual under the coercion of the contracts of large corporations, through which the working conditions of the individual are often exploited. As capitalism is deregulated, the individual is further exposed to risks of exploitation. With such intense competition and weak state intervention, large local corporations become multinational corporations, which are companies that have “a substantial proportion of [their] sales, assets, and employees outside [their] home [countries]” (Kotz 2002, p. 67). Because of these basic components, multinational corporations have limited ties to domestic markets of their own home countries for goods and labour. Due to the free market and intense global competition, these corporations have negligible social duties and responsibilities to the workers and society. The labour of the individual can be minimized and sacrificed for the private profit of the corporation. When a large corporation finds another place beneficial to capital accumulation, it will move freely from one state to another. To maximize profits, these multinational companies use the competition between nation states for global capital as leverage to influence government decisions, creating “major difficulties for the realization of democracy” (Scholte 1997, p. 439). The net result of these undemocratic negotiations has been a global increase in inequalities in wealth and income (Piketty 2014, p. 23). Without sufficient regulation and social welfare policies, workers first face problems of exploitation, and then they have to deal with the threat of mass layoffs and unemployment. Global competition for capital becomes a cause for degradations in sound governance, democratic representation, and social equality. Capital flows, disproportionately, into the coffers of the wealthy and the powerful.

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Taiwan and Hong Kong are two examples of East Asian nations experiencing the impact of global capitalism. Most of the East Asian countries have similar developments as they moved from colonial to democratic countries. In Taiwan and Hong Kong, the governments have always been educating the public that boosting the profits of the large corporations will eventually benefit the public. In his Prison Notebook, Antonio Gramsci writes about the formation of hegemony that has been formed by two parts in a superstructure. One is called “civil society, that is the ensemble of organisms commonly called private” (Gramsci 1999, p. 145). And the other one is called “political society” or “the State” (Gramsci 1999, p. 145). The political society or the State is the place where state control and coercive power exist. The civil society is called private since it covers political organizations, churches, schools, media, and family. It basically reflects everything in one’s life so widely that he or she can hardly detect the connection between civil society and the political society. Due to the influence of civil and political society, the political hegemony becomes invisible and accepted as the “common sense” (Gramsci 1999, p. 349). With the accepted common sense, the individual “governs himself without his self-government thereby entering into conflict with political society— but rather becoming its normal continuation, its organic complement” (Gramsci 1999, p. 543). Throughout years, the governments in Taiwan have applied neoliberalism that decreases taxes and regulations and boosts the profit of corporations. For many years, this neoliberal policy has successfully created economic miracles and transformed Taiwan into one of the four Asian Tigers. These achievements, so it is claimed, bring more equal opportunities for prosperity to anyone who is willing to work hard. The strong economic development also leads to the emergence of the middle class who pressure the government to be more politically and culturally open. Due to the successful experience in the past promoted by the state, the civil societies started to embrace global capitalism as the “common sense” which will once again create economic miracles and bring the same equal opportunities of prosperity and more freedom of movement. Therefore, with the widely accepted “common sense,” the individuals refrain from protesting against the neoliberal policy that brings profit to the large entrepreneurs. In the name of boosting GDP and economic growth, the political society also employ or appropriate the research papers of professional experts and economists qua the civil society as the “common sense”

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for its neoliberal policy. Through this method, the governments often bypass democratic procedures and generate oppressive consequences. Around 2008, Taiwan, under the rule of the Ma administration, faced a widening gap between low salaries and high living expenses and housing prices. Studies have revealed these problems. Ming-Chi Chen, I-Chun Tsai, and Chin-Oh Chang indicate that the “actual increase in [the] average house price in Taipei” shows a “very high rate of increase and extremely large fluctuation in [the] house price” while “household income during the same periods has increased only 4.4% with a 6.2% standard deviation” (Chen, Tsai and Chang 2007, p. 244). They stress that the “ratio of house price to income (PIR) in Taiwan has been about 4 or 5; however, this affordability index rose from 4 to more than 13 … because the house prices jumped threefold” (Chen, Tsai and Chang 2007, p. 244). In the meantime, the Ma administration decided to cut government subsidies for petrol and electricity, which indirectly raise the average cost of living. The imbalance between the high house prices, comparative low incomes, and rising cost of living incensed ordinary people. Chan Hou Cheng and James Hsueh argue that Taiwan’s society is shifting towards an “M shape” one in which the middle class is shifting to the lower class (Chan and Hsueh 2008). While scholars point out these widening gaps between the rich and poor as well as low incomes and high housing prices, the government uses them as excuses for neoliberal policy so as to improve the deteriorating economic situation. Thus, in the 2008 presidential election, the president promoted the “I-Taiwan 12 Projects” that would build more affordable houses for urban citizens and more industrial complexes to offer more jobs. The “I-Taiwan 12 Projects” was a plan “estimated total budget (over eight years): NT$3.99 trillion (US$130 billion), including NT$2.65 trillion from government and NT$1.34 trillion from the private sector” (Taiwan 2008). It ranges from “transportation,” “industrial innovation,” “rural revitalization” to “urban and industrial district renewal” (Taiwan 2008). In the name of boosting the economy and improving lives of citizens, the president won the support of the majority in the election. The president proclaimed that the project would be “a key tool of economic growth” (Hsu and Chang 2013, p. 154). It was supposed to be a win– win policy. Yet, the project was later distorted to encourage speculative business projects for land developers in both urban and suburban areas. From 2008 to 2010, the land prices in the Taipei city centre increased by “424 percent after the urban renewal, which created huge pressure

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for the local working class residents to move out and prevents those of similar socio-economic status from moving in” (Hsu and Chang 2013, p. 156). This drastic rise in housing prices happened not only in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, but also many other parts of Taiwan. In 2010, the Miaoli county government designed an area in Dapu Village to build an industrial complex, which required the expropriation of land belonging to local residents. The county government reimbursed the landowners using pricing of an industrial complex, which is considerably lower than the price of a residential area. After obtaining the land, the county government changed the project and used only one-fourth of the land as an industrial complex. It transformed most of the remaining area for residential use and then transferred it to local land developers, which allowed them to profit greatly. For the original landowners, they were given so little money that they could hardly afford to buy a house on their own land. Many protested against this land expropriation and two people even committed suicide as a form of protest (Kuang 2013). Through common sense, Taiwanese civil society has remained rather quiet about these unjust incidents while the local residents were turned into the excluded outcasts in the land development. In the name of boosting the economy, the government is complicit with the entrepreneurs. From 2008 onward, the Ma administration promoted the “I-Taiwan 12 Project,” which would build more affordable houses for urban citizens and more industrial complexes to offer more jobs. With its “golden 10-year policy,” the Ma administration was able to control the public in Taiwan from 2008 to 2014 (Mo 2011). For years, the improper land expropriation happened numerous times, which planted the seeds for the large-scale protest of the Sunflower Movement in 2014. The common sense of neoliberal capitalism would soon be challenged. Despite the public support for global capitalism as common sense, I claim that this support is the result of a strong socially constructed desire, which has been transforming in different stages under different circumstances. In Powers of Freedom, Rose has extended Foucault’s concept of governmentality and explained how capitalist countries employ market technologies to construct the common sense of the public (Rose 1999, p. 85). Capitalists create “technology of desire,” allowing consumers to obtain “identity through consumption” (Rose 1999, p. 85). As a result, to obtain the socially desired identity, the public have to support the system of global capitalism. The traditional Chinese values in Taiwan

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society strengthen the influence of desired identity upon the individuals. According to the traditional value of the gregarious Chinese society, the individual is only widely regarded as successful when he follows the unwritten traditional rules to have five elements in his life, which are a house, car, wife, son, and savings (Chinese translation of wu zi deng ke 五 子登科:房子、車子、妻子、兒子、金子). To have a wife, one must have a good job with good savings as well as a house so that he can afford to have kids in the future. Everything is relevant and influential. Only with these five elements can the individual be deemed a useful and respected person among relatives, neighbours, friends, and colleagues. Therefore, the governments of Taiwan can easily control their citizens when the public strongly pursue the socially and traditionally desired identity. To fulfil these five socially desired elements, one must support capitalism. Through Foucault’s analysis of power in Security, Territory, Population, we can gain a clearer point on the workings of “governmentality” (Foucault 2007). The governing of power works not only through disciplinary institutions, such as family, schools, hospitals, and the military, but also through self-government. In a democratic country, the public need to control and discipline themselves. In Taiwan, the public pride themselves as citizens with good educations and disciplinary behaviours. At school, teachers take up a leading and sometimes unchallengeable position in the hierarchical structure of the educational system. Absolute obedience and diligence are imperative for students. In traditional Confucian values and literature, parents, teachers, emperors, heaven, and earth should all be respected with absolute obedience, respectively (天、地、君、親、師). In fact, in Taiwan, when one grows up, he or she has been brought up with the strong influence of family values, especially filial piety, which involves obedience and respect towards parents, brothers, sisters, and all relatives. Hierarchal order is of great significance. At home, children are taught to obey the orders of the parents. At school, discipline is as important as academic performance, while discipline is everything in the military. Through family life, compulsory education, and military service (Taiwan), the individual unconsciously embraces and actively inscribes the hierarchical order into his mind. The self-government spreads outward and inward ubiquitously throughout one’s lifetime. At different stages of life, the individual is expected to achieve different goals, such as obtaining a job after leaving school, a stable income after finding a job, a good car following the good pay, a nice house, a virtuous wife, and polite children.

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Therefore, it is imperative that Taiwan’s individuals obey the parent’s order of finding a job, buying a house, getting married, and bearing children. It is also easy for the individual to obey the decisions of the political leaders, who assume the hierarchical position of the emperors. So, when the government intentionally promotes the advantage of the FTA, the public, accustomed to order and discipline, will naturally choose to support the global capitalist policy of signing the FTA with other economic entities. They choose to support the government’s policy mainly due to the following reason. In Taiwan’s history since 1949, the KMT government had never failed to boost the country’s economy with its neoliberal policy. The KMT government’s trade policy and deregulation in capital have allowed foreign investment from Japan and the US, which led to rapid economic growth and achieved the Taiwan economic miracle. So, the public believe that the KMT government will once again revitalize the economy as it did in the past. Yet, with this self-repressive governance, the public react with strong frustration after failing to reach their desired goals. Eventually, they protest with civil disobedience and reflect on the function of global capitalism. Here I would broach that citizens from Taiwan, having sensed the risk of becoming the victims of global capitalism, exchanged opinions and sought to find an alternative to replace the oppressive working of global capitalism. In Taiwan, the public originally followed the socially constructed desire and believed that the economy would grow after signing the global trade agreement. When protesters protested against the purchase of several magazines and TV channels by a Chinese backed tycoon (Tsai Eng-Meng, the second richest man in Taiwan), as well as the signing of the Cross-Straits Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China from 2009 to 2012, most audiences and workers did not perceive the purchase as a threat to the freedom of speech in the public media and the signing of the ECFA as a harm to the local economy. In fact, following the purchase, the China Times, owned by Tsai Eng-Meng, was fined by the government for running embedded advertising from the Chinese government. As the signing of the ECFA allows more investments in China, the media companies, such as China Television, China Times, and local TV channels began to rely on the Chinese market “for revenue and therefore wish to maintain a good relation with the Beijing authorities.” Eventually, these media companies gradually followed an invisible self-censorship to either avoid or tone down some sensitive topics, such as news related to the Dalai Lama or the

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Tiananmen Square protest. Meanwhile, the signing of the ECFA encourages investors and manufacturing sectors to move to China, which will stimulate the unemployment rate. In practice, the singing of the ECFA qua the FTA benefits mainly “small, privileged parties on both sides, such as multinational corporations, at the expense of workers, those with low incomes” (Buxton 2008, p. 175). Without proper management of speculative investments, the Taiwanese government allowed speculative house purchases and boosted the already expensive price of real estate. From 2009 to 2014, house prices almost doubled (Delmendo 2016). This was the case despite the fact that the Chinese government generally sought to sign the free trade agreement “for political motivations rather than economic benefits” (Fuller 2014, p. 94). Most of the public thought that the global investment, especially the Chinese one as the second largest economic entity, would surely boost the faltering economy immediately. With this in mind, they started to interpret the protesters in their own socially constructed desire: These dissidents did not want the wealthy Chinese buyers and investors to enter the local markets because they were afraid of global competition. To enhance that socially constructed desire, the KMT government (the Ma administration) published flyers and several other pieces of advertisement to promote the idea that those who were unwilling to accept the trade agreement and Chinese investors were not well-educated and competitive. The KMT government tried to convince the public that Taiwanese products and local companies were much better and more competitive than the Chinese ones. The signing of the FTA would therefore increase profits of Taiwanese companies. The public should support the government decision to sign the agreement with the second largest market, China. For those economically marginalized protesters, the KMT government would prepare compensatory funds and direct them to other prosperous industries. They should also be ignored and dispersed since they threatened economic growth. Nonetheless, the public did not know that their self-discipline and socially constructed desire for economic growth would eventually marginalize them and make their desired goals impossible to achieve. In fact, the signing of ECFA attracted and encouraged entrepreneurs to move their factories and companies to China since it has cheaper labour, lower taxes, and state compensations. Also, ECFA allowed the import of cheaper Chinese commodities into Taiwan, which posed a threat to the local labours and SMEs. The resulting victims were laid-off workers and bankrupt factory owners, caused by the

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signing of the trade agreement. Although ECFA does stimulate growth in GDP, the profit merely goes to a few large enterprises rather than the public. During these years following the signing of ECFA, the public has faced standard entry-level salaries of NT$22,000 (US$665) in monthly wages despite a considerable increase in the local GDP. Thus, ECFA increased income inequality. On the other hand, the Ma administration claimed that the signing of ECFA would balance the capital flow between China and Taiwan. It would also allow Chinese capital to boost the already declining economy in Taiwan. Nevertheless, without sufficient domestic regulation of the investment, Chinese investors could easily put their investment into buying property and real estate. It eventually raised housing prices at a time when local Taiwanese were feeling uneasy about the unaffordable cost of property. Starting in 2009 to 2014, the housing prices doubled and nearly tripled due to strong Chinese investment while the average income was reduced drastically as most factories and companies moved out to China. As the opportunity of well-paid jobs dwindled, salaries declined, and housing prices soared, the public experienced gradual frustration towards the Ma administration. Before the Sunflower Movement, there were numerous protests that revealed the signs of public disappointment. In Taiwan, when the improperly laid-off workers protested for their rights, they were treated by the government and entrepreneurs as threatening obstacles to economic growth. On February 2nd, 2013, over 100 labourers lay on train tracks in protest against the closing down of a factory after the factory owners left them overnight. They protested the legal issues supported by the government, labourers, and factory owners. Their protest caused delay of approximately 40 trains and more than 10,000 passengers. The police spent more than three hours lifting the protesters one by one onto the platform. Although the public complained about the problem and inconvenience the protesters had caused, few thought about the underlying reason that caused suffering for the protesters—the actions of the multinational company owners. On October 5th, 2014, more than 10,000 protesters camped out overnight right in the middle of the road in the most expensive residential complex. They protested the soaring housing prices and government inaction towards them. They not only blocked the road but also created an eyesore and inconvenience in a luxurious area of Taipei while the Ma administration gave no response.

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The unexpected breakout of the Sunflower Movement created an inevitable impact through media in which the public started to reflect on the growing inequality, exploitation, and violence of global capitalism behind its sugar-coated veil. Here, I will employ Erik Olin Wright’s analysis of transformation theories from “interstitial” to “symbiotic” strategies. These three strategies reveal the rout from ruptural transformation to the possibility of challenging the hegemony of global capitalism in its neoliberal form. In Envisioning Real Utopias, Erik Olin Wright defines three different models of “trajectory of systemic transformations beyond capitalism: ruptural (revolutionary socialist), interstitial metamorphosis (anarchist), and symbiotic metamorphosis (social democratic).” The clearer definition and categorization can be found in Table 7.1. In the ruptural transformation beyond capitalism, capitalist states are “overthrown and revolutionary regimes at least symbolically committed to socialism installed” (Wright 2010, p. 69). Activists confront the bourgeoisie and battle to replace the capitalist state. In the interstitial metamorphosis, participants seek to “build new form of social empowerment” embedded in civil society “in the niches, spaces and margins of capitalist society, often where they do not seem to pose any immediate threat to dominant classes and elites” (p. 211). Activists of interstitial metamorphosis are anarchists engaged in social movements and aim to build alternatives outside the capitalist state. Wright states that interstitial metamorphosis can “strengthen popular understandings that another world is possible and contribute to moving along some of the pathways of social empowerment” (p. 255). The symbiotic metamorphosis is associated with social democracy. Activists of the symbiotic strategy collaborate with the state and bourgeoisie through democracy to look for evolutionary adaptations for a possible win–win situation. Wright stresses that “symbiotic strategy can potentially open up greater spaces for interstitial strategies to work; and the cumulative effect of such institution building around expanded forms of social empowerment could be to render ruptural transformations possible under unexpected historical conditions” (p. 255). In other words, symbiotic strategy creates opportunity for interstitial strategies, which will ultimately lead to the radical and revolutionary transformations in the state. Based on Wright’s categorization, I regard the Sunflower Movements as the combination of the interstitial and symbiotic strategies. Previously, in 2013, Taiwan’s ruling party had agreed to hold 16 public hearings

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Table 7.1 Strategies of transformation Three Models of Transformation: Ruptural, interstitial, and symbiotic Vision of trajectory of systemic transformations beyond capitalism

Political Tradition most closely associated with logic of transformation

Ruptural

Revolutionary Classes socialist/communist organized in political parties Anarchist Social movements

Interstitial metamorphosis

Symbiotic Metamorphosis

Social democratic

Pivotal collective actors for transformation

Coalitions of social forces and labour

Strategic logic with respect to the state Attack the state

Build alternatives outside of the state Use the state: struggle on the terrain of the state

Strategic logic with respect to the capitalist class Confront the bourgeoisie

Metaphors of success

War (victories and defeats)

Ignore Ecological the bour- competition geoisie

Collabo- Evolutionary rate with adaptations the bourgeoisie

Source Envisioning Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright (p. 214)

about the details of the agreement to inform the non-governmental organizations and representatives of the industries impacted by the trade agreement. As the ruling party repressed all knowledge or recognition of its own inability to cope with the negative impact, it held only eight simple public hearings in a week without inviting or fully informing the representatives of the impacted industries. On the one hand, it did this to avoid any challenge or question to its policy after signing the agreement. On the other, the ruling party proclaimed that the CSSTA would create only profits for the public and thus have no need for public hearings. When experts and impacted industry representatives expressed their opinions and concerns, the director of the public hearings showed no sign of weakness or backing down. The representative of the ruling party only answered that the content of the trade agreement had already been passed and was impossible to be amended. Moreover, he refused to reveal any of the content and details of the contract in the name of trade secrets.

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7.3.1

Interstitial Metamorphosis:

Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement also shows signs of interstitial metamorphosis. The social movements amass popular understandings that another world is possible. It also creates possibilities of social empowerment. On the afternoon of March 17th, 2014, in Taiwan, the ruling party bypassed the democratic procedure and declared that the CSSTA, which had gone through all legal processes and democratic procedures, should be considered reviewed and be submitted to a session on March 21st for the final vote. The ruling party’s failure to solve the problem of the impacted industries after signing the CSSTA would eventually transform the local workers into the possible victims of unemployment and force the SMEs to relocate to China, since cheap labour, products, and low-cost enterprises from China would replace the local ones in Taiwan. The further deregulation of the service industry, including the financial industry, insurance industry, and real estate developers, would very likely lift housing prices although it might also improve the economy and raise the average salary. However, protestors have claimed that the signing of the FTA with China has boosted housing prices much higher than the average wage earners can afford. Also, media freedom and freedom of speech have been deteriorating considerably ever since the signing of ECFA between China and Taiwan. In other words, the signing of the FTA with China may have a negative effect on Taiwan. But the ruling party hid the fact that global capitalism creates inequality, exploitation, and even oppression, and that the signing of the FTA could even aggravate the problem. In fact, the profits and economic growth in the CSSTA would be possible only by turning impacted local workers and industries into the excluded outcasts. Yet, only few knew about this problem leading up to March 18th, the day when students occupied the parliament. The Sunflower Movement becomes the embodiment of the symbiotic and interstitial strategies for the following reasons. First, the interstitial strategy happens in the hegemonic governing space “within which individuals act in relatively autonomous ways, not following the dictates of the logic of the system” (Wright 2009, p. 229). Interstitial activities are “consciously constructed forms of social organization that differ from the dominant structures of power and inequality” (p. 230). Student leaders claimed that everyone is the leader, which empowers the individuals for occupation activity. The Sunflower Movement participants promote

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the slogan of “Saving my own country by myself” (自己的國家自己救). Rather than posing an immediate threat to the dominant capitalist class and elite, they claim to safeguard democracy and freedom. During the protest, citizens acted in relatively autonomous ways. Therefore, they were all welcomed to occupy the parliament and the space near it. NGO activists and experts also set up public forums (公民議壇), democratic classes (民主教室) and deliberations on the street (街頭審議) based on different issues. These meetings, forums, and classes show the feasibility of the open, transparent, and democratic negotiations when signing the FTA. In the meantime, these activities covered different issues, including the repressed and ignored ones from the sacrifice of the labour rights and pollution caused by the unclear power plants. Participants tried to find an alternative way to increase social empowerment where the signing of the FTA could become an open and democratic procedure without having the exploitative impact of global capitalism. 7.3.2

Symbiotic Metamorphosis:

Despite their direct challenge against the ruling governments through the interstitial metamorphosis, Taiwan’s activists also show the signs of symbiotic metamorphosis. In Envisioning Real Utopias, the fundamental idea of symbiotic metamorphosis is that “advances in bottom-up social empowerment within a capitalist society will be most stable and defendable when such social empowerment also helps solve certain real problems faced by capitalists and other elites” (Wright 2009, p. 240). Wright indicates a form of “mutual cooperation between opposing classes” between “workers and capitalists” (p. 241). In this symbiotic metamorphosis, both workers and capitalists (Taiwan’s SMEs) can “improve their position through various forms of active, mutual cooperation,” which can be regarded as a “positive class compromise” (p. 241). In his latest finding, the Taiwanese scholar, Ming-Sho Ho, discovered that the seasoned activists’ improvisation as “strategic responses without prior planning” is the crucial yet neglected key to making the social movement successful, particularly in the Sunflower Movement (Ho 2017). In practice, the flexible and quickly improvised response, including cooperating with Taiwan’s large number of SMEs in bottom-up social empowerment, is one of the most significant catalysts that contribute to the successful mobilization in the occupy movement. The constant and sufficient supply of food, drinking water, tents, mobile toilets, medical services, and even

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mobile phone accessories is the outcome of the “improvised” cooperation and integration among the average seasoned activists, political parties, and SMEs. For example, when activists were criticized for intentionally vandalizing the public space and expansive facilities in the plenary conference chamber, Taiwan’s individuals as well as small- and medium-sized companies were quick and flexible in answering the denunciation mostly from politicians and media pundits. The ruling KMT government and media pundits proclaimed that the vandalism and forceful scuffle would cost taxpayers more than 1 trillion NT dollars (about 3.2 million US dollars). With no one in command, professional accounts, carpenters, and facility sellers came to evaluate the total losses caused by the activists. After careful investigation, they concluded that the total losses should be less than 10% of the government’s estimation, which is less than 2 trillion (650,000 US dollars). Moreover, to further ease the public criticism about the damage, workers and small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs outside the commanding circle took initiative to amass a professional group of experts, mechanics, carpenters, construction workers, and computer engineers in three days right after the students announced the end of their occupation. More than one thousand citizens joined to clean, replace, and repair most of the damaged facilities in the plenary conference chamber within two days. The amount of money was only 2.85 million, which was later covered by online donations to the activists. As the Sunflower Movement deterred the signing of the CSSTA with China, it exposed and solved certain real problems faced by capitalists and other elites. It forced the ruling government to work on improving labour rights and upgrading the industries instead of ignoring them. In this symbiotic metamorphosis, both workers and capitalists had the chance to confront and ask the government to improve their present situation. The Sunflower Movement protesters exposed long-time economic inequality in Taiwan. Concerning economic inequality, Taiwan had faced a rising Gini coefficient from the 1980s to 2009, while the average wages and salaries had been going down, eventually hitting a historical low (Fuller 2014). In his article about economic inequality, Douglas B. Fuller points out that the free trade agreement between China and Taiwan does not reduce economic inequality. He avers that Taiwan should “reconsider its social policies to address the challenges of being a mature economy” (Fuller 2014). Also, the Sunflower Movement exposed the problems

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of “globalization and ‘free trade’” (Wasserstrom 2014). In her interview, Shelley Rigger stressed that the existence of the Chinese political threat permits Taiwan to be “less blinded than people in other countries by a neoliberal ideology” (Wasserstrom 2014). Rigger concluded that “it’s globalization and twenty-first-century capitalism” that is creating Taiwan’s economic situation (Wasserstrom 2014). For instance, the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement paved the way for unequal competition between the big Chinese State-Owned enterprises and small Taiwanese service companies (Smith 2014). Compared to the Chinese state-backed large enterprises, even the largest banks, service companies, and real estate developers are still 50 to 100 times smaller than their Chinese competitors are. To be competitive in China, entrepreneurs must follow the unwritten rules of the Chinese authorities concerned. In China and Taiwan, there is a popular slang for successful businessmen: “If you have connections, you will find the way to success. If you don’t, you won’t have a chance” (有關係就沒關係, 沒關係就有關係). The demonstrations can be regarded as a “struggle against nepotism” and inequality in global capitalism (Cole 2014). Taiwan’s service sector takes up approximately 70 percent of its GDP, which consists mainly of SMEs. This is a stark contrast to their Chinese counterparts. In China, the size and scale of enterprises are normally much larger, better-funded state-owned enterprises. As a consequence, not only Taiwanese labourers but also SME owners are subject to the CSSTA. During the protest, many economic and social problems were raised and discussed. The improperly laid-off, mistreated, underpaid, dissatisfied labourers shared a common ground with enterprise owners, who faced unequal competition. Together, the protesters confronted and questioned the government to the point where the hysterical protesters found the government’s knowledge lacking. They found out that the government could not guarantee that the impacted industries would not be replaced by the Chinese industries. They also discovered that the government could not guarantee improvement in labour rights, salaries, and already expensive housing markets after signing the agreement. So, the protesters stopped believing that the free trade agreement was capable of guaranteeing a better life, economic growth and wealth for everyone. During the protest, protesters challenged the signing of the CSSTA while government officials and the president only replied with vague answers, such as Z > B (the benefits outweigh drawbacks). The economics minister had to go to different demonstration sites and universities to debate with students and professors. Although the ministers

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and president proclaimed that the protesters lacked sufficient knowledge about the agreement, they failed to fully answer protesters’ questions about the impact of the CSSTA. Lin Ying-dar, a professor at the Institute of Computer Science and Engineering at National Chiao Tung University and former CEO of Telecom Technology Center, described the agreement as an “e-version Trojan Horse clause” (Shih 2013). It would threaten “national security, businesses, and individuals’ rights to privacy, because they could easily intercept information” (Shih). National Taiwan University professor, Lin Tsung-nan, said that the agreement would allow Chinese companies to “severely jeopardize the nation’s information safety” (Shan 2014). Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, director of the institute of Sociology at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan commented that “There are groups [in Taiwan] who will benefit from this trade pact, big business and especially the financial sector [who] want to open their banking operations in China. But who loses? The majority of the public” (Russell 2014). It shows that the majority of the public, particularly Taiwan’s employees and SMEs, could most likely face a disadvantage when facing competition from better-funded state-owned enterprises. Concerning these doubts and questions from the bottom of the society, the government could only produce a series of groundless predictions. Different from the government’s promises and statistic calculations, citizens from Hong Kong offered the Taiwanese the most concrete, vivid, and painful example of signing the FTA with China. It showed Taiwanese the possible future society of highly developed global capitalism, where residents have to bear the pressure of rocketing real estate prices, falling incomes, and stressful competition. Therefore, in the Sunflower Movement, angry small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs worked with unemployed workers, scholars, and students to demand that the government “repeal the CSSTA, defend democracy,” (退回服貿、捍衛民主) and “renegotiate with China” (重啟談判) since the FTA will affect employers and employees in over 1.3 million SMEs. The symbiotic cooperation between the small- and medium-sized capitalists and activists had been so successful that there was plenty of food and material supply even after the end of the occupation movement, which was later transferred to other social movements, such as the Anti-nuclear Power Plant Movement that lasts for six days. Therefore, activists also asked the government to cope with the present problems within the existent SMEs. During the protest, activists also invited impacted industries to the forum where workers in

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factories, employers in service industries, and even farmers could talk about their problems and disadvantages. Activists called on the authorities concerned to make those impacted industries more competitive before signing the FTA with any countries. Acting as a medium, activists and experts allowed the individual voices in “bottom-up social empowerment” which offered possible solutions “faced by capitalists and other elites” (Wright 2009, p. 240). They attempted to help the impacted industries and solve the economic inequality. 7.3.3

Discussion of Findings and Conclusion

While interstitial and symbiotic metamorphosis does not pose a serious and immediate threat to the status quo of neoliberalism and global capitalism, they in effect play a practical role in making a real change in the lives of people. Cumulatively, these two different models of metamorphosis in these two movements explain how protests seek to expand social power and look for opportunities to change the existing system. For Taiwanese, after decades of martial law and white terror, the average person had been driven to see global capitalism as the only economic policy and solution. Yet, after witnessing Taiwan’s government’s incompetence, the public, for the first time in the history of Taiwan, stopped regarding free market global capitalism as the ultimate solution in their life. For the first time, the public, especially the younger generation, started to demand an alternative mode of economic system with a more just distribution of wealth and democratic, transparent politics. Unlike youth who felt uninterested in politics in the past, young people today feel responsible by participating in social and political issues. Young activists create the slogan to express their anger and dissatisfaction: “If you do not stand up to fight today, you will never stand a chance to fight” (今天不站出來、明天站不出來) and “If you do not talk about politics, politics will screw you” (你不搞政治、政治來搞你). Therefore, following the movement, citizens, who are active in the protest, answered the calls from the public. They organized two new political parties, New Power Party and Social Democratic Party, which represent the rising third force in Taiwan. They are regarded as the “product of the mass’s desire for a Left alternative” (Young 2015). In the 2016 general election, activists from New Power Party won five seats in the legislative Yuan (Taiwan’s parliament). By entering the parliament, these new pro-democratic party members may show the rise of the grassroots democratic movement

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and the public’s desire to create a new alternative where the repressed local voices can be heard. As the Sunflower Movement members pose a serious threat to the capitalist ruling government, they are either strongly criticized by the capitalist controlled and state-backed media, or sentenced to prison as they both represent the strong potential to change the structure of global capitalism.

References Baker, D., G. Epstein, and R. Robert Pollin. (1998). Globalization and progressive economic policy, 49–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Buxton, Nick. (2008). Economic strings: The politics of foreign debt. In Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization, ed. Jim Shultz, and Melissa Crane Draper, p.175. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chen, M., I. Tsai, and C. Chang. (2007). House prices and household income: Do they move apart? Evidence from Taiwan. Habitat International 31 (2): 243–256. Cheng, C. and Hsueh, J. (2008). Exploring M-shaped society and policy implications for Taiwan. National Policy Foundation. Available at: http://www.npf. org.tw/2/3868. Accessed 2 Mar. 2017. Delmendo, Lalaine C. (2016). Taiwanese house prices continue to fall due to harsh taxes. Global Property Guide [online]. Available at: https://www.global propertyguide.com/Asia/Taiwan/Price-History. Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population. Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillian. Fuller, D. (2014). ECFA’s empty promise and hollow threat. In Political Changes Taiwan under Ma Ying-jeou: Partisan Conflict, Policy Choices, External Constraints and Security Challenges, 1st ed., ed. J. Cabestan and J. Lisle. New York: Routlefge. Gonoi, I. (2016). Global justice movement after the Arab uprisings: A conceptual framework. 1st ed. [pdf] Tokyo: Takachiho University Department of Business Management. Available at http://web.isanet.org/Web/Conferences/ AP%20Hong%20Kong%202016/Archive/216c1f03-134a-4ab9-b2e5-783bbc ac3374.pdf. Accessed 14 Mar. 2017. Gramsci, A. (1999). Selections from the prison books. London: ElecBook. Harvey, D. (2005). Spaces of global capitalism: Towards a theory of uneven geographical development. London: Verso. Ho, M. (2015). Occupy congress in Taiwan: Political opportunity, threat, and the sunflower movement. Journal of East Asian Studies 15 (1): 69–97. Ho, M. (2017). From mobilization to improvisation: The lessons from Taiwan’s 2014 sunflower movement. Social Movement Studies 17: 01–14.

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Hsu, J., and W. Chang. (2013). From state-led to developer-led? The dynamics of urban renewal policies in Taiwan. The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration. London and New York: Routledge. Huat, C. (2016). Return to/of the political popular in cultural studies in Asia. Situations 9 (1): 1–19. Karatani, K. (2014). The structure of world history: From modes of production to modes of exchange. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Kotz, D. (2002). Globalization and neoliberalism. Rethinking Marxism 14 (2): 64–79. Kuang, C. (2013). A caring society: Multimedia records for Taiwanese citizen action in a new era, pp. 46–47. Taipei: Under Table (in Chinese: 管中祥主 編, 公民不冷血 (台北市: 紅桌文化, 2013年), 頁 47. Michael Cole, M. (2014). Does the sunflower movement have (or Even Need) an exit strategy? [Blog]. The far-eastern sweet potato. Available at: http://fareasternpotato.blogspot.tw/2014/03/does-sunflower-mov ement-have-exit.html. 25 Oct. 2016. Mo, Y. (2011). Ma Unveils his ‘Golden 10-year’ prospects outline. Taipei Times [online] p. A3. Available at: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/arc hives/2011/09/30/2003514561. Accessed 27 Feb. 2017. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century, 19–23. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. UK: Cambridge University Press. Rowen, I. (2015). Inside Taiwan’s sunflower movement: Twenty-four days in a student-occupied parliament, and the future of the region. The Journal of Asian Studies, 74(1): 5–21. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/109 20320/Inside_Taiwan_s_Sunflower_Movement_Twenty-Four_Days_in_a_S tudent-Occupied_Parliament_and_the_Future_of_the_Region. Accessed 22 Jan. 2015. Russell, R. (2014). Exclusive: Taiwan occupation turns into “sunflower revolution”. Occupy.com [online]. Available at: http://www.occupy.com/article/ exclusive-taiwan-occupation-turns-sunflower-revolution#sthash.yqkd1zjj.7BO pexOv.dpbs. Accessed 15 Feb. 2017. Scholte, A. (1997). Global capitalism and the state. International Affairs 73 (3): 427–452. Taiwan. Ministry of foreign affairs. (2008). I-Taiwan 12 projects. Taipei, Taiwan. Ministry of Foreign Affairs [online]. Available at: https://taiwantoday.tw/ news.php?unit=10,23,45,10&post=14816. Accessed 3 Sep. 2021. Shan, S. (2014). Trade pact siege: Experts Decry NCC telecom plans. Taipei Times [online] p. A3. Available at: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/tai wan/archives/2014/04/10/2003587705. Accessed 3 Feb. 2017.

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Shih, H. (2013). Experts fear forthcoming risks to internet freedom. Taipei Times [online] p. A1. Available at: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/arc hives/2013/08/31/2003570992. Accessed 17 Jan. 2017. Smith, G. (2014, May 29). Taiwan’s sunflower movement. Foreign policy in focus [online]. Available at: http://fpif.org/taiwans-sunflower-movement/. Accessed 25 Oct. 2015. Wright, Erik Olin. (2010). Envisioning real Utopias. London: Verso. Young, P. (2015). Taiwan’s third party forces and new political forces around the World. New Bloom, [online] Available at: http://newbloommag.net/2015/ 10/18/link-third-force-new-political-forces/. Accessed 6 Dec. 2016.

CHAPTER 8

Culture, Land Reclamation Movement, and Property Relations in Indigenous Mapping Projects in the Contemporary Truku Society Ching-Hsiu Lin

8.1 Indigenous Movements and Land Reclamation Movements in Truku Society When I did Ph.D. research fieldwork (2005–2006, and 2008), I participated in two different types of indigenous mapping projects within my field site in Truku communities, on the eastern coast of Taiwan. Both indigenous mapping projects were conducted by indigenous people with technical assistance provided by a team of non-indigenous geographic experts. Undertaken using the same geographical technology, these two

C.-H. Lin (B) Department of Public and Cultural Affairs, National Taitung University, Taitung, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_8

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mapping projects had different goals and strategies, and hence produced different styles of maps. Indigenous mapping projects are fundamentally social and political activities in which indigenous people appropriate geographical knowledge and technologies, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning System (GPS), and Google Earth, in order to make their maps ‘objective’ and ‘accurate’, and therefore to legitimate them. Indigenous mapping projects have been gaining ever more prevalence in indigenous communities around the world since the 1980s. Indigenous people suppose that they can translate their specific ideas on land to maps, and then use maps to prove their land rights (to others) or create a political space in which they can negotiate with the state over the comanagement of natural resources in their areas (e.g. Nietschmann 1995; Sparke 1998; Usher et al. 1992). These two mapping projects, occurred in 2005, are linked to two different types of land problems and land reclamation movements. One mapping project was conducted by the ‘Return Our Land Self-help Association’ (ROLSA), which has been campaigning against the Asian Cement Company in Fushih Village since 1992.1 A private enterprise dominated by non-indigenous people, the Asian Cement Company established significant mining operations in the village in 1976, and many residents suffered not only from the environmental pollution created by the company’s operations, but also from losing land to the company. ROLSA was organized by indigenous landowners whose lands had been seized by the Asian Cement Company. The second mapping project under consideration is the Truku Indigenous Mapping Project (TIMP). The TIMP is financially supported by the government and organized by a small number of Truku people. This project is part of the nationwide ‘Indigenous Mapping Project’ (IMP) initiated by the Council of Indigenous People (CIP), Executive Yuan, in 2002. The main goal of TIMP is to record ecological and geographical knowledge, place names, migration history, and the location of ancestral working and hunting areas in ‘traditional territory’. For Truku people, the majority of their ‘traditional’ territory lies in Taroko National Park. Before the Japanese colonial government took over Taiwan in 1896, Truku people lived in the mountain area in the northern part of Hualien County, only leaving when resettlement policies were put into effect by the Japanese colonial regime in 1918. As a result, from 1918 to 1944, they were subject to strict state control. The

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colonial government set up reservations on the plains in the eastern part of Taiwan, and forced or encouraged them to move from their original homelands to the government established reservations. As a result, historically, the lands inhabited by the Truku people have included both highland and lowland areas. Though the Japanese colonial regime ended in 1945, most people did not return to the highlands, but remained settled in the lowlands. In 1986, the government set up Taroko National Park in the highlands. As a result, they cannot use the land within the Taroko National Park as they would have in the past. In order to deal with various problems which have arisen in relation to land, from the 1990s onwards a number of land reclamation movements were established by Truku people. Generally, these land reclamation movements can be divided into two different types, depending on the particular concept of land ownership employed within Truku society. One focuses on the struggle over the legal rights of land ownership, as represented by the ROLSA in Fushih Village; and the other focuses on resisting those governmental institutes which ‘occupy’ their ‘traditional’ territory, such as the Taroko National Park.

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These two different kinds of land reclamation movements, I would suggest, represent the two main themes prevalent in respect of indigenous lands in Taiwan. ROLSA focuses on issues of private landed property, while land reclamation movements in relation to the Taroko National Park focus on the concept of common lands. With the privatization of indigenous lands from the 1960s onwards, private land ownership replaced customary property relationships which had defined the relationship between people and land in indigenous society. The ROLSA is a significant example of how indigenous people can use the modern legal system and concepts of human rights in order to reclaim their land rights. The land reclamation movements against Taroko National Park are significant examples in terms of reflecting on the impact of national parks in indigenous society. They are also significant examples, for indigenous people in Taiwan, of thinking about how to create a social and political space in which indigenous people can negotiate with the government in order to set up policies for the co-management of resources in their territory. Comparing the modes of mobilization in the ROLSA mapping project with those of TIMP in 2005, Chi and Chin argue that the former can be regarded as a ‘bottom-up’ indigenous mapping project organized by the Truku, while the latter, as part of an official indigenous mapping project, was controlled by a few elites and intellectuals in cooperation with an expert academic team (Chi and Chin 2010: 739). As a member of the academic team within both mapping projects in 2005, I am in partial agreement with the criticisms made by Chi and Chin, but would argue that they have failed to take spatial–temporal factors into account in conducting their comparison. In terms of project duration, comparisons are difficult. The ROLSA project was conducted over the course of one week only, while the TIMP project has been in operation since 2002. In terms of geographic scale, the ROLSA mapping project focused on an area within a particular Truku village, while the TIMP includes the highlands and the lowlands. Different spatial–temporal scales will influence the ways in which mapping projects are mobilized. In addition, Truku actors involved in the TIMP are more active and subjective than depicted by Chi and Chin, in terms of their relationships with academic staff in the mapping process. During my fieldwork, I had

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multiple roles within the mapping projects. I was an academic specialist in geographical technologies and an enabler in terms of introducing more convenient and accessible tools for mapping. In most mapping exercises, I was an assistant and involved in operating the digital maps rather than in organizing the projects’ participants. The implications of the involvement of academic experts in indigenous mapping projects are too complex to address in this essay, but working in these mapping projects enabled me to study the diverse perspectives of the participants engaged in mapping projects. Particularly, in working with the Google Earth digital map program for both the ROLSA and TIMP mapping projects, I found that these projects used different language and concepts relating to property in order to express their ideas on the relationship between people and the land. In the process of mapping, participants frequently asked me to adjust the scale of the digital map in order to help them to express their ideas relating to land. When I zoomed in or zoomed out using Google Earth, I found that different scales of map held different meanings depending on the concern, in relation to different concepts of property relations. Based on my experience of engagement in the ROLSA mapping project and the TIMP, I will discuss the manner in which concepts of property relations are articulated in two distinctive land reclamation movements, and analyze the concepts of property intrinsic to these movements. How do the participants determine which particular ideas of property is used in the process of mapping? By comparing the different ways in which concepts of property are articulated in ROSLA and in TIMP, we can consider the implications of the modern legal system and privatization for indigenous peoples’ perspectives on land in Taiwan. This essay will reflect on the influence of the dichotomous concepts of private and common land as they relate to traditional indigenous territory and indigenous land reservations, in indigenous land reclamation movements, and how they inform the imagination and articulation of the relationship between indigenous people and the land in contemporary Taiwan. In different land reclamation movements, the participants may prefer the language of the common land, or of private property, in constructing their narratives, though these two distinctive languages may also be mixed together when indigenous people express their concepts of the lands.

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8.2 The Mapping Project, Memory, and Property Relations Indigenous mapping projects have drawn their inspiration from the experience of ‘community mapping’ or ‘participatory mapping’ in some rural villages around the world (Taiban Sasala 2008). The main purpose of such programs is that local people (peasants or indigenous people) adopt mapping techniques in order to legitimate or protect their land rights (e.g., Orlove 1991; Peluso 1995). In terms of mapping conducted by local people, Peluso (1995: 385–387) argues that the map itself is absolutely an instrument for the government to control resources and define territory in a nation. Therefore, there is an overt implication of resistance contained in the process of mapping. Mapping not only concerns the use of technology to investigate and define the boundary of the territory, but it also connects with how people (both collectively and as individuals) speak of the land (oral history). In Taiwan, the nationwide indigenous mapping project was initiated by the state, rather than local people, in 2002. This project was carried out from 2002 to 2010. Since then, the government has organized traveling exhibitions to share the results of this mapping project with indigenous communities in Taiwan. Government policy established when the DPP took power in 2000, sought to establish a relationship based on partnership between government and indigenous people. For some indigenous people, this project is a strategy for them to improve their social and political status in Taiwan. Actually, the goals of this project are diverse and in different contexts or cultures, indigenous people have different ideas. Though both the government and indigenous people see the indigenous mapping project as a strategy or tool to achieve their goals, these mapping projects are not regarded as an effective way of improving life for indigenous people. By reflecting on the operation of indigenous mapping projects in indigenous society, this project should consider who is speaking through the medium of mapping technologies, rather than what indigenous people are saying, as these projects are most likely under the control of a few indigenous elites and intellectuals, rather than the majority of those in indigenous communities (Chi and Chin 2010; Ishigaki 2005). In addition, indigenous mapping projects can be regarded as a process of translation and representation of indigenous ecological knowledge and concepts of human–land relations by the use of modern/western

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geographical technologies (Kuan and Lin 2004: 132). In the process of mapping, epistemological controversy and methodological limits in the use of ‘western’ mapping technologies may mean indigenous people are unable to truly present their ideas on the human–land relationship. But the appropriation of geographical technologies has brought western concepts of territory with fixed boundaries into the representation of indigenous concepts of human–land relations (Ishigaki 2005: 37). In this situation, mapping projects might even cause conflicts over land or natural resources in indigenous society. Although there is much criticism leveled at the work of indigenous mapping projects, the idea of indigenous mapping has gradually spread in indigenous communities in Taiwan. The nationwide profile of indigenous mapping projects has meant many indigenous people are able to gain access to GIS technologies and have the opportunity to learn about such technologies, and then initiate their own mapping projects. In addition, the emergence of Google Earth has enabled indigenous people to more effectively carry out their own projects. Even though the government has halted the nationwide indigenous mapping project, there are many indigenous people carrying out their own small-scale mapping projects throughout indigenous communities in Taiwan. For indigenous people, the indigenous mapping project is the practice of shaping or reshaping the relationship between themselves and the land, and concomitantly their relationships with their ancestors. Halbwachs (1992: 38) demonstrates that collective memory is the active past that forms our identity. Because memory interweaves with spatial practices, remembering may be a highly charged tool to legitimate new forms of reification (Antze and Lambek 1996). If the process of mapping can be recognized as memory, this process may be influenced by social and historical factors and by the interplay between collectives and individuals. From the literature referred to above, we can see that the indigenous mapping project is a political exercise through which indigenous people might be empowered in legitimating their rights to the land or to the natural resources in their territory. The indigenous mapping project is not only influenced by the transformation of the political environment, but also by the development of geographical technologies. Furthermore, the mapping project is always involved in political practices of memory and representation. Firstly, the mapping project is involved in the politics of translation between different cultures of landscape and human–land relations. Secondly, it is also associated with the construction of the

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connection between the present and the past, and therefore is a political space in which people construct their individual or collective identity through spatial representation by mapping. But which factors influence the practices of memory in the dynamic process of mapping? If the ancestor–land–human relationship is the basis of the mapping project, what narratives are created by indigenous people in the process of mapping? And what kinds of language relating to property are appropriated by indigenous people in the processes of mapping? If we look at the history of the development of indigenous mapping projects, they are aimed at creating certain types of land reclamation movements. Rights over land or the management of natural resources may be central to these movements. As such, indigenous people will probably articulate their understandings of property relations within the maps they create. Also, these maps can be regarded as a narrative representing indigenous concepts of property relations.

8.3

Land Reclamation Movement, Modern Legal System, and Private Property

Many Truku residents in Fushih Village argue that their lands in the Asian Cement Company are illegally occupied by the company. In this situation, the company violates their land rights and land ownership. Documents provided by ROLSA describe the story of this land reclamation movement which began in 1972, when the Asia Cement Company entered into nine-year lease agreements negotiated by the local administration office for 272 plots of indigenous land. Additionally, in the following years, the land rights to all but 61 parcels of land were canceled and handed over to the company under circumstances that activists and legal representatives say are illegal and should render the company’s claims to land use rights invalid. The original landowners received monetary compensation for the displaced crops and the promise that the land would be returned to them after twenty years. However, in 1993, Asia Cement Company’s leases were set to expire. When some of the original owners tried to reclaim their land, they found that their property rights had mysteriously disappeared. The company claimed that the owners had relinquished their rights to the property in perpetuity, and that the company had the legal documents to prove it. At the center of the land reclamation movement against the mine are strong suspicions that the cancellation of land rights was obtained

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through forgery. ROLSA argues that copies of relevant documents show remarkably similar handwriting for signatures which are meant to be by different people, signing over the rights to their land. Some lack dates and all lack thumbprints, which are required in the case of a representative signing in lieu of someone who cannot write Chinese. Furthermore, an investigation in 1996 of the land right cancellations showed that none of the people interviewed could recall signing the waivers. Although ROLSA won two significant legal cases against the Asian Cement Company in 2000 and 2010 (Lin 2010; Simon 2005), the company still insists that the land rights were obtained legally and the indigenous people’s claims to land are moot. It is still the case that indigenous landowners are unable to enter company property to gain access to their lands. ROLSA can be seen as a land reclamation movement organized by a group of Truku landowners. The leader of ROLSA is a Truku woman, of over sixty-five years of age. She married a Japanese man and spent much of her life in Tokyo, but returned to Fushih Village, her hometown, in 1995 and became involved in the movement against the Asian Cement Company. Through her tireless efforts, the land reclamation movement has campaigned continuously from 1996 onwards. In order to reclaim their land rights, she worked together with the landowners and residents of Fushih Village to set up the ROLSA. However, the leader of the ROLSA had been under considerable pressure from the company and the government. This was exacerbated by the fact that many of the landowners and their descendants refused to support her and ROLSA. On the contrary, many of the local landowners, residents, and local administrators feared the influence of the company and central government, and were afraid that opposing them might endanger their own interests. This female leader of ROLSA could not understand why they simply acquiesced to the illegal occupation of their lands by the company. She said to me, I always remind landowners and residents that the basic responsibility of the modern state, such as the state in Japan, is to protect rather than violate the private property of its citizens. In her affirmation of the role of the modern state and legal system, is an implicit belief that the cause, which she espouses, is just and that the people will ultimately succeed in reclaiming their land. Her understanding of the modern legal system is reflected in her strategies concerning the land reclamation movement. She worked increasingly with non-Truku lawyers who are experts on the improvement of human rights in the

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NGOs, rather than working solely with residents or landowners in organizing marches against the cement company. Working with and through lawyers has become central to the ROLSA. In this situation, although ROLSA gained significant legal victories for landowners and indigenous society in general, the use of the modern legal system to deal with disputes over land might not be well understood by Truku people in Fushih Village. Framing their efforts primarily in legal terms focused on private ownership, the ROLSA mapping project, under the guidance of its leadership, directed the efforts of participants toward locating their occupied lands via the medium of digital maps. From this, the leadership helped landowners to identify areas of land with points on the digital maps. In addition, landowners were encouraged to identify the crops cultivated prior to the appropriation of land by the Asian Cement Company, and also any particular memories they had in respect of their occupied lands. The mapping project conducted by the ROLSA in 2005 lasted for only one week, though most of those landowners who had lost land to the Asian Cement Company were invited to join it. If a landowner did not come to the workshop, others would help them to locate their land and to calculate the area affected. Two products have emerged from this mapping project. Firstly, there are the ‘points’ identified on digital maps in relation to land appropriated by the Asian Cement Company, each point referring to a piece of land and, in total, allowing landowners to appreciate the full extent of their loss by offering a visual depiction. Secondly, a small-scale database containing landowners’ stories relating to land appropriated by the cement company was collected. Most of the stories appearing in this mapping project are short and simple. Many of the landowners concerned simply described their farms and some unique geographical features, etc. A few recorded their memories of working with their parents or other family members on their land. For example, a female elder described that, When I was young, I often worked with my parents and grandmother in our field (in the mining area). We grew peanuts, sweet potato and corn there. I will never forget carrying back the basket full of crops, waiting for my grandmother, and then returning home with her. In those days, it was easy for a household to make its living by cultivation; the countryside was so clean and fresh, and there were no thieves in the village.

