How the Tainan Museum of Archaeology challenged my approach to criticism

As you approach the Museum of Archaeology in Tainan Science Park, you might not notice its dark exterior of stacked bricks.  This unassumingly natural edifice almost seems to rise out of the grasses, bushes and flowers around it, as though they are part of it and it of them. Even the paved areas have different textures of stone, with the main entrance at the end of a long outdoor passage that cuts open at various intervals, as though giving you a glimpse of the world here, and here, and there.  Throughout the exterior, more modern elements in metal and glass bring the building into the future. 

The easy symbolism here is "melding the ancient and modern", but I think that's too simplistic. The dark, low stacked stone of the exterior recalls Rukai Indigenous stacked-slate housebuilding techniques. The cuts in the entrance hall remind you that we only view moments in history as a cutting-in, and must use our imaginations to fill in the details. 

Once inside, natural wood benches and a large atrium allow families to keep children occupied while someone stands in line for tickets. As you ascend the escalators, an interior side of the facade comes into view: the Rukai slate-house colors are still there, but now they're designed as geological layers, complete with replica fossils that come into view as you rise. 



The Archaeology Museum took quite awhile to build, having been first conceived when priceless finds were discovered when developing the science park, from Indigenous settlements dating back thousands of years. (There are some shards of modern pottery and even "figurines of foreigners" from the Dutch era, too). 

Tainan has built on its reputation as a historical and cultural capital with its Taiwan-focused museums: the Tainan Fine Art Museum, housed in two buildings, one vintage and one modern; the National Museum of Taiwan History which offers a bracing definition of "who is Taiwanese" alongside a building-size timeline of the country's history with (mostly replica) artifacts; and the Museum of Archaeology, understated and elegant, displaying the real deal -- including treasures like a carved deer antler knife handle, centuries-old dice, and millenia-old pottery, tools and jewelry. 

There is more to love about this museum, despite its distance from the city center -- there's probably a bus, but I recommend a car to get there. We went with a local friend. But first, I want to talk about a particular effect it had on me.



It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of the National Palace Museum. Sometimes when subjugationists sneer that if Taiwan wants to be independent so much, why doesn't it just give back all the treasures they carted over from China?

I usually retort: "Sure, you can have your junk back. Guaranteed freedom matter more."

I don't really mean this -- well, I would be in favor of sending most of it back across the strait, but I don't get a say. Regardless, that was never a serious proposition. Rather, I know perfectly well that it's not "junk". It's a museum in an ugly building full of priceless foreign artifacts, displayed in the most unengaging manner possible -- bland rooms of vases and scrolls, with very little context offered to tell you why each one matters in its own way. You are supposed to gape at it and agree that it matters, without getting a real feel for anything. (Some items, like the carved ivory or the colorful porcelains of the Empress Dowager Cixi do indeed stand out on their own). 

I tell visitors that it's worth going if you are specifically interested in Chinese history, but you won't learn much about Taiwan beyond a better understanding of all the loot the retreating ROC hauled over here. 

Otherwise, though, it's just kind of there, in its ugly building, expecting your admiration and thinking it owes you not one jot of engagement that you don't bring to the visit yourself. A shrine to a foreign country, a lost war, an enforced identity that couldn't even be enforced very well once Taiwanese people were actually given a say.

In other words, it's easy to take a big ol' dump on the National Palace Museum. Criticism is easy. "This thing sucks!" "I don't like that!" "Most. Uninsightful. Song-Ming Blue and White Porcelain Display. Ever!" I could do that all day. 

What's harder is offering a positive alternative: try this place instead. This is cool. This is a hidden gem. This truly captures a tiny piece of the soul of Taiwan. This other museum is small but really captures a poignant moment of Taiwanese history. 

The Tainan and Taipei Fine Arts Museums are just such museums. Do not miss the exhibit of vintage Taiwanese paintings from the Japanese era, including the original Dihua Street market scene by Kuo Hseuh-hu (郭雪湖), ending in two weeks. The Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art too, but recent scandals have soured me on it a tad. The Shunye Museum of Formosan Aborigines is across the street from the National Palace Museum and is a more edifying visit if you are actually interested in Taiwan. The Nylon Deng Memorial Museum deserves to be in this list, though it's difficult to access in English. The 228 Museum, the National Prehistory Museum (temporarily closed for renovation), Jingmei Human Rights Museum and Green Island's White Terror Memorial Park and so many more -- too many, in fact, to list -- not only offer deeper, more intimate and more local understandings of Taiwan. 

And that's just the short list. 

All of these museums utilize design concepts to offer engaging museums with experiences beyond we built this Chinese-lookin' cement thing and put all our stuff in it, people will come because of its obviously superior cultural refinement. Even the museums that were once prisons have options to discuss what you are seeing with a former inmate who'd been imprisoned there.

