TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A biology textbook has drawn the ire of Taiwanese after it was found to use the Mandarin word for "potato" seen in China instead of the commonly used term in Taiwan.

A middle school teacher recently discovered that a middle school biology textbook used the term "tudou" (土豆) to mean potato, rather than "malingshu" (馬鈴薯), which is more commonly used in Taiwan to refer to the tuber. This has led to a collective suspicion among some Taiwanese that the language was a tactic by the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) United Front to disseminate linguistic uses from China into Taiwan as part of its cognitive warfare program designed to erode Taiwanese reluctance at being annexed by Beijing.

In a cartoon at the top of the page, which the teacher posted on a personal Facebook account, a student tells his classmate that he enjoyed sweet and sour tudou (potato) shreds with his family last week. The classmate was confused because in Taiwan tudou means peanut, and he tried to conceptualize the shredding of a peanut into fine strips.

The student said that it was a big tudou and then asked his classmate if the tudou he was referring to was the same one that he had in mind. In the call-out box, he equated tudou with malingshu.

However, the classmate continued to look perplexed as he visualized a tudou being equivalent to a peanut.

The teacher wrote that the cartoon appeared in Chapter 3.2, which introduced "the naming and classification of living things," reported SET News. The teacher pointed out that malingshu and tudou are not interchangeable terms in Taiwan and asked "What's wrong with Kang Hsuan's editor?"

The teacher recommended changing the explanation in the textbook to read, "In Taiwan, yangyu (洋芋) and malingshu refer to the same plant. The commonly used words peanut (花生, huasheng) and tudou refer to another plant. But Taiwan's tudou and China's tudou do not refer to the same plant, which is the problem that common names easily bring about."

The teacher concluded that it is therefore necessary to use scientific names to avoid misunderstanding in scientific research.

During a session of the Legislative Yuan on Monday (April 17), New Power Party (NPP) Chair and Legislator Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) asked Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) about the matter. Pan said that he was quite surprised that the textbook made it to print as "it would be impossible to pass the review" by the National Academy for Educational Research.

Pan said that textbook publishers must use words commonly used in Taiwan, and it would be impossible to approve a lexicon from China. The education minister stated that if it has been found that the publisher made a mistake, "it should be corrected."

In response to the complaints, Kang Hsuan Educational Publishing Group on Monday (April 17) issued a statement in which it claimed that the purpose of compiling the textbook is a reminder that different words used in daily life to refer to the same thing enables students to understand the "importance of scientific names for communication." It stated that it is "deeply sorry" for the controversy caused by the use of the terms and pledged to submit the revised content for review by the National Academy for Educational Research.

Kang Hsuan claimed that the words printed in the textbook were based on the revised version of the Mandarin dictionary recompiled by the Ministry of Education and were referenced from the agricultural knowledge portal of the Council of Agriculture. It stated that subsequent revisions of this edition will be submitted for review in accordance with the administrative procedures stipulated in the official textbook examination and approval guidelines.

Controversial page from Kang Hsuan textbook. (Facebook image)

Apology letter sent by Kang Hsuan. (Kang Hsuan image)