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These stories were presented as supplementary materials in relation to the maps. In fact, though ‘supplementary’, these personal accounts have added considerable value to the maps produced through the ROLSA project, distinguishing them from official cadastral maps in that they offered more than simple representations of locations and areas. Official cadastral maps can show with precision the location, number, measure, and ownership of land, while on ROLSA’s maps, each piece of land is represented in simple terms, as a small colored point. However, the addition of personal accounts marks out ROSLA maps as the work of landowners, carrying emotions and memories, making ROLSA’s maps more powerful than the official cadastral maps in terms of claiming their land rights in land reclamation movements. If mapping represents the politics of spatial representation, the ROLSA mapping project can be regarded as a strategy within the land reclamation movement. In order to strengthen the legitimacy of their land rights, the

Map 2 The distribution of occupant lands for the Truku landowners in the Asian Cement Company, made by the ROLSA in 2005

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ROLSA’s maps can be regarded as a visual representation of the reality that many landowners faced when they lost their lands because of the Asian Cement Company. The representation of occupied lands on maps, in terms of areas, indicates the strategic importance of the concept of private property to ROSLA, a strategy which is based on the use of the modern legal system in their efforts to reclaim land from the company. The ideas of private property are therefore deployed by Truku participants in ROSLA, to express their relationship to the land. In expressing ownership in terms of modern legal systems and concepts, Truku participants also refer to their families, in particular their parents or grandparents. The meaning implicit in these references relates to the connections between the landholder and their descendants (or heirs). These narratives on the relationship between people and land, however, allow no room for the others in the landowners’ family history and personal memory. The narratives of human–land relations are based on the ideology of private property; Truku concepts of property relations between humans and land are seemingly concealed or absent in this land reclamation movement. Before the introduction of the modern legal system in Taiwan, gaya, for Truku people, was the only complex set of norms in society. The concept of gaya is closely connected to ideas of (ancestor) spirits, utux. In terms of Truku nations of gaya, they actually have different ideas and interpretations of norms (gaya) in different contexts, or create or change rules of gaya in order to adapt to new social, economic, and religious situations. For instance, the elders might use their authority to interpret customs (gaya) to serve their personal desires. Relying so heavily on the modern legal system in order to deal with land issues will strengthen or create an antithetical distinction between the modern legal system and a complex set of norms. As such, this antithetical relationship might shape an assumption that indigenous people’s norms of property relations are as fixed as those of the modern legal system. Consequently, it will mislead outsiders to believe that indigenous people have their own strict norms of property relations similar to modern laws, which may have an adverse impact on indigenous people when they deal with conflicts over land ownership through the legal system (Lin 2010).

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The Visualization of Truku History: Ancestors and Collective Identity

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Due to the decade long efforts of the Truku Name Rectification Movement, Truku people were officially recognized by the government as an indigenous group in 2004. Before being an indigenous group, the Truku were categorized as a sub-group of the Atayal group, an indigenous group in Taiwan. After becoming an independent indigenous group, Truku people organized an association including Truku postgraduate and undergraduate students, civil servants, teachers, and ministers from the Presbyterian Church, to start to campaign for the self-government. This mapping project is a process by which Truku people’s territory can be defined. This project moreover shall be regarded as the process of creation of the image of Truku ancestor, and invention of the narrative of their history. It simultaneously provides Truku people with the means to strengthen the sense of subjectivity, and creation of a relationship between ancestors and their descendants. The leader of the TIMP is a Truku elder who is over seventy years old and is a retired colonel. He was also the chair of the alliance which formed the Truku name rectification movement. He translates ‘traditional territory’ as ‘nniqang rudan’ in the Truku language, which means a place where someone used to live. Under his definition of ‘traditional’ territory, any place used by the ancestors in the past, such as hunting and gathering areas, dwelling places and communal places in a community, arable lands, streams, etc., should be included. In addition, he tries to describe the history of migration, and this history is linked to his genealogical survey by use of historical documents and fieldwork. He also attempts to record and emphasize the traditional rules of land use and land property, in his descriptions of the particular characteristics and stories relating to each landmark on the map. Importantly, he argues that the indigenous mapping project should involve exploration and mountain-climbing, because they insist on bringing GPS in order to locate their ancestral lands and trace the route of their ancestors’ migration on the map. For this purpose, the leader of this project likes to invite hunters who have spent a lot of time living in mountainous regions, to contribute to Truku ecological and botanical knowledge. From 2005 to 2010, the indigenous mapping project conducted by Truku people has collected about 200 place names. Most points showing on the map are the location of tribes in their ‘traditional territory’.

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Apart from this particular theme of the location of tribe, there are three lesser themes also represented on the map. TIMP team includes Truku hunting culture on the map. It shows many points relating to various kinds of resting area (lhqnaw), like caves, tree holes, huts, etc. If we trace these resting areas, we might be able to construct hunting paths in the highlands. There is a theme, in the TIMP, which relates to the history of a battle between the Truku and the Japanese colonial government in 1914. Prior to 1914, Truku lands were not controlled by the Japanese colonial government. In 1914, the government waged war (the so-called ‘Taroko Battle’), and finally conquered the Truku (Teyra 2003). The story of this battle is, for the Truku, an epic, including a lot of stories, legends, and heroism. They like to describe in detail the battles which were waged, and the well-known locations where their ancestors had fought bravely against the Japanese military, or successfully conducted headhunting raids against Japanese soldiers. This story of ‘Taroko Battle’ has become increasingly popular in the contemporary, since they started to campaign for the ‘Name Rectification Movement’ in the late 1990s. The participants in TIMP started by adding points on digital maps, and then adding descriptions for the tribal history of each point, because most points refer to tribes. In particular, this history is based on the results of a genealogical survey conducted by the TIMP. They located each ancestral community on the map, and the genealogical relationship between communities is the main issue addressed on the map. Truku people can use these maps to learn the locus of a family’s history in the ‘traditional’ territory, and the process of diffusion followed by that family’s descendants. But how the TIMP did combine their mapping project with the results of their genealogical survey in order to portray Truku history? If most points on the map refer to tribes, how was the notion of tribe understood when Truku lived in their original homelands? ‘Tribe’ is called ‘alang’ in the Truku language. They originally lived in scattered settlements, and the scale of each community or alang in the highlands was small, on average consisting of less than twenty households (Mona 1998: 1). Every household in the same community collectively shared the same hunting area (Mona 1998: 22).2 Truku marital residence is customarily virilocal. When a son got married, he would leave his parents and set up a new home. However, if there was insufficient land for this newly married couple to cultivate, they would claim new land from the tribe. In Truku kinship in the highlands, the unmarried person would

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live in a place with the kin groups of his or her father and grandfather. Furthermore, each tribe has its geographical boundary, which is called ‘ayus ’ in Truku language. They held that everyone must respect the ‘ayus ’ of the tribe. Usually, they used significant geographical features, such as rivers, ridges, valleys, etc., to define the ayus of the tribe. Each ayus would be negotiated with the neighbors. If an outsider crossed territorial boundaries without permission, he or she would be headhunted. The territory of each tribe included hunting areas, dwellings, farms, rivers, fallow lands, and so on. Members of the tribe were allowed to share in the use of tribe lands and this was accompanied by a duty to protect the communal areas and follow the customs pertaining to their use. If discussion of memory informs us that in the process of mapping, collective (ethnic) identity is simultaneously reinforced or constructed, because mapping is remembering or forgetting the past, then in this process of representing the past, the notion of kinship perhaps becomes one of the most important elements. Moreover, emphasis on common origins easily (mis)leads people to believe that the relationship between an individual and a community (nation and ethnic group) is equal to kinship. Through integration of genealogical survey into mapping project, participants construct a historical narrative for the Truku. This narrative is that there are several descent groups of these ancestors. And each group included a number of tribes in ‘traditional’ territory. And all Truku people are descendants belonging to a certain tribe, and finally they have common ancestors. The connection between common ancestors and their descendants as represented on the map is not only a narrative of Truku history, but also relates to ideas of property relations along with the language of kinship. This mapping project focuses on the concept of the ‘commons’, because the map is seeking to depict their contours at the level of the tribe. As I have described above, in a tribe, members had equal access to resources and land, had common duties to protect their own tribe’s territory, and had common ancestors. This language of the commons contributes to narratives of Truku identity, and to the production of a sense of solidarity in society. Because the maps generated by the TIMP stop at the tribe level, it is impossible to present the relationship between individuals and their lands in a tribe. However, what are property relations at an individual level in the tribe when Truku people lived in the highlands? Why does the TIMP try to omit information on the relationship between individuals and their land from its maps? In the next section, I will describe

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how Truku audiences invited to examine the results of the TIMP’s labors, sought to amend the results to reflect their own ideas of property relations in the highlands.

8.5

The Trick of Adjusting Map Scales

When a team from TIMP asked Truku elders and hunters to recall stories and place names in their traditional territories, place names were always associated with the name of the land user. In Truku language, the possessive is located before the object. For instance, Watan’s land is translated as dxgal (land) Watan in the Truku language. When conducting their fieldwork, TIMP collects a lot of place names relating to each particular user’s name. The teams therefore include many landowners’ names when compiling their maps. The issue of place names brings us to a discussion on property relations in personal and on an individual household level in traditional culture. Mona (1998: 24–25) tried to apply the dichotomy between communal property and individual property, in order to analyze concepts of property and land tenure in pre-colonial society. According to his study of property relations during that period, the communal property included communal forests, natural springs, arable lands, streams, wasteland, paths, and roads. Various kinds of individual’s property included immovable property, such as land (cultivated land, fallow land, and dwellings), forest, and buildings (house, barn, hut, pigpen, coop, etc.); and movable property, such as hunting and farming implements, cooking utensils, furniture, livestock, staples, vegetables, etc. In Truku culture, every tribe has its own ‘ayus ’ of its territory and each household has its own ayus of its landed properties. In pre-colonial society each household had ‘rights’ over the land within its recognized ayus, including the use of any natural resources and agricultural products (Mona 1998: 26). If one of the residents of the tribe appropriated the natural resources or harvest of another’s land without the landholder’s permission, he or she would be seen by the landholder and the other residents as a thief. The principle of pre-emption should be regarded as the key for the Truku people to gain landed property in the pre-colonial society. Basically, they recognized that all such lands belonged to the community, although each household individually had its own land. Moreover, if a landowner could not bequeath his or her land to descendants, or to other relatives,

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then the land would be returned to the community holdings, once again to become community wasteland. A household that wished to plant crops or to reclaim wastelands had first to establish exclusive ‘rights’ over the land. When the members of a household had decided to farm a particular piece of wasteland, they would first stake their claim by making a statement to all the residents in the community that the land belonged to them, and they would do this by planting trees or setting up stone banks. After this ‘announcement’, everyone was expected to respect the household’s appropriation of the new land. Place names as land users’ names are based on Truku concepts of individual property in their cultural context. However, this individualization of property culture and place names is totally erased on the TIMP maps. In 2005, I was invited by the TIMP to participate in three workshops in which the mapping team showed their maps to Truku audiences. In these workshops, I operated the digital map which was projected onto a wall in the meeting room. Before the meetings, the TIMP leader suggested that I avoid zooming-in on the digital maps too much, and instead follow his instructions on how to display the map. However, in these mapping meetings he was very disappointed by my performance, as there were always requests from the audience to zoom in on sections of the map, and so the workshop was not fully within the control of the TIMP workshop leader. For the TIMP leader, the main goal of these workshops was to show the distribution of tribes in the highlands, including famous battles and historical sites, such as the ‘Taroko Battle’ in 1914, and also the history of migration of the Truku people. However, not all the narratives of land and history were explored, as the workshop leader sought to avoid discussing what he knew of the location of highland lands once used by the parents or grandparents of those in his audience. The main reason for this was to avoid a situation whereby the audience members might impose their own concepts of private property in discussing the relationship between their ancestors and land in ‘traditional’ territory. However, in these workshops the audiences seemed to be more interested in the location of the land belonging to their parents and grandparents, than the distribution of tribes and Truku history. Sometimes, members of the audience would run to the platform, and ask me to make the digital map zoom in more in order to point out the location of the cultivated land or hunting area ‘belonging to’ their parents or grandparents. Such interruptions might provoke others to join in discussions, but also might give rise to disputes over land among audiences.

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On such occasions, there were those who tried to stop such ‘nonsense’ disputes, arguing that ‘it is not time to pay attention to your individual property. If we can regain this traditional territory from the government or the Taroko National Park, then we can discuss how to use or re-allocate our land’. Sometimes, audience members would dispute the location of a particular piece of land as identified by a particular member of the audience. Conflicts over the relationship either between the commons and individual property, or between individuals, seemed to be inevitable in such workshops, but the TIMP leader always did his best to try and avoid them. Eventually, the TIMP leader found a better way to display maps for the audiences during workshops, electing to show slides of various ‘themed’ maps rather than employ a digital presentation which had the capacity to zoom in on certain features. In this way, he could control the scope and scale of the maps presented in workshops and could show whatever he wanted to the audiences without any threat of incidents. The narrative which links a particular location to a particular family is similar to one of the narratives deployed within the ROLSA mapping project. The link between an individual and his or her parents or grandparents receives more emphasis than the link between common ancestors and their descendants. Nevertheless, there is a significant difference between the narrative of individual property employed in workshops for Truku indigenous mapping projects and the narrative found in the ROLSA mapping project. In the ROSLA mapping project, the relationship between each landowner and their lands is represented as a number on the map. But if an individual wants to claim his or her land rights in traditional territories, they have to provide evidence to show their genealogical relationship to land users. The closer the genealogical relationship, the more authority they have in claiming land rights in their traditional territory. The difference between these two narratives relates to the different legal conditions pertaining to the land. In ROLSA case, the number is a symbol showing that the land occupied by the Asian Cement Company is the private property of a particular landowner. In the workshops for sharing the results of the mapping project with the Truku people, the ‘traditional’ territory defined by the mapping project is not privatized. Rather most of it is controlled by the Taroko National Park, while some are mountain areas and forest governed by the Forestry Bureau, Council

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of Agriculture Executive Yuan, and others are dominated by other governmental institutes. In other words, ownership of Truku people’s traditional territory is a national property and neither private property nor Truku communal property. When Truku people lived in the highlands, there were concepts of property relating to the household and its land. However, a set of principles of property relations between a household and its land cannot simply lead us to argue that Truku people have ideas of landed ownership which are similar to the modern legal system. The property relations between the household and its land were associated with a complex of norms, concepts of kinship, and hunting and gathering culture when they lived in their traditional territory. However, the leader of TIMP was inclined to conceal the results of their research on the relationship between individual households and their land, when compiling maps. The notion of representing owned land in terms of numbers, as done on the ROLSA project, did not arise. The TIMP focuses on the commons and it articulates a narrative based on the connection between the common ancestors and their descendants and their own history. By applying the language of common lands onto the map, Truku people may be able to construct a sense of social solidarity. Indeed, it is very difficult to encourage them to work together in order to claim their land rights if people pay more attention to property relations on the individual level than on the communal level.

8.6

Conclusion

With the government’s imposition of the policies on ‘Lands Reserved for Indigenous People’ in the 1948, the modern legal system and concepts of private property have significantly influenced concepts of property relations in indigenous society. Economic, cultural, and political difficulties have created serious problems for indigenous people in Taiwan. In order to reclaim indigenous land rights, a number of land reclamation movements organized by indigenous people have arisen from the 1990s onwards in Taiwan. These land reclamation movements are diverse, and their goals and strategies are always dependent on the particular contexts of indigenous lives. There are at least two main themes involved in these land reclamation movements, one is the fight against the government or private companies which have occupied indigenous people’s lands or

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prevented indigenous people from using their lands in their own ways. Another theme is the self-empowerment of indigenous people. In these land reclamation movements, the presentation and representation of native concepts of human–land relationships are essential to indigenous people. Because the aim of these land reclamation movements is to claim their rights over land, it is inevitable that indigenous understandings of property relations will be uppermost in the activities and representations of indigenous peoples. Their narratives of property relations are usually associated with their memories of the past at both the individual and collective level. The narratives of property deployed in these land reclamation movements are constructed by indigenous people; they are not neutral, but rather are political in nature. They are influenced by the micro-political context as well as the macro-political. In the micro-political context, the narratives of property relations presented in land reclamation movements interact with various conflicts of interests between individuals and collectives. In the macro-political context, the narratives of property relations can be regarded as a result of the reaction of indigenous people toward the transformation of policies on indigenous people. Furthermore, indigenous people usually shape and reshape their concepts of property relations in order to serve their strategies and goals in the land reclamation movements. Along with the co-emergence of privatization and capitalism in western society, a distinction between private and common holdings has characterized the distinction between the west and the rest, between modern society and primitive society, and between capitalist society and precapitalist society, and so on. Concepts of private property are so influential that if people try to explain native ideas on property relations, they will face the limitations of using the language of private property. When indigenous people try to express their ideas on property relations to others, it is possible that they may be misunderstood, that property relations in indigenous society may be thought to be essentially synonymous with modern notions of private property. I do not attempt to discuss Truku concepts of the relationship between ‘personhood’ and property relations, but regard the concepts of property relations involved in land reclamation movements essentially as labels. The labeling of property relations is not only deeply influenced by the complex legal and political institutions of government, but also by the struggle of indigenous people over land rights in contemporary society. Through the investigation of mapping projects in society, this essay looks at the

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reasons why they adopt a particular language or languages of property in the practice of mapping. In this way, I explore why and how they use and struggle over different conceptions of property in the first place. Through reflection on the practices of mapping projects in the ROLSA and the TIMP, I describe the various languages of property involved in land reclamation movements in society, and how to manipulate mapping technologies and digital maps to present their concepts of property relations. The various ideas of property in mapping projects represent a complex interaction between the government and indigenous people, between the organizers of the mapping projects and ordinary people, between western notions of the human–land relations and Truku understandings, and between the private and the commons. In addition, different languages of property in these mapping projects articulate different kinship connections. Generally, the language of the commons is associated with the relationship between the common ancestors and their descendants, while the language of private ownership concerns the kin relations between parents and their children. The decision as to which language of property should be used in these mapping projects is dependent on the particular goals and strategies of the land reclamation movements. However, the language of property relations found in mapping projects is not familiar to the language of everyday life in communities. The ROLSA focuses on the land rights of individual landowners, and in its mapping project participants used only one language of property, that is, the language of private property. On the contrary, the TIMP adopted the language of the commons to present their ideas on property relations in the highlands. Although the decision on which language of property to adopt is dependent on the particular tactics of the land reclamation movement concerned, the ideology of the distinction between the commons and the private has been reinforced in wider Truku society. This ideology has meant that Truku concepts of property relations have lost their flexibility in terms of dealing with problems or issues of land, and may mislead outsiders into imagining that there is a set of strict norms in property relations which resemble the modern legal system. Consequently, it gives outsiders the conceptual tools and justification for once again imposing their worldview on indigenous people. If the property relationship between people and land is either private or communal, it is far from the ordinary, day to day experience of dealing with land rights in everyday life. In studies of indigenous mapping

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projects, it is important to think about the consequences, in indigenous society, of the translation of native concepts of human–land relations into the medium of maps based on western spatial ideology. They focus not only on the cultural and political factors which influence the practices of mapping, but also try to seek effective ways to make mapping projects better able to contribute to the improvement of life for indigenous people.

Notes 1. Fushih Village is highly representative of the problems which have affected indigenous Taiwanese peoples in terms of land and indigenous social movements. Many residents have lost or are threatened with the loss of their lands. A considerable number of those residing on the hill in Fushih Village have had their land occupied by the Asian Cement Company, a private enterprise, whilst many residents have found themselves in similar conflicts with the Taroko National Park. According to the official 2009 census, the village contains 2158 residents, including 1153 males and 1005 females, and 635 households (CIP 2009). 2. The household consists of a married couple and their unmarried offspring and perhaps the husband’s parents. The Truku term for the physical house is ‘sapah’. Linguistically, sapah refers to the house as a building, but it is also a metaphor for the household.

References Antze, Paul and Michael Lambek (eds.). 1996. Tense past: Cultural essays in trauma and memory. New York; London: Rutledge. Chi, Chun-Chieh and Hsang-Te Chin. 2010. Knowledge, power, and tribal mapping: A critical analysis of the ‘return of the Truku people. GeoJournal 77: 733–740. Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992. On Collective Memory (edited and translated by Lewis Coser). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ishigaki Naoki. 2005.「Buluoditu」diaocha jhih shengsih: Yi bunongzu jhih neibenlu diaocha weili. 「部落地圖」調查之省思: 以布農族之內本鹿調查為 例 (Reflections on community mapping researches: A case of the Laipunuk research by the Bunun). Journal of Eastern Taiwan Studies 10: 37–64. Kuan, Da-Wei and Yi-Ren Lin 官大偉、林益仁. 2008. Sheme chuantong? Sheide lingyu? : Cong taiyazu maliguang liouyu chuantonglingyu diaocha jingyan tan kongjianjhihshih de jhuany. 什麼傳統? 誰的領域?: 從泰雅族馬里光流域傳統 領域調查經驗談空間知識的轉譯 (What tradition? Whose territory: A critical

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review to the indigenous traditional territory survey and the translation of spatial knowledge in Marqwang Case, Taiwan). Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology 69: 109–141. Lin, Ching-Hsiu. 2010. Women and land: Privatisation, gender relations, and social change in Truku society, Taiwan. PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh. Mona, Masao. 1998. Social organization in Atayal society. Taipei: Nantian. Nietschmann, Bernard. 1995. Defending the Miskito reefs with maps and GPS: Mapping with Sail, Scuba, and Satellite. Cultural Survival Quarterly: 34–37. Orlove, Benjamin. 1991. Mapping reeds and reading maps: The politics of representation in lake Titicaca. American Ethnologist 18 (1): 3–38. Peluso, Nancy. 1995. Whose woods are these? Counter-mapping forest territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Antipode 27 (4): 383–406. Sasale, Taibang. 2008. The division and re-construction of traditional territory: Re-examining human-land configuration and spatial change of Kucapungane. Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology 69: 9–44. Simon, Scott. 2005. Scarred landscapes and tattooed faces: poverty, identity and land conflict in Taiwanese indigenous community. In Indigenous peoples and poverty: An international perspective, eds. McNeish, R. Eversole & A. Cimadamore. London: Zed Books. Sparke, Matthew. 1998. A map that roared and an original atlas, cartography, and the narration of nation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88 (3): 463–495. Teyra, Yudaw. 2003. Muda haka utux (Over the rainbow). Hualien: Tailugezu Wenhua Gongzuofang. Usher, Peter J., Frank J. Tough, and Robert M. Calois. 1992. Reclaiming the land: Aboriginal Title, Treaty Rights and Land Claims in Canada. Applied Geography 12 (2): 109–132.

CHAPTER 9

Countering Prejudices with Uncanny Strangeness: Taiwanese Children’s Books About Southeast Asian Marriage Migrants in Taiwan Chen-Wei Yu

9.1

Introduction

Since 1970, an increasing number of women from Southeast Asian countries, particularly Vietnam and Indonesia, have immigrated to Taiwan through marriage to Taiwanese men.1 By 2018, according to statistics from Taiwan’s Executive Yuan, the number of these immigrants reached over 160,000. The Ministry of Education’s The Report on the Statistics of New Residents’ Children in Elementary and Junior High Schools notes that in the same year, the number of their children at all levels of education in Taiwan was about 310,000 (2019b: 11). Typically, Taiwanese men

C.-W. Yu (B) Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Fo Guang University, Jiaosi, Yilan County, Taiwan, ROC e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_9

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who seek wives from abroad are farmers or blue-collar workers from rural areas. These men are socially disadvantaged compared with white-collar and urban men when it comes to marriage, so they seek spouses from regions with less-developed economies. Their wives, known as “marriage migrants,” used to be referred to as “foreign brides,” a pejorative term associated with ridicule, prejudice, and discrimination. Marriage migrants often suffered from social stigma and bias to an even greater extent than they do in the present day. At first, the Taiwanese government was indifferent to marriage migrants and their welfare, but that started to change in 2002. As the annual birth rate in Taiwan continued to decrease, it became clear that the children born of these transnational marriages (known as “new Taiwanese children”) would make up a substantial percentage of Taiwan’s future generations (the first of these children reached adulthood in 2019). Hsiao-Chuan Hsia, a Taiwanese scholar who has studied the immigrant movement in Taiwan, notes that there was a “dramatically increasing concern” about the “quality” of these children and that the concern “coexisted with” media reports about their slow intellectual development and poor academic performance (2007: 77). Moreover, Taiwanese governmental agencies instituted immigrant-unfriendly laws and legislation aimed at curbing the number of transnational marriages. Hsia argues that “these laws and regulations are not only the products of, but also in turn reinforce prejudice and discrimination against” marriage migrants (2008b: 193). Overall, the Taiwanese government and media have contributed to constructing the image of this group as a social problem. Still, many NGOs in Taiwan have worked with marriage migrants to provide them assistance with education and encourage social action. For example, literacy programs are designed to teach marriage migrants Mandarin Chinese “to empower [them] to speak for themselves and form an organization to fight for their rights” (Hsia 2015: 316). In 2003, the Alliance for Human Rights Legislation for Immigrants and Migrants was formed to mark the commencement of a new immigrant movement in Taiwan (Hsia 2008b: 194–95). The alliance strategically conducted a series of social actions and demonstrations to protest unfriendly legislation. As a result, many laws were amended, new laws were implemented, and some measures were taken to improve the immigrants’ situations and welfare. As a result, the quality of life of these marriage migrants has greatly improved. Official documents now refer to them with more

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neutral terms, such as “foreign spouses” or “new residents.” Immigrants also actively participate in political events, continuing to make their voices heard, and their children are seen as the pioneers of Taiwan’s “New Southbound Policy,” which aims to strengthen economic and trade relationships with Southeast Asian countries. In 2019, the national school curriculum in Taiwan radically changed its language requirements. A decree issued by the Ministry of Education (2018) stipulates that starting in first grade, schools are to offer optional language courses in the Minnan, Hakka, and Taiwanese indigenous languages, as well as additional elective courses for the official languages of seven Southeast Asian countries (Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Malaysia). The purpose of these newly added language courses, according to the Ministry of Education’s Electronic Newsletter (2019a), is to offer “both children of new residents and other Taiwanese children the opportunities to learn the languages of Southeast Asian countries” and allow children “to appreciate different cultures and languages.” Thus, to some extent, the Ministry of Education’s 2018 education policy is a governmental acknowledgment of these immigrants as important members of Taiwanese society. The progress of the immigrant movement in Taiwan represents a gradual change in the social discourse related to this group of people. As part of the social discourse, publishers of children’s and young adult literature in Taiwan have released literary works about marriage migrants. Most of the protagonists in these books are marriage migrants from Vietnam and Indonesia. The books portray the difficult circumstances that marriage migrants and their children face in daily life. For example, children face discrimination in school because of their mothers’ immigrant status, and peer pressure sometimes causes these children to deny or reject their mothers. These mothers also endure ill-treatment from their husbands’ family members, who are prejudiced against foreign nationals. Some of the authors of these books claim that their stories are based on true events or real people. The authors are looking to educate readers on the importance of understanding and accepting marriage migrants and the different cultures that they bring to Taiwan. For example, Guangfu Li, author of I am Taiwanese, Too, states in the preface that the wife of his wife’s brother was the real-life inspiration for his protagonist, an Indonesian woman descended from an ethnically Chinese family (2008b: 8). In the preface of her book My Vietnamese Mother, Zuoyu Cai calls for an unbiased attitude toward marriage migrants and for appreciation of their

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cultures (2011: 3). These authors aim to help young readers and the public understand the lives and experiences of marriage migrants. The stories often end with hope and solutions. Their stories also highlight the discrimination originating from stereotypes of marriage migrants. In a sense, these works, most of which were published between 2008 and 2011, represent the effort that Taiwanese society has made to address these social issues. Since 2011, few works of fiction that address these themes have been published, although many continue to promote multicultural appreciation. This recent comparative lack of books on this specific issue may indicate that such stories are no longer told because the marriage migrant movement in Taiwan has successfully addressed the problem. This study looks at four works of fiction2 that tell the stories of marriage migrants and their experiences in Taiwan: The Boy of Saigon, My Little Baby: The Story of a Vietnamese Mother, I Am Taiwanese, Too, and My Vietnamese Mother. All of them are novels, except My Little Baby: The Story of a Vietnamese Mother, which is a picture book.3 The purpose of the study is to offer a psychoanalytic perspective on the distinctive ways in which each book fights the prejudices and discrimination against marriage migrants. The study is based on a concept called “uncanny strangeness” (1991: 187), from Julia Kristeva’s book Strangers to Ourselves. Kristeva uses Sigmund Freud’s concept of “the uncanny,” meaning an unconscious dynamic in which one’s mental response to another person’s presence is a compulsive tendency to fight that second person. The reaction arises from the discomforting or frightening feelings that the second person triggers in the first’s unconscious. The first wants to ignore or forget such feelings, or as Freud suggests, to repress that part of his/her psyche ([1955] 2001: 238–41). In this way, to fight the other person is to fight the self. According to Kristeva, “uncanny strangeness” points to a way of embracing the foreign because “Freud brings us the courage to call ourselves disintegrated in order not to integrate foreigners and even less so to hunt them down, but rather to welcome them to that uncanny strangeness, which is as much theirs as it is ours” (1991: 191– 92). She further states, “By recognizing our [original emphasis] uncanny strangeness we shall neither suffer from it nor enjoy it from the outside. The foreigner is within me, hence we are all foreigners” (1991: 192). Kristeva’s Freud-based psychoanalytic concept provides the theoretical framework for this study. My reading of these four works does not intend to be psychoanalytical per se, however. Rather, I aim to draw parallels

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between the plots of the stories and this psychoanalytic concept. That is, I highlight how the Taiwanese customs and social norms portrayed in these books play important roles in constructing the marriage migrant characters as they are. Ultimately, the books strive to convey how these foreign “others” are an essential part of Taiwanese society; in other words, they are just as irreplaceable in Taiwan as Taiwanese people themselves.

9.2

Love as the Basis of Transnational Marriages

Many women from Southeast Asian countries marry Taiwanese men to provide financial assistance to their original families. Globalization encourages this pattern of transnational marriage because it often widens the economic gaps between countries. As Hsia notes, “Many Southeast Asian women decide to marry Taiwanese men because they hope to escape their native country’s poverty, which has been intensified by globalization” (2008a: 135). Most of these women meet their Taiwanese spouses through international marriage matchmaking agencies. The families of would-be grooms pay expensive fees to these agencies, which arrange matchmaking events, host marriage ceremonies, and “handle immigration formalities” (Bélanger 2010: 3). As part of the matchmaking process, Taiwanese men choose their potential wives from a large group of women during matchmaking interviews (Lin 2012: 842–43). The transactional nature of this process means that the women involved are often ridiculed and viewed as commodities, which is addressed in The Boy of Saigon. In the novel, a Taiwanese husband pays a cash dowry to his Vietnamese wife’s family. The payment of a dowry is a long-standing tradition in the ethnically Chinese society of Taiwan. The protagonist, a boy named Shaokuan, tells his father how people tease him and say that his mother was “bought” from Vietnam. The father admonishes his son for his silliness, saying, “Who said that? The money is the dowry. How can you not pay a dowry to the family that has laboriously raised a daughter to be your wife? You fool!” (Zhang 2009: 133). Shaokuan’s mother also believes her marriage to be a “thoroughly reasonable transaction” (Zhang 2009: 39). She explains that, when she was in Vietnam, she contributed an important amount of income to her family. After she was married, her husband’s family gained another person to help with household tasks, but her family in Vietnam lost a source of income. So she asks, “What is wrong with my Taiwanese family paying my Vietnamese family as compensation?” (Zhang 2009: 39).

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Marriage migrants from Southeast Asian countries face the stigma of being considered commodities and women who marry only for financial gain. As Hsia points out, they are “constructed as active evil-doers, who are money-driven and marry Taiwanese men just to suck away their money” (2007: 61). My Little Baby: The Story of a Vietnamese Mother counters this prejudice by emphasizing a loving marriage between a female immigrant and her husband. The female protagonist tells her story to her young daughter, explaining how she had heard that Taiwan had a better economy and so she thought that working in Taiwan would bring in enough financial support to help her parents build a new house (Lai 2009: 10). She continues, “I was reluctant to come to Taiwan, but your father fell in love with me. He said that he would take care of me for the rest of my life, like a prince does for his princess” (Lai 2009: 10). She wanted to help her parents and start a family of her own, so she married and came to Taiwan. In I Am Taiwanese, Too, the main character, a female immigrant named Caizhi from Indonesia, blushes as she remembers how she originally did not want to marry her future husband, a young Taiwanese man named Wen Rong. However, Wen Rong’s constant courting and her own parents’ persuasion convinced her otherwise (Li 2008: 18). The stories in these novels underscore how similar the notions of love and marriage are for couples in transnational marriages and non-transnational marriages. As with any marriage, some transnational marriages are not based on love. In Taiwan, men with disabilities or social disadvantages may have trouble finding Taiwanese spouses. These men face their own stigma in Taiwanese culture and media portrayals, which often describe them as “socially undesirable” (Hsia 2007: 63). Therefore, they might seek foreign wives because they assume that it will be easier to find a spouse from a less-economically developed region. Unethical matchmakers might deceive women seeking Taiwanese husbands, failing to disclose in marriage interviews that their potential spouses are disabled or that they are not as wealthy as they seem to be. In The Boy of Saigon, for example, the husband is a physically disabled and reticent clock smith. However, his Vietnamese wife expresses her fondness of him despite his disability, saying that she likes him for his quietness even though he will need crutches for the rest of his life (Zhang 2009: 6). She believes that he is worth more than his disability. Furthermore, the novel constructs a positive image of him by highlighting his skill at repairing old watches, which receives high praise from foreign nationals and is even reported on

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by the media. In this way, the story challenges the negative stereotypes held by the public about Taiwanese men who marry women from Southeast Asian countries, particularly men who carry their own stigma related to disability or poverty. Only one of the novels in this study discusses a transnational marriage that is not based on love. In My Vietnamese Mother, the wife admits that she married a Taiwanese husband with cerebral palsy for the purpose of getting money for her family to build a house and to avoid having to work outdoors all day in the rice fields (Cai 2011: 99). Love is not mentioned, and the husband needs constant care and is confined to his bedroom (Cai 2011: 18). This novel is an exception in that the other three emphasize love as the basis for the marriages, characterizing the husbands as supportive when their wives are faced with problems with the husband’s family members.

9.3

The Difficult Role of Daughter-in-Law and the Issue of Gender Preference

In these four books, the mother-in-law is often the cause and symbol of the marriage migrant’s interpersonal relationship problems. As Wu et al. explain, “establishing a good relationship with her mother-inlaw is an important task in a Taiwanese woman’s marital adjustment” (2010: 500). Like non-migrant Taiwanese wives, the migrant wife is expected to participate in her husband’s family as a devoted daughterin-law. She needs to maintain the relationship with her husband’s family while also managing feelings of homesickness and loneliness in her new home. These four books describe the different ways in which female marriage migrants painstakingly endure the dissatisfaction and harsh criticism of their mothers-in-law, who often perceive their daughters-in-law as untrustworthy foreigners. In My Little Baby: The Story of a Vietnamese Mother, the marriage migrant explains how her mother-in-law criticizes her for not being able to cook Taiwanese dishes well (Lai 2009: 26). In My Vietnamese Mother, the mother-in-law accuses her daughter-in-law of stealing her hard-earned money, though it is later revealed that the grandson had stolen it. Similarly, in The Boy of Saigon, upon forgetting where she keeps her money, the mother-in-law accuses her daughter-in-law of theft. While Shaokuan, the son, stands by his Vietnamese mother, she is physically attacked and

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blamed by her mother-in-law for Shaokuan’s bad manners (Zhang 2009: 64–65). In Taiwanese culture, the wife’s original family often provides support and guidance, particularly during marital hardships. Also, on the second day of the Lunar New Year period, married Taiwanese women traditionally return to their original family homes for a visit. However, marriage migrants often live far away from their original families. In The Boy of Saigon, the wife explains that she and many of her married female friends have not visited their home countries for many years since coming to Taiwan. One of them even says that she has almost forgotten her homeland and feels like a ghost haunting Taiwan (Zhang 2009: 178). In I Am Taiwanese, Too, Caizhi cannot visit her mother during the Lunar New Year, so she instead visits her sister, who has also married a Taiwanese man, and adopts the house of her sister as her “maternal home” (Li 2008: 50). The family conflicts in these books underscore how migrant wives struggle to adapt to long-ingrained Taiwanese domestic conventions and how their problems are similar to, but often worse than, the problems of native-born married Taiwanese women. As previously mentioned, a typical assumption in Taiwan is that children of marriage migrants are prone to poor academic performance. Hsia points out that this concept has arisen from the idea that “marriages between the Taiwanese men and Southeast Asian women are stereotyped as a union of two persons with little education, which is constructed as a serious problem to the ‘quality’ of future generations” (2007: 60). Another misconception is that these children tend to be developmentally delayed, based on “the assumption that since the marriage migrants are from the developing countries, they must lack the skills necessary to educate their own children” (Hsia 2008b: 192). This bias arises from Taiwan’s patrilineal heritage, in which women are still seen “primarily as the homemakers, shouldering all responsibilities in child-rearing” (Hsia 2007: 79). In fact, many Taiwanese men seek a wife from Southeast Asia precisely out of being compelled to follow the patriarchal custom of continuing the family line through marriage and having sons. Correlated with this custom is the sexist preference for male children in Taiwanese culture. My Vietnamese Mother addresses this as a possible cause behind the assumption that children of marriage migrants are prone to poor academic performance. In the novel, a teacher discovers that among two sibling pupils in her class, the sister is less literate than her brother. The teacher visits

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the family and finds that their mother is a woman from Vietnam who hardly understands or speaks Mandarin Chinese. However, it is revealed later that the girl’s poor degree of literacy has not been caused by her mother but by the discriminatory behavior of the mother-in-law, who shows preference for her grandson by taking care of him and giving him sufficient educational resources while doing almost nothing for her granddaughter. The Boy of Saigon challenges the predominant image of children of immigrants as academic underachievers. Both the boy protagonist and his sister work hard to keep their grades within the top ten in their classes (Zhang 2009: 48). These novels suggest that children from transnational marriages can academically perform as well as their Taiwanese classmates.

9.4

Taiwan as a Society of Immigrants

As described thus far, these books draw parallels between transnational marriages and non-transnational marriages by emphasizing how the customs and conventions of Taiwanese society affect all marriages. Thus, if marriage migrants are construed as “problems,” then Taiwanese society should be held accountable to treat the causes of these problems. In addition to these similarities, marriage migrants and Taiwanese people share a history of immigration. As Debei Huang points out, “Taiwan is a society of immigrants. Apart from the indigenous Taiwanese, virtually all other groups emigrated to this area from somewhere else. In the past 400 years, due to either economic or political reasons, different groups migrated and settled in Taiwan at different times. They brought with them new cultures and customs that enrich Taiwanese life, its economy, and its culture” (2005: 5). Most people in Taiwan are the descendants of Chinese migrants, mainly from the southeastern provinces of mainland China. The waves of migration date back to the seventeenth century. The two main groups of Chinese migrants are the “Hakka Chinese from the province of Canton, and Southern Min speakers from the province of Fujian, both Han Chinese groups but ones with distinct languages and culture” (Simpson 2007: 237). After the Qing-dynasty rulers lost the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, Japan ruled Taiwan. During the Japanese colonization of Taiwan, “the Qing Dynasty was overthrown and the Republic of China was established in 1912 by the Chinese Nationalist Party, also known as the KMT” (Yu 2011: 34). Japanese sovereignty over Taiwan ended in 1945 with its loss of World War II. Not many years later, a large group

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of people from China came to Taiwan with the KMT, which had lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communist Party of China in 1949. Soon after arriving, the KMT declared martial law to consolidate its authoritarian rule over Taiwan Before the KMT came to Taiwan, many inhabitants of the island spoke the dialects of their ancestors who had migrated from China long before. After arriving, the KMT imposed a Chinese nationalist identity onto everyone in Taiwan, introducing a centralized educational system and establishing Mandarin Chinese as the official language that everyone had to learn and speak. This top-down promotion of Mandarin Chinese forced all Taiwanese people to identify as Chinese even if they were not descendants of immigrants from China. This situation is exemplified in The Boy of Saigon. China’s status as an informal suzerain of all other lands in the Southeast Asian region is shown through the wife’s feelings of loyalty to Taiwan. Although she is from Vietnam, she recognizes the historical ties between China and her homeland. She even learns Mandarin Chinese, including how to write her family members’ names in Mandarin (Zhang 2009: 154). As the KMT made Mandarin Chinese the only official language in Taiwan and prohibited the speaking of local dialects, the families of Taiwanese husbands in some transnational marriages force migrant wives into compliance by actively discouraging or preventing them from speaking with their children in their native languages. Such restrictions are meant to promote conformity with Taiwan and, so they say, ensure the best interests of their children. In this way, “assimilation by linguistic adaptation for the sake of childrearing thus becomes a shared interest between the in-laws and the state” (Cheng 2013: 168). Such situation plays out in My Vietnamese Mother. By the end of the novel, the marriage migrant, Ruanzhen, is learning Chinese Mandarin. Her mother-in-law has forbidden her to speak Vietnamese at home. Ruanzhen complies out of the fear that it will sabotage her children’s ability to learn Mandarin (Cai 2011: 37). Thus, she is imprisoned in silence. Kristeva explains this mental state of imprisonment: when trapped “between two languages, your realm is silence. By the dint of saying things in various ways, one just as trite as the other, just as approximate, one ends up no longer saying them” (1991: 15). Based on Kristeva’s perspective, Kelly Oliver further explains that this silencing of language happens when “the foreigner experiences a loss of his or her mother, motherlands and mother-tongue” (2002: 226).

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Oliver suggests that this mental state of polyphonic confusion is concomitant with the child’s rejection of his/her mother in Kristeva’s theory of abjection. Psychoanalytically, when abjection is activated by the paternal demand for obedience, the child is forced to repress the fondness for things maternal as a way of maintaining a bond with the father. To the child, that which is maternal is now “something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object” (Kristeva 1982: 4). The feeling of abjection is experienced by the mother and child alike in My Vietnamese Mother. The boy, Chengtai, looks down on his mother, Ruanzhen, largely because he is reared by his grandmother, who despises Ruanzhen. This unfriendly attitude leads to abjection of his mother. While out shopping with her, Chengtai encounters his classmates on the street. Ruanzhen is shocked and hurt when he refuses to acknowledge her as his mother and instead refers to her as their maid from Vietnam (Cai 2011: 55–56). When those same classmates discover that his mother is actually from Vietnam, they no longer want to be his friend. He struggles with feelings of estrangement from them: “Loneliness is like this. Loneliness is not feeling like the only person in the world. It is knowing that there are people in the world who are happy, but you are excluded and isolated from them” (Cai 2011: 131). He has reinforced his identity as Taiwanese by rejecting his mother, but when his Taiwanese friends reject him, he experiences the same feelings of foreignness and abjection as his mother and becomes an outsider. As Kristeva explains, outsiders “are reconciled with themselves to the extent that they recognize themselves as foreigners” (1991: 195). The Boy of Saigon uses another strategy to address this “foreignness” in Taiwanese people. After giving birth to twins, the Vietnamese mother experiences post-partum depression, homesickness, and fatigue, causing her to be unable to take care of the babies. Her Taiwanese husband lets her and the babies go to Vietnam for the care they need, and they stay there for several years, returning to Taiwan when the children reach elementary school age. Before leaving Vietnam, the maternal grandparents tell the boy and girl that they should never forget Vietnam (Zhang 2009: 12). They eventually become fluent in both Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese. In school, when the boy feels discriminated against by Taiwanese classmates who talk behind his back, he speaks to them in Vietnamese, which ironically forces them to consider their own feelings of foreignness. As Kristeva explains, “by recognizing [the foreigner] within

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ourselves, we are spared detesting him in himself. … The foreigner comes in when the consciousness of my difference arises, and he disappears when we all acknowledge ourselves as foreigners, unamenable to bonds and communities” (1991: 1). After the KMT’s martial law was lifted in 1987, the Taiwan-oriented Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gained political power after winning a presidential election. Taiwan became a democratic nation where people may freely express their opinions and vote for political parties of their choice. Meanwhile, “the highly centralized educational system has been replaced with a decentralized one, which makes room for greater linguistic and cultural diversity in the curriculum” (Yu 2011: 34). Consequently, “Taiwanese children are now educated in an indigenized curriculum that aims to reflect the diverse ethno-geographic reality of Taiwanese society and to promote Taiwanese identity” (Yu 2011: 34). Although Taiwanese identity has taken root in younger generations, Chinese nationalist identity has not died out. Despite the localization of the KMT, it “has always maintained a stance that is open to ultimate unification with the mainland, despite its flirtation with the Taiwanese identity for electoral reasons” (Wu 2011: 51–52). To compete with the DPP in elections, the KMT strategically appeals to voters for support of “its relation to mainland China, and the prospects for security in the Taiwan Strait and in the region” (Wu 2011: 52). Taiwanese society thus continues to be a home for many people whose identities are constantly being negotiated. In My Little Baby: The Story of a Vietnamese Mother, the migrant wife must manage her own conflicting identities. Her Taiwanese neighbors still treat her as the “Vietnamese bride,” even though she has lived in Taiwan for more than seven years. Yet, when she goes back to Vietnam for a visit, she is regarded as Taiwanese by her own family. Viewed as foreign in both Taiwan and Vietnam, she wonders why she cannot be Taiwanese and Vietnamese at the same time (Lai 2009: 37). In I Am Taiwanese, Too, the main character, Caizhi, is from Indonesia and married to a Taiwanese man. She struggles with her identity in both realms, trying to become well-versed in Taiwanese folk religion customs and meticulously preparing what is needed for worship rituals. This effort wins praise from her husband’s family, and they ask how she does it, to which she replies, “I have settled into a Taiwanese life because I am Taiwanese,” but under her breath, she says, “but I am still Indonesian” (Li 2008: 45).

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Mandarin Chinese is the predominant language in modern-day Taiwan. However, people in certain areas still prefer to speak their Minnan or Hakka dialects to assert their Taiwanese identity, much like Caizhi in I Am Taiwanese, Too, who cultivates dual identities. Caizhi’s Hakka ancestors migrated from China to Indonesia a long time ago. Her Taiwanese husband, Wen Rong, descends from the Hakka Chinese, who migrated from China to Taiwan. Thus, their Hakka roots reinforce their shared Taiwanese identity. Moreover, her children do not treat her as a foreigner, because she can speak Hakka. She asks her children if they ever feel ashamed of her being a foreigner. Her daughter replies, “No, I never have,” and her son echoes, “Neither have I. In fact, you speak Hakka very well. None of my classmates’ mothers speak Hakka better than you do!” (Li 2008: 68). In short, the four books in this study convey the idea of uncanny strangeness between marriage migrants and Taiwanese people in Taiwan, highlighting a rich array of their lived experiences as immigrants in Taiwan in the modern day.

9.5 Conclusion: Anticipating a More Multicultural Taiwan Countering prejudices is an important endeavor in these works of fiction about transnational marriages in Taiwan. They also explain the cultural artifacts surrounding these marriages and the experiences of the migrant spouses who must reconcile feelings of foreignness both in their adopted homes and their home countries. The characters in these books express their identity in their clothes, food, and language. For example, in The Boy of Saigon, the wife, who is from Vietnam, wears a tailor-made áo dài, a traditional dress from her home country which was bought for her by her mother-in-law. When she wears it in the streets of Taiwan, people whisper and gawk at her (Zhang 2009: 128–29). Her son, Shaokuan, who is fluent in both Mandarin and Vietnamese, becomes an interpreter. He helps translate for a Vietnamese wife who cannot speak Mandarin and is trying to get the police to intervene in a domestic violence incident (Zhang 2009: 169). He and his mother are proud of his linguistic proficiency. In My Vietnamese Mother, the boy, Chengtai, loves to eat the different foods and desserts that the other migrant wives bring when he accompanies his mother to her neighborhood Mandarin Literacy class (Cai 2011: 110).

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These books inform readers that the rich cultural heritage of the women in transnational marriages should be appreciated and celebrated because they enhance and renew Taiwan’s culture. Published between 2008 and 2011, the books tell us that marriage migrants are an essential part of Taiwanese society because they have contributed to making Taiwan a diverse and multicultural society and will continue to do so for years to come.

Notes 1. This study focuses on marriage migrants from Southeast Asian countries. Although there are more marriage migrants from China than from these countries, the complex political situation in Taiwan has led to unique situations and challenges for Chinese marriage migrants that are beyond the scope of this study. 2. These works are not published in English. The book titles and the quotes from the texts are my own translations. 3. For the purpose of the study, I include only the verbal narrative of this book.

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Hsia, Hsiao-Chuan. 2008b. The development of immigrant movement in Taiwan: The case of alliance of human rights legislation for immigrants and migrants. Development and Society 37 (2): 187–217. Hsia, Hsiao-Chuan. 2015. “Action research with marginalized immigrants’ coming to voice: Twenty years of social movement in Taiwan and still going.” 315–24. In Sage Handbook of Action Research, edited by Hilary Bradbury. London: Sage. Huang, Debei 黃德北. 2005. “Tuijianxu er” 推薦序二 [The Second Preface of Recommendation], 5–7. In Buyao jiao wo waiji xinniang 不要叫我外籍新 娘 [Don’t Call Me “Foreign Bride”], edited by Hsiao-Chuan Hsiao 夏曉鵑. Taipei: Sinobooks. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Kristeva, Julia. 1991. Strangers to Ourselves. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Lai, Jiahui 賴佳慧. 2009. Wo de xiaobaobei: Yi ge Yuenan mama de xinqing gushi 我 的小寶貝: 一個越南媽媽的心情故事 [My Little Baby: The Story of a Vietnamese Mother]. New Taipei: Kang Hsuan. Li, Guangfu 李光福. 2008. “Preface.” In Wo ye shi Taiwanren 我也是台灣人 [I am Taiwanese, Too], 7–8. Taipei: Little Solider. Li, Guangfu 李光福. 2008. Wo ye shi Taiwanren 我也是台灣人 [I am Taiwanese, Too]. Taipei: Little Solider. Lin, Chun-Yu. 2012. Working bodies, performed bodies: Marriage migrant women’s bodily works. Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences 4 (4): 822–851. Oliver, Kelly. 2002. “Individual and National Identity.” In The Portable Kristeva, edited by Kelly Oliver, 224–227. New York: Columbia University Press. Simpson, Andrew. 2007. “Taiwan.” In Language and National Identity in Asia, edited by Andrew Simpson, 235–260. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Taiwan. Executive Yuan 行政院. 2019. Waiji peiou yu Dalu (han gangao) peiou renshu 外籍配偶與大陸 (含港澳) 配偶人數 [The Statistics of Foreign Spouses and Mainland (including HK and Macau) Spouses]. https://www.gender. ey.gov.tw/gecdb/Stat_Statistics_DetailData.aspx?sn=lJvq%2BGDSYHCFfHU 73DDedA%3D%3D. Accessed 25 Oct 2019. Taiwan. Ministry of Education 教育部. 2018. Ling 令 [Decree]. https://www. naer.edu.tw/ezfiles/0/1000/attach/14/pta_16460_5591824_48935.pdf. Accessed 25 Oct 2019. Taiwan. Ministry of Education 教育部. 2019a. Dianzibao 電子報 [Electronic Newsletter]. https://epaper.edu.tw/news.aspx?news_sn=67017. Accessed 25 Oct 2019.

