As the name suggests, Taiwanese people are those who reside on the main lands of Taiwan. Over the last few decades, they had been actively contributing towards the alarming rise in overall Taiwanese population, which reached as much as 22.56 million in 2003, August. Taiwanese are found dispersed all over the mainland areas, particularly in the metropolises.
Apart from quite a handful of aboriginal Taiwanese, around 433,524 in total count found in the country, rest of the population consists entirely of migrant groups like Hakka, Han Chinese and Fujianese. In fact, Hakka and Fujianese are the earliest Han Chinese people inhabiting Taiwan. The Hakka Taiwanese people belong mostly to the Guangdong Provincial region, while Fujianeses hail from Fujian, the southeastern coastal province. Together, these twin groups compose some 85 percent of the total Han Chinese population. However, it is the Fujianese who outnumbers the Hakkas in the ratio of three to one.
Excluding the Han Chinese people, there is of course one more migrant group who settled in various parts of Taiwan in 1949. Popularly called “Mainlanders”, they compose less than 15 percent of the entire Han population. In the initial stages, all these aboriginal groups had distinct individual traits, which gradually faded away owing to extensive intermarriage among all the four groups.
Yet, any discussion about the Taiwanese population is incomplete without mentioning their composite natures. The different tribes with their varied customs, etiquettes, traditional practices and lifestyles immensely influenced the national life and culture, awarding Taiwan multi-ethnic and multi-faceted identities.
