History Daily - Saturday Matinee: The China History Podcast

Episode Date: March 1, 2025

On today’s Saturday Matinee, we just begin to scratch the surface of the long, storied history of Taiwan- a country whose beginnings may trace as far back as 6,000 years ago. Link to The China History Podcast: https://linktr.ee/teacupmedia Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.

Are new cotio, Ki-Kicarissa. Hae asuntolanae muttomastomast Aspanktomatsy, Avaeer, T-Lanahakomptompson. S-pank, Suomen Mutkottomim bank. Way back in college, I took a course on the history of China, and I'll be frank, it was 100% unfamiliar to me then, and I've retained none of it since.

The only thing I really remember is being given the option to write a historical dramatization in lieu of a research paper, an option I eagerly took. I don't think I got a very good grade, though. Turns out, it would take me another 20 years to get good at telling a compelling version of history. All this to say, my knowledge of the history of China is pretty thin. Good thing, there's a podcast that's been running for almost 15 years that covers this topic explicitly,

the China History Podcast. And on today's Saturday matinee, we're sharing the first episode from their 15-part series on the history of Taiwan, from the geological formation of the island, all the way up to the recent elections of 2024. I hope you enjoy. While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow the China History Podcast. We put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you. Hey, everyone, across the universe. Thanks for tuning in to the China History podcast.

Lasla Montgomery with you once again, welcoming you all to this long-running family program, well into its 13th year, offering you some of the greatest hits and rarities from ancient and modern Chinese history. I launched the CHP back in June of 2010, and it wasn't long after. that I started getting requests to cover certain topics. And a lot of topics presented STHP episodes throughout the years. Actually came from many of you who took the time to reach out to me with your entreaties. But the history of Taiwan, I'd say by a long shot, this has been the most requested topic.

And the frequency to cover Taiwan's history has accelerated over the past few years in particular. I've even been contacted by listeners in Thailand. Taiwan generously offering me their assistance with the episode's research if I was willing to cover it. So I thought, as soon as I finish up this Guangzhou history series and the standalone episode on Ida Khan and Mary Stone, I'll launch part one of this hot topic. I say hot topic because it gets requested so often. You wouldn't know this from all the bluster on Twitter regarding Taiwan, but its history actually goes back much farther than the mid-20th century. If you go on to Google Earth and peer at the big-picture map of Taiwan and East Asia,

you'll see clearly from about the Kamchatka Peninsula and the north, all the way down along the east coast of Japan and the Ryukyu Islands to the east coast of Taiwan and down the entirety of the eastern continental shelf of the Philippine islands. You can see these edges of massive tectonic plates. Taiwan was formed and continues to be shaped by the pressures of the Eurasian plate to Taiwan's west and north. There's also the Philippine Sea plate on the east and south of Taiwan, and it's the boundaries of these two plates in particular that are the most striking and visible. Because of this, and other plates converging. This part of our planet is rife with volcanic and seismic activity.

It's part of the famous Ring of Fire. And Taiwan has had its share of some rather big earthquakes in 1935, 1946, 195, 64, and in 2010, and there was a 7.3 tremble that happened on September 21st, 1999. This was the 1999. Gigi earthquake in Nantou County in the center of the island. And just this morning, I woke up to news at the 6.8 earthquake in Taekong County in the southeast. So when you're looking at this satellite view, it's as plain as day. You could see the convergent boundaries of these sea plates,

subducting over and under each other. And it was marine geology and plate tectonics from more than 100 million years ago, that placed Taiwan about 130 to 150 kilometers off the coast of Fujian province. Geologists have pegged the creation of Taiwan island itself to about 4 to 5 million years ago, and it was from the pressures of these two lithospheric plates, the Eurasian plate pushing to the east into the Philippine plate that formed the island, with mountains running north to south from the center of the island all the way to the southeast coast. In the western third of the island of Taiwan, it's all lowlands and coastal plains. Human kind always had a thing for these flat plains, and this is where most of the

great civilizations of the world got their start. It's a lot easier to engage in agriculture on a flat surface rather than in the mountains. All the major cities of Taiwan today, Taipei, Taoyuan, Xinju, Tai Zhong, Chiay, Taipei, Ta'i, Tainan, and Gao Xion. They're all along the western coastal plain of the island. You had the same exact thing with the Indian plate and the Eurasian plates grinding into each other, such with the pressures of these two plates at their convergent boundaries. They form the Himalayan mountains. These longitudinal mountains in Taiwan are no way. near the height of the Himalayas, but they do have 258 peaks over 3,000 meters.

