My close friend Drew strikes a pose in front of the old market in Hsiluo.
People often view Taiwan as a former colonized territory that must be fashioned into a nation, but it would be more accurate, as Lu Hsin-yi does in the excellent The Politics of Locality: Making a Nation of Communities in Taiwan, to say that Taiwan is a collection of localities in search of a nation. In this book Lu tells the story of the burgeoning of "the local" in the narrative of Taiwan nationalism since the end of martial law, and of how "the local" is constructed and constructs itself in the search for the authentic core of a sustainable Taiwan nationalist narrative.
A slim book at just 164 pages, it nevertheless contains a meaty and idea-dense explication of The Local in the context of Taiwan nationalism. There are six chapters, but the core is three studies of community projects and community in Tanshui, I-lan, and Baimi, a small town south of Suao on the east coast. Two chapters on nationalism, community, and local culture front the book, and the final chapter weaves the disparate threads of the local narratives into an insightful discussion of Taiwan, communities, and nationalism.
In Taiwan, Lu narrates, the growth of the local, and local communities, grew out of the democratization of the island after the lifting of martial law and the resultant explosion of interest in the local. Taiwan culture, long suppressed by the KMT, was deliberately opposed to the faux, idealized, Chinese culture brought from China by the retreating mainlanders. The KMT deployed that culture in an attempt to destroy the local, even changing the street names to reflect places in China, thus burying much local history. But the renaissance in things Taiwanese led to a massive shift in the cultural pattern, as Mandarin became devalued in favor of Taiwanese. Taiwanese folk art and artists were rediscovered and celebrated. Even in the antique market, Chinese high culture was superseded by a preference for local collectibles.
The Taiwanization movement of the 1990s owes much to the deliberate policy of Lee Teng-hui to build local culture as a way to encourage Taiwan nation building. In 1993 Lee Teng-hui began to promote the idea of Taiwan as a "living community" (shengming gongtongti) and the idea of communal sentiment (gongtongti yishi). In 1994 the Integrated Community-Making Program was begun by the Council on Cultural Affairs. This was followed by a proliferation of culture workers in the local communities, the development of Taiwan studies as a discipline, and textbook reform. Community organizations mushroomed.
The article goes on to discuss how when a Chen pai member was picked because of his better education, the Li faction was enraged and township councilman from the Li faction boycotted many of his innovative projects. Eventually the opponents of his projects successfully sued him and got him suspended from the mayorship. Many of the projects petered out or were defeated by developmentalists who had far more political power than the preservationists, a common pattern in Taiwan.
I-lan, where community building began earlier under the brilliant administration of Chen Ding-nan, and Baimi are also discussed in minute detail.
With the KMT in power everywhere, what will happen to attempts to build community-based nationalism in Taiwan?
Another author I would highly recommend is Yuan-tsung Chen of "Return to the Middle Kingdom". As engrossing as any historical novel I’ve ever read, this book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the origin of Modern China.