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CHAPTER 10

Gastronomic Fusion and Flexible Culinary Citizenship of Southeast Asian Female Migrants in Taiwan’s Public TV Programs Han-Sheng Wang

Taiwan has opened the door to migrant workers since 1989. There are more than 700,000 migrant laborers, mostly from Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand, in Taiwan by the end of 2018. This number is even much higher than the population of the indigenous people in Taiwan. At the same time, the number of marriage migrants in Taiwan from the neighboring Southeast Asian countries has reached a total of more than 150,000. Thus said, the number of Southeast Asian immigrants, including workers and foreign spouses, constitute more than 4% of Taiwan’s population. These migrant workers are not protected by Basic Labor Law in Taiwan, not recognized as citizens, and even their basic human rights can be easily violated and thus

H.-S. Wang (B) National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Neipu Township, Pingtung County, Taiwan, ROC e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_10

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“ended up as victims of a legalized modern slavery system” (Liu 2018). Coincidentally, with the increasing migrants from Southeast Asia, Taiwan has witnessed the opening of ethnic restaurants or eateries around the island over the past decades. The opening of eating establishments as such not only offers Taiwanese people a variety of multicultural cuisines but also helps to ease these migrants’ nostalgia for their native food. More importantly, having access to native food in the foreign land, these migrants from Southeast Asian countries manage to find a way to claim their identity and position in Taiwan’s racialized society. Visual representations of Southeast Asian immigrants’ negotiation with their identity through culinary practices in Taiwan reached a peak in the first decade of this century, when many Public TV programs began to highlight the pressure and challenge facing these cultural others. Among these programs, The Taste of Nyonya and Papaya Love, released in 2007 and 2010, respectively, unfold stories concerning especially diasporic subjectivities of women immigrants who appeal to the art of cooking as a means of transcending the boundaries starkly mapped between the host country and the homeland. Culinary narratives employed in these two TV programs are thus akin to those used in contemporary culinary writings that explore food as a field where issues like identity, gender, and ethnicity come into play. Food writing by ethnic writers, a genre becoming popular over the past decades, has been denigrated by literary critics as pandering to the palate of Western mainstream reading public. The well-known Chinese American author and playwright Frank Chin, for instance, renounces culinary-themed novels as “food pornography”1 in which ethnic writers employ Orientalist, reduced, and exaggerated representations of minoritized cultures to satiate the hunger of mainstream readers for consuming difference. Criticism as such highlights culinary writing as a denigrated form of cultural consumption and the tendency of ethnic writers to cater to the need of the voyeuristic reader through displaying exotic otherness in their depiction of delectable treats. Culinary narratives are thus accused for being spiced with the flavors of exoticism and sugar-coated realism and endorsing forms of cultural selfcommodification and self-Orientalism, wherein minorities often fall victim to exoticized and over-simplified representations of otherness. Borrowing Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreal consumption, Mannur considers culinary narratives as “affectively simulating hyperreal eating” (1988: 85) that allows mainstream readers to consumer difference without having

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to be really involved in the politics of ethnicity. However, being positioned as an easily digested cultural commodity and an acceptable mode of representation does not mean that culinary narratives are automatically apolitical. Appropriating Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theory of minor literature, Mannur re-evaluates culinary writing as a form of minor literature in which ethnic writers, who serve as powerful cultural brokers instead of “passive objects subject to penetrating Orientalist gazes,” (1988: 87) can manage to “contrive into majoritarian discourse” and “[deterritorialize] major literature” (1988: 86) through the deployment of a culinary frame that mimics the conventions of Orientalist parable “to render critiques of late capitalism and racism palatable” (1988: 87). This chapter thus aims at exploring how food acts as a cultural manifestation of boundary-crossing when Taiwan is receiving increasing immigrants from Southeast Asian countries. For these immigrants, the struggle to assert their rights as a new inhabitant or dweller in Taiwan’s society has been staged on an everyday basis. As a register of cultural infusion, those foods from Southeast Asian countries become a trope embodying especially the female immigrants’ negotiations with their being a new denizen in Taiwan’s society.

10.1 Diasporic Taste Memory and Flexible Culinary Citizenship At an age characterized by the high flow of capital, labor, and goods, an increasing number of people migrate from their homeland to another country to seek opportunities for survival or a better future. The stateimposed identity becomes thus no longer applicable to those people who have transgressed the conventional boundaries of a nation state. In her pioneering study of transnational mobility, the anthropologist Aihwa Ong comes up with the term “flexible citizenship” to denote the migrant’s new mode of constructing identity while focusing especially on overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as “the forerunners of today’s multiply displaced subjects, who are always on the move both mentally and physically” (1999: 2). Ong’s interest in the formation of diasporic cultural identity occurring to transnational subjects is shared by Anita Mannur and Pin-chia Feng, two scholars who explore food memory as a significant cultural factor that contributes to the construction of the diasporic migrant’s subject position. People in the diaspora tend to be culturally and affectively connected to their home country. Pining for the

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original flavor of food from homeland, people migrating to a foreign country usually suffer from what Mannur calls “culinary nostalgia,” an important cultural, affective basis for the migrant subjects to assert “culinary citizenship”—that which “grants subjects the ability to claim and inhabit certain identitarian positions via their relationship to food” (2018: 29). Borrowing Ong’s concept of the formation and reconstruction of cultural identity within the migratory context, Feng presents the term “flexible culinary citizenship” to emphasize diasporic people’s “constant negotiations between roots and routes,” as is reveled in “the persistent attachment to gastronomic preferences connected with the imagination of a homeland” and in “the inevitable complications of food practices in the diasporic context” (2018: 6–7). Employing Feng’s explication of “flexible culinary citizenship” as theoretical framework, this paper wants to further explore how Southeast Asian migrants in Taiwan negotiate their identity through gastronomic practices, as represented in The Taste of Nyonya and Papaya Love. The longing for native food might be best reflected in the multifarious forms of food memoirs that record what Indian American food expert Madhur Jaffrey calls “taste memory” (2005: 5)—a gastronomic memory that speaks the tenacious relation of a diasporic subject to his or her place of origin. For Carol Bardenstein, food memoirs as such include a medley of “differently inflected subgenres” (2002: 357) such as recipe books, memoirs, or a combination of both composed by food professionals like food critics, chefs, and non-professionals that often mediate between a sense of “loss” and a desire for “recuperation” (2002: 358). Bardenstein’s observation shows especially how food as a culinary practice can be affectively linked to a subject in the diasporic migrations. Papaya Love offers such a culinary narrative, which is largely constituted by Nguyen’s memoir about how food interacts with her diasporic position, a memoir that takes on various forms like note-taking, picture-drawing, and recipe-making. Beginning with the first encounter of Nguyen and her to-be-husband Liao in Vietnam, Papaya Love impresses the audience with the tasteful Vietnamese papaya salad, a dish Nguyen makes for Liao in her eatery that will later serve to ease Nguyen’s nostalgia and satiate her palate when she becomes a marriage migrant to Taiwan. Nguyen’s graphic representation of the tragic love story about how Vietnamese papaya salad comes to be seasoned with fish sauce foreshadows what Nguyen as a foreign bride will need to go through when seeking self-identity in an alien land. In the story, the young couple was

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separated by a jealous wizard, who wanted to marry the woman. The pining woman stood by the river waiting for her beloved so long that she grew into a papaya tree while the man was turned into a fish confined to a well by the magic of the wizard. The marriage of the woman and the man was made possible when the green papaya finally fell into the well to be combined with the refined essence of fish—that is, fish sauce. Unfolded at the very beginning of the TV program, this love story can be seen as a culinary allegory in which the aspiring woman, the opposing wizard, and the beloved man all implicate how female migrants may negotiate their self-identity in a foreign soil that associates food with ethnicity. In the story, the woman becoming a papaya tree registers the female marriage immigrant’s aspiration to identify with her homeland. The wizard that stands between the woman and her beloved signifies the nationalist and patriarchal capitalism that exploits female migrants yet denies them identity and equal position. The fish sauce that adds unique flavor to green papaya salad invests Vietnamese seasoning with ethnic identity via culinary imagination. In The Taste of Nyonya, native food also serves an important media that binds migrant workers with their home country. As diasporic subjects who find themselves dislocated in an alien land, migrant workers may feel more “at home” when they can consume food made in the style they are familiar with. The Thai laborers working at railway construction site, for instance, learn to make do with their Taiwanese lunch boxes by using Thai sauces. The grocery where Sari and her fellow migrant workers shop for snacks, sauces, and other goods imported from Southeast Asian countries is another venue for migrants’ daily consumption and social interaction. Most importantly, the eatery that Sari helps her employer reopen and serves as a chef cooking ethnic cuisines is both a space of business and a place of gathering together for migrant workers where they can find gastronomic pleasure and delight themselves in a more relaxing, homelike ambience. In both TV programs, however, identities of migrant workers or marriage migrants from Southeast Asian countries are repressed, repudiated, and represented as something they need to fight for or negotiate with the mainstream culture of the host country. They are represented as exploited bodies that are racialized and devoid of ethnic identities. In The Taste of Nyonya, for instance, the Muslim worship practiced by Sari and her fellow Indonesian migrant domestic worker is considered by

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their employers to be evil witchcraft, a cultural misunderstanding reinforced by ethnic stereotypes held by the Taiwanese toward Southeast Asian migrants. To show to her employer how submissive Sari is, the broker of migrant workers even appeals to the racial categories that determine the worker’s working attitude and ability based on the nationalities he or she belongs to. The cultural logic of such ethnic stereotypes is largely underpinned by a commonly held belief that migrants from Southeast Asian countries are racially, culturally, and economically inferior and thus underserving equal rights or equitable citizenship.2 In Papaya Love, being a foreign bride, Nguyen is nevertheless treated like a domestic worker, which reflects the very position marriage migrants from Southeast Asian countries usually occupy in Taiwan’s nationalist, patriarchal families. As well as being a docile wife and daughter-in-law, Nguyen is presented as a cooperative, hard-working employee to the restaurant managed by her husband and mother-in-law. Nguyen’s assertion of her ethnic identity can be perceived only when she tries to argue with her mother-in-law, who blames Nguyen for serving the customers with her Vietnamese home cooking, papaya salad seasoned with fish sauce, a dish Mrs. Liao deems to be foul and stinky. Mrs. Liao’s disgust at the native food offered by her Vietnamese daughter-in-law discloses not only a judgment of good and bad cuisines but also a cultural boundary-making that draws a line between pure Self and dirty racialized Other. As the anthropologist Mary Douglass indicates, our division between purity and dirty reflects our way of ordering things. “Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements” (Douglass 1996: 35). Food loathing is also revealed by the cultural critic Julia Kristeva to be “perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of abjection” (1982: 2). Thus said, our attitude toward cuisines from other cultures reflects exactly our distinguishing of Self and Other, a mechanism activated by the subconscious rejection of aliens and their practices of cooking food. Through protesting against Mrs. Liao’s stigmatization of her native food, Nguyen also manages to show her discontent with Taiwan’s nationalist division that belittles Southeast Asian migrants and their identities. Sari’s mastery of cooking ethnic cuisines in The Taste of Nyonya offers another example of how the culturally dominant Self divides itself from the abject Other. To rescue her Taiwanese employer Cheng Loong, who runs an eatery with very limited choices of cuisine, out of the embarrassment of failing to satiate the appetite of hungry

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customers, Sari, a hired domestic worker, does not hesitate to show her culinary skills in cooking a banquet of Indonesian dishes that earn the applause of the diners. Even Cheng Loong’s mother, who receives Sari’s care yet despises Sari for her Southeast Asian ethnicity, finds her Nyonya dessert a tasteful treat after taking a bite without knowing that the dessert she consumes comes from Indonesia and Sari is its maker. The astonishment that Cheng Loong’s mother shows after knowing the fact indicates her failure to associate excellent culinary skills with Sari’s abject position, which results in a collapse of her long-held nationalist system of classifying not only food but also ethnicity.

10.2 Fusion Cuisine as a Trope of Multiculturalism Becoming increasingly popular, fusion cooking as a culinary style of mixing food from different nations testifies to the acceleration of transnational mobility and the movement of labor and capital. Immigrants bring with them unique ways of cooking that culturally and affectively link them to their home country and diasporic identity. As its name suggests, fusion cuisine signifies a boundary-crossing that marks not only the style of cooking but also to the realm of ethnicity. Through destabilizing the affiliation of nation and cuisine, the style of fusion cooking problematizes the category of national cuisines and calls into question the viability of the “nation” as a register of culinary identity (Fairchild 2001: 3). As such, to fuse food from different nations appears to be an innovative way of cooking that opens up possibilities of blending together ethnic identities as well as cooking ingredients. However, fusion cuisine is “arguably all about celebrating the ways in which foods intermingle to create a space for new tastes and flavors” and offers “intriguing possibilities for thinking through the politics of palatability in a racial-ethnic-culinary frame” (Mannur 2010: 186). In Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics, Lisa Lowe has offered a useful critique of multiculturalism that masks its inherent danger to marginalized groups by presenting inclusion. For Lowe, multiculturalism as such “assert[s] that American culture is a democratic terrain to which every constituency has equal access and in which all are represented, while simultaneously masking the existence of exclusion by recuperating dissent, conflict, and otherness through the promise of inclusion” (1996: 86). Tinted with an alluring promise of being assimilated into the mainstream culture, the rhetorical

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construction of fusion cuisine may be the result of an all-to-easy multiculturalism in which foreignness and difference of immigrants and their representative foods are erased. Unveiling multicultural love as a national ideal that demands ethnic minorities give back their difference in return for being loved, Sara Ahmed comments on “how acting in the name of love can work to enforce a particular ideal onto others by requiring that they live up to an ideal to enter the community” (2004: 139). Appropriating the rhetoric of national love, multicultural society asks its members of a shared commitment to the political community that takes “such forms as a quiet concern for its well-being, deep attachment, affection, and intense love” (Parekh 1999: 4). Or as when examining the case of immigration, Ahmed claims that multiculturalism speaking in the name of love demands the migrants take the host country as “their object of love” by swearing “allegiance and adherence,” and “sticking to the nation in the formation of the ego ideal” (2004: 134). Much of multicultural discourses of love predicates itself upon the ideal love of a nation, which is “a form of conditional love”: that is, if the migrants or others would give their difference to the nation, by mixing with others, then the “ideal” would be achieved, and that difference would be “returned” with love (Ahmed 2004: 139). Throughout Papaya Love, the subjectivity of Nguyen as marriage migrant is multiply repressed to meet the requirements of a largely racialized, patriarchal Taiwanese family. Nguyen is gradually revealed to learn to be a submissive, docile employee, wife, and daughter-in-law, a learning process marked by her numerous attempts at familiarizing herself with localized culinary practices. For instance, to resolve the conflict rising from her serving the customers with Vietnamese papaya salad, a dish her mother-in-law finds particularly repugnant because of its special odor, Nguyen learns to make Hakka pickled papaya by herself through experimenting with various methods of seasoning until her mother-in-law helps her with the recipe. The same pattern of learning from her mother-inlaw is perceived in her attempt at cooking Hakka Stir Fry, a dish most commonly served in Hakka restaurants. The ethnicity of Nguyen, symbolically registered by her native food, is thus sacrificed in her efforts to please her mother-in-law, who deems Hakka dishes as the orthodox of Taiwanese cuisine. Learning the recipe of Hakka cooking is therefore analogous to Nguyen’s many other practices she adopts to assimilate herself into the nationalistic, patriarchal culture characteristic of the Liao’s family, such as her managing to learn Mandarin and to comply with the

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manners required of a Taiwanese daughter-in-law. Near the end, Papaya Love culminates in a creative Hakka gourmet food competition in which a fusion cuisine is displayed that adds both Hakka and fish sauces to Vietnamese papaya salad, aiming at presenting, in Liao’s mother’s words, “a harmonious relationship between her and her Vietnamese daughter-inlaw” to break the rumors about the ill-treatment Nguyen is said to receive from Liao’s mother. This ending reflects the very reality that such a fusion cuisine brought about a more cohesive relation in their life.3 As Chang (2019) testifies to this Taiwanese-Vietnamese fusion after interviewing Nguyen and her mother-in-law in their family’s restaurant Light Taste, a restaurant featured by its wide-ranging menu: If you were to describe Nguyen’s life in terms of Light Taste’s specialties, you might say her relationship with her mother-in-law is a bit like Hakka Stir Fry: it has a flavor that stays with you, and the longer it “cooks” the more character and nuance it develops. Her relationship with her husband is reminiscent of Papaya Love: it is a Taiwanese-Vietnamese Fusion with sweetness in the sour and flavor in the heat. (44)

Fusion cooking appears to offer a resolution of conflicts between a Taiwanese mother and her Vietnamese daughter-in-law, which is also a promise of ethnic minority being included and assimilated into the mainstream group. By contrast, Sari in The Taste of Nyonya ventures to perform her ethnicity and woman’s power through helping her employer to open a restaurant serving cuisine of Indonesian flavors. Such an act, however, marks a transgression of borders mapped for class, gender, and race in The Taste of Nyonya, whose borderlines are closely guarded by the mother of Sari’s employer, a matriarch setting up strict social divisions. Originally employed as a domestic worker, Sari impresses her employer with consummate skills of cooking her native food nyonya, a fusion cooking resulting from blending Chinese ingredients with various distinct spices and cooking techniques used by the Malay or Indonesian community.4 As a chef of this newly opened Indonesian restaurant, whose fusion cuisine succeeds in satiating the palate of many Taiwanese gourmets, Sari nevertheless challenges the boundaries conventionally held between a female migrant worker and her male employer. As Xu (2008) indicates in her study of eating identities, “[while] restaurant cooking has been regarded as male and professional, categorized as production and

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generating exchange value, cooking at home has been seen as female and domestic, thus belonging to the categories of reproduction and use value” (50–51). Here ethnicity complicates Sari’s transgression of gendered and classed boundaries because it is the opening of a restaurant selling ethnic food with multicultural flavors. In this sense, Sari obviously fails to cling to the conventional image of female foreign domestic worker doing daily chores and caring for the elderly. Through working as a chef of an ethnic restaurant, Sari asserts her own ethnicity and aspires to be married to her employer and to be accepted by the host country. Such an aspiration, however, proves to be a wishful thinking when Sari is renounced and hit by the mother of her employer for daring to want to rise above her subservient status. It is the racial and class boundaries between a migrant domestic worker and her employer that set the limit on Sari’s aspiration. Such a limit is, however, ultimately lifted when after the collusion is resolved, Sari returns to Taiwan as a pregnant marriage migrant taking care of her previous employer’s (now her husband’s) family, a more privileged social position than being a foreign domestic helper. Boundaries based on such a racialized and classed hierarchy can be also observed in the circumscription of everyday space lived by migrant workers in Taiwan. In The Taste of Nyonya, both Sari and her Indonesian fellow domestic worker Cidi are confined to a very small room in the house of the employer, where they retreat to after a day’s routine job. The same situation applies to the Thai laborers, who huddle together after a day’s work in the dormitory managed by a Taiwanese superintendent responsible for monitoring their behaviors. Spatial demarcation in the working space as such marks the power relation between the Taiwanese employer and his workers from Southeast Asian countries, with the latter being assigned to a marginalized, separate space of their own. Outside working space, migrant workers are not always welcome in the public space in Taiwan. Their appearance or hanging-around in parks or railway stations is often stigmatized as threatening, dangerous, and even unhygienic.5 Thus said, migrant workers in Taiwan are often pressured into showing required behaviors when they are supervised, the so-called “front region” behaviors scholars such as Lan (2002) and Wang (2008) borrow from the sociologist Erving Goffman to register the attentive and always on-guard “acting” that migrant workers need to perform on daily basis. Underpinned by the official regulation of daily space exerted by their employers, such “acting” is counteracted only in “back stage” space where migrant workers can feel relieved to exhibit their selfhood and

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identity.6 However, ethnic restaurants and eateries flowering in the thoroughfares of cities and towns after the great influx of migrant workers into Taiwan since the late 1990s provide a space of social and cultural fusion for both Taiwanese people and those workers from Southeast Asian countries. Eating establishments catering to the gastronomic needs of especially migrant workers serve as an alternative space for them to have social interaction, entertainment, and relaxation.

10.3

Conclusion

Both Papaya Love and The Taste of Nyonya offer palatable narratives and images, which are spiced with romanticized multicultural love, to mainstream Taiwanese audience, whose appetite for racialized difference is satiated by their hyperreal eating, that is—their consumption of minorities and their foodways represented in these two public TV programs. On the surface, these exotic foods, immigrants’ bodies, and enticing culinary narratives all appear to be passive objects subject to the consumption of an all-devouring audience. Yet the complexities of race, gender, and class concerning Southeast Asian immigrants’ subjects are also revealed in these two TV programs so much so that not only their racialized differences are rendered palatable but also their ethnic identities are played out. Sugar-coated by popular multiculturalism, both TV programs serve the mainstream audience with fusion cuisines that appear to collapse the difference between Self and ethnic Other with their palatable, easily consumed, and digested foodways of mixed-up flavors. While celebrating hybridity, cultural interaction and assimilation, fusion cooking as such nevertheless appeals to the mass consumer without really challenging the structural nature of race inherent in a nation. As Mannur reminds us, the consumption of fusion cuisine involves “the danger of falling prey to the seductive appeals of a malleable, all-too-easy multiculturalism” (2010: 194), because “it is enacted in the cultural realm, where mixing is always ephemeral” and constitutes “a less potent threat” (193). Yet there is no denying that through employing culinary practices that negotiate their ethnic identity and living space in the host country, the women immigrants in these two TV programs embody subtle resistance against limitations imposed upon their everyday routines and activities. Appropriating the fusion of cuisine and culinary space, they open up a crack in the seemingly seamless structure of power that maps the starkly drawn boundaries of race, class, and gender facing the Taiwanese marriage immigrants and migrant workers from Southeast Asian countries.

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Notes 1. In his play The Year of the Dragon, Chin uses this term to castigate especially Asian American women writers for using “a culinary idiom to anchor depictions of racialized life” for mainstream readers (Mannur 2010: 15). It is considered “a form of cultural self-commodification” through which Asian Americans earn a living by “capitalizing on the so-called exoticism embedded in one’s foodways” (Mannur 2010: 82). 2. The same cultural logic, however, does not apply to the more privileged White migrant workers who come to Taiwan for the same purposes and enjoy much more egalitarian rights. 3. In real life, Nguyen and her mother-in-law Liao-Liu Taoluan won top prizes at the 2009 Creative Hakka Gourmet Food Competition. 4. The origin of Nyonya is marked by a hybrid combination of food ingredients from China and Southeast Asia, a hybridization reflecting also the cultural history of migration and racial intermingling among the Chinese, Malays, and Indonesians. See Ng and Karim (2016: 93-106). 5. See Wang (2008: 328–334). 6. For a detailed analysis of Taiwan’s Taoyuan Station as a “back stage” for migrant workers, see Wang (2008: 309–356). For an encompassed exploration of multi-layered “back stage” space appropriated by migrant workers in Taiwan, see Lan (2002: 191–199). See also Yeoh and Huang (1988) for their explicating the migrant workers’ weekend enclave of Lucky Plaza in Singapore as “counter-spaces”.

References Ahmed, Sarah. 2004. The cultural politics of emotion. New York: Routledge. Bardenstein, Carol. 2002. Transmissions interrupted: Reconfiguring food, memory, and gender in the cookbook-memoirs of middle eastern exiles. Sign 28: 353–387. Baudrillard, Jean. 1988. Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings. Ed. Mark Poster. Standford: Standford UP. Chang, Chiung-wen. 2019. “A Taiwanese-Vietnamese Fusion: Hakka Daughterin-Law Nguyen Thi Thu’s Delicious Life.” Translated by Scott William. Bonds of Friendship, Bonds of Love—Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Taipei: Taiwan Panorama Magazine. Douglass, Mary. 1996. Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Fairchild, Barbara. 2001, September. “America Goes Global.” Bon Appetit 3–42.

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Feng, Pin-chia. 2018. Flexible Culinary Citizenship and Gastronomic Kinship in A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family. Tamkang Review 48: 1–18. Jaffrey, Madhur. 2005. Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of A Childhood in India. New York: Random House. Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror, an Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP. Lan, Pei-Chia. 2002. A transnational topography for the migration and identification of Filipina migrant domestic workers. Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies 48: 169–218. Liu, C.H. 2018. Invisible city-dweller vs. politics of citizenship: The Aporia of negative political paradigm and the thesis of universality. Chung Wai Literary Quarterly 47: 185–230. Lowe, Lisa. 1996. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke UP. Mannur, Anita. 2010. Culinary fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture. Philadelphia: Temple UP. Ng, and Shahrim Ab. Karim. 2016. Historical and contemporary perspectives of the Nyonya Food Culture in Malaysia. Journal of Ethnic Foods. 3: 93–106. Ong, Ailhwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke UP. Parekh, B. 1999, December. “What Is Multiculturalism?” Multiculturalism: A Symposium on Democracy in Culturally Diverse Societies. Accessed 15 Feb 2020. Xu, Wenying. 2008. Eating Identities: Reading Food in Asian American Literature. Honolulu: Hawaii UP. Yeoh, Brenda, and Shirlena Huang. 1998. Negotiating public space: Strategies and styles of migrant female domestic workers in Singapore. Urban Studies 35: 583–602. Wang, Chih-hung. 2008. “Dis/placed identification and politics of space: The consumptive Ethnoscape around Tao-Yuan Railroad Station.” In Unquiet Migration: Taishe Reader in Im/Migration, edited by Hsiao-chuan Hsia. 309–356.

PART III

Ethics and Other Issues of Cultural Creativity

CHAPTER 11

An Inclusive Theory of Ethics Based on Chinese Culture: The Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers Chih-Hung Wang

Ethics is the foundation of counseling psychology. And ethical issues are closely related to cultural issues. Therefore, the professional ethics of counseling psychology needs to take into account indigenization issues. Why does psychology need indigenization? Arnett (2008) argued that psychological researchers in the United States dominate international psychological research but “restrict their focus to less than 5% of the world’s total population. The rest of the world’s population, the other 95%, is neglected.” In papers published in the journals in six significant areas of psychology (2003–2007), 68% of the study participants were

C.-H. Wang (B) Department of Guidance and Counseling, National Changhua University of Education, Changhua, Taiwan, Republic of China e-mail: [email protected] Department of Education, Changhua County Government, Changhua, Taiwan, Republic of China

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_11

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from the United States and 96% from Western countries, representing 12% of the world population (Henrich et al. 2010a, 2010b). They call this a “WEIRD” psychology, meaning “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic” (Henrich et al. 2010b, p. 1). Non-Western psychology is awakening to the fact that every culture— Eastern and Western—evolves its unique psychology appropriate to and consistent with its historical and cultural roots; this is the new reality in psychology (Marsella and Pickren 2012). Therefore, a culture-inclusive psychology or indigenous psychology provides a new way of thinking about psychology and social science. Indigenous psychology has an epistemological goal, which is to follow the principle of cultural psychology (one mind, many mentalities); it advocates constructing psychological theories that represent the universal mind of human beings, as well as the particular mentalities of people living in a specific culture (Hwang 2011a, 2012; Shweder et al. 1998). Based on the above principles, we constructed The Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers with the intention to include Western culture and Chinese culture and integrate the two. From the ethical perspective of Western culture, what is ethics? It can be said to be the regulation of interactive behavior in interpersonal role relations. What is professional ethics? It is the regulation of the professional interpersonal roles and interactions of professionals. Professional ethics regulates the interactions and relationships of professionals with other professionals, the clients they serve, and other social groups (Niu and Wang 2008). Professional ethics is the foundation for the helping professions intended to build public trust (Blocher 1987), which is the core value of helping professionals (American Counseling Association 2014). From the Western point of view, the core concept of helpers’ professional ethics is the welfare (rights) of the client and the duty of the helper. The starting point of Western professional ethics is to adhere to the basic principles of ethics or maintain the rights of the client (American Counseling Association 2014; American Psychological Association 2017; Corey et al. 2011; Niu 1991; Niu and Wang 2008). The clients have five major types of welfare (rights) (Herlihy and Corey 2015; Kitchener 1984; Niu 1991; Niu and Wang 2008). These rights are autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and fidelity . Autonomy refers to the right of the client to decide freely, have complete self-determination, choose to

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enter or withdraw from the counseling, and retain or expose the counseling content. Beneficence refers to the right of client to benefit from the counseling, and their well-being is listed as the highest priority. Nonmaleficence refers to the right of the client to be protected from something going wrong in the counseling process or injury caused by the counselor. Justice refers to the right of the client to be treated fairly, to accept counseling, to participate in a counseling plan based on individual needs, and to seek other auxiliary resources suitable for themselves. Fidelity refers to the right of the client to be faithfully and sincerely treated, to be respected, to have the treatment be kept confidential, and to be assured that the counseling process is correctly recorded. The maintenance of these five significant kinds of client welfare represents the main structure of Western considerations regarding the professional ethics of helpers. Relative to the five major types of client welfare, help professionals assume three primary responsibilities or duties (Corey et al. 2011; Herlihy and Corey 2015; Niu 1991; Niu and Wang 2008): professional duty, ethical duty, and legal duty. Professional duty requires helpers to (1) maintain a professional demeanor and approach to mental health; (2) have professional knowledge and training; and (3) have personal professional experience, including (a) acceptance of counseling; (b) internship experience; (c) acceptance of supervision; and (d) professional ethical beliefs. Ethical duty requires helpers to (1) provide qualified professional services; (2) maintain the fundamental welfare and respect the interests of the client; and (3) enhance professional public trust. Legal duty requires helpers to (1) protect the privacy of the client; (2) maintain the right of privileged communication for the client; (3) take the obligation of duty to warn and mandatory reporting; and (4) avoid malpractice or misconduct. The above is the focus of Taiwan’s counseling psychology community in discussing the ethical implications of the Western point of view. The ethics of Western cultural views are based on the protection of clients’ interests, with an emphasis on objective and rational external regulations. It is this ethical view of Western culture that we have adopted in the past. However, discussions of Chinese culture and Chinese cultural perspectives can help us study culturally sensitive ethical topics from a more inclusive perspective and model. When we begin to think about the ethical point of view of Chinese culture from a culture-inclusive perspective, we rethink what ethics is. The so-called ethics of Confucian culture will be called the ethics of the general public, that is, the self-cultivation of the average person.

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This is also the “Wulun” (the five cardinal relationships): (1) between parents and offspring there should be affection; (2) between ruler and subjects there should be righteousness; (3) between husband and wife there should be attention to their separate roles; (4) between old and young there should be a proper priority; and (5) between friends, there should be fidelity (Teng Weng Gong, Mencius ). Furthermore, what is professional ethics? Confucian culture points to the so-called ethics of the “Shì” (scholar, professional), that is, the self-cultivation of professionals. The Master said, “A youth should be filial at home, respectful to elders abroad, should be earnest and truthful, should overflow in love to all, and then he can be said to be moving towards ethics. When one has time and opportunity, after doing these things well, the remaining effort can be directed to literature learning” (Hsio R, The Analects of Confucianism). Literature learning refers to acquiring professional knowledge of Confucianism. That is to say, Confucian learners must complete ethical learning to achieve the condition of “pro benevolence,” before professional learning. Confucianism emphasizes that benevolence is the single requirement of ethics. In other words, in the eyes of Confucian culture, ethics precedes professionalism. The Master said, “Setting an ambition to pursue ‘Tao’(way), giving according to ‘Te’(virtue), abiding by benevolence (ethics), swimming in the arts and studies” (Shu R, The Analects ). “Arts and studies” refers to the professional knowledge of Confucianism. It points out that the Confucian emphasis on setting an ambition to pursue “Tao” and giving according to virtue means that the priority is morality, that is, the merits of self-cultivation; then the implementation of abiding by benevolence (ethics) in the life practice of treating others good, and then swimming in the arts and studies means being dedicated to professional learning. In other words, in the eyes of Confucianism, morality precedes ethics, and ethics precedes professionalism. From the above content from The Analects , we find that Confucian ethics emphasizes that benevolence is the key to practice, from selfcultivation to the implementation of life. The practice of benevolence is not only the law of interpersonal interaction but also the critical factor in the implementation of subjective morality in objective ethics. Master the key to this interpersonal interaction, and the study of professional knowledge can demonstrate its value. That is to say, in

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Chinese culture, professional ethics is considered more important than professional knowledge. Along with applying professional ethics by adhering to interpersonal interaction rules and behavioral practices, professional knowledge can play a practical role in the implementation of morality and manifestation of virtue, this is the professional ethics of Chinese culture (Wang 2013b). That is, morality (setting an ambition to pursue Tao and giving according to virtue) precedes ethics (abiding by benevolence), and ethics precedes professionalism (swimming in the arts and studies). That is to say, we must first have the ethical cultivation of benevolence, then professional skills can achieve the goal of practicing benevolence. But how does Confucianism define the practice of morality and ethics? There is a brilliant dialogue between Confucius and the philosopher Tsang in The Analects . Master Confucius said, “Tsang! My way (Tao) is bound together with one continuous strand.” The philosopher Tsang said: “Yes, I see.” Then Confucius walked out, and others asked “What’s that?” The philosopher Tsang said: “The way of the Master is ‘Zhong’ and ‘Shù,’ nothing more” (Le Jin, The Analects ). The Song Dynasty Confucian Zhu Xi commented: “Do what we can as Zhong (loyalty, self-requirement, and self-cultivation) and treat others well as Shù (kindness, goodness to others)” (Li Ren IV, Annotations of Analects ). It is thus known that Confucianism emphasizes loyalty, that is, morality. Its core cultivation is doing oneself good, that is, selfrequirement and self-cultivation; Confucianism emphasizes kindness, that is, ethics. Its core cultivation is being considerate to others, that is, doing good to others. A Confucian helping as a professional must first work hard to be selfcultivated in virtue in order to achieve the doing-oneself-good requirement and then make a further effort to treat the client well, in order to achieve the goal of doing good to others. This is the view of Chinese Confucian culture about professional ethics. The integration strategies of Western cultural ethics and Chinese cultural ethics are as follows. The ethical view of Western culture emphasizes the following: external, objective, and rational regulations, protecting the five major types of client welfare as the starting point and then asking the helpers to fulfill their three major duties. The ethical view of Chinese Confucian culture emphasizes inner subjective self-cultivation and helps the helper’s self-cultivation (doing

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Fig. 11.1 The duality model of professional ethics for helpers

oneself good) as the starting point; it further asks the helper to be kind to the client (doing good to others). We integrate these two and construct The Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers, as shown in Fig. 11.1. Western culture’s view of professional ethics is based on individualism, which is referred to by Leibniz as the “principle of ground” and by Heidegger as “metaphysical thinking” or “technical thinking.” It is based on rationality, with justice as the core principle (Hwang 2009, 2012, 2013). It emphasizes the protection of the client’s welfare. It is indeed real and objective help. Professional ethical goals and the duties imposed on the helper also require the helper to exhibit good ethical behavior, but with the limitation that this ethical behavior must follow external rational requirements. However, less focused self-motivated and positive behavior that helps people express their own heart can regulate the external ethical behavior of helping professionals. However, the professional ignores the individual’s inner moral cultivation and cannot adequately adhere to the spirit of self-discipline that professional ethics primarily requires. Confucius said (Wei Zheng, The Analects ): “If laws lead the people, and uniformity is sought to be given them by punishment, they will try to avoid the punishment but have no sense of shame. If they are led by virtue, and uniformity is sought to be given to them by

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the rules of propriety, they will have a sense of shame, and will become good.” The regulation of professional ethics, such as the ethics code and the formulation and implementation of relevant laws and regulations, may make professionals only seek excuses without the advantages of growth and may inevitably lead to the danger of referring to the means of power control. Just as the French philosopher Foucault said in his famous book Discipline and Punish (Foucault 1977; Hwang 2013), there is less inspiration and respect for humanity. The Chinese culture’s view of professional ethics is based on relationism, with the “the way of Ren” (goodwill) and the “the way of Tian” (heaven); that is, the “originative thinking” or “essential thinking” that Heidegger refers to as essential thinking (Hwang 2009, 2012, 2013), based on the realization and practice of the “natural way” and “selfevident virtue” (Wang 2006), with Ren at the core, through the ethics of the Shì and doing good to society by practicing the Tao (Hwang 2013). That is to say, according to the self-expectation of the professional proclaimed in the The Analects (Tai Bo), “The Shì (professional) cannot be without breadth of mind and vigorous endurance. His burden is heavy, and his course is long. Ren (perfect virtue) is the burden which he considers it is his to sustain—is it not heavy? Only with death does his course stop—is it not long?” Therefore, professionals in Confucian culture are required to take ethics (Ren) as the responsibility of self (the burden which he considers it is his to sustain), and it is the responsibility of a lifetime (only with death does his course stop), which is indeed a quite heavy burden. Before self-cultivation is moral learning; after self-cultivation is the practice of ethics; the learning process is self-growth and then a contribution to others and society. This self-cultivation, which emphasizes doing good as a helper, helps the helping professional develop his inner moral cultivation and selfmotivation. Therefore, the ethical behavior of self-discipline can also be adapted to the spirit of self-discipline in professional ethics and the goal of protecting the welfare of the client. However, the limitation is that the ethical behavior of the helper manifests in his adopting the regulations and requirements of the self, and it is used to express external ethical behavior.

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It is relatively difficult to implement the practice of professional ethics if one neglects the specific objectives of protecting the welfare of the client and observing the objective external behavioral regulations. Based on the above considerations, the proposed Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers can integrate the characteristics of the professional ethics of Eastern and Western cultures, which can be used to complement each other. As shown in Fig. 11.1, protection of the welfare of the client and selfcultivation of the helper are the two core concepts. Although the starting points are different, they need each other; although the route is different, the destination is the same. Regarding the helping profession and the helper’s professional ethics, we can further understand through The Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers that the function of ethical regulations is to protect the welfare of the client. This is the main reason to regulate the duties of the helper. The function of ethical education is to encourage the helper with self-cultivation. This is the main reason to cultivate the helper’s behavior for the purpose of protecting the welfare of the client. The two are parallel and complementary. That is, through the regulations intended to protect the welfare of the client and education to promote the helper’s self-cultivation, the Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers can be used as a reference for the revision of the ethical code and the implementation of ethics education. Regarding the application of the Chinese culture in ethics education through the Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers, the Chinese Confucian culture emphasizes moral cultivation and ethics cultivation. Thus, moral and ethical self-cultivation encompasses the Confucian “philosophy of Gongfu.” The so-called Gongfu or philosophy of Gongfu is regarded as the exclusive vocabulary of traditional Chinese philosophy. Compared with the modern Western academic classification, its scope is closer to the field of moral philosophy, ethics in philosophy, or spiritual practice in religion (Yang 2005). However, the primary form of the Confucian Gongfu philosophy is based on ontology. The primary purpose is to purify the will of the subject. Confucian will-cultivation is accomplished mainly by awareness and cultivation of one’s mental state in order to carry out psychological cultivation and will-training activities.

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These Gongfu exercises have different levels of “sequence” issues; that is, how one strives to achieve self-cultivation so as to achieve a higher or the highest level on “realm” issues, and how one implements selfcultivation in daily life; this is known as the “practice” issue (Du 2007). That is to say, the cultivation of ethics is a process of continuous hard work, which occurs in different realms according to the type of effort and emphasizes practice in daily life. But how should these efforts be carried out? This article attempts to discuss the context and methods of ethical self-cultivation from the perspective of the Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers and the Confucian philosophy of Gongfu. 1. The Context of Ethical Self-Cultivation Ethical self-cultivation is aimed mainly in the direction of cultivating oneself and giving peace of mind to others and becoming an internal saint (a good virtue person like a saint) and external king (a good governing person like a King). (1) Cultivating oneself to give peace of mind to others Helping professionals do not have to be national leaders, so they do not need to give peace of mind to all the people, as long as they can give peace of mind to some, but they must first cultivate reverential carefulness in themselves; that is, they must first demand this cultivation and then use it to give peace of mind to clients. The Confucian spirit of counseling and psychotherapy, however, is people treating people and not techniques treating people, that is, “counselor cultivating oneself and giving peace of mind to the client” (Wang 2016a; Wang and Yang 2016). In the “Xian Wen” of The Analects of Confucius, there is such a dialogue. Tsze-lu (one of the disciples of Confucius) asked what is a “J¯unzˇı” (a gentleman, a person of noble character). The Master (Confucius) said, “The cultivation of oneself in reverential carefulness.” “And is this all?” said Tsze-lu. “He cultivates himself to give peace of mind to others,” was the reply. “And is this all?” again asked Tsze-lu. The Master said, “He cultivates himself to give peace of mind to all the people. Even Yao (famous ancient king of virtues) and Shun (famous ancient king of virtues) were still solicitous about this” (Xian Wen, The Analects ). The main point of the previous paragraph is that one day, a disciple of Confucius, called Tsze-lu, asked Confucius how to become a J¯ unzˇı. Confucius replied: “Cultivating yourself with respect is the behavior of a J¯unzˇı.”

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Tsze-lu felt that this level was not high enough, and one could go higher, so he said, “Is this enough?” Confucius further answered, “Being a J¯unzˇı is to cultivate oneself to stabilize others.” Tsze-lu still felt that this level was not high enough and one could go higher, so he said again: “Is this enough?” Then Confucius answered further: “Cultivating oneself to give peace of mind to others is being a J¯unzˇı.” Confucius was worried that Tsze-lu was too confident and did not know the difficulties in reaching such a realm, so he went on to say: “Cultivate oneself to settle the hearts of the people; even sage kings such as Yao and Shun are afraid that they cannot do it!”. We also can say that the method of Confucian counseling is for the counselor to facilitate the admirable qualities of the client. Just like The Master said, “The J¯unzˇı seeks to facilitate the admirable qualities of men and does not seek to facilitate their bad qualities. The mean man does the opposite of this” (Yan Yuan, The Analects ). Therefore, the goal of the counselor is to help a client facilitate the admirable qualities of the client (Wong 2002). Of course, counselors should perfect the admirable qualities in themselves before they seek to facilitate the admirable qualities of the clients, and they should first do self-cultivation. In other words, Confucian counseling is perfecting the admirable qualities of the counselor, and then facilitating the admirable qualities of the client. As Confucius said, “Now the man of perfect virtue, wishing to establish himself, seeks also to establish others; wishing to enhance himself, he also seeks to enhance others. He demonstrates helping behavior by setting an example and comparing the heart [of the other] to the heart [of oneself] to exhibit helping behavior with empathy, which is the best strategy for the practice of ethics” (Yong Ye, The Analects ). Therefore, in Chinese culture, the essence of counseling is the practice of ethics, and the manifestation of ethics is the function of counseling. It can also be simply said that in Chinese culture, counseling is ethics and ethics is counseling. The two are two sides of the same coin, except that ethics is performed at the relationship level, and counseling is performed at the function level (Wang 2017b). (2) Internal saint and external king In the Great Learning (Dà Xué) there is a paragraph about the method of learning, that is, the method of self-cultivation: “Understanding things, discovering conscience, being honesty, correcting one’s heart, cultivating oneself, leading the family, governing the country, and calming the world.”

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One has to engage in internal effort first: the stage of understanding things, discovering conscience, being honest, correcting one’s heart, and cultivating oneself; that is, one must first understand the principles of nature to inspire conscience. Then one can be sincere and honest in pursuit of self-cultivation, and then one can work hard outside oneself: lead the family, govern the country, and calm the world; play the role of influencing others and leaders; and cultivate yourself internally and externally. This is the so-called internal saint and external king learning process. 2. The Method of Ethical Self-Cultivation The Confucian method of ethical self-cultivation has been mentioned a lot in Four Books of Confucianism. We can work hard in three areas: learning, thinking, and doing. (1) Pay equal attention to learning and thinking The self-cultivation of Confucian ethics emphasizes equal emphasis on learning and thinking. As Confucius says in The Analects : “Learning without thinking, you will get lost. Thinking without learning, you will encounter difficulties” (Wei Zheng, The Analects ). This means that if one studies without thinking, one will be confused. If one thinks without studying, one’s learning will encounter obstacles and cannot move forward. Therefore, one must pay equal attention to learning and thinking, and one must have both ethical knowledge and engage in practice of good behavior to gain experience and solve difficult problems. Learning occurs not only through teachers and reading but also through peer learning. Also very important are so-called “friendship with the just, friendship with the sincere, and friendship with the man of much observation—these are advantageous” (Ji Shi, The Analects ). Moreover, “the J¯unzˇı in the context of culture meets with his friends, and by friendship helps his virtue” (Yan Yuan, The Analects ). It is suitable for the self-cultivation of ethics to make friends with just people, honest people, knowledgeable people, and ethical people. (2) Both knowledge and practice Self-cultivation in Confucian ethics emphasizes both learning and practice. As Confucius says in The Doctrine of the Mean: “[A J¯unzˇı should have] knowledge, interrogation, careful thinking, discernment, and perseverance.” This means broad learning, careful verification, cautious thinking, clear discrimination, and practical action.

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The study of ethics starts with broad learning for practical action. It requires both extensive knowledge and actual practice. It must be confirmed through careful verification, reflection, and discrimination. In short, it is necessary to have both learning and practice. That is the true Gingfu of ethics. (3) Act with due diligence How does Confucian self-cultivation work in practice? Yan Yuan and Confucius have the following important conversation (Yan Yuan, The Analects ): Yan Yuan asked about perfect virtue. The Master said, “To subdue one’s self and return to propriety is perfect virtue. If a man can for one day subdue himself and return to propriety, everyone under heaven will ascribe perfect virtue to him. The practice of perfect virtue is from a man himself, not from others.” Yan Yuan said, “I beg to ask the steps of that process.” The Master replied, “Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; do not which is contrary to propriety.” The first half of the above paragraph indicates that Confucianism emphasizes ethical initiative. The second half is Yan Yuan asking Confucius for the details of ethical practice. Confucius said: “If it is unethical, do not look, if it is unethical, do not listen, if it is unethical, do not speak, if it is unethical, do not do it.” That is to say: “The J¯unzˇı is cautious even if not seen, and apprehensive even if not heard. Nothing can be hidden, nothing cannot be seen, so gentlemen should be careful, so the J¯unzˇı is very cautious when he is alone” (The Doctrine of the Mean). This means that the J¯unzˇı is more cautious when no one sees or hears him. The darkest place seems to be regarded as the most accessible place, and the most subtle things seem to be regarded as the easiest to reveal. Therefore, J¯unzˇıs are more careful when they are alone. Self-cultivation in Confucian ethics is practicing this daily behavior. From the perspective of modern professional ethics or helpers, one should at all times follow the professional ethical codes (Wang 2017b). (4) Self-reflection The self-cultivation of Confucian ethics emphasizes self-reflection, which is what the philosopher Zeng said: “I daily examine myself on three points: whether in transacting business for others, I may have been faithful; whether in intercourse with friends, I may have been

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sincere; whether I may have mastered and practiced the instructions of my teacher” ( Xue Er, The Analects ). That is, through daily introspection, is one loyal and trustworthy to others? Does one continue to learn about his profession and learn new things? One can see that introspection and correction are the practical efforts of Confucianism to consolidate ethics. Confucius even encouraged his disciples: “Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles. Have no friends not equal to yourself. When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them” (Xue Er, The Analects ). Emphasize the integrity of life and work that is based on the principle of faithfulness, do not make friends with whom are less virtuous than your own, and do not be afraid to make corrections if you make errors. That is, through constant reflection and revision, it is a primary method to promote ethics cultivation in seeking the realm of perfection (Wang 2017b). (5) Focusing, calmness, tranquility, deliberation, insight In general, the self-cultivation of Confucian ethics is regarded as mainly focused on the cultivation of psychological will. Physical cultivation is less a focus in Confucian practice than in Taoism and Buddhism, although during the Song and Ming dynasties the Confucians talked more about meditation, mainly meditation to adjust the correct value of consciousness and to strengthen the subject’s will. This is in contrast to the meditation of Taoists and Buddhists, which is more concerned about the physical changes during meditation (Du 2007). However, Yang (2005) believes that the part of the discussion of Qi theory in the Confucian philosophy of Gongfu that addresses physical practice has been neglected. Nevertheless, the philosophy of Gongfu in Song(dynasty) Ming(dynasty) Confucianism emphasizes the research results of physical and mental cultivation or the cultivation of life. These research results should be cherished and valued. Confucian descriptions of meditation in Gongfu, for example, are mentioned in The Great Learning: The method described in The Great Learning is to learn the doctrine of life (the pursuit of the unity of heaven and man): Through self-cultivation to understand the doctrine of life (understanding of truth), to practice the doctrine of life through action (practicing of truth), and to verify the truth of life through the continuous pursuit of perfection (verification of truth).

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Acknowledgements of the existence of such ultimate wisdom of perfection provides a focus; having a focus enables calmness; a calm demeanor brings about tranquility; a tranquil mind allows for explicit deliberation; explicit deliberation leads to the insight of wisdom of perfection. The text first suggests the goal of the realm of perfection. It starts by describing the steps of practicing Gongfu. We can imagine that the meditation of Confucians starts with cognition and knowing the existence of such ultimate wisdom of perfection. Then by stopping delusion, the mind becomes concentrated and firm. Then developing a focus allows calmness. A calm demeanor brings about tranquility and one is not fooled by the impact of environmental changes. Then the tranquil mind can think clearly and thoughtfully, allowing for explicit deliberation, which then can lead to the insight of wisdom and the experience of the realm of perfection. (6) The right words and deeds The highest realm of the Confucian ethics of self-cultivation is to do what one wants and to say what one wants. Confucius said: “At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning. At thirty, I stood firm in academic achievements. At forty, I had no confusion about life. At fifty, I knew the mission Heaven gave me. At sixty, my ear could distinguish right from wrong words easily. At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired without violating the ethics” (Wei Zheng, The Analects ). To follow what one’s heart desires without violating the ethics is the highest realm of the Confucian ethics of self-cultivation: Do what you want to do and say what you want to say. In this regard, “The Doctrine of the Mean” has a wonderful description: When the mood of anger and sorrow has not yet occurred, the mind is calm and unbiased; this is called “Zhong” (equilibrium); if the emotion is expressed appropriately and gently, it is called “He” (harmony). “Zhong” is the foundation of everything in the world, and “He” is the avenue on which the people of the world work together. If the principle of neutrality can be pushed to a perfect state (“Zhong He”), then everything in the world can live in its proper position and will be nourished and flourish. The highest goal of Confucian ethical self-cultivation is to conform to the essence of nature, which is Zhong (equilibrium), and to have an ethical expression, which is He (harmony). If people can strive to reach

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the perfect state of equilibrium and harmony (Zhong He), they can cultivate emotions and express appropriate words and deeds, all goes well, everyone has his place, and everything is flourishing (Wang 2017b). Ethical self-cultivation is naturally ethical if the person can reach a state of proper words and deeds. Ethics is naturally integrated into words and deeds, and the words and deeds that affect people naturally serve the function of helping others. This is the state of “Xiu-Ji-An-Ren” (just as the J¯unzˇı cultivates the self and gives peace of mind to others). As far as helping professionals in Chinese culture is concerned, the essence of counseling is the practice of ethics, and the manifestation of ethics is the function of counseling. It can also be said that counseling is the same as ethics and ethics is the same as counseling. So, helping professionals who want to do an excellent job of counseling and practice ethics must work hard on self-cultivation. Internal subjective self-cultivation is the focus emphasized by the Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers. Its purpose is to supplement the shortcomings of the external objective regulations emphasized by Western ethics. The points mentioned above constitute the Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers (Wang 2013a, 2016a), which has been further developed. It has been applied to create the Duality Model of Research Ethics (Wang 2013c) and verified by actual research; a scale of 12 items (Research Ethics Duality Model Scale, REDMS) was constructed (Wang et al. 2017a, 2017b). These studies reflect the ongoing movement to indigenize psychology and social science in Taiwan and the Chinese region. These social science indigenization can be expressed as three research levels (Wang 2016b, 2017a; Wang et al. 2017b). (1) Localization indigenization: Localization of social science theory is a process of translation and amendment of a foreign theory in order to make it more applicable to the local people. (2) Acculturative indigenization: Social science theories introduced from other places are further combined with local culture and promoted to achieve a high level of acculturative indigenization (“bentulization”). “Ben” (meaning original) refers to cultural tradition. “Tu” (meaning earth) refers to local life experience. Combining the social science theories introduced from the West with the Ben of cultural traditions the Tu of local life experiences, or, in other words, combining modern social science theories that are derived from Western culture with Chinese

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cultural traditions and local life experiences, can make the indigenization of Chinese-Western integration more applicable to the Chinese. After this localization work has matured and experience has accumulated, local professionals can combine local cultural traditions and local life experiences with foreign professional theories. For example, the Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers (Wang 2013a, 2016a) combines Western ethics with Confucian ethics. The Virtual Existential Career Model (Liu et al. 2014, 2015, 2016) combines a theory of life with the dialectical perspective of Yin and Yang from the Book of Changes . The Single-Session Counseling Model or SSCM (Wang and Yang 2006, 2016) combines Western counseling theory and techniques with Huangdi’s Internal Classics (the oldest book of traditional Chinese medicine), Yijing (the Book of Changes ), Confucianism, and Buddhism. These models can all be regarded as examples of cultural integration indigenization (acculturative indigenization). (3) Enculturative indigenization: Based on the maturation and development of local social sciences, local professionals can use local cultures inherited from cultural traditions and local life experiences as a starting point to create social science theories based on local cultures. For example, the Mandala Model of Self (Hwang 2011b) and Nonself Theory (Shiah 2016), which incorporate Buddhist thinking, and the Psychological Displacement Paradigm of Diary-Writing (PDPD), which incorporates Taoist thinking (Jin 2005, 2010; Li and Jin 2016), are psychological theories that while inheriting the traditions of Eastern Buddhism and Taoist thinking can also be applied globally to the helping professions. The Duality Model of Professional Ethics for Helpers, discussed in this article, is another example of the construction of a social science indigenization theory. The professional society that promotes the indigenization of social sciences, namely, the Chinese Indigenous Social Science Association (CISSA) (http://cissa.heart.net.tw/), established in 2018, will undergo further vigorous development. It deserves more attention and expectations.

