Taiwan’s Cultures and Communities

Taiwanese society has a surprisingly high degree of diversity. According to Ethnologue, published by US-based SIL International, over 20 living languages are found on the island as of 2016. These languages are spoken by the many Austronesian and Han ethnolinguistic groups that comprise the people of Taiwan.

Throughout the island’s history, fierce and often violent competitions characterized the relationship between these cultural, ethnic and linguistic groups. More recently, however, these distinct communities have learned to coexist and cooperate with one another in order to transform Taiwan into a stable, prosperous and democratic home for all Taiwanese people.

Taiwan’s Austronesian Highlands

The First Nations of Taiwan—the Formosans—are the prehistoric ancestors of all Austronesian-speakers.

The Austronesians are incredibly diverse ethnolinguistic groups. They are highly successful seafarers who arose in Taiwan around 4,000 to 3,000 BCE and subsequently spread throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Austronesia is vast and encompasses not only Taiwan but also the highly diverse Philippine and Malay communities of maritime Southeast Asia. The Malagasy people of Madagascar—off the east coast of Africa—and the Oceanic nations of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia (including Hawaiians, Easter Islanders and New Zealand’s Maori) are also members of the Austronesian family.

The Austronesians in Taiwan are known by many names. In linguistics and anthropology, they are called the Formosans. They are, however, more commonly called yuánzhùmín, which means “original inhabitants.” They have also historically been known as the “Mountain People,” a term derived from the fact that the majority of the remaining Formosan tribes today reside in Taiwan’s mountainous regions. This term, however, has come to be regarded as derogatory in recent years and its use is in decline.

Taiwan’s indigenous Formosan nations are largely organized into highly diverse tribal bands. 16 of these groups have official recognition from the Taiwanese government.

Among them, the Amis people of eastern Taiwan are the most numerous of the indigenous ethnic groups with over 200,000 members. Smaller groups like the Saisiyat and the Kanakanavu number only a few thousand or less.

Today, though these Formosan “original inhabitants” form only 2% of the island’s total population but they dominate the mountainous highlands of central and eastern Taiwan.

While a number of their extraordinarily diverse and ancient Austronesian languages are critically endangered (some rapidly becoming moribund), many government and non-governmental efforts are endeavouring to preserve and revive this unique heritage of the island.

While the highland nations have a long history of resisting foreign cultures, those of the lowlands, in contrast, have a history of exchange and cooperation with newcomers.

Today, Taiwan’s lowland Formosan tribes have largely embraced the Han cultures that began colonizing the island in the 17^th century. The resulting cultural and linguistic contrast between Taiwan’s mountains and plains regions (comparable to Scotland’s Gaelic Highlands and Anglophone Lowlands) contributes to an overall sense of duality and diversity in the identity of the Taiwanese people.

Taiwan’s Sinitic Lowlands

Taiwan’s speakers of Sinitic (Chinese) languages—this includes the descendants of 17^th-century Chinese immigrants and Sinicized lowland Austronesians—are known as Hànzú or Hànrén, i.e. “Han people.” To Taiwan’s highland tribes, Taiwan’s Han people are known as píngdìrén, which means “lowlanders” or “people of the plains.”

Han colonization of the island began in the 1600s, initially under the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC)—the Dutch East India Company. From 1624 to 1662, the Dutch claimed Taiwan as the colonial governorate of Formosa and founded the island’s first successful non-Austronesian regime. Early Han settlers in Taiwan, who largely originated in southeastern China, were recruited by the VOC to work in the new colony as labourers. The prospect of employment under the VOC attracted an influx of immigrants from the continent.

These 17^th-century Han settlers consisted of two main groups: the Hoklo and Hakka peoples. The Hoklo (Hokkien-speakers) originated in southern Fujian. They emigrated not only to Taiwan but throughout Southeast Asia, including places like Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The other main Han group, the Hakka people, who speak a Chinese variety distinctly different from Hokkien, originated in eastern Guangdong. The Hakkas, notably, have also historically formed communities in parts of India, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia.

Today, the Hoklo of Taiwan make up the majority (70%) of the island’s population and—along with their language—are commonly referred to simply as “Taiwanese.” These people mainly inhabit Taiwan’s agriculturally productive lowlands, with the largest population concentration in the island’s southwest. The Hakkas, on the other hand, are based mainly in the Hsinchu and Miaoli counties in hilly northwestern Taiwan. The Hakkas form the second largest ethnolinguistic group (15%) on the island.

A final group of Chinese-speakers forms about 13% of the island’s population. In English, they are often called “Mainlanders” (those originating from mainland China as opposed to diasporic Han communities overseas). On the island, these people are better known as wàishěngrén or “outlanders.”

These people arrived in Taiwan as refugees in 1949, at the end of China’s civil war, and largely settled in the area around Taipei in northern Taiwan. This is a remarkably diverse group of people originating from all over China. They speak a wide variety of mutually unintelligible Chinese languages and dialects. Mandarin, a language introduced to Taiwan after WWII, serves as the primary lingua franca among the Mainlanders as well as between Mainlanders and other groups living in Taiwan.

Today’s Taiwan

The above are the main ethnolinguistic groups of the island.

While these cultural, ethnic and linguistic divisions still have very real socioeconomic and political implications in Taiwanese society, the lines have begun to blur as the groups interact and mingle with one another. Today’s inter-group exchanges, no longer the violent confrontations of old, are generally friendly in recent years and contribute to a sense of solidarity and unity among all Taiwanese people.