Lin Hsien-tang and resistance and adaptation in 20th century Taiwan by Chen Pei-pei B.A., M.A. Asian Studies, School of Humanities, College of Arts, Law and Education Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD University of Tasmania March 2019 Statements and Declarations This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for a degree or diploma by the University of any other institution, except by way of background information and duly acknowledged in the thesis, and to the best of my knowledge and belief no material previously published or written by another person except where due acknowledgement is made in the text of the thesis, nor does the thesis contain any material that infringes copyright. This thesis may be made available for loan and limited copying and communication in accordance with the Copyright Act of 1968. ……………………………….. (Signature) ……………………………….. (Date) i Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Mark Harrison for the continuous support of my PhD thesis. Without his guidance, insight, constant feedback, patience and encouragement this PhD would not have been achievable. I would like to give special thanks to Dr. Barbara Hartley and Dr. Mitchell Rolls for their guidance and roles in supervision. I would also like to thank Dr. Richard Corry and Dr. Nicki Tarulevicz for their support and assistance. I am grateful to my parents Chen Shih-tung and Lee Mei-jung, my husband Lin Jie, and my sister Chen Ping-ying. Your belief in me have made this journey possible. I am also grateful to my three sons, Thomas, Duncan and Hayden. You are the pride and joy of my life. This thesis is dedicated to my family, especially my mother who died of cancer aged 56 before the thesis was completed. ii Note on Romanisation Hanyun pinyin, a system for romanising Chinese ideograms, is used to represent transliterated Chinese words throughout the thesis, except in cases where the Wade-Giles term is more familiar, for example, Chiang Kai-shek and Lin Hsien-tang. For authors whose names have all along been romanised in the Wade-Giles system, for example, Hsu Hsueh-chi and Chou Wan-yao, the Wade-Giles romanisation is retained in references. iii Contents 1. Lin Hsien-tang’s Family Background 1-31 2. Lin Hsien-tang’s Early Youth 32-55 3. Lin Hsien-tang’s Social Reform 56-74 4. Lin Hsien-tang’s Educational Reform—the Taichung Middle School 75-100 5. Petitions Movement 101-154 6. Classical Chinese Cultural Revival 155-200 7. Lin Hsien-tang After the Second World War 201-231 8. Lin Hsien-tang and His Later Years 232-278 Bibliography 279-295 iv List of Tables 1. The genealogical table of Lin Hsien-tang (with only given names) in the male line……19 2. The enrolment and attendance of Taiwanese students in the Common Schools…………...85 3. Comparisons between Taichung Middle School and other middle schools……………...95 4. Number of Taiwanese students in Tokyo around the 1910s……………………………...106 5. Petitions and numbers of signatures, and Lin’s involvement…………………………….119 6. Residence of Taiwanese petitioners………………………………………………………121 7. Educational level of Taiwanese petitioners………………………...…………………….122 8. Public lectures held in 1923-1926……………………………………………………….128 9. Examples of activities held by the Yixin Association from March to July 1932….162-163 v Abstract This thesis examines Lin Hsien-tang’s life story that interprets one part of Taiwan’s past and its history. Like a characteristic of area studies where the “object” of analysis was unstable as “Taiwan,” the thesis intersects with a range of scholarly fields: Taiwan Studies, Chinese Studies, history, life-writing, political sociology, sociology of education. The thesis uses Lin’s story as a touchstone to tell the complexity of Taiwan’s story. Lin Hsien-tang (1881-1956) was a socially responsible Taiwanese elite whose life traversed the Qing, Japanese and then Nationalist rule. The thesis highlights Lin’s story through specific events in his life to illuminate Taiwan’s changing circumstances across different periods. The thesis offered a detailed examination of Lin’s politico-social and cultural life in a chronological order. Each chapter was fundamentally important in representing Lin’s personal development across different periods of his life as well as Taiwan’s story during these different authorities. Grounding on Lin Hsien-tang and Taiwan’s stories, Michel De Certeau’s notions of “strategy of domination” and “tactics of resistance” are introduced to offer an analytical mechanism to map out the conflicts, tension and cooperation between ethnicities, governments, countries, ideologies, and generations. It attempts to be attentive to Lin’s political, social and cultural experience, and then to explore the evolving issues from which knowledge about Lin Hsien-tang and the broader of Taiwan has been