#second generation diaspora moment i have such a relationship with japanese culture.
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
lord-shitbox · 2 years ago
Text
[ask b4 reposting]
Tumblr media
ais + japanese culture
insert guy deranged in front of corkboard image. so many feelings about him.
EDIT: THINGS I FORGOT TO MENTION
-the spider lilies on his enamel pin (associated with death in japan)
-red makeup at the outer corners of his eyes (this is a whole thing in traditional japanese makeup, geisha and kabuki makeup styles both commonly have it if you want to look more into it)
160 notes · View notes
dillydedalus · 5 years ago
Text
october reading
 books. i read ‘em.
the bird king, g. willow wilson ugh i’m disappointed with this - i expected it to be more about the fall of granada, rather than just taking that as a jumping-off point for a very slow story of how fatima (concubine to the last andalusian sultan) and her bff hassan (magical mapmaker) escape from lady inquisitor luz to a magical/legendary island. that’s more of an expectation mismatch, but i also found this just a bit boring and confused, didn’t like the characters or the emotional moments. 2.5/5
lanark: a life in four books, alasdair gray y’all... this is a weirdo pomo mess which gray himself describes as ‘a portrait of the artist as a frustrated young glaswegian’ (instant love), it’s about duncan thaw growing up in post-war glasgow (not a good place) and lanark, sans memories, finding himself in the city of unthank (probably The Bad Place), where the sun hardly ever shines and people grow dragonskin, but really it’s about art & cities & politics & scotland & hell. it’s completely nuts & has a chapter where the protagonist meets the author in the process of writing and there’s a chapter-long sidebar detailing all instances of plagiarism in the book (incl. the lack of influence from robert burns, more sinister than all plagiarism). it’s a bit flabby in places & could stand to be a 100-200 pages shorter, but damn. 4/5
the memory police, yoko ogawa (tr. from japanese by stephen snyder) very atmospheric, quietly disturbing magical realist(ish) book about an island on which sometimes certain things (birds, roses, ribbons, fruit) just disappear, with the inhabitants losing their memories and emotional connection to the thing. the disappearances seem to occur randomly and on their own, but the memory police makes sure that no disappeared items remain and that those who can still remember also... disappear. really liked the quiet slow dread building here, the mysterious workings of the disappearances, and the interplay between the main story and the novel the narrator is writing while worrying whether words too will soon disappear. 4/5
trick mirror: reflections on self-delusion, jia tolentino collection of nine essays about roughly, life & self-image & politics in the social media age (and its predecessor, the reality tv age), gender politics and uh scams and self-delusions. many of these essays felt vaguely like things i’d read before online (& i might have) & didn’t offer anything completely new but i liked the examinations of big wedding culture, and her take on the ‘difficult woman’ archetype of millenial feminism. tolentino in general is an engaging, sharp writer, and even when she’s writing about familiar topics, she often puts an interesting spin on things. 3.5/5
here in berlin, cristina garcía and the anglophone-berlin-books saga continues. a cuban-american woman with a mild personal crisis goes to berlin (as people w/ personal crises so often do) and there collects a variety of snapshot stories from berliners (by birth or choice or accident), mostly about world war 2 and the latin american diaspora in berlin. some of the snapshots are p interesting or bizarrely funny but mostly they retread the same ground (history, trauma, collective & personal responsibility, commemoration etc) without really saying anything new (except the connection garcía makes between the nazis and south american dictatorships). there’s also a pretty annoying attempt to create authenticity by peppering in german words and phrases which sometimes aren’t even appropriate or spelled correctly* (get a german proofreader you cowards i’ll do it for free... like wtf is ‘volkenbrot’). 2/5 *i ordered it used and got an ARC, so maybe some of these issues were fixed for the final version but lmao. volkenbrot. 
