Contemporary Taiwan Research Articles

Consuming the White Terror: Transmedia Adaptation and Franchise-Building of Detention

Abstract This article examines the Taiwanese video game Detention (Fanxiao 返校, 2017) and its namesake film and television series adaptations, each of which has achieved critical acclaim and commercial success. Despite the franchise’s preoccupation with the history of the White Terror, this article argues that the video game’s theme of “memory as remedy” – a crucial discourse in the quest for transitional justice in contemporary Taiwan – has been diluted rather than preserved in the process of transmedia adaptation and franchise-building. Through a close-playing of the game and close-readings of the film and TV series, I demonstrate that the transmedia development of Detention is not always unified and coordinated, but rather filled with contradictions and incongruities that lead to the displacement of historical trauma. These divergent narratives reveal how the White Terror remains contested terrain in contemporary Taiwan. Dominated by the managerial logic of media franchising, a confluence of social, political, and economic factors has made Detention a unique case for contemplating transmedia storytelling in the age of convergence culture.

The Pig Slaughter Ritual among Tayal Christians in Contemporary Taiwan: towards a Preliminary Theological Reflection

The Pig Slaughter Ritual among Tayal Christians in Contemporary Taiwan: towards a Preliminary Theological Reflection

Conceptions of Divinity: Statue Making in Contemporary Taiwan and the Ritual of Embedding the Spirit (Rushen)

This article examines a ritual called the rushen (“Embedding the Spirit”) as it takes place in Taiwan. The second in a traditional series of three consecration rituals, the rushen involves the transformation of varied materials and their subsequent assemblage inside of a nascent deity statue. How do statue carvers, ritual specialists, and patrons express what the ritual achieves? This article argues that the rushen aims to purify, potentiate, and protect the interior space of a young statue. To this end, the ritual achieves the conception of a spirit embryo (shentai) inside the statue’s body. The concurrent assemblage of consecrated materials thereupon works to nourish and protect this incubating divine presence as it continues to grow in subsequent weeks. From the moment of the rushen, the spirit embryo, like a newly planted seed, gestates under the statue’s surface, protecting the image from malevolent spirits and engendering it with divine capabilities. Hidden beneath the surface, the spirit embryo awaits the kaiguang, the final ritual of animation, the moment when the statue will come to life as a spirit image, like a seedling sprouting up through the soil, like an infant emerging from the womb.

Transcultural Appropriation and Aesthetic Breakthrough of Hollywood Film Noir in Contemporary Taiwan Suspense Thriller Films: A Case Study of Who Killed Cock Robin (2017)

The production of suspense thriller films has recently surged in Taiwan. These films adopt narrative techniques and visual aesthetics reminiscent of classic and neo-noir Hollywood cinema but also address social issues in Taiwan and represent transcultural aesthetic appropriation of film noir. This article employs a case study approach to examine the narrative and visual style of the Taiwanese suspense thriller Who Killed Cock Robin (2017), using film narratology as a textual analytical framework. This study considers themes, characters, visual style, and narrative structures, focusing on fundamental characteristics of classic film noir and neo-noir. This study reveals that the selected film both appropriates and deviates from the aesthetics of Hollywood film noir. It effectively incorporates aesthetic elements from classic Hollywood film noir and neo-noir, enriching the intricacies of storytelling and character depiction, while also localizing them through complex narrative strategies and nuanced Taiwanese cultural and social elements. The film brings attention to several prevalent issues in Taiwan’s media landscape, including truth manipulation, sensationalism, tabloidization, and conglomerate and political control. The film portrays Yi-Chi as a morally compromised character embodying the detective archetype with classic noir traits, while also reflecting the “Eastern mentality” in Taiwan journalism. Despite his moral compromises, Yi-Chi partly retains traditional virtues, presenting a nuanced view of human nature that blends pessimism and optimism in Taiwan. This approach creates a distinct cross-cultural narrative that resonates emotionally with Taiwanese audiences, while also contributing to the broader global cinematic discourse on film noir.