So this is how that happened. And into our day, these tectonic plates are still moving, very slowly, of course, but with all the earthquakes and volcanoes we read about in our news feeds or experience ourselves down on the marine floor, it's moving just fast enough to let us know the Earth is still a work in progress. People started showing up in Taiwan during the Pleistocene epic. That's a fancy way of saying, the Ice Age. This era began roughly two to two and a half million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago with the appearance of us humans. This is also called the Paleolithic Age in the timeline of prehistory, when humans lived in caves, teepees, simple dwellings, and lived a hunter-gatherer

and used basic stone tools and axes for hunting. Homo sapiens were present on Taiwan from early times. The continents were all still moving around, and because of all the glaciers, water levels were not what they are today. These kinds of water levels allowed people to migrate overland from place to place, including from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan. So during the Paleolithic Age and from the oldest known stone, tools dug out of the ground, we know with certainty, at least around 15,000 years ago,

people were wandering around Taiwan. No one could say with any degree of certainty who these first people were, thanks to all the efforts of archaeologists, linguists, geneticists, and other brilliant scientists going back to the 1930s. A lot has been figured out about Taiwan during Neolithic times. The Paleolithic Age preceded the Neolithic Age, which was just another way of saying the New Stone Age, when the land started to be cultivated and settled on. In Chinese history, these were the times known as Yang Shao, Longshan, and Arlito cultures, and the Xia Dynasty as well, from about 5,000 to 1,500 BC. This was the most ancient and mythical part of China's prehistory that developed along the Yellow River and its tributaries.

From so many past CHP episodes, we all know what was going on in the south of the country was a whole other thing from what was starting to evolve along the rivers of the northern central plain. Though scientists are still trying to add more pieces to the puzzle, for lack of any specificity, we call these inhabitants of southern China the Bay Ye. The Hundred Yue. These are the Aboriginal people of Southern China, and like in Taiwan were spread out across a wide area. Following what were known as pre-Austronesian cultures came the proto-Austronesians,

who spoke Austronesian languages and became what our today referred to as Austronesian people. These people were the ones who started the oft-called Great Migration into the Pacific and South China Seas. And because of this main reason, They are referred to as the ancestors of all the people who populate the islands stretching from Southeast Asia to the most distant islands of Oceania, the Mariana's, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Samoa, and even as far as Easter Island, which is closer to South America than it is to Asia. Groups of these Austronesian voyagers and discoverers even made it to Madagascar during the 5th century AD. The official language of this island country, Malagasy, is part of the Austronesian language family.

They all share many similarities or cognates, and because the island of Taiwan was the location where you had the greatest number of these diverse Austronesian languages spoken, linguists for the most part agree that that was the mothership. Taiwan was where these languages originated from and were carried. far and wide by these people who took these epic voyages. And not so long ago, relatively speaking, that is to the period I just mentioned, in the 14th century probably, Yuan or Ming Dynasty in China, some of these Polynesians from around Samoa, the Solomon Islands, and other islands in eastern Polynesia, they got in their now much more advanced sailing craft

and sailed south and west, and chanced upon the land of the long white cloud, or Aotei Atoa, as the local people came to call it. In 1769, following the visit by Captain James Cook, this same place would be called New Zealand. And these first-time arrivals in Aouti-Aroa, or New Zealand, became the Maori people. And they too were among these Austronesian-speaking people who by now were spread out from Africa to farthest oceania, and who all spoke languages that traced their origin back to the earliest Austronesian languages still spoken on Taiwan. It's believed that maybe 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, over 1,000 years before the time of the Yellow Emperor, these people in Taiwan who spoke these Austronesian languages and lived along the mountainous east and southern coasts,

