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Due to its remote location on the border and relatively late development, Taitung County has preserved a host of indigenous cultures and settlements; owing to the Taiwanese Hokkiens, Taiwanese Hakkas, and Mainlanders who have moved in from the western part of Taiwan in recent times, issues related to ethnic interaction have gained particular importance. Indigenous people in Taitung County account for more than one-third of its population, and numerous samples of indigenous people also help to facilitate research and discussion of “indigenous-Han” relationship. This study aims at investigating the current situation and insularity of the interpersonal friendships of the sixth graders and the nuptial matching of their parents and that of indigenous parents in Taitung County. In this study, student questionnaire samples used in the Taitung Database from the first phase of the three-year project initiated by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2015, “Construction of the Eastern Taiwan Education Panel Survey,” was examined and data were obtained by means of the statistical methods of percentage cross tabulation and log-linear analysis.
The findings of this study show that in the choices of intrapersonal friendship among the sixth graders in Taitung County, whether they are Taiwanese Hokkiens or indigenous people, there was a relatively significant amical insularity in the outflow or inflow ethnic friendship matching in the percentage cross table The reason is perhaps both the Taiwanese Hokkiens and indigenous people have greater opportunities to meet one another as they have a larger population in the Taitung region. However, the populations of Taiwanese Hakkas and Mainlanders are much smaller, and it is also easy to underestimate the marginal effects of their amical insularity; among the three groups, the number of Mainlanders is the lowest, which immensely affects their chances in choosing to make friends with other mainlanders in interpersonal friendships. In the further log linear analysis, the difference in amical insularity among the sixth graders in Taitung County was not great, with mainlanders having a higher ratio and more opportunities in making friends with their own ethnic group. In general, the boundary of ethnic friendship among various ethnic groups was not notable.
The percentage cross table of ethnic marriage among the parents of the sixth graders in Taitung County shows that in the ethnic marriage table of the marriage table, both Taiwanese Hokkiens or indigenous people exhibited a higher ratio of nuptial insularity. The main reason being that there are more samples of Taiwanese Hokkiens and indigenous people in the sample size, as Taiwanese Hakkas and Mainlanders do not comprise a very high proportion in the total population of Taitung County, hence they still have to marry other ethnic groups to satisfy their personal need for establishing a family and developing a sense of belonging. In the log-linear analysis table, the phenomenon of endogamy was more conspicuous among indigenous people than in other ethnic groups, while the nuptial insularity of Taiwanese Hokkiens, Taiwanese Hakkas and Mainlanders was very low, revealing that the contact among Hokkiens, Haakas and Mainlanders, all belonging to the Han ethnicity, has become increasingly frequent, and the cultural barriers and friendship boundary among different ethnic groups are fading; the increase in ethnic homogeneity helps promote interethnic marriage.
Finally, in the ethnic groups of ethnic marriage among the indigenous parents of the sixth graders in Taitung County, the analysis of the percentage cross table shows that most indigenous people treated the opposite sexes of the same ethnic group as their primary marriage partners, particularly in the subsequent log-linear analysis, it is even discovered that there was a manifest ethnic difference in the endogamy among different indigenous tribes. The chances of endogamy were higher in the Tao, the Bunun, the Payuan, and the Rukai, and those of the Amis and the Puyuma were lower. The reasons behind this difference lie mainly in the impact magnitude of spatial segregation of the dwelling places of the various tribes.
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