wilder girls, rory power this is annihilation as YA, set on an island called raxter where a mysterious illness called the tox has taken over, transforming the wilderness, the animals (deers grow canines y’all), and most of all the girls at raxter boarding school. the narrator’s eye has fused shut & something is growing under it, her friend has grown an extra spine, other girls have gills or claws. less fortunate girls (and most of the teachers) just die. there was a lot i liked about this, especially the tox and the ambivalent relationships the girls have to their changed bodies, but the last third just... eh. also, like, i like tumblr monster-girl poetics as much as the next person, but this is really overdoing it. 2.5/5
nach mitternacht (after midnight), irmgard keun KEUN HYPE TRAIN!!! this one’s super interesting because it’s the first novel keun wrote in exile, published 1937 and set at around the same time. the protagonist, sanne, is a naive and politically uneducated 19-year-old who is repeatedly & very dramatically confronted with the political reality she lives in, first when her aunt denounces her to the gestapo and later when her boyfriend franz is arrested. for most of the (very short) novel, sanne is observing and not quite understanding the increasing legal discrimination against jews, culture of paranoia and denouncement, and glorification of fascist ideology, which makes for a very disturbing reading experience, especially with the reader’s retrospective knowledge, but the climax is truly nightmarish & devastating. 4/5
children of god, mary doria russell the sequel to the sparrow, which i read & loved earlier this year. in this one, emilio sandoz, still in recovery from the trauma of his first trip to the planet rakhat, is forced to return there (bc the pope thinks it’s god’s will lol) and finds the planet changed after decades (space travel makes time weird) of revolution and civil war. i liked this but it’s not as good as the sparrow, the characters (except my man emilio) aren’t as interesting & well-developed and the dual timeline structure isn’t as well-executed but hey. there’s some closure for emilio & that made me hella emosh. 3.5/5
the wilful princess & the piebald prince, robin hobb a novella telling the true (?) story of charger farseer, the piebald prince, a historical figure that has great influence on the six duchies of fitz’s time, especially regarding the treatment of the witted (people who can magically bond with aninmals) and how fitz is framed & reviled as the ‘witted bastard’. this was cool & i enjoyed how it twists the story, but it’s not worth reading if you haven’t read the main series. 3/5
the inheritance, robin hobb/megan lindholm collection of short stories by hobb under her two pseudonyms - i mostly skipped the lindholm ones (sorry), but the three hobb ones were really really good. the first is about the first expeditions into the rain wilds (i love the cursed shores so much & wish there was a full trilogy about the first settlers there), the second is about bingtown & wizardwood, the third is about how sometimes you gotta kill your abusive ex & if you’re lucky, your cat will help you do it. it’s great & the cat is called marmelade. 4/5 for the hobb stories only
unholy land, lavie tidhar alternate history + multiple realities + high-concept pulp - lior tirosh, a pulp author (it’s meta) returns to his homeland, the jewish state palestina, established in east africa in the early 20th century, and there becomes involved in... rival plots to destroy/stabilise the borders between the worlds, not only between this alternate one and our real one, which tirosh seems to occasionally slip into, but all the million others, including one where the moon broke. love the concept, but this is so vague & confusing on so many points and the ending so abrupt that i was left kinda frustrated & unsatisfied (also bc we never find out much more about the world where the moon broke). 3.5/5
tigermilch (tiger milk), stefanie de velasco german ya book about two teen girls growing up in a poor neighbourhood in berlin. nini’s father is absent, her mother depressed, while jameelah’s father died in iraq and her mother is worried that they might be deported, and their bosnian friend amir’s sister is dating a serb. it’s some pretty harrowing stuff & it’s good to see Issues (TM) addressed in german ya in a way that doesn’t feel super didactic & preachy, but ultimately i’m really not the target audience here. 3/5
sea monsters, chloe aridjis
weirdo brainy dreamy novella about a girl in 80s mexico running away from mexico city to the beach because she’s looking for ukrainian circus dwarfs (???). i liked a lot about this (atmosphere, poetic & mythical allusions, a lot of the writing, the depictions of mexico city and the weird beach culture are both really cool) but a lot of the time this was so dreamy that i just kinda zoned out. 3/5
i am currently reading emma by jane austen bc i forgot about my monthly austen project until the last few days of the month lol & one of the hugo long list anthologies. the one with the cool fox on it.
4 notes · View notes
chisimage · 4 years ago
Text
Discuss the relationship between place, identity and displacement through the case of mainlander forced migrants of 1949 in Taiwan.