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Wang, C.H. 2016b. The goal of indigenous counseling psychology. Taiwan Counseling Quarterly 8 (4): vii–x. Wang, C.H. 2017a. Exploring the development of indigenous counseling psychology. Journal of Indigenous Counseling Psychology 9 (1): vi–xvii. Wang, C.H. 2017b. Exploring the foundation of Chinese indigenous counseling psychology: The concept of Confucian counseling as an example. Journal of Indigenous Counseling Psychology 9 (2): vi–xv. Wang, C.H., and Yang. C.F. 2006. The concept and application of Single Session Counseling Model. Guidance Quarterly 42 (1): 1–11. Wang, C.H., and Yang, C.F. 2016. The power of once: Chinese culture-inclusive Single Session Counseling Model. Taipei, Taiwan: Living Psychology Publishers. Wang, C.H., Liu, S.H., Huang, T.C., Shiah, Y.J., Yang, C.F., Chang, Y.M., and Chen, Y.A. 2017a. November. Implication exploring and scale construction of research ethics in Taiwan. Paper presented at First Southeast Asia Regional Conference of Psychology (RCP 2017). University of Social Science and Humanity, Hanoi, Vietnam. Wang, C.H., Liu, S.H., Sun, S.H., and Shiah, Y.J. 2017b. Crisis, chance, resilience and culture context: Probing into the direction, goal and strategy of indigenous counseling psychology. Chinese Journal of Guidance and Counseling 50: 1–28. Wong, K.C. 2002. Conscious reflections on my own theory and practice of psychotherapy: Appreciating the beauty of a person through the stories. Research in Applied Psychology 16: 23–69. Yang, R.B. 2005. Introduction. In Qi and Gongfu in Confucianism, edited by R.B. Yang and P.C. Zhu, 1–10. Taipei, Taiwan: National Taiwan University Publishing Center.

CHAPTER 12

Through the Compound Eyes: The Ethical Dynamics of Wu Ming-Yi’s Materialistic Literary Vision in the Man with the Compound Eyes and the Stolen Bicycle Laurie Jui-Hua Tseng

After winning several literary awards for best new writer, Wu Ming-Yi published his first short story collection We’re Closed Today in 1997 when he was in his mid-twenties. Impressed by Wu’s talent in visualizing Taiwan’s everyday life and scenes through words and vividly bringing readers’ imaginations of Taiwan and their memories of its past to the

In this paper, all Taiwanese writers’ and scholars’ names follow the Taiwanese naming tradition by having the family names preceding the given names. L. J.-H. Tseng (B) National Taitung University, Taitung City, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_12

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front, Song Tik-lai once expressed his expectation for Wu’s future career as a prominent Taiwanese writer in the preface to this debut work and praised it as “a fair first sail of Taiwan’s fourth generation writer” (1997: 3–10). But while identifying Wu as a Taiwanese writer of the new generation, or even seeing Wu’s literary achievement as inseparable from his devotion to writing about the homeland or even in his mother tongue, Song’s remarks on Wu’s literature should not be reduced to the expression of simple nationalism which may either privilege Taiwan’s subjects over all other values in a literary work or treat literature merely as a transparent vehicle for expressing the writer’s aspiration of a nation. Rather, Song’s appreciation of Wu’s literature is mainly based on Wu’s peculiar way of literary presentation, which reexamines and delineates our material world in a new light, liberating all matters and object relations from their previous value systems, and endowing them with new lives and new meanings. For Song, it is therefore Wu’s special gift in capturing the world in its minute details and rendering it in a new order that opens up the new vision for Taiwan on its way to gaining more recognition on the world stage in its innovative faces. In this paper, Song’s observation about Wu’s idiosyncrasy will be further discussed and verified by reading Wu’s The Man with the Compound Eyes (2011) and The Stolen Bicycle (2015), particularly on the details that are palpitating with ethical dynamics, based on Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann’s elaborations on new materialism and its application to literary works. In fact, as Wu gets more attention from critics and common readers for his publications of more impressive works in the new century, including novels and essay collections on nature, photographic visions and literary discourses on Taiwanese literature and ecocriticism, we see Song’s insight into Wu’s capacity of literary creation resonate with more notable literary awards conferred to Wu’s works and ongoing researches exploring his literary materialism. To name a few, his The Book of Lost Butterflies (2000) wins the Creativity Award of Taipei Literature Award in 2000; his Tao of Butterflies (2003, revised and republished in 2010) is recommended by Kingstone Book Store as the most influential book of the year in 2010; in 2015, his Above Flame (2014), an essay collection on the affinity between photographic visions and memories, wins the Golden Tripod Award, the highest honor in Taiwan’s publishing industry, and is once again recommended by Kingstone Book Store as the most influential book of the year; and, also in 2015, his The Man with the Compound Eyes and The Stolen Bicycle,

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aside from earning him major domestic literary awards soon after their publications in Chinese at home, win the second and the fourth places, respectively, in a poll of best Chinese novels between 2001 and 2015, making him the only writer in the transnational Chinese-speaking areas that takes up two places in the list of the top five best novels.1 Moreover, thanks to the translations of many of his works into many different languages across the world, Wu makes a name both for himself and for Taiwan in the field of contemporary world literature by gaining more international literary honors for his works, such as the 2014 Prix du Livre Insulaire for the French translation of his The Man with the Compound Eyes, and the nomination of the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for the English translation of his The Stolen Bicycle (Chen 2019; Chiu 2018; Chou 2014; Lee; Huang 2019).2 Along with the halo of these honors at home and abroad, there are then more and more critics and scholars drawn to study Wu’s literature, and since most of Wu’s writings are characterized by his materialistic style, discussions or researches on Wu’s literature can hardly proceed without talking about his literary materialism or even referring to Song’s insightful remark on Wu’s literary talent. For example, in the preface to The Book of Lost Butterflies, an essay collection aiming to interrelate butterflies’ life and ecology with human civilization in a new light, Liu Ke-hsiang dubs Wu “Taiwan’s endemic species,” some living part of Taiwan’s ecosystem just like the butterflies he has been engaged in exploring in Taiwan, and acclaims Wu’s materialistic approach as a pioneer opening a new path for Taiwan’s nature writing (14–19). In the paper on Wu’s visual culture and the way of looking in his literature, aside from arguing dialectical materialism as Wu’s major approach in writing, Xu Rui-hong also takes the writer’s dedication to visualizing or materializing the perceived world through words as an essential step toward the creation of his literary vision full of imaginations and psychical reality, and refers to Song as a significant critic who has proposed such an insight in Wu’s early career (174–176). For many scholars who have studied The Man with the Compound Eyes, new materialism (or more precisely, the concept of “hyperobjects” developed sby Timothy Morton) is taken as a major approach to understanding “garbage” as a material embodiment of men’s complicated entanglement with the environment (Chou 2014; Juan 2016; Prystash 2018; Tsai 2018). In Chang Yalan’s material-oriented reading of Wu’s The Man with the Compound Eyes, materials like “mountains, caves, earthquakes, waves, the sea, and all of nature” are studied as “full of agency” with

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lives and even raison d’etre of their own (2016: 96). In the preface to The Stolen Bicycle, Wang Der-wei not only reads Wu as an advocate of “New Objectivity,” a 1920s–1930s literary movement which is characterized by a special interest in delineating materials objectively independent of man’s psychical projection, but also attributes it to Song’s influence by citing Wu’s own acknowledgment (II–XVI), though as Wang also points out, due to Wu’s different learning background from Song’s, such as Wu’s long involvement with photography, the literary vision he creates for readers is further invested with some other elements beyond what his forerunner has offered (VII). And, following Wang’s remarks on Wu’s leaning toward “New Objectivity,” Huang Ding-Ru also affirms Wu’s materialistic approach and relates such a special interest in “the texture of objects” to “his training in visual media” (2016: 62), but besides taking Wu’s involvement with visual art as an asset to his materialistic writing, Huang still adds that Wu’s interest in exploring the material world as well as his “years of first-hand investigation and scholarly research” also contributes to form his idiosyncrasy (62). From these articles and papers, we see that while Wu’s materialistic literature has drawn many critics’ attentions, the issue has constantly been delved further and ramified into diverse foci of research along time, ranging from the writer’s novel presentation of the literary world by juxtaposing psychical reality with material reality, to his earnest and discreet exploration into the matters’ and beings’ existential realities, including details like their relations to other objects within the same ecosystem and their evolutions in the course of human history. The field of new materialism and its application to Wu’s literature, taken from this view, have been inexhaustible and deserved our further explorations. In response to the call for further research on Wu’s materialistic literature, this paper thus chooses to explore the ethical dimension carried in his materialistic writings. More precisely, while the aesthetic value and scientific truth contained in Wu’s works have already been explored by many Wu scholars, this paper is making a turn to the study of how Wu’s materialistic literature also carries ethical dynamics, the real force of materialism that practically liberates all matters and beings around the world from the anthropocentric or any other ideological symbolic structure and treats them all as equally real, equally significant, and as they really are. And since one can see the material world as it really is or as it is disengaged from its previous value system only when his vision is open to the broader horizon beyond the reality he actually perceives, the ethical dynamics

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this paper is concerned about will be approached and measured by the multiplicity of the work’s literary vision or the varieties of reality one can see in the literary work. Our research into Wu’s ethical/materialistic literature, accordingly, is to examine the “visibility” or the creativity of the literary vision of his works. To fathom the intensity of the ethical dynamics inherent in Wu’s literature, this paper plans to comb out the practices of the visual multiplicity presented in Wu’s works from two aspects, the visual multiplicity synchronously opening in space and the multiplicity of truth gradually revealed in time, as exemplified in his two novels, The Man with the Compound Eyes and The Stolen Bicycle, respectively. While in the former novel, we can see the visual multiplicity most perfectly embodied in the mysterious man with the compound eyes, in the other, we can witness how the multiple truth of the lost bicycles and other historical objects overlapping one after another in the literarily constructed world, as depicted by Wu’s quote of William Butler Yeats’ poetic line “wing above wing, flame above flame” in Above Flame (277), can be reversely unfolded layer by layer along with the narrator’s archeological exploration in the novel. It is expected by comparing the multiple visions variously presented by Wu in his works that we can grasp his ethical concern commonly shared in his materialistic literature. But before entering into our discussion on the ethical moment variously presented in Wu’s two novels, we will take a look at Iovino and Oppermann’s formulation of “material ecocriticism” and their argument about the theory’s affinity with literary representation, particularly with the process of narrative construction. It is believed that through the two scholars’ illumination of the ethical implication of material ecocriticism in terms of its materiality, its agency and its affinity with narrativity, we can have a better understanding of the multiplicity or the ethical moment of Wu’s literary vision as manifested either in the spatial or the temporal dimension of a narrative context, either of which makes the narrative a true materialistic world. According to Iovino and Oppermann, our recent reconsideration of materiality in the last decades has a lot to do with the great impact we receive from the radical changes of the nature (such as the climate changes) on our environment. Shocked by the loss of control on the nature, humans are awakened to their limit or lack of knowledge of the material world and hence the desperate need to explore, but not to exploit, the living environment. But as materiality is delved further, as Iovino and Oppermann point out, its complex entanglements with

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nonmaterial spheres are revealed. To highlight the concept of permeable interrelatedness (not just the interrelatedness between objects, but also the interrelatedness between humans and things) as the feature that characterizes the new discipline they have been engaged in studying, they thus borrow Stacy Alaimo’s remark to define the discipline which is called new materialism in order to be distinguished from the materialism people used to understand in the dualistic context: “Most notably, this reconsideration is characterized by a distinctive interest in the ‘ultimately unmappable landscapes of interacting biological, climatic, economic, and political forces’ (Alaimo 2010: 2)” (75). For Iovino and Oppermann, in other words, a real materialism brings us a new way of seeing the world, which by disclosing the object-subject dualistic thinking as a discursive idea itself or the result of a subjective mental work that should be purged of, dismantles the object-subject dualistic thinking structure. Moreover, as Iovino and Oppermann also maintain, since interrelatedness, or what Morton (2010) called the “mesh,” or in Bennett’s words, the “inextricably enmeshed” relationships between our life and our environment (Bennett 2010: 13; Iovino and Oppermann 2012: 87), constitutes the true dimension of matter, a true materialism should take the study of object relations or the interactive trajectories of the “material agents” (87) as more fundamental than the essentialist quest for what material is. New materialism, taken from this view, is ecological in nature and can be best approached only through narrativity, a quality that has generally been treated as the character of literature. To argue this point, in their paper on the affinity between material ecocriticism and narrativity, the two scholars first borrow materialist viewpoints from critics, such as Manuel De Landa and Jane Bennett 1997, to argue matter’s “inherent creativity” (De Landa 16; Iovino and Oppermann 2012: 77) or its inherent agency that has nothing to do human intentionality or material “automatism or mechanism” (Bennett 2010: 3; Iovino and Oppermann 2012: 77). Then, based on Karen Barad’s theory of “agential realism,” an idea formulated from quantum theory which treats the universe as composed of phenomena or objects emerging through their interactions with other phenomena or objects, they further define reality as a symmetric entanglement of material and discursive processes, suggesting that the ongoing process of materialization or object becoming, not the static and passive substance or being, be the real target of materialist investigation. As they quote from Barad’s definition of “matter” as

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something “agentic, not a fixed essence or property of things” (Barad 2007: 137; Iovino and Oppermann 2012: 77), matter is “a doing, a congealing of agency,” or “a stabilizing and destabilizing process of iterative intra-activity” (Barad 2007: 151; Iovino and Oppermann 2012: 77). Seeing materiality as more a process than a thing, which is perceived or represented always in the form of descriptive (not prescriptive) language, Iovino and Oppermann then propose to read matter (or more precisely, matter formation) as a narrative, which embodies the process of its becoming as well as its interaction with other objects, and suggest two ways to approach its agency. As they said, If matter is agentic, and capable of producing its own meanings, every material configuration from bodies to their contexts of living, is “telling,” and therefore can be the object of a critical analysis aimed at discovering its stories, its material and discursive interplays, its place in a “choreography of becoming” (Coole and Frost 2010: 10). Material ecocriticism proposes basically two ways of interpreting the agency of matter. The first one focuses on the way matter’s (or nature’s) nonhuman agentic capacities are described and represented in narrative texts (literary, cultural, visual); the second way focuses on matter’s “narrative” power of creating configurations of meanings and substances, which enter with human lives into a field of co-emerging interactions. In this latter case, matter itself becomes a text where dynamics of “diffuse” agency and non-linear causality are inscribed and produced. (79–80 emphasis added)

Through Coole and Frost’s use of dance image in the term “choreography of becoming,” Iovino and Oppermann clearly portray the process of material configuration as the development of a story, though proceeding circuitously along with the discursive interactions with other objects like a dance. Revealing or representing this process of materiality, accordingly, entails an act very similar to telling a story. Moreover, since the two ways of approaching materiality through describing its agency and narrating its discursive trajectory of interacting with other objects (namely the representation of the material object in a new light independent of dominant cultural perspective, and the representation of the matter’s becoming process) exactly cover the two essential dimensions of narrativity (that is, the spatial and the temporal of a narrative), the act of representing materiality precisely coincides with every detail of storytelling. In their paper, to demonstrate how material agency can be manifested in a narrative, Iovino and Oppermann give many examples. Among

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them, the sea’s material agency represented by a Turkish writer Cevat Sakir ¸ Kabaa˘gaçlı (aka the Fisherman of Halicarnassus) is the most impressive one. According to Iovino and Oppermann, many of this Turkish writer’s stories portray the White Sea (the Mediterranean) along Turkey’s coast as a pulsating nonhuman agent which functions as a vital force. By calling attention to the agentic assemblages of nature’s magnificent forces around him and showing how his material imagination has been crafted by their effects on him, the Fisherman’s narratives about the Mediterranean ecosystem display the permeable boundaries between marine creatures and human subjects. Though having been limited by their cultural and language background, Iovino and Oppermanndid not have the chance to read Wu Ming-Yi’s novels and include them in their paper, their illustrations of how material agency can be approached through narrative forms, particularly at the point of how the sea can be materialized and represented in a new light, have been illuminating for us to study the sea that encompasses the Wayo Wayo island, the imaginary world populated with “the people of Wayo Wayo” who “thought the whole world was but a single island” (10), in Wu’s The Man with the Compound Eyes.3 In fact, Iovino and Oppermann’s materialist approach has been inspiring for many materialist critics, such as Chang Yalan, who has also been dedicated to studying Wu’s novels and analyzed Wu’s The Man with the Compound Eyes from the same material ecocritic perspective. But while Chang employs Iovino and Oppermann’s theories to study the novel’s anthropomorphism, as manifested in the sounds of the ocean and the mountains, and argues it as a form of the writer’s presentation of material agency, “a narrative expedient intended to stress the agentic power of matter and the horizontality of its elements,” rather than “the sign of an anthropocentric and hierarchical vision” (Iovino and Oppermann 82; Chang 98), this paper plans to adopt Iovino and Oppermann’s two ways of narrative approaches to study the materiality in Wu’s The Man with the Compound Eyes and The Stolen Bicycle, particularly focusing on the two novels’ spatial and temporal multiple realities respectively. In The Man with the Compound Eyes, Wu’s interest in characterizing the spatiality of the material configuration is clearly displayed from the beginning chapters of the novel where he definitely exposes the narrative structure he deliberately contrives. To tell a story of how two separate worlds with different languages, ways of living, and worldviews (namely the imaginary world of the Wayo Wayo teenage boy Atile’I, and the realistic world of Alice, a professor of the coast town Haven in the east of

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Taiwan) can possibly come across, interact with each other and form a new material world in an unexpected way, Wu first alternates delineating the two worlds with two different sad stories separately chapter by chapter. By jumping between two separate worlds and narrating their sad stories in turn repeatedly in the beginning chapters, Wu apparently leads readers to treat the two worlds as two material spaces and suggests spatial movement to be the fundamental structure of the novel. In the beginning, Atile’i was forced to leave his hometown due to “the fate of every Wayo Wayoan second son” (15). Then, as the novel proceeded, Atile’i was abandoned by the fate again as a shipwreck made him floating at the sea until he was brought by the current to a moving trash island or “the Trash Vortex” (115) on the Pacific Ocean. Along with the current’s movement, then again, Atile’i as well as the trash vortex was brought to meet Alice’s island during a hailstorm in the middle part of the novel. The two characters’ encounter and their communications in a new language that came up only at the moment of their interactions hereafter, in this view, can be read as the merging of these two material worlds/spaces into one. And their parting at the end of the novel, accordingly, bespeaks the entropy or the natural declining of the newly formed materiality. The development of the novel’s narrative structure, in short, literally coincides with the spatial movements and ongoing interactions of the portrayed material worlds. And the sea, a material in itself, which not only physically flows and transforms in time, but also functions to separate and/or bring together the divided material worlds in the novel, can thus be taken as an essential narrative element functioning to provide the narrative with the necessary media and/or space for the story to take place. Besides the characterization of the two worlds’ interaction in terms of the ongoing material configuration, Wu’s attempt to portray the sea’s material agency and disengage it from man’s established symbolic structure is also seen in the chapters on the Wayo Wayo island where the sea is worshiped as the life center (if not the whole) of the Wayo Wayoan people. Living on and surrounded by the sea, people of the Wayo Wayo island cannot live or talk without referring to the sea. For example, they coordinate their daily schedule with their positions in relations to the sea. They talk facing the sea and eat facing way. They conduct rituals facing the sea and make love facing away. In the community without hierarchy, they don’t have any chief who governs the public affairs, but only “elders” (aka “old men of the sea”) who are asked for advices for other people simply

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because they know more about the sea than the others (12). Moreover, greetings exchanged among the people also revolve around the sea. As the following passage shows, In the morning, they greeted each other, “Are you going to sea?” At noon they asked, “Shall we test our luck at sea?” And at night, even if the weather had been too rough to go fishing today, they exhorted one another, “You must remember me a story of the sea.” As a rule, the Wayo Wayo went fishing every day. Fishermen who met on shore would yell, “Don’t let the mona’e steal your name!” Mona’e meant wave. When people bumped into one another, one would ask, “So how’s the weather at sea?” Even if a gale was flowing, the other had to reply, “Very fair.” (12 emphasis original)

In this way, by having the sea stuff the Wayo Wayoans’ lives, their minds and their language, Wu clearly demonstrates an ecosystem constituted by the sea culture in which humans are no more than a petty part of the ecosystem. Moreover, by liberating the sea from the anthropocentric symbolic system and rendering its material agency as it really is, Wu apparently triggers the movement of the ethical dynamics by which each part of the system has been relocated in terms of their new positions or relations to other parts of the system in the most primitive or realistic way. Indeed, when the sea appears as the dominator of man’s fate and “Let me tell you a story of the sea” (13) accordingly appears on the tip of every Wayo Wayoan’s tongue, Wu undoubtedly reaches the literary effect that may remind us of the Fisherman’s materialist presentation of the White Sea. In fact, in the novel, Wu’s materialistic writing is not limited to the portrayal of the sea. To present the material/real world in a new light independent of man’s established symbolic structure, Wu comes up with a new language system which describes things in terms of their real relations to other materials, or in short, a new language which aims to render the real visions of the diverse materiality. For the Wayo Wayoans, for example, “full moon” is not only a natural phenomenon, but also a figure of speech which is used to measure time by its times. More specifically, when a boy got “a hundred and eighty notches” on the tree his father chose for him to mark at “each resurrection of the moon” (13) since he was born, he had to build a talawaka, a boat made of trees and grasses. A woman could make sure if she was pregnant after she saw “three full

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moons”(14) since she had a sex with a man. And as for distance, for the Wayo Wayoans, it can be measured by the average toss of a coconut husk. To the north-east, accordingly, a cay or a coral reef was described as fully exposed at ebb tide “at a distance of ten husks” away (11). And even away from Wayo Wayo in the coast town Haven in the east of Taiwan, natural crops were used as figures of speech to describe things: Hafay’s beautiful voice was described as so nice that “would make the millet sprout” (91). And her sixth toe was also found by Dahu as “adorable” as “millet sprout” (295). Here, perhaps, one may find that both Hafay and Dahu are Taiwan’s indigenous people, the minor groups of people in Taiwan that are generally taken as less affected (or even less contaminated) by the long-established anthropocentric culture and language uses, and thus is tempted to assert that by choosing natural materials as figures of speech to describe only the Wayo Wayo people and the indigenous people, Wu seems to suggest that the realistic or materialist ecological ethics exist only in these communities. For Wu, one may thus say, it is only when the language of representation precisely renders reality’s materiality (such as the materialistic language use applied to the Wayo Wayo people and the indigenous people) that the represented reality or materiality can be presented in their realistic or materialistic faces and ethically endowed with new lives. But in fact, with the appearances of the mysterious (or actually fictional) man with the compound eyes in the mountain area of east Taiwan in the novel, Wu clearly demonstrates his more ambitious attempt also to emancipate the well-educated (perhaps hence also conventionallycultivated) Alice, the sad mother (also a professor and writer) who lost both her husband Thom and her son Toto during their hike, and even the dead Thom and Toto, from their sad memories and knowledge of the world by revealing the truth that as the multiple visions of reality can synchronously co-exist on one body, either in the mysterious or fictional man’s eyes, or on Atile’i’s painted body, realities can be multiple, allowing one to transgress between life and death freely, and hence to escape from being separated from his/her family through the mediation of art. In the novel, compared with Atile’i’s imaginary Wayo Wayo world, Alice’s living world is more realistically (not in the sense of the above materialistic style) closer to our own not only because its place can be identified in our real world, but also because it is similarly agitated with vicissitudes of life we may share in our daily lives. But more sadly, Alice’s world is shadowed with parting from the family due to death. From the beginning of the story, we are told that Alice was laden with profound

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melancholy because her husband Thom and her son Toto didn’t come back long after their hike in the mountains. But as the story unfolds, it turns out that Toto had died from snakebite earlier in his childhood but kept “alive” henceforth until his accident (or second death) with Thom again only in the Alice’s mind (or perhaps also in Thom’s) through her writing (280–81). Alice’s knowledge of Toto’s accident with Thom during their hike, in other words, was only her imagination. More specifically, she was sunken into the abyss of the perpetual bereavement of her son where her son seemed to die again and again simply because she could not face and accept the reality that her son had already been dead. In the novel, we are not definitely told if Thom was aware of Alice’s fatuous adherence to her own imagination before his own accident or not. But in a surrealistic scene where he was shown in a state between life and death after tripping down to a valley among the cliffs, we see that Thom was told by a mysterious man about Alice’s illusions, Toto’s earlier absence from them since his childhood, and the present condition of his being dead. It was the man with the compound eyes. In despair, when Thom looked at the man who talked to him, he found that. [All] he sees is the man’s compound eyes, which seem to change from moment to moment in hallucinatory permutations and combinations. And the scene in each of the tiny ommatidia that compose every compound eye is completely different with each passing instant. (276)

While being helplessly mesmerized by the instantaneous images playing in each ommatidium ranging from an erupting undersea volcano to a leaf about to fall, Thom found that as there could be multiple visions synchronously reflected on the man’s compound eyes, the world might also contain multiple realities including some people’s happiness and joys here and some others’ pains and sorrows there. That is, perhaps one may be afflicted with his own distresses and pangs, but all in all, taken from the panoramic point of view, happiness and sorrows, joys and pains are all interconnected as a part of the multiple realities. Seeing the interrelatedness of being reflected in the mysterious man’s compound eyes, Thom then apparently felt released with a sigh and accepted his own death and even his inability to protect his child, who in fact had already died long before he realized the truth. And it was not only about the same time when Toto, who didn’t realize he’s being dead until he met the man with the compound eyes and was told about his not being alive any more

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(285) either, accepted his own death, gave up looking for his father down the valley, and was “received into one of the ommatidia, far smaller than pinpoints, of the man with the compound eyes, along with the panorama of all scenery” (286). It was also about the same time when Alice discovered a similar scene on Atile’i’s painted body before the latter was setting out to the sea to look for his beloved Rasula: [Atile’i] took off the green polo shirt that Alice had bought him, and his chest, arms, belly, and even the parts of the back he could twist his arms to reach, were covered in the stories of their life together on the island: Ohiyo, water flowing into the sea at the river mouth on a rainy day, alpine birds, and even Toto. He drew Toto’s tiny form on a huge, apparently boundless cliff that extended from his hips to his shoulder blades. (292)

Presented with the multiple visions on Atile’i’s body spatially, which may reach the same effect with the myriads of images reflected on the mysterious man’s ommatidia, Alice then opened her mind to the broader views and reached her serenity henceforward. It seems, after seeing what the various possibilities of life could be like, and how these possibilities could be interrelated with one another, one can finally experience richer life far beyond his/her personal existence or concern. Indeed, like the function of art, or as the man with the compound eyes said to Thom, “the only reason for my existence is that I can merely observe, not intervene” (282), the presentation of the multiple visions alone may seem still a step away from bringing forth any real action to change the world for the better. But before one can take any action to do the right thing, understanding is the first essential step. And it should be noted that besides being an environmental activist, Wu has also been dedicated to creating and exploring the function of visual arts, such as photography, sketching, painting and even materialistic natural writing which attempts to visualize the material nature with words. As he comments on the powerful impact brought by the visual art by comparing the difference between writing a poem (a genre of literature to be distinguished from novel in terms of their different emphases on visualizing materiality) and taking a photograph through Abbas’s mouth, a photographer in The Stolen Bicycle, while poets may or may not feel the pain of war to write a poem of war, photographers have to go to the scene, which really “changes a person”: “Every time you press the shutter-release, if you’re really looking, the

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scene you’re shooting will change you. That’s why good war photographers aren’t happy people” (153). Visual arts, in other words, can be ethical and potential of creating difference to the world. In this way, space by space, chapter by chapter, by juxtaposing Alice and Atile’i stories suffused with diverse realities in multiple languages of materiality with the trash island moving at the sea, another material space or in Morton’s terms in The Ecological Thought, hyperobjects, which not only in a way epitomizes human’s material existence, but also functions to bring Atile’i’s story to meet Alice’s, Wu renders us the most ethical landscape spatially like the man with the compound eyes. But to see how he unveils the realities of some historical objects which are formed in time level by level, we will continue to read his next novel The Stolen Bicycle. Contrary to The Man with the Compound Eyes, where the multiplicities of realities are visually presented and juxtaposed together spatially as exactly epitomized in the men with the compound images on their bodies in the novel, The Stolen Bicycle is concerned more about materializing or visualizing some historical objects, such as bicycles, which may be absent at or since some particular moment of one’s life, but have left their legacies or traces of entanglements with humans or other objects along time in history. As Wu quotes from Kiyohara Shinji, a Japanese bicycle designer, in the inserted “Bike Notes” in the novel, “a bicycle is not simply a bicycle” (57).4 Interrelated with a bicycle, in fact, is as we have discussed in Iovino and Serenella’s paper, a story or “a text where dynamics of ‘diffuse’ agency and non-linear causality are inscribed and produced” (80). To retrieve these historical objects from somewhere, consequently, one needs to embark on the process of tracing their entanglements with other objects in time. Indeed, while the novel may be thematically concerned about the narrator’s loss and regaining of a bicycle, the narrator’s interest throughout the narrative is apparently far more than that. Rather, it is the bicycles as well as their stories in the plural form that he is obsessed with exploring. More precisely, the novel is more about the research on Taiwan’s bicycles as well as their various material entanglements with people in Taiwan since the turn of the twentieth century than simply the narrator’s search for his own bicycle. Entitled “The Stolen Bicycle,” the novel may mislead readers to expect that it is about how a bicycle gets lost and searched, just like what is presented in the 1948 Italian film The Bicycle Thief directed by Vittorio De Sica, or perhaps even also about how it is retrieved after the narrator’s circuitous search of it through many people’s mediations. But after we

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are introduced by the narrator some people, like the narrator Ch’eng, Apu, Abbas, etc., are crazy about historical objects simply because they are fascinated with the process of combing out the histories, the meanings, or even the sense of time entangled with the objects, we learn that it is not the bicycle, but the process of its being located in the historical context or in terms of eco-materialism, the process of its material configuration, that is the main concern of the novel. As A-pu, a collector who has in a way helped the narrator find the long-lost bicycle, said in the novel, “that might sound crazy, but it’s like [those old stuffs] unlocked something in me, opened it up” (29). Therefore, though the narrator Ch’eng found the bicycle 20 years after it disappeared with his missing father not long after he embarked on his search for it through the help of A-pu and Little Hsia, he was not satisfied with the simple return of the lost object. Rather, he continued researching the trajectory of the bicycle’s journey after it got lost with his father: why and how it disappeared with his father, by whom it was kept and what happened to it during the adventure. As he told Abbas, a photographer and the owner of the café “Kyoko’s Place” (or “House of the Mirror”) which was then transferred to A-tát as “Ringo,” soon after he was sure that he found the lost bicycle, I’m not trying to hunt down whoever it was that stole it or anything like that. I’m just thinking that if I’m lucky, if I can trace all the different owners, I might be able to figure out where it’s been for the past twenty years. I don’t know whether it’ll mean anything to me, or whether I’ll find answers. It’s just what I want to do. I’m not looking for someone to blame. (72)

To find out “where it’s been,” Ch’eng thus continued to meet more people, including A-tát, Abbas, Abbas’s girlfriend Annie, Annie’s friend Sabina, and Shizuko introduced by Sabina, and listened to or read from them more stories which may either have a lot or a little to do with the bicycle in question, including Pasuya’s (Abbas’s father) expedition in the forests of Northern Burma where he buried a bicycle “like it was a fallen comrade” (221), Old Tsou’s Silverwheel bicycle that was supposed to serve in the war but was “left behind in Taiwan for some reason” and was then left to Abbas (149), A-hûn’s (Sabina’s mother) unfruitful romance with a married man and her departure from the man with only the bicycle that witnessed their love with her (12–24), and Squad Leader Mu’s (Shizuko’s late life lover) chance encounter with Ch’eng’s father

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and the latter’s commission of the bicycle in question to send to his family with a note though without any address attached to it: “If I don’t come back, please take my bicycle home” (287 emphasis original). From these stories, Ch’eng learned more about what happened in Taiwan and in the Southeast Asia during the Second World War. He also learned that the horrors and the pains brought by the war tormented not only the people of that age, but also the animals, such as the elephants and the butterflies, broadly involved in the war. As through some bicycles some people are interrelated with one another like a web, these animals, like Lin Wang, connected some people and stories like connectors or nodes of a mesh. And when all these stories about the lost objects are linked together through the narrator’s narration in different forms, including letters, fictions, conversations, interviews, translated cassette transcriptions, translated notes, and pictures, whose original languages range from Chinese to Japanese and Tsou, a novel about Taiwan’s history during the war is materially configured. At the end of the story, we are informed through a letter from Abbas to Ch’eng that the bicycle that had once been buried by Pasuya in Burma long ago was then found entangled with a tree and kept being lifted “higher and higher in the air” (357) along with the growth of the tree from a seed falling into the mud. As the “bicycle-embracing tree” (358) grows in time, the novel embodies the flow of time. As Wu explicitly remarked in the postscript of the novel, he didn’t write this novel out of nostalgia but out of respect for an era he did not experience, and reverence for the unrepeatability of life (371). Through the quest for an object that ends up visualizing a history many details of which could otherwise be distorted, suppressed or even left out, Wu’s The Stolen Bicycle indeed renders us an ethical view of the history in which every detail of its materiality is truthfully presented and linked to one another, and hence no detail will get lost.

Notes 1. It is a vote conducted in 2015 by Literary Connection—Chinese Language Literature Links, aka Novel Gravity, an internet-based transnational platform dedicated to promoting the quality of literature in Chinese language and co-founded by National Culture and Arts Foundation and Wenhsun Magazine. The transnational areas include Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macaw, Shanghai, Singapore and Malaysia.

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2. Wu’s Routes in the Dreams (2007 in Chinese) was translated into French and published in 2012; his The Man with the Compound Eyes (2011 in Chinese) was translated into English in 2013, into French in 2014, into Turkish in 2015, into Czech in 2016, and into Hungarian in 2018; his The Stolen Bicycle (2015 in Chinese) was translated into English in 2017, and into Japanese in 2018; and his short story collection The Magician on the Skywalk (2011 in Chinese) was translated into Japanese in 2015, and into French in 2017. Discussions about Wu’s “Worlding” issue can be found in the papers written by Chen Pei-Yun, Chiu Kuei-Fen, Chou ShiuhHuah, and Huang Ding-Ru respectively. In Chen Pei-Yun’s and Chou Shiuh-Huah’s papers, and in Lee Wei-Lin’s article, moreover, Grayhawk agency’s (or Tan Guanglei’s) involvement with introducing Wu’s books to the publishers abroad is explicitly cited as one of the major forces to facilitate Wu’s international visibility. In Lee’s article, the magazine Books from Taiwan is particularly considered contributive to Wu’s worldwide recognition. 3. Iovino and Oppermann’s paper was published in 2012, only one year after the publication of The Man with the Compound Eyes ’ Chinese version in 2011. Since The Man with the Compound Eyes ’ English translation was not published and circulated until 2014, and The Stolen Bicycle’s English translation was not published until 2017, Iovino and Oppermann did not have the chance to read Wu Ming-Yi’s novels in English or even to discuss them in their paper when they published their paper in 2012. 4. The narration of the novel is intermittently interrupted by 7 “Bike Notes” which generally discourse on the development of the bicycle industry in Taiwan. These 7 “Bike Notes” are independent essays from one another. Though sometimes offering facts or background knowledge related to the novel, these notes are not directly connected to the main plot of the novel.

References Alaimo, Stacy. 2010. Bodily natures: Science, environment, and the material self . Bloomington: Indiana UP. Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham and London: Duke UP. Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke UP. Chang, Kathryn Ya-Lan. 2016. “If nature had a voice: A material-oriented environmental reading of Fuyan ren (The Man with the Compound Eyes ).” In Ecocriticism in Taiwan: Identity, Environment, and the Arts, 95–109, edited by Chia-ju Chang and Scott Slovic. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

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Chen, Pei-Yun. 2019. Landscape in motion: Wu Ming-Yi’s novels and translation. Ex-Position 41: 155–165. Chiu, Kuei-Fen. 2018. ’Worlding’ World Literature from the Literary Periphery: Four Taiwanese Models. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 30 (1): 13– 41. Chou, Shiuh-Huah Serena. 2014. Wu’s the man with the compound eyes and the worlding of environmental literature. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 16.4. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article= 2554&context=clcweb. Coole, Diana and Samantha Frost. 2010. Introducing the new materialisms. In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, 1–43, edited by D. Coole and S. Frost. Durham: Duke UP. De Landa, Manuel. 1997. A thousand years of nonlinear history. New York: Zone. Huang, Ding-Ru. 2019. Compound eyes and limited visions: Wu Ming-Yi’s ‘Weak Anthropocentric’ Gaze for World Literature. Ex-Position 41: 53–70. Iovino, Serenella, and Serpil Oppermann. 2012. Material ecocriticism: Materiality, agency, and models of narrativity. Ecozon@ 3.1: 75–91. Juan, Rose Hsiu-Li. 2016. “Imagining the Pacific Trash Vortex and the Spectacle of Environmental Disaster: Environmental Entanglement and Literary Engagement in Wu Min-Yi’s Fuyan ren (The Man with the Compound Eyes ).” In Ecocriticism in Taiwan: Identity, Environment, and the Arts, 79–93, edited by Chia-Ju Chang and Scott Slovic. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Lee, Wei-Lin. “Wei guoji banquan daili kaichuang hsinmoshi: Tan Guan-Lei rang shijie kanjian Taiwan haoshu.” (“Opening a New Vision for International Copyright Agency: Tan Guan-Lei Making Taiwan’s Good Books Visible to the World”). http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2554& context=clcweb. Accessed March 1, 2021. Liu, Ke-Hsiang. 2010. “Taiwan teyou zhong: yige ziran xiezuo de hsinmianxiang.” (“Taiwan’s Endemic Species: A New Dimension for Nature Writing”). Preface. Midiezhi. (The Book of Lost Butterflies ). Taipei: Xiari (Summer Festival Press). Morton, Timothy. 2010. The Ecological Thought. Cambridge; Massachusetts; London: Harvard UP. Prystash, Justin. 2018. “Speculative Realism, Daoist Aesthetics, and Wu MingYi’s The Man with the Compound Eyes.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 25.3: 510–28. Song, Tik-Lai. 1997. “Disidai Taiwan zuojia de meili chuhang.” (“A Fair First sail of Taiwan’s Fourth Generation Writer”). Preface. Benri gongxiu. (We’re Closed Today). Taipei: Jiuke.

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Tsai, Robin Chen-Hsing. 2018. Speculating Extinction: Eco-Accidents, Solastalgia, and Object Lessons in Wu Ming-Yi’s The Man with the Compound Eyes. Comparative Literature Studies 55 (4): 864–876. Wang, Der-Wei. 2016. “Xiaoshuo ‘juiwulun’: Wu Ming-Yi Danche shiquieji ji qita” (“Novelistic ‘Objectivity’: Some Reflections on Wu Ming-Yi’s The Stolen Bicycle”). Preface. Danche shiqieji (The Stolen Bicycle). By Wu Ming-Yi. Taipei: Maitian. II-XVI. Wu, Ming-Yi. 2014a. Fuguang (Above Flame). Taipei: ThinKingDom. Wu, Ming-Yi. 2014b. The Man with the Compound Eyes. London: Vintage. Wu, Ming-Yi. 2017. The Stolen Bicycle. Translated by Darryl Sterk. Melbourne: Text. Xu, Rui-Hong. 2014. “Guankan yu shijian: Shijue wenhua yu Wu Ming-Yi xiaoshuozhong de guankan siwei”. (“Practicing and Looking: Visual Cultural and the Way of Looking in Ming-Yi Wu’s Novel”). Zhongguo Wenxue Yanjiu (SICL) 37: 155–194.

CHAPTER 13

Affect and the Virtual: A Deleuzian Reading of a Taiwanese Film: Kano Catherine Ju-Yu Cheng

13.1 The Virtual and Affect in Wei Te-Sheng’s Kano Wei Te-Sheng’s Kano, released in 2014, portrays an inspiring sports saga wherein a ragtag, underdog baseball team from Taiwan, composed of Japanese, Taiwanese, and aborigines, made it to the finals at Koshien, Japan’s national high-school baseball championship. Behind this seemingly rosy picture is a scheme of colonization, with the Japanese government employing baseball to pacify Taiwan, propagate the glory of Japan, and stabilize Japanese rule. Insidiously, the government creates a mirage that the three ethnic groups on the Taiwan team coexist in harmony. Once

This builds upon my presentation at the 4th Deleuze and Guattari Studies in Asia. I am grateful to Dr. Su-Chen Wu’s and Dr. Ananta Giri’s kind invitation. C. J.-Y. Cheng (B) Feng Chia University, Taichung City, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_13

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the Taiwanese and aboriginal baseball players join the team alongside the Japanese players, they become tools of colonial rule. In “Imagining ‘Taiwan’ by Remembering the Colonial Past: On Film Director Wei Te-Sheng’s ‘Cape No.7,’ ‘Seediq Bale,’ and ‘KANO,’” Wen-Yin Huang observes that coexistence of the three ethnic groups is not a result of negotiation and reconciliation among the groups themselves, but rather, by the colonizer, the Japanese government, merely overlooking ethnic differences in the name of modernization with the assumption that doing so will resolve all paradoxes and conflicts (2015: 48). Similar to Huang’s argument, Clarence Tsui, in “Kano: Film Review,” says, “The erasure of these players’ past roots and present existence as members of different racially delineated social classes is in parallel to the never-uttered Musha Massacre, the historical incident documented in Wei’s Seediq Bale films in 2011” (2016). In this catastrophic incident, the Japanese slaughtered thousands of insurrectionist indigenous tribesmen, belonging to the Seediq tribe, were slaughtered. What is even more poignant is that most of the remaining Seediq people were eliminated. Tsui goes on to indicate that the massacre pushed the Japanese colonial administration to “rethink about its strategies in bringing its subjects on side. Thus the emphasis on tri-ethnic harmony and also the quickening of infrastructural development on the island. Not mentioning this would be akin to making a film about a mixed-race South-African sports team in the 1970s and not mentioning apartheid” (2016). The two critics were concerned that the film would lose its spatio-temporal background and turn into a blank template that glorifies Japanese colonial rule. According to Huang and Tsui, baseball is a tool to build the mirage of tri-ethnic harmony and pacify the resentment of the Taiwanese. Presumably, once the two Taiwanese groups join the team, they become complicit in the policy of eradicating ethnic differences. I agree with their concern about the danger of overlooking the spatio-temporal background and the unreservedly whole-hearted embrace of modernization despite very real underlying differences among the three ethnic groups. However, my concern is that if the Taiwanese and aborigines had refused to join the team, they would have foregone the opportunity to transform their relationship with the Japanese. Although each ethnic group would have retained its integrity and singularity, each would have remained separate and conflict-stricken. In contrast to Huang and Tsui’s respective criticisms, Li-Ke Chang and Yi-Chen Liu point out that joining the baseball team might involve

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cultural resistance, making it beneficial. Chang claims that the local response of Taiwan baseball activities performs in three different ways: resistance, the art of the weak, and emulation. He employs de Certeau’s concept of the art of the weak, considering the baseball activities to be a useful tactic that paves the way for “micropolitical practice” (2000: 39–42). As Chang said, “the ‘weak’ Taiwanese can still shuttle and conduct guerrilla warfare in the space occupied and dominated by the ‘strong’ Japanese” (2000: 42).1 Even though the Taiwanese are politically weaker, their baseball performance functions as a microcosm of cultural resistance. Yi-Chen Liu agrees with Chang’s proposition of the possible cultural resistance, but he is aware of the fact that the Japanese might not even discern the cultural resistance happening. The Japanese might just consider the Taiwanese’ successful performance in baseball activities and competitions to be evidence of the success of colonizing Taiwan and transforming the island into a Japanese settlement. Around 1920, they treated Taiwan as an extension of Japan by intensifying colonial education and other policies to eliminate ethnic and cultural differences. Taiwan encountered the “Kominka Movement” during the Japanese Colonial Period (1937–1945) and received Japan’s cultural bombardment. There was a dilemma to solve. If the Taiwanese joined the baseball teams, they would seem to fall into the trap of accepting Japanese colonization and the Empire’s policy of internalization. What is worse is that when the Japanese government pacifies and unifies the three ethnic groups in the film, it seems that their ethnic differences disappear—they homogenize. Even though the Taiwanese’s baseball performances transform the relationship between them and the Japanese to some extent, the Japanese still refuse to recognize Taiwanese identity, treating the best of them as indoctrinated citizens and the worst of them as lower beings. Refusing to join baseball teams immediately gives up any chance for cultural resistance. It is possible that there is an alternative that envisions the simultaneous preservation of their cultural and ethnic differences and the tri-ethnic harmony. In Kano, the director finds a glimpse of hope in that the Taiwanese and Japanese players form a becoming and affective relationship with the eagle, the baseball, each other, and others. This time, though it is still about being one, it is never a static one that loses the difference of each element. Rather, it is a dynamic and becoming one just as that which Deleuze proposes. In creating Kano, Wei Te-Sheng expresses his desire to transcend dichotomies—

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for colonized Taiwan to achieve liberation from its colonizer, Japan. The revolutionary power derives not from overcoming actual dichotomies but from transforming the actual into the virtual. Actual conventional static boundaries and hierarchies must dissolve into virtual symbiotic, dynamic transactions, not of discrete, static identities, but of organic forces. The forces do not point to actual revolt but rather to affect between the players and baseball, to affect among the three groups of players, and even to affect between the players and the audience.2 Gilles Deleuze’s concepts of the virtual, particularly individuation, and affect help us understand how the baseball players of Kano, via their connection with virtual forces, transform themselves from accomplices of colonial rule to subjects of the virtual. In this way, they manage to revise the colonial relationship and actualize their singularities. Through baseball as a tool for establishing affective assemblage, Te-Sheng re-envisions and transforms the paradoxical relationship between Taiwan and Japan. 13.1.1

The Virtual Force of Individuation

The paradoxical relationship between Taiwan and Japan can be understood via Deleuze’s concept of individuation or indi-dramadifferent/citation. It involves the oscillation between the actual and the virtual and helps us understand the implicit mutuality in the relationship between the individual and ethnic species. In other words, if one sees the individual in terms of the actual, one cannot help but follow the rule of the species. On the contrary, if one sees in terms of the virtual, the individual’s connection with virtual forces promises a line of flight from the rule of the species. According to Deleuze, one can see the individual as the unfolding crystal, the reservoir of infinite assemblages, and the embryonic state of life—not a limited subject but a larval life form. Extrapolating from von Baer’s embryology , Deleuze uses the image of an embryo to show how the embryo manifests movements that surpass species limitations. For Baer, the embryo transcends the boundaries of the species, genus, order, and class, serving as the “phantasm of its parents” because “every embryo is a chimera, capable of functioning as a sketch and of living that which is unlivable for the adult of every species” (Deleuze 1968: 250). Embryos (individuals) by no means replicate the parts of the organisms to which they belong, but instead “…cross species and are a condition

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for the emergence of species through a process that Deleuze calls individuation or indi-drama-different/citation” (Williams 2004: 189). In short, it is not the species that determines the trajectory and development of the individual. The individual, as an embryo, envisions and promises the infinite possibilities of assemblage. I employ Deleuze’s concepts of the individual and the species, but what I mean by species aligns with the idea of ethnic species. Deleuze employs the idea of color to explain how the individual is originally embedded with infinite possibilities. Accordingly, when s/he is actualized, according to her or his milieu, s/he is limited to one part or species. He proposes the example of the color white. Deleuze proposes, “The Idea of colour, for example, is like white light which perplicates in itself the genetic elements and relations of all the colours, but is actualized in the diverse colours with their respective spaces” (Deleuze 1968: 206). The intensity that determines the differential relations actualizes the Idea of color and transforms it into different actualities (colors) in line with certain spatio-temporal conditions. Deleuze calls “the determination of the virtual content of an Idea differentiation” and “the actualization of that virtuality into species and distinguished parts differenciation” (Deleuze 1968: 207). While the color is seen in terms of the sea of enfolding and unfolding singular points, we lean toward the virtual. If the color is explicated into a specific color, we encounter the actual, while it is in the context of the relationship between the individual and the species and the individual/embryo is actualized into a specific form, it is implicated in itself and “continues to envelope difference at the very moment when it is reflected in the extensity and the quality that it creates” (Deleuze 1968: 240). The virtual and the actual do not preclude each other. They are, on the contrary, entwined and simultaneous. If we put Kano into the framework of Deleuze’s concept of individuation or indi-drama-different/citation, we see that on the level of differenciation or the actual, their respective ethnic characteristics determine the baseball players of Kano. On the differentiation or the virtual levels, the individual can precede and diverge from the limitation of the ethnic species. I first explore the level of differenciation or actual revealed in Kano. In Deleuzian terms, the baseball players’ intensity is fixed as extensity, or the virtual differential relation is incarnated (dramatized) into actualized individuals by the process of “differenciation,” as

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Deleuze would put it. In the process of individuation or indi-dramadifferenciation, the respective ethnic characteristics of the baseball players of Kano are actualized. Their potential is awakened and strengthened. It is epitomized by the coach’s retort to one of the fund-controlling officials. He notes that the Hans are the best attackers, the aborigines are the perfect runners, and the Japanese are the best defenders. When coach Hyotaro Kondo, once the most promising coach in Japanese baseball, asks for a higher food budget for his players, the official ridicules him, declaring “our students are no match to the schools up north. We’ve never got a chance, have we? Not to mention the fact that you are a motley crew, mixing Japanese, Hans, and natives together. How do you expect to win the game?” Kondo angrily retorts, “What’s wrong with a motley crew? What does race have to do with baseball? Let me tell you…The natives are fleet of foot. The Hans are strong batters. The Japanese are good at defense. This is a perfect lineup. It just takes a little more training, and we will surely become the best. We will definitely make it to Koshien.” With Kondo’s physical and spiritual training, the players’ potential is indeed actualized and employed to its utmost. The Han pitcher Wu Ming-jie, the hard hitter Su Cheng-sheng, and the Ami-ancestry fast runner Yasurou Hirano, stand out on the team as up-and-coming players. However, if one is discussing the specific potential of each ethnic species, then we must ask how we can escape from the logic that the players seem conditioned by their ethnic species or races and trapped into serving as colonial tools; this is made clear when their specific potential is employed by their colonial overlords to pacify Taiwanese people’s resentment of Japanese’ exploitation. I propose that, when we interpret one of the night scenes in Kano in terms of Deleuze’s concept of the virtual, their ethnic species or races can be temporarily transgressed. I explore the second level, the level of differentiation or the virtual, revealed in Kano. The night training scene manifests the players as virtual in a larval life state, which connects them with the animal (the eagle) and the baseball as they move toward differentiation and toward the virtual. During one of their evening practices, the coach tells the team they must together become an eagle, and they are initiated into the virtual. Coach Kondo says, “Imagine yourself as an eagle standing on the mountaintop and your eyes are searching for another pair of eyes.… First, spread out your arms as wide as you can. Second, swoop down at the speed of light. Third, claws out in the blink of an eye. Fourth, attack.” In this case, the players are embryonic and

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larval-like, surpassing their original ethnic genus or species and collectively becoming the eagle, thus echoing what Deleuze terms a process of becoming-animal: “Becoming is certainly not imitating, or identifying with something” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 239). Rather, it forms a “zone of proximity... an objective zone of indetermination or uncertainty” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 273), a “proximity, an indiscernibility” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 279), where the two (or more) bodies encountering each other constitute an unlikely relationship that undoes their original categories.3 This process of becoming-animal initiates all the players into the realm of the virtual, blurring the boundary between the players and the eagle, the human and the inhuman. In the realm of the virtual, concrete forms are shattered and give way to the larval state of life, rendering possible the transformations of those involved. The players can transcend the limitations of their respective species and establish a new affective bond. I propose that when we interpret Kano using Deleuze’s concept of the actual and virtual, we can better see how the players simultaneously actualize their potentiality and encounter the virtual realm. The oscillation between the actual and the virtual helps the players strengthen and actualize their power and modify their relationships with other elements in the virtual realm, where different elements can cross-fertilize. The intertwined and cross-fertilizing relationship between the actual and the virtual helps re-envision and transform the paradoxical relationship between Taiwan and Japan. 13.1.2

The Affective Relationship Between the Players and the Baseball

Another idea that can help us understand the “indiscernibility” or “an objective zone of indetermination or uncertainty” between the players and the baseball is the idea of “affect ” that Deleuze and Guattari propose. They define “affect ” as nonhuman becomings of men. They employ the case of Mrs. Dalloway to explain how the individual passes into the landscape and becomes imperceptible: “It is Mrs. Dalloway who perceives the town—but because she has passed into the town like ‘a knife through everything’ and becomes imperceptible herself. Affects are precisely these nonhuman becomings of man” (Deleuze and Guattari 1991: 169). When Mrs. Dalloway, the protagonist in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, dissolves her identity as a hostess and immerses herself

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in the town, she loses herself in the turmoil and vibrations of the landscape, leading her to become nonhuman and imperceptible. She no longer feels the turbulence and bustling of the town through her “human” perceptions, but rather dances with the atoms and molecules of the town. Through dancing, she no longer exerts her subjective perceptions when experiencing the landscape. Instead, she is initiated into a state of nonhuman becoming and enters into the domain of affect —a zone of indiscernibility. In this nebulous zone, the natural differentiation of all beings can be transcended via the affective relationship between the affecting and the affected being. According to Deleuze and Guattari, This something can be specified only as sensation. It is a zone of indetermination, of indiscernibility, as if things, beasts, and persons (Ahab and Moby Dick, Penthesilea and the bitch) endlessly reach that point that immediately precedes their natural differentiation. This is what is called an affect. (Deleuze and Guattari 1991: 173)

Affect passes through different elements and bonds them in a zone of indiscernibility, in which plants, animals, objects, and individuals encounter each other and trigger transformations. The different interactions among the various beings constitute a dynamic cosmos. In Kano, the team’s becoming relationship with the eagle and affective relationship with the baseball, multi-ethnic teammates, and the audience revises the paradoxical relationship between Taiwan and Japan, and between the individual and the empire (the ethnic species). The baseball epitomizes how the players of Kano can simultaneously follow and precede the established plan for the Empire of Japan’s functioning. From the perspective of the actual, the ball players cannot help falling into the trap of following the colonial policy of modernization and cooperation. Yet, in the deep reality of the virtual cosmos of baseball, all such dichotomies between the colonizer and the colonized dissolve in favor of the symbiotic interaction of opposites. In Kano, the old political antagonisms between the colonizer and the colonized no longer apply. This is because the boundaries dissolve and are reconciled. Deleuze’s concept of affect transforms the relationship of the players with the baseball and one another, despite their ethnic differences and histories of enmity. The concept even affects the relationship between the players and the audience.

