China’s ethnic minorities

We continue our series on China’s 55 ethnic minority groups. This month features the Drung, Ewenki and Gaoshan ethnic minorities. We continue our series on China’s 55 ethnic minority groups. This month features the Drung, Ewenki and Gaoshan ethnic minorities.

The Drung ethnic minority
Population: 5,800
Major area of distribution: Yunnan
Language: Drung
Religion: Polytheism

The Drungs, numbering about 4,700, live mainly in the Dulong River valley of the Gongshan Drung and Nu Autonomous County in northwestern Yunnan Province. Their language belongs to the Tibetan-Myanmese group of the Chinese-Tibetan language family. Similar to the language of the Nu people, their neighbors, it does not have a written form and, traditionally, records were made and messages transmitted by engraving notches in wood and tying knots.

History
During the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the places where the Drungs lived were under the jurisdiction of the Nanzhao and Dali principalities. From the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the Drungs were ruled by court-appointed Naxi headmen. In modern times, the ethnic minority distinguished itself by repulsing a British military expedition in 1913.

Natural Environment
The Dulong River valley extends [93 miles] from north to south. It is flanked on the east by Mt. Gaoligong, [16,500 feet] above sea level, and on the west by Mt. Dandanglika, [13,200 feet] above sea level.

The area has abundant rainfall due to the influence of monsoon winds from the Indian Ocean; the annual precipitation is [100 inches]. Virgin forests cover the mountain slopes, and medicinal herbs, wild animals and mineral deposits abound. Crops grown in the area used to be limited to maize, buckwheat and beans, but after liberation at the mid-20th century rice and potatoes were introduced.

Customs and Traditions
Before the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Drung society maintained many vestiges of the primitive commune system. There were 15 patriarchal clans called "nile." Each nile consisted of several family communes, and each commune occupied a separate territory marked off by boundaries such as streams and mountain ridges. The clan was further divided into "ke'eng," or villages, where people dwelt in common long houses.

Agricultural production remained at a very low level until 1949, due mainly to the primitive nature of the Drungs' farm tools. Every year saw several lean months when their diet had to be supplemented by food gathering, hunting and fishing.

The ke'eng members pursued collective farming on common land and held their hunting, fishing and gathering grounds in common. However, in modern times this system was slowly giving way to ownership of the means of production by blood-related families. Following financial difficulties due to illness or debt as a result of the imposition of taxes, land sales gradually led to the emergence of oppressive landlords. And rich households used to make seasonal workers and destitute children work for them.

The Drungs produced some primitive handicrafts, including bamboo and rattan articles and engaged in the weaving of linen. But the absence of both traders and towns made barter the only form of exchange.

The ke'eng was the grassroots organization of Drung society. Its members regarded themselves as being descended from the same ancestor. A Drung's personal name was preceded by that of the family and his father's name. In the case of a woman, her mother's name was included.

Each ke'eng was headed by a "kashan" whose duties were both administrative and ceremonial. He also directed warfare and mediated disputes. The ke'engs were politically separate entities, which formed temporary alliances in times of great danger threatening from outside communities.

Marriage within the clan was forbidden and monogamy was the rule in recent times, but vestiges of primitive group marriage remained, such as several sisters marrying one man. Polygamy was also not unknown.

The dead were buried in the ground in hollow logs, except in cases of death from serious disease, when the corpses were cremated or disposed of in the rivers. Funerals were attended by all the relatives, who brought sacrificial offerings of food.

The Drung people, male and female, wear their hair down to their eyebrows in front and down to their shoulders behind. Both sexes used to wrap themselves in a covering of striped linen fastened with straw ropes or bamboo needles. The poorer ones would often have no other clothing but a skirt of leaves.

Girls tattooed their faces at the onset of puberty, with the patterns varying according to the clan.

The traditional ke'eng long house -- made of logs in the northern areas and of bamboo further south -- is made up of a large, oblong room which serves as the ke'eng's common quarters, with two rows of smaller rooms at the back. Each small room has a fireplace in the middle and is the home of an individual family.

