Register Now for the Taiwan Culture and History Camp/Tour

We wanted to recommend to everyone: http://www.taiwancenter.com/tsunah
Note:
1. Even if you are living in Taiwan, or if you might not classify yourself as "youth", you are welcome to register.
2. Please remember the October 8 registration deadline.
3. This event has hosted many very excellent speakers including one famous Austronesian author.
4. Even if you have visited a lot of the sites in Taiwan, joining this event is worthwhile. Even while on the bus, there are a lot of discussions regarding Taiwan's history and cultures. The Foundation tries to keep the registration fees very low, and subsidizes the cost.

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Dear Friends:

The Tsunah Foundation has launched its Eleventh International Youth Culture Tour of Taiwan program. This is a great opportunity for young International Taiwanese, who are at least 18 years old and were born and/or grew up outside of Taiwan, to get to know more about their motherland. I hope you, your children, or your friends who qualify will enroll in this wonderful program. Please also help relaying this great news by forwarding this information to your friends, members of your organizations, and people in your local Taiwanese communities, or by posting this letter on your web-site and/or establishing the link from your web-site to Tsunah Foundation’s web-site, www.taiwancenter.com/tsunah.

The highlights of this year’s program are listed below.

1. This special November’s tour lasts seven days & six nights (11/08/10-11/14/10).
2. The cost is $650 per person excluding the airplane ticket cost.
3. There is a scholarship program for the participants.

This year, the group will visit the beautiful I-Lan County scenic sites and stay in the Tsunah Center and its dormitory facility for the first two days. Then, the group will go on an around-the-island tour along the island’s most beautiful east coast to Taroko National Park, Hualien, Taitung and Kaohsiung, then back to Taipei, visiting sites of historical and cultural interest, and having some fun at the same time.

Please visit the Tsunah Foundation’s web site, www.taiwancenter.com/tsunah for detailed information and updates.

The deadline for the enrollment is October 08, 2010. However, it is strongly recommended that interested people register as soon as possible due to limited availability. The airplane ticket is also increasingly difficult to find after August due to airlines reduction of flights.

I am looking forward to your participation and/or help. Please don’t hesitate to e-mail or call me for any question.

Best Regards,
Justina Wu

Tsunah Foundation
(858) 456-1258
tcloudff7@att.net

各位親愛的鄉親：

慈林基金會今年所舉辦的台灣文化之旅歡迎所有的台灣鄉親及其朋友們不分國籍都來參加。

同鄉們若預定於十一月初返台，請考慮參加此文化之旅。您只需多花US$650的旅費，就能無憂無慮的享受七天六夜的巡迴全台文化之旅。不但成就我們旅遊的目標和樂趣，而且還能受到台灣文化之薰陶，使我們更加了解台灣，真是一舉兩得。

您若能說服您的第二代及第三代子女和孫子女隨您一起來報名參加，我們亦非常歡迎，只要他們年滿13歲即可。

這個十一月八日到十一月十四日的英文台灣文化之旅是今年我們第一次嘗試舉辦的，但也可能是唯一的一次。請不要錯過這個難能可貴的機會。US$650的旅費包括您七天的全部費用，吃、住、交通費及參觀景點的門票等。報名表及相關中英文詳情，請上慈林基金會的網站 www.taiwancenter.com/tsunah 瀏覽及下傳。

大家都知道十一月是旅行的淡季。此時回台機票最便宜，且台灣氣候也最宜人。請有意的鄉親及早來報名。謝謝大家！

謝節惠敬上
Justina Wu
Tsunah Foundation
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The Tsunah Foundation (慈林基金會) was founded in March 1991. Its roots, however, extend back further to a tragedy in 1980, when Mr. and Mrs. Lin I-Hsiung (林義雄) and Su-Min (方素敏) lost their mother, Lin-Yu Ah-Mei, and their twin daughters, Lien Chiun and Tin Chiun, to a politically motivated assassination. Soon after Mr. Lin was released from the political imprisonment, Mr. and Mrs. Lin were exiled from Taiwan. Out of the depths of their grief for their loved ones, and for their separation from their homeland, Mr. and Mrs. Lin found new life and new hope, for themselves and for Taiwan. Eleven years later, the establishment of the Tsunah Foundation in Taiwan was, and remains today, their expression of that hope. The Tsunah Foundation has two missions: (1) to promote the values of empathy, love, and respect for all people, and (2) to promote cultural activities, and foster the development of a community of culturally enlightened, caring Taiwanese citizens.

Learning from the History of Other Nations -- Ireland

Ireland and Taiwan do indeed have many historical parallels.
See the article below. (Used with Permission) - DEMO!