Author/ Chi Chu
‘The embodiment of the homelessness refers to the circumstances of the refugees away from 'home'”, Warner (1994, p.48) ever states. This was also the experience for 'mainlander forced migrants' in 1949. 1937 to 1960 was the most chaotic period in modern Chinese history. After the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Civil War and the Korean War, a large number of people were forced to migrate between China and Taiwan. After the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949) between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the government of the Republic of China (ROC) retreated to Taiwan in 1949. Since then, mainland China has been governed by the People's Republic of China (PRC). At the time, about 2 million 'mainlander forced migrants'[1] migrated to Taiwan and became one of the 'rootless groups' in history. Using this case, this essay discusses the relationship between place, identity and displacement through analysing post-war literature. First, the essay will consider how migrants shape nostalgia and the 'sense of places' through 'a taste of home' or 'ritual' to establish their identity and sense of belonging to hometown. Second, it aims to discuss how mainlander forced migrants have confronted the double ambivalence and transformation of identity while/after 'returning home'. Finally, this essay argues that the relationship between place, identity and displacement is a dynamic process. For mainlander forced migrants who moved to Taiwan after 1949, their identity is mainly influenced by the political situation between China and Taiwan and memory shaped by forced migrant communities.
The sustenance of displacement and nostalgia have been the collective experiences of mainlander migrants who left their hometown (mainland China) in 1949 but could never truly return to their hometown physically and psychologically. One of the reasons is the dilemma of the political situation between China and Taiwan. Because the new regime, the PRC, has governed mainland China since 1949, these displaced people from the mainland have experienced a kind of political displacement. Meanwhile, not only was the international refugee system still in the process of being established at that time, but the protection or settlement policies for these forced migrants was also incomplete (Nedostup, 2010). So far, the displacement from 1945 to 1949 caused by the Chinese Civil War is still a major talking point. Hence, the mainlander forced migrants, who have been difficult to catalogue in the relief system or following refugee conventions, have been put on hold by the international community and are framed up in the political conflicts between China and Taiwan (Ibid). Looking at history, Lary (2010) shows that, for many Chinese people, the wars meant endless separation, which was a sudden incidents without any signs, and it just happened naturally. In a documentary about the life of mainlander forced migrants in Taiwan, Hebei Taipei (2016), the protagonist, Li, mentions that all the roads he had travelled were not ones he would have chosen himself, but were forced on him by the external situation: 'it was fate that chose me.' This is indicative of the experience of mainlander forced migrants. For them, Taiwan is not their home: their real hometown is in mainland China (Taiwan People News, 2015). As Turton (1996) states, “one assumption of 'displacement' indicates ideally people 'belong' to a certain place and gain the identity from their association with a particular place fundamentally or naturally” (Cited in Kiberab, 1999, p.405). However, returning to the hometown has become a utopia for mainlander forced migrants. In turn, nostalgia and the cohesion of the forced migrant community can be observed in post-war literature, through which migrants attempted to reconstruct the memories of their hometown during their displacement. Yu (2011[1974]), part of the first generation of mainlander forced migrants, describes the attachment to hometown in his poem, Nostalgia:
When I was a child,
Nostalgia was a tiny postage stamp,
I, on this side,
My mother, on the other.
When I was older,
Nostalgia became a ship ticket,
I, on this side,
My bride, on the other.
Later,
Nostalgia was a squat tomb,
I, outside.
My mother, inside.
And now,
Nostalgia is a coastline, a shallow strait.
I, on this side,
The mainland, on the other.