At one time, each ke'eng had a common granary, but this was replaced by granaries owned by small groups of families.

The Drungs are animists and make sacrificial offerings to appease evil spirits. Shamans, and sometimes the kashan, performed such rites. The Drung New Year falls in December of the lunar calendar. The exact dates are not fixed, nor is the duration of the celebration, which lasts as long as the food does. Cattle are slaughtered as an offering to Heaven, and the Drungs dance around the carcasses.
 
New Life
A new life began for the Drung people with liberation in 1949. The year 1956 saw the establishment of the Gongshan Drung and Nu Autonomous County, with a Drung as the county magistrate. The first task for the government was to provide the Drungs with clothing and farm tools, and promote farm production and education.

In light of the conditions in Drung society, the government decided that land reform would be inappropriate, and concentrated on the development of production.

Beginning in 1954, about [14,820 acres] of arable land was brought under cultivation in the Dulong River valley. Irrigation projects transformed part of the land into paddy fields, which had been non-existent up until then. A few years later, the area began to sell surplus grain to the state. Along with the increased farm production went a boost for livestock raising (cattle, goats and pigs), the cultivation of medicinal herbs and the processing of animal hides.

Primary schools, unknown in the Drung area in the past, now number over 20. Clinics and health stations have put the shamans out of business.

Special attention has been paid to making the mountainous Drung area accessible to the outside world. Some [93 miles] of roads have been constructed, and ferries and bridges now span the roaring torrents of the hill streams. Modern commodities are now available to the Drungs. There is also a post office, bookstore and film-projection team in the valley. Several small hydroelectric power stations, built in the last couple of decades, have brought electricity to the Drung villages.

The Ewenki ethnic minority
Population: 26,400
Major areas of distribution: Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang
Language: Ewenki and Han
 
This ethnic minority is distributed across seven banners (counties) in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and in Nahe County of Heilongjiang Province, where they live together with Mongolians, Daurs, Hans and Oroqens.

The Ewenki people have no written script but a spoken language composed of three dialects belonging to the Manchu-Tungusic group of the Altai language family. Mongolian is spoken in the pastoral areas while the Han language is used in agricultural regions. The Ewenki Autonomous Banner, nestled in the ranges of the Greater Hinggan Mountains, is where the Ewenkis live in compact communities. A total of [7,644 square miles] in area, it is studded with more than 600 small and big lakes and 11 springs. The pastureland here totaling [3,680 square miles] is watered by the Yimin and four other rivers, all rising in the Greater Hinggan Mountains.

Nantunzhen, the seat of the banner government, is a rising city on the grassland. A communication hub, it is the political, economic and cultural center of the Ewenki Autonomous Banner.

Large numbers of livestock and great quantities of knitting wool, milk, wool-tops and casings are produced in the banner. Some 20-odd of these products are exported. The yellow oxen bred on the grassland have won a name for themselves in Southeast Asian countries. Pelts of a score or so of fur-bearing animals are also produced locally.

Reeds are in riot growth and in great abundance along the Huihe River in the banner. Some 35,000 tons are used annually for making paper. Lying beneath the grassland are rich deposits of coal, iron, gold, copper and rock crystal.

History
The forefathers of the Ewenkis had originally been a people who earned their living by fishing, hunting and breeding reindeer in the forests northeast of Lake Baikal and along the Shileke River (upper reaches of the Heilong River), tracing their ancestry to the "Shiweis", particularly the "Northern Shiweis" and "Bo Shiweis" living at the time of Northern Wei (386-534) on the upper reaches of the Heilong River, and the "Ju" tribes that bred deer at the time of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) in the forests of Taiyuan to the northeast of Lake Baikal. Later, they moved east, with one section coming to live on the middle reaches of the Heilong River. In history, the Ewenkis and the Oroqens and Mongolians living in forests to the east of Lake Baikal and the Heilong River Valley in the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368) were known as a "forest people," and a people "moving on deer's backs" by the time of the Ming (1368-1644). When it came to the Qing period (1644-1911) they were called the "Sulongs" or "Kemunikans" (another tribal people different from the Sulongs at the time) who knew how to use deer.

