Taiwan Church News 3269 Editions October 20 - October 26, 2014 Obituary News Taiwan: Whose Country? Whose History? - Two Giant Taiwanese Historians Are Remembered For Their Outstanding Achievement And Passion To Build Up A Taiwanese Subject With Historical Visions Written by Wang Chao-wen In the fall of 2014, two giant Taiwanese historians were unfortunately passed away: Academia Sinica academician Ts'ao Yung-ho died on September 12, due to an old age at 94 years old; Professor Chang Yen-hsien, 67 years old, died on October 3 due to a sudden heart attack during his oral history investigation for 228 Massacre in 1947 en route at Philadelphia, USA. Ts'ao Yung-ho is an autodidact and polygot in many languages, including Taiwanese, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, English, German, Dutch, French, Spain, Portuguese and Latin. In 1939, Ts'ao failed his university entrance, but he undauntedly worked hard to get a job as a librarian at Taihoku Imperial University, now Taiwan University, which gave him access to a huge range of materials he would have never seen otherwise. He also studied with Professor Iwao Seiichi to read the archived material from the Dutch Formosa era. And this pioneering Dutch documents mining from a Taiwanese point of view prepared him to earn international academic recognition afterwards. Within an interview in 1990s, Ts'ao proposed a concept of "Historical Perspective of Taiwan Island", stressing the study of Taiwan history should jump out the bondages imposed by the perspective of Chinese(Han)-historiography. Instead of being limited by the Chinese-center perspective, Ts'ao suggested future historians should focus kinds of histories, e.g. ethnological, cultural, linguistics and etc, running on this Taiwan island from primordial times. And this epoch breaking proposal had a great impact for the historians working for next generations. Chang Yen-Hsien, a PhD of historiography from famous Tokyo University, concentrated his scholarly efforts to build up "Taiwan Subjective" and "Taiwanese Consciousness". He deemed the research within official archives as insufficient. He once said the historian could certainly found some policy decision or political mechanism within the dusty archives, yet such studies were formal and even superficial. They can not touch the real intentions and emotions of common people's mind. So, it is why Chang insist to do the oral history investigation, especially on oral historical reconstruction of the 228 Massacre in 1947, anticipating to carry on the tradition of Taiwanese resistance to the injustice and restore back the historical justice to the victims of 228 Massacre victims and the related sufferers. It is a very sad news that these two giants of Taiwan historiography had left us consecutively in the fall of 2014. We believe their excellent works will keep encouraging the heart of Taiwan society. And now, it is our business to carry on their good job! Translated by Peter Wolfe |