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3 - Cultural Nostalgia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2020

Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, Columbia
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Summary

Chapter 3 uncovers the memory production that centered on the mainlanders’ native places in China, which emerged after the shock of 1958. When people realized that they might never see home again in their lifetimes, a profound sense of loss and depression began to set it. The need to mitigate this “social trauma of the diminishing hope (for return)” resulted in efforts to gather, preserve, and disseminate “local references” – historical and cultural information about one’s home provinces, counties, towns, and villages in China via shared memories. These efforts manifested themselves in the publication of provincially based magazines and books, as well as in public exhibitions and the construction of temples and cultural museums. The mainlander native-place associations became the main driving force behind these mnemonic projects from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. Going against the previous interpretation that saw these activities as part of the state-led Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement, the chapter argues that the production of native-place memories was closely associated with mainland exiles’ attempts to rebuild community, to seek roots locally in Taiwan, and to pass on their native-place identities to their Taiwan-born children. Unfortunately, young mainlanders were uninterested in their parents’ native-place memories and identities.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Great Exodus from China
Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan
, pp. 127 - 167
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Cultural Nostalgia
  • Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, University of Missouri, Columbia
  • Book: The Great Exodus from China
  • Online publication: 12 September 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108784306.004
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  • Cultural Nostalgia
  • Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, University of Missouri, Columbia
  • Book: The Great Exodus from China
  • Online publication: 12 September 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108784306.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Cultural Nostalgia
  • Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, University of Missouri, Columbia
  • Book: The Great Exodus from China
  • Online publication: 12 September 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108784306.004
Available formats
×