In 1635, the Kemunikans came under the domination of Manchu rulers after their conquest of the Lake Baikal area, to be followed around the years from 1639 to 1640 by their control of the Sulongs living to the east of Lake Baikal. From the mid-17th century onwards, aggression by Tsarist Russia had led the Qing government to remove the Ewenkis to the area along the Ganhe, Nuomin, Ahlun, Jiqin, Yalu and Namoer -- tributaries of the Nenjiang River. In 1732, 1,600 Ewenkis were called up in the Buteha area and ordered together with their family dependents to perform garrison duties as frontier guards on the Hulunbuir Grassland. Their descendants are now the inhabitants of the Ewenki Autonomous Banner.

Economy and Life Style
Immigrations in the past led to population dispersion which in turn resulted in great unevenness in the social development of the Ewenki people dwelling in different places with diverse natural conditions. As a result, some Ewenkis are nomads; others are farmers or farmer-hunters. A small number of them are hunters.

The Ewenkis in the Ewenki Autonomous Banner and the Chenbaerfu Banner lead a nomadic life, wandering with their herds from place to place in search of grass and water. They live in yurts.

The Ewenkis excel in horsemanship. Boys and girls learn to ride on horseback at six or seven when they go out to pasture cattle with their parents. Girls are taught to milk cows and take part in horseracing at around ten, and learn the difficult art of lassoing horses when they grow a little older.

A "Mikuole" festival is traditionally observed by Ewenki herdsmen in May every year. At happy gatherings held everywhere on the grasslands, men, women and children in their holiday best go from yurt to yurt to partake wine, fine foods and other delicacies prepared for the occasion. It is a time for nomads to count new-born lambs and take stock of their wealth, and for young, sturdy lads to demonstrate their skills in lassoing horses and branding or castrating them.

With the institution of the "eight banner system" way back in the 17th century, Ewenki nomads were drafted into the army and had the obligation to pay leopard skins as tributes to the Qing rulers. This was at a time when they were at the transitional stage from primitivity to a class society. Helped by the Qing rulers, an upper stratum of Ewenkis invested with feudal rights then emerged. The expansion of agriculture and animal husbandry finally brought the Ewenki nomads to the threshold of a patriarchal feudal society.

A "nimoer" mutual-aid group consisting of a few to 10-odd families was usually formed by the Ewenkis to pasture their herds. People in the group were members of the same clan, and there was no exploitation of man by man at first. But in later years each "nimoer" group came to be dominated by a feudal lord, who had far more cattle than the other nomads in the group. In name the pastures belonged to the "nimoer" group, but in fact it was owned by the feudal chief who had the biggest herd. The poor nomads in the "nimoer" were at the beck and call of the feudal chief for whom they had to perform corvee.

A concentration of land also took place in areas where the Ewenkis lived as farmers or farmer-hunters. In areas near mountains, they lived by hunting, lumbering and making charcoal, with a few going in for farming. There emerged landlords, some possessing as many as [741 acres] of land. Here poor Ewenkis became employed hunters of landlords who supplied guns, ammunition and hunting horses and took away the bulk of the game bagged.

In the forests of the Ergunazuo Banner were Ewenki hunters who, having no permanent homes, wandered from place to place with their reindeer in search of game. When they stopped in the hunt, these Ewenki hunters lived in make-shift, umbrella-shaped tents built on 25 to 30 larch poles. In summer these tents were roofed over with birch bark, and in winter with reindeer hides. When the hunters were on the move, their tents and belongings as well as their capture were carried by reindeer, which lived on moss.