It can be observed from Yu's text that displacement is a lack of existence, perhaps more fundamental than the lack of shelter (Cresswell, 2004). It means that mainland migrants were forced to leave their hometowns and lost the sustenance of their hometowns in the process. Also, through Yu’s expressions, 'here' and 'there', the hometown is depicted as far away. Moreover, through expressions of nostalgia, mainland China is undoubtedly a place of inner connection and a sense of belonging (Augé, 2017, p. 60). Yu's poem also responds to Kibreab's (1999) statement that “the propensity of many societies, including formerly 'cohesive' ones, to define themselves based on their ethnic, national or spatial origin, or religion”. This indicates that in Yu's texts it can be seen that the  description of his ethnic origin through the relationship between mother/ mainland China (on the other side) and him/ Taiwan (on this side). Also, Relph (1976) notes ‘ the roots are significant to provide people a point of prospect and the attachment of a particular place in terms of spiritual and psychological sides. For human beings, it is an essential need to be attached and have deep ties to places. Hence, in the nostalgia of mainlander forced migrants, spatial origin and the roots represent place attachment psychologically. Besides, ‘place attachment is often defined as 'an affective bond or link between people and specific places'’ (Hidalgo & Hernández 2001; Cited in Windsong, 2010, p. 206). For instance, Tang (1979, p. 2), a food writer and first generation member of the mainland diaspora, describes how 'the taste of food provokes my nostalgia of hometown. It would bewonderful if all mainlander forced migrants could return to the mainland and try a taste of hometown.' This implies that a taste of home represents the place-based, physical attachment of hometown. Additionally, over time, for mainlander forced migrants who have not been able to return to their hometowns, it has been necessary to restore and re-establish a set of cultural customs belonging to their hometown to maintain their roots (where they are from) and release the nostalgia (Sun, 2010, p. 48). For them, nostalgia and the spiritual substance of hometown are pin on a particular object or practice, such as a taste of home and ritual. These objects/practices represent the reappearance of 'place', which can be imagined and even reconstruct the memory of hometown. As a consequence, these objects/practices encapsulate a sense of place and Les Lieux de Memoire (Nora). As Tuan (1975;1990) states, the place becomes a symbol of spirit to express emotions, not just to indicate location or function. The thought of home transcends the boundaries of residence and includes places that are often described as 'sense of place' with a sense of belonging (May, 2000, p. 748). As mentioned above, in a displacement context, the place provides spiritual and memorial sustenance and is not just a physical place but can also be a sense of place presented in any object.
The memories and identities of hometown formed by displaced mainlanders take shape through practices such as food literature or rituals in the alien land. In the process, a desire to return to their hometown is created. For instance, as Chung (1959) mentions in My Native Land, 'the blood of the native villagers must be flown to the original hometown to be stopped.' This means that the nostalgia of mainlander forced migrants will stop only when they make their return. Due to the political situation between China and Taiwan, mainlander forced migrants were not allowed to visit relatives in China and 'return to their hometowns' until 1987. Nevertheless, the experience of returning to their hometown has also become a critical point to deny the imagination of mainland China shaped in these four decades by mainlander forced migrants. During this time, the mainlander forced migrants became truly psychologically 'rootless' and lost their identity. Identity has the function of identification and connection for individuals. It distinguishes the difference between insider and outsider, and connection meets the sense of belonging between individuals and communities. In the case of mainlander forced migrants, when they returned to their hometowns they discovered that profound changes had occurred in the past few decades. This made their mental connections to the landscape disappear (Lin, 2010, p. 304). As Chu (1992) mentions in In Remembrance of My Buddies from the Military Compound, ‘the moment when I was able to return to my hometown, I found that for my relatives who remained I was a Taiwan compatriot and a Taiwanese; However, when going back to the Island (Taiwan), where I have lived for over four decades, people refer to me as a member of the mainlander forced migrants from the other province of mainland China… Thus, I have a deep feeling that I am like the displaced bat, which cannot be classified into bird or vertebrate’. Chu (2002[1997], p. 213) also states the mistake about her ancestral history in The Ancient Capital. For Chu, people blame forced migrants for retreating to Taiwan in 1949 and abandoning ancestral tombs and the reunion with family. Another example is the documentary, How High is the Mountain, which reveals the relationships within individual encounters of mainlander forced migrants and history after 1949. In one scene, a son asks, 'How did you feel when you went back to your hometown yesterday?'. His father replies, 'I do not know anyone ... all have changed'. 'Will you want to go back again?', the son asks. Father shakes his head and says, 'it is not like my hometown at all. My original house is gone.' In the cases mentioned above, the disconnection from hometown is a response to the difference of sense of belonging, as well as the disparity between ‘self’ (forced migrant) and 'others' (hometown). Furthermore, mainland migrants sink into a dilemma because they belong to neither their original hometown nor Taiwan.
