December19, 2017 | DAIGU SIGUA Chopsticks: Its Mysterious Name Change in China Chopsticks are eating utensils used for thousand of years by the people of the Orient.  From ancient time up to the present, “tu” or “chu” were the only words used for  chopsticks by the people of Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China and Vietnam. But around 600 years ago in the Chinese Ming Dynasty, they had changed the name to “kuai-zi”.  There are various explanations on the reasons behind this change, but none is  particularly persuasive.  My personal opinion is that it’s related to the first emperor of Ming, Chu Yuan Chang.   The first reason, the name “Chu” has a similar pronunciation to “tu”, in order to avoid disrespect  to the emperor, the name of chopsticks was changed.  The second reason, since Chu Yuan Chang was a Muslim and regarded pig as an unclean animal, and the word “tu” is a homonym for both chopsticks and pigs, therefore the...

December 8, 2017| DAIGU SIGUA Kumara (Sweet Potato)  Its Enigmatic Distribution in Oceania Sweet potatoes were a common food crop of the Austronesian people, which were abundantly cultivated in New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Islands.  “Kumara” is a Maori term and it is also used by most other Austronesian languages to call sweet potatoes.  The place of origin of sweet potato has been considered by most mainstream science as Central and South America. But before Columbus arrived in America in 1492, the sweet potato was already being cultivated on the islands of Pacific.   There is also another theory that the Austronesian people, with their excellent navigation techniques, had already visited America and brought back the sweet potato.  But this theory is lacking, for why did they only bring back the sweet potato and not other crops, such as maize, another food crop that is also originally from America? In the history of the Mao...

From Saviah to Hawaiki Mt. Morrison of Taiwan /   https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E7%8E%89%E5%B1%B1# Mt. Morrison with its altitude of 3,952 meter is the highest peak in Taiwan and eastern Asia. It's also the sacred mountain of both Bunun and Tsou tribes. Bunun call it as “Saviah, Savih, and Tongku Saveg”. For Polynesian, the words of Savaii, Avaiki, Havaii, and Hawaiki, are also used in their legends as the homeland their ancestors came from. This imaginative reconstruction of the Māori homeland, Hawaiki, was drawn by artist Wilhelm Dittmer and published in his book Te tohunga: the ancient legends and traditions of the Maori in 1907. It depicts the island of Hawaiki, with a host of inhabitants preparing to embark in the canoes that will take them in search of new lands. https://teara.govt.nz/en/artwork/3803/hawaiki Possible migration routes of the Polynesians/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiki# Imagine, abou...