Abstract
After WWII, the Chinese civil war had caused over six hundred thousand military soldiers and their dependents to immigrate to Taiwan, led by the Kuomintang (KMT) government. In order to settle those Chinese soldiers and dependents, the KMT established 886 military communities around the Taiwan island and other off-shore islands. These military communities had become a unique landscape in Taiwan and developed hybridization among the residents who lived in the communities in a diasporic context. In 1996, the approval of a remodeling regulation announced the decline of these military communities. When the public housings have changed the landscapes in modern cities, the experiences of living in the crude, crowded houses of military communities have become the reminiscences shared among these older residents. In order to analyze the interrelationship between outer space and inner home imaginations of the immigrant groups living in Taiwan's military communities, the researcher of this project will interview the residents who had lived in old military communities and are currently living in the new-built public housings in Pingtung City, the southernmost county in Taiwan; then she will apply narrative criticism to examine the interview narratives made by these residents. The research purpose of this project is to investigate how the Chinese immigrants and their descendants present home imaginings and identity constructions while facing long-term cultural and political conflicts between China and Taiwan. In addition, by analyzing the above cultural narratives, the research conclusions may be helpful to explore the intersections between diasporic experiences and the construction of belongings.
Author Information
Pei-Ling Lee, Shih Hsin University, Taiwan
Paper Information
Conference: ACCS2013
Stream: Cultural Studies
This paper is part of the ACCS2013 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Lee P. (2013) Old Communities, New Buildings: Decoding the Home-imagining Narratives of Taiwan’s Military Communities ISSN: 2187-4751 – The Asian Conference on Cultural Studies 2013 – Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/2187-4751.20130105
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/2187-4751.20130105
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