took to their bamboo rafts and outrigger canoes and started exploring the world. world around them. An outrigger canoe had these support floats fastened to one or two sides of the canoe that provided more stability on the water. And these were among the first ocean-going vessels that we know of. How many of these journeyers perished in storms or died at sea? We'll never know. But some of them made it to distant lands. And these visitors from today's island of Taiwan, mixed with the people who were already present on these islands, who probably had been developing there independently since the days of Homer Erectus over 100,000 years ago. Though in most cases, Austronesian seafarers were the first ever humans to set foot on these islands, whoever these unknown people might have been

existing and living very primitive lives, they began to be visited by these earliest sailors and human civilization, all speakers of these Austronesian languages. And wherever they sailed to, they began mixing with these people and creating new cultures and new languages that became branches and sub-brances of the original proto-Austronesian languages that originated in Taiwan. So 4,000 BC is when things really started to happen. This was the beginning of Dapan Khung culture. This neolithic culture that first showed up in northern Taiwan, it's thought probably came from somewhere in and around Fujian province when water levels were such that you could walk from Fujo to Taipei without getting wet.

Was Ki-kharisza, Pienn or Isomper hankintam, Haiixtomest, Hale juer since S-lina muttumstomest from-Panky. S-Pankk, Suomen Mutkattomintomint Pank. Isk? These Keecarrissololinaw fromutkest, painked, Auxmobile and do linehackmobile. S-pank, Suomen Mutkottomim bank.

Was Ki-kari in or isompy hankint, S-laina-tee there's mightolid. Hae, you're just to be a s-lina muttomest to S-mobile. S-panky, Suomen Mutkotomincic Banki. These Neolithic people of Dapan Keng culture had nothing to do with the Neolithic people who were developing along the Yellow River, who served as the most ancient answer,

ancestors of the Han northern Chinese. These proto-Austronesian people in Taiwan became the earliest ancestors of the 2.3% of Aboriginal people who make up the island's modern-day population. Tapan kong kong culture spread out all over the coasts of Taiwan, as well as to Punghu. Pungu, by the way, is also known by its Portuguese name, the Pescadores Islands. This is a small island chain off the southeast coast of Taiwan. Today it's a county of Taiwan. As the story unfolds, you'll see, just as early Guangzhou history started off in Panyu, a lot of Taiwan's earliest history happened in this small archipelago of 90 small islands located 30 miles off the Taiwan coast. Again, when this Tapan Khong culture started to evolve, there were already pre-Austronesian people living,

living in Taiwan, though we don't know exactly who they were. Recent finds, coupled with tribal myths, suggests there was a sizable Negrito population. Negrito was a 16th century Spanish word to describe those first people they encountered on the Philippines, the Andaman Islands, and a few other locations in maritime Southeast Asia. Over the next couple thousand years, these people who crossed over from Southeast China, began to spread out all over Taiwan and formed a myriad of Neolithic cultures. The number of these different cultures is quite large and spread out all over the island, including on Punghul. It's believed around 3,000 BC or thereabouts. The water levels on the planet were about the same as where we are today, and the shape of all the islands on a map

would be recognizable to us. And what began and existed for a very long time as a collection of unitary clans spread out sparsely around Taiwan really began to transform into something much bigger. Why? Well, probably because of the food security that was the secret to growing a population. Rice and millet farmers were by then quite advanced and able to grow a surplus of food. And fishermen were able to make the most out of the sea's bounty. So without the need to live as a nomad or hunter-gatherer, Neolithic settlements proliferated, and the island's population began to take off. Maybe it was this, maybe it was something else. We can't know for sure. But here is where the indigenous people warmed to this idea of searching for new lands. It was also a period where

so many of these wenwas or cultures expanded all around. around the island? Which one of these dozens of neolithic cultures were the earliest ones to look beyond the horizon of the waters they were familiar with and risk their lives to find out? That we don't know for certain. Most scientists and researchers speculate that whoever they were, it's likely they came from the south and eastern parts of the island rather than the coastal plains of the west. In this subtropical paradise on the western part of Taiwan, people most likely found no need to look for greener pastures elsewhere, so they stayed put and enjoyed their perfect little agrarian part of the island. But on the eastern part of Taiwan, it's a great place to grow tea, but not so great if you're trying to cultivate rice or millet or engage in animal husbandry. For this reason, it's thought these people to the east were the first to high.

