Familiar Strangers Afoot in Taiwan: the Competing Social Imaginaries of East Asian Tourists
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FAMILIAR STRANGERS AFOOT IN TAIWAN: THE COMPETING SOCIAL IMAGINARIES OF EAST ASIAN TOURISTS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ANTHROPOLOGY MAY 2012 By CHEN, Chien-Yuan Dissertation Committee: Christine Yano, Chairperson Andrew Arno Geoffrey White Ming-Bao Yue David Y.H. Wu Keywords: Taiwan, Intra-Asia Tourism, Familiar Strangers. Social Imaginaries, Chineseness, Residual Culture i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Since the very beginning of my enrollment in the UH anthropology department in fall 2007, I have dreamt of the coming of this day and of how I should present the bitter-sweet experiences of my postgraduate and research life in Hawai’i. The day has come and what has most occupied my mind is not really how I have struggled but how I have being helped. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to the many people who have given me such strong support emotionally and academically, any time I felt lost or exhausted. The warm support of faculty, friends, and informants has helped me to overcome numerous difficulties. First, I appreciate the great patience and generous help of my dissertation committee members. Dr. Christine Yano, a wonderful and energetic mentor, has not only advised me on my academic work but also presented me with the template for an exceptional anthropologist. Dr. Geoffrey White’s considerable knowledge about both cultural tourism and research methodology proved fundamental to the formation of my research concerns. Dr. Ming- BaoYue’s guidance in the arena of cultural studies always brought me valuable insight into my fieldwork in China. Dr. Andrew Arno’s expertise in media studies directed my fruitful explorations of representations behind cultural imaginations. Finally, Dr. David Wu has been immensely helpful to me in finding research affiliations and sharing useful information gained from his personal and research experience in Chinese societies. I have also benefited greatly from non-committee members. Dr. Chung-Hsin Sun, who has known me more than a decade, has been a true mentor in helping me resolve my uncertainty ii about the future. Dr. Guo-Juin Hung has inspired me to look at Chinese cinema and has widened the scope of my knowledge of Chinese mass media. Dr. Leo Ching was the person who first planted in my mind the seeds of interest in inter-Asia studies, and the one who coined the term “intra-Asia tourism.” Moreover, Dr. Emma Teng, as an outside reader, has always given me positive feedback and encouraged me to continue my work. Dr. Stéphane Corcuff, whose ideas on Taiwan’s liminality provided substantial food for thought, assisted me in refining my research discoveries. Dr. Katherine Clayton has been an agreeable and tireless listener to my ceaseless complaints about conducting fieldwork in Chinese societies. Many thanks to Dr. Lara Chen and Dr. Feiyun Lu, and to Dr. Mizuka Kimura, for your hospitality and generous assistance during the course of my fieldwork. Also, my thanks go to my friends and fellow students, David, Hiro(s), Toru, Kazu, Kohei, Sarah, Mingjen, Wozzeck, and Suhao for once suffering together in the Ivory Tower. Thanks to my informants. While I consider you my friends, in anthropological jargon I must call you “informants,” and sometimes your names have been erased and you appear anonymous. Please be assured you are not anonymous to me. My great appreciation also goes to the following organizations and their members: Japan Asia Airways, JTB Kansai, Minpaku, Peiking University, SHUFE, Shanghai Guolu, the Taiwan Tourism Bureau, the Taiwan Tourism Association, various tour guide and tour leader training groups, and the East West Center. Also, without the substantial financial support of two foundations, the Sumitomo Foundation and the Matsushita International Foundation, my transnational work could not have been carried out as smoothly as it was. Finally, my special thanks go to my dearest family for their endless support, though they may have been confused about what I have been working on the past few years. This iii dissertation is solid evidence that I went to Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Osaka for more than just fun. Along with my grandmother, my grandfather, who was an early “international student” in Kagoshima, Japan and at the same time a colonial subject of the Japanese empire, inspired my explorative journey into the Japan of yesteryear, and constantly reminds me of how different identities can become intertwined. The warm and endless support of my parents has been a balm for my homesickness through the years. Sharing the study-abroad experience in the U.S. with my sister, Yi-Ju, has created other kinds of strong