Taiwan inside‐out: Rescaling colonial constructions of Taiwan through a Tayal‐focused lens

AbstractThis research deals with issues of Indigeneity and autonomy in Taiwan by notionally turning things inside‐out. We aim to contextualise international geopolitics and local polity by considering the Tayal people, one of 16 nationally recognised Indigenous groups living in northern Taiwan. We reject the conventional geopolitical lens of Great Power claims as the only and best way to understand contemporary Taiwan and chooses to refocus and rescale the geopolitical lens. We seek to reconsider Taiwan’s history, geography, and territory by reference to the conceptual lenses that apply to Tayal peoples’ experiences. The research methods employed include geographical fieldwork, literature reviews, and archival studies. The research acknowledges Tayal people’s custodianship over their territory and provides an in‐depth discussion on the colonial history and geography of Taiwan. In the process, we unsettle what is taken‐for‐granted and rescale erasure, violence, and resistance in Indigenous Taiwan. In building a Tayal‐centred positionality, we reframe geopolitical dynamics as connections within territories and across boundaries rather than as disputes over deeply contested boundaries. Neither Tayal people nor other Indigenous peoples in Taiwan ever ceded their sovereignty. Regardless of any broader geopolitics shifts, Tayal territory remains just the way it always has—Tayal territory.

A living archive of the oppressed: Revisiting Taiwan's authoritarian past through Freud's “The Ego and the Id”

AbstractThis paper emerged from a sore spot—the kind of sore spot that pulses with an ancient ache, refusing to find stillness. The pain caught me in a passionate unrest, turning my pages and engulfing me in a subdued fury. Re‐reading Freud's The Ego and the Id through a dialogical quest with my mother, it reveals the complexities of psychosocial troubles of identity, desires, and oppression—not solely of individuals but of an entire nation. Historical reiterations of dictatorial “thou shalt” (Freud, 1923, p. 55) echo resoundingly throughout contemporary Taiwan. If Japan stood as the foreign father—stern but devoid of the embrace of love—the subsequent rule of the Republic of China, the “biological” father of Taiwan, was characterized by militarization and violence. My inquiry repositions the father, the manifold “authoritarian fathers” of Taiwan, who fixed social relations into precise configurations of dominance and submission. Furthermore, whilst Freud primarily focused on the relationship between the ego and the super‐ego, this paper highlights instead the significance of the often‐overlooked relationship between the ego and id. This nuanced perspective allows us to perceive the id as a living archive of the oppressed, preserving what has been repressed but never truly forgotten.

The eating model in contemporary Taiwan: Destructuration or a new insight into compressed food modernity in Asia

In contemporary societies with diverse but often conflicting values attached to eating, it is important to scrutinise what eating well means to a given population. While such attempts have been pioneered, mostly in Western countries, Asia has been rarely explored. Moreover, food scholars in Western countries have called for in-depth analysis of the impacts of food modernisation on our everyday eating models, but empirical data about Asia and its implications for the plurality of food modernisation have been limited. To narrow this knowledge gap, we replicated Ueda's previous survey in Japan by utilising the same web-based questionnaire in a study of the Taiwanese population (n = 920, aged 20–69) to elucidate their eating model across all dimensions; that is, not only meal content but also the temporal, spatial, social, qualitative and affective facets. It was found that, similarly to other parts of the world, the Taiwanese have experienced the so-called ‘destructuration’ of their eating model, including two out of five habitually skipping meals; one out of four eating out 14 times or more in a week; and three out of five eating alone for breakfast. The destructuration also extended to their dietary norms, which marked a sharp contrast with other countries, such as Japan and France, where many eaters experience dilemmas due to high ideals and reality. We argue that this interesting phenomenon is due to the ‘compressed’ food modernity that Taiwan experienced. This study is the first attempt to provide comprehensive data about the eating model in Taiwan. Further empirical studies, particularly in other Asian regions, are expected to advance our thinking about a complex relationship between food modernity and well-being.

Decolonizing the ‘One China’ Narrative: The Case of Taiwan

This essay argues that contemporary Taiwan, as a democratic, functionally independent polity, constitutes the crucial exception to disavowals by the Republic of China (ROC) and People’s Republic of China (PRC) of imperialist claims and ambitions. As such, it explores how the ideal of a single China spanning the Taiwan Strait (‘one China’) depends on the erasure of a (proto-) national Taiwanese identity, and possibly the suppression of the people who claim it. ‘One China’ narratives seek to naturalize Taiwan’s absorption into the ROC in the 1940s and its potential future annexation by the PRC, hiding the pressures placed on Taiwanese people today to give up their hard-fought democracy, as well as the bloodshed that would be involved in any military conquest.

