Graduate Student, Anthropology
PhD Candidate
Thesis Title: Home(lands) Reinvented: The Chinese Diaspora and Their Material Culture in Taiwan
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Chris Tilley
Victor Buchli |
About
This research delves into the everyday practice of the now-elderly Chinese diaspora (waishengren) who retreated from China to Taiwan after World War II. In the thesis, it compares and contrasts how waishengren and their family, either from mainland China or island Taiwan, make sense of dwelling in Taiwan for more than a half century, and how they define their relationship with other (imagined) ethnic groups in Taiwan through material culture, which is revealed by (1) interviewing waishengren and their families; (2) phenomenologically describing public and domestic space; (3) investigating the (in)significance of home(lands) to them, and (4) exploring the way Chinese diaspora situate themselves in a time of emerging “Taiwanese statehood”. Semi-structured interviews with forty households were conducted in LN Village in Hsinchu City of northern Taiwan, whilst photographs, maps, spatial diagrams, floor plans, selected socio-spatial data and archives are exhibited and analysed in order to further understand how the Chinese diaspora and their family construct multiple identities through homes and potted-plant gardens in contemporary Taiwan.