The roving Ewenki hunters were still in the last stage of the primitive society on the eve of liberation. Five or six to a dozen families who were very closely related were grouped under a clan commune, the chief of which was elected. All in the commune took part in hunting, and the game bagged was divided equally among the families. However, changes were already taking place in the clan commune system at the time of liberation when shot-guns, reindeer and the much-prized squirrel pelts were coming into the possession of individual families.

Life Style
The Ewenkis are an honest, warm-hearted and hospitable people. Guests in the pastoral areas are often treated to tobacco, milk tea and stewed meat by the Ewenki hosts. Such delicacies as reindeer meat, venison, elk-nose meat sausages are generously offered in the hunting areas. When Ewenki hunters go out on long hunting trips, they leave whatever they cannot take along -- foodstuffs, clothing and tools in unlocked stores in the forests. Other hunters who are in want, may help themselves to the things stored without the permission of their owners. The things borrowed would be returned to the store owners when the hunters happen to meet them at any time in future.

Monogamy is generally practiced. In old days exogamy was strictly observed. Members of the same clan were not permitted to marry one another, and those going against this unwritten law would be punished.

An Ewenki wedding is an occasion for dancing and merry-making. All Ewenki folk dances are simple and unconstrained. The dancers' foot movements, executed in a forceful and vigorous style and highly rhythmic, are characteristic of the honest, courage and optimistic traits of this ethnic minority.

Myths, fables, ballads and riddles form their oral literature. Embroidery, carving and painting are among the traditional lines of modeling arts as commonly seen on utensils decorated with various floral designs. An adept hand is also shown by the Ewenkis at birch bark carving and cutting in producing all kinds of fancy beasts and animals as toys for children.

Most Ewenkis are animists while those in the pastoral areas are followers of the Lamaist faith. A few living in the Chenbaerhu area are believers of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

While believing in animism, Ewenkis also worship their dead ancestors, and lingering influences of bear worship is still found among Ewenki hunters. After killing a bear, the Ewenkis would conduct a series of rituals at which the bear's head, bones and entrails are bundled in birch bark or dry grass and hung on a tree to give the beast a "wind burial." The hunters weep and kowtow while making offerings of tobacco to the dead animal. In the Chenbaerhu area every clan has its own totem -- a swan or a duck -- as an object of veneration. People would toss milk into the air upon seeing a real swan or duck flying overhead. No killing of these birds is permitted.
 
Wind burial was originally given to the dead. But it has now been replaced by burial in the ground, thanks to the influence of other ethnic groups living nearby, then and now.

Dispersed to live in different places and with many Ewenkis dragged into the army by the Qing rulers, the Ewenki ethnic group was threatened by extinction. Of a total number of 1,700 Ewenki troops sent to suppress a peasant army of other nationalities that rose against the Qing government in 1695, only some 300 survived the fighting. Following their occupation of northeast China in 1931, the Japanese imperialists not only intensified their exploitation of Ewenki people but drafted many of them into the Japanese army. They lured Ewenkis into the habit of opium-smoking and used some of them for bacteria experiments. All this, coupled with the spread of smallpox, typhoid fever and venereal diseases, brought about a sharp population decline. For example, there were upwards of 3,000 Ewenkis living along the Huihe River in 1931, but less than 1,000 remained in 1945.
 
Things took a turn for the better for this ethnic minority after the Japanese surrender in 1945. Two years later democratic reforms were carried out in both the pastoral and farming areas. As for Ewenki hunters roving in the forests, efforts were made to help them develop production and raise their cultural level. With the setting of cooperatives, these hunters, who were then at the transitional stage from primitivity to a class society, leap to socialism. Socialist reforms in most of the Ewenki area were completed towards the end of 1958.

The Ewenki Autonomous Banner was established on August 1, 1958, in the Hulun Beir League (Prefecture). Five Ewenki townships and an Ewenki district were set up later. A large number of Ewenkis were trained for administrative work.

A series of measures, including the introduction of fine breeds of cattle, the opening of fodder farms, improved veterinary services, building permanent housing for roving nomads and the use of machinery, have been taken to boost livestock production in the Ewenki Autonomous Banner. In the forested areas, Ewenki hunters, who used to be on the move after their game, now live in permanent homes. They still hunt, but they have also gone in for other occupations.

