benshengren

See also: Benshengren

English

Alternative forms

• Benshengren

Etymology

From Mandarin 本省人 (běnshěngrén), literally "original province people" (from the point of view that Taiwan is a province of the Republic of China).

Noun

benshengren (plural benshengren)

1. Han Chinese who came to Taiwan from mainland China before 1945, often having experienced Japanese rule, as compared to Han Chinese who came to Taiwan from mainland China after 1945, following the Chinese Civil War (waishengren).

   Coordinate term: waishengren

   • 2000 August 18, Takefumi Hayada, “The complexity of the Taiwanese”, in Taipei Times‎^[1]:

     What surprised me was that it was not a "waishengren" who had such a deep consciousness of Chinese history, but a "bensheng-ren"[...]Many Japanese people residing in Taiwan, including myself, receive a lot of help from benshengren, who are fluent in Japanese. We often hear them complain about waishengren and China, while they appear to cherish Japan.

   • 2011, Joshua Fan, China's Homeless Generation: Voices from the Veterans of the Chinese Civil War, 1940s-1990s, Routledge, →ISBN, page 60:

     Gu Xionghua remembered when he first got to Taiwan there was no Benshengren in the army.

   • 2021 August 4, Sarah A. Topol, “Is Taiwan Next?”, in The New York Times Magazine‎^[2]:

     The tsunami of around 1.5 million exiles who accompanied Chiang to Taiwan produced two castes: benshengren — people from this province — and waishengren — people from outside this province.