hop in their outrigger canoes and explore the great unknown. Their first journeys may not have had migration in mind and may have been simply for establishing trade relations. We know, for instance, that jade and pottery that originated in Taiwan was traded all along the island chain of the Ryukyu's. If you look on a map, you'll see the easiest place to sail to from southern Taiwan, other than across the Taiwan straight to China, is directly south to the island of Luzon, in the Philippines.

From the nephrite jade that's found locally in Taiwan and dug up from graves all over Southeast Asia, it appears likely that trade networks were already forming. I mentioned in that six-part Guangzhou history series that long before the Han Chinese started showing up in Guangdong province, there was a long-established non-high trade going on. Nanhai again just means South seas, or more precisely the South China Sea. and the smaller seas adjacent to this body of water. This non-high trade was carried out by these Austronesian-dominated trade networks. A lot of the same kinds of artifacts discovered in eastern Taiwan can also be found in the

northern Philippines. Again, North Luzon. And we think it was sometime around 2,200 BC or thereafter, that these people in South and East Taiwan migrated to the Philippines. this not only from archaeological finds, but also from linguistic study. Over in China, this period of migration of these Austronesian indigenous people from Taiwan to the Philippines was the mythical time of Yao and Shun, the legendary Chinese rulers so beloved and respected by Confucius. So these people went from south and east Taiwan to northern Luzon, with intermediate stops in the Bataanis Islands. And once settled there, they

started their incredible expansion. Someone southward throughout the Philippine archipelago and beyond, and to the Salabese Sea, Malacca Sea, Banda Sea, Pas Sulawesi, and they mixed with those mysterious people who were already living there since who knows when. And after these Austronesian-speaking people got settled in the Philippines, one group went west in the direction of Indonesia and beyond, and another group, perhaps the bravest of them all. sailed all the way to the farthest reaches of Polynesia. The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, including the surrounding islands, and Australia had been inhabited for millennia when this great Austronesian migration commenced.

However, the islands further east and north, namely New Zealand, Micronesia, Fiji, and everything east, were uninhabited. So these arrivals were the first humans to populate the islands. And they braved every single kind of danger that the high seas could throw at them. Storms, rogue waves, strong winds, giant fish, or whales, and all other manners of extreme weather. And we'll never know how many perished before they got a handle on the weather patterns and the currents. But today we know those who made it to those far-flung places executed, extremely. extraordinary feats of navigation with only the stars, birds, seaweed, and ocean currents to guide them. And the original people who made that first voyage to northern Luzon in the Philippines,

they spoke what we call the Malayo-Polynesian branch of this Austronesian language family that had long existed in Taiwan. For this reason, Taiwan is often referred to as the Austronesian homeland and the Philippines as the Malayo Polynesian homeland. And as time went by, century after century, from the moments those first courageous souls bid farewell to their Klansmen and pushed their canoes off the edge of the beach to infinity and beyond, maritime technologies and navigation got better and better, which allowed them to push the envelope with each voyage. Let me also say that some of these people also found their way to the Southeast Asian mainland

where these Austro-Asiatic languages were spoken in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and parts of the Malay Peninsula. And during the 20th century, all manners of brilliant scientists, geneticists, archaeologists, and linguists started putting all the pieces to the puzzle together. With each discovery, they knew that indeed what began to happen in northernmost Philippines originated in Taiwan. And today, 400 million speakers of these Austronesian languages, who are part of all the cultures that were created when this great mixture of peoples was happening, are spread out today over 30 countries.

