Asia has made an apparent rebound. Having faded as the West ascended, Asia has long been relegated to the world’s backwater, a living anachronism strewn with effete dynasties and kingdom. As Asia joined the modern world, it was caught in an unresolvable bind between utilizing some form of indigenous thought to fulfill a non-Western form of development and fully embracing the Western order of things. The unbridgeable contradiction produced a maddening fever, and the fever produced hundreds of years of chaos.
亞洲已經明顯地重回世界舞臺。過去當西方崛起時，亞洲漸漸消沉，有很長一段時間，亞洲被貶為世界的落後地帶，好比不合時宜的活古董，充斥著無能的王朝與君主政權。當亞洲和當代世界接軌時，亞洲各國均深陷難以抽離的泥淖，不知如何抉擇：究竟亞洲該以固有的思維，走出和西方不同的發展道路？抑或該全盤擁抱西方世界的秩序？這個兩難的處境彷彿讓亞洲沉疴難起，橫跨整個20世紀，亞洲始終未能從這場惡疾中痊癒，恍若陷入動亂與衝突的無常幻景。
In the 21st century, the question would appear, at least on the surface, to have been settled now that free market logic has triumphed after the end of the Cold War and free market logic has triumphed in Asia. Yet despite this seeming appearance of things, what the apparent dominance of capitalism would evince is that questions dating back to an earlier period in time, from the onset of modernity in Asia, have not been resolved with any definitive answers. What exactly it is that has come to exist in Asia is, in fact, not as clear as it would seem. Nevertheless, it would appear that there is a lack of space for independent intellectual discourse dedicated to contemplating this problem.
現今21世紀，亞洲面臨的矛盾看似平息。因為亞洲各國擁抱自由經濟的思考邏輯，並且帶動世界體系的重新分配，使得亞洲成為自由市場的中心。資本主義表面上拯救了亞洲，但其實動亂一觸即發。資本主義的經濟思維正在製造亞洲獨有的問題與衝突。在亞洲覺醒的同時，美國於國際秩序的力量搖搖欲墜，或者說美國至少暫時退離要位，美國不再有辦法強力操縱亞洲的走向，使得亞洲處於某種思維的真空狀態。亞洲的未來該往何處，是個再度被爭論的問題，也因此亞洲的獨立識士需要一個新的論述空間，來思索這個問題。
New Bloom is an online magazine dedicated to cultivating localized subjectivities in Asia, once at the margins of the intellectual world and now the center of the contemporary economic order, by bringing indigenous forms of thought into conversation with international discourse. We hope that through this, the question of what exactly Asia is today, as understood by those living in it today, will become clearer. Asia would appear to be something like a world-riddle for our times.
《破土》是個線上雜誌，致力於讓亞洲國家建立在地的主體性。亞洲擁有的歷史脈絡帶來現狀，現正發生的各個議題與未來發展令人關注，亞洲在地和國際之間對此也有許多論述，《破土》的創辦便是為了建立亞洲和國際溝通。我們希望藉此幫助生活在這片土地的人們，更加釐清亞洲面臨的難題，而亞洲的處境將會是我們這個世代的「世界之謎」。
Why Taiwan?
Why begin with Taiwan? Though often neglected in considerations of Asia at large, Taiwan, the so-called “orphan of Asia,” would seem to point to something about the fundamental condition of Asia. In examination of the deeper structural basis of what lies behind Taiwan, we can perceive the traces of the larger historical problems confronting Asia as a whole.
為什麼以台灣為起點？雖然談及亞洲時，台灣常常被忽略，也因而有「亞細亞的孤兒」之稱，但台灣堪稱亞洲的典型範例，亞洲各國普遍存在的問題，以及問題背後深層的原因，都能在台灣發現蹤影。
What we today call “Taiwan” was originally inhabited by Austronesian peoples who are the ancestors of the people we refer to today as Taiwanese Aboriginals. It was only later that Chinese immigrants from Guangdong and Fujian successively migrated from mainland China to Taiwan.