Startled Stomach: Contemporary Indigeneity and Sensorial “Culture Shock” in Aljenljeng Tjaluvie’s Paiwan Pop Music

In 2016, Aljenljeng ended a thirteen-year hiatus and returned to the pop music scene in Taiwan with her first solo album, all in the Paiwan language, Vavayan. Formerly a Mandopop singer, Aljenljeng used to be known by the Chinese stage name Abao and sang only in Mandarin Chinese. Her choice to compose and sing the whole album in Paiwan signals a critical re-evaluation of Mandopop culture and its lyrical paradigm, which normalized Mandarin monolingualism as both the index of musical modernity in Taiwan and the lingua franca of Mandopop’s internationalization during the 1990s and early 2000s. Aljenljeng’s Paiwan turn was an effort to disrupt both Mandopop’s consumption of Indigenous music in Taiwan and the settler structure of feeling. Aljenljeng’s audiovisual expressions, sensorial experiences, and depictions of contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures in Taiwan generate meaningful Indigenous-initiated transcultural conversations. Aljenljeng’s video for “Minetjus” (which translates as “startled” or “shocked”) counters settler (over)consumption by placing settler, rather than Indigenous, individuals in the position of being observed, absorbed, transformed, and compelled to adapt. Amid the rhythmic naming of an array of Paiwan dishes in the song and video, the singer playfully cautions, “Don’t eat too much, otherwise your stomach will be startled.” Here, the Paiwan idiom for stomachache, “to have one’s stomach startled/shocked,” signifies both an openness to intercultural exposure and a rejection of the settler desire to digest and consume. Extending from the music tradition of the Paiwan, one of the sixteen Indigenous nations on the island, Aljenljeng’s work affirms intercultural curiosity on the premise of Indigenous sensory and emotional sovereignty, further fostering the possibility of interethnic dialogue in multicultural contemporary Taiwan.

Forming a Collaborative Relationship between an Applied Researcher and the Researched Subject in Contemporary Taiwan: A Case Study from Beiguan Opera (北管戲)

In contrast to the practice of the one-way collection and analysis of data from the field as found in existing beiguan literature, this article presents a role-changing process used in the recording of beiguan opera with the Qinghexuan ensemble (慶和軒) in Taiwan, formed in order to generate bilateral benefits through a collaborative applied project. I discuss both the practical recording skills needed in the field and the mixing down skills employed in the studio to demonstrate how the designed interactive process reflects the needs in the community and how the collaboration aspect creates an interface with each step of the recording process, from making to checking. Firstly, I examine the recording process in the field, including microphone placement and recording strategy. Secondly, I discuss how the utilisation of plug-ins (equaliser, compressor, panning, balance) in the mixing of tracks is similar to, and based on, that seen in popular music and also on the research collaborators’ opinions, as shared during the fieldwork. Also presented are details behind the dynamic range of the suona (嗩吶) and the percussion instruments in this genre, for example the natural frequency arrangement on the spectrum. Thus, this discussion shows how an ethnomusicologist can be responsive to needs shared by the community if they apply their professional training in relation to the recording process; it also reshapes the relationship between researcher and informant in an ethnographic context, in comparison to previous beiguan research, by engaging the musicians as collaborative listeners in the curation of their own art form.

The Metaphysics of Globalization in Gadamer: A Case Study of Contemporary Taiwan

This manuscript introduces Gadamer’s metaphysical concept of fusion of horizons as a key to solving the conflicts arising in global capital, cultural, and religious issues. The globalization of contemporary Taiwan is discussed as a case study that covers three aspects: capital, cultural, and religious. TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), war tension across the Taiwan Strait, and local evangelism are explored separately to illustrate the present scenario of Taiwan’s globalization. In conclusion, the author calls for a fusion of horizons in solving capital interest conflicts, international political tension, and diverse religious beliefs.