In the old days almost all the Ewenkis were illiterate. Today more than 90 percent of all school-age children are at school. Some Ewenkis have been enrolled in the Central Nationalities Institute in Beijing, Inner Mongolia University in Hohhot and other institutions of higher learning.

With improved health care, tuberculosis, venereal disease, and other diseases that used to plague the Ewenki people have been put under control. Hospitals, maternity and child care centers, TB and VD prevention clinics are now at the service of the Ewenkis who knew no modern medical care formerly. As a result the population in the banner, which had dwindled for a century or more, has increased by many folds in the past four decades. The Ewenki ethnic group which was dying out is freed from the threat of extinction.

The Gaoshan ethnic minority
Population: 300,000
Major area of distribution: Taiwan and Fujian
Language: Gaoshan people speak 13 languages
Religion: Polytheism

The Gaoshan people, about 300,000 in total, account for less than 2 percent of the 17 million inhabitants, based on statistics published by Taiwan authorities in June 1982 of Taiwan Province. The majority of them live in mountain areas and the flat valleys running along the east coast of Taiwan Island, and on the Isle of Lanyu. About 1,500 live in such major cities as Shanghai, Beijing and Wuhan and in Fujian Province on the mainland.

The Gaoshans do not have their own script, and their spoken language belongs to the Indonesian group of the Malay/Polynesian language family.

Taiwan Island, home to the Gaoshans, is subtropical in climate with abundant precipitation and fertile land yielding two rice crops a year (three in the far south). Being one of China's major sugar producers, Taiwan also grows some 80 kinds of fruit, including banana, pineapple, papaya, coconut, orange, tangerine, longan and areca. Taiwan's oolong and black teas are among its most popular items for export.

The Taiwan Mountain Range runs from north to south through the eastern part of the island, which is 55 percent forested. Over 70 percent of the world's camphor comes from Taiwan. Short and rapid rivers flowing from the mountains provide abundant hydropower, and the island is blessed with rich reserves of gold, silver, copper, coal, oil, natural gas and sulfur. Salt is a major product of the southeast coast, and the offshore waters are ideal fishing grounds.

The Gaoshans are mainly farmers growing rice, millet, taro and sweet potatoes. Those who live in mixed communities with Han people on the plains work the land in much the same way as their Han neighbors. For those in the mountains, hunting is more important, while fishing is essential to those living along the coast and on small islands.

Gaoshan traditions make women responsible for ploughing, transplanting, harvesting, spinning, weaving, and raising livestock and poultry. Men's duties include land reclamation, construction of irrigation ditches, hunting, lumbering and building houses.

Flatland inhabitants entered feudal society at about the same time as their Han neighbors. Private land ownership, land rental, hired labor and the division between landlords and peasants had long emerged among these Gaoshans. But, in Bunong and Taiya, land was owned by primitive village communes. Farm tools, cattle, houses and small plots of paddy field were privately owned. A primitive cooperative structure operated in farming and the bag of collective hunting was distributed equally among the hunters with an extra share each to the shooter and the owner of the hound that helped.

Customs and Habits
The Gaoshans are monogamous and patriarchal in family system, though the Amei tribe still retains some of the vestiges of the matriarchal practice. Commune heads are elected from among elderly women and families are headed by women, with the eldest daughter inheriting the family property and male children married off into the brides' families. In the Paiwan tribe, either the eldest son or daughter can be heir to the family property. All the Amei young men and some of the Paiwan youths have to live in a communal hall for a certain period of time before they are initiated into manhood at a special ceremony.