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For Deleuze and Guattari, the term affect means “the ability to affect and be affected.” The translator Brian Massumi defines it in his foreword to A Thousand Plateaus : L’affect (Spinoza’s affectus) is an ability to affect and be affected. It is a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body’s capacity to act. (Massumi 2002: xvi)

L’affect (Spinoza’s affectus) points to pre-personal intensity that can surpass subjective and objective boundaries and enable the body to possess a capacity to act and to be acted upon. The pre-personal affect is embodied in subjective perceptions just as Massumi describes: “Formed, qualified, situated perceptions and cognitions fulfilling functions of actual connection or blockage are the capture and closure of affect. Emotion is the most intense (most contracted) expression of that capture” (2002: 45). Kano presents several layers of affect rippling in the film. The first level of affect forms between the baseball and the player, Wu Ming-jie. The second level of affect forms between Wu and his teammates. The third level of affect forms between the players and the audience in the auditorium, and finally the fourth one is between the players and the audience in front of the radio in Taiwan. First, several people in Kano affirm the concept of baseball as the soul of an individual or species. When the baseball is no longer an object but epitomizes the soul of an individual and even an ethnic species, it possesses the affective force to have an impact on and be influenced by the individual. Likewise, each player possesses the pre-personal intensity that can surpass subjective and objective boundaries and enable the body to hold a capacity to act and be acted upon. The affective relationship between Wu and the baseball is apparent when considering the bond between them and the interplay of the roles of the affecting and affected, since their pre-personal relationship is fluid rather than fixed. When this relationship is actualized or embodied in subjective perceptions, it is revealed as what Massumi describes: “Emotion is the most intense (most contracted) expression of that capture” (2002: 45). It is his passion toward baseball game. The Han pitcher, Wu Ming-jie, forms a close and affective relationship with baseball, just as that between a swimmer and the water in which he swims. The swimmer’s distinct bodily movement propels its progression

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by interacting with the water, while the water dynamically trims the swimmer’s bodily positioning. Together, the two entities are continuously in the process of becoming each other (Chen 2011: 6–7). Deleuze points out the interaction with reference to a wave: “When a body combines some of its own distinctive points with those of a wave, it espouses the principle of a repetition which is no longer that of the Same, but involves the Other - involves difference, from one wave and one gesture to another, and carries that difference through the repetitive space thereby constituted” (Deleuze 1968: 23). This relationship is something of an apprenticeship. It is a process of encountering the signs, repeating with differences while stroking and acquiring the skills: “To learn is indeed to constitute this space of an encounter with signs, in which the distinctive points renew themselves in each other, and repetition takes shape while disguising itself” (Deleuze 1968: 23). In Kano, Wu Ming-jie outsmarts many opposing batters because he is continuously changing how he pitches, ensuring his movements are perfectly unpredictable. He is initiated into the apprenticeship as he develops his pitching skill. In the state of mutual becoming between the player and the baseball, Wu makes subtle shifts in his bodily positioning, throwing arm, grasp, and release of the ball, and thereby undetectably morphs his pitches. Like the swimmer, Wu’s distinct bodily movement adjust his control of the baseball, while the baseball dynamically trims his bodily positioning. Gradually, he becomes an extension of the baseball, and the baseball becomes an extension of him. They are always in the process of becoming each other (Chen 2011: 6–7). When his finger is hurt severely, his blood intensifies his bonding with the ball, and he persists, becoming even better at his craft as baseball and player form an indiscernible and affective relationship. Being hurt severely, Wu could have chosen to give up since he is locked into his own incapacity, his lack. However, this is also where his potential comes from. Giorgio Agamben’s concept of impotentiality, the incapacity, echoes Wu’s incapacity. In Agamben’s Potentialities, he discusses the concepts of potentiality and impotentiality. He was especially intrigued by the concept of impotentiality, which refers to “the potentiality not to.” Impotentiality is a positive and affirmative action for him since it implies that “The freedom to refrain from an act, proves that there exists a potentiality to act in a certain situation” (Agamben 1999: 183). The freedom to choose not to act in certain circumstances envisions the actualization of potentiality. Agamben appropriates Aristotle’s concept of pure

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potentiality, building upon it and thereby developing his own. For him, “To be potential means: to be one’s own lack, to be in relation to one’s own incapacity. Beings that exist in the mode of potentiality are capable of their own impotentiality, and only in this way do they become potential” (Agamben 1999: 182). In Kano, the Han pitcher, Wu Ming-jie, is triggered by his impotentiality. This lack forms a trigger because his circumstances form his last chance to get into Koshien. When Wu is injured, the easier path is to give up, and for a moment it seems likely, as he is locked into his own incapacity, his lack. However, this is also where his power resides. Wu demonstrates the spirit that “To be potential means: to be one’s own lack, to be in relation to one’s own incapacity” (Jecu and Pinto 2019). His limitation turns out to be his potentiality. Despite his finger’s relentless bleeding, Wy insists on finishing the game because it might be his last. He is like the papaya tree that serves as the central metaphor for the whole film. To inspire the coach and players of the Taiwan team, an agriculture teacher, who likes to experiment, reveals a secret: he has driven a nail deep into the root of each papaya tree to improve its fruit. “After that,” he explains, “each tree has produced big and tasty fruits….because the nail hammered into the root made the tree think it’s dying. So it tried very hard to produce the sweetest fruit in order to ensure its own reproduction. It’s the sense of life or death that made the papaya tree put everything into its fruits.” The teachers’ veiled message is that the team should seize its chance to fulfill its dream, regardless of obstacles. “Go, it’s your last year at school. Next year’s Koshien is your final opportunity as well. Don’t you feel the pressure of crisis? Don’t you want to achieve something like the papaya tree?” One particular scene in the film is especially touching. When Wu applies dirt to stop his bleeding, it constitutes a Deleuzian event: Wu embodies such passion for baseball that he loses all subjectivity, epitomizing what Deleuze terms haecceity: There is a mode of individuation very different from that of a person, subject, thing, or substance. We reserve the name ‘haecceity’ for it. A season, a winter, a summer, an hour, a date have a perfect individuality lacking nothing, though this individuality is different from that of a thing or a subject. They are haecceities in the sense that they consist entirely of relations of movement and rest between molecules or particles, capacities to affect and be affected. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 261)

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Wu’s mentality, emotionality, physicality, body and limbs, pitching style, disregard for blood, dirt, the ball, his tacit understanding of his teammates and opponents—all are now haecceities: “the relations of movement and rest between molecules or particles, capacities to affect and be affected.” When his teammates witness how Wu perseveres, bonding with the ball via blood, they too embody his perseverance, becoming determined, no matter what, to hit or catch every ball, to run like the wind, and to leave nothing on the field, as baseball players say. Here, we witness how the second layer of affect between Wu and his teammates extends from the bond between Wu and the baseball. The third layer of affect between the baseball players and the audience in the auditorium forms when the spirit of the players affects the audience in the auditorium. Jousha Hiromi (the pitcher of another team) is deeply touched because he knows how seriously Wu is hurt, as well as the difficulty of persisting through the game while facing such odds. When the fans in the bleachers witness how Wu’s courage, passion, and resilience inspire and unite the Kano players, they cry out, “KANO is for the world! KANO…heroes of the field…”. Even a Japanese journalist cannot help saying, “Be at one with the ball! Now I’m completely a KANO fan! They come from different races, yet they are dedicated to the same cause. I am moved to tears by their spirit!”. When the entirety of the audience is touched by the affect between Wu and the baseball and among the players, the third layer of affect between the players and the audience triggers the fourth layer—that which is between the players and the audience in front of the radio in Taiwan. Back in Taiwan, where Taiwanese, aborigines, and Japanese sit together in front of public radios, all become roused by the players’ passion for baseball and how three ethnic differing ethnic groups unify as one team determined to give it their all. In this process, the boundaries among the players— earned by many years and events of enmity and violence—dissolve. Affect transforms the relationship of the players with the baseball and with one another, despite their ethnic differences. This even affects the relationship between the players and the audience, transcending location, whether in Japan or in Taiwan. The paradoxical relationship between the baseball players of Kano (the individuals) and the ethnic species (Taiwan and Japan) appear through the oscillation between the colonial plan and virtual forces (becoming

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and affect among the Japanese, Taiwanese, and aboriginal players). The players take on dual roles: first, as colonial subjects (tools) conditioned by the geopolitical situation, destined to propagate the glory of Japan and help stabilize Japanese rule. The second role is that they are virtual, and as such they are connected by virtual forces so that they can revise the colonial plan and trigger evolution. Reconfiguring the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, between individual divergences and collective totalitarianism, is key to each player’s role as a virtual agent, and as an affecting agent rousing their fans. We witness the formation of affect among baseball and the Japanese, Taiwanese, and aboriginal players. With concern to Deleuze’s concept of individuation and affect, the film unravels how Taiwan groups transform their relationship with the ruling Japanese, as well as how the players transcend racial boundaries and become international heroes. Wei Te-Sheng desires to create virtual agents (the baseball players) so as to initiate them into the realm of virtual force, which extends beyond the actual politics of confrontation or dichotomy, and beyond the confrontation between the colonizer and the colonized.

Notes 1. Alan M. Klein made a more detailed distinction on the concept of “resistance”: he talks about two forms of resistance, overt and covert, and two kinds of attitudes of resistance, the active and passive (Klein 1991: 111– 112). He considers that the fight between the Dominican baseball players and the American baseball players refers to a kind of roundabout cultural resistance (1991: 113). 2. L’affect (Spinoza’s affectus) points to pre-personal intensity that can surpass subjective and objective boundaries and enable the body to possess a capacity to act and to be acted upon. 3. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari explore how viruses link two beings and break the model of arborescent descent. They use the example of “Benveniste and Todaro’s current research on a type C virus, with its double connection to baboon DNA and the DNA of certain kinds of domestic cats” (1987: 10) to reveal the prospect that evolutionary schemas can be revised and follow a rhizomatic pattern. Type C viruses prompt one being to develop a rhizomatic relationship with other animals. We see, for instance, unlikely alliances such as “a becoming-baboon in the cat” (1987: 11).

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References Agamben, Giorgio. 1999. Potentialities, collected essays in philosophy. Stanford California: Stanford UP. Chang, Li-ke 張力可. 2000. Taiwan bangqiu yu renting: Yige yundong shehuixue de fenxi 台灣棒球與認同: 一個運動社會學的分析 (Taiwan Baseball and Identities: an Analysis of Sociology of Sport). MA thesis. Hsinchu: National Tsing-Hua University. Chen Zuei-Wen 陳瑞文. 2011. “Delezi chuangzao lilun de feirencheng yu feirencheng xing” 德勒茲創造理論的非人稱與非人稱性 (The Impersonal and Impersonality in Deleuze’s Theory of the Creation). The National Chengchi University Philosophical Journal 政治大學哲學學報 25 (2011): 1–45. Deleuze, Gilles. 1995. Difference and repetition. 1968. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia UP. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1987. A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. 1980. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1994. What Is philosophy? 1991. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, New York: Columbia UP. Huang, Wen-Yin 黃文胤. 2015. “Zhimin lishi jiyi yu ‘Taiwan’ xiangxiang: Yi Wei Te-Sheng Haijiao qihao, Saideke balai, KANO wei li” 殖民歷史記憶與「台 灣」想像: 以魏德聖 《海角七號》 、 《賽德克. 巴萊》 、 《KANO》為例 (Imagining “Taiwan” by Remembering the Colonial Past:On Film Director Wei TeSheng’s “Cape No. 7,” “Seediq Bale,” and “KANO”). MA thesis. Taichung: National Chung-Hsing University. Klein, Alan M. 1991. Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream, and baseball. Yale University. Marta, Jecu and Juan Manuel Gomes Pinto. 2019. “Beyond the Landscape, or Agamben and the Impotentiality of Art.” An International and Interdisciplinary Journal of Postmodern Cultural Sound, Text and Image 9 (2012). Available at https://intertheory.org/jecu.htm. Accessed 8 May 2019. Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. Durham, NC: Duke UP. Tsui, Clarence. 2016. “Kano: Film Review.” The Hollywood Reporter. Available at http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/kano-film-review685782. Accessed 2 May 2016. Williams, James. 2004. Gilles Deleuze’s difference and repetition: A critical introduction and guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP.

CHAPTER 14

Articulating Ecological Ethics and Politics of Life in Ming-Yi Wu’s The Land of Little Rain Yi-Jen Chang

14.1 Becoming Nonhuman/Less-Than-Human/More-Than-Human Beings The collection of six short stories is, as Taiwanese writer Ming-Yi Wu writes in the afterword in his latest fictional writing The Land of Little Rain (Ku yu zhi di, 苦雨之地), about “the change of the relation between human and environment, the relation between human and species” (Ming-Yi 2019: 248). And Wu further explains, his literary attempt in this short story collection aims to explore “the spiritual evolution of human as a living creature” (Ming-Yi 2019: 248). Wu’s words self-evidently show his consistent ethical concern about the human and nonhuman species

Y.-J. Chang (B) Department of Foreign Languages and Applied Linguistics, National Taipei University, New Taipei City, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_14

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intertwined in the ecological context in Taiwan since his novel The Man with the Compound Eyes (Fuyanren, 複眼人), the first Taiwanese novel to be published in English translation, and his nature-writing essay So Much Water So Close to Home (Jia li shui bian na me jin, 家離水邊那麼 近), both of which revealing his interest in portraying and (re)configuring nonhuman beings through fictional and nonfictional works. As an ecological writer, Wu has put a lot of efforts in experimenting nature writing in Taiwanese literature, a genre primarily emphasizing nonfictional nature experience, environmental ethical criticism, and the author’s affective feeling and interaction with the environment in the context of Taiwan. Central to nature writing are the elements of “nonfiction” and “informative knowledge,” deriving from empirical observation and scientific study of the natural environment and species. And yet, Wu is not content with the current understanding, assumption, and definition of nature writing. Rather, he endeavors to go beyond and challenge the ecocriticism concerning nature writing about Taiwan. In his “Topophilia, Awareness, Find the Way, and then Inhabit the Island: Rethinking Several Issues about Taiwanese Eco-Criticism and Nature Oriented,” Wu argues that literature is not unfamiliar with various kinds of border-crossing experiments, and therefore research field as a metatext of literary works should also adjust its critical perspectives if a new aesthetic paradigm and environment ethics were to be developed and initiated in nature writing. Crossing-the-border is in itself an act of decentralization and an attempt of diversification. For nature writing in Taiwan, Wu expects border-crossing to manifest two-fold challenges: one is about the crossover of fictional literary writing and nonfictional essay writing engaged in scientific narrative, and the other concerns the interdisciplinary research in literature and ecology (Ming-Yi 2010: 45–79). The former involves a breakdown of the anthropocentric division of human and nonhuman species while the latter could be viewed as how ecocriticism invites literature to transcend ethnic and national boundaries to “study human experience in relation to the more-than-human world and to compare human experience across cultures” (Slovic 2010: 4). Bordercrossing thus prepares a space for objective observation from the scientific narrative to be closely accommodated in and in dialogue with the representation of subjective perspective of literary production and would thus be able to fully exhibit the presence and essence of nonhuman species in a more-than-human ecology.

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Henceforth, his latest work The Land of Little Rain is an attempt to break away from the strict division of fictional and nonfictional writing. By integrating nonfictional material with fictional creation, Wu proffers his readers a new cross-genre of literary writing to challenge our anthropocentric worldview and ethics. The six stories in this collection is as much about the life journeys of human characters as about the life stories of the nonhuman, less-than-human characters. Central to each story is a Taiwanese animal or plant species—a Metaphire formosae (earthworm), an Oriolus chinensis diffusus (a black-naped oriole), a Tsuga chinensis var. formosana (a Taiwan hemlock), a Neofelis nebulosa brachyura (a Formosan clouded leopard), and migratory animal species—a killifish, a Thunnus orientalis (the Pacific bluefin tuna), and a Butaslur indicus (a grey-faced buzzard). Wu masters to interweave fictional writing of the human characters with the scientific observations and empirical study of the nonhuman characters in The Land. It is evident that Wu’s attempt in integrating fictional literature and nonfictional writing is aligned with his endorsement of Patrick Murphy advocacy of a more inclusive ecocriticism. Though ecocriticism, according to Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, is defined as “the study of the relationship between literature and physical environment” in the book The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology they edited (xviii), Murphy in Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-Oriented Literature argues ecocritics have long ignored genres other than nonfiction nature writing. According to Murphy, a new taxonomy he labeled as natureoriented literature—including nature writing, nature literature, environmental writing, environmental literature—refuses the overtly drastic distinction of nature and culture on which nonfictional, realistic writing is premised. Murphy suggests that ecocriticism, the nature-sensitive field emerged since the 1990s, has matured enough to the point where it requires a more inclusive and thorough critique: If ecocriticism has been hindered by too narrow an attention to nonfiction prose and fiction of nonfictionality, it has been limited by a focus on American and British literature. In order the widen the understanding of readers and critics, it is necessary to reconsider the privileging of certain genres and also the privileging of certain national literatures and certain ethnicities within those national literatures. Such reconsideration will enable a greater inclusiveness of literatures from around the world within the conception of nature-oriented literature. It will also enable critics and readers such as

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myself, who focus primarily on American literature, to place that literature in an internationally relative and comparative framework. I see such reconsideration as one of the ways by which we can refine our awareness and expand the field of ecocriticism. (58)

The broadened framework of ecocriticism allows nature writing to encompass literature or fictionality “as a means of illustrating sustainable lifestyles” and “as an agent of environmental activism” (Slovic 2010: 7– 8). A year after Murphy’s Farther Afield, Karla Armbruster and Kathleen R. Wallace argue in the collection Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism that the ecocriticism’s early focus on nonfiction nature writing prevented readers from appreciating the representality in literature and shunning from the wider range of authors exploring environmental ideas through literary expression. Environment, Armbruster and Wallace write, need not be limited to only “natural” or “wilderness” areas, but can also accommodate “cultivated and built landscapes, the natural elements and aspects of those landscapes, and cultural interactions with those natural elements” (Slovic 2010: 4). Ecocriticism would be merited from its expanded sense and scope of environment to tackle with the nature–culture dualistic division, but rather to understand them as interwoven together. In other words, when we examine environmental issues, any attempt to examine nature as it is without taking cultural influences into consideration—be it gender, race, class, or ethnicity—needs to be revised. Armbruster and Wallace believe that a viable ecocriticism is the one that continues to challenge the dualistic thinking and to achieve the end, ecocriticism should continue to strive for an interdisciplinary perspective to push the boundaries of both literary studies and environmental writing. The under-examined genre, the less than obvious natural landscapes, or the landscapes or animal species on the verge of disappearance call for extra attention from ecocriticism to develop alternative perspectives on examining nature and human relationships to it. The cross-border of The Land is not only presented in Wu’s experimenting with the genre of nature writing, but also in the crossing over the boundary of life and death in the shadow of extinction. In The Land, the six stories are either about the precarious existence of nonhuman species in natural environment or about the marginalization of the human characters in their society. Animals like Formosan clouded leopard, the Pacific bluefin tuna, or grey-faced buzzard are threatened with extinction or no longer exist. Their precarity echo the condition of the human

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characters in The Land who, to some extent, are in a way or another abandoned or excluded from the human society. Human characters in the six stories include a female dwarf (Sophie), a young boy who is bullied for his speech and language delay and also suffers from hearing impairment later (Di-zhi), a runaway girl (Min-min), a Hemlock researcher who is in a vegetative state after falling from a tree (Xiao-zhi), a young aboriginal man whose mother is dead from falling off cliff (Xiao-tie), and an unemployed young aboriginal man who squats in one of the abandoned buildings, unfinished because of the financial crisis caused by military collision (Si Maraos, or Xiso-si). If extinction is the purport of this collection, then what does the novelist intend to do to deal with the irreducible disappearance in his writing? In the afterword of the collection, Wu explicitly tells his reader that the responsibility of the novelist, he believes, is not to rebuild what is annihilated, but to explore the meaning of annihilation as the essence of life (Ming-Yi 2019: 252). What does it mean to say that annihilation is the essence of life? Does Wu not merely state the obvious fact that the death is the inevitable end of all life forms and life would all be consumed by death? To better understand the above questions, we might need to think: what is annihilation? What does it mean to be annihilated? Is it an active act of refusing to continue the lineage or a passive act of being reduced to nothingness? When it comes to animal species, extinction is the word for annihilation, spinning stories of the mass death of a species over a long period of temporality. As Thom van Dooren invites his reader to think closely about the significance of extinction and whether we could understand the word its diverse meanings in new ways, he then argues that the immensity and significance of extinction must not “be reduced this one event” of the death of the last living individual of any species (van Doreen 2016: 12). Instead, extinction, van Doreen emphasizes, should be thought through the prism of “entanglement,” or to borrow Donna Haraway’s words, “becoming together,” and therefore he asks us to think: What is lost when a species, an evolutionary lineage, a way of life, passes from the world? What does this loss mean within the particular multispecies community in which it occurs: a community of humans and nonhumans, of the living and the dead? How might we think through the complex place of human life at this time: simultaneously a/the central cause of these extinctions; an agent of conservation; and organisms, like any other, exposed to the precariousness of changing environments? (4–5)

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Extinction is never a singular event, but instead, an entanglement of various forms of life of human and nonhuman in a more-than-human world. The “entangled” significance of extinction works to undermine the anthropocentric perspective that holds human beings apart from the rest of the world. The human exceptionalism would cut off connections between human and nonhuman actors and human would waive accountabilities and obligations toward the disappearing others. Extinction therefore is never an end of a single species, but serves as the processes of “knotting,” though often painful, highlighting the “entangled becoming that cut across human/nonhuman and nature/culture binaries” that a multispecies world would be rendered visible. The paper thus aims to explore how what I would call narrative of “double-becoming”—nonfictional becoming fictional and human becoming nonhuman—in Wu’s The Land of Little Rain works to disrupt the human exceptionalism in the time of ecological catastrophe. This paper argues that The Land not only explores new modes of telling stories but also offers a call for an awareness of human’s entanglement with nonhuman beings at an immense scale of temporality and a call for new ways of figuring human’s place in and obligations to a more-than-human world.

14.2 Animal and Man: From Heidegger, Derrida to Agamben Last year a TV coverage about Guantian District in Tainan, Taiwan, though less noticed, told the audience about a celebratory victory in breeding the population of the once endangered bird, Pheasant-tailed Jacana, reaching almost 1700 adult birds. In the 1990s, Pheasant-tailed Jacana was almost wiped out to less than 300 of them for reasons such as over-development and excessive use of pesticide. Guantian District has long been famous for the water caltrop produce, and for the restoration of Pheasant-tailed Jacana, a few farmers in Guantian District are willing to cooperate with the Tainan government to adopt “rice and water caltrop (with four horns) rotation” cultivation for the water caltrop is planted to feed the Jacana so that they would not eat the rice, inside the husk is pesticide that would kill the creatures. Other environmentally friendly methods are also adopted to protect the habitat of the local Pheasant-tailed Jacana. In the news, Lee Zhen-Bin, a farmer who joined the restoration act in his water caltrop field told the reporter that water

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caltrop with four horns actually does not really sell well, but it is sold to purchase an idea; an idea candidly tells us that if bird cannot survive, then in the end, on the top of the food chain—humans—would not survive as well. Lee’s words tells a story about how human and nonhuman species are entangled to the extent that they will be in each other’s life and there is no way that human can set himself apart from the nonhuman species “out in nature.” The human-animal-plant relationship consisted of farmer, Pheasant-tailed Jacana, and water caltrop in this case make a really beautiful connection, relationship, and ethical responsibility, which, however, has undergone a very bumpy road along which the relationship between animal and human is considered as hierarchical, and never equal or entangled. The relationship between man and animal is often described as dogmatic anthropocentrism in Western philosophical tradition. We may need to explore the problematic anthropocentrism in the following to figure out how much we have to go to achieve the “becoming together,” the entangled relationship if the viable ethical relationship between human and nonhuman could be made possible. In the midst of increasing ecological crisis, the prominent scholar in ecofeminism Donna Haraway asked a provocative question in the very beginning of one of the chapters in her groundbreaking book Staying with the Trouble to come to terms with new ways to reconfigure the relations of human to the earth and all its inhabitants, be it animals, bacteria, fungi, or protists. The question bluntly asks us, as the inhabitants on this planet, to think, “what happens when human exceptionalism and bounded individualism, those old saws of Western philosophy and political economics, become unthinkable in the best sciences, whether natural or social?” (Haraway 2008: 30). That we should revisit the idea of human at the center of epistemological practices echoes Haraway’s own position in When Species Meet, in which she unequivocally favors Derrida’s over Heidegger’s view on animals and human. Undoubtedly, Heidegger should be thanked for bringing up the philosophical contemplation on animals in the 1992 publication of the now classic lectures given by him in 1929–1930, The Fundamental Metaphysics: World-Finitude-Solitude. However, the now famous triple thesis clearly reveals how Heidegger situates the animals in a dubious framework, “The stone is worldless; the animal is poor in world; man is world-forming” (Heidegger 1995: 184). The animal’s poverty of the world not only suggests their not having world, but their quality of being poor specifically situates them as a being deprived of world. Heidegger proposes that we need to have an initial

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understanding of what a world means in order to figure out the “specific relation” that stone, animal, and man has toward world (Heidegger 1995: 185). To better explicate the thesis of “poverty in world” and “worldforming,” Heidegger turns to German biologist Jakob von Uexküll, whose idea about the “environmental world of the animal” offers an instructive contribution that helps Heidegger define what it means to assert that animal is poor in world (Heidegger 1995: 192). Uexküll distinguishes the term environment (Unwelt ) and inner world (Innenwelt ) to offer an insight into the “relational structure between the animal and its environment,” to which Heidegger called “disinhibiting ring” (Heidegger 1995: 263). The way in which animal, according to Uexküll, stands in relation to its environment decides its ontological differences from the human being. Heidegger continues to argue that it is neither qualitative nor quantitative distinctions between animal and human beings, a perspective from which we make our comparative examination of the world of the animal and that of the human being. It is, rather, a question, of whether the animal can “apprehend something as something, something as a being” (Heidegger 1995: 264). What does it mean to say that animal cannot “apprehend”? This is not to state that the animal does not possess the ability of language so it cannot understand something, since Heidegger is known to constantly reject the traditional definition of man as animal rationale, as “the living being that has language” (Agamben 50). The “abyss” that separates animal from man is therefore not the capability of language, but rather, as Heidegger indicates, animal is “encircled by a disinhibiting ring” (253). Following Uexküll, Heidegger explains that the animal is closed in the circle of “that which initiates, disinhibits the capability” for opening itself to what is approaching it (254). In other words, Heidegger continues, “when [the animal] comes into relation with something else, [it] can only come upon the sort of entity that ‘affects ’ or initiates the capability in some way” and “[n]othing else can penetrate the ring around the animal” (254). Though Heidegger designates the idea of animal’s poverty of the world not in the sense of quantitative or “hierarchical evaluation,” yet he still wishes to articulate a mode of being proper to the animal (194). To further explain why he considers animal only being capable of reacting to whatever approaches it within its disinhibiting ring, Heidegger brings the term “captivation” into focus. Captivation is, according to Heidegger,

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“an essential moment of animality” (239). As long as the animal is captivated, it is wholly absorbed in itself and its disinhibitor, which means that the animal, unlike human beings, cannot act or comport, but can only behave in the sense of a “driven performing ” (Heidegger 1995: 237). Heidegger makes it clear that behavior is exclusively an enduring state of the animal in its absorption: Behavior as a manner of being is in general only possible on the basis of an animal’s absorption in itself [Eingenommenheit in sich]. We shall describe the specific way in which the animal remains with itself —which has nothing to do with the selfhood of the human being comporting him– or herself as a person—this way in which the animal is absorbed in itself, and which makes possible behaviour of any kind, as captivation [Benommenheit]. The animal can only behave insofar as it is essentially captivated. The possibility of behaving in the manner of animal being is grounded in this essential structure of animal, a structure we will now elucidate as captivation. Captivation is the condition of possibility for the fact that, in accordance with its essence, the animal behaves within an environment but never within a world. (238–239)

Driven by its instinctual response to the stimuli, the animal is captivated and can never truly open itself to a world, or to put it in Heidegger’s words, being deprived of world. This drivenness behavior and lack of the capability of apprehending can be better understood by a bee example Heidegger borrows from Uexküll. Heidegger asks his reader to think about the significance of a bee carrying on sucking honey even when its abdomen is removed. It is evident that if the bee continues its “driven activity” regardless of the presence of too much honey, it is because, Heidegger concludes, the bee is “simply taken by its food” (242) And this being taken proves that “the possibility of apprehending something as something is withheld [genommen] from the animal” (247). The withholding rightly reflects a negative relationship between the animal and its environment. We may wonder: isn’t human beings also capable of being captivated by his surrounding environment? After all, captivation is often employed to describe human beings in a state of mind intensely held for a greater period of time. Heidegger explains that, indeed, this state is known to human beings and yet, human beings can detach from and are not immediately swallowed up in all the beings around them. To animal, however,

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since captivation is its “essential moment” and characterizes its “animality,” the term becomes its “permanent trait” and therefore the animal has no chance of escaping all determination (Heidegger 1995: 239). Heidegger thus concludes that the animal is defined by its being poor and deprived of world: Being open in captivation is an essential possession of the animal. On the basis of this possession it can do without [entbehren], be poor, be determined in its being by poverty. This having is certainly not a having of world, but rather being taken by the disinhibiting ring—it is a having of that which disinhibits. (269–270)

Imprisoned in its captivation, the animal is governed by its inner mechanism constituted by its instinctual drive-oriented response to its environment and therefore is denied the possibility of the manifestation of being. Or, in Canadian philosopher Jean Grondin’s words, human beings understand beings while the animal “remain imprisoned at the level of ‘being,’” the way human beings related to his environment is manifested in his capability to make free use of their being, while the animal’s relation to its environment is encircled in the disinhibiting ring by its foraging behavior and this negative relation leads to no “privileged access to Being” (Grondin 2007, 32). At this point, it is not difficult for us to understand why Haraway dismisses Heidegger as a “grumpy human-exceptionalist” for his apparent anthropocentric mindset (Haraway 2016: 11). In When Species Meet, Haraway praises Derrida for his remarkable discussion in his lecture titled “And Say the Animal Responded,” in which he tackles the “old philosophical scandal of judging ‘the animal’ to be capable only of reaction as an animal-machine” (19). In the collection on the philosophical mediation on animals, Derrida addresses that Heidegger, though gestures to move toward a new direction “concerning the world and the animal” in his attempt to “deconstruct the whole metaphysical tradition, yet he still remains “profoundly Cartesian” (147). In another lecture “The Animal That Therefore I Am” collected in the same book, Derrida uses his experience of feeling “ashamed” when he was caught naked by his cat in a bathroom one morning to work on the “animal-machine” reaction. He feels that his cat looks back at him, which makes him question himself “who I am at the moment when, caught naked, in glance, by the gaze of an animal” (3). In other words, the gaze from the animal is disturbing

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for human beings now casts doubt on how he defines himself. This troubling experience renders it clear, according to Derrida, that the animal has been excluded from philosophical thought, intentionally or not, as he writes, “the experience of the seeing animal, of the animal that looks at them, has not been taken into account in the philosophical or theoretical architecture of their discourse” (14). The animal’s looking back not only challenges the human being’s ontological existence, but also gives an idea that the animal is not always “imprisoned” in its environment because such a gaze is not a reaction toward whatever in its surroundings disinhibits it. Can we thus make a bold move to suggest that, as Derrida’s example indicates, not just the perspective of an anthropocentric framework is facing its limits, but the gaze may open up a problem concerning the animal’s relation to human beings and even to the world? What is the animal’s relation to human beings then? Apparently, the distinction between humans and animals not only lies in their relation to the world respectively, one as world-creative (humans) and one as world-responsive, or world-deprived (animal), as Heidegger claims. But rather, according to Derrida, the creation of the very word “animal” is in and of itself where the exclusion of the animality from human beings is already at work. As Derrida writes in “The Animal That Therefore I Am,” “[T]he animal, what a word! The animal is a word, it is an appellation that men have instituted, a name they have given themselves the right and the authority to give to the living other” (23). The naming of the “animal,” Derrida argues, is obviously an act of anthropocentric exclusion. “Animal” is a word used to demarcate every living being that humans are not, a word functioning as a negative identification by which humans recognize themselves “with a view to being what they say they are, namely, men, capable of replying and responding in the name of men” (Derrida 2008: 32). It appears that, in order to identify who and what humans are, we create a term animal as to make sure that there is a solid, non-penetrable border between what-we-are and what-we-are-not. That is, animal works as a “securing device for survival and maintenance of the human” (McDonald 2011: 16). There exists, if not a hierarchical division, then at least a negative reduction that authorize humans to keep within bounds that which is deprived of the particular mode of being as humans in the general concept of animal. As Derrida writes,

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[A]nimal is a word that men have given themselves the right to give. These humans are found giving it to themselves, this word, but as if they had received it as an inheritance. They have given themselves the word in order to corral a large number of living beings within a single concept: “The Animal,” they say. And they have given it to themselves, this word, at the same time according themselves, reserving for them, for humans, the right to the word, the naming noun [nom], the verb, the attribute, to a language of words, in short to the very thing that the others in question would be deprived of, those that are corralled within the grand territory of the beasts: The Animal. (32)

In the act of naming, animals have never been asked for their opinion about being relegated to a single concept, however heterogenous they are. Determined by the human frame of reference, animals are always already less than human because they not merely “remain[s] forever deprived of a linguistic order held in common with man,” but are possessed by human language and never a possessor of language (McDonald 2011: 13). It may appear that we once again fall back to argue whether the distinction of the animal and human is hinged on the former’s deprivation of language and its being reduced to serve as a perimeter to define what is and is not human. For Giorgio Agamben, what is really at stake here is not how to mend “the abyssal rupture” between human beings and animals, but rather, from the relation between animal and man we should attempt to understand how the figure of an “already and not yet human,” whatever falls in the abyss, is produced by the mechanism of “anthropological machine” (Derrida 2008: 31; Agamben 2004: 35). In The Open, a book Agamben devoted to exploring the Heideggerian concept of animal’s poverty of the world, he questions the idea of human as a being distinct from animals as a highly fraught one and attempts to approach the complicacy of the relation of the animal to man with the concept of anthropological machine. Unlike Haraway, who criticizes Heidegger as an human-exceptionalist, Agamben thinks that Heidegger’s ontology of animality affirms but also problematizes the human/animal distinction, which serves for Agamben as a point of departure to argue that modern man constantly works to distinguish his animality from within. As Agamben indicates, the anthropological machine has two variants, ancient and modern. The ancient machine is quite familiar to us, for it produces man through “the opposition man/animal, human/inhuman” by means of the mechanism of “exclusion” (Agamben 2004: 37). The modern anthropological machine, on the other hand, animalizes the

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human, excludes “as not (yet) human an already human being from itself,” to put it in a different way, isolate the animality, the nonhuman “within the human” (Agamben 2004: 37). Animality, therefore, is never the opposite to human, but is a hidden part that is excluded from within human, and man always feels that the distinction of animal/man is fundamentally unstable and he is always at the danger of collapsing into which he defined himself against. Setting aside the attempt to destroy the distinction that separate animals from human in an absolute and dualistic manner, Agamben instead focuses on the indistinction between “the animality and humanity of man” produced by the anthropological machine that underlies the origin of Western politics (Agamben 2004: 80). What the anthropological machines produces is less a distinct division between animal and human than a possible proximity and similarity between humans and animals, or, a “state of exception, a zone of indeterminacy in which the outside is nothing but the exclusion of an inside and the inside is in turn only the inclusion of an outside” (Agamben 2004: 37). Agamben makes the Jews, the néomort, the overcomatose person as the examples of the animalization of the human, the inhuman produced within the man while the man-ape, the slave, the barbarian, and the foreigner are examples that manifest the production of the non-man by the humanization of an animal. Both the animal separated within the human body and the figures of an animal in human form, the animalization of man or a humanization of the animal, well proffer that it is, paradoxically, the zone of indistinction that puts anthropological machine into work. At the center of this zone of indistinction is “neither an animal life nor a human life, but only a life that is separated and excluded from itself—only a bare life” (Agamben 2004: 38). In other words, if the task of the anthropological machine is to manage and police the border between the human and the animal, then the task can never be completed for it constantly produces bare life as a remainder of what cannot be fully categorized as man or animal. Up to this point, we glimpse the problematic distinction of animal and human primarily engaged with Heidegger’s notion of animality and later with Derrida and Agamben’s critique of the anthropocentric mechanism at the center of modern politics. Politics itself is the product of the anthropological machine, which inherently produces division of humanity into more and less human types, serving as justification for various kinds of atrocious crimes against humanity, slavery, genocide, religious persecution, racial discrimination, dehumanization, unethical human experiment,

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etc. To bring the anthropological machine to a standstill, Agamben searches for a reconfiguration of the relation between human and animal, humanity and animality. “A new and more blessed life” in the form of “neither animal nor human” appears from the emergence of a “supreme and unsavable figure of life” (Agamben 2004: 87). It may seem paradoxical that Agamben’s logic of salvation is that its object must be unsavable. To Agamben, salvation does not have to do with the general concept of the recovery of what was lost or the remembering of that was forgotten. To the contrary, as Agamben uses the unbaptized children in limbo, who knows neither God nor sin, in The Coming Community to explain an alternative form of life that is beyond “perdition and salvation” as the “truly unsavable life…in which there is nothing to save” (Agamben 2007: 6). Therefore, to truly deactivate the anthropological machine that has historically articulate human and animal through a reciprocal exclusion, Agamben urges us to render visible “the unsavable figure of life,” which is no longer human for it does not attempt to master its inherent animality, no longer animal since it is not captivated by the environment. To render the machine inoperative is not to find “more effective or more authentic” articulations or definition and human and animal because this would only endorse more teleological production of the hierarchical division between humanity and animality. But instead, Agamben asks us to look at the abyss, the “central emptiness, the hiatus that separates man and animal” (Agamben 2004: 92). That is, the relation between man and animal is neither how animality is subservient to humanity nor how human is defined through animal as the constitutive outside within the human himself. What is at stake is not to recover a “more authentic” relation between man and animal, but to realize that whatever separates man and animal is in itself empty if we want to suspend the anthropological machine from producing the space of the figures of animal and not-quite-human. To recap, while Heidegger’s distinction of human and animal is largely hinged upon the “deprivation” and captivation consisted of the animal’s ontological existence, Derrida’s endorsement of animal’s capability of looking back as a challenge to human exceptionalism, Agamben might be the one whose theorization can be productively extended to a diagnosis of the violence and dangers to animal life. However, the primary drawback is that in The Open, Agamben’s focus is largely centered on the endangerment to human life rather than animal life. The paper therefore asks whether the above-mentioned philosophers’ theoretical framework

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might help us to find a better way to accommodate both human and animal/nonhuman beings without falling into the same predicament of hierarchal division to help us to tackle with the environmental devastation characterizing our shared times. If not, is there any better way to articulate the relation between human and animal in our time of ecological catastrophe?

14.3

Becoming Together, Becoming-With

In the epigraph of the chapter “Tentacular Thinking,” Haraway borrows the evolutionary developmental biologist Scott Gilbert’s words, “We are all lichens,” to elucidate the symbiotic interrelationships of beings to one another, as well as the ways in which all parts of nature creating a resonant ecosystem that have altered throughout the time. Lichens are composite organisms arising from algal or cyanobacteria partner in symbiosis with filaments of multiple fungal species. Once classified as single organism, lichens are now properly understood as a community of organism, which can survive in a variety of environmental condition. Haraway uses lichens as one of the examples in her book Staying with the Trouble to advocate for the symbiotic relationship, a particular mode of what she calls “being” and “becoming-with. Symbiosis, in a word, speaks of the impossibility of being “individual.” The way that humans have never been individuals, but rather, are inhabited by millions of bacteria can therefore be likened to the way that lichens are situated in microecosystems, redrawing boundaries between different species. To Haraway, symbiosis as a mode of being collective, “being-with,” could release us from the anthropocentric perspective, as mentioned earlier, to make human exceptionalism unthinkable (2016: 30). What is at stake is that central to the concept of symbiosis is not a rosy imaginary of a “mutually beneficial” relationship between human and nonhuman, but a relationship brimming with trouble. The possibility of breaking away from human exceptionalism or to dismiss the idea of animals only responding to its disinhibitor ring would be made viable through the attempt of “staying with the trouble,” as Haraway’s book title suggests. What on earth does it mean to stay with the trouble? How might it help us with the problematic human-animal-nonhuman hierarchy? In the end, how might the concept of symbiosis and trouble proffer us an ethical analysis of Wu’s The Land? In the following, I would mainly focus my analysis of one

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chapter in the collection because of the limited space of the paper on the issue of symbiosis of human and nonhuman agents. Trouble, Haraway argues, is the task for humans to become capable of responding to the disturbing times of ecological crisis. Staying with the trouble is an ethical obligation of humans, who are required “making oddkins” with the nonhumans in the rest of the world in “unexpected collaborations and combinations” (Haraway 2016: 4). Woven together in the stories in The Land, the nonhuman and human characters are situated in a riveting symbiotic relationship, “entangled and worldly” (Haraway 2016: 4). The protagonist Sophie in the opening chapter titled “Black Night, Black Earth, Black Range” is described to translate her mourning over the loss of her killifish to an unexpected passion for dirt and later her being bullied as a dwarf is aligned with her interest in dirt, which draws her whole attention to the creature moving through the dirt—the earthworm. Her mourning over one species therefore connects her to another species. When Sophie buries her killifish and falls in love with digging the dirt, she would taste the dirt when her parents are not around (Ming-Yi 2019: 14). Her tasting the dirt echoes the way earthworm eat the nutrients in the compost. Earthworms eat almost everything in the soil—fungi, leaves, twigs, moss, microscopic life and even all kinds of “human waste, from coffee grounds to the rotten beef” (Ming-Yi 2019: 17). That the earthworms consume everything left from the human world, produces nutrients to the environment and benefit human indirectly by their digestion automatically creates a micro-ecosystem and make them “oddkins” with humans by the unexpected connections. The inconspicuous bond between human and nonhuman beings is represented when Sophie looks at her “twisted” reflection on the glass tube, at that moment, she feels “as if she is as peculiar and coarse, as beautiful as the regenwurm” (the earthworm) (Ming-Yi 2019: 24). Sophie is like earthworms: both are easily stepped on/bullied by creatures of larger size because their small size (Sophie as a dwarf and earthworms as unremarkable creatures to human eyes) turn them into easy targets of various kinds of violence. Earthworms are actually not as insignificant and unremarkable as people assume. Professor Muller, Sophie’s supervisor and also an expert on annelids, tells her that Darwin believes that if humans no longer exist, the world can still continue running its course, but it would definitely be a disaster, if the earthworms are extinct in the world (Ming-Yi 2019: 24). Darwin’s words not only shatter the anthropocentric perspective, which places importance on humans over other nonhuman beings.

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But rather, Darwin’s comments on earthworms demonstrates the importance of earthworms, according to a scientific study on ecosystem and environment, lies in its being situated in a symbiotic relationship with microorganisms, which can break down and fragment organic matter in a progressive manner and the mineral nutrients earthworms casts would stimulate plant growth indirectly to help lessen plant disease attack (Edwards and Fletcher 1988: 235–247). What is at stake in this passage is if a symbiotic relationship disfunctions, a great disrupting impact would be left on the world like domino effects. The next question that follows is if earthworms can be of such a great importance for being situated in a symbiosis, what about humans? Sophie the main protagonist in this story is a dwarf, a “deformed” child, who therefore suffers from verbal insult and bullies during her growth. As an orphan abandoned after being born, Sophie was happily adopted by a German couple but she still keeps thinking about her biological mother, whether she is as deformed as Sophie is, whether she hesitates to give birth to an unhealthy, misshaped child. And why the woman does not choose to abort her during her pregnancy but choose to abandon her child to grow up as an “incomplete” human figure (Ming-Yi 2019: 33). Sophie further asks herself, maybe……pregnancy is merely an accident, the deformed baby was an accident, but why not throw away the odd pea in the pod? Why would she abandon a baby near a church if this is an expected pregnancy? Why not just abandon the baby in the stream and that would be the end of the story? Is half murder more merciful than an absolute murder? Why would God arrange the following? Doesn’t he know that everything in the world, from the desks and chairs in the classroom, the light switch in the room, to the seats on the train, are not designed for a person like her? (Ming-Yi 2019: 33, my translation)

Sophie the dwarf, to borrow Agamben’s words, can be regarded as a person reduced to the condition of “bare life.” Bare life, a naked existence, is not a return to a “prepolitical state of nature,” nor a conception of mere biological existence prior to political sovereignty, but a form of life made possible by an indeterminate condition, a state of exception, an existence included in the polity by its being excluded (Smith xv). In other words, Sophie is included to be excluded from human society because of her deformation. Her monstrosity makes her a being less than human.

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The earthworm and Sophie are for these reasons both “troubles ” in many regards. They are troubles that ask to suspend the anthropological machine, to stop the sovereign governmental violence of including the excluded, of sacrificing those who are considered to be detrimental to the health of one species or group. The nonhuman and human characters in this story are therefore connected through the possibility of their extinction, one being extinction of symbiosis, the zother extinction of deformation. Mick Smith writes in his Against Ecological Sovereignty to warn us of the political and ecological danger. Smith uses the prisoner in Guantánamo Bay and the residents of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, two groups of people seemingly unlikely to be put together, as an example to explicate the rarely noticed “implications of biopolitics for ecology and the ecological implications of biopolitics” (Smith xv). The prisoners and the residents are both left in an “indeterminate (excluded/included) condition” and this “zone of exception” in which we now live is “not the exception but the rule” (Smith xv). Sovereignty harbors such dangers because, according to Foucault, justification for declaring a state of emergency is always the defense of the people and the state. The pervasive governance would permit the prevailing biological way of reducing people to bare life, from the birth date and height, to DNA profile, from the unique pattern of finger prints and iris to the information in our biometric passports. The anthropological machine never stops its work in deciding who does and does not count as properly human and who should and should not live as a normal human. The nonhuman and human character, the earthworms and Sophie the dwarf, thus serve as an awareness of ecological and political ethics to bring us closer to a wider more-than-human world. If we would like to escape the anthropological machine, to undo human exceptionalism, and to get away from the anthropocentric perspective, Smith argues, “an ethical concern for nature, and the politics associated with it, would need to be an expression for a relation not predicated on whether or not such a concern is properly human” and more importantly, he further writes, some beings other than humans have their “ethical possibilities” (Smith xix). Wu’s writing makes it possible to render visible the “oddkins” made by earthworms and Sophie, which works to trouble and disturb the world that does not accommodate the less-than-human or nonhuman beings and cultivate us a sense of “response-ability” in the climate of ecological crisis. It is thus proper to end this paper with a thought-provoking passage from van Doreen’s fascinating book Flight Ways:

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In taking seriously the entanglements of ways for life across evolutionary, ecological, affective, and multiple other domains, we are inevitably drawn into a set of complex responsibilities for what has come to pass and what may yet still be possible. If this period of incredible loss cannot rouse in us an awareness of our place in, and our responsibility for, a shared world, then I am not sure what can. (147)

Wu’s The Land of Little Rain is a collection not only about animal species and ecological environment in Taiwan; it is also a book about an mourning of extinction, of suspending the anthropological machine, and the ethical response-ability we should take up in this more-than-human world.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 2004. The open, trans. Kevin Attell. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Agamben, Giorgio. 2007. The coming community, trans. Michael Hardt. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Derrida, Jacques. 2008. The animal that therefore i am, edited by Marie-Luise Mallet. New York: Fordham University Press. Edwards, C. A. and K. E. Fletcher. 1988. Interactions between earthworms and microorganisms in organic-matter breakdown. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 24(1/3): 235–247. Glotfelty, Cheryll, and Harold Fromm, eds. 1996. The ecocriticism reader: Landmarks in literary ecology. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press. Grondin, Jean. 2007. Derrida and the question of the animal. Cités 30: 31–39. Available at https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_CITE_030_0031--derridaand-the-question-of-the-animal.htm. Accessed 21 February 2021. Haraway, Donna J. 2008. When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1995. The fundamental metaphysics: World-finitude-solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. McDonald, Blair. 2011. To do what one ought to do: Reconsidering Heidegger’s Thesis: The animal is poor in world. Colloquy 21: 6–24.

