Cultural Origins

What do you call that round thing in your kitchen that you cook soup in? Mandarin calls it guo (鍋). Taiwanese Minnanese calls it ding (鼎). I used to think ding was just a local word — like “dumpling” vs “gyoza.” Regional. Cute. Nothing special. Then I read the Revised Taiwan Provincial Chronicles: Linguistic Chronicles. And I discovered something that stopped me cold. That ding we say in Taiwanese? It’s the exact same word Sima Qian used in the Records of the Grand Historian — 2,000 years ago. He used it 229 times. ...

A Fact You Probably Don’t Know Where did Taiwanese people come from? Some say from the mainland. Some say indigenous origins. But a set of data from the Revised Taiwan Provincial Chronicles might shock you: Taiwan and the mainland only separated 10,000 years ago. What does 10,000 years mean? Human civilization was just getting started. So in a sense, Taiwan and mainland Chinese “broke up” just yesterday. This story starts with a bone. ...