Gaoshan clothes are generally made of hemp and cotton. Men's wear includes capes, vests, short jackets and pants, leggings and turbans decorated with laces, shells and stones. In some areas, vests are delicately woven with rattan and coconut bark. Women wear short blouses with or without sleeves, aprons and trousers or skirts with ornaments like bracelets and ankle bracelets. They are skilled in weaving cloths and dyeing them in bright colors and they like to decorate sleeve cuffs, collars and hems of blouses with beautiful embroidery. They also use shells and animal bones as ornaments. In some places, the time-honored tradition of tattooing faces and bodies and denting the teeth has been preserved. Some elderly Gaoshan women, though having lived on the mainland among the Han people for many years, still take pride in their distinctive embroidery.

For transportation in rugged terrain, the Gaoshans have built bamboo and rattan suspension or arch bridges and cableways over steep ravines. They are also highly skilled in handicrafts. Their rattan and bamboo weaving, including baskets, hats and armors, pottery utensils, wooden mortars and pestles and dugout canoes are unique in design and decoration. In the mountains, the Cao and Bunong tribes are experts in tanning hides, while the Taiya tribe makes excellent fishing nets.

Songs and dances are very much a part of Gaoshan life. On holidays, they would gather for singing and dancing. They have many ballads, fairy tales, legends, odes to ancestors, hunting songs, dirges and work songs. Instruments include the mouth organ, nose flute, and bamboo flute. One musical form unique to the Gaoshans is a work song accompanying the pounding of rice.

Gaoshan art includes a great deal of carving and painting of human figures, animals, flowers and geometric designs on wooden lintels, panels, columns and thresholds, musical instruments and household utensils. Hunting and other aspects of life are also depicted, and figures with human heads and snake bodies are a common theme.

The Gaoshans are animists who believe in immortality and ancestor worship. They hold sacrificial rites for all kinds of occasions including hunting and fishing. The dead are buried without coffins in the village graveyard. There are vestiges of the worship of totems -- snakes and animals -- and certain taboos still remain.

History
The name Gaoshan was created for the minority people in Taiwan following victory over Japan in 1945. There are several versions of the origin of the ethnic minority. The main theories are: they are indigenous, they came from the west, or the south, or several different sources. The theory that they came from the west is based on their custom of cropping their hair and tattooing their bodies, worshipping snakes as ancestors and their language, all of which indicate that they might have been descendants of the ancient Baiyue people on the mainland. Another theory says that their language and culture bear resemblance to the Malays from the Philippines and Borneo, and so the Gaoshans must have come from the south. The third and more reliable theory is that the Gaoshan ethnic group originated from one branch of the ancient Yue ethnic group living along the coast of the mainland during the Stone Age. They were later joined by immigrants from the Philippines, Borneo and Micronesia.

Cementing close economic and cultural ties through living and working together over a long period of time, these peoples had by the time of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911) welded themselves into a new ethnic group known as Fan or Eastern Fan, which is today called the Gaoshan ethnic group.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Gaoshan ethnic group has all along maintained close connections with the mainland. Until the end of the Pleistocene Epoch 30,000 years ago, Taiwan had been physically part of the mainland. Fossils of human skulls belonging to this period and Old Stone Age artifacts found in Taiwan show that humans probably moved there from the mainland during the Pleistocene Epoch. Neolithic adzes, axes and pottery shards unearthed on the island suggest that New Stone Age culture on the mainland was introduced into Taiwan 3,000 to 4,000 years ago.

In A.D. 230, two generals of the Kingdom of Wu led a 10,000-strong army across the Taiwan Straits, and brought back several thousand natives from the island. At that time, the ancestors of the Gaoshans belonged to several primitive, matriarchal tribes. Public affairs were run collectively by all members. Their tools included axes, adzes and rings made of stone and arrowheads and spearheads made of deer antlers. Animal husbandry was still in an embryonic stage.

By the early 7th century, the Gaoshans had started farming and livestock breeding on top of hunting and gathering. They planted cereal crops with stone farm tools. Each tribe was governed by a headman who summoned the membership for meetings by beating a big drum. There was neither criminal code nor taxation. Criminal cases were tried by the entire tribe membership. The offender was tied with ropes, flailed for minor offences or put to death for serious crimes.

