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Southern California has been my home for more than 3 decades. Since relocating here, I've been exposed to a gamut of East Asian peoples and cultures. More specifically, I have worked and resided with and amongst people from Taiwan and Mainland China.
With the passing of time, as acquiantances turned into close friendships, I was made aware of the succinct differences between Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese. To my surprise, in a few occasions, the differences were clearly described with an outright measure of hostility by each side. Historical/political matters seem to be at the heart of the apparent differences. Lesser aspects were also mentioned.
I've been taken a back by all this. Admittedly, after several discussions, the differences between the two do seem to outweigh the similarities. I prefer to be wrong in this assessment.
My request to all informed readers:
- Please name cultural/social/political similarities between Taiwan and Mainland China.
- Could the differences possibly be of less importance?
Xie-xie!
Last edited by chacho_keva; 04-21-2013 at 03:44 PM..
My request to all informed readers:
- Please name cultural/social/political similarities between Taiwan and Mainland China.
- Could the differences possibly be of less importance?
Xie-xie!
- Same 5000 year history, except for aboriginal Taiwanese and/or non-Han Chinese.
- Older generations are more focused on survival/subsistence (saving large % of income, little concern for long-term health effects of smoking, etc.)
- Both strongly focused on education (minimum University BS, probably MS in Taiwan) and thrift.
- Both strongly focused on established or measurable value and substance over flash, innovation, or fads/trends.
- Similar religious mixture, despite the PRC's attempts to quash traditional religious/superstitious views.
- Similar extended-nuclear-family structure; 2 working adults, elders/grands taking care of children at home while parents are at work.
Most mainland Chinese seem at least a generation behind their Taiwanese counterparts. Nearly all of Formosa is an industrialized 1st-world country. Traditional farms, family compounds, and traditional practices are kept up as tourist attractions, yet in China washing is still done in rivers, rice is still planted by hand, etc. in wide swaths of the countryside.
Taiwan is also very small and so everyone is well-connected and complaints are settled by political dialogue. China is enormous with very different types of people in the far provinces. Restiveness often takes the form of violent and even open rebellion and is put down with police and military force. If the same thing happened in Taiwan, the president would be impeached and the congress kicked out overnight in order to elect more competent leadership who could settle problems without resorting to violence. Taiwanese are used to living in a peaceful democracy and would not stand for a return to the restrictive dictatorial politics such as the "White Terror" of the past.
I think that Taiwan is becoming more different from the PRC as the years go by. The two sides will continue to diverge until mainland China is ruled by her people instead of The Communist Party bosses and their children.
Young people from both sides share a lot of culture.
When I was a kid, I watched a lot of Taiwanese TV series. Most Mandarin pop songs were made in Taiwan then.
Young mainlanders use new terms from Taiwan, and sometimes Taiwanese borrow new words from mainland too.
In schools of Taiwan, students are still required to take many hours of Chinese history, Chinese geography, and of course, Chinese language and literature (which contains history and culture too). They are required to learn many details of old and contemporary China, like where is the capital of Sichuan Province, where the oil wells are, which railway connects Beijing and Guangzhou, and so on. No other place in the world does the same.
To add onto what the others have said, certainly one of the differences is the writing conventions - Taiwan (and Hong Kong) still uses the traditional full-form characters, while the PRC officially uses simplified characters. However, the base meanings are the same. Of course, there are regional differences in lexicon usage, even in industry/technology. I was in the telecom industry years ago and Taiwan and PRC have different terms for "analog" and "digital", and "quality". But the meanings are comprehensible to all.
To add onto what the others have said, certainly one of the differences is the writing conventions - Taiwan (and Hong Kong) still uses the traditional full-form characters, while the PRC officially uses simplified characters. However, the base meanings are the same. Of course, there are regional differences in lexicon usage, even in industry/technology. I was in the telecom industry years ago and Taiwan and PRC have different terms for "analog" and "digital", and "quality". But the meanings are comprehensible to all.
China should adopt English as its official language.
In Taiwan there's freedom of religion. Not in mainland China.
Taiwan maintains the old Taoist traditions, funeral rites, and Taoist acupuncture and healing traditions. Mao purged all that.
In Taiwan, the aboriginal people have gained a lot of rights, after the UN Decade for Indigenous People. In China it's a mixed bag, but the largest ethnic groups: Mongols, Uighurs and Tibetans, are denied certain basic cultural rights.
The very fact that Taiwan maintains independence and calls itself the Republic of China is probably what galls mainlanders most.
Both claim Tibet as an historic part of China. Both put out information claiming Tibetans and Chinese came from the same genetic stock. This is only partly true. Tibetan nomads are more of Turko-Mongol heritage than Sinitic (han Chinese).
In Taiwan there's freedom of religion. Not in mainland China.
Taiwan maintains the old Taoist traditions, funeral rites, and Taoist acupuncture and healing traditions. Mao purged all that.
In Taiwan, the aboriginal people have gained a lot of rights, after the UN Decade for Indigenous People. In China it's a mixed bag, but the largest ethnic groups: Mongols, Uighurs and Tibetans, are denied certain basic cultural rights.
The very fact that Taiwan maintains independence and calls itself the Republic of China is probably what galls mainlanders most.
Both claim Tibet as an historic part of China. Both put out information claiming Tibetans and Chinese came from the same genetic stock. This is only partly true. Tibetan nomads are more of Turko-Mongol heritage than Sinitic (han Chinese).
Mao died 37 years ago and mainland China has changed a lot since then.
I don't think traditional things are all good either.
And the core of Chinese culture is "united".
The similarities are just that most Taiwanese are descendants of people who originally came from mainland China. Taiwan aborigines represent a small percent of the population only. Another similarity is that both governments still maintain that they belong to the same country, although it is clear that Taiwan is almost like a independent country.
Although the Taiwanese study Chinese history, the island of Taiwan itself does not really share the same history as China. Taiwan only started to be part of China in the Qing dynasty. Before that, it was a Dutch colony for a short time and also had a "Ming dynasty" loyalist government set up by Zheng Chenggong (aka Koxinga). While China has 5000 years of history, Taiwan has only about 400 years of written modern history. Also, it became a Japanese colony at the end of the Qing dynasty and it was not only after World War II that it became part of the Republic of China. In the past 120 years or so, Taiwan was under the same government as mainland China for only a few years. That explains many differences.
While Taiwanese students studied Chinese geography, what was taught before Taiwan became more democratic around 1993 was weird. Textbooks and maps of China in Taiwan still show Outer Mongolia as part of China, Beijing was still shown as Peiping (the name it had when the capital was moved to Nanking), there were provinces like Jehol (aka Rehe) and many others that no longer exist under the PRC government, etc.
Confucian values are very important in Taiwan education while such teachings were discouraged for a while in the mainland. Not sure about recently.
Different people often have very different views on how similar or different they are across the straits.
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