A Loose Yet Effective Link: Some Creative Aspects of Comparative Literature

Abstract As a promoter of the literature of Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples, our most important task is to foster a relatively open and relaxed environment to encourage our people to continue and perpetuate their interest and vitality in “creative writing.” The purpose of this essay, by focusing on the aspect of “creative writing” and based on actual practice, is to raise several controversial issues that can influence writing for consideration. First, we deal with the strategic question of the choice of “language” that Indigenous literary creation must face; second, we examine the problem of “literariness” and “realness” in Indigenous literary creation; finally, we clearly pinpoint the distance between tribal and national imagination, in order to prevent Indigenous literature from being kidnapped by the so-called “national identity” in contemporary Taiwan.

Performing eco-public art: Tseng Chi-ming and his embodied environmental artivism

This article investigates the interrelations of public art, performance art and environmental activism in contemporary Taiwan through a case study of Tseng Chi-ming and his ecologically conscious public art. With a professional background in fine arts and theatre, Tseng adopted performance art as his primary medium of expression in 2011, very much prompted by his concern of Taiwan’s continuous ecosystem deterioration despite waves of environmental movement. Since then, he has become a key member of the island’s grassroots environmental artivism with his consistent performance works in the public space to advocate the cause of ecology and sustainability. Taking issues with environmental problems and related social injustices, Tseng uses his very own body as the ground, the material and the vehicle to carry out his artivism. Often performed on the street, in the public square or next to endangered ecological sites, his art becomes eco-public art. Methodologically, Tseng tends to incorporate natural materials such as earth, water, stones and plants or direct elements of nature such as rivers, beaches, wind and sunlight as his props. This is very much inspired by his Hakka ethnic background, particularly the deeply rooted Hakka agrarian tradition of ‘worship of nature’ and ‘reverence to heaven and earth’. Aiming to inform, engage and activate the public for environmental protection and ecological literacy, Tseng’s work is an example of the eco-public art in the island that is part and parcel of the ongoing environmental artivism that strives to advance the discourse of ecosystem diversity and foster non-exploitative human–nature relationship.

“A Living Tradition”

This article traces one method of divination, Chinese character divination, from imperial China to contemporary Taiwan. The article proves that many of the techniques used in character divination today originally stem from imperial Chinese sources. It thus shows the continued significance of this method as a living tradition in contemporary Chinese-speaking countries. The article first gives a concise overview of early sources of character divination. It then focuses on three important works from late imperial China, namely the Zichu (Realising a Character’s True Meaning), parts of the Gujin tushu jicheng (Complete Collection of Old and Contemporary Diagrams and Writings), and the Cezi midie (Secret Documents on Fathoming Chinese Characters). In these materials, the treatment of character divination gradually changed from a loose description in short narratives to rigidly defined rules and regulations. Finally, the article juxtaposes these findings with the reality of Chinese character divination in contemporary Taiwan by analysing the results of fieldwork carried out in 2014 and 2015.

Transcending Whose Past? A critical view of the politics of forgetting in contemporary Taiwan

The repeated renaming of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and ensuing debates (2007–2009), reveal the multiple presences of collective memory andthe ongoing ideological struggles between the Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party in contemporary Taiwan. This paper examines the dynamicand intertwined relationships between collective memories and competing histories which are exposed by the renaming and its aftermath. An emphasis on forgetting as well as ‘transcending the past(s)’ (chaoyue guochu) have become common strategies that function to incorporate the two contradictory versionsof national history in contemporary Taiwan—implying not only amnesia about the other side’s past but also the suppression of diverse voices. Moreover, bothparties compete to narrate a ‘national history’ from victimized perspectives, resulting in the adoption of different periods of Taiwan’s past to support theirpolitical assertions.
 
 Keywords: Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, collective memory, national history

Between Reality and Society: Lee Kuohsiu’s Far Away from Home

Abstract This paper presents the argument that the practice of modern theatre constitutes a crucial method for reorienting the particular traumas of the Chinese diaspora in contemporary Taiwan. In particular, it offers a close reading of Far Away from Home (西出陽關, Xichu yangguan, 1988) by Taiwanese playwright Lee Kuohsiu (李國修, 1955‒2013) and its performance archive of 2004. Lee deploys theatre as a negotiating space in which to reflect the social formations, identities, and history of Taiwan in the late 1980s—a period that saw Taiwan’s complicated relationship with China become the subject of intense scrutiny as the Cold War came to an end and the pressures of rapid globalisation mounted.

