My current writing project is a series of essays about life as a middle class Wisconsin dad raising his daughter alongside a first generation Asian American mom. I am two years into the project, but only recently have I been sending draft chapters to my biracial daughter for feedback. A week ago I spoke to Clare on the phone about a chapter I’d written on Manyu’s obsession with Clare learning to speak fluent Mandarin.
Early in our conversation, Clare said, “You know, Dad, I speak Mandarin with a Taiwanese accent, but Mom doesn’t.” With my very limited comprehension of Mandarin, how would I know that? I did not even know Mandarin came in accents.
In 2008, Manyu, Clare, and I moved to Taiwan for a year. The reason was largely to improve Clare’s Mandarin. For one full academic calendar, she attended a Taipei public school and spoke Mandarin with everyone except me. At school, her teacher and most of her classmates were Taiwanese.
This is where things gets complicated for anyone not familiar with Taiwan’s history. In Taiwan, the non-indigenous population is made up of two major subgroups. One subgroup is the people whose ancestors emigrated from the Chinese Mainland in the 1700s. In English, they are often referred to as Taiwanese. The other subgroup are the children and grandchildren of the Mainlanders who emigrated to Taiwan with Chaing Kai-shek in the 1940s. In English, they are often referred to as Han.*
Clare’s teacher and classmates were mostly Taiwanese. Only a few were Han. The Taiwanese people have foods and customs that are distinct from anything on the Mainland. They also have their own spoken language (Taiwanese). While Mandarin is the official language of Taiwan, it is the second language to about 80% of the island’s population. All Taiwanese people speak Mandarin, but probably not inside their homes. They apparently also speak it with an accent. When Clare told me that she spoke Mandarin with an accent, she was saying that she spoke Mandarin like a Taiwanese person. My wife is Han and does not have the accent.
I am describing the difference between Taiwanese and Han as if I know what I am talking about. I don’t, but that is only because the people from Taiwan aren’t sure themselves. The distinction between Taiwanese and Han was huge for Manyu’s parents, but is becoming less important with each succeeding generation. When I met Manyu in the early 1990s, Manyu considered herself Han, not Taiwanese. Thirty-five years later she does not know what she is. If pressured to put a name to her heritage, she will say that she is “Chinese from Taiwan.” Clare, on the other hand, considers herself a daughter of mom from Taiwan, so she is Taiwanese.
This blog is a longwinded way of saying that I only recently learned that my daughter speaks Mandarin with an accent.
*Taiwanese and Han are English words for differentiating the 18th Century emigrants from the 20th Century immigrants. The Mandarin words for the two groups are bénshěngrén (本省人) and the wàishěngrén (外省人). Bénshěngrén means “provincial people,” and wàishěngrén means “outside province people.”
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