But again, it's easy to criticize that old dinosaur up in Shilin.

Instead, let the design elements of places like the Tainan Museum of Archaeology wash over you and perhaps spur you to think a little more deeply about the subtler elements. 

Coming here helped me remember: it's easy to criticize. It's easy to say the National Palace Museum pushes a (mostly fabricated) narrative of Chinese history "preserved" by "free China" in Taiwan.



It's difficult to offer a positive alternative. It's even harder to offer that alternative simply, for its own sake, without a specific agenda. Or rather, if there is an agenda, it's simply to get more people to go to museums about Taiwan when they visit Taiwan. 

There's a lot to like about the place: when you enter, one of the first things you come across is a timeline of who exactly lived in this part of Tainan when. 

Ya think the vast majority of Taiwanese history is Han? Think again, mofos:



Some objects (which may be replicas) are even presented in ways that show how archaeological digs actually look -- there's an entire glass-floored room where you can walk over what would be the roped-off grid on a dig. I have a friend who's an archaeologist and I came away with a fresh appreciation for how she could look at, say, a specific shape of stone and identify it as a tool rather than just an interesting rock. One floor has dioramas -- along with real artifacts found in places that might have hosted scenes like these -- of how the people who used these items lived. You access each floor by going down a gentle ramp, as though you're descending through layers of the earth. The floors themselves are often made of materials meant to mimic a semi-natural, semi-industrial look. It is in a science park, after all, and the metal beams holding up all that glass on the way to the top remind visitors of that.

As you do, square windows offer odd light from a bright yellow courtyard. They're all at different heights and sizes, seemingly sprinkled down the hall. The effect is once again of peeking through at different levels of visibility, the way a reconstructed pot or a carved knife-handle might allow you to have a peek through a tiny window about lives lived in the distant past. 




The courtyard itself is where all these windows converge, sunny-hued in even the cloudiest of weather. A single bench, a single beautiful tree, and several stories of viewpoints peering down at balanced but irregular intervals.

It's small and difficult to get to, but this is a museum worth visiting. This is a museum that incorporates its mission into its very structure, which attempts to reach out and engage you. This is a museum about Taiwan. 

So what did I learn? Don't dwell so much on what is wrong -- though you can, if it's merited. Spend perhaps even a little of that time talking about what is right.

Speaking in Brutal Tongues

A short post for a gray Sunday morning.

Yesterday, I visited the Jingmei Human Rights Museum (景美人權文化園區), which is a short taxi ride from MRT Dapinglin (大坪林) station (not Jingmei station, which is across the river near the Taipei/New Taipei border). The museum is a former detention center used to house political prisoners in the later part of the Martial Law era, along with the correctional facilities on Green Island. The original center was located in Taipei, but it was torn down and the Sheraton stands on that site today.

Alongside stories that make your skin crawl and your blood boil - that prisoners might well be executed with no trial whatsoever, that many still don't know why they were accused, how some were kept in prison long after it was known they had not committed the crimes they had been accused of (to "save face" for the officers), how they were housed thirty people to a 9 square meter cell and drink toilet water if there was no tap (and there often wasn't), and how only in recent years are some family members receiving goodbye letters, was a story that made me sit down and stare blankly into space for a time.

When inmates were allowed visitors - family only, no friends - they could meet for ten minutes at a time, and were only allowed to speak Mandarin.

Mandarin was not - and for many still is not - a native language of Taiwan. The KMT dictated that it was the official language of the ROC government they forced on Taiwan, and would become the lingua franca. This impacted education, government affairs (if you addressed the government - not that that ever did much good - it had to be in Mandarin), jobs (certain jobs were only open to Mandarin speakers, that is, members of the new regime and the diaspora that came with them) and more. At the Taiwanese who were already here when the KMT invaded - yes, invaded - generally spoke Hoklo and perhaps Japanese, Hakka, or indigenous languages. The native population of Taiwan was essentially forced to learn the language of the foreign power that came to rule them, and those who did not were punished either socially or overtly (anything from your neighbors suspecting you, to losing access to jobs and education, to actual fines and potentially arrest).

The purpose was, of course, not only for the KMT to force their language on locals (many members of the diaspora spoke Chinese languages that were not Mandarin). It was to remake Taiwan as a 'province of China', to erase its history and culture through erasing their languages. To stamp out 'Taiwaneseness', in all its varied linguistic uniqueness.

As you can imagine, some of the inmates themselves might not have spoken Mandarin well (perhaps some not at all), and it would have been fairly common that their family members didn't speak it, either.