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Ming-Yi, Wu. 2010. Topophilia, awareness, find the way, and then inhabit the Island: Rethinking several issues about Taiwanese eco-criticism and nature oriented. Journal of Taiwan Literary Studies 10: 45–79. Ming-Yi, Wu. 2019. The land of little rain. Taipei: ThinKingDom. Murphy, Patrick. 2000. Farther afield in the study of nature-oriented literature. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Slovic, Scott. 2010. The third wave of ecocriticism: North American reflections on the current phase of the discipline. Available at https://ebuah.uah.es/xmlui/ bitstream/handle/10017/21206/third_Slovic_ecozona_2010_N1.pdf?seq uence=1&isAllowed=y. Accessed 10 February 2021. Smith, Mick. 2011. Against ecological sovereignty: Ethics, biopolitics, and saving the natural world. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. van Doreen, Thom. 2016. Flight ways: Life and loss at the edge of extinction. New York: Columbia University Press. von Uexküll, Jakob. 2010. A foray into the worlds of animals and humans: With a theory of meaning, trans. Joseph D. O’Neill. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

CHAPTER 15

Breathing Between: Making a Sensory Ethnographic Film on Freediving Spearfishing with the Amis in Taiwan Futuru C. L. Tsai

15.1

Introduction

For the contemporary indigenous Amis people who inhabit the coastal area of eastern Taiwan, freediving spearfishing is an integral part of Indigenous life and as one of representation of social and cultural traditions. Similar to most human beings who reside along rivers, lakes,

An earlier version of this chapter was previously presented at the American Anthropological Association 117th Annual Meeting: Advancing Knowledge, Solving Human Problems., San Jose, CA. Nov. 14–18 2018. I am heartily grateful for the discussion with the panel organizer Professor Kerim Friedman, and for the valuable comments by the discussant Professor Marc Moskowitz. I also thank Professor D.J. Hatfield for assisting in the English editing of the manuscript. F. C. L. Tsai (B) National Taitung University, Taitung City, Taiwan, ROC e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_15

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and seas, fishing is important for subsistence, and spearfishing with a harpoon is an ancient way of fishing that can be traced more than five thousand years ago (Hamilton 2015: 6). As for Amis people, the earliest document on spearfishing with the harpoons dates on the beginning of the nineteenth century by a Japanese sailor who was accidentally drifted all the way from Japan to an Amis village on the east coast of Taiwan (Qin Zhen Lian ed. 1939: 24). There is no evidence that Amis people who inhabit the east coast of Taiwan could dive underwater with harpoons to spearfish until Japanese introduced modern materials such as glasses, rubber bands, and bitumen at the beginning of the twenty century (Tsai 2015: 4). With the development of material technology, the contemporary Amis freediving spearfishermen are geared with completely modern equipment such as diving masks, wetsuits, snorkels, flippers, and even modern manufactured spear guns. Freediving spearfishing has been regarded as a very important traditional skill of the young Amis. I have begun learning to spearfish underwater since around 2010 and discovered that freediving spearfishing was not merely a sport or a way of subsistence among Amis. I launched a research project and found that there was a great deal of traditional ecological knowledge that was implicit in it. I argue: For the Amis people on the east coast of Taiwan, freediving spearfishing is not only a means of subsistence but is related to their society and culture. Furthermore, ‘Amis freediving spearfishing requires complex knowledge of the nearshore sea, including the currents, fish species, marine landscapes, and related stories, which, together, can be regarded as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK).The local marine TEK of the Amis freediving spearfishers regards the interactions between local Amis society and the sea, which is foundation of the social–ecological system of indigenous resilience. (Tsai 2020: 1)

It requires intense practice, to engage in freediving spearfishing with local Amis in order to perceive and learn these knowledges; furthermore, during the process of freediving spearfishing, many complicated sensory experiences emerge from one’s bodily interactions with the ocean.

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These experiences include senses of the variations of ocean conditions, marine lives, and belief among Amis. According to Mauss (1973: 85), techniques of the body are “physio-psycho-sociological assemblages of series of actions…are more or less habitual and more or less ancient in the life of the individual and the history of the society.” Except for the common biological mechanism of the “dive reflex” among human beings, Amis spearfishing men have developed techniques of the body entangled with the ocean and the culture and the society of Amis. Therefore, understanding the marine knowledge and for perceiving the sensory experiences and forms of this knowledge from freediving spearfishing among Amis makes methodological demands. As Hviding (1996: 6–12) has argued, ethnographers who study maritime cultures need to participate in everyday practices in and on the ocean and, due to the uncertain conditions of the ocean, one also needs courage to venture there. Currently, I’m making an ethnographic film on Amis freediving spearfishing titled Breathing Between. The film focuses on representing the perceptions and the sensory from the activities of Amis freediving spearfishing men. In this paper I reflect upon the representation of these embodied practices through sensory ethnographic filmmaking. Freediving spearfishing is both an example of the resilience of traditional knowledge as well as the adaptation of this knowledge to changes in material culture (Tsai 2020). As an ethnographic filmmaker, I reflect upon the strategies used in my own representation of the “techniques of the body” (Mauss 1973) deployed in this cultural practice. In particular, I ask what kind of Bakhtinian chronotopes (1981) are evoked by framing Amis identity as inextricably linked to the ocean? How does the extensive use of underwater video uniquely index Indigenous bodies? And how does sensory ethnography represent the fieldwork encounter? This project is part of a long-term ethnographic project on Amis spearfishing; and I also reflect on my own bodily and sensory experiences as a non-Indigenous Taiwanese ethnographer. For my own production of ethnographic film Breathing Between, I’ll leave the analytical traditional ecological knowledge to writing (see Tsai 2020). In the film I focus on the senses as I experienced them alongside Amis spearfishermen.

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15.2

Sensory Ethnographic Film

Visual Anthropologist Sara Pink (2005) has reviewed the related arguments that ethnographic film can represent the Others’ sensory experience, including the origins of the anthropology of the senses, arguments from the anthropology of experience, the intrinsical indivisibility of a multisensory field which is not always dominated by vision, and the important role of vision in evoking the complex whole of the senses based on an anthropological frame. However, Pink (ibid: 58) argues that as in the case of writing, film or video alone cannot represent the complexity of human sensory experience. Therefore, she suggests that a possible solution is to “explore further how writing and video might combine” (as a sort of multimedia) to “represent sensory experience theoretically and ethnographically.” In other words, Pink does not deny the potential of evoking senses by visual representation but argues for the need to apply both visual and other forms of media as multisensory-experiential ethnography. In addition to the multisensory aspect, the trend of sensory ethnography in late visual anthropology also focuses on the aspect of the aestheticsensual which has found expression in some of the observational films of Robert Gardner and the members of Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University (Nakamura 2013). The most impressive of sensory ethnographic films in recent years could possibly be Leviathan (2012, 87 min), an ethnographic film by Lucien Casting-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, which gained enormous attention among not only visual anthropologists but also in the art film circuit. Although ethnographic film is a genre of documentary, it is hard to define Leviathan in terms of the six types of modes of documentary classified by Bill Nichols (2001); the film wanders among poetic, observational, and performative modes. Many reviews and articles discuss Leviathan as a landmark of sensory ethnographic film, for example, in his review, Hunter Snyder (2013: 179) argues: For those concerned with phenomenology, the anthropology of work, sensory ethnography, and/or the tradition and transgressions of ethnographic film, Leviathan is compulsory viewing. In Leviathan’s showing and limited saying, the argumentation of film as logically inferior to that of text is swallowed whole by more feral bodies. Perhaps it is Leviathan’s recording of the illogicality of life itself that allows this filmic sea creature to slip away….

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Leviathan diverges from traditional modes of narrative sequentiality in ethnography; the film seems to have no structure, but interprets the ocean “beyond seeing and hearing, to the exhausting/enfeebling/disorienting opalescence of the sea.” (ibid: 176). Even the professional journal Visual Anthropology Review published a Leviathan special issue (Volume 31, Issue 1, Spring 2015) including seven essays. Among these reviews, most comment positively on the contributions of Leviathan. For examples, Landesman (2015) points out “Leviathan marks new horizons for participatory observation in ethnographic cinema.” Through an examination of the color aesthetics of the film Hanssen (2015) argues that Leviathan successfully “described the effect both of the film’s images as seeming both completely disembodied and yet connected to a subjective, embodied experience.” Meanwhile Pinney (2015) explores “the film’s fascination with ‘submersibility’ as a late modernism idiom that insists on the liquidity of the surface of representation.” However, amid this critical adulation, there is still an argument similar to Pink’s (2015) point on the insufficient ability of film to represent sensory experience. Pavsek (2015) argues that “even as the film dynamically explores new aesthetic territory, some of its basic presuppositions about the ability for film to convey experience and to represent the sensory world remain unexamined for the ways in which they are themselves conventional.” In another word, as vision and sound dominate in film or video, the debate between the potential and the insufficient ability of film to represent the complex whole of sensory experience continues, even as Leviathan is regarded as a “groundbreaking” experimental ethnographic film (Kohn 2015). In the wake of Leviathan Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) has released many films focusing on sensory experimental aesthetics. Ginsberg (2018) has criticized those experimental documentaries of SEL, arguing that these films place too much stress on aesthetics without concern for the ethics of ethnographic films. Building on Jean Rouch’s notion of “shared anthropology” Ginsberg argues that ethnographic films must concern ethics both on and off screen as their foundation. To Ginsburg this “aesthetics of accountability” provides the possibility for an experimental aesthetics, without which films fail to be ethnographic. This controversy raises two questions. First, questions about sensory ethnographic film connect to the “the crisis of representation” (Marcus and Fischer 1986), in which anthropologists have argued that “partial

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truth” is inherent in ethnography (Clifford and Marcus 1986), regardless of medium (whether in writing or in visual forms, such as film or video). Therefore, the point of ethnographic work is not to represent the sensory experience of either the Others or the anthropologists per se. Instead, ethnographic film, in contrast to ethnographic writing, has a power to transform the sensory experience of both the Others and the anthropologists in situ. As in the film A Trip to the Moon directed by the magician Georges Méliès in 1902, the magic of film making could transform sensory experience, changing or creating the audience perceptions. Second, how might we consider the “aesthetics” and “accountability” of ethnographic film at the same time? In regard to artistic features, ethnographic film is a genre of visual art; the aesthetic experience of its viewers matters. In front of a visual art, spectators are generally detached from the artwork, allowing for a space to encounter the aesthetic experience from a distance (Maquet 1988). Therefore, a consideration of the elements which cause the effect of detaching from the ethnographic film would be a matter for the film production process. It seems like Leviathan would be a raw methodological model of making a sensory ethnographic film in the production process. However, it is limited, especially once one considers how the format in which one watches the film might affect how one perceives the senses from the film. From my own experience of watching Leviathan as an example, I think that an ethnographic film like Leviathan needs to be screened in a theater instead of TV or PC. Because my first viewing of Leviathan was from my desktop personal computer, I could not perceive either the sensory experience or the aesthetic experience. But later when I was in a theater to watch it again, I was totally trapped by the film. Therefore, the attributes of the media would affect the mode of receiving (McLuhan 1964). The aim of this paper is to help myself as an ethnographic filmmaker to orientate my production. The point of making a sensory ethnographic film is not merely representation but a transformation of the sensory experience, which in turn transforms the subjective perception of senses. Therefore, exploring the cinematic magic needed to transform the sensory experience drawn from freediving spearfishing will be one of the challenges to produce Breathing Between. Although Leviathan provides a fantastic reference for my production of an ethnographic film about freediving spearfishing, it still is limited by the format in which one needs to view the film. Furthermore, I am also inspired by Ginsberg’s argument

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about the aesthetics of accountability of ethnographic film, therefore, my work, Breathing Between, engages with not only the on screen action but also relationships which develop off screen.

15.3

Freediving Spearfishing Among Coastal Amis

When I started learning freediving spearfishing with my Amis age mates several years ago, I focused on gathering knowledge of the near ocean environment from my diving partners. The core research question of this project was to explore traditional ecological knowledge among Amis spearfishing men, who interact with the ocean in their bodily day-to-day practices. Most of the Amis spearfishing men don’t talk too much about their practices. Thus, it is difficult to study this subject merely through interview or observation. Therefore, I was “forced” to be a spearfishing man to learn the invisible TEK with the other spearfishing men; my age mates are both my best mentors and my diving partners. As an ethnographical filmmaker, filming is usually one of many research methods. I always try to research by writing an essay and producing an ethnographic film at the same time to “represent” the reality of my research, and this project follows a similar trajectory. My ethnographic project on freediving spearfishing focuses on three interrelated dimensions including the relations between spearfishing men and the natural environments, society, and the supernatural (Tsai 2020: 4–11). Hence, I tried to collect several types of footage, including underwater, social activities, and rituals among these freediving spearfishing men. TEK among the Amis spearfishing men is a complex whole. For example, knowledge about the waves, tides, currents, nearshore and underwater cultural landscapes, the relations between land and ocean, meteorology, and fish-ality (the “personality” of fishes) are all articulated to Amis social activities including the age set organization, protests against coastal tourism and development, rituals, and even the leadership among coastal Amis. All these TEK could be described and analyzed as an elaborate and systematic ethnography in writing. (ibid.) As I mentioned above, spearfishing is a day-to-day practice. I could write the ethnography of the daily practices among the freediving spearfishing men, in a conventional genre of ethnographic literature: as a manner of fact, I’ve been trying in an essay to express my own sensory experience, which was also described by my diving partners, the sense

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of “feeling lonely, but not alone” when we are in underwater freediving to spear fishes (Tsai 2016). However, because the essay took the form of poem, I am not sure if it is enough to convey this sense to those who don’t have the same experience of freediving spearfishing. In another word, this form of literature is difficult to fit into the form of an academic argument. Furthermore, I am reluctant, perhaps even depressed, when I attempt to integrate sensory experience into the writing of an essay: it is not the core argument in an academic article after all; instead, academic arguments generally focus on systematic knowledge. Therefore, making a film would probably be my choice to share these sensory experiences to others. There is no doubt that the film also could describe the TEK I have been studied in this project, but if I produce the film in a systematic way to represent it, why should I make an ethnographic film? Couldn’t I just write it down? In other words, if an essay can clearly elaborate the maritime TEK among the freediving spearfishing men, then making an ethnographic film on it would be merely the analytic data of the essay. Yet without a presentation of the sensory experience of human–environment (including the maritime lives) interactions among Amis freediving spearfishing men, this description of the complex whole of maritime TEK would be deficient. Hence, I try to employ different media—writing and film—to describe TEK and to convey the sensory experiences through which TEK is embodied, respectively. Having touched on issues concerning representation and aesthetics in ethnographic film and writing, I will now reflect on the sensory experiences carefully and see what kind of aesthetic strategies needs to be considered carefully in making a sensory ethnographic film.

15.4

Senses of Freediving Spearfishing

In thinking of the sensory experiences of bodily practices among Amis freediving spearfishing men one needs to consider the day-to-day practices first and then tease out the subtle senses within them. Generally, I’ll start thinking about these experiences within the scope of a day of freediving spearfishing men in first person. For example: I woke up at 5 am this morning as Kinam (one of my age mates and diving partner) had made an appointment with me last night by Line app. We’ve checked the tide, wind and wave forecast, it will be a good day for

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freediving spearfishing this early morning, especially the fishes are also just awake to find something to eat. I walked to my front yard to prepare my spearfishing gears, to check if the spear is strait enough and all the gears are in good condition. Suddenly I feel the wind is blowing from the south which is different from the forecast indicating the wind would from the north. I am a little bit concerned about visibility and the stability of the ocean. I call Kinam to ask him to check the ocean when he is on the way to meet me in my house. Kinam replied to me 5 minutes later saying that the ocean is just okay to dive. When Kinam arrived, we check the gears again and drive to Pacifalan (a nearshore location) to check the sea. Since the wind came from the south, the waves looked a bit rough, so that we went to another spot Xingchang around three km away to the north. The ocean near Xingchang looked fine but the visibility was a little bit fuzzy. Kinam and I discussed at the shore to decide to dive or not to dive. Since Kinam has been waiting for a whole week to dive because he was too busy on his job, we made our mind to dive anyway. We started dressing in our wetsuits. It’s a little bit windy in the early morning so that we feel cold when dressing up. Both us checked the gears again. After that, Kinam lighted up a cigarette as he walked toward the end of the wave. Worshiping the ancestors Lepang and Dongi in Amis language, we ask them to protect us safely in the ocean and to catch enough fishes. Kinam came back to his car to take the gears toward the ocean and carefully choose the right spot to jump into the water. I just followed behind him. Once we touched the water, it felt too warm; and I had a bad sense about it, thinking that not many fishes would show up. We wore our flippers and masks, ready to swim out of the reef barrier around 20 meters ahead. The wave was getting rougher, and we were force to dive under the wave to swim out. Once we did it, we separated from each other right away to find our own favorite reef for searching out fishes. I swam on the surface of the ocean to check the fishes. Once I found the suitable reef for fishes I try to balance my breath and hold the breath with the air into my belly and dove down to 8 meters underwater. I could hear my heart beats underwater, felt that I was the only person left in the world. Then the current pushed me to the wrong direction, and I had to hold a reef to stable myself. Suddenly, there came a school of Fice’ki (a certain fish in Amis language) when I almost ran out my air in my mind. I choose to stay underwater; I believed I can hold another minute to spear the fishes. Finally I found the right timing to spear my fish target. I fired my spear gun and the fish was speared in the stomach. The fish was shaking intensely; I had to catch it by my hand immediately to keep it from being loosed off my spear. When I was stringing the fish, I heard Kinam yelling out loudly from around 30 meters away, I could not

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hear clearly what he was saying but instantly I was so nervous that I was afraid of the same situation of Atai (another age mate and dive partner who almost drowned several months ago when we dove together at one night). I swam very fast to approach Kinam and found out that he just informed me there was a big fish that he could not handle by himself. We speared that big fish together and swam back to shore and brought the fish ashore. We panted for a while . We checked our diving computers. Kinam had held his breath for 6 minute and 58 seconds, I had held my breath for 3 minutes and 38 seconds. Both of us broke our own records.

The story as above is just one of the days we went to freediving spearfishing. The italics and bold letters in the description above all relate to our sensory experiences during the freediving spearfishing. It would easily ignore those experiences in a story line as above, but they are all critical to understanding both the meanings and metaphors of the complex whole of maritime TEK among Amis freediving spearfishing men, especially their enthusiasm and devotion, the effect of spearfishing on social relations, and the beliefs among Amis freediving spearfishing men. One core sense when Amis freediving spearfishing men are underwater is the sense of “feeling lonely but not alone.” When the spearfishing man is freediving, he experiences the sense of loneliness while seeking his game but always knows there is someone company around; therefore, he is actually not alone. Secondly, another core sense is about holding breath. Nowadays, most of the young Amis spearfishing men have diving computers when they freediving spearfishing. The most useful function is the depth and the time of diving. For the diving time, although we can figure out the time for holding the breath with an objective frame, the sense of holding breath depends on the game and body conditions: sometimes the diver feels that the dive is shorter, and sometimes longer, than the actual time. In another word, the sense of feeling lonely but not alone indicates the space is both separated and articulated; holding breath implies that time is condensed as well as extended. The chronotopes of the sensory experience in freediving spearfishing are evoked by framing Amis identity as inextricably linked to the ocean. Furthermore, the techniques of the body among the Amis spearfishing men, for example, ways to deal with the waves and currents, the sense of the wind direction, and the depth of diving are all connected to techniques of the Amis body through their interactions with the ocean. Amis spearfishing men know the waves and the currents in detail. They know

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the rhythm of the waves and currents and ways to deal with the different “temper” of the ocean. Sensing wind direction becomes a habitus among the spearfishing men due to its influence on the condition of the ocean. Finally, as to the depth of diving, compared with the freediving in mainstream society, in which it is an extreme sport pursuing not only big games but also the depth, Amis spearfishing men usually don’t dive over 15 m because of cultural preferences for certain fish. “We can spear fishes above 15 m depth, why should I go deeper?” as one of my dive partner said. We can understand the chronotopes and the techniques of the body among Amis spearfishing men as a set of specific sensory experiences, which people from other societies or those Amis people who don’t go freediving spearfishing could not sense but could probably merely “understand” cognitively but not in a sensory way. Because of the specific sensory experiences among Amis spearfishing men described above, the use of visual and audio media requires wellthought-out arrangements. For example, the Gopro camera is now easily operated underwater, for the majority of freediving spearfishing men, including Amis, the camera can be mounted either on the head or on the spear gun, focusing on the moment of spearing the game. However, for representing the sensory experience among Amis freediving spearfishing men, one needs to change to other positions than merely the head or the gun; for example, on top of the reef underwater, or floating with the wave or current in either good or bad visibility conditions.

15.5

Conclusion Remarks: On the Road of Making an Ethnographic Film

While debates concerning the potential of representing sensory experience by ethnographic film in recent visual anthropology stress either insufficient or groundbreaking qualities of films like Leviathan, I argue it is impossible to represent a certain subject’s sensory experience in film but it may be possible to transform subjective sensory experience through immersion into the film. Therefore, for my ethnographic film project Breathing Between, the sensory experience of chronotopes and bodily techniques among Amis freediving spearfishing men are evoked by framing Amis identity as inextricably linked to the ocean. I’ll leave the analytical environmental knowledge to writing, but explore the sensory experience of freediving spearfishing in the ethnographic film.

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However, there is still a limitation of being immersed into the film to perceive sensory experience, which is the frame of watching. As I mentioned above, the aesthetic experience produced by visual and audio rhetoric in the ethnographic film needs to consider the different qualities of media formats. Watching a film in the theater and in a TV or PC would be different experiences and cause different perceptions. According to McLuhan’s theory (1964), screening a film in the theater in high resolution, including image and sound, which is a “cool media,” but in TV or PC is in low resolutions both in image and sound, which is “hot media.” The cool media would help the spectators to create a space for the sense of aesthetics but hot medium is not (ibid.). I do not anticipate Breathing Between would be screened in the theater but like most of the ethnographic film would usually be screened more in TV or PC. According to this limitation, I argue, sensory ethnographic film production needs to negotiate the balance point between art form (aesthetic) and holistic view of certain ethnography to fit the contributions of different screening environments.

References Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. Forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel. In The dialogic imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, 84–258. Austin: University of Texas Press. Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus, eds. 1986. Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. University of California Press. Ginsberg, Faye. 2018. Decolonizing documentary on-screen and off: Sensory ethnography and the aesthetics of accountability. Film Quarterly 70 (1): 39– 49. Hamilton, S.L. 2015. Xtreme fishing: Spearfishing. North Mankato, MN: Abdo Publishing. Hanssen, Eirik Frisvold. 2015. His eyes are like the rays of dawn: Color vision. Visual Anthropology 31 (1): 20–26. Hviding, Edvard. 1996. Guardians of Marovo Lagoon: Practice, place, and politics in Maritime Melanesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Kohn, Lisa Stevenson Equardo. 2015. Leviathan: An ethnographic dream. Visual Anthropology Review 31 (1): 49–53. Landesman, Ohad. 2015. Here, there, and everywhere: Leviathan and the digital future of observational ethnography. Visual Anthropology Review 31 (1): 12– 19.

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Maquet, Jacques. 1988. Aesthetic Experience: An Anthropologist Looks at the Visual Arts. Yale University Press. Marcus, George E., and Michael M. Fischer, eds. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. University of Chicago Press. Mauss, Marcel. 1973. Techniques of the body. Economy and Society 2 (1): 70–88. McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding media: The extensions of man. MIT Press. Nakamura, Karen. 2013. Making sense of sensory ethnography: The sensual and the multisensory. American Anthropologist 115 (1): 132–135. Nichols, Bill. 2001. Introduction to documentary. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Pavsek, Christopher. 2015. Leviathan and the experience of sensory ethnography. Visual Anthropology Review 31 (1): 4–11. Pinney, Christopher. 2015. Aqueous modernism. Visual Anthropology Review 31 (1): 35–40. Pink, Sarah. 2005. The future of visual anthropology: Engaging the senses. Routledge. Pink, Sarah. 2015. Doing sensory ethnography. SAGE Publications. Qin, Zhenlian, ed. 1939. A Diary about drifting to Cepo’s island in the Third Year of Xianghe. Taipei: Taipei Empire University. (秦貞廉編) 享和三年癸亥 漂流臺灣チョプラン嶋之記。臺北: 臺北帝國大學。. Snyder, Hunter. 2013. Film review: Leviathan. Visual Anthropology Review 29 (2): 176–179. Tsai, Futuru C.L. 2015. Micinko/Mipacin: A brief introduction to maritime culture and spearfishing among amis. Indigenous Literatures 23: 2–6. (蔡政 良) Micinko/Mipacin (打魚) 阿美族的海洋文化與潛水射魚文化初探。原住 民族文獻 23: 2–6。). Tsai, Futuru C.L. 2016. The sea is a refrigerator that is lonely but not alone. In 2016 5th Taitung Poetry Festival: Dietary Rhapsody. Dong, Shumin and Jian Qiru, eds., P.88. Taitung: Department of Chinese Literature, NTTU. (蔡政 良) 海洋是個寂寞但不孤獨的冰箱。刊於 2016 年第五屆臺東詩歌節: 食光狂 想曲, 董恕明、簡齊儒策展, 頁 88。臺東: 國立臺東大學華語文學系。). Tsai, Futuru C.L. 2020. Shuttling between Land and Sea: Contemporary practices among amis spearfishing men as a foundation for local marine-area management. Sustainability 12 (18): 7770. https://doi.org/10.3390/su1 2187770.

CHAPTER 16

The Life Education of the Protect Life Relief Pictures in the Buddha Museum, Taiwan Yung-Dong Shih

The development of Buddhist relief art can be traced back to the most representative Sabchi stupa reliefs in early India. The Chinese Buddhist relief art is mostly found in grottoes, the most representative of which is the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang. As to the contemporary Buddhist relief art in Taiwan, the Buddha Museum, completed in 2012, boasts the richest collections, comprising three large groups of colour pictures in relief, namely Buddha’s Story, Zen Pictures and Zen Talks and Protect Life Pictures Collection.

Y.-D. Shih (B) Graduate Institute of Religious Studies, Fo Guang University, Jiaoxi, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_16

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16.1 Introduction to the Authors of the Protect Life Pictures The original Protect Life Pictures Collection is a set of six volumes of 450 pictures cum poetry and calligraphy created by Feng Zikai (豐子愷) in a prolong period of 46 years beginning in 1927. The purpose of the pictures was originally to celebrate the birthday of the Master Hong Yi. The original intention to publish the pictures was to invoke Buddhist compassion in trying to evoke people’s empathy towards living beings, so as to enable people to develop a good, broad, tolerant and loving heart.1 —Feng Zikai compiled, Gr, Zhao Guang (葛兆光) trans. (2001) Selection of The Protect Life Pictures Collection by Feng Zikai (豐子愷護生畫集選), pp. i–ii

The purpose of the pictures is in line with the current ecological and environmental protection ideas. 16.1.1

The Life of Feng Zikai

Feng Zikai (1898–1975), a native of Chongde, Zhejiang, was born in a well-off family in Shimenwan. His father had a keen interest in reading books and poetry. In 1915, Feng Zikai studied music and painting from Master Hong Yi (弘一) (Li Shutong 李叔同). In 1916, he studied Chinese literature under Xia Mianzun. In 1921, he raised money to go to Japan for a ten-month study tour. He was influenced by Yumeiji Takehisa (竹久夢二) and acquired knowledge in drawing simple-stroke caricatures. Returning to China the following year, he taught at Chunhui Middle School in Zhejiang (ibid.: backcover).2 Losing interest in boring school meetings he was attending, Feng Zikai would note the varied postures of his tired colleagues, and render them into sketches when he returned to his dormitory. He found them quite interesting, and extended his effort to cover other subjects. Some of his ideas came from his keen observation of everyday happenings, and some from the new understanding of poetry.

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Since childhood Feng Zikai could notice things around him in considerable depth with immediate introspection. With the power of observation he acquired through his training in sketching from life when he was a student, he was able to produce persistently later in his life with simple and forceful strokes large numbers of “Protect life” pictures which are interesting and show his caring attitude towards fellow people. Feng Zikai believed that “caricature is a kind of drawing that is done with simple strokes while focusing on meaning”.3 —Cai Bingcheng (蔡秉誠) (2011), The Protect Life Pictures by Feng ZikaiBased on Volumes 1 & 2 (豐子愷 《護生畫集》 - 以一二集為對象), p. 55

With a habit of extending his deep thinking from his own person to other entities, formed in 30 years, Feng Zikai often thought about things, and various animals as well, including humans (ibid.: p. 4).4 Therefore, among the 70 Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs in the Buddha Museum, there is the high proportion of 67 pictures that depict animals, and only 3 involve plants. From the choice of the pictures, it can also be seen that the Buddha Museum stresses very much on the use of these 70 pictures to highlight love for all sentient beings in its promotional effort. Feng Zikai created the “Zikai caricatures” with his self-taught skills.5 Later, influenced by Buddhism, he produced the Protect Life Pictures Collection, in which he echoed the Buddhist precept against killing. —Yang Mu (楊牧) (1982), Literal Collection of Feng Zikai (豐子愷文選II), p. back cover

His caricatures and the accompanying calligraphy are natural and lively, unique in their style, and are very well received in the art circle. In addition to his Yuan Yuan Tang Casual Notes, he also wrote An Introduction to Music and translated the Twelve Lectures on Western Painting Schools, Tales of Genji 源氏物語, and Hunter’s Diary 6 He was eulogized as a Chinese painter and writer.

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16.1.2

The Life of Master Hong Yi

Master Hong Yi (1880–1942), born Li Wen Tao with the literary name of Shutong, was an early Chinese drama activist and art educator. He was good at painting and calligraphy, seal engraving and poetry writing. He wrote/composed a large number of poems, music, or lyrics for selected pieces of music, all left significant impact on society (Gr ibid.: backcover).7 In 1918, Li Shutong became a monk. His cleric name was Yan Yin, with the alternative name of Hong Yi. He was honoured as the 16th generation patriarch of the Buddhist Vinaya School and was committed to the collation of Buddhist rules, the reinvigorating of the Nanshan Rules. He was the author of Buddhist works such as “The Tabulated Record of Precept Forms of Bhiksu of the Four-Division Vinaya” and Summary of The Nanshan Rules for Reference at Home. His practice of observing the Buddhist rules after becoming a monk also established a model for later generations. For example, in order to follow the Bhiksu precept of filtering the drinking water, Master Hong Yi ordered a filter bag to filter his drinking water. In his everyday life, he faithfully observed the precept of caring for material objects and treasuring life. Feng Zikai was naturally deeply inspired and regarded caring for material objects and treasuring life as his responsibility. Li Shutong was Feng Zikai’s spiritual mentor. In all aspects of personal thinking and values as well as artistic attainment, Feng Zikai was very much influenced by him. During the production of the first volume of Protect Life Pictures Collection, Li Shutong constantly shared his ideas with Feng Zikai. When Li Shutong became a monk, he gave Feng Zikai the A Register of Personalities which was a good book categorizing exemplary deeds and wise words of people and used to occupy a place on Li’s desk. This showed that Li was both a teacher and a friend to Feng.8 —Master Bodhi (菩提) (1996), “Master Hong Yi’s Cause and Condition in Saha World” Bodhitree Magazine (菩提樹) V3. 1996

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16.2 The Publication History of the Protect Life Pictures Collection The production of the Protect Life Picture Collection came from, among other things, a commitment to “compassionate endeavours by a teacher and a student”: Master Hong Yi and Feng Zikai saw that human beings treated chickens, ducks, pigs, cattle, etc. without any sympathetic feelings, they, the teacher and the student, then agreed to produce the Collection to educate people on the evil of killing and the virtue of sparing life.9 —Zhong, Yachin (衷雅琴) (2015), “A Talk on Best seller of the Protect Life Pictures” 《護生畫集》 < 暢銷談>, GV.253, p. 1

In 1929, Feng Zikai completed the first volume of the Protect Life Pictures Collection containing 50 pictures. Its publication, by Buddhist Book Company in Shanghai, coincided with the 50th birthday of Master Hong Yi. The pictures in the first volume of the Collection were drawn by Feng Zikai, the inscriptions on the pictures by Master Hong Yi, and the subjects for the pictures were suggested by Li Yuanjing who was also the editor of the volume. The volume was a collection of pictures carrying poem calligraphy, with “humanitarianism as the theme, trying to convince people with pictures” to cherish life and oppose killing (ibid.: i).10 Ten years later, when the second volume of 60 pictures was completed in 1939, it was time for the 60th birthday of Master Hong Yi. The texts on the pictures of the first and second volumes were written by Master Hong Yi (Gr ibid.: i),11 though no personal seal was affixed at the bottom of the calligraphy. In 1942, Master Hong Yi passed away in Quanzhou. However, Feng Zikai carried on to produce a volume every ten years according to the original plan, and add 10 pictures to each subsequent volume to match the would-be age of Master Hong Yi had he not died. From the third volume in 1950 onward, the text was selected by Feng Zikai himself, the inscriptions and calligraphy provided by famous scholars such as Ye Gongchao, Zhu Youlan and Yu Yu, and personal seals were affixed at the end of the calligraphy. In 1973, Feng Zikai finally completed the sixth volume of 100 pictures. In 1979, four years after his death, Mastr Guang Qia of Singapore, who helped in the publication of the fourth volume of 80 pictures (in 1962)

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and the fifth volume of 90 pictures (in 1965), put all the six volumes together and had them published in Hong Kong (ibid.: i).12 The first volume of the Protect Life Pictures Collection was printed so many times that the calligraphy on the pictures became unclear, and (the printing plates) were destroyed in war. The whole volume was reproduced in 1936 by Master Hong Yi and Feng Zikai. It was reproduced a second time in 1939 by Master Hong Yi because the original copies were destroyed in war (Regarding the portion reproduced by Master Hong Yi). This masterpiece of culture and art, which took 46 years to complete, combines the characteristics of “pictorial expression of poetry” and “poetic expression of pictures”. It is the fruit of the combined efforts of several masters in the Buddhist and art sectors, and occupies a special artistic position in the fields of poetry, literature, calligraphy and painting.13 16.2.1

Editions of the Protect Life Pictures Collection

Since the publication of the first volume of the Protect Life Pictures Collection in 1929, Feng Zikai continued to work painstakingly on drawing and writing. By 1973, the six volumes of Collection were completed. In August 1981, Pure Literature Publishing House of Taipei first published the complete work in Taiwan; Haitian Publishing House of Shenzhen published all six volumes of the Collection in March 1993, which were one of the earliest printed on the Mainland; in 2005, the Collection was published by People’s Publishing House in Shanghai, and it was the first time the Collection was totally integrated with Hong Yi’s calligraphy, and it was reprinted many times thereafter. In December 1999, Zhonghua Book Company edited and published the Selection from the Protect Life Pictures Collection. In the Buddhist sector, Guanghua Temple in Putian, Fujian Province published A Collection of Selected Protect Life Pictures in 1984. In 1996, Guanghua Temple of Beijing printed the complete set of the Protect Life Pictures Collection. So far, various versions of the Collection have been distributed around the world, with innumerable editions and prints (Zhong 2015).14 From the above, it is not difficult to see the great popularity of the Collection. The editions published before 1983 had the poems cum calligraphy and pictures on facing pages of 11 cm times 17.5 cm; fully opened, the book measures 22 cm wide.

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At the beginning of the present century, in order to enhance the “cherish life” principle, two volumes of Protect Life Pictures cum Calligraphy Collection were published, which were based on the original pictures by Feng Zikai, but copied in colour by Feng Yiyin, the youngest daughter of Feng Zikai, while the calligraphy was provided by Shi Yixin, imitating the calligraphic style of Hong Yi. The two 32 mo volumes, each containing a choice selection of 100 pictures, were printed in full colour with copper plates by Ancient Books (Guji) Publishing House of Shanghai in December 2001 and August 2003 respectively. They re-invented the charm of the Protect Life Pictures Collection and extended its literary lineage (Cai 2011: 38–39).15 These new volumes display a very modern feel and serve as the most important reference for the building of the 70 Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs in the Buddha Museum later in 2010–2012. I had an opportunity to interview Ven. Ruchang, the General director of the Buddha Museum, on 21, Jan. 2019 at Foguangshan to prove it. In 1986, the first volume of the Protect Life Pictures Collection published by the Yangshan Magazine Publishing House in Taipei began to have personal seals affixed at the foot of the calligraphy. In 2012, the Protect Life Pictures Collection of the Buddhist Museum carried the personal seal of Yi Xin. 16.2.2

Achievements of the Paper Version of the Protect Life Pictures Collection

According to Cai Bingcheng’s paper entitled Feng Zikai’s Protect Life Pictures Collection–a view based on volumes 1 and 2, the Collection has three achievements, to which I believe that a fourth achievement, that of educational, should be added. These four achievements are outlined below: i. Artistic Achievement: The six volumes of the Protect Life Pictures Collection by Feng Zikai, Master Hong Yi and others, 90 years to the present day since first creation, and with their many versions, and on-going publication, have had a far-reaching influence. Its authors, Master Hong Yi, Feng Zikai, Ma Yifu and others, are top art masters. In terms of the form of presentation, the poems, pictures and calligraphy compliment each other in a most interesting way, the calligraphy is endearing and beautiful, the caricatures

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natural and honest, the poetry unsophisticated and touching. The art form in the whole is readily understood and popular. Central to their contents are the philosophical thinking and ecological ethics of cherishing life and opposing killing. Such ideas are explained in depth through simple words and imagery, and induce people’s deep thinking. They are among the rare art treasures in the past 100 hundred years. ii. Religious achievement: In China, the ideas of protecting life, caring for material objects, as well as causality which defines the connection between the good and the evil, have a long history. After the rise of Buddhism, it is emphasized that “all sentient beings have buddha nature” with the corollary that all living things are equal, life should be respected and killing should be forbidden. While such ideas are practised in daily life, vegetarianism is also promoted. Among the Protect Life Pictures Collection, E9 “Clearing footprints of deer so no hunter can find them in the morning” (V2.n14.p.28 poem by Lu Puhuang of the Tang Dynasty), W19 “I eat only vegetables today” (V3.n26.p.52 poem by Zen Master Shou Guang of the Qing Dynasty), and W27 “Summon the mountain boy to free the trapped” (V2.n4.p.8 poem by Fan Chengda of the Song Dynasty), etc., are full of Buddhist ideas of protecting life and forbidding killing, as well as the belief in the concept of causality that good and bad deeds are duly reciprocated. iii. Social Achievements: Through the combination of a rich variety of pictures and texts, the Protect Life Pictures Collection could be viewed as an antidote against the current world-wide trend of materialism, indiscriminate killing of wild animals for food and damage to global ecological balance. Examples include E2 “My leg” (V1.n19.p.38 poem by Tao Zhouwang of the Ming Dynasty), W11 “Children’s game” (V1.n9.p.18 poem by Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty), and E4 “Ants moving home” (V2.n25.p.50 inscription added by Feng Zikai). iv. Educational Achievements: The so-called “protect life” is actually “protect the heart” which requires the removal of cruelty and nurturing of compassion in the heart before interacting with other people and the world. This kind of love/respect thought has a definite positive educational effect in awakening human beings in the present world. The production of Protect Life Pictures Collection

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sets a broader and more profound goal for the modern “conservation effort”, and is worth learning and adopting. It echoes, in particular, the three major areas of life education that the world is actively promoting: ultimate care, value examination and spiritual cultivation.

16.3 The Protect Life Pictures Collection Reliefs of the Buddha Museum The Buddha Museum selected 70 pieces from the 450 Cherish Life Pictures Collection pictures, and invited the sculptor Ye Xianming to make clay sculptures and painter Chen Mingqi to apply colours. These 70 reliefs combine the bas-relief art and sculpture, painting, calligraphy and poetry. The whole set is located on the outer walls of the rain-shelter corridors on both sides of the eight pagodas in front of the Buddha Museum. The effort of turning printed pictures into three-dimensional reliefs highlights the life education effect of the Protect Life Pictures Collection; they not only add beauty to the environment of the Buddha Museum, but also elucidate the meaning of compassion and love for material objects and respect for life through the three-dimensional language that is special in sculptural art. There are two causes for the creation of the set of 70 relief pictures in the Buddha Museum: one is the idea of Venerable Master Xing Yun of Fo Guang Shan; the other is the Protect Life Pictures Collection Exhibition staged by Zhejiang Museum during the period of 2013.11.12~2014.3.2 in the Buddha Museum and the Taichung branch of the Fo Guang Yuan Art Museum. A total of 124 pictures were displayed with four themes, that is, “Warn the World Against Killing”, “Love Living Beings”, “Harmonious Homeland” and “Happy Life”. —Ru Chang (2013), The Cultural Heritage between Two Straits: Special Collection of the Protect Life Pictures by Hong Yi/ Feng Zikai (兩岸文化遺 產: 弘一大師/豐子愷護生畫集特選), pp. 5–6

The 70 Buddha Museum reliefs contain 40 pictures from the first three categories. These 70 pictures are from the first to fifth volumes of Feng Zi’s six volumes of the Protect Life Pictures Collection, of these, 27 from

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the first volume, 19 from the second, 16 from the third, two from the fourth, and six from the fifth. Among the six volumes, the selection is biassed towards the first three volumes, while the largest number comes from volume one, 38.57%, next volume two, 27.14% and followed by volume three 22.85%. 16.3.1

Classification of the Protect Life Pictures Collection Reliefs of the Buddha Museum

I personally took photographs of all the Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of the Buddha Museum from 1:00 to 4:00 pm on Friday, 2105.11.16, and collected relevant information. After that, the 70 Pictures were numbered according to their respective positions. On the right side of the Buddha statue facing the rising sun the pictures are prefixed with E, E1 to E35 starting from the one closest to the Buddha statue, running towards the worshipping hall, while those on the left side carry the prefix of W, from W1 to W35 similarly going from the Buddha statue towards the worshipping hall. They are again divided into categories according to their titles, origin, theme and the three major areas of life education. The 70 reliefs of the Protect Life Pictures Collection can be divided into three categories, namely “Warn the World Against Killing” (23 pieces), “Love Living Things” (22 pieces) and “Harmonious Home” (21 pieces).

16.4 A Descriptive Study of Varied Contents of the Protect Life Pictures Collection Reliefs of the Buddha Museum The 70 Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of the Buddha Museum are the pictorial creations of Feng Zikai and Feng Yiyin and the calligraphy mainly of Masters Hong Yi and Yi Xin; in addition, poems and calligraphy of 37 poets from the Song Dynasty to the Republic of China era were included. The contents of the reliefs can be studied separately under the three headings of calligraphy, poetry and pictures.

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Calligraphy

The 70 Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of the Buddha Museum include the calligraphy of Masters Hong Yi and Yi Xin and two pieces with the original calligraphy that can be found in the original paper version of the third volume. i. Among the 29 reliefs with Master Hong Yi’s calligraphy, there are 13 with calligraphy of only ancient poems, of which E3 “Silkworm’s torture tools” carries a small seal inscribed with “Shutong”, Master Hong Yi’s secular name, but without the name of the poem’s author, though on Feng Zikai’s suggestion, a note that “cotton or hemp cloth can replace silk damask, but those who cannot stand cold weather should use camel hair cloth instead of damask” was added. It is therefore possible that the poem was Feng Zikai’s. That is why on this particular relief, the seal bearing “Shutong” was affixed at the end of the calligraphy. Further, on E22 “It is hoped that the whole country is always plentiful” and E34 “Expedition”, found on Page 92 and Page 80 respectively in the original paper version of the third volume, the calligraphy was by Ye Gongchao. And in the preface to the second volume of the Protect Life Pictures Collection published by the Hong Kong Bodhi Institute, Xia Mianzun mentioned that Master Hong Yi only wrote the inscriptions for the first and second volumes. However, the relief version of these two pieces in the Buddha Museum, carry the small seal bearing “Shutung”, secular name of Master Hong Yi, apparently at variance with the above fact. ii. Master Yi Xin’s calligraphy: The ancient poems on 39 reliefs of the Buddha Museum Protect Life Pictures Collection were penned afresh by Master Yi Xin. E18 “Not fishing by the creek” (poem by Chen Jiru of Ming Dynasty), E19 “The cow’s Sunday (inscription added later by Zhi Yi)”, and W12 “The dead mother bear” (Yi Wen) carry the seal “Yi Xin the Monk” on the lower left corner of the calligraphy, and not like the other 36 pieces that carry the seal “Yi Xin”. W17 “Newborn deer” (from A Register of Personalities by Liu Zongzhou of Ming Dynasty) is the only one affixed with a large rectangular seal on the lower left corner of the picture (description of the seal on p. 45). Furthermore, with the exception of E4 “Ants moving home”, E35 “Swallows flying by for the first

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time” and W30 “Vitality”, the other 36 Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs carry the names of the author after the poems. A search of the Protect Life Pictures Collection published by the Hong Kong Bodhi Institute revealed that E4 “Ants moving home” originally did not have an inscription, but was later supplied by Feng Zikai, and E35 “Swallows flying by for the first time” (Poem by Teng Hu), which had its inscription written by Yu Yu. Though W30 “Vitality” is included in the A Collection of Li Shutong’s Choice Works and seems to be the work of Li Shutong; but the Buddha Museum’s relief version of this work only carries the small seal “Shutong”, but without the name of the poet after the calligraphy. According to habit, Master Hong Yi used his rectangular seal “Hong Yi” for the calligraphy of his own poems, but the seal “Shutong” for writing calligraphy for other poets, so it is obvious that the poem on W30 “Vitality” is not Master Hong Yi’s. iii. Retain the original calligraphy: There are two pieces in this category, both are included in the third volume of the original paper version, namely, W1 “The flagrant bait did not lure the fish” and W3 “Breaking the spider web while standing speechless”, and the calligraphy was by Ye Gongchao. From the above, it can be seen that the 70 pieces of the reliefs of the Protect Life Pictures Collection of the Buddha Museum used the calligraphy of Master Yi Xin who specialized in imitating the calligraphy of Master Hong Yi since early age in place of the original by Zhu Youlan and Yu Yu. This change shows the intention of highlighting the calligraphy of Master Hong Yi with a view to balancing the emphasis on the pictures by Feng Zikai. 16.4.1.1 Poetry In addition to the 15 poems by Master Hong Yi and the three by Feng Zikai, the reliefs of the Buddha Museum Protect Life Pictures Collection also include 37 poems from the Song to the Qing Dynasties, namely, Tang (5), Song (10) Ming (8). Qing (8), Republic of China era (1) and others (5)

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i. The 16 reliefs with Master Hong Yi’s poetry and calligraphy carry the rectangular seal with the inscription of “Hong Yi”, and this is different from the original paper version which has no seals. It is also noted that when Master Hong Yi wrote calligraphy for ancient people’s poems, he would use the small seal with the characters “Shutong”. However, on W35 “Father and son”, the seal “Shutong” was used under the calligraphy, and there is no mention of the poem’s author. After checking, it is found that though W35 “Father and son – He feeds you today, you feed him in future, so there is a cycle in which you and he play the parts alternately as father and son” was included in the A Collection of Li Shutong’s Choice Works, and it seems to be the work of Li Shutong. However, according to volume one of the Protect Life Pictures Collection published by the Hong Kong Bodhi Institute, the poem on W35 “Father and son” was adapted from the poetry of Huang Tingjian of the Song dynasty, so the appearance of the seal “Shutong” on the relief is in line with its conventional use. ii. Feng Zikai’s poem: Two reliefs signed “poem by Master of Yuan Yuan Hall” are in this category, namely E15 “Humanitarian” and E33 “A cruel literary pursuit”. In the reliefs of the Protect Life Pictures Collection of the Buddha Museum, poems used include those from the Tang Dynasty to the contemporary Republic era, but none from the Yuan Dynasty. The ratio of the poems and dynasties is as follows: 5:10:0:8:8:1. The Song Dynasty is on top of the list with 10 poems, followed by eight each from the Ming and the Qing Dynasties. 16.4.1.2 Pictures Of the 70 Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs in the Buddha Museum, the central targets of the “cherish life” expression are mainly animals, predominantly at 67 pictures and plants, numbered only three. The animals are widely represented, covering land, water and the flying. The only three plants represented are the big tree in E25 “The guest loves to stay outdoors sitting under the thousand-year-old tree”, the glass and plants in W18 “Spring grass”, and the feeble grass in W30 “Vitality”. It can be seen that the targets we need to protect are not only sentient

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beings, but also the insentient plants and the general environment around us, such as rivers, mountains and the land generally. Pictures 54 “Group Gulls” in volume 2 of the original Protect Life Pictures Collection was adapted into W2 “Gulls can be summoned”. Obviously, the Buddha Museum used as the title of this relief the last line of the 4-line gatha “Seas are never too deep, mountains never too tall; when virtue and benevolence are adequately accumulated, gulls can be summoned”. What is more, a small female subject was added beside the male one as the following Table 16.1 shows. Regarding the contents of the 70 reliefs, with the exception of 11 pieces, namely, E6 “Public display”, E17 “Cooking a meal”, E20 “Morning Chicken”, E31 “With new bamboos providing shade and nobody shooting, it’s all right to share the breeze from the north window”, E32 “Living and flying together”, W7 “Call down all the stars”, W16 “The carp saving its young”, W18 “Spring grass”, W19 “Guests busy blocking: I am a vegetarian this year!”, W20 “Today and tomorrow”, W24 “Reed has offspring and mustard has grandchildren”, which are exactly the same as the original paper version, the remaining 59 are more or less modified. Small modifications involved only adding flowers and trees, or hills and rocks to the background. The following 17 reliefs are in this category. E11 “To part for now or forever? The condemned goat” has grass added Table 16.1 A comparison of the “Gulls can be summoned” relief of the Buddha Museum and the original paper version of the “Group Gulls” #

Name

W2 Gulls p. can be 15summoned 鷗鳥可 招

Relief

#

Name Paper

No. Group 54 gulls V2 群鷗 p. 108

Relief W2 cited from Hong Yi/Feng Zikai, compiled by Ru Chang (2011), The Protect Life Pictures Collection (護生畫集), KHS: Foguangshan Culture and Education Foundation, p. 15 Picture 54 cited from Feng Zikai (1993), Protect Life Pictures Collection, Volume 2, Haitian Publications, p. 108

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in front and bushes on the right; E12 “A swallow comes to rest on the pillow”, hills and small groves of trees were added to the background; E13 “The nature of man is good at the beginning”, bushes were added to the right middle area; E22 “As long as the whole country is plentiful, there is no problem with a lot of hunting birds around”, a lot of betel trees were added to the back of the left middle area; E24 “Ah Huang comes welcoming bearing an umbrella in its mouth”, trees and distant mountains were added behind the gazebo; E25 “The guest loves to stay outdoors and sits under the thousand-year-old tree”, trees and hills were added behind the house; E26 “A noisy magpie brings new sunshine”, the scarce leaves in two places outside the window were replaced with a thick bamboo grove; E33 “A cruel literary pursuit” now has trees in the lower left corner, and land and trees in the right; E34 “Expedition”, distant mountains were added in the upper right corner; E35 “Swallows flying by for the first time”, the relief has land lines and craggy mountains; W3 “Breaking the spider web while standing speechless, and free a couple of butterflies”, the relief has groups of flowers and bushes; W4 “Only swallows of the old nest come back despite greedy property owner”, there are bushes in the back. W8 “Captured”, flowers, grass and bushes were added; W12 “The dead mother bear”, the rocks were added to the lower corners; W14 “Not one dog has come”, the grass was added to the ground in the lower right corner; W17 “The newborn deer”, shows cliffs on the left side of the deer. The remaining 42 pieces of the reliefs of the Protect Life Pictures Collection show bigger changes. The following describes added features. E1 “The world is but a room, and the garden a birdcage”, there are trees in the lower left corner and a tall willow tree as well as dwarf bushes in the right, and two orchids blooming from a pot on the low fence. E2 “My leg”, there are bushes behind the subject and the pig’s tail drooping instead of raised. One painting was added to the wall of E3 “The silk worm’s torture device”, the clothes hanger has an extra bar, cocoons are clearly seen in the bucket, and there is a tea table beside the bucket behind the subject; E4 “Ants moving home”, the male subject is facing the woman by his side and not the kid moving the stool (trousers replaced shorts) male subject’s vertical-stripe vest replaced by a plain black one, E5 “The quiet new year eve”, vertical-strip pillows and cotton quilt of the same colour as well as a long tripod candle holder are seen. E7 “The prisoner’s song”, the background is a cracking wall with a bird cage hanging under the eaves, the short-tailed bird becomes a long-tailed one. E8 “Last

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night’s result”, the male subject has a more serious facial expression rather than a jokingly one, and has no trousers under his robe, there is also a rat hole on the wall. E9 “Clearing footprints of deer so no hunter can find them in the morning”, the white shirt and vest of the male subject are not the robe in the original, what is more, there are six pieces of rock in the lower left corner instead of five. E10 “Carrying the son”, the female subject has a long-stripe blouse, the little boy wears a short-sleeved shirt and trousers instead of a shortsleeved vest, there is one chick less than (the original) six, little bushes appear in the background, the colour is the same as the picture with the same title in the colour version of Protect Life Pictures Collection done by Feng Zihai in his twilight years. E14 “Sura”, there is a winding cobblestone path between the two piglets. E15 “Humanitarian”, for the subject on the right, plain trousers replaced the original horizontal-stripe trousers. E16 “Eats grass, but produces milk”, the female subject’s blouse carries added round dots and the cow has stripes on its body. E18 “Not fishing by the creek”, three fish are absent in the water, and hills added in the lower left corner. E19 “Sunday of the cow”, two birds are absent in the air, and hills added on the right. E21 “The kitten is like a small friend looking at the picture perching on the shoulder of its mistress”, the dress of the female subject is a plaided one, there are flowers in the painting, the wall behind is peeling, there are a colour plate, a water tray and two books with titles on the table. E23 “The old woman next door, having has nothing to do, summons home the white-nosed pigs at sunset”, the poem is different, there is a stream in the front, a house on the back, a tall tree behind the low fence and behind the house on the right, there are hills, trees and the setting sun; different in colour from the rectangular whole-page colour version of Cherish Life Pictures and Calligraphy Collection (originally created by Feng Zikai, copied in colour by Feng Yiyin, with calligraphy written by Shih Yi Xin, published by Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House), the old woman wearing a red blouse and a black skirt, facing the white-nosed pigs; E27 “Hanging upside down”, the male subject wears a vertical-stripe shirt and not a vest, and there are trees left and right. E28 “Singing continuously instead of crying”, the fan the female subject holding is colour-painted, flowers and trees were added behind her. E29 “Holding a light round fan in hand, but couldn’t bear to swat the flying couple”, compared to the original paper version, patterns were added to the women’s dresses, and bushes in front of and behind the two people.

