Shelley Rigger

And they were there already when Chinese started coming from the Chinese mainland about 100 miles away in the 1500s and especially in the 1600s and later.

But the second layer and in some ways the thickest layer are

People that came to Taiwan after the mid-1500s, for the most part, and before about 1900.

And these are the folks that we often call native Taiwanese or local Taiwanese.

The reason people came from mainland China to Taiwan was because it was very crowded in the mainland and there were opportunities for economic benefit in Taiwan.

It was rugged.

It was fast.

far away from any source of comfort or order.

There was a lot of competition for land and resources.

The indigenous people were already there.

So, you know, they're going to fight back to hold on to their stuff.

Newer migrants coming from the mainland

competed with older migrants from the mainland, and different communities from the mainland competed with one another.

None of those groups got along with each other.

So it was a pretty violent place.

It was not the kind of place where you go because you're thinking about staying and setting your clan for all eternity.

But over the decades, some people did stay and they started to bring families over from the mainland.

And Taiwan began to be a bit more of a kind of settled Chinese community.

Yeah, it is a lot like that, actually.

You know, and I'm suddenly thinking about the gold rush, which was all men, you know, initially, almost all men.