The importance of being and speaking Taiwanese
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Meet Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan's de facto ambassador to the United States:
As you can see in the video, Bi-khim's father is Taiwanese and her American mother speaks fluent Taiwanese.
"Hsiao Bi-khim appointed Taiwan's representative to U.S.", Focus Taiwan (6/16/20)
Because she is the closest confidant(e) to President Tsai Ing-wen, Hsiao Bi-khim 蕭美琴 was appointed as representative of Taiwan to the U.S. last month. Her given name reflects the Taiwanese pronunciation of 美琴 (MSM Měiqín) and is written in Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ; Church Romanization). This is because her father is a pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. Her father is Siau Chheng-hun 蕭清芬 (N.B.: All three characters are read in the first tone, so there are no diacritic marks. I am not sure whether he uses Siau for his passport; he may likely use Wade-Giles Hsiao [Mandarin] just like his daughter).
Pastor Siau Chheng-hun holds the Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary and was president of Tainan Theological Seminary during the Kaohsiung Incident*. Some of the seminarians got involved in the incident and were arrested. As the president of the seminary he spent time attending to the imprisoned students and their families.
The Kaohsiung Incident, also known as the Formosa Incident, the Meilidao Incident, or the Formosa Magazine Incident, was a crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations that occurred in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on 10 December 1979 during Taiwan's martial law period.
Source
What's most unique about Bi-khim is that, through her mother's genealogy, she is a descendant of a Mayflower passenger. Her mother's name is Peggy Cooley (from North Carolina); she has a Masters degree in Music from Westminster Theological Seminary.
Here's another video (about 50 minutes long), which is an interview with Bi-khim in a "staged cafe" setting, mimicking a sort of French-style relaxed atmosphere. It provides more in depth background.
Selected readings
- "Graduation speech by a West African student at National Taiwan University" (6/10/20)
- "French girl sells crêpes in a Taiwan market" (4/9/20)
[Thanks to Chau Wu]
Victor Mair said,
July 21, 2020 @ 10:04 am
From a colleague:
Seeing the Romanization 'Bi-khim' in association with ' 美琴 ' gave me a flashback to so many good memories!
I love the Southern Min language, partly for its sheer musicality (as expanded on below) and its ability to 'take me back' to the Taiwan of 1973-1976, but also for the more objective reason that it is arguably one of the two or three (or four?) non-pootoong languages is that is 'more Chinese than Mandarin'.
By 'musicality' I refer to two things: First, the sound of Southern Min itself. But also the continual stream of 'counterpoint' that is generated as one hears, for example, 'Bi-khim' uttered at the moment against the backdrop of 'Měi-qín' in one's mind.
Grace Wu said,
July 21, 2020 @ 10:12 am
Love my mother tongue!