familial ties. Hong-di’s backup in Taipei always helped me to concentrate on my work. And last but far from least, Yuhan has always been not only a life-partner but also my strongest academic ally, standing by me and helping me overcome the many difficulties and unexpected occurrences of my studies in the U.S. iv ABSTRACT This dissertation, focusing on intra-Asia tourism practices and tourism encounters in Taiwan, proposes a new transnational, multi-sited ethnographic approach for the examination of several crucial issues concerning social imaginaries, modernities, post-Cold War ideologies, and cultural identities in East Asia. The term “familiar strangers” refers to intra-East Asia tourists— mainly Japanese, and PRC Chinese—visiting Taiwan. These visitors often possess certain preconceptions concerning their destinations prior to departure—preconceptions shaped by a shared contentious history and highly subjective narrations of this history. In this dissertation I intend to explore which “social imaginaries” inform and shape tourism practices if touristic discourses and tourist reactions are assumed to be mutually influential. What dominant image of Taiwan is represented through tourism, specifically with regard to its historical relationships with Japan and China? By examining intra-Asia tourism through this triangular relationship, I illustrate (1) how Taiwan’s past(s), its “Chineseness” and popular culture, are represented at particular tourism sites, and evoke different responses in Japanese and mainland Chinese tourists, (2) how these tourists use Taiwan as a reference point to re-position themselves within East Asia, and (3) how Taiwanese travel agencies and relevant businesses have reinvented and commercialized “Chineseness,” “Japaneseness,” and “Taiwaneseness” to maximize their profits. In order to map the terrain of the destination culture of Taiwan as a dynamic cultural formation, I conducted a transnational and multi-sited fieldwork in Taipei, Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai and Beijing from August 2009 to May 2011, which allows me to participate in Taiwan’s tourism industry from the perspective of a tour guide, tourist, and researcher. This dissertation represents v an attempt to understand how fluid and yet competing conceptions of “Chineseness,” “Japaneseness,” and “Taiwaneseness” and the social imaginaries behind them have figured in Taiwan’s tourism discourse, which has focused on different tourist populations at different periods of time. Keywords: Taiwan, Intra-Asia Tourism, Familiar Stranger, Social Imaginaries, Chineseness, Residual Culture. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements……………….………………………………………...................................I Abstract………………..………………………………………...................................................IV Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………...………...vi List of Tables…………………………..………………………………………….....................VII List of Figures ………………………........…………................................................................VIII Chapter 1: Introduction: Familiar Strangers Afoot in Taiwan……….…………...………............1 Chapter 2: Encounters with Multiple Identities…………………………………………............41 Chapter 3: Learning to be Professional………………………..……………..............................72 Chapter 4: Escape to A Place of Familiarity: Transforming Japanese Tourist Imaginations of Taiwan ………...........................................................................................................96 Chapter 5: Imagining Baodao, Imagining “Chineseness”……………………………………..132 Chapter 6: Crafting Chineseness and Commodifying Taiwan………………………………...168 Conclusion .……………………………………………............................................................207 Appendix A ………………………………….………………………………..........................217 Appendix B ………………………………….………………..................................................218 Appendix C ……………………………………………............................................................219 Appendix D…………………………….…...…………............................................................220 References vii LIST OF TABLES Table 6.1 Most Purchased Taiwan Products…………………………………………..……194 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 “Luke Yubao”……………………………………………………………………..5 Figure 2.1 Beida ID and Taibao ID……………………………………………………..........61 Figure 4.1 the historical town Jiufen……………………………………………………......119 Figure 5.1 the main melody film “Jianguodaye”…………………………………………...143 Figure 5.2 National Geography Series: Zhongguo Taiwan…………………………….…..160 Figure 5.3 The Chinese Version of Cultural Shock Series……………………………........161 Figure 5.4 The Original Version of Cultural Shock Series…………………………...........162 Figure 6.1 Mao and Chiang………………………………………………………………...187 Figure 6.3 Figure of “Jubaopen”……..…………………………………………………….196 Figure 6.3 Figure of Chinese