Accordingly, whether the ‘identity’ would truly transform after a while when the original hometown is no longer how it appears in memory. For mainlander forced migrants, the identity of 'outsider' signifies that nowhere can be attached and status of displacement—not only outside Taiwan but also outside the hometown in mainland China (Mei, 2006, p. 12). Even though displacement is still constant, psychologically, these mainlander forced migrants have recognised they have lived for most of their lives in Taiwan and have recognised Taiwan. However, the identity of mainlander forced migrants has been continuously split by the political situation between China and Taiwan. The identity issue has continued to ferment (Yang, 2010, p. 64). The first reason for the identity issue is that the governments of ROC and PRC have emphasised the 'homogeneity' of identity in the post-war era in order to establish the coherence of opposite political ideology between China and Taiwan, respectively. Consequently, this long-term opposing position has created a difference in consciousness/ideology/memory between mainlander forced migrants and their families/hometowns. Secondly, because the Taiwanese political environment has changed drastically since 1949, mainlander forced migrants have been marginalised in Taiwanese society. The atmosphere of society had changed from Chinese consciousness to local Taiwanese consciousness (Lin, 2010, p. 313; Ko, 2010, p. 81). The reason was a series of political conflicts that took place in Taiwan after 1949, such as the 228 Incident, which accelerated the differentiation between mainlander forced migrants and local Taiwanese . Therefore, for mainlander forced migrants, they are neither Taiwanese nor Chinese because of the difficulties in the processes of assimilation and acculturation. ‘They are just a wandering soul that has no place to go/ belongs.’ (Lin 2019). The situation faced by mainlander forced migrants corresponds to the concept of 'double ambivalence' proposed by Weisberger (1992) in Marginality and Its Directions. This idea indicates the anxiety of migrants facing a marginal situation in an alien land. This anxiety stems from the difficulty striking a balance between the culture of the alien land/new nation-state and the hometown/native nation-state. Neither can migrants rule out the influences created by their native culture. Consequently, migrants are in a marginal position, not in-between, but unable to adapt to each side, resulting in the double-ambivalence. They can only return to their native hometown geographically but cannot truly go home psychologically. This indicates that mainlander forced migrants have confronted the dilemma in the sense of belonging/identification and might they retreat to the margins of society.
As mentioned above, mainlander forced migrants have faced the split between 'hometown' and 'nation-state' which has changed their own identities. According to Crowley (2003), who discusses the concept of narrative identity proposed by Paul Ricoeur, there are two types of 'identity': idem and ipse. Ipse identity corresponds to the relationship in the space-time context produced through the accumulation of cultural construction, narrative body and time. Often it must be reproduced through the subject's narrative. Not only can it only be formed in the process of continuous construction, but also often generates various deformations under the cultural norms. For example, great differences in the identity consciousness of hometown can be observed between different generations. Due to social oppression, although new generations recognize Taiwan, they continue the consciousness of hometown and the sense of national identity from older generations (Ko, 2012, p. 41&146), resulting in a double identity of nation-states (Shen 2010: 128). There is such a difference of identity because, for the second generation, life in Taiwan is their first memory instead of in mainland China. Therefore, in response to Ricoeur's statement, the identity of mainlander forced migrants in different generations is a continuous construction between self and history/environment. Therefore, identity is an invisible and dynamic process/concept.
Overall, according to the case of mainlander forced migrants living in Taiwan after 1949, it can be seen that the relationship between place, identity and displacement is a dynamic process, which is not only based on the changes of time and space but also reflected in the political context, the inner cohesion of displacement communities, the meanings of identity for different generations and more. Furthermore, for mainlander forced migrants in 1949, even 'return' cannot eliminate their psychological or physical displacement. Because of long-term displacement, the memories caused by nostalgia, rather than a visible place, become an 'imaginary place', the spiritual attachment onto which forced migrants hold. Consequently, the double ambivalence of place and identity presents the displacement situation in the context of forced migrants.
Reference
Augé, M. (2017[1992]). NON-LIEUX: intruduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité [In Chinese] trans. By S. Sun. Taipei: Garden City Publishers.
Chu, T.-H. (1992). In Remembrance of My Buddies from the Military Compound [In Chinese]. Taipei: Rye Field Publishing Co.
Chu, T.-H. (2002[1997]). The Ancient Capital [In Chinese]. Taipei: INK.
Chung, L.-H. (1959). My Native Land [In Chinese]. Available at: http://cls.lib.ntu.edu.tw/hakka/author/zhong_li_he/he_composition/he_onlin/short_stoy/short_16.htm (Accessed 10 May 2020).
Cresswell, T. (2004). Place: A Short Introduction. US: Wiley-Blackwell.
