Minister criticizes plan to bring aboriginals to ancestor worship ceremony in China (2015/03/27)
Council
of Indigenous Peoples minister Lin Chiang-yi has called it “ridiculous”
to label Taiwanese aboriginals as descendants of China’s Yellow
Emperor. Lin’s comments were in response to a New Party plan to take
young aboriginals to an ancestral worship ceremony in China.
Worshippers
pay tribute to the Yellow Emperor outside of his tomb in Shaanxi. This
is an important ceremony that takes place each year on Tomb Sweeping Day
in China. Among those who will attend this year is New Party member Yu
Mu-ming. His plan to bring along aboriginal youth representatives has
sparked criticism.
Lin Chiang-yi Council of Indigenous Peoples It
would be ridiculous to label (aboriginals) as descendants of the Yan
and Yellow emperors. I think a lot of people would oppose participating
in this ancestral worship ceremony.
Taiwanese aboriginals trace
their ancestry back 6,500 years, from before the age of the Yellow
Emperor 5,000 years ago. They are part of the Austronesian language
family, not the Sino-Tibetan language family that the Han people belong
to.
Kung Wen-chi KMT Legislator Anthropologists identify
our (aboriginals) as being part of the Austronesian language family.
This group’s origin could be Taiwan. From a linguistic and ethnic
perspective, Taiwanese aboriginals are not descendants of the Yellow
Emperor.
The DPP sees the expansion of Yellow Emperor worship in recent years as a unification strategy.
Chen Chi-mai DPP Legislator Taiwanese aboriginals are being exploited by a political party to worship the Yellow Emperor.
In
response, the New Party’s Yu said he agrees that aboriginals are not
descendants of the Yellow Emperor. But he said that doesn’t mean they
can’t pay tribute to the emperor as a form of cross-strait exchange.
留言列表