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E30 “Sleeping gulls giving way to passengers”, has two fewer passengers in the boat than the original paper version. W1 “The fragrant bait not luring the fish, a dragonfly rests on the fishing rod”, a poem by Master of Yuan Yuan Tang p. 71 is absent, the gown of the female subject is a straight-stripe one, and there are mountains in the background. W2 “The world is but a room, and the garden a birdcage”, a small female subject is added beside the male subject, and the flying gulls in the air have a bigger size difference, and are arranged in a more chaotic pattern, with the front six seagulls on a landing course, there are layers hills and trees beyond the sea. W5 “The farmer and the dairy cow”, the cow has big black spots added, the milker is changed to a male and there are small hills behind him. W6 “Equality”, a middle-aged man with curly hair replaced the crew-cut youngster. W9 “The world is but a room and the garden a birdcage” (compare W2 above), mother and child are both hatless, with added curtains inside the house, the two window frames are not divided into two parts (i.e. with no crossbars in the middle). W10 “Freed”, the middle house has a chimney, and trees behind the house. W11 “Children’s game”, the boy wears a long-sleeved shirt, and shorts with pictures, the girl wears a long dress with non-straight line patterns, there are trees behind, and widely scattered tree trunks in the fields. W13 “Silent thanks”, patterns were added to the female subject’s dress, there are many trees behind the house, plus one or two tall trees. W15 “Lured to death”, a fish basket instead of a bucket, three (instead of 4) fish in the water and trees in the middle and the back. W21 “Drunken man and the wine-treated crab”, there is an extra crab leg on the table. W22 “Winter fun”, the boy wears striped shirt and pants, a high hat and gloves and small spring festival couplets on both sides of the door. W23 “The old cow also appreciates the music, and walks slowly with the music of the flute”, there is a small hill in the distance, and the shepherd boy on the back of the cow has straight stripes added to his shirt. W25 “Corpse forest”, the words “corpse forest” are absent from the relief. W26 “Begging for life”, the male subject wears a robe instead of trousers and there are bushes behind him. W27 “Summon the mountain boy to free the trapped”, there are betel trees in the background, the male subject’s robe has patterns, the chair becomes a tree stump, and there is a book on the table, the hunter’s net replaced with a gun, and beside the spider web one gazebo was added. W28 “Assassination”, the male subject wears socks instead of stockings, he

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carries more hunted animals in his hand, and there are distant mountains. W29 “Benefit at no cost”, a wall, couplets and door couplets are added. W30 “Vitality”, the wall is more delicate, and a butterfly was added. W31 “Coming back carrying soil containing fallen flowers”, there are purple chrysanthemums in the front and small bushes at the back, and the clothes of the mother and her three children have varied stripes. W32 “The carp rescue its child”, there are hills on the back, the original two butterflies become five. W33 “If the sheep can read”, the male subject wears a beard. W34 “Butterflies come visiting”, there is a potted plant at the bottom right corner, the woman on the left woman is replaced by a man and there is tall stool behind him. W35 “Father and son”, the father’s two feet are seen.

16.5 Features of the Protect Life Pictures Collection Reliefs of the Buddha Museum Besides recreating the original printed version’s neat style, novel pictorial composition and the combined expressive power of the pictures and poem, the 70 reliefs of the Protect Life Pictures Collection of the Buddha Museum have the following five features: 16.5.1

Combining the Arts of Sculpture, Painting, Calligraphy and Poetry

The 70 Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of the Buddha Museum not only contain the poems, calligraphy and pictures of the original Protect Life Pictures Collection, but they themselves are sculptures. 16.5.2

The First Set of Protect Life Pictures Collection Reliefs

The Buddha Museum turned a large number of black-and-white rectangular pictures from the Protect Life Pictures Collection into coloured, circular and shallow three-dimensional reliefs. This is the first Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of such large scale. 16.5.3

Beautifying the Landscape of the Buddha Museum

This set of Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs combines the arts of sculpture, painting, calligraphy and poetry, which not only beautify

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the environment of the Buddha Museum, but also enrich the Buddha Museum landscape. The layout design facilitates visitors and guided tours. You need only to walk along the Museum’s ring road to view the reliefs one by one; and to appreciate the value of life by listening to the stories of the pictures and asking questions. Students can sit on the grass or stand in the shade of tress to take part in the dialogues with the tour guides. 16.5.4

The Metaphors of Causality Are Educational

The Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of the Buddha Museum not only have artistic, religious and social features, but through the pictures that illustrate causality in a three-dimensional language, they silently transmit the message of loving life and caring for living beings. These reliefs are not restricted by words, and people of all ages, nationalities and beliefs can, through appreciating the reliefs, better understand life, thus extending the life education function of the Protect Life Pictures Collection in the twenty-first Century. 16.5.5

Realizing the Four Cardinal Principles of Fo Guang Shan

The four contributions of the Protect Life Pictures Collection, as mentioned previously are Artistic, Religious, Social and Educational. If we place the educational contribution just after the artistic contribution, they match exactly the four cardinal principles of Fo Guang Shan, namely, to promote Buddhist Dharma through cultural means, to nurture talents through education, to purify people’s hearts through collective religious cultivation, and to benefit society through charity and welfare. It can be seen that the creation of the 70 reliefs of the Protect Life Pictures Collection in the Buddha Museum helps the promotion and implementation of the four principles of Fo Guang Shan.

16.6 The Contemporary Significance of the Protect Life Pictures Collection Reliefs of the Buddha Museum Venerable Master Hsing Yun, founder of Fo Guang Shan, in his effort to promote Humanistic Buddhism, has long hoped to spread the ideas of compassion and cherishing of life throughout the world so that cherishing

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life will replace modern people’s mistaken belief in the ritualistic acts of releasing captured animals or fish. Therefore, the main idea of the Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs in the Buddha Museum is to spread the concept of compassion and cherishing life. The original intention of Master Hong Yi and Feng Zikai in creating the Protect Life Pictures Collection was to invoke Buddhists’ compassion to appeal to the world to spare some sympathy for the living things and to gradually develop their own kindness, broadness of mind, tolerance and compassion. Now it seems that such appeals have gradually coincided with the idea of ecological and environmental protection. On Planet Earth where we live, many living creatures that used to coexist with humans had, or beginning to, become extinct due to the expansion of human habitats and the fast development of technologies; green forests are disappearing, water sources and the air are polluted. In man’s endeavour to make his life comfortable, he destroys the environment in which he lives. Therefore, the world urgently calls for “the protection of Earth” and “loving living things”. However, what needs to be protected is man’s sympathy for Earth and its living things and his soul that is still not so selfish and cruel. In that, the Protect Life Pictures Collection carrying idea “Protect live is Protect the heart” has its modern meaning. In addition to cherishing life, avoiding killing, and doing good deeds, the Protect Life Pictures Collection also highlights the idea of causality as well as the spirit of mutual aid and mutual love, and expresses the compassion inherent in Buddhism by means of visual art. These Protect Life Pictures inspire people to respect and love life, and let people grow a sense of compassion upon viewing them, thereby increasing the general goodness of society. The Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of the Buddha Museum turn the Museum’s garden into a valuable venue for life education, and also symbolize the continuation and inheritance of Buddhist art. The ratio in the 70 reliefs of the Protect Life Pictures Collection of the Buddha Museum corresponding to the three principal areas of life education is 3: 50: 20. Ultimate topic accounts for only 3 reliefs, while 50 reliefs involving subjects of ethical introspection, at 68.45% of the total, represent a high proportion of nearly 70%. The last area of personality integration and spiritual improvement accounting for 20 reliefs, occupies the middle position.

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Conclusion

There are four research findings as follows. 16.7.1

Research Findings

i. The Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of the Buddha Museum comprise a selection of 70 pictures from the original six volumes of 450 printed drawings, turned into their present form of outdoor reliefs permeated with the idea of compassionate cherishing of life. Their artistic representation contains metaphors and meanings that carry a wide variety of messages that spread the various aspects of life education, namely, from avoiding killing as is in line with the principle of compassion, to cherishing life, instead of just releasing captured animals and fish, and progressing to advocating equality of living rights, caring for ecological conservation, adhering to food safety, etc. They have become ready-made life education teaching materials for life education for schools. ii. The Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of the Buddha Museum, which are based on the original printed version that is credited with having artistic, religious, social and educational achievements, are now also a combination of the several arts of sculpture, painting, calligraphy and poetry. Being the first of their kind, these colour reliefs beautify the Buddha Museum’s landscape and enhance its artistic contents; the metaphors implicit in the pictures are lessons on causality, fully expressing the four cardinal principles and five features of Fo Guang Shan. They not only realized the Fo Guang principle of “promoting Buddhism through cultural means”, but also highlight the function of merging educational and cultural activities in the proclamation of Buddhist Dharma under the Fo Guang Humanistic Buddhism. With human nature degenerating, and people deviating from time-honoured values, these reliefs carry both great significance and value of our times. iii. The first volume of the Protect Life Pictures Collection was published in 1929, and the sixth and last volume in 1973. In August 1981, Pure Literature Publishing House of Taipei first published the complete collection in Taiwan; Haitian Publishing House of Shenzhen published all the six volumes in March 1993, which were one of the earliest prints on the Mainland; in 2005, People’s Publishing

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House of Shanghai published a combination of Feng Zikai’s Protect Life Pictures Collection and Master Hong Yi’s calligraphy, and this complete work was reprinted many times. Since then, it has been reprinted in many places. So far, various versions of the Collection have been distributed around the world, and the number of versions and prints are difficult to count. Prior to the 1983 version¸ all editions had the pictures and the poems on opposite pages measuring 11 cm times 17.5 cm, 22 cm wide fully opened. In 1986, the first volume of the Collection published by the Yangshan Magazine House of Taipei began to have personal seals affixed. In 2012, the Buddha Museum version carries the personal seal of Yi Xin. At the beginning of this century, two volumes of Protect Life Pictures cum Calligraphy Collection were published, in December 2001 and August 2003 respectively by Ancient Books Publishing House of Shanghai, each containing a choice selection of 100 pictures from the original creation by Feng Zikai, faithfully copied in colour by Feng Yiyin, youngest daughter of Feng, with Shih Yixin carefully imitating the style of Hong Yi, providing the calligraphy. They were published in full colour with copper plates, 32 mo, and have quite a modern feel. They are the chief reference when the 70 Buddha Museum reliefs were constructed in 2010–2012. iv. The 70 Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of the Buddha Museum are closely related to the three main fields of life education: Of the 70 reliefs, 3 reliefs imply a profound outlook on life, religion and life and death, ultimate care, life and death care and hospice care, their meaning and practice; 50 carry the potential to foster students’ ability to do moral thinking, to explore the intrinsic quality of ethics and learn the spirit of “adopting a fair attitude but not necessarily a neutral position”, thereby to reflect on the major ethical issues of life and to cultivate an aesthetical life that is both beautiful and good; 20 help students to internalize their outlook on life and ethical values, so as to integrate their informed intentions with their body and mind, resulting in upgrading the state of their life. The 70 Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of the Buddhist originally represent a continuation to echo the nineteenth-century effort for world peace. However, the cultivation of bodhi mind is no longer limited to the

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saving of human beings, but extended to the saving of other living beings. Today, in the twenty-first century, such intentions are in line with that of modern life education. Now that with human nature degenerating and values biassed, the study of the life education potentials of the 70 reliefs of the Buddha Museum has significance and value of the times. 16.7.2

Contribution of This Research

It is hoped that the findings of this research can have the following five contributions: i. To understand, through the Protect Life Pictures Collection reliefs of the Buddha Museum, the differences of its various published versions, thereby providing reference material for future academic research. ii. It can be used as teaching material for life education courses at all levels of schools, thereby helping the implementation of life education the Ministry of Education is promoting. iii. Enhancing the industry-university cooperation between Fo Guang University and Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum, highlighting this University’s characteristics of being an educational institution run by a Buddhist organization. iv. Assisting in enriching the contents of Buddha Museum’s guidebook for tourists, and strengthening the cultural education function of the Buddha Museum. v. Raising the understanding level and life realm of those interested in Buddhist relief art.

Notes 1. Feng Zikai compiled (2001), Gr, Zhao Guang (葛兆光) trans., Selection of The Protect Life Pictures Collection by Feng Zikai (豐子愷護生畫集選), TPE: Sulin, pp. i–ii. 2. Ibid., p. backcover. 3. Cai Bingcheng (蔡秉誠) (2011), The Protect Life Pictures by Feng ZikaiBased on Volumes 1 & 2 (豐子愷 《護生畫集》 - 以一二集為對象), MA Thesis of Art Institute, Fo Guang University, p. 55. 4. Ibid., p. 4.

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5. Yang Mu (楊牧) (1982), Literal Collection of Feng Zikai (豐子愷文選 II), TPE: HongFan Bookstore Co., Ltd., p. back cover. 6. Feng Zikai compiled (2001), Gr, Zhao Guang (葛兆光) trans., Selection of The Protect Life Pictures Collection by Feng Zikai (豐子愷護生畫集選), TPE: Sulin, p. back cover. 7. Ibid. 8. Master Bodhi (菩提) (1996), ‘Master Hong Yi’s Cause and Condition in Saha World’ Bodhitree Magazine (菩提樹) V3. 1996. https://book.bfnn.org/books/0604.htm. 9. Zhong, Yachin (衷雅琴) (2015), A Talk on Best Seller of the Protect Life Pictures 《護生畫集》 < 暢銷談>, by Wide Angle Publication (出版廣角) GV.253, 2015.12.29. https://kknews.cc/zh-tw/culture/mg42a4z.html. 10. Ibid., p. i. 11. Feng Zikai compiled (2001), Gr, Zhao Guang (葛兆光) trans., Selection of The Protect Life Pictures Collection by Feng Zikai (豐子愷護生畫集選), TPE: Sulin, p. back cover, p. i. 12. Ibid. 13. https://kknews.cc/zh-tw/culture/yvazvj.html2018.10.3. 14. Zhong, Yachin (衷雅琴) (2015), A Talk on Best Seller of the Protect Life Pictures 《護生畫集》 < 暢銷談>, by Wide Angle Publication (出版廣角) GV.253, 2015.12.29, https://kknews.cc/zh-tw/culture/mg42a4z.html. 15. Cai Bingcheng (蔡秉誠) (2011), The Protect Life Pictures by Feng ZikaiBsed on Volumes 1 & 2 (豐子愷 《護生畫集》- 以一二集為對象), MA Thesis of Art Institute, Fo Guang University, pp. 38–39.

References Cai, Bingcheng (蔡秉誠). 2011. The protect life pictures by Feng Zikai-based on volumes 1 & 2 (豐子愷 《護生畫集》 - 以一二集為對象). MA Thesis of Art Institute, Fo Guang University. Feng, Zikai. 1993. Protect Life Pictures Collection (豐子愷護生畫集). Haitian Publications. Feng, Zikai compiled. 2001. Gr, Zhao Guang (葛兆光) trans., Selection of the protect life pictures collection by Feng Zikai (豐子愷護生畫集選). TPE: Sulin. Hong, Yi, and Zikai Feng, compiled by Ru Chang. 2011. The protect life pictures collection (護生畫集). KHS: Foguangshan Culture and Education Foundation. Master, Bodhi (菩提). 1996. Master Hong Yi’s cause and condition in Saha World (弘一大師之娑婆因緣). Bodhitree Magazine (菩提樹) V3. https:// book.bfnn.org/books/0604.htm. Ru, Chang. 2013. The cultural heritage between two straits: Special collection of the protect life pictures by Hong Yi/Feng Zikai (兩岸文化遺產: 弘一大師/豐 子愷護生畫集特選). KHS: FGS Culture and Education Foundation.

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Yang, Mu (楊牧). 1982. Literal collection of Feng Zikai’ (豐子愷文選II). TPE: Hong Fan Bookstore Co., Ltd. Zhong, Yachin (衷雅琴). 2015. A talk on best seller of the protect life pictures《護生畫集》 < 暢銷談>, by Wide Angle Publication (出版廣角) GV.253, 2015.12.29. https://kknews.cc/zh-tw/culture/mg42a4z.html.

CHAPTER 17

The Combat and Compromise in Taiwanese Puppets as a Body Without Organ: Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe as an Example Yi-Jou Lo

17.1

Introduction

The concept of body without organs was first conceived by Antonin Artaud—a European avant-garde dramatist. Artaud had been sick since his boyhood days. For his entire life, he spent battling his illness, both mentally and physically. His struggle inspired the idea of body without organs. This concept was later popularized by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus . Simply put, body without organs literally views a body as an entity with no organs inside. To this extent, the body can take on the form of an animal, a voice, or even a thought (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 127). Deleuze and Guattari thus promulgated an esthetic principle that advocates for continuous change and deterritorialization and celebrates differences, otherness, and multiplicity.

Y.-J. Lo (B) Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, Kaohsiung, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_17

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Based on the literary definition, Taiwanese puppet shows, also elected as the representative image of Taiwan in 2006, perfectly exemplify body without organs. In the literal sense, Taiwanese puppets are indeed bodies without any organs—there is nothing but hollowness inside a puppet. Metaphorically, these puppets’ and the puppetry’s evolution also signify the concept of body without organs. In the beginning when puppet shows were introduced to Taiwan from Mainland China, the puppets were approximately 30-cm tall. The shows strictly followed the performance rules of Chinese opera characterized by the presence of Shen, Dan, Jin, Mo, and Chou.1 Thus, the audience could identify a puppet’s personality from its appearance. Over time, the puppets increased in size to 120 cm tall, thereby resembling human beings. Currently, the puppets still look like humans, with hands sufficiently long to reach knees (in Chinese tradition, this bodily feature predicts a person’s great future). Additionally, these body-without-organs puppets travel overseas to countries such as America and Japan,2 where they start to speak in foreign languages. Originally, the same narrator’s voice was used for all puppets; however, presently, each puppet has his/her own spokesperson.3 Subsequently, in 2011, Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe broke more rules of Taiwanese puppetry—at least, at first, the team had intended to create beautiful puppets only for exhibition and not for performances—an innovative idea in Taiwanese puppetry. When Taiwanese puppets began talking with the employment of different voice actors, part of the essence of traditional Taiwanese puppet shows was lost. When a puppet does not need a manipulator to perform but only needs to stand still for an exhibition, the puppet show seems to stop firing audience’s imagination in a show. Currently, the Taiwanese puppetry industry is apparently affected by practitioners’ differences— they fight against each other to compete. However, it is in these disturbing times that Taiwanese puppet shows are discovering different channels for creativity and possibilities for future cooperation. In reference to Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, this paper begins with a history of Taiwanese puppetry. Particularly, the new trends in puppet shows are discussed by citing Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe as an example to demonstrate how the Taiwanese puppetry industry has evolved from mutual fighting to finding a new territory for individual expansion.

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Body Without Organs

Despite the fact that the concept of body without organs emerged from Artaud’s attempts to escape bodily torture, this concept does not entail a complete rejection of the body—nor does it promote the destruction of the body. On the contrary, it signifies the pursuit of a body’s eternality. Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari emphasized that body without organs does not constitute a rejection of a body’s organs but an objection to the presence of an organism in the body (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 30). Particularly, body without organs attempts to abolish all chains and handcuffs for liberation. Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari explained the following: Is it really so sad and dangerous to be fed up with seeing with your eyes, breathing with your lungs, swallowing with your mouth, talking with your tongue, thinking with your brain, having an anus and larynx, head and leg? Why not walk on your head, sing with your sinuses, see through your skin, breathe with your belly: the simple Thing, the Entity, the full body, the stationary Voyage…. Psychoanalysis says, ‘Stop, find yourself again.’ We should say instead, ‘Let’s go further still, we haven’t found our Body without Organ yet, we haven’t sufficiently dismantled our self.’ Find your body without organs. Find out how to make it. It is where everything is played out. (167)

In this long quotation, Deleuze and Guattari have highlighted the limiting viewpoint of a body as a holistic unit in which everything is unchangeable, including the appearance and the functions of the body. For example, eyes can be used only for seeing while lungs only for breathing. Owing to these nature-introduced constraints, on the surface, the body is moveable; however, in reality, it is stagnated without any possibility for innovation and transformation; that is, it is a dumb, dead shell. Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari proposed to dismantle the body. Dismantling the organism does not mean suicide (177). On the contrary, it is only through body dismantlement that a body stands the chance to meet with different polymeric materials and establish contact with different fields and domains (177). Deleuze and Guattari explored three dangers associated with the concept of body that is referred to as three strata, namely, “organism, significance, and subjectification” (159). These three strata contribute

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to the stereotypical concepts concerning the body that stagnate evolution. Among these strata, organisms hinder the purified existence of body organs, significance inhibits insignificance, and subjectification leads to a narrowed over–self-centeredness.4 It is only by means of deterritorialization, dismantlement, and dismemberment that the stagnation can be annihilated and the body can be activated again. Deleuze and Guattari asserted that what humans need now is nomadology (26) through which the territory of the human body can be deterritorialized for a new territory to be reterritorialized (421). Based on body without organs theory, to dismember or dismantle every organ is to accentuate its individuality through which multiplicities can be identified. Second, this theory stresses on not being bounded by individual organs. For example, plants can become rootless, a rhizome. Normally, a plant can only stem from one root; however, a rhizome plant can sprout from different stems, thereby extending its growth to different places. This constitutes the second trait of body without organs—the state of being a rhizome. Third, a body without organs does not reject its surroundings. On the contrary, such a body assimilates and accepts more possibilities. This reterritorialization after deterritorialization constitutes the third trait. Overall, a body without organs leads to deconstructive combat; however, this combat enables the body to find a way to connect with all beings and explore its identity.

17.3 The Transition of Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe as a Body Without Organ Taiwanese puppetry presents one of the best exemplifications of Deleuze and Guattari’s body without organs concept. Literarily, without a manipulator, a Taiwanese puppet only has a body with no organs. After years of evolution and transformation, this once-tiny puppet has now become a significant image of Taiwanese culture. The potential of this body-without-organ-puppet stands uncontested. The history of the development of Taiwanese puppetry is indeed a history of combats pertaining to body without organs. Taiwanese puppetry originated from Fukien and Zhangzhou in Mainland China. Originally, the puppets were called marionettes (a puppet with string for manipulation) and puppetry was called Case Play (or Box Play).5 In the Ming dynasty, a scholar, Liang Bing-lin, from Quanzhou is said to have a dream in which an old man revealed to him that success lies within one’s

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hands. Motivated by his dream, he then invented a 30-cm puppet without strings, and the puppet show was highly popular along the Mainland China coastline. Surprisingly, puppets became increasingly popular after being introduced to Taiwan. Compared with Chinese Opera or Taiwanese Opera, puppetry does not require too many human laborers. Only one manipulator (who is also the narrator) and several tiny puppets are sufficient for an entertaining performance. Due to the convenience, a puppet show can be performed almost anywhere, thereby puppet shows turn into a major form of entertainment early in Taiwan. Eventually, the 30-cm puppets could not satisfy audiences because they were too tiny for the audience sitting far away to clearly see the performance. Thus, the tiny puppets increased in size to 50 cm, and, presently, they can be 150 cm or even taller. When they were tiny, they could be manipulated using one hand. However, at their current size, they need two or even three manipulators. During early days, one man was sufficient to perform special tricks—for example, the puppet could be thrown from the right hand and caught by the left hand to make the puppet fly. This became impossible after the puppets increased in size. However, through multiple manipulators and postproduction (currently, puppets often have their own shows on TV), the more delicate movement could be performed. Additionally, the larger puppets resemble humans and are usually exquisitely made. In fact, thousands of dollars have been paid on creating some puppets. Therefore, in addition to watching a puppet show, appreciating the making of puppets, and even collecting beautiful puppets have become another popular trend in Taiwanese puppetry. This is another transition in Taiwanese puppetry. In 2011, a brand new team was established—Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe. In the beginning, there were only seven members, of which only one, Duo Duo (Wang Wen-Chi), had performed in real puppet shows because his family had been involved in the industry for generations. The remaining members, including a teacher, a designer, a factory worker, and a puppet-costume designer, were only indirectly associated with the puppetry industry. However, encouraged by their shared interest in puppets, they decided to make beautiful puppets for their own collections. Their puppets were so beautifully made that they attained fame and were invited for puppet exhibitions by city/county cultural centers and specifically the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store. They have also been invited to exhibit their puppets in several countries, including China, Japan, Germany, England, and Holland.

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Following are some important facts about the Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe: 1. Their aim is to make beautiful puppets without mass-producing them (therefore, each puppet is one of a kind); 2. In the beginning, they only made puppets and did not engage in performances. Recently, they have started delivering performances; 3. Their puppets can be touched—different from puppets in other troupes; 4. Inspiration for making the puppets can be found everywhere. Overall, these traits make it possible to constantly develop bodywithout-organ puppets. Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe is indeed evolving and developing on the basis of the concepts pertaining to body without organs, namely multiplicities, deconstruction and reconstruction, and being rooted with rootlessness. 17.3.1

Multiplicities

Anyone familiarwith Taiwanese puppetry would know the new trends introduced by Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe. Traditionally, performance is essential and the primary reason why Taiwanese puppetry is appreciated. However, Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe originated from a completely different objective—they were not interested in performances at all. This was because they had only one member who knew how to manipulate puppets. Another reason was that they had started the troupe purely out of their love for beautiful puppets. They originally sought to collect beautiful puppets and producing a show was definitely not their aim. In terms of group organization, Samadhi Tang is not following the usual way. In all puppetry troupes, the mentor–mentee system is highly respected, and members should take performance as their primary profession. However, all members of Samadhi Tan have other day jobs, and making puppets is a leisure activity for them (however, since 2019, some members have decided to turn this leisure time activity into their primary job because two members have retired from their respective jobs). In this troupe, members are neither mentors nor mentees—they are friends brought together by a common interest. Because all members have major

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jobs, seeing all members in one exhibition is a rare phenomenon. The fact that all members work in different industries reinforces the trait of multiplicities of the body without organs concept that argues that one organ can have various functions. Liu Koa-Ann is the key designer of the troupe. His major in art facilitates his puppet designing. Since 2011, he has created more than 160 puppets that represent four major religion sects: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Legalism. Originally, his creations were inspired by traditional cultures. Eventually, he also explored Japanese motifs, which did not come as a surprise due to the connection between Taiwanese and Japanese cultures. Furthermore, the same character has different editions such as the sealed edition and the holistic edition of Sakra (see Figs. 17.1 and 17.26 )

Fig. 17.1 The sealed edition of Sakra (Di Shi Tien)

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Fig. 17.2 The holistic edition of Sakra (Di Shi Tien)

and the secular edition and the official version of Gong Sun Chang Ger. The second editions of these two characters were created for different reasons. Liu first created the sealed edition of Sakra in which the character is a kid. Fans of the troupe insisted on seeing an adult Sakra, following which the holistic edition was created. As for Gong Sun Chang Ger, the secular edition was created first. However, eventually, Samadhi Tang started conducting performances with Gong Sun as the protagonist. Xiaojing, who used to be a college assistant professor but resigned now, wrote a story in which Gong Sun is an official who often switches to the secular edition to see how people live (Web, Xiaojing, September 10, 2013). Thus, an official edition of Gong Sun was created. To summarize, following the creation of its characters, Samadhi Tang assimilates opinions to create various editions of the characters. These puppets, in observance

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of the concept of body without organs, are not bound by limitations but accept and adjust to all possibilities to become increasingly stronger. 17.3.2

Deconstruction and Reconstruction

The existence of Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe eyewitnesses the trait of reterritorialization after deterritorialization in the concept of body without organ. At the beginning, Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe only produced beautiful puppets for exhibition but never had any performance. They definitely have been questioned whether it is a puppet show since, after all, narration and manipulation are essential in a Taiwanese puppetry. However, their exiguities puppets have attracted more and more attention. It seems they have opened up another possibility for the development of puppetry. Yet, at the request of their fans, Samadhi Tang starts to have performance. In 2018, they released a short film of their performance. Also that year, they started to cooperate with Echo Music and add classic music in their performance. Samadhi Tang started the troupe in a different way—puppet for exhibition. This is a deconstruction of puppetry. Little by little, they start to have performance. It seems they have been back to the traditional puppet show. Yet, with the addition of Echo Music, Samadhi Tang again explores another new way of performance of puppet shows. In deconstruction and reconstruction, Samadhi Tang is stepping forward steadily. The creation of characters of Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe again asserts its attempt to deconstruct for its reconstruction. A famous example can be seen in Samadhi Tang’s creation of Zhu Bajie, the Pig from Journey to the West . A traditional Zhu Bajie of course looks like a pig. However, the Pig in Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe is very handsome as in Fig. 17.3. Teacher Xiaojing has explained that the Pig is said to be very fickle and dissolute, especially he loves pretty girls a lot. Therefore, it is not a surprise that the Pig would change himself into a handsome person to attract more beauties. Another example is Samadhi Tang’s creation of Iron-Crutch Li. In the traditional image, Iron-Crutch Li used to dress like a beggar. However, Samadhi Tang changes him into a stout warrior (Fig. 17.4) since they deem Iron-Crutch Li, as a God of Protection, definitely should be a warrior. One more example is the creation of the Four Buddha Kings.7 Again, Samadhi Tang creates the four kings by different colors (Fig. 17.5). Guan Jiang Shou perhaps is one of the most creative puppets. With their colored facial expression, these

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Fig. 17.3 Zhu Bajie—the Pig

Fig. 17.4 Iron-crutch Li

underground protectors look terrible but with heroic spirit. In a speech on October 5, 2016, Teacher Xiaojing (Yen Ren Hong) has explained the design and indicated they are quite afraid that they may intrude convention and irritate some religious people in the making of Guan Jiang Shou puppets. One day, there really came some members from the temple. To their surprise, these members requested if they could put the design of Guan Jiang Shou in their real human parade. The design of Guan Jiang Shou firstly demonstrates that Samadhi Tang does not follow the tradition—Guan Jiang Shous are the underground protectors and they are not as famous as Ba Jia Jiang (the Eight Generals).8 Not many people would be interested in them. Secondly, in their design, Samadhi Tang dares to be

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Fig. 17.5 The Four Buddha Kings

away from the traditional concept, making Guan Jiang Shou magnificent and awfully dignified. The troupe thus finds their own way in the development of Taiwanese puppetry. Like a body without organ, it is only in terms of deterritorialization that a self-relocation can be uncovered. Samadhi Tang finds its own way thanks to their rebellious innovation. 17.3.3

Being Rooted with Rootlessness

As the aforesaid, a body without organ is like a rhizome that can be rooted in various places. Nameless, even though there is no center, still a growth and development is possible. Samadhi Tang’s promotion management can be a good example. Like Pili, the most famous puppet troupe/company in Taiwan , Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe has its own fans. The troupe opens all possible creation to fans—their fans can re-make Samadhi Tang’s characters as in Fig. 17.6. Besides, different from most puppet companies that would ask for copyright and seldom helps with fans’ creation, Samadhi Tang even helps their fans to make their own creative puppets and expect “the blooming of more creative puppets” as said by Teacher Xiaojing (January 25, 2017). In all the exhibitions of Samadhi Tang in Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Stores, the troupe always opens a column for

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Fig. 17.6 A column for fans

fan creation. It resembles a body without organ that attempts to get rid of subjectification and aspire for freedom. The way to extend itself for Samadhi Tang is never to put itself as the subject but to allow fans to establish fans’ subject. Interestingly, due to their open-mindness, Samadhi Tang becomes stronger and explores the path to tenacity. Among Samadhi Tang’s creation, some are quite abrupt—they are neither inspired from classics nor from fans. The first example is Miss Shin Kong Mitsukoshi which is created to appreciate the invitation from Shin Kong Mitsukoshi. Next, Princess Taiping (Fig. 17.7) is created to memorize Samadhi Tang’s visit in Peking. From Miss Shin Kong Mitsukoshi to Princess Taiping, it seems there is no rule in the creation of Samadhi Tang but in fact, it shows how Samadhi Tang is like a body without organ that can find its way of birth (i.e. creation) everywhere. Samadhi Tang can create a puppet based on the change of a classic, based on fans’ request, and even based on the friendship between Samadhi Tang and other company or place. Again, Samadhi Tang’s growth eyewitnesses the pattern of rooting with rootlessness of a body without organ. It is because Samadhi Tang never sets things stereotypically that they can find inspiration everywhere and thus grows everywhere.

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Fig. 17.7 Princess Taiping

17.4

Conclusion

Nowadays, creative produces are innovated day after day. Unfortunately, with so many different products, the quality is not well controlled. Particularly, it is often criticized that a lot of products may emphasize upon its culture essence with innovation forgotten. Stepping into the twenty-first century, Taiwanese puppet shows are right now encountering two problems: on the one hand, facing the burden of tradition, a little adjustment may receive critical comment. When moving puppet show from outdoor stage into a TV station, Master Huang Junxiong has received tons of criticisms, deeming Huang to deviate from the tradition. Interestingly, Huang’s son, Huang Wen-Zer promoted a new type of puppetry—puppet animation, Huang Junxiong also criticized his son’s innovation. However,

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facing the advancement of technology in the twenty-first century, if we do not ponder upon how we can catch up with the time, we are doomed to be eliminated. Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe’s creative puppetry may find a new path for Taiwanese puppet show. Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe made its first shot in the exhibition in Cultural Affairs Bureau of Chiayi City in 2011. The beautiful puppets caught attention instantly with many visitors visiting the exhibition. The successful step encouraged the team. They then accepted invitation from Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Stores and gathered their fans. Without performance and no narration in a puppet show, the definition of a puppet show is thus questioned. Perhaps perceiving many similar questions, Samadhi Tang started to perform by having Gong Sun Chang Ger as their protagonist. So, Samadhi Tang has stepped back to the tradition. However, body without organ does not mean a deviation from the tradition. A true essence of body without organ is open up to all kind of possibilities even including the tradition. Samadhi Tang goes back to performance but exhibitions are kept on. In their exhibition, “all our puppets are touchable” said Teacher Xiaojing (2016). Even though the troupe needs to spend time cleaning the puppets, the troupe still continues their tenet. In the development of puppetry, Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe, in terms of Body without Organ, rejects traditional puppet performance and on the other hand, uncovers the possible growth with tradition. Acknowledgements In composing this paper, I am grateful to the sponsor from the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST 106-2632-h-160-002) as well as the information, photo sharing, and even mistake correction from Teacher Xiaojing from Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe. I am also thankful for Wallace Academic Editing’s proofreading.

Notes 1. In Chinese operas, roles are strictly classified. Shen denotes male characters, Dan signifies female characters, Jin refer to characters with extreme personalities, such as those who get irritated easily, Mo indicates old males, and Chou are clowns. All these characters have special facial expressions and can, thus, be easily identified. 2. In 2002, Pili Company’s The Legend of Sacred Stone was released in Japan. In 2006, a series of Pili’sWulin Warriors was broadcast on Cartoon Network in America.

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3. In 2014, Pili released a movie, The Arti: The Adventure Begins in which every character had his/her spokesman. However, this only received criticism such as “It is neither fish nor fowl” (March 15, 2015, Liberty Times Net ). 4. These three strata have a fixed focus in common. Organism ascertains the fixed functions of organs. Significance claims to be the focal point, and thus, insignificance is forgotten. By virtue of excluding non-subjectification, subjectification becomes the focus. Because all these strata seek a focus, they exclude differences, thereby hindering possible growth facilitated by differences. 5. Case Play (or Box play) earns its name from the puppets being put in a case. 6. All of the photos of puppets of Samadhi Tang are taken by the researcher in the exhibitions Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Stores in different districts of Taiwan in 2016. The researcher would like to show her appreciation for Samadhi Tang’s approval of sharing these puppet pictures in the paper. 7. The Four Buddha Kings are protectors of the earthly world. They are in charge of four different directions with different tools: Dhritarastra is in charge of the east direction by music; Virapaska, east, with a red rope; Vaisramana, north, with an umbrella; Vidradhaka, south, with a sword (Online, Angel Heart 2008). They have different looks in different areas and normally, they look like aged Buddha. However, Samadhi Tang makes them handsome men in different colors of outfit. 8. Jiang in mandarin means generals. Ba Jia Jang refers to the eight protectors beside gods. Guan Jiang Shou are also protectors of gods. However, Guan Jiang Shou is like the police of the underground world while Ba Jia Jang is like the police of the earthly world. Therefore, believers in Taiwan seldom worship Guan Jiang Shou.

References Angel Heart. Four Buddha Kings. 2008. June 27. Web. https://blog.xuite.net/ baoyuan_hj/twblog1/136700542-%E5%9B%9B%E5%A4%A7%E5%A4%A9% E7%8E%8B. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1988. A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Print. Liberty Times Net. 2015. Great loss of the arti: Audience said ‘It is neither fish nor fowl’, March 15. Xiaojing (Yen Renhong). 2013. Gong Sun Chang Ger, September 10. Web. myp aper.pchome.com.tw/trueshin/post/1325320655.

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Xiaojing (Yen Renhong). 2016. Introduction of Taiwanese Puppet Shows. A Speech at Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, October 3. Xiaojing (Yen Renhong). 2017. Interview in Messenger, Facebook, January 25.

CHAPTER 18

Engaged Buddhism, the Six P¯aramit¯as, and Yuanmen’s Collective Social-Charity Practices Su-Chen Wu

Buddhism has to do with your daily life, with your suffering and with the suffering of the people around you. You have to learn how to help a wounded child while still practicing mindful breathing…. Action should be meditation at the same time. ´ Ha.nh1 —Thích Nhât

Wu is currently an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures at Fo Guang University, Taiwan, and currently studying for a Ph.D. at the Graduate Institute of Religious Studies at National Chengchi University, Taiwan. S.-C. Wu (B) Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Fo Guang University, Jiaoxi, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8_18

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18.1

Introduction

Traditional Buddhism has had little to say about social concerns. Some observers may claim that the Buddhist emphasis on liberation from samsara (the cycle of birth and suffering) has been accompanied by a neglect of the mundane. They may associate Buddhism with turning inward, away from the world. As a result, Buddhism has been criticised for its promotion of detachment from society and for monks who engage only in dhy¯ ana 2 (Neusner and Chilton 2005). As Christopher Queen has also observed, “Buddhists have been seen as passive and otherworldly because they avoid suffering by detaching themselves from the desires of the material world” (Queen 2000: 81). As a result, many people think that Buddhists have no deep motivation to work for social justice. However, many others argue that Buddhist teachings provide a strong impetus for active involvement in alleviating the world’s suffering. What is the relationship between Buddhist practice and social engagement? What are the social implications of a Buddhist perspective? Buddhist practices and social engagement need each other since cultivation in the spiritual aspect necessarily includes social engagement. In my view, some fundamental Buddhist teachings, such as the six p¯ aramit¯ as (also known as the “six perfections”), are generally understood as important for our personal religious practice related to social engagement. I believe that Buddhist practice and social engagement are different aspects of the same developmental process. Each influences and interweaves with the other. In recent years, engaged Buddhism has grown to become a sub-field of Buddhist academic study and has spread to Buddhist communities throughout the world. The Vietnamese Thi`ên Buddhist teacher ´ Ha.nh is the founder of the engaged Buddhist movement. Thích Nhât He became a dharma teacher at the age of forty, writes articles and books, and edits magazines and a journal to “promote the idea of a ´ Ha.nh 1998c: 7). He coined the humanistic, unified Buddhism” (Nhât term “engaged Buddhism” in the 1960s (Yarnall 2003: 286). Engaged Buddhism illustrates “the rise of political activism and social service by Buddhist communities and organisations in Asia and the West since the 1950s. Paralleling a global increase of political involvement by religious groups within the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu traditions, engaged Buddhists have supported campaigns for conflict resolution,

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human rights, economic development, national self-determination, and environmental protection.”3 This description makes clear that engaged Buddhism refers to Buddhists seeking ways to apply insight from dharma teachings to alleviate suffering and injustice in the social, political, and ´ Ha.nh’s engaged Buddhism is also an actuenvironmental realms. Nhât alisation of the six p¯aramit¯as from the Lotus S¯ utra.4 Set in a vast and fantastical cosmic setting, the Lotus S¯ utra places emphasis on doing whatever is needed to serve and compassionately care for others. In his book ´ Ha.nh has an insightful chapter The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Nhât on the six p¯aramit¯as, which he describes as “six techniques for happiness” ´ Ha.nh 1998a). He believes that the practice of the six p¯aramit¯as (Nhât is the basis of the bodhisattva’s path. The Yuanmen Taichi Martial Arts Center5,6 established in 2007 in Taiwan, offers its members tai chi chuan (often simply referred to as “tai chi” ) courses. In addition to its main focus on physical training through the courses, Yuanmen also has a series of charity and collective-practice cultivation events that its members participate in regularly with the purpose of helping members acquire physical well-being, internal tranquillity, stability of character, and a sense of blessedness through social engagements. Some of Yuanmen’s events are a response to the suffering of others in Taiwanese society, demonstrating the spirit of the six p¯aramit¯as and the social application of Buddhist ´ Ha.nh’s engaged Buddhism . teachings as described in Nhât ´ Ha.nh’s The objective of this study is to discuss the practices of Nhât engaged Buddhism and the actualisation of the six p¯aramit¯as by Yuanmen’s charity and collective-practice events. The research applies sociological and analytical study methods. I have observed that all collectivepractice events organised by Yuanmen actualise the six p¯aramit¯as and ´ Ha.nh’s engaged Buddhism, which stresses manifest the spirit of Nhât the combination of Buddhist religious practice and social engagement. Yuanmen’s collective social-charity work leads its members on the path of self-cultivation towards the goal of self-enhancement. This study discusses this spirit and demonstrates how Yuanmen’s events comply with it. No other studies have focused on the close relationship between engaged Buddhism and its actualisation of the practice of the six p¯aramit¯as. By Yuanmen’s example in Taiwan, I have concluded that promoting one’s self-cultivation and his/her own welfare requires the cultivation of altruistic virtue and being involved in social-charity work.

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18.2

Literary Review

The movement of engaged Buddhism is well-studied, including research by many religious scholars. Scholars from diverse cultural backgrounds have offered a variety of studies on engaged Buddhism with many different perspectives. For example, the 1988 essay collection The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism, edited by Fred Eppsteiner, examines a range of topics related to engaged Buddhism. The essays illustrate how one may apply Buddhist ideas and awareness to one’s work, relationships, and social action. Sulak Sivaraksa’s 1988 essay: “A Socially Engaged Buddhism” insists that Buddhism should play an active role in the political and social affairs of Thailand, Asia, and the world. He portrays the future of an ideal society, delineates different development possibilities for a sustainable socioeconomic order. He also displays Buddhist values that can be integrated into such a model. Kenneth Kraft edited the book: Inner Peace, World Peace: Essays on Buddhism and Nonviolence (1992), which is a collection of critical essays by scholars and practitioners of engaged Buddhism. Bernard Glassman’s book: Bearing Witness: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Making Peace in 1998 displaying a Zen Roshi’s experiences and experiments in social engagement. Sulak Sivaraksa, Pipob Udomittipong, and Chris Walker co-edited Socially Engaged Buddhism for the New Millennium: Essays in Honor of the Ven. Phra Dhammapitaka (Bhikkhu P.A. Payutto), published on Payutto’s 60th birthday in 1999, as a collection of essays that deal with a variety of issues relating to socially engaged Buddhism. Numerous contemporary issues, including Buddhist responses to ecological degradation, economic globalisation, and development, questions of ethics, etc., have been explored in this book. Engaged Buddhism in the West, published in 2000, records Western Buddhist environmentalism in the late 1990s. The book portrays the evolution of engaged Buddhism, including its history, leadership, and teachings. Issues, such as race, gender, violence, peace, homelessness, and the environment, were addressed. The activism ´ Ha.nh, Bernard of renowned leaders and organisations, such as Nhât Glassman, Joanna Macy, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and the Free Tibet Movement were explored in this book. Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King co-edited the collection: Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia in 1996. This collection is the first scholarly treatment of engaged Buddhism, surveying nine movements. Queen also edited the book: Engaged Buddhism in the West (2000), which is

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a comprehensive treatment of eighteen movements in North America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. In 2003, Queen further edited the book Action Dharma: New Studies in Engaged Buddhism to trace the rise of social service and political activism in Buddhism in Asia and the West. Most papers on engaged Buddhism place emphasis on many social issues and concerns worldwide, while very few of them explore the close relationship between engaged Buddhism and its actualisation through the practice of the six p¯aramit¯as.

18.3

´ Hanh’s Engaged Buddhism Thích Nhât .

´ Ha.nh has eloquently argued that engaged Buddhism is consisNhât tent with earlier Buddhist traditions and particularly suited to the world of today. In his eyes, the very essence (or spirit) of Buddhism involves a commitment to social engagement. He describes the basic tenets of engaged Buddhism in this way: “Engaged Buddhism is just Buddhism. If you practice Buddhism in your family, in society, it is engaged Buddhism” (1989: 22). Currently living in Vietnam, he is the founder of nine monastic communities, including the Plum Village Monastery in France. In Saigon, he witnessed suffering during the Vietnam War. When so many nearby villages were being bombed, he offered his method for sharing the prajñ¯ a and compassion advocated by Buddhist teachings within a social context: Along with my monastic brothers and sisters, I had to decide what to do. Should we continue to practice in our monasteries, or should we leave the dhy¯ana halls in order to help the people who were suffering under the bombs? After careful reflection, we decided to do both—to go out and help people and to do so in mindfulness. We called it engaged Buddhism . Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting…. We must be aware of the real problems of the world. Then, with mindfulness, we will know what to do and what not to do to ´ Ha.nh 1991: 91) be of help. (Nhât

Thus, he established engaged Buddhism . For him, to be “engaged” in the Buddhist sense means to be involved in society’s various social, political, economic, etc., institutions and systems. He explained that Buddhists should be involved in the issues of the world and with life in the present moment. He puts the teachings of the Buddha into practice in responding

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to problems in the world. In an interview with Queen, Glassman gives us ´ Ha.nh and Sivaraksa’s sentiments. Glassman asks, a Zen echo to Nhât ´ “How did [the Buddha] benefit mankind by sitting in dhy¯ana?” [Nhât Ha.nh] answers his own question: “This is a problem with the term ‘engaged Buddhism’ in a broad sense…. Anything one is doing to make themselves whole in their own life, or realizing the Way, or becoming enlightened—whatever term you would use—these are all involved in service, because if we realize the oneness of life, then each person is serving every other person and is reducing suffering. (Queen 2000: 104)

´ Ha.nh stresses that enlightenment, after all, In this interview, Nhât includes realising that we are part of the world and non-dual with it. He states that people should see the world through the eye of the dharma and respond emphatically and actively with compassion. Consequently, his engaged Buddhism places emphasis on the need for compassion to be expressed through action by serving others. By deep insight into the nature of individual and social suffering, Buddhist practice cultivates the qualities of compassion that sustain a life of service. Keeping this in mind, people will replace the aim of personal liberation with the motivation to actively pursue the benefit of all sentient beings. The liberation ´ Ha.nh’s of ourselves and the liberation of others are inseparable. Nhât engaged Buddhism is compatible with the modern world. To show ´ Ha.nh’s altruistic virtue, Martin Luther King, Jr. nomirespect to Nhât nated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, claiming, “His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”7

18.4

´ Hanh’s Order of Interbeing Thích Nhât .

