Taiwan in Time, a column about Taiwan’s history that is published every Sunday, spotlights important or interesting events around the nation that either have anniversaries this week or are tied to current events.Hair do’s and dont’s have been a tricky subject in Chinese culture ever since the Manchu conquest in 1644. As recent as 2019, 77.5 percent of junior high school respondents to a Humanistic Education Foundation (人本教育文教基金會) survey said that their schools still restricted their hairstyles. The effectiveness of the government lifting the restrictions has been repeatedly questioned. In response to those who opposed the move, Tu famously asked, “Is the hairstyle issue really that important? Does your hairstyle indicate what kind of person you are? Does wearing one’s hair long make them a bad person?” In July 2005, then-education minister Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) announced that all public schools in the nation should remove their hair restrictions, and on July 23, the activists celebrated with a goodbye-to-hair-restrictions bash. As the protesting voices grew louder, many public figures also joined in, and students formed an anti-hair restriction association to fight the government. However, student discontent brewed as society became more open in the 1990s, and more schools relaxed their rules. Most female high school students were allowed to grow their hair to their shoulders - just a few centimeters longer than before, but opening up a whole new world of styling possibilities. These rules were written into law in 1969, and were again reiterated in 1978.Īlthough government-mandated hair restrictions on secondary school students were officially removed in 1987, almost all schools continued to impose their own rules. In order to promote the values of cherishing time, cleanliness and austerity, we mandate that beginning from this semester, all secondary schools should require that their boys shave their heads and all girls cut their hair short.” This is unsightly and a waste of time for the students. ![]() This has spread to Asia in recent years, and has caused the hearts of our youth to waver as they believe that such behavior is fashionable.”īut most notable were the hair restrictions in schools: In 1950, the Ministry of Education sent the following order to all secondary schools: “Inspections of secondary students have found that many have long hair or varied styles. “Their bodies are unkempt, their behavior is odd, they have long hair and wear strange clothes it’s as if they’ve lost their minds. “The in Western countries has perverted the minds of their citizens, causing them to become dispirited, hopeless and confused - which has given to the rise of ‘hippies!’” Tu said. Taiwan Provincial Assemblyman Tu Yen-ching (涂延卿) in 1978 urged the government to firmly clamp down on “unusual clothes and long hair,” adding that Taiwan should even refuse entry to foreigners who looked like “hippies.” People, of course, didn’t always follow the law. Curiously, the hair of the men shown in the video can barely be considered “long” by today’s standards. A 1971 Taiwan TV (台視) clip shows over 100 men who were taken to the police station to be forcefully given haircuts. There didn’t seem to be hair rules for women in general (presumably it couldn’t be too outrageous) the authorities were more concerned about them showing too much skin. Hair restrictions returned during the Martial Law era - men were forbidden to wear their hair too long, for example. There doesn’t seem to be any specific or unified guidelines, but most boys shaved their heads and girls either wore it short or in braids. For women, the focus was on foot-binding.Īs for schools, students began wearing Western-style uniforms starting around 1920, and a great deal of importance was put on students’ appearance, which presumably included hair. ![]() ![]() I pray that once we chase the Japanese devils out, we can grow our hair back to repay our ancestral spirits.”īy 1915, only about 80,000 men in Taiwan retained queues - mostly old people who were allowed to keep them. that we cut our hair, accepted Japanese education and have become Japanese citizens. Writer Chang Shen-chie (張深切) lamented: “Our entire family wept in front of the family altar when we cut our queue. Similarly, other Taiwanese were reluctant to cut off their queue because this symbolized their status as a conquered people. When prominent tea merchant Lee Chun-sheng (李春生) visited Japan in 1896, locals mocked him as a “pig-tailed slave,” prompting him to become one of the first notable Taiwanese to cut off his queue, lamenting that he had been abandoned by his motherland anyway. Then-Deputy Minister of Education Fan Sun-lu displays photos showing the 1978 government guidelines on student hair.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |