Taiwanese Culture Research Articles

The development and testing of a scale of Taiwanese caregiver meaning

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a scale of Taiwanese caregiver meaning. The meaning of care-giving is defined as the beliefs one holds about oneself and the care-giving experiences that affect adjustment to the care-giving role. An existing tool, the Meaning in Care-giving Scale, has been tested in Taiwan, but it showed that the construct validity was unreliable. The study was a cross-sectional study with purposive sampling. The instrument was developed through 20 semi-structured interviews of caregivers of mentally ill patients. A comparative method was used to analyse the text and field notes. According to the results, 29 items were designed and 318 caregivers of mentally ill patients were recruited from a psychiatric outpatient department in central Taiwan. Content and back direct content validity tests were conducted. Internal consistency, Chronbach's alpha, was used to examine the reliability, and exploratory factor analysis was used to examine the construct validity. Twenty items were kept after exploratory factor analysis. They represent four factors: the benefits of care-giving, a belief in Karma, personal responsibility and a reflection on life. Cronbach's alpha value for a subscale increased from 0·68-0·84, and the total scale was 0·84. A sixty per cent (59·55%) cumulative variance can be explained by four factors. A Taiwanese caregiver meaning can be considered a useful scale for assessing the meaning of care-giving for Taiwanese caregivers of mentally ill patients. A good scale and instrument take years to develop. This study takes the first step to examine the structure of the scale, and it is worth continued testing, modification and improvements. The scale of Taiwanese caregiver meaning was developed based on certain aspects of contemporary Taiwanese culture. It can be used to provide mental health professionals new counselling knowledge to assist caregivers of mentally ill patients to adjust to their circumstances.

A survey of the reasons patients do not chose percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy/jejunostomy (PEG/PEJ) as a route for long‐term feeding

To investigate why patients do not choose percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy or percutaneous endoscopic jejunostomy as a route for long-term feeding. Home enteral tube feeding is well recognised as a valuable therapeutic option for patients requiring nutritional support following discharge from hospital. The number of patients discharged from hospital and receiving home enteral tube feeding increases annually in Taiwan. A cross-sectional study. Participants (n = 607) were chosen from one free-standing home care agency and three hospital-based home care departments in Taipei. A review of the patients' records to gather demographic data, medical diagnosis, length of home care and length of intubation prior to the home visit was conducted. A face-to-face interview was conducted at the time of the home visit. The prevalence rate of home enteral tube feeding was 70.3% (n = 427). Of the 427 tube-fed subjects, 93.4% were fed with a nasogastric tube. The most common reasons for refusing to use percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy or percutaneous endoscopic jejunostomy were 'too old to suffer from an operation', 'worried about wound infection or leakage after performing percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy' and 'to keep subjects' body integrity'. Stroke, no dementia, poor activities of daily living and poor cognitive status were significant predictors of being tube-fed, while higher education and better cognitive status were significant predictors of percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy or percutaneous endoscopic jejunostomy use. The reasons patients refused to use percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy or percutaneous endoscopic jejunostomy reflect the influence of cultural values and the level of patients' education, which home health care nurses need to discuss with patients in detail. Investigating patients' perspective on the meaning of 'body' in Taiwanese culture and the decision-making processes related to home enteral tube feeding is recommended for nurses to provide better care and support when home enteral tube feeding in an option.

"No, She Doesn't Seem to Know Anything about Cultural Differences!": Culturally Centered Music Therapy Supervision

Wei, a young Taiwanese musician and music therapist in training, first began meeting with me as a supervisee late in the first year of her master's level program. This was also her first year and winter on the East Coast, having recently moved from Taiwan where she had spent her whole life. Viewed by many as quiet and shy, Wei was new to music therapy. However, she arrived as a skilled pianist, very disciplined, dedicated to learning, and willing and open to receive supervision and support. Behind a rich, contemplative world of inner thought, she struck me as emotionally innocent.After completing her initial 150 hours of practicum training at a Jewish center for the elderly, her teachers reported to me that Wei seemed to be having a difficult time with essential skills as she prepared for her upcoming internship. This included her comprehension and fluency with the English language as well as the breadth and diversity of her musical language. Her teachers were concerned about her general ability to engage with her clients and effectively communicate activities and interventions as well as learn and perform traditional Jewish and Hebrew songs. Despite the cultural gap between Wei and her clients, Wei seemed to enjoy the structure of groups and music-centered therapy at her site and felt supported by her site supervisor, who was a pianist and immigrant herself. Nonetheless, she seemed to be in need of support and guidance for her cultural transition and was offered additional outside supervision with me mid-year, which she readily accepted. Culturally centered and musiccentered supervision assisted Wei in gaining confidence in her abilities, learning important tools for building musical relationships, and becoming more comfortable with her developing and shifting ethnic identity.Of Indian descent myself, I found that Wei and I shared many Asian such as being emotionally reserved, communicating indirectly, and gaining knowledge through contemplative means (Landrum-Brown, 1994). However, I also felt that Wei's needs as a recently arrived international student would require care and sensitivity to navigate, being quite different from my own experience of growing up in the United States. I found Nilsson's (2004) framework for international students very helpful in guiding the supervision process, which recommends assessing students' levels of acculturation, addressing cultural differences, fostering a supervisory environment that supports the development of a strong working alliance, and being explicit about supervisory expectations. I also considered the development of her ethnic identity and investigated the role that a strength-based perspective could add in supporting a culturally centered supervision model.Level of AcculturationAcculturation refers to the degree to which an individual conforms or identifies with the attitudes, lifestyles, and values (Lee, 1996, p. 19) of the host culture. It is generally acknowledged as a process of cultural adjustment and negotiation between one's own culture and the host culture that occurs over time (Berry, 1998; Bhatia & Ram, 2001). Among the barrage of new communication styles, social interactions, and family that foreigners are confronted with, those who have not had much exposure to U.S. mainstream culture may find themselves feeling vulnerable or afraid that they will lose their own cultural and language. Sometimes this comes at the expense of learning English or making new American relationships and can lead to a further sense of isolation or homesickness. Plake and Sodowsky (1992) and Nilsson (2004) found that international students' acculturation to the United States involved three areas: level of acceptance of the U.S. culture, fluency in English, and feelings concerning being accepted by Americans.A recent immigrant, Wei had a high level of identification or strong connection with her own Taiwanese culture but a low level of identification or limited sense of connection with American culture. …

Comparison of the quality of life between patients with non-small-cell lung cancer and healthy controls

We explored covariates of the quality of life (QOL) in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients and made a comparison with healthy controls. We assessed the QOL of 220 consecutive NSCLC patients at a university hospital. The QOL data were measured by the brief version of the World Health Organization's Quality of Life and by utility using the standard gamble method. We selected demographically matched healthy controls from the 2001 National Health Interview Survey for comparison. Multiple linear regression models were constructed to explore significant factors of QOL after controlling for covariates. Patients with more advanced stages of NSCLC had poorer scores than did the healthy controls in the physical and psychological domains. Patients with disease duration of longer than 1 year tended to report higher physical and environment QOL than did those with NSCLC diagnosed for less than 1 year. Insight into one's own illness was associated with a higher utility, better social support, and improved financial resources. QOL was significantly associated with staging and duration of NSCLC. Disease insight appears to be a positive factor for operable NSCLC patients of the Taiwanese culture, which implies that clinicians should respect patient autonomy in diagnosis disclosure.

The Twenty-five Maiden Ladies' Tomb and Predicaments of the Feminist Movement in Taiwan

“The Twenty-five Maiden Ladies' Tomb” is the collective burial site of the female workers who died in a ferry accident on their way to work in 1973. The fact that of the more than 70 passengers on board all 25 who died were unmarried young women, and the taboo in Taiwanese culture that shuns unmarried female ghosts, made the Tomb a fearsome place. Feminists in Gaoxiong ([Formula: see text]) had for some years wanted the city government to change the tomb's public image. Their calls were not answered until the Gaoxiong mayor's office finally allocated money to clean up the gravesite and, as part of the city's plans to develop urban tourism, to remake it into the tourist-friendly “Memorial Park for Women Labourers”. Consequently, even though the tomb renovation seemed to indicate a triumph of the feminist endeavour, it was more a result of the Gaoxiong city government's efforts towards culture-led urban revitalization.

The impact of product placement on TV-induced tourism: Korean TV dramas and Taiwanese viewers

This study examines of the ways in which Korean TV dramas affect Taiwanese consumers’ attitudes toward the locations where the dramas are filmed (onscreen locations). Previous studies have incorporated balance theory into product–character association models and have demonstrated that consumers tend to align their attitudes toward products with the valence of a character’s attitudes toward the products. Unlike previous studies, this article attempts to investigate the product–character association model in a cross-cultural setting where the ‘products’ considered are the onscreen locations. To account for the effect of similarity between Taiwanese culture and Korean culture, the concept of perceived cultural proximity is introduced into the balance-theory-based model. The results show that consumers’ parasocial relationships with a character and consumers’ attitudes toward the character are related to their attitudes toward the location. However, this relationship is significant only for those viewers with high perceived cultural proximity between Taiwan and Korea.

Changing Boundaries of Ethnic Identity and Feelings Toward Ingroup/ Outgroup: Examining Taiwan Residents From a Psycho-Historical Perspective

Subjective group identification may not always be based on common biological origins or group salience, but rather, due to changes in group power. The present cross-temporal meta-analysis documents the transformation of Taiwan residents’ identification as both Taiwanese and Chinese during recent decades, in which the legitimacy of Chinese power over Taiwan was changed. The relations between identification and feelings toward Taiwanese and Chinese were also examined. Results suggest that historical memories and the political ascendancy of Taiwanese culture, rather than relative size of groups, increased identification with Taiwanese over Chinese. Historical and ethnic differences are compared to address ingroup favoritism, outgroup derogation, and other issues in social identity theory.

Impact of Taiwanese culture on beliefs about expressing anxiety and engaging in physical activity: a discursive analysis of the literature

This paper analysed the scholarly discourse about the influence of Taiwanese culture on beliefs about expressing anxiety and engaging in physical activity from literature review. The well-being of individuals with mental illness is promoted by the World Health Organization. Reducing barriers to treatment and care in community health-service systems requires cultural understanding. However, little is known about the influence of Taiwanese culture on physical activity programmes for people with anxiety disorders in Taiwan. A discursive analysis of the literature. Literature was used to examine the impact of Taiwanese culture on beliefs about anxiety and physical activity from historical, economic, social, political and geographical perspectives. Taiwanese cultural beliefs about anxiety and physical activity can be summarised into six themes. Beliefs about anxiety are reflected in three themes: anxiety and shame, beliefs against direct communication and beliefs about anxiety and external forces. Beliefs about engaging in physical activity are reflected in three themes: beliefs about human action, the relationship between health and physical activity and priority of academic achievement. This paper exposes the hidden power of culture to influence Taiwanese beliefs about anxiety and physical activity. Three negative beliefs about anxiety influence the expression of anxiety symptoms and help-seeking behaviours. Two positive and one negative belief about physical activity significantly affect choice of activity type and level of participation in physical activity. Anxiety and physical activity have a dynamic relationship and both are deeply influenced by Taiwanese culture. An awareness of cultural influences on beliefs about anxiety and physical activity is important when encouraging Taiwanese people with anxiety disorders to engage in physical activity. This awareness may help nurses understand better how their patients perceive anxiety and physical activity, leading to more appropriate physical activity programmes to improve both physical and psychological well-being.

Acceptance of pricing strategies: a Taiwanese experience affiliating tourism with public recreation management

Charging fees for resource-based recreation has mostly been examined in western countries. This research proposes a systematic approach, structured in line with fundamental pricing arguments, to investigate the public's acceptance of pricing strategies within the context of Taiwanese culture and society. Study results increase our understanding of the public's attitudes, and further contribute to revealing the relationships between various stimuli and types of pricing strategies based on Adaptation Level Theory. For economic efficiency-driven pricing strategies, focal and residual stimuli are most influential. Comparatively, perceived social value (a contextual stimulus) is the most powerful explanatory variable for social equity-driven pricing strategies.

The experiences of carers in Taiwanese culture who have long‐term schizophrenia in their families: a phenomenological study

Schizophrenia is a severe illness with little hope of recovery and requires long-term care. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of carers who live with someone with long-term schizophrenia, within the cultural context of Taiwan. The study was conducted in a community setting in central Taiwan. A qualitative phenomenological approach was used to explore the experiences of carers. Purposive sampling was used by selecting the carers who were close relatives of the clients, had lived with the clients for at least 1 year and bore most of the responsibilities. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted to collect the data and narratives were analysed using Colaizzi's (1978) seven-step method. Data saturation was achieved after interviewing 10 carers. Three themes and eight sub-themes were identified: burdens of caring (helping clients' illness, lack of professional support and family conflicts), emotional burdens (sadness, worry and fear) and strategies of coping (cognitive and religious coping strategies). Our study supported the importance for nurses to understand the cultural aspects of mental illness, particularly the widespread cultural beliefs and patterns of help seeking behaviours, in order to provide culturally sensitive health care.

Home deaths versus institutional deaths in patients with cancer

Most patients with cancer would prefer to die at home, but the institutional hospital setting is the predominant place of death. In keeping with traditional Taiwanese culture, patients should die in the main hall of their home surrounded by their family.

Use of Folk Remedies among Families of Children Hospitalised in Taiwan

To describe the attitudes toward and the use of folk remedies among caregivers of children who were hospitalised in Taiwan. Parents incorporate folk remedies into the care of sick children in many cultures, including Taiwan. Twelve common folk remedies are commonly used in the Taiwanese culture for the care of sick children. The study employed a descriptive, exploratory design using survey methods. Participants were 92 caregivers (parents) whose children were hospitalised for at least three days in a hospital in the middle district of Taiwan. Sixty per cent of the participants used some form of folk remedies in the care of their hospitalised children. The most frequently used remedies were: spirit-calling (63%); carrying a cross or incense bag (47%), praying a Buddhist mantra (36%). There was a positive relationship between a positive attitude towards folk remedies and current use with children (p < 0.05). Logistic regression analysis revealed that parents' previous experience of using folk remedies (odds ratio = 0.272, p = 0.037), and parents' knowledge of the care of disease (odds ratio = 18.044, p = 0.015) were the strongest predictors of use of folk remedies. Almost three-fourths (73%) of all participants expected that health care providers would