I'm reluctant to drill down any deeper than this as far as these theories of Austronesian origins and dispersal go because there are a lot of disagreements that still exist about which theory is the correct one. So roughly 2,000 to 1,500 BC, this Austronesian dispersal was well underway. So let's trace the skittles back to where we came from, the island of Taiwan. As I said previously, there was no small number of Neolithic cultures stretching from Taipei to the most southern point of Pingdong County. I mentioned Dapankang Khong culture. There were several others, all differentiated by their pottery and other tools and artifacts. And these people from so many Neolithic cultures were all the ancestors of Taiwan's indigenous people.

The Taiwanese indigenous people go by a few names. Taiwanese Austronesians, Taiwanese aboriginal people, Yenchu Minsu, Kaohan people, as well as by their individual tribal names. As I said, today, they make up roughly 2.3% of Taiwan's population, and much more than that, if you figure in all the mixed marriages that have occurred since non-Austronesian people started showing up. The indigenous people of Taiwan once spoke a couple dozen or so different Austronesian languages. Some are extinct, and some of them are on their way towards extinction, and some were still spoken today. Some lived in the mountains and others were known as the Plains Indigenous People, the Ping Pu Zhu Chin. They lived in the lowlands and coastal plains where all the main population centers would end up

and where the Europeans and Chinese would go to in the greatest numbers. And for this reason, of all the Taiwan indigenous people, they were the ones who assimilated the quickest. If you look at any simple tourist map of Taiwan, you'll count about 23 tribes. and clans of indigenous people. Currently, the government recognizes 16, with a few more fighting for recognition. Since, in varying degrees, they all play a role throughout Taiwan history. I'll introduce some of them later on in the series. So let's skip ahead to what we know from official records.

Chinese historians from the earliest times had this knack for keeping great records. We can only imagine how much information was lost and all the upheaval, that litter world history. But thanks to Chinese historians and scholars whose passionate was to preserve China's historical past, we know a lot about the history that went on beyond China's borders. There isn't much prior to the year 230, 10 years into the Three Kingdoms period. And from the San Guo, the record of the Three Kingdoms, we know it was Sun Quan, by then the emperor of Eastern Wu, who had two of his men, Wei Wen and Zhuge, Zhi, Li, Li, and Zhuge, Li, 10,000 people in the direction of Taiwan to find the legendary islands of Yid Zhou and Dan Zhou.

Now, I checked my PLECO app to see what Michael Love said about Yichou. It's the name of an ancient barbarian country, possibly Taiwan, or among the Ryukyu Islands. As for Dan Zhou, it suggested that this was the very same legendary island of the immortals, that Chin Shur Huang sends Xu Shur to go find and bring back the elixir of love. life. Now, we don't know for sure what these two places were, but that's where Sun Quan instructed his people to go and seek out. They didn't have any luck where Don Joe was concerned, but they did manage to locate Yi Zhou and captured a bunch of indigenous people that they brought back to China. Most all of them died en route. The back end to this expedition to Yi Zhou was an exploratory

mission to Zhuya or Hainan Island. That ambitious voyage, ended up in a disaster and most everyone died from disease or ill-fortune. And Sun Quan wasn't all too pleased and had Wei Wen and Zhuge Zhur executed. And the great historian, Chun Shu, duly recorded this in the record of the Three Kingdoms. As tenuous as some may consider it, some point to this story from almost 18 centuries ago as China's oldest political claim to the island of Taiwan. Some call the Sun Quan's story from two 2.30, 21, mighty thin gruel, with no way of saying for sure if the Yi-Jo they discovered was Taiwan or one of the Ryukus. From the Three Kingdoms period, we have to wait almost 400 years