What do you do when you are only allowed to speak a language you don't know when visiting a loved one you might not have seen in years?

"You can only look at each other, and speak through tears," said the tour guide.

A former victim imprisoned for a crime he hadn't committed joined us on the tour, and told his story as well: it included just such a scene, and he and his mother were not even allowed to hug. I won't narrate the entire tale here - that's his story to tell, not mine. (If you read Mandarin, you can buy his book here).

Whether such a cruel, inhumane policy was perpetrated out of a sense of 'practicality' - as a friend pointed out, the regime likely lacked the imagination to have Hoklo, Hakka and indigenous eavesdroppers ensuring their surveillance of prisoners was complete, or if they had thought of that, might not have trusted anyone to relay the truth. These are people who murdered without trial, who kept people they knew were innocent in prison to protect themselves - they placed their faith in no-one but their own (and often, not even then - many who came to Taiwan with the KMT ended up in prison as suspected Communists, as well).

Or it could have been simply because they were evil and cruel. Some of the former guards who are known to have tortured White Terror victims are alive today, living normal lives, facing no legal repercussions, seemingly at peace with themselves and their actions (though who knows).

I suspect it was a combination of both.

Fast forward to 2018: foreigners come to Taiwan to study Mandarin (though I haven't been particularly impressed with teaching methods here). I learned it so I could live here as normally as possible. It's seen as a practical language to know, something you might study out of interest, but is also internationally useful.

This history, however, and hearing it put so plainly, has made feel slightly ill about continuing to speak it in Taiwan. I'm not speaking a native language of Taiwan, not really - I'm speaking a colonial language. I don't feel good about that at all. I'd always felt a little unsettled about it, in fact, but that story pulled all of that nebulous uneasiness into sharp focus.

How can I speak Mandarin as though it is normal in a country where it was once used to keep parents from speaking to their children?

I'm aware of how odd that sounds - it is a lingua franca. Most Taiwanese, even those who are fully aware of this history, likely were impacted by the White Terror (or have families who were) and are otherwise horrified at the truth of this history, speak it - often without a second thought. Who am I,

Stripped of its dark history in Taiwan, Mandarin is merely a language. A beautiful language, even. One steeped in history that is otherwise no crueler than any history (though all history is cruel). And yet, it was used to brutalize Taiwanese - even now, those who do not or prefer not to speak it face discrimination and stereotyping, either as 'crazy political types' or as 'uneducated hicks', both deeply unfair labels that perpetuate a colonial system that dictates who gets to be born on top, and who has to fight their way up from the bottom.

Mandarin is only a native language and lingua franca in Taiwan because of this linguistic brutality. Foreign students only come here to learn it for this reason, as well. That most Taiwanese speak it natively speaks to the success of the KMT's cruelty. That not everyone does, and many who do still prefer native Taiwanese languages shows the strength of the Taiwanese spirit, and the KMT's ultimate failure as a cruel, petty, corrupt, dictatorial and foreign regime.

I can respect the idea that Taiwan has begun - and will likely to continue - to use Mandarin appropriatively rather than accepting it merely as the language of those who would continue to be overlords if they had their way. To take Mandarin and use it for their own purposes, to their own ends (this paper is about English being used in this way, but the main ideas are for Mandarin as well).

But - we're not there yet. There is still an imperialist element to Mandarin in Taiwan that makes me deeply uncomfortable. That structure still hasn't quite been broken down.

I know, especially as a resident of Taipei, that I can't just say "screw it!", refuse to use Mandarin unless absolutely necessary, and start learning Hoklo in earnest - preferring only to use that or English. Many former victims and Taiwanese deeply affected by this history do so, and I admire that, but I'm not Taiwanese.

I want to be a part, if only a very small part, of a better Taiwan, to contribute to building a truly free, decolonialized nation. But again, I am not Taiwanese. There are people who would think I was just putting on a show, and while I don't believe that, it would be hard to make the case that they are wrong.

And yet, the main reasons for not giving up Mandarin - that I would be giving up on something so 'practical', and that I'd be labeled another 'crazy political type' (perhaps more so because I'm not even from here, and this history is not my history), feel like giving the colonial ROC regime yet another brutal victory.

For now, I suppose I will keep speaking Mandarin; I kind of have to. In any case, is Hoklo not the language of oppression for Hakka and indigenous people? And yet, I don't see any sort of real world in which I can walk around Taipei speaking only Amis and a.) not look like an idiotic - if not crazy - white lady; and b.) actually communicate with the vast majority of people. As a language learner and foreign resident, where do I draw that line?

I don't feel good about it at all, however, and perhaps the first step is, without giving up Mandarin per se, to start seriously learning Hoklo.