produced. vi Chapter 1 Lin Hsien-tang’s Family Background Introduction In 2016, a series of celebrations titled “Jinian Taiwan yihui zhi fu Lin Xiantang xiansheng 135 zhounian danchen (Commemoration of the 135th Anniversary of the Birth of Lin Hsien- tang, the father of Taiwanese Parliament)” were held in Taichung to commemorate the cultural and political legacy of Lin Hsien-tang.1 The events highlighted the enduring legacy of Lin Hsien-tang in Taiwan’s political and civic life. Activities included a music concert, calligraphy contest, drawing contest at the Lin Garden (Lai Yuan, 萊園),2 and public lectures given by 1 “Jinian Taiwan yihui zhi fu Lin Xiantang xiansheng 135 zhounian danchen—huodong huaxu (Commemoration of the 135th Anniversary of the Birth of Lin Hsien-tang, the Father of Taiwanese Parliament—Events Highlights),” Mingtai High School, accessed May 25, 2018, http://www.mths.tc.edu.tw/activity/135ann_lin/index07.html. 2 Lai Yuan is the family garden of the Lins in Wufeng. It has been a national-designated historical site since 1985. The Lai Yuan is a traditional Chinese-style garden in the central Taiwanese town of Wufeng that was the centre of the Lin family’s power. Lai was chosen as the name of the garden in the 19th century in reference to a traditional figure in Chinese classical literature named Lai Zi. The figure of Lai is characterised as paragon of filial piety of his act of dressing in child’s clothes at the age of 70 in order to entertain his parents. “Guanyu Wufeng Lin jia (About the Wufeng Lin Family),” Wufeng Lins, accessed August 14, 2018, http://wufenglins.com.tw/%E9%97%9C%E6%96%BC%E9%9C%A7%E5%B3%B0%E6%9 E%97%E5%AE%B6. 1 several Taiwanese scholars. Lin Hsien-tang was an important heir to the Lin family in Wufeng from central Taiwan. He was a landowner, reformer, activist and moderniser who lived from 1881 to 1956. He was one of Taiwan’s most significant civic leaders and his life traversed Taiwan’s late Qing imperial period, Japanese colonization and the early Nationalist period. The purpose of the thesis is to examine Lin Hsien-tang’s life story against the backdrop of Taiwan’s changing political and cultural circumstances in the transition from Qing to Japanese to Nationalist rule. The thesis tells the story of Lin and places his life in the context of the history of a modernising Taiwan. Tracking through specific cultural and political events in Lin’s life, the thesis describes how Lin Hsien-tang, a leading Taiwanese citizen, undertook a series of campaigns for colonial educational reform, for a Taiwanese parliament, and for classical Chinese education in Taiwan. In these ways, he developed and leveraged socio- political and cultural capital to co-opt, negotiate and resist the forces of power, including colonial power, that shaped Taiwan over his life-time. Lin Hsien-tang’s life story therefore illuminates Taiwan’s modern history, with the different periods of his life expressing changing political and cultural circumstances in the transition from Qing to Japanese to Nationalist rule. However, describing this is a challenging undertaking. The subject of Taiwan as it is an unstable signifier, with a deeply contested meaning on the geopolitical fault lines of the Chinese, western and Japanese worlds. Taiwan is a post-colonial society, shaped by the legacy of Japanese colonial rule. It is also a self- governing democracy with all of the appearances of a nation-state in the international system, however it is not recognised as such by the international community. It is nominally the Republic of China, and it is claimed as a part of the territory of People’s Republic of China, For these reasons, using the story of Lin to understand the modern history of Taiwan is a distinctive scholarly strategy. It is tracing a line through the Taiwanese story, in which Lin’s 2 life functions like a social object, and from which can be read narratives of Taiwan’s history. Taken as a “stable” reference point to produce knowledge about Taiwan, Lin’s story is used to bring structure and analytical force to periods and a place for which the scholarly boundaries and problematics continue to be open-ended. In using the story of Lin Hsien-tang to untangle the complex story of Taiwan, the thesis touches on a range of topics. These include Taiwan as a frontier society, social class and the elite life of Taiwan’s landowners, Japanese colonial strategies of domination and Taiwanese everyday resistance, generational change among Taiwanese literati, cultural capital and China’s imperial legacy on Taiwan, the experiences of the Taiwanese during the transitional period after the relocation of Kuomintang (KMT), and so on. Lin’s life illustrates these themes and more in particular ways as his story offers a distinctive pathway through the modern Taiwanese experience.