before Taiwan appears as a blip on the China history radar. During the Sui, Tang, Song, and Yuan, there were a number of events that took place in the history of interaction with the mainland. During the Sui, Emperor Yang was quite determined to add Taiwan to his list of conquests. And he sponsored three unsuccessful expeditions to Liu Chou, which may have been Taiwan or may have been the Ryukyu Islands to Taiwan's north. The first expedition in 605 failed due to language problems. The second one in 607 went a little smoother, but the purpose of the trip was to get the folks on Taiwan to agree to tributary relations. with the Sue. But Taiwan was still an island filled with a bunch of individual tribes that all had their own

things going on. There was no one spokesperson for the whole island yet. So that second mission terminated unsuccessfully. After learning their lessons from the two past failed attempts in this third expedition in 610, the Suey military came much better prepared and in much greater numbers. They were able to inflict some serious damage. on the Aboriginal forces they clashed with. But the losses to the Sui Army were also considerable.

And after sailing back to the mainland with several thousand captives, someone was able to convince Sui Yangti to declare victory and give up on this island of little strategic value. The Tang Dynasty emperors surprisingly showed little interest in Taiwan. The island didn't contain any particular commodities that were considered important enough. nor was the island located in the immediate seaways of the Maritime Silk Road. Starting here in the Tang, more and more people from the mainland will sail across the strait and explore opportunities, but not on Taiwan. The destination of choice was on Peng Hu.

Tang poet Shir Jianwu, who was immortalized thanks to one of his poems being included in the Tang Shi, San Bai Shou, or 300 Tang poems, retired to Peng Hu in the early. Ninth century during the reign of Tang Emperor Xienzong. In his poetry, Shur Jianwu played up the merits of this Penghu paradise. Though many Chinese tried their luck on Peng Hu during the Sui and Tang, it wasn't until the Song where the numbers started to pick up. You might find it as no surprise that it was the fishing in and around Peng Hu that attracted the earliest arrivals there. As I said, without any one single political entity to negotiate with, it was somewhat of a lesson in frustration for China's diplomats to negotiate for relations. There were too many indigenous people to deal with, while speaking different languages and many were quite hostile to any kind of entreaty originating from the mainland.

But in the northern Song, more and more Chinese started coming to Penghu and Taiwan. All the abundance in Song China started to show by the 11th century, and as it happened in China from time to time, following a sustained period of peace and economic prosperity, some people, to escape population pressures, began migrating across the strait. And these Song-era people heading in the direction of Peng Hu and Taiwan were mostly Hokkien people from southern Fujian who spoke their Minnan dialect. And hot on their heels were the Hakas from southeastern Guangdong. Today, there are no small number of Hokkien and Hakka people long residing in Taiwan who can look back on these Song Dynasty arrivals as their earliest ancestors. This particular wave that came during the Song was just the beginning of more migrations to come. In 1171, the southern Song Emperor Xiaozong had Penghu placed under the

jurisdiction of Tuan Zhou, Fujian province, and with Penghu now part of the Song Empire, authorities dispatched troops to these islands to protect the Chinese inhabitants there. The primary antagonizer to these Chinese migrants to Penghu were Japanese Wa Kho pirates, who throughout the Ming Dynasty remained a constant menace. And besides this, Song Records also wrote about occasional raids from Taiwan by aboriginal people who attacked residents on Peng Hu, armed with bows and arrows, spares, and knives. Between 1174 and 1189, there were even attacks by fearless Taiwanese natives who sailed across the Taiwan Strait to raid coastal villages on Fujian. As more Chinese continued to homestead on Penghu,

the Song government beefed up its forces there and built military installations. The Song was the first Chinese dynasty to have its own navy, and they used it to patrol around Punghul and Taiwan. And after the Mongol takeover of China, beginning with Kublai Khan in 1271, those migrants from China who had settled in Taiwan and Punghu, with things looking grim on the mainland, decided to make their temporary visit permanent. The Yuan government set up an administrative post on Pung Hu to control things there and on Taiwan. But this was on paper. only, and this office had little impact on the affairs of those places. And as more Chinese arrived from the mainland, setting themselves up on the western coastal plain,