´ Ha.nh discussed the importance In the interview with Glassman, Nhât of realising the oneness of life, which has been illustrated by a movement he initiated, the Order of Interbeing (tiephien). In the mid-1960s, ´ Ha.nh established this worldwide movement8 which deals with Nhât major human conflicts through ancient Buddhist teachings. It centres on extending Buddhist thought and practice to promote peace and social responsibility. In addition, he combined the prefix “inter” with the verb “be” to create a new verb, “inter-be,” to express the connectedness of all

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´ Ha.nh 1988: 3).9 In his things as taught by engaged Buddhism (Nhât words, we all “inter-are.” In his poem “Interrelationship,” we read, You are me, and I am you./Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?/You cultivate the flower in yourself,/so that I will be beautiful./I transform the garbage in myself,/so that you will not have to suffer./I support you;/you support me./I am in this world to offer you peace;/you are in this world to bring me joy.10

From the angle of “inter-areness,” we are all the same. Rather than you and I being opposed to each other, both of us are, in our own ways, complete manifestations of the whole universe. One has to realise his/her non-duality with others and integrate that realisation into the way he/she lives. In this sense, all discrimination is to be overcome. What is going ´ Ha.nh on in the world is also going on within us, and vice-versa. Nhât describes the reality of individuals as a radical integration of thought and body, person and community, and person and nature. He invites us to consider a piece of paper: If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper.… If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say ´ Ha.nh 1991: 95) that the cloud and the paper inter-are. (Nhât

This is the system of interpenetration in Buddhism developed by the China-initiated Huayan school to be linked with the term “interbeing.” According to Buddhist teachings, life is an intricate web of interconnections, which means that human beings are all responsible for each other. The metaphor of Indra’s net of jewels plays an essential role in the philosophy of the Huayan school (Cook 1977: 2). Indra’s net of jewels is employed to portray an interpenetration (Sanskrit: yuganaddha) of microcosmos and the macrocosmos (Odin 1982: 16–17). Everything conditions and is conditioned by all else. Constructed self-identity is a ´ delusion because it obscures one’s interdependence with others. Nhât Ha.nh founded the Order of Interbeing in the Rinzai lineage of Zen Buddhism.11 He proclaims the objective of the Order is “to realize the spirit of the Dharma in early Buddhism, as well as in the development

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of that spirit through the history of the Sangha, and its life and teachings in all Buddhist traditions” (Queen 2000: 40). The movement is based on “four spirits”: “the spirit of nonattachment from views; the spirit of direct experimentation on the nature of interdependent origination through dhy¯ana; the spirit of appropriateness; and the spirit of skillful means” (Queen 2000: 40). A true dharma practice will flow from the understanding of the complete yet complicated interdependence of ´ Ha.nh’s all life. These four spirits are the religious scaffolding for Nhât movement. He states, “The aim of the Order is to actualize Buddhism by studying, experimenting with, and applying Buddhism in modern life ´ Ha.nh 1998b: with a special emphasis on the bodhisattva ideal” (Nhât 105). Bodhisattvas do not sacrifice or delay their own awakening to help others; they are deepening and integrating their awakening by learning to live in such a selfless way. They devote themselves to relieving the world’s sufferings because spiritual liberation includes realising that each of us is ´ Ha.nh’s non-dual with the world, which complies with the spirit of Nhât Order.

´ Hanh’s Engaged Buddhism, 18.5 Nhât . ¯ ¯ ¯ and the Six Paramit as the Lotus Sutra, ´ Ha.nh’s realisation of the oneness of the whole world is demonNhât strated by his Order, and his engaged Buddhism is an actualisation of the six p¯aramit¯as from the Lotus S¯ utra. In his book Opening the Heart of the Cosmos: Insights on the Lotus S¯ utra, he claims, “The Six P¯aramit¯as are very concrete means for us to cross over the sea of suffering to the ´ shore of freedom from craving anger envy despair and delusion” (Nhât Ha.nh 2003: 175). The six p¯aramit¯as (“six perfections”) are an example of Buddhist ethical and social engagement in the world of suffering. The Lotus S¯ utra, whose full title literally translates as “s¯ utra on the white lotus of the sublime dharma,” is one of the most popular and influential Mahayana s¯utras in East Asian Buddhism (Shields 2013: 512). It is believed to have been written in the first or second century. According to Paul Williams, “For many East Asian Buddhists since early times the Lotus S¯ utra contains the final teaching of the Buddha, complete and sufficient for salvation” (Williams 2009: 149). The word “lotus” in the title symbolises the purity of Buddhahood, blooming in the midst of our ordinary lives just as a lotus blossoms in muddy pond water. It also represents

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the bodhisattva, who is rooted in earthly mud yet flowers above the water utra, in the open air of enlightenment (Reeves 2008: 1). Through this s¯ Shakyamuni expounds the ultimate truth of life to which he was enlightened. In Buddhism, the p¯aramit¯as refer to the perfection or culmination of certain virtues, which purify karma and help Buddhist practitioners on the path to enlightenment.12 The p¯aramit¯as need to be continuously cultivated and perfected as part of a bodhisattva’s practice over the long course of his/her spiritual development. The Lotus S¯ utra reads: To those who sought the s´r¯avaka vehicle, he expounded the Dharma in accordance with the Four Noble Truths, ferried them from birth, old age, illness, and death, and ultimately led them to nirvana. To those who sought the pratyekabuddha vehicle, he expounded the Dharma in accordance with the twelve-linked chain of dependent origination. To the bodhisattvas he expounded the Dharma in accordance with the six perfections, with reference to the highest, complete enlightenment, and led them to the Buddha’s prajñ¯a. (Lotus S¯ utra: 265)

The p¯aramit¯as play an integral role in the cultivation and actualisation of prajñ¯a and compassion in daily life. In the s¯utra’s 15th chapter, “Bodhisattvas Emerging from the Earth,” the great number of bodhisattvas from other realms who came to hear Shakyamuni preach in the ceremony in the air hope to receive the Buddha’s permission to be the ones to propagate the dharma in the perilous era to come (Murano 1967: 50–51). The bodhisattva ideal in Mahayana Buddhism emphasises the union of prajñ¯a and compassion: The bodhisattva vehicle is founded upon developing the bodhi mind, the mind that aspires to awakening, and wishes to benefit others and liberate the world. The ultimate goal of this practice is to cultivate the supreme happiness of prajñ¯a and compassion and to liberate all sentient beings through the practice of the six perfections and all modes of liberation. (Hsing Yun 2015: 55)

According to Hsing Yun, bodhisattvas hold an altruistic bodhi-mind as the foundation of their path. The spirit of the bodhisattva precepts is the vow to benefit others. It replaces the aim of personal liberation with the motivation to actively pursue the benefit of all sentient beings. It is clear that prajñ¯a and compassion are the primary characteristics of a

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bodhisattva, an enlightened being. The six p¯aramit¯as are an integral part of the gradual path in the training of a bodhisattva. The Lotus S¯ utra identifies the p¯aramit¯as as “giving (d¯ ana), good conduct (´s¯ıla), perseverance (ks.¯ anti), effort (v¯ırya), meditation (dhy¯ana), and wisdom (prajñ¯a)” (Lotus S¯ utra: 241). D¯ana is the giving of oneself; s¯ıla, proper conduct; ks.¯anti, patience and endurance; v¯ırya, diligence; dhy¯ana, concentration; and prajñ¯a, insight (Bodhi, Bhikkhu 2007: 300).13 Among all the sacred teachings expounded by the Buddha over the course of his lifetime, the s¯ utra is the highest authority on the practice of the six p¯aramit¯as as the way to the immediate attainment of enlightenment. It reads: I have explained that, for this reason, after the Tath¯agata’s parinirv¯an.a those who preserve and recite this S¯ utra, and explain it to others, who copy it or move others to copy it and who pay it homage to it no longer have to build stupas, monasteries, or erect chambers for the monks, or revere the sangha. How much less do those who preserve this S¯ utra and practice the perfections of giving (d¯ana), good conduct (´s¯ıla), perseverance (ks.¯anti), effort (v¯ırya), meditation (dhy¯ana), and wisdom (prajñ¯a) need to do so! Their merit is the highest, immeasurable and limitless. It is immeasurable and limitless in the same way that space is immeasurable and limitless in the ten directions—east, west, south, north, the four intermediate directions, and the zenith and nadir—and they will thus quickly obtain omniscience. (Lotus S¯ utra: 241)

The six p¯aramit¯as have been indicated as the bodhisattva practice directed at Mahayana enlightenment. Those who walk the Buddhist path must put the p¯aramit¯as into true use. This path involves the dedication of a bodhisattva to postpone his/her enlightenment in order to save all other beings from suffering. In this paper, I will illustrate how the Yuanmen Taichi Martial Arts Center’s charity and collective social-charity events in Taiwan are a response to the suffering of others in Taiwanese society, which demonstrates the spirit of the six p¯aramit¯as and the social application of Buddhist ´ Ha.nh’s engaged Buddhism . Firstly, I will teachings as described in Nhât briefly introduce Yuanmen. It was established in 2007 in Taiwan with the purpose of promoting tai chi. The centre mainly offers its members physical training courses in tai chi but also has a series of charity and collective social-charity events that its members participate in regularly.

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Through these events, Yuanmen looks to help its members acquire physical well-being, internal tranquillity, stability of character, and a sense of blessedness. As seen on Yuanmen’s website, events it conducts include donating rice and coffins to people in need, providing vegetarian meals to the homeless once a week, helping animal shelters quarterly, making quarterly pilgrimages to worship, etc.14 Yuanmen conducts these events through collective v¯ırya and practice with the hope of bringing positive energy and sustainable influences to the world. Below, I will demonstrate how the spirit of the six p¯aramit¯as is practised at Yuanmen’s events.

¯ ¯ 18.6 Dana Paramit a¯ and Yuanmen’s Charity Events As previously explained, d¯ana refers to true or perfect generosity of spirit. As the first p¯aramit¯a, it is critical. Generosity is the cure for greed and miserliness. It emphasises being freely generous without any self-oriented motivation. In the Lotus S¯ utra, Bodhisattva Manjushri cultivated this p¯aramit¯a. He was a teacher of Bodhisattva Maitreya, who was known as the “Seeker of Fame” due to his worldly pursuits. But by his meritorious deeds of generosity through charitable work and philanthropy, Maitreya was nonetheless able to attain Buddhahood: That is why he was called Ya´sask¯ama, ‘Fame Seeker.’ But because he had also planted various roots of good merit, he was able to meet innumerable hundreds of thousands of myriads of kot.is of buddhas whom he rendered homage to, honored, revered, and praised. (Lotus S¯ utra: 15)

In an essay on the practice of d¯ana, Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi notes that it is considered the foundation of spiritual development. “In the teaching of the Buddha … the practice of d¯ana claims a place of special eminence, one which singles it out as being in a sense the foundation and seed of spiritual development” (Bodhi 1990). The practice of d¯ana could be broadly put as there being no limit to what one can give, be it time, presence, money, or even just words of praise and encouragement. In Taiwan, the Yuanmen Taichi Martial Arts Center has held charity rice events every month since December 2, 2007. People at Yuanmen have thus practised d¯ana, looking to relieve the suffering of people in need and make them happy. The rice is donated to the Hong Hua Children’s Orphanage15 ; elderly people who suffer from dementia, have

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disabilities, or live alone and are under the wing of the Huashan Social Welfare Foundation16 ; and patients in vegetative states being cared for by the Genesis Social Welfare Foundation.17 In addition, beginning in 2013, based on the spirit of ecological concern and care for the planet, Yuanmen has been providing organic rice to people young and old who are alone or suffer from disabilities. The rice is brought to special-needs and educational/care centres organised by Catholic foundations throughout Taiwan. Moreover, in June 2013, Yuanmen initiated a charity event in cooperation with the Hong Hua Charity Organization for donating coffins to poor families.18 Yuanmen’s Meal-Boxes for the Homeless program began on January 11, 2017. Every Friday at noon, Yuanmen works with the Wanhua District Department of Social Affairs (on Wuzhou Street in Taipei City) in providing vegetarian meal-boxes for the poor and homeless.19 Yuanmen also began its quarterly Food for Stray Animals and Cleaning Homes for Stray Animals events in October 2016. By participating in these events, people at Yuanmen express lovingkindness, charity, and benevolence, that is, a sincere desire to benefit others without the expectation of reward or recognition.

´ ila Paramit ¯ 18.7 S¯ a¯ and Yuanmen’s Vegetarian Support The second p¯aramit¯a is s¯ıla, which is upholding the precepts of Buddhism, such as abstaining from performing acts that are harmful to others. “This perfection is important for the bodhisattva to develop because it leads to better rebirths in which they can further their development, and because not engaging in misdeeds results in a calm mind undisturbed by guilt, or eventually even the mental dispositions that lead to negative actions” (Powers 1995: 100). In the teachings of Buddhism, the most concise list of guidelines for proper conduct is the Five Precepts: abstinence from killing, stealing, unwholesome sexual conduct, false speech, and intoxication of the mind20 (Pañca-Sila 2005). Upholding the Five Precepts is ´ Ha.nh tells us one of the methods of practising the virtue of s¯ıla. Nhât that the precepts help keep us from doing things that harm our bodies and minds:

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The trainings remind us to consume mindfully and refrain from doing things that can harm our body and mind. They help us refrain from harming others and from using the kind of language that causes disharmony and division and brings about suffering. The practice of [s¯ıla] is a ´ Ha.nh 2003: 182) path to greater understanding and compassion. (Nhât

Abstinence from killing, besides its obvious meaning, implies refraining ´ from producing discord both in our lives and the lives of others. Nhât Ha.nh states, “Do not kill. Do not let others kill. Find whatever means ´ Ha.nh 1996: 98). The possible to protect life and prevent war” (Nhât p¯aramit¯a of keeping the precepts is related to bodhisattva precepts that are based on the Mahayana spirit of compassion. A person should not do harm to any human or animal. The essence of training related to keeping precepts is to make every effort to respect and protect life so as to continuously move in the direction of peace. An important part of personal spiritual practice is commitment to non-violence. The promotion ´ Ha.nh 2002). In of non-violence is one of the tenets of Buddhism (Nhât Buddhism this precept has always been understood to apply broadly to include all sentient beings. Today the imminent collapse of many ecosystems requires a more ecologically engaged attempt. Some of Yuanmen’s charity events, such as the giving of vegetarian meals, which encourages people to be vegetarian, correspond with this essence, highlighting the need to make a personal commitment not to kill animals for food whenever alternatives are available. Moreover, Yuanmen supports organic rice cultivation within the spirit of abstaining from the taking of life of any sentient being while farming.

18.8

¯ Ksanti Paramit a¯ and Yuanmen’s Physical Training in Nature

The third p¯aramit¯a is ksanti, which is the ability to withstand. It is the ability to endure and exercise forbearance. It allows one to endure hardship on the path to enlightenment while keeping his/her commitment to liberate all sentient beings in sight: “To bear all manner of hardship over the course of the path to Buddhahood without ever losing commitment to liberate all beings from sam . s¯ara. Not to be overwhelmed by the profound nature of reality but instead to be receptive or acquiescent to it” (Buswell and Lopez 2013: 446). This kind of patience encompasses all favourable and unfavourable conditions. Take physical endurance, for

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example. It implies patience with regard to the environment, such as not being disturbed by such discomforts as cold, heat, hunger, or illness. In February 2012, Yuanmen launched a series of events named Homage to the Mountains and Rivers of Taiwan. The activities are held to pay homage to the divine through the practice of tai chi each month in a certain spot among the mountains and rivers of Taiwan. During these events, participants train their physical endurance since, while training outdoors, they have to be patient with such weather as extreme cold in winter, scorching heat in summer, and unexpected heavy rainfalls. It is a form of endurance training that yields forbearance.

18.9

¯ V¯irya Paramit a¯ and Yuanmen’s Mountain Pilgrimage

The v¯ırya p¯aramit¯a is about diligence, one of the most important parts to achieving success in any endeavour. It is about making a courageous, ceaseless effort to achieve a goal. The term “v¯ırya” refers to an untiring practice on the Buddhist path both physically and mentally. This twofront effort entails physical and mental devotion in one’s practice of the other five p¯aramit¯as. Buddhists believe that the journey to Buddhahood is long and arduous, so Buddhist practitioners travel their paths with diligence in order to attain complete awakening. In chapter nine of the Lotus S¯ utra, Shakyamuni Buddha discusses his time as the King of Emptiness ¯ Buddha. Both he and Ananda concurrently conceived the aspiration for supreme perfect enlightenment. The former attained Buddhahood earlier than the latter by virtue of his diligence. Having perceived the thoughts of the bodhisattvas present, Shakyamuni responded: O sons of a virtuous family! The thought of highest, complete enlighten¯ ment once awoke simultaneously in Ananda and myself in the presence of ¯ the Buddha Dharmagagan¯abhyudgatar¯aja. Ananda always wanted to hear a great deal about the Dharma, and I always made diligent v¯ırya. For this reason I was shortly able to attain highest, complete enlightenment, ¯ whereas Ananda preserves my teaching and in the future will uphold the treasure house of the Dharma of all the buddhas. He will lead, inspire, and perfect the bodhisattvas. Since this was his original vow, he has obtained this prediction! (Lotus S¯ utra: 153)

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¯ Different from Ananda, who always preferred listening to the dharma, Shakyamuni always made diligent v¯ırya and then shortly after was enlightened. To practise v¯ırya, one must first properly develop his/her character and courage. Bodhisattvas do not fear obstacles; instead, they diligently develop courage, practise the dharma, and bring joy and benefits to others. With diligence, one will persevere in helping sentient beings regardless of whatever calamity or obstacle may be encountered. Yuanmen’s quarterly Mountain Pilgrimage allows participants to practise virya. Since 2007, Yuanmen has been holding the Mountain Pilgrimage, an event for prayer and calming the mind at the Chengtian Chan Temple in Tucheng City, every January, April, July, and October. It includes a series of three steps and one prostration to practise endurance. The training is used to focus a practitioner’s awareness on his/her inner determination rather than on external authority. The Yuanmen website reads: The event includes a series of three steps and one prostration to practice endurance and concentration; a series of three steps and one prostration to train up our flexibility, humility, and capacity to let go; and a series of three steps and one prostration to cultivate moral living and mindfulness. A mountain pilgrimage is a process for calming and cleansing the mind and self-examination in which one learns to bend, kneel, and prostrate oneself in veneration of all nature…. On the journey of prostration and veneration, we also practice proper breathing and the moderation of our mental tempo.21

Through the pilgrimage, people at Yuanmen practise endurance and concentration. It is a process for practitioners to calm and clear their minds. The practice of diligence brings all virtues together, enabling one to overcome all obstacles in his/her path to enlightenment. Through the pilgrimage, people are practising v¯ırya.

¯ ¯ 18.10 Dhyana Paramit a¯ and Yuanmen’s Tai Chi Training Dhy¯ana is a discipline intended to cultivate the mind. In Buddhism, cultivation of the mind is of utmost importance because it enables one to develop profound prajñ¯a, which will guide one on the path to supreme perfect enlightenment.

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All of the other perfections are strengthened by the practice of dhy¯ana. Through these practices, one is said to be better able to practice nonattachment due to a recognition of the emptiness (sunyata) of all things, which in turn leads to a stronger ability to practice generosity, moral conduct, and patience. As well, through dhy¯ana, the practitioner develops a one-pointed mind that concentrates all of its energy into the task at hand, allowing them to accomplish tasks with vigor and focus. (Mitchell 2002: 114)

Great concentration is required to achieve clarity and insight. People practising at this level place great emphasis on samadhi and abide in it, taking ´ it to be liberation. In the Lotus S¯ utra, “Samatha … is a state in which the mind is focused only on one item, brought to rest, and not allowed to wander. When this is done, a deep calm pervades body and mind, a state of tranquility that must be experienced to be understood” (Gunaratana 2015: 194). Often what is experienced is the unity of body and mind, of the inner and outer environments, and of previous and future thoughts. This is often described as being one with the universe. Tai chi at Yuanmen teaches practitioners that focusing on breathing is the way to tranquilly unify the mind. When people are practising tai chi, they become aware of and strongly focused on breathing. They can then focus on the dhy¯ana and enter a state of contemplation. Through the practice of mentally focusing, one enters into a state of mindfulness of the body, sensation, and the mind.

¯ 18.11 Prajña¯ Paramit a¯ and Yuanmen’s Dharma Learning and Practice The sixth p¯aramit¯a is prajñ¯a, which is wisdom. In Mahayana Buddhism, prajñ¯a is mostly about escaping ignorance, the source of our suffering. Ignorance arises from self-attachment, that is, attachment to one’s own body, the extension of which is our concept of life span. It comes from the five skandhas. According to Bodhi, the five skandhas “are the building blocks that we typically use to construct our sense of personal identity; they are the things that we cling to as being ‘mine,’ ‘I,’ and ‘myself’” (2015: 22). Each of the skandhas is in fact empty—there is no abiding self at all. Bodhi describes training our prajñ¯a as the development of insight that allows us to see the true nature of existence, that is, seeing things as they really are.

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The training in prajñ¯a centres on the development of insight (vipassan¯abh¯avan¯a), a deep and comprehensive seeing into the nature of existence which fathoms the truth of our being in the only sphere where it is directly accessible to us, namely, in our own experience. (Bodhi 2012: 109)

Eradicating this self-attachment means transcending our illusions about the world. In this way, human beings can liberate themselves from the prison cell of egocentricity and from the greed, hatred, and delusion it engenders. Through practising the six p¯aramit¯as, one breaks away from his/her self-attachment, giving rise to prajñ¯a, which will sever the attachment to the physical body. In 2017, Yuanmen established two groups on LINE (a communication app popular in East Asia): Reciting the Name of Buddha and Reciting a S¯ utra Daily. Through these two groups, Yuanmen encourages participants to cultivate the habit of reciting s¯utras on a daily basis. In addition, the Yuanmen leader of the two groups offers a dharma talk each day. When people read and recite the Buddhist s¯ utras, they enhance their wisdom and gain a deeper understanding of the true dharma.

18.12

Conclusion

Buddhists have never accepted a dualistic split between the spiritual and social domains. To engage in a spiritual life necessarily includes social ´ Ha.nh’s Engaged Buddhism is a solid dharma practice. engagement. Nhât “Engaged Buddhism entails both inner and outer work. We must change the world, we must change ourselves, and we must change ourselves in order to change the world” (Kraft 1999: 10). The teachings of the six p¯aramit¯as from the Lotus S¯ utra are antidotes for mental afflictions. SGI President Daisaku Ikeda has stated that the Lotus S¯ utra is a tool of empowerment. It “teaches us that the inner determination of an individual can transform everything; it gives ultimate expression to the infinite potential and dignity inherent in each human life.”22 In reflecting on Buddhism and social engagement, Paula Green refers to Kato Shonin, the Buddhist monk who is leading the group of walkers, he “believes that since the Buddha turned the Wheel of Dharma on this earth, this earth is where we obtain his teachings and reach enlightenment.… If individuals

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practice the Lotus S¯ utra correctly, Shonin says, ‘life itself is engagement and we do not need to separate into engaged and non-engaged Buddhism.…’ Every moment of life is engagement; every moment of life is Buddhist” (2000: 153–154). Yuanmen has developed useful means for embodying compassion as its members act to serve the homeless, animals, the deceased, etc. Those who participate in Yuanmen’s collective socialcharity events exhibit a solid dharma practice. All these events are related to social issues in real-life situations. Yuanmen tackles social issues by working to improve society, acting constructively, and helping in useful and skilful ways. Staying in touch with the reality of suffering keeps one sane and nourishes his/her wellsprings of understanding and compassion. Yuanmen requires its charity event participants not only to focus on the service but also on Buddhist self-cultivation with the help of collective practice. The primary Buddhist position on social action is one of total activism, an unswerving commitment to complete self-transformation and complete world transformation. This activism becomes fully explicit in the Universal Vehicle (Mahayana).... But it is also compellingly implicit in the Individual Vehicle (Hinayana) in both the Buddha’s actions and his teachings…. Thus, it is squarely in the center of all Buddhist traditions to bring basic principles to bear on actual contemporary problems to develop ethical, even political guidelines for action. (Thurman 1983: 46)

The bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism emphasises the union of prajñ¯a and compassion and replaces the aim of personal liberation with the motivation to actively pursue the benefit of all sentient beings. Bodhisattvas sometimes need to manifest their compassion in more socially engaged ways. “Religion means deep commitment, and personal transformation. To be of help we must become more selfless and less selfish. To do this, we have to take more and more moral responsibility in society. This is the essence of religion, from ancient times right up to the present” (Sivaraksa 1988: 12). I have observed that Yuanmen’s collective social-charity events embody the spirit of the six p¯aramit¯as and manifest the spirit of engaged Buddhism, thus leading its members along the path of self-cultivation and towards the path of enlightenment.

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Notes 1. This quotation from Malkin, John’s paper: “In Engaged Buddhism, Peace Begins with You.” Lion’s Roar: Buddhist Wisdom for Our Time. (July 1, 2003). Available: https://www.lionsroar.com/in-engaged-buddhismpeace-begins-with-you/ [Accessed 29 Jan. 2019]. 2. Dhy¯ana, in Indian philosophy, is a stage in the process of meditation leading to Nirv¯an.a. Available: https://www.britannica.com/topic/ dhyana/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2015]. 3. See Encyclopedia.com. Available: https://www.encyclopedia.com/enviro nment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/engaged-buddhism [Accessed 22 Mar. 2020]. 4. In this paper, all citations from The Lotus S¯ utra would be quoted from Tsugunari Kubo and Akira Yuyama’s translation in 2007. 5. In my study, Yuanmen Taichi Martial Arts Center’s social practices are mainly explored and analyzed. For all information referring to Yuanmen in this paper, please take reference to its website: https://www.yuanme n.tw/ [Accessed 19 June 2019]. ´ 6. See: King, M. L., Jr. (1967, January 25). Nomination of Thích Nhât Ha.nh for the Nobel Peace Prize. Retrieved from the Hartford Web Publishing website. Available: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/ 45a/025.html/ [Accessed 15 Oct. 2020]. 7. Please take reference to the Editor’s introduction by Fred Eppsteiner (1997) in Interbeing: fourteen guidelines for engaged Buddhism by Thích ´ Ha.nh. Nhât ´ Ha.nh’s 8. For a full explanation of the term “interbeing,” see Thích Nhât Being Peace, pp. 83–102. ´ 9. From Call Me by My True Names—The Collected Poems of Thích Nhât Ha.nh, Parallax Press, 2005. 10. For more information, see: http://www.payer.de/neobuddhismus/neo bud0204.htm. 11. See: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Paramita [Accessed 30 May 2020]. 12. Bodhi, Bhikkhu (2007-12-01). The Discourse on the All-embracing Net of Views: The Brahmaj¯ ala Sutta and Its Commentaries. Buddhist Publication Society. p. 300. 13. See: Yuanmen Taichi Martial Arts Center. https://www.yuanmen.tw/ [Accessed 2 Jan. 2019]. 14. See: http://hong-hua.blogspot.com/ [Accessed 12 Dec. 2020]. 15. See: https://give2asia.org/huashan/ [Accessed 7 July 2019]. 16. The Genesis Social Welfare Foundation (G.S.W.F).

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17. “Those who donate coffins will receive copies of the deceased’s lowincome status certificate, certificate of death, and household registry. Then local public offices, public service centres, social service departments of major hospitals, social affairs bureaus, and social welfare centres will arrange the related official documentation/referrals. Each coffin donation is NTD5,500: NTD5,000 of that will be given to the family of the deceased for the purpose of paying funeral expenses (including fees for the cremation, urn, and coffin), while the remaining NTD500 will go to the Hong Hua Charity Organization for administrative fees” (from Yuanmen website). This passage is author’s own translation. 18. “It has been reported that people become homeless for many different reasons, and the fault does not usually lie with just the individual alone; it is often a result of interaction between the individual and the social structure. However, Taiwan’s social welfare system is improving, and tolerance is increasing, which means people are becoming less apt to end up on the streets. Yuanmen looks to extend helping, accepting hands of action toward disadvantaged people of all types in Taiwan” (Yuanmen website). 19. See: Anguttara Nikaya 8:39. “The Five Precepts: pañca-sila,” Available at: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sila/pancasila. html [Accessed 22 July 2019]. 20. For more information, see the Yuanmen website. 21. See: https://www.sgi.org/about-us/buddhist-lineage/lotus-Sutra.html [Accessed 22 Jan. 2019].

Works Cited Bodhi, Bhikkhu, ed. 1990. Dana the practice of giving. Selected essays published by Buddhist Publication Society. The Wheel Publication No. 367/369. Bodhi, Bhikkhu. 2007. The discourse on the all-embracing net of views: The brahmaj¯ ala sutta and its commentaries. Buddhist Publication Society. Bodhi, Bhikkhu. 2012. The noble eightfold path. Kolkata: Maha Bodhi Book Agency. Bodhi, Bhikkhu. 2015. In the Buddha’s words. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications. Buswell, Robert E., Jr., and Donald S. Lopez Jr. 2013. The princeton dictionary of Buddhism. London: Princeton University Press. Cook, Francis H. 1977. Hua-Yen Buddhism: The jewel net of Indra. University Park and London: Penn State Press. Gunaratana, Bhante. 2015. Mindfulness in plain English. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications. Hsing Yun. 2015. Where is the way: Humanistic Buddhism for everyday life. Hacienda Heights, CA: Fo Guang Shan International Translation Center.

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Kraft, Kenneth. 1999. The wheel of engaged Buddhism: A new map of the path. New York, NY: Weatherhill. Mitchell, Donald W. 2002. Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist experience. New York: Oxford University Press. Murano, Sench¯ u. 1967. An outline of the Lotus S¯ utra. Contemporary Religions in Japan 8 (1): 50–51. Neusner, Jacob, and Bruce Chilton. 2005. Altruism in world religions. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. ´ Ha.nh, Thích. 1988. The heart of understanding: Commentaries on the Nhât prajnaparamita heart. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press. ´ Ha.nh, Thích. 1989. Buddhist Peace Fellowship Newsletter 11 (2, Summer): Nhât 22. ´ Ha.nh, Thích. 1991. Peace is every step: The path of mindfulness in everyday Nhât life, ed. Arnold Kotler. New York: Rider. ´ Ha.nh, Thích. 1996a. Being peace, ed., Arnold Kotler. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Nhât Press. ´ Ha.nh, Thích. 1998a. The heart of the Buddha’s teaching. Berkeley, CA: Nhât Parallax Press. ´ Ha.nh, Thích. 1998b. Interbeing: Fourteen guidelines for engaged Buddhism. Nhât Berkeley: Parallax Press. ´ Ha.nh, Thích. 1998c. Fragrant palm leaves: Journals, 1962–1966. Berkeley, Nhât CA: Parallax. ´ Ha.nh, Thích. 2002. Be free where you are. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press. Nhât ´ Ha.nh, Thích. 2003. Opening the heart of the cosmos: Insights on the Lotus Nhât S¯ utra. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press. Odin, Steve. 1982. Process metaphysics and Hua-Yen Buddhism: A critical study of cumulative penetration vs. interpenetration. Albany: SUNY Press. Powers, John. 1995. Introduction to tibetan Buddhism. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications. Queen, Christopher S., ed. 2000. Engaged Buddhism in the west. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications. Reeves, Gene. 2008. The Lotus S¯ utra: A contemporary translation of a Buddhist classic, trans. Gene Reeves. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Shields, James Mark. 2013. Critical Buddhism: Engaging with modern Japanese Buddhist thought. England: Ashgate. Sivaraksa, Sulak. 1988. Buddhism in a world of change. In The path of compassion: Writings on socially engaged Buddhism, ed. Fred Eppsteiner, 9–18. Berkeley: Parallax Press. Thurman, R.A.F. 1983. Guidelines for Buddhist social activism based on Nagarjuna’s jewel garland of royal counsels of royal counsels. The Eastern Buddhist 16 (Spring): 19–51.

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Williams, Paul. 2009. Mah¯ ay¯ ana Buddhism: The doctrinal foundations, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Yarnall, Thomas F. 2003. Engaged Buddhism: New and improved? Made in the USA of Asian materials. In Action dharma: New studies in engaged Buddhism, eds. Christopher Queen, Charles Prebish, and Damien Keown. London and New York: Routledge Curzon. Yuanmen Tai Chi Martial Arts Center. 2010. Available at https://www.yuanme n.tw/. Accessed 30 July 2019.

Index

A Abjection, 165, 176 Above Flame, 208, 211 Absorption, 51, 249 Acculturative indigenization, 201, 202 Aesthetics of accountability, 265, 267 Affect, 7, 163, 201, 230, 233–235, 237–239, 248, 266 Agamben, Giorgio, 236, 237, 248, 252–254, 257 Ahmed, Sarah, 178 Alaimo, Stacy, 212 Animality, 249–254 Animals, 7, 8, 222, 232, 234, 243–245, 247–255, 259, 277, 282, 287, 292, 294, 295, 301, 327, 329, 334 Anthropocentric, 7, 210, 214, 216, 217, 242, 243, 246, 250, 251, 253, 255, 256, 258 Anthropological machine, 7, 252–254, 258, 259 A person of noble character, 195 Aristotle, 32, 236

Arnett, J.J., 187 Artaud, Antonin, 303 Assemblage, 214, 230, 231, 263 A Thousand Plateau, 235, 301 Autonomy, 86–89, 99, 103, 188 Avidya, 43, 44 B Back stage space, 180 Baker, D., 110 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 263 Barad, Karen, 212 Bare life, 253, 257, 258 Baseball, 7, 227–239 Becoming, 25, 58, 59, 110, 113, 117, 143, 172, 175, 177, 195, 212, 213, 229, 233, 234, 236, 238, 245–247, 278, 322, 336 Being-with, being-together, 255 Beneficence, 188 Benevolence, 2, 3, 8, 15, 17–25, 27–30, 71, 74, 190, 191, 288, 328 Ben, meaning original, 201

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Giri and S.-C. Wu (eds.), Cross-Currents of Social Theorizing of Contemporary Taiwan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0684-8

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340

INDEX

Bennett, Jane, 212 Biopolitics, 258 Bodhi, Bhikkhu, 326, 327, 332, 333, 335 Bodhicitta, 38, 45 Body without organ, 8, 301–304, 306, 307, 309, 311, 312, 314 Book of Changes, Yijing, 202 Border-crossing, 242 Bourgeoise representative democracy, 100, 101 Buddha, 42–45, 282, 284, 315, 321, 324–326, 333, 334 Buddhism, 8, 36–46, 48–51, 60, 64, 65, 69, 199, 202, 277, 282, 293–295, 307, 318–326, 328, 329, 331–334 Buddhists, 3, 8, 9, 36, 37, 40, 42, 44–46, 48–51, 65, 199, 202, 275–278, 280, 282, 294, 296, 297, 318–326, 330, 333, 334 Buddhist Self-Enlightenment Theory, 3, 42, 43, 45, 48–52 Buxton, Nick, 118

C Cai, Bingcheng, 277, 281 Captivation, 248–250, 254 Casting-Taylor, Lucien, 264 Chang, C., 114 Chang, Kathryn Ya-Lan, 209, 214 Chang, W., 114, 115 Cheng, C., 114 Chen, M., 114 Chen, Pei-Yun, 209 Chen Shui-bian, 98 Chenzi, 14 Children’s and young adult literature, 157 China, 2, 4, 5, 8, 36, 59, 67, 71, 73, 83, 85, 97, 107, 109, 111,

117–119, 122, 124–126, 163, 164, 166, 167, 276, 282, 305 China Nationalist Party (KMT), 83 China Times Trade Union, 86, 89–93, 100, 102 Chinese culture, 3, 6, 36, 58–60, 66–71, 188, 189, 191, 193, 194, 196, 201 Chinese Indigenous Social Science Association (CISSA), 202 Chinese opera, 302, 305 Chin, Frank, 172 Chiu, Kuei-Fen, 209 Chou, Shiuhhuah Serena, 209 Chronotope, 263, 270, 271 Class-based (working-class) democracy, 94, 97, 100 Colonization, 163, 227, 229 Committee for Action of Labor Legislation (CALL), 4, 93–100, 102 Common sense, 109, 113, 115 Compassion, 3, 8, 18, 45, 46, 48, 50, 276, 282, 283, 293–295, 321, 322, 325, 329, 334 Confucian, Confucianism, 2, 6, 13–15, 17–23, 25–28, 30, 31, 36, 58–60, 65, 68–70, 73, 74, 77, 78, 116, 189–191, 193–200, 202, 307 Conscience, 27, 62, 74, 196, 197 Constructing culture-inclusive theories, 13 Coole, Diana, 213 Corey, G., 188, 189 Courage, 2, 16, 17, 25, 158, 238, 263, 331 Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA), 121, 122, 124–126 Culinary citizenship, 6, 174 Culinary narrative, 172, 174, 181 Cultivating oneself, 196, 197

INDEX

Cultivating oneself to give peace of mind to others, 195, 196 Cultural psychology, 35, 60, 188 Culture-inclusive perspective, 189 Culture-inclusive psychology, 6, 188 D D¯ana, 326, 327 Dangwai (黨外), 84, 85 Dao, 15–17, 25 Daodejing , 16 De, 15–17 Deconstruction, 306, 309 De Landa, Manuel, 212 Deleuze, Gilles, 7, 8, 173, 229–237, 239, 301–304 Delmendo, Lalaine C., 118 Democratic People’s Party (DPP), 84, 96–99, 136, 166 Derrida, Jacques, 247, 250–254 Desired self, 3 Deterritorialization, 301, 304, 309, 311 Discipline and Punish, 193 Disinhibitor ring, 255 Doctrine of dependent origination, 44 Douglass, Mary, 176 E Ecocriticism, 208, 211–213, 242–244 Ecological and environmental protection, 276, 294 Ecology, 209, 242, 258 Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), 117–119, 122 Embryology, 230 Emptiness, 44, 45, 254, 332 Enculturative indigenization, 202 Engaged Buddhism, 9, 318–324, 326, 334

341

Enlightenment, 48, 61, 70, 322, 325, 326, 329–331, 333, 334 Entanglement, 209, 211, 212, 220, 245, 246, 259 Environment (Unwelt ), 248 Epistemological, 13, 35, 36, 71, 137, 188, 247 Ethical duty, 189 Ethical self-cultivation, 194, 195, 197, 200, 201 Ethical system, 2, 17, 21, 27, 29 Everyone can be a political candidate and boss Movement , 93, 101, 103 Exterior action, 58, 59 F Feng, Pin-chia, 173 Feng, Zikai, 8, 276–282, 284–287, 290, 294, 296 Fidelity, 188–190 Five broad ways, 18 Flexible culinary citizenship, 6, 174 Fondness for learning, 25 Food pornography, 172 Foucault, M., 4, 109, 115, 116, 193, 258 Four Books of Confucianism, 197 Four dharmas of attraction, 45 Free Trade Agreement (FTA), 108, 111, 117, 118, 122, 123, 126, 127 Freud, Sigmund, 158 Frost, Samantha, 213 Fuller, D., 118, 124 G Gardner, Robert, 264 Gentleman’s doctrines, 72 Ginsberg, Faye, 265, 266 Goffman, Erving, 180 Gonoi, I., 108

342

INDEX

Gramsci, A., 109, 113 Grassroots democracy, 89, 94 Great Learning, 18 Gr, Zhao Guang, 276 Guattari, Felix, 8, 173, 233–235, 301–304 H Haecceity, 237 Haraway, Donna, 245, 247, 250, 252, 255, 256 Harvey, D., 111 He, harmony, 200 Heidegger, Martin, 7, 192, 193, 246–254 Helping professions, 188, 194, 202 Henrich, J., 188 Historical realism, 75–78 Ho, M., 108, 123 Hsia Lin-Ching, 87 Hsing Yun, 293, 325 Hsio R, 190 Hsueh, J., 114 Hsu, J., 114, 115 Huang, Ding-Ru, 210 Huang, Junxiong, Master, 313 Huat, C., 109 Human, 1, 7, 17, 22, 24, 25, 27–29, 40, 43, 49, 50, 59–61, 66, 73–76, 78, 85, 89, 134, 210–212, 216, 220, 233, 234, 241–247, 251–258, 264, 277, 294, 302, 304, 305, 329 Human exceptionalism, human exceptionalist, 246, 247, 254, 255, 258 Humanistic Buddhism, 8, 293, 295 Hwang, K.K., 2, 3, 13, 15, 20, 35–38, 40, 42, 50, 188, 192, 193, 202 Hwang Kwang-Kuo, 63, 68–70, 73, 77, 78

Hwang Kwang-Kuo Problem, 4, 70, 78 Hyperobjects, 209, 220

I Idea, 8, 20, 22, 23, 49, 50, 69, 73, 84, 88, 89, 100, 103, 109, 118, 123, 132, 135–137, 142, 145, 146, 149–151, 162, 167, 212, 231, 233, 244, 247, 248, 251, 252, 255, 276, 278, 282, 283, 293–295, 301, 302, 320 Impermanence, 44–46 Impotentiality, 236, 237 Indi-drama-different/citation, 230, 231 Indigenous counseling psychology, 188 Individuation, 230–232, 237, 239 Inextricably enmeshed, 212 Inner cultivation and exterior action, 58, 59 Internal saint and external king, 196, 197 Interstitial metamorphosis, 120, 122, 123 Inventing the original mind, 74 Iovino, Serenella, 208, 211–214, 220 Iterative intra-activity, 213

J Jeng Tsuen-Chyi, 84 Journey to the West , 309 Juan, Rose Hsiu-li, 209 Jun zi, 25, 29, 30 J¯ unzˇı, a gentleman, 195–198 Justice, 19, 20, 31, 85, 108, 111, 188, 189, 192, 318 Juxtapose, 220

INDEX

K Kano, 7, 229, 231–238 Karatani, K., 111 Karma, 43, 44, 325 Kitchener, K.S., 188 Kotz, D., 110–112 Kristeva, Julia, 5, 158, 164, 165, 176 Ks.¯ anti, 326 Kuang, C., 115 L Labor Movement, 4, 85, 86, 94–99, 101, 102 Labor Standards Act, 86, 96 Lee, Wei-Lin, 209 Left wing, 85, 94, 99, 101–103 Left-wing democracy, 102 Legal duty, 189 Leibniz, 192 Less-than-human, 7, 243, 258 Leviathan, 264–266, 271 Life Education, 8, 283, 284, 293–297 Liu, Ke-Hsiang, 209 Localization indigenization, 201 Lotus S¯ utra, 319, 324–327, 330, 332–334 Lowe, Lisa, 177 M Mandala Model of Self, 3, 40, 68, 202 Mandarin Chinese, 156, 163–165, 167 Mandela Model of Self, 36 Mannur, Anita, 172–174, 177, 181 Marriage migrants, 5, 156–158, 160–163, 167, 168, 171, 175, 176 Marsella, A.J., 188 Marxism, 84 Marx, Karl, 84

343

Massumi, Brian, 235 Master Bodhi, 278 Master Confucius, 191 Materialist, 212, 214, 216, 217 Mauss, Marcel, 263 Ma Ying-Jeou, 98 McLuhan, Marshall, 266, 272 Mencius, 74 Mengzi, 19, 21–23, 27, 28, 30 Metaphysical thinking, 192 Millions Spoiled Ballots, 97 Mind cultivation, 59, 65 Ming-Yi, Wu, 6, 7, 207, 214, 223 Modernization, 70, 228, 234 Morality, 8, 15, 16, 42, 50, 63, 190, 191 More-than-human, 241, 242, 246, 258, 259 Morton, Timothy, 209, 212, 220 Mo, Y., 115 Multiculturalism, 177, 178, 181 Multicultural love, 178, 181 Multiplicity, 211, 301 Murphy, Patrick, 243, 244

N Narrativity, 211–213 Natural way, 193 Nature, 14, 27, 37, 43, 45, 50, 74, 78, 99, 150, 159, 181, 197, 200, 208, 211, 212, 214, 219, 243, 244, 246, 255, 258, 282, 289, 295, 297, 322–324, 329, 332, 333 Nature writing, 209, 242–244 Neither unification nor independence, 95, 97 Neo-Confucianism, 36, 38, 58, 59, 65, 69 Neoliberalism, 111–113, 127 New language, 215, 216

344

INDEX

New Objectivity, 210 ´ Ha.nh, Thích, 9, 318–324, 326, Nhât 328, 329, 333, 335 Nichols, Bill, 264 Nicomachean Ethics , 32 Niu, G.Z., 188, 189 Nonhuman, 213, 233, 234, 241–247, 253, 255, 256, 258 Nonhuman agent, 214, 256 Nonmaleficence, 188, 189 Nonself, 36, 42 Nonself Theory, 202 Nousism, 4, 70, 73, 74, 78 O One mind, many mentalities, 35, 188 Ong, Aihwa, 173, 174 Ontology, 20, 71, 73, 194, 252 Oppermann, Serpil, 208, 211–214 Order of Interbeing, 322, 323 P Paravel, Véréna, 264 Peace of mind, 195 People’s Democratic, 102 People’s Democratic Front, 102 Philosopher Tsang, 191 Philosophy of Gongfu, 194, 195, 199 Piketty, T., 112 Pili (company), 311 Pink, Sarah, 264, 265 Political Movement, 4, 84, 85 Prajñ¯a, 321, 325, 326, 331–334 Praxis, 41, 42, 84, 85, 93, 96, 97, 100–102 Principle of ground, 192 Professional duty, 189 Professional ethics, 187–194, 198 Propriety, 3, 15, 17, 19–21, 23–25, 28, 29, 193, 198 Prystash, Justin, 209

Psychoanalytic perspective, 158 Psychological consultation, 3, 58–60, 64, 65 Psychological Displacement Paradigm of Diary-Writing, PDPD, 202 Psychology, 3, 6, 35–37, 39, 40, 49, 51, 58, 59, 68, 78, 84, 187–189, 201

Q Qi theory, 199

R Radical democracy, 103 Raging Citizens Act Now, 102 Reconstruction, 174, 306, 309 Relief pictures, 283 Rendao, 17–19, 25 Responsibility, 3, 30, 90, 92, 102, 139, 193, 245, 247, 259, 278, 322, 334 Reterritorialization, 304, 309 Reversed engineering, 71 Rhizome, 304, 311 Righteousness, 2, 3, 15, 17, 19–22, 24, 25, 27–29, 31, 190 Rooted with rootlessness, 306, 311 Rose, N., 4, 109, 115 Rouch, Jean, 265 Rowen, I., 108 Ruchang, 281 Ruptural metamorphosis, 120, 121 Russell, R., 126

S Samadhi Tang Creative Puppet Troupe, 8, 302, 304–306, 309, 311, 314 Sanctification, 63, 70, 77 Scholte, A., 112

INDEX

Self, 1, 3, 4, 35–42, 44–49, 51, 60, 61, 68, 70, 73, 158, 176, 181, 193, 201 Self-cultivation, 2, 3, 6, 9, 13–15, 25, 29–32, 36–38, 42–46, 48–51, 59, 63, 65, 71, 73, 74, 189–191, 193–201, 319, 334 Self-evident virtue, 193 Self-nature, 2, 3, 13, 36–38, 42, 45–51 Sensory Ethnographic Film, 8, 264–266, 268, 272 Sensory Ethnography Lab, 264, 265 Shan, S., 126 Shì, 190, 193 Shiah, Y.J., 3, 36–47, 49, 50, 202 Shih, H., 126 Shudao, 17, 18 Shù, kindness, goodness to others, 191 Shweder, R.A., 35, 188 ´ ıla, 326 S¯ Six P¯aramit¯as, 9, 318, 319, 321, 324, 326, 327, 333, 334 Six perfections, 45, 318, 324, 325 Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), 108 Smith, G., 125 Smith, Mick, 258 Social movements, 4, 84, 85, 94–97, 103, 105, 108, 109, 120, 122, 123, 126, 152 Song, Tik-Lai, 208 Sovereignty, 163, 257, 258 Spatial, 137, 138, 141, 152, 180, 211, 213–215 Species, 230–233, 235, 238, 241–247, 255, 256, 258, 259, 262 Spiritual realism, 75–78 State of exception, 253, 257

345

Suffering, 9, 39, 44–46, 48–50, 119, 318, 319, 321, 322, 324, 326, 327, 329, 332, 334 Supra-mundane-mind renunciation, 44 Symbiosis, 255–258 Symbiotic interrelationship, 255 Symbiotic metamorphosis, 120, 123, 124, 127 T Tai chi chuan, 9, 319 Taiwan, 1, 2, 4–7, 9, 58, 59, 66, 68, 83–87, 92, 94–98, 100, 101, 103, 104, 107–109, 111, 113–120, 122–127, 131–137, 142, 143, 149, 155–158, 160, 162–168, 171–174, 176, 180–182, 189, 201, 207–209, 217, 220, 222, 223, 227, 229, 230, 233–235, 237, 238, 242, 246, 259, 262, 275, 280, 295, 302, 305, 311, 315, 319, 326, 327, 330, 336 Taiwanese Opera, 305 Taiwanese puppet, 302, 304 Taiwanese puppetry, 302, 304–306, 309, 311 Taiwanese puppet show, 302, 313, 314 Taoists, 60, 199, 202 Tao of Butterflies , 208 Tao, way, 190, 191 Technical thinking, 192 Techniques of the body, 263, 270, 271 Temporal, 211, 213, 214 Ten good deeds, 44 Teng Weng Gong, 190 Terror Management Theory, 39 Te, virtue, 190 The Analects , 29, 190–193, 195–200

346

INDEX

The Analects of Confucianism, 190 The Crisis of representation, 265 The Cultivation of oneself in reverential carefulness, 195 The Doctrine of the Mean, 14, 197, 198, 200 The Ego, 70, 76 The Great Autumn Struggle, 94 The Single-Session Counseling Model or SSCM, 202 The Way of Ren, goodwill, 193 The Way of Tian, heaven, 193 Three principles of authenticity and unperturbedness, 77 Traditional Ecological Knowledge, 262, 263, 267 Troubles, 160, 255, 256, 258 Tsai, I., 114 Tsze-lu, 195, 196 Tu, meaning earth, 201 228 Event, 84

Wei Te-Sheng, 7, 227 Well-functioning self, 40 Western philosophy, 63, 65, 73, 247 White Terror, 84, 127 Wisdom, 2, 3, 16, 17, 25, 27, 36, 40–45, 49, 51, 60, 61, 66, 91, 200, 326, 332, 333 Wisdom consultation, 3, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66 Working-class political party, 86 Wright, Erik Olin, 109, 120, 122, 123, 127 Wulun, five cardinal relationships, 190

U Uncanny strangeness, 5, 158, 167 Union, 86–95, 104, 105, 162, 325, 334 Unity of heaven and humans, 59, 61, 69, 74

Y Yang Mu, 277 Yang, R.B., 194, 199 Yin and Yang, 202 Young, P., 127 Yuanmen Taichi Martial Arts Center, 9, 319, 326, 327

V van Doreen, Thom, 245, 258 Vegetarianism, 282 Vigorous practice, 27 Virtual, 7, 230–234, 239 V¯ırya, 326, 327, 330, 331 von Uexküll, Jacob, 248 W Way of Humanity, 2, 3, 18, 23, 25, 27–30 WEIRD psychology, 188

X Xiaojing (Yen Ren Joong in Samadhi Tang), 308, 309, 311, 314 Xiao ren, 25, 29 Xiu-Ji-An-Ren, 201 Xunzi, 27

Z Zhong, equilibrium, 200 Zhong, loyalty, self-requirement, and self-cultivation, 191 Zhong, Yachin, 279, 280 Zhongyong , 2, 14, 15, 31 Zhu Xi, 14, 18, 59, 191 Zisi, 14 Zone of exception, 258 Zone of indeterminacy, 253 Zone of indistinction, 253