# Sea change in Taiwan

**Preface**

Though an island nation, Taiwan long turned its back on the sea, restricting access to its beaches and fearing enemy advances. A writer takes stock as its people rediscover their aquatic past.

Driving north on the Hualien-Taitung coastal highway on a sunny day might be one of the best things that Taiwan has to offer. The highway sticks close to the coastline and the Pacific Ocean, which is turquoise, navy or deep blue, depending on the time of year. On the other side, the highway runs parallel to a low mountain range, where you'll see clouds settling in thin wisps as evening rolls in. As you drive you might see Green Island to the east, rising out of the sea about 30km off the coast. Now a popular spot for diving, the island was once an infamous penal colony, where political prisoners waited out long sentences.

Looking out at the long beaches and the rolling waves, it is difficult to imagine that much of the coast was off-limits to civilians for much of the 20th century. At that time, Taiwan was ruled under martial law by a one-party state that viewed the island's beaches as possible landing points for Chinese spies or even an invading communist army. Leisure activities were confined to a few tightly managed areas, though as the decades passed surfers and other civilians slowly began to push back against the restrictions. Pastimes such as sailing and yachting are noticeably less advanced than you might expect in an island nation, thanks to the long legacy of martial law.

The relative newness of water sports here is also apparent in Taiwan's nervous approach to coastal safety. Beaches tend to be one of two extremes. There are those with lifeguards that are often so overmanaged that you can only swim in waist-deep water- and even then many will wear floats. And then there are the beaches left completely wild without any safety precautions. These are often preferred by surfers and paddleboarders who are proficient in navigating the strong currents and riptides. On the wild beaches, sunbathers can't rely on easy access to services and often bring their own water, snacks, sun tents and other forms of protection from the elements.

Taiwan's sometimes halting progress in this respect seems exemplified in Dulan, a small tourist town where the school holds surf classes for children. One expat parent informs me that after months of lessons they still haven't touched the water. His theory is that many of the children were scared by their grandparents' stories of ghosts in the water, the sort that would pull people down into the depths. Though most Taiwanese aren't quite so superstitious, you'll notice that some are more careful around water during August, which coincides with "ghost month" on the lunar calendar.

Others, however, are more than happy to try out diving, surfing, snorkelling, paddleboarding, kayaking and even spear fishing. Outdoor sport is enormously popular and offers some much-needed reprieve from Taiwan's densely populated cities and long working days. Such pastimes have only been possible for the past two decades as Taiwan began to move to a five- day working week. As recently as in 2016, many here were still required to work on Saturdays and the practice of "making up" for holidays with extra weekend shifts persists. Travel restrictions have increased pressure on Taiwan's coastal areas, with residents opting for a domestic trip to the beach rather than flying to the Philippines or Okinawa as they might have done before the pandemic.

It seems significant to me that Taiwan is finally embracing the sea after such a long absence. It's key to its geography as an island but also to its history. The first humans arrived in Taiwan by a land bridge but the rest arrived by boat, some pressing onwards towards the Pacific Islands using the ocean currents, according to one migration theory. To test this hypothesis, a team of Japanese and Taiwanese successfully travelled from Taiwan to Okinawa in 2019 on a dugout canoe, relying only on the most basic navigation techniques. Similar boats can be seen today at the National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung, alongside replica houses of the first Neolithic settlements, which look strikingly like traditional houses of southeast Asia.

Taiwan's coastline can be treacherous and is littered with shipwrecks but that didn't keep mariners and would-be settlers from trying their luck over the centuries, according to Ann Heylen, a professor at National Taiwan Normal University. Before Taiwan came to the attention of Asia's imperial powers, it was best known as a way station where ships could find fresh water and barter with indigenous groups. Named Formosa by the Portuguese, the island was a convenient location for off-the-books trade by Japanese and Chinese merchants - sometimes called "pirates" - who were comfortable with working around the strict legal restrictions of both countries. By the time Taiwan came to the attention of the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century, it was home to a smattering of Chinese and Japanese communities.

As an American, I have always found it interesting that the Dutch began building New Amsterdam, now known as New York, not long before they started building forts in Taiwan. While thousands of miles apart, they were connected by Dutch trading networks, which provided funds for the religious wars in Europe, as well as new souls for Christian missionaries, says Heylen.

Their tenure over both settlements, however, wasn't long. In a few short decades, the Dutch were expelled from Taiwan by Koxinga, an enterprising half-Chinese, half-Japanese "pirate king" who united Chinese immigrants and the indigenous Taiwanese against them. Taiwan was later annexed by the Qing empire but the legacy of Koxinga still looms large over the region's history.

I would very much like to see a multimillion-dollar miniseries about his legacy but I might have to settle for something produced by the Taiwan Public Television Service. Despite being one hell of a narrative, like most of Taiwan's stories, it's effectively untellable, thanks to its censure of China. By some interpretations, the Koxinga narrative dares to suggest that Taiwan existed beyond the control of China as a multiethnic state, as opposed to an integral part of its so-called "5,000 years of continuous history". For a Chinese government that asked Hollywood producers to edit the Statue of Liberty out of a Marvel movie, such a version of history simply would not do.

Taiwan has at least produced a series, Seqalu: Formosa 1867, about another well-known seafaring incident that helped to launch the island into the modern era. The show covers the aftermath of the 1867 Rover incident, when indigenous Taiwanese massacred shipwrecked Americans. Historians like to point to this moment and another shipwreck a few years later as the point when other countries, notably Japan, began to notice the island and the tenuous hold of the Qing empire over less than half of its territory. The shipwreck set in motion Japan's colonisation of Taiwan, which lasted from 1895 to 1945 and unified the entire island for the first time into a single political entity.

I hope that you're beginning to understand why the idea of a Taiwan disconnected from the sea feels completely bizarre. Much of its contemporary culture arrived by water, through fishing and maritime trade. One of Taiwan's most important deities is Mazu, goddess of the sea, says Cheng- Heng Lu, an assistant professor at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University specialising in Taiwan's maritime history. In a spectacular religious ritual to the Taoist deities Wang Ye, participants light a replica Chinese junk boat on fire to dispel evil spirits and send the good ones back to heaven.

Though now a source of pleasure to summer swimmers, the sea could still pose an existential threat to Taiwan at some point in the future. Climate change and rising sea levels will continue to erode its coast, while typhoons and changing weather patterns are already endangering its freshwater reservoirs. Although the government has lifted the old restrictions on the coastline, some fear that these sandy shores could one day be the site of an amphibious invasion by Beijing's forces if China ever decides to make good on its promise of unification with Taiwan.

Landing on one of its beaches, however, could be a difficult manoeuvre and topologically troublesome even for a modern army, says Taiwanese historian Bill Sharp. For now, the waters that once gave the heartiest Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, American and indigenous seafarers a run for their money continue to guard against the next possible invasion. Meanwhile, I and most others here hope that these same waters are restricted solely to commercial and leisure activities, as the sea change allows people here to wade into their maritime inheritance.

**About the writer:**

Hale is a freelance journalist based in Taiwan, where she spent the pandemic studying Chinese. She covers breaking news, politics and culture for international media and previously reported from Hong Kong and Cambodia.