早在幾千甚至幾萬年前，台灣這座島嶼便有南島語族居住於此，而這群人便是台灣現今原住民族和平埔族的祖先；而後中國移民陸續自沿海閩粵一帶遷居來台。
As Taiwan’s location in the western Pacific makes it a geographically advantageous site for trade, Taiwan came under occupation from European powers in the early 17th century. Taiwan was initially colonized by the Dutch and Spanish, with the Dutch controlling southwestern Taiwan and the Spanish northwestern Taiwan. However, with the defeat of the Spanish by the Dutch, Taiwan fell for some time into the control of the Netherlands until the Dutch were driven out by Ming dynasty loyalist Zheng Chenggong, also known as “Koxinga,” who assumed control of Taiwan. As Zheng was a loyalist of the Ming dynasty, which had since collapsed to the Qing dynasty, Taiwan would revert to control of the Qing dynasty after the defeat of Zheng’s descendants some decades after Zheng’s early death. Yet with the defeat of Qing dynasty China itself to Japan during the Sino-Japanese War, Taiwan was ceded to Japanese colonial control in 1895 through the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Taiwan’s forcible modernization began in the late Qing dynasty but largely occurred in the period of Japanese colonial rule. In this way, Taiwan’s history variously repeats a cycle of colonization and resistance to colonization as bound up with the shifting terrain of powers in Asia.
台灣是坐落於西太平洋的島嶼，擁有發展貿易的地理優勢，也因而成為兵家並爭之地。17世紀初期，荷蘭和西班牙分別殖民佔領台灣西南部和西北部，但是荷蘭人最後打敗西班牙人獨握台灣西岸。17世紀下半葉，鄭成功因明朝滅亡，便驅逐荷蘭人轉據台灣。數十年後，清朝消滅鄭氏王朝，台灣落入中國清朝統治。1895年甲午戰敗，清朝又轉手把台灣讓給日本。台灣許多現代化建設便是奠基於清末和日本時期，雖然如此，清朝與日本統治期間，台灣人皆曾多次起義抵抗殖民。
After the defeat of the Japanese empire during World War II, Taiwan fell to the control of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang (KMT). The defeat of the KMT to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led to the large-scale retreat of the KMT to Taiwan in 1949, with then-plans of mainland reconquest that never materialized. The KMT’s rule over Taiwan involved brutal political suppression as inaugurated by the 228 Massacre, the period of White Terror that followed, and Taiwan’s decades-long martial law period—until recent times the longest martial law period in human history. The KMT period also saw the forced identification of Taiwan with China in such a manner as to maintain the fiction of Taiwan culture as synonymous with China when, of course, Taiwan’s history had already had many periods in which it diverged sharply from that of mainland China. Only with the lifting of martial law in 1987 has Taiwan taken gradual steps towards democratization.
二次世界大戰日本戰敗，台灣轉由蔣氏的中華民國政府接收；1949年蔣介石於國共戰爭中失敗，國民黨政府大舉撤退來台。蔣氏統治期間，曾興起大規模的二二八屠殺和白色恐怖，台灣長達數十年處於高壓威權統治之下。約三十年前戒嚴解除，台灣才漸漸走向民主。
As Taiwanese history has been a history of successive displacements and continual shifts in political rulership, each successive regime that ruled over Taiwan, though only pursuant of its self-interest, has left indelible traces upon Taiwanese society and culture. Yet perhaps we can say that colonialism has left its strongest impact upon Taiwanese subjectivity in lingering traces of the colonial mentality of domination that colonialism engendered that persist even to the present and the lack of a wholly discrete Taiwanese identity—but that this has left Taiwan with a hybrid sense of identity.
回顧台灣顛沛流離的歷史，雖然每個政權多少對台灣的文化與社會進展有所貢獻，但是各政權多抱持著利益掛帥的殖民心態統治台灣，所以如今台灣的政治、經濟與文化尚缺乏完整的主體性。
On the surface, it would appear that democracy has been established in Taiwan, although Taiwan’s authoritarian legacy remains. In regards to Taiwan’s sense of identity in the world, the influence of Chinese culture is repeatedly emphasized, in denial of Aboriginal influences and the multiple legacies of colonialism, in such a manner that the view of Taiwan as having a unique culture of its own remains suppressed. One need only point to the attempts made at erasing remaining Aboriginal culture or consigning it to the place of a quaint relic through commodification in order to bind Taiwanese culture wholly with mainland Chinese culture and extirpating Japanese colonial influence to the extent that such influence separates Taiwanese culture from mainland Chinese culture even when in some places it had contributed positively to Taiwanese culture. And, perhaps, as with many Asian countries, subjectivity itself remains undeveloped. As the complexity and deep-rooted nature of the problem makes it hard to define, much less address, Taiwan is representative of and also provides an entry point in considering the broader contradictions of Asia at large.
表面上台灣的民主制度已建立，但威權的遺毒仍未完全散去。另一方面，中華文化對台灣的影響一再被強調，使得台灣原住民族和多個殖民政權遺留的融合文化受壓抑，台灣文化缺乏空間發展屬於自己的獨特之處。亞洲許多國家和台灣類似，缺乏社會各層面的主體性，且深層的問題複雜難界定。正因為如此，以台灣為出發點探究亞洲各國的問題，深具代表性。