Nostalgia for Japanese colonialism: Historical memory and postcolonialism in contemporary Taiwan

AbstractTaiwan is unique among postcolonial societies today for a widespread social nostalgia for Japanese colonial rule. Contrasted with anti‐Japanese sentiment in neighboring East Asian societies like South Korea and China, Taiwan seems to present a puzzling instance of “pro‐colonial” nostalgia. This article discusses this phenomenon through reviewing recent scholarship of Japanese and Guomindang rule of Taiwan and Taiwanese postcolonialism. Nostalgia for Japanese colonialism in Taiwan emerged after the traumatic experiences of later Guomindang authoritarian rule and the politics of democratization and decolonization that followed the end of Guomindang martial law. While some of this social memory is shaped by a generation who lived through Japanese rule, much of the reshaping of Taiwan's historical memory is more complex than merely “pro‐colonialism.” Colonial nostalgia reflects a historical memory shaped by contemporary social experiences of trauma, counterhegemony, and postcolonial agency.

Taiwanese Nuns and Education Issues in Contemporary Taiwan

In this article, I discuss the Buddhist educational profile of nuns in contemporary Taiwan by introducing the development of monastic education for women. Taiwanese women’s mass ordination created a Buddhist renaissance after postwar Taiwan, a national ordination system based on monastic discipline, as well as the revival of monastic education. Both ordination and monastic education are very strong institutional settings for women’s monastic identity. Its findings, firstly, shed light on how the increased opportunities for women’s education in Taiwanese Buddhism have continuously attracted young female university students. Secondly, these so-called scholarly nuns come to Buddhist academies as students and eventually become instructors. These scholarly nuns elevate the standards of their Buddhist academies and use their original academic specializations to expand the educational curriculum of their school. The role of scholarly nuns in contemporary Taiwan exemplifies that Buddhism provides educational resources for women, as educational resources enhance women’s engagement in Buddhism.

The ‘national’ imagining of contemporary Taiwan: the representation of cultural heritage from the Japanese colonial era

ABSTRACT This study aims to discuss how the government and society of Taiwan have appropriated the heritage from Japanese colonial rule into the discourse of Taiwanese culture to bolster the national identity of Taiwan. The interconnected theoretical concepts of ‘imagined communities’ and ‘nationalising the past’ ground the analytical framework of this study. With a focus on the ‘selective’ presentations of the colonial heritage in historic Tainan City, this study explores how the official and social discourses have trivialised, reorganised, simplified, and recontextualised the historical intricacies of legacies of the Japanese colonial era through the process of heritagisation. The research results suggest that the meaning of colonial legacies has been shaped and reshaped from being a mark of the dark past and deprivation to constitute a glorious contribution fulfilling the discourse of multi-faceted Taiwanese culture. This case also suggests the possibility for a post-colonial society to extricate itself from a mimicking mentality and to redevelop their culture discourse as a buttress of the national identity.

Of Horror Games and Temples: Religious Gamification in Contemporary Taiwan

This article examines the intersection of Taiwanese horror videogame Devotion (2019) and folk religious ritual guanluoyin 觀落陰 (descent into the netherworld) as a new window into the symbiotic evolution of religion and gaming technology. It traces the curious trend whereby Taiwanese gamers, after encountering guanluoyin while playing Devotion, went to offline, physical guanluoyin temples to ‘play’ the ritual for themselves, and playfully invoked Devotion’s intra-game religious narrative in their extra-game lives. Devotion thus activated a dynamic community of gamers who, hungry for horror, produced novel forms of engagement with the world(s) beyond their consoles. This anthropological study reconfigures the popular framework in existing scholarship of ‘gaming as a religious experience’, instead investigating ‘religion as a gaming experience’, and proposes the concept of ‘religious gamification’ to capture religion’s re-imagination, marketing, and operation as a gaming experience by a surprising ensemble of social actors and institutions. By drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and analyses of game design, temple advertisements, gaming chatrooms, a television show, songs, viral videos, and social media trends, this article explores the unexpected convergence and mutual articulation of Taiwan’s gaming and religious cultures, and the wider implications thereof for understanding religion in our rapidly gaming-mediated world.