they inevitably began having confrontations with Aboriginal people who had populated these areas for centuries. Now it was the turn of the Taiwan indigenous people to face this all too common phenomenon in world history. The Yuan Dynasty's interaction with Taiwan mostly concerns the story of Wang Da Yuan. From 1328 to 1333, he traveled throughout the South China Sea, Java Sea, Andaman Sea, Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea, 300 years before Admiral Zheng He, and he wrote about every place that he visited. In his Dao Yi Zhur Lue, a brief account of island barbarians, Wang Da Yuan wrote about Peng Hu and noted the presence of Chinese engaged in fishing. He also visited Liaocho, which was probably Taiwan, and described the topography of the place,

noting that he did not encounter any Chinese living there. Among Wang's observations about Taiwan was that the people wore their hair in tufts, tattooed their bodies, and wore red silk and yellow cloth wrapped around their heads. The travels of Wang Da Yuan are more celebrated for his other discoveries elsewhere in Southeast Asia, particularly during his 1330 stopover in Singapore, which was then called Temasek. During the Ming from 1602 to 1603, we have another traveler, Litteratus, and soldier, who once fought under Chi Chi Guang. This was Chen Di.

He joined up with an expedition led by one Shen Yolong, who was embarking on an expedition to Taiwan from the island of Jinmen, 6.2 miles off the coast of Xiaemen, more about that tiny island. later. The purpose of this voyage was to deal with the problem that seemed to have no end, eradicating the Japanese Waukow pirates from their Taiwan lair. As far as ridding the place of pirates, the expedition was quite successful. And as a kind of cherry on top, they also chased away a number of Dutch sailors based on Pung Hu, who were scouting around the place. Chased away they were, but they'd be back later, and we'll look at them in part two of this series.

Not long after returning from this exciting voyage to Taiwan and back, Chen Di, 62 years old at the time, wrote a book about his 21 days spent on Taiwan and his observations regarding the Aboriginal people there. This was called the Dong Fanji, an account of the Eastern Barbarians, also later known as the Record of Formosa. This was one of those lost books that thankfully lived on in later compendium. But in 1955, a copy of the entire text was discovered in the Tokyo Imperial University. This work, the Dong Fanji, is hailed as the first detailed account of Taiwan's indigenous people, their language, customs, description of their person, their society, and all kinds of other interesting observations. Chandi referred to them as Yi, which means barbarian, and carries all the well-traveled baggage of cultural chauvinism. His descriptions of the indigenous people exudes a strong whiff of primitivism and obviously looks down on their relative backwardness.

He noted they tattooed their bodies, ate a lot of dare meat, were extremely physically fit, and could run as fast as a horse, and remarkably had no calendars or chieftains to rule them. In fact, he was sort of incredulous that such a place, so close off China's coast, could be so backward relative to such a sophisticated, refined, and culturally advanced place as China. There were many more observations, such as their architecture, agriculture methods, marriage, and funeral customs, and vivid descriptions of their cuisine. There's no mention about which one of the multitude of tribes it was that he was mixing with. It's believed, as his few weeks stay there was limited to the southwest part of Taiwan between China. in Kaohsiung, that it was the Suraya or Shilaya people who were the ones he encountered. The Shilaya were among the Ping Pu or Plains Aboriginal people who lived in the west of Taiwan,

in the lowlands and coastal plains. When the Dutch start showing up in force, it will be these Pingpoo people who they interact with mostly. We thank these Shilaya people for giving us the name Taiwan. It came from their language, which pronounced it Taiowang. From that, we get the name Taiwan and the Chinese characters chosen to name the place. The language of these Shilaiya people belong to the same family as Indonesian, Malay, and Tagalog. More about them as we wander through the Taiwan history timeline.

So, let's close up shop for now. Almost 100 million years we covered. I'd say that's enough for one single episode. A CHP thankful shoutout to Messrs Toby Openshaw and Josh Brown for their kind assistance. I thank you all for tuning in, especially if you made it this far, and I don't see why you wouldn't have. This is a Laslo Montgomery signing off from Southern California and living the life somewhere in the city of Los Angeles. My friends, do consider coming back again next time for another exciting episode of the China History. podcast.