Perhaps the English title refers not to Taiwan, but instead to continental China, in what appears to be the early 1900's from the type of clothing and flash bulb cameras. China used to be called Republic of China before the communist revolution, after which time the winning communist's changed the name to The People's Republic of China. Because I don't think the setting looks like Taiwan, as it was ruled by Japan for 50 years before WWII and was fairly undeveloped and agricultural until the Japanese arrived. Taiwan wasn't called Republic of China until after the war when the defeated Chinese party fled continental China and emigrated to Taiwan. Before the Japanese, Taiwan had a variety of different names, from all the different waves of immigrants and European colonies, starting from the aborigines (who were mistreated by both the Chinese and Europeans, just like every other place throughout human history), over tens of thousands of years. You might still find some elderly people who grew up speaking Japanese and who had trouble learning Mandarin. Otherwise the Chinese would would have mostly spoken their ethnic Han or Fujian dialects of Hakka or Hokkien. Interestingly, you'll find that most of the Chinese in Singapore also speak Hakka or Hokkien, along with Cantonese. Strangely, you'll sometimes find Chinese people in very remote villages of Southeast Asia, like in Cambodia or Philippines speaking Hokkien, because they emigrated, travelled for trade, or were brought in to work on European colony plantations.
So, anyway, the English title most probably and correctly refers to continental China, since that name doesn't relate to Taiwan until a much later time period from what the story's setting appears to be.