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[St. Patrick's Day and Taiwan
- by Joel H. Linton


St. Patrick's Day celebrates a modern nation that almost did not come to existence one hundred years ago. You see, Ireland had been absorbed by the British Empire for a long time. An alien language, English, had been forced on the inhabitants, and the Irish speakers had been ostracized as "country bumpkins" and penalized when they spoke their native mother tongue. In the British Empire's attempt to solidify its grip on the island nation of Ireland, they tried to remove any respect for the cultural and linguistic elements that made the Irish distinct from the English. Many will see the similarity to what the Japanese and KMT regimes tried to do in Taiwan beginning in 1895 through 1987.

By the late 1800's there was a question whether Ireland would forever be absorbed by the British empire and her native tongue would be silenced forever. It had already lost the majority of its population to emmigration. The economic depression that was partly due to the Empire's policies toward Ireland and partly due to the Irish potato famine caused huge numbers to flee to the United States and make a new life there.

What would bring Ireland back from the brink of oblivion?

"The most important move towards revitalizing nationalism [in Ireland] came, ironically, not through the groups formed for strictly political reasons. One evening in 1893, seven men met in a small room in Dublin. They were all [Irish] Gaelic scholars with mutual concern to preserve the language. To this end they decided to form a cultural society which was to be called the Gaelic League. The two leading lights of the society, Eoin MacNeill and Douglas Hyde, could not have forseen the enormous implications of the movement which, as well as preserving Ireland's cultural heritage, was destined to become the most important source of inspiration in the Irish fight for independence." (p. 124)

They had their own paper, the GAELIC JOURNAL, which carried stories in both English and modern Irish. One of its sections gave lessons in basic Irish. That might not seem to be much. But it steadily became popular to be able to speak Irish. The Gaelic League had branches also among the emmigrant populations in other countries, including the U.S. People began to unite around being "Irish".

"The Gaelic League was giving the country an identity, a difference which justified her becoming independent." (p. 124)

There was another group that had been established close to the same time. In 1884, some men founded the Gaelic Athletic Association, to protect and promote traditional Irish games which were in danger of being lost due to the introduction and promotion of English sports.

"So, by the end of the nineteenth century, there were two powerful groups, one intellectual, the other athletic, with a highly developed awareness of being Irish. Meanwhile, in the Parliament [of the British Empire] they were pursuing a policy of "Killing Home Rule by Kindness," by introducing liberal reforms in Ireland." (p. 126)

(Now does this not sound familiar to any of you who look at the later years of the KMT military dictatorship under Chiang Ching-Guo or the current attitude some of the time coming out of communist China?)

This included a land reform act in 1903 that caused tenant farmers to be able to purchase land on easy terms.

Although finally in around 1914, when Britain was getting into World War I, there was a "Home Rule Bill" going through Parliament, the Irish nationalists began to recruit and train an army secretly. They took over the General Post Office in Dublin and put up a banner proclaiming The Irish Republic with a new flag.

The push for independence did not result in a full-scale war for independence, but the presence of their own army committed to the Irish cause undoubtedly gave them the courage to declare independence.

Military strength may not lead to war, but to a prevention of war. The foreign army will decide not to invade. And the new nation will have the confidence of the people to break free, and take responsibility for itself and finally declare formal independence.

It is no surprise that those wanting to force unification with China would seek to and continually block the ability for Taiwan to build up its military strength.

Three things to put in place: Linguistic Respect. Cultural Respect. and Respect of the Ability of Self Defense. In this sad day and age, military strength is a necessary part of deterrence of aggressive neighbors. You must be ready for war to prevent war from even starting.

If Taiwan had these three, they would feel free to declare once and for all formal independence, and not fear that China would try to invade. Although Taiwan is independent now and has its own military, that military strength is steadily eroding.

Taiwan has the money. They could upgrade their military. But Taiwan does not yet have the will. That will comes from a cultural transformation to respect for being Taiwanese, whether descendents of the first inhabitants Austronesian peoples, Hoklo, Hakka, or a recent immigrant Mandarin speakers.

Let St. Patrick's Day be a reminder to all of us to get working. Any suggestions? Did any of you catch a vision?

Funny how the color of Ireland is the color of Taiwan independence.

Please forward this letter to anyone whom you think would benefit from it. Also, maybe next St. Patrick's Day, we can convince either the government of Taiwan or high profile organizations, or academic institutions like NTU, NTNU, and Academia Sinica to invite high profile scholars from Ireland to come speak on this historic time in Irish History, --- the topic "How Ireland was able to become Free and Independent from the British Empire" That's one idea we could implement. Do you have any others?

(written Saint Patrick's Day 2006)

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NOTE: the quotes above are from Your Irish Ancestors by J. Anderson Black, © 1974 Paddington Press Ltd. New York
For further reading on language's impact on nations, see: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler
An interview, a review, the publisher]


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There are two movies that help explore the agony and disagreements that accompanied the fight for freedom in Ireland. Some wanted to be more conciliatory and gradual; some wanted a definite, clear and complete break.

Michael Collins (1996) 邁克爾Collins


The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) 震動大麥的風


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Links:

taiwanchurch.org/taibun
Siá Tâi-Oân ê Oē
Taiwanese Identity