Setting: Taiwan

[GhostDancer]

In 1590, Portuguese named Taiwan "ilha formosa (beautiful island)."  To the Chinese, it was always Taiwan.

 

From 1895 to 1945, Taiwan was ruled by Japan, who introduced baseball and demanded rice and sugar.  Taiwanese opposed Japanese rule.

 

Japan developed Kaohsuing into a modern port city, with an aluminum processing plant, power stations, and light industry.

 

 

[GhostDancer]

[Lawnmower Boy]

Actually, "Taiwan" is apparently a Siraya word, extended from the name of a smaller island off the southwest coast of the island to the entire island. Wikipedia reports that  various claims have been made for earlier "Chinese" encounters with the island, but, if these do refer to Taiwan, the island was then known as "Yizhou" or "Liqiu."

 

This is a little easier to understand with reference to the history of Fujian, the province on the coast of China opposite. Although nominally drawn into the Middle Kingdom as early as the Qin dynasty, Fujian remained remote and inaccessible right into Qing times. Fujian is the home of the Min Nan "dialects," notably including Hokkien. Although the Min languages are usually identified as Sinitic, language politics can shade into the tad controversial in China, and we are rather behind-hand in extracting what a historical linguist in the Western tradition would be happy to label (often on scant evidence) the "pre-Chinese linguistic substrate of the southern dialects." I have seen some work done on Cantonese, but am utterly unfit to comment on that scientifically, much less the Southern Min languages.

 

We do, however, have  evidence that Sinitic languages replaced a substrate related to Austronesian in the region south of the Yangzi river at an early date. This  language family indigenous to Taiwan, and it is inferred that it spread from the Yangzi valley to Taiwan in the Neolithic. Presumably it would also have spread overland, and at some point Fujianese might well have spoken Austronesian languages.  

 

What is known is that the Min language once spoken in Taiwan was imported from Fujian, and is now know as Taiwanese --as distinct from the Austronesian "aboriginal" tongues of Taiwan, such as Siraya-- and has been the object of modern language politics, with various pro-Taiwanese activists opposing the linguistic takeover of Mandarin.

 

All this comes back to the  main point, which is that Southerners rule and Northerners drool.