Crowley, P. (2003). Paul Ricoeur: the Concept of Narrative Identity, the Trace of Autobiography. Paragraph, 26(3), p. 1-12.
Kiberab, G. (1999). Revisiting the Debate on People, Place, Identity and Displacement. Journal of Refugee Studies, 12(4), pp. 384-410.
Ko, P.-W. (2010). The Research of "Home-Country Writing " of Taiwanese Proses After 1980s [In Chinese]. PhD Dissertation, National Cheng Kung University.
Lary, D. (2010). The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937-1945 (New Approaches to Asian History). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Li, N. (2015). Hebei Taipei [Documentary in Chinese]. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4842868/ (Accessed 10 May 2020).
Lin, Klaw (2019). No Place to Go and Belongs. [In Chinese]. Available at: https://living.taronews.tw/2019/11/22/537312/ (Accessed 10 May 2020).
Lin, P. (2010). Being Strangers at Home: Mainlander Taiwanese in China. In M.-K., Chang (ed.) Nation and Identity: Perspectives of Some “Waishengren”[In Chinese]. Taipei: Socio Publishing Co. Ltd, pp. 301-329.
May, J. (2000). Of Nomads and Vagrants: Single Homelessness and Narratices of Home as Place. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18(6), p. 737-759.
Mei, C.-L.(2006). The Vicissitude in Mainlander Association (eds.) The Memory in Drifted period: Undeliverable family letters. Taipei: INK.
Nedostup, R. (2010). Defining Displacement: A Few Problems in Analyzing Wartime Refugees in China and Taiwan, 1937-1960 [Lecture]. Available at: http://ccs.ncl.edu.tw/files/1217%E5%BC%B5%E5%80%A9%E9%9B%AF%E6%95%99%E6%8E%88%E6%91%98%E8%A6%81.pdf(Accessed 10 May 2020).
Nora, P. (1989). Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire, trans. by M. Roudebush. Representations, 26, p. 7-24.
Relph, E. (1976). Place and placelessness. London: Pion Limited.
Shen, S.-C. (2010). Fatherland and Homeland. In M.-K., Chang (ed.) Nation and Identity: Perspectives of Some “Waishengren”, 111-146) [In Chinese]. Taipei: Socio Publishing Co. Ltd, pp. 111-146.
Sun, H.-Y. (2010). National Identity of Waishenren, the Second Generation in Taiwan. In M.-K., Chang (ed.) Nation and Identity: Perspectives of Some “Waishengren” [In Chinese]. Taipei: Socio Publishing Co. Ltd, pp. 31-74.
Taiwan People News (2015). Discussion of political identity [Online Essay in Chinese]. Available at: https://www.peoplenews.tw/news/ebd2a5b4-99a2-43d2-9ff1-04d6fd31e4e2 (Accessed 10 May 2020).
Tang, L.-S.(1979). Get Away from Home. Taipei: China Times Publishing Co.
Tuan Yi-Fu (1990). Topophilia: A study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values. NY: Columbia University Press.
Tuan, Yi-Fu (1975). Topophilia: A study of environmental perception, attitudes and values. Human Ecology. 3(2), p. 131-133.
Warner, D. (1994). Voluntary Repatriation and the Meaning of Return to Home: A Critique of Liberal Mathematics.Journal of Refugee Studies,7(2/3), p. 160-174.
Weisberger, A. (1992). Marginality and Its Directions. Sociological Forum, 7(3), p. 425-446.
Windsong, E. A. (2010). There is no place like home: Complexities in exploring home and place attachment. The Social Science Journal, 47(1), p. 205-214.
Yang, M.(2010). The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: The literature of Mainlander Authors of 1949. [In Chinese]. Taipei: Showwe Information Co., Ltd.
Yeh, J. & Tanf, S.-C. (2002). How High is the Mountain [Documentary in Chinese]. Taipei: Taiwan Public Television.
Yu, K.-C. (2011[1974]). Nostalgia[In Chinese]. Wuhan: ChangJiang Literature.
[1] In her lecture, Nedostup (2010) discusses how government officials found it difficult to define the veterans and civilians who migrated to Taiwan after 1945, and especially in 1949. Political and cultural uncertainties are reflected in the terms used in documents and in secondary historical materials, including political categories (compatriots), geographic cultures (mainlander diasporas/forced migrants), and social categories (refugees).
0 notes