Wu Feng Legend

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The Wu Feng Legend is a politically-motivated myth once popular in Taiwan. Long misrepresented as history, it purports to show an example of the Han Chinese having a "civilising" influence on the Taiwanese aborigines through heroic personal sacrifice. During the Kuomintang rule of Taiwan, Wu Feng was considered a minor national hero. The myth was originally created during the Japanese colonial era, but its promotion peaked in the Kuomintang era. (Shepherd 1993:475 n.55)

According to the myth, Wu Feng was a Han Chinese who befriended aborigines. He tried to persuade the A-li-shan tribe to give up their practice of headhunting, but his attempts were unsuccessful. On one occasion he declared that on the following day the aborigines would see a man in a red cloak. He told them they would cut off the man's head, but it would be the last head they ever took. The next day, the aborigines saw a man in a red cloak and decapitated him, only to find they had killed Wu Feng himself. Horrified, they gave up the practice of headhunting forever.^[1]

This story was in school history books during the Kuomintang dictatorship period. However its historicity is now discredited. In 1989, soon after the 1987 lifting of martial law in Taiwan and taking advantage of a new-found emphasis on human rights, aborigines who had long been offended by the overtones of racism in the Wu Feng story protested against its continued presence in history books. As part of the protest, they demolished statues of Wu Feng "wherever they found them." ^[2]

The story has since been dropped from Taiwanese history books.

[edit] References

^ Lonely Planet: Taiwan
^ "Minority, Not Minor." Dignity, Respect & Freedom website:Government Information Office, Republic of China. Accessed 8/17/06

Shepherd, John R. (1993), Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600-1800, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.. Reprinted 1995, SMC Publishing, Taipei. ISBN 957-638-311-0