Anthropologist Jeff Martin sent this around Facebook.
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2 comments:
Very interesting find!
The drawings were supposed to denote the cow's relative and specific physical characteristics; e.g. relative size and shape of its ears.
In 1898 (three years after Japan took over Taiwan), the Tajima (但馬) area in Japan started their cow registration system, which soon got adopted for the whole Japanese empire (including Taiwan.)
The KMT goverment inherited the system from the Japanese; as well as many other modern administrative systems; e.g. the resident registration system, the public health management system, the water resources management system, the forest resources management system, etc.
Japan today still has the cow registration system. obviously, drawings have been replaced with digital pictures and entries include blood line (parental IDs) and blood test results (for BSE and other diseases).
Maybe someone out there knows:
Why are there so many cows near Er Lin ( 二林)?
Lot's of people down there own a single cow. Not a working buffalo, but a cow.
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