These early Gaoshans had no written language, nor calendar; and they kept records by tying knots. People worshipped the Gods of Mountain and Sea, and liked carving, painting, singing and dancing.

In the Song and Yuan dynasties (960-1368), central government control was extended to the Penghu Islands and Taiwan, which were placed under the jurisdiction of Jinjiang and Tongan counties in Fujian Province. During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), farming, hunting and animal husbandry further developed in Taiwan. In the early 17th century, an increasing number of Hans from the mainland moved to Taiwan, lending a great impetus to economic development along the island's west coast.

The Gaoshan and Han people in Taiwan worked closely together in developing the island and fighting against foreign invaders and local feudal rulers. Japanese pirates invaded Chilung, the major seaport in Northern Taiwan, in 1563. In 1593 the Japanese rulers tried to coerce the Gaoshan people into paying tribute to them but this demand was firmly rejected. The invasions of Japanese pirates from 1602 to 1628 were repeatedly beaten back.
 
Towards the end of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the Dutch and the Spanish time and again made forays into Taiwan, but were repulsed by the islanders. Finally, in 1642, the Dutch defeated the Spanish, seized the island and imposed tyrannical rule on the local people. This touched off immediate resistance. The anti-Dutch armed uprising led by Guo Huaiyi in the mid-17th century was the largest in scale. In April 1661, China's national hero Zheng Chenggong led an army of 25,000 men to Taiwan and freed it from under the Dutch with the assistance of the local Gaoshan and Han people, ending the Dutch invaders' 38-year-old colonial rule over Taiwan.

After recovering Taiwan from the Dutch, Zheng Chenggong instituted a series of measures to advance economic growth and cultural development there. He forbade his troops engaged in reclamation to encroach on the Gaoshan people's land, helped the local people improve their farm tools and learn more advanced farming methods from the Han people, encouraged children to attend school, and expanded trading. With the growth of production, the feudal system of land ownership came into being, and the gap between the rich and the poor was getting wider and wider. The feudal landlord economy developed in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), when the Gaoshans began using ox-driven carts, ploughs and rakes developed by the Hans.

Zheng died five months after recovering the island, and his son succeeded him. The Zhengs governed Taiwan for 23 years. In 1683, the Qing court brought the island under central government control and this rule lasted for 212 years till Taiwan fell under Japanese rule following the signing of the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895.

After the Opium War of 1840, British, American, Japanese and French colonialists invaded and plundered Taiwan one after another. The foreign invasion and plundering were met with fierce resistance. To fight the British invaders, the local people formed a volunteer army of 47,000 troops who beat back all the five British invasions.

Taiwan fell into the hands of the Japanese in 1895 after China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War. Fighting shoulder to shoulder for five months, Gaoshan and Han people inflicted 32,315 casualties on the Japanese invaders.
 
During the 20 years from 1895 to 1915, the people of Taiwan staged some 100 armed uprisings against Japanese occupation. One of them was the Wushe Uprising mounted by the Gaoshan people in Taichung County in 1930. Enraged by the murder of a Gaoshan worker by Japanese police, over 300 Gaoshan villagers wiped out the 130 Japanese soldiers stationed there and held Wushe for three days. In the following months, the insurgents killed and wounded more than 4,000 Japanese occupationists. In retaliation, the Japanese moved in most of their garrison forces in Taiwan along with planes and guns and crushed the uprising. They slaughtered over 1,200 Gaoshans including all the insurgents.

After victory over Japan in 1945, Taiwan was returned to China and placed under Kuomintang rule.

Gaoshans on the Mainland
Twenty-nine hundred Gaoshans now live on the mainland. Though small in number, these Gaoshans have their deputies to the National People's Congress, China's supreme organ of power. They enjoy equal rights in the big family of all ethnic groups on the mainland.

The Gaoshan people share the aspiration of all other ethnic groups in China for peaceful reunification of the motherland, so that people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits will be reunited.

Source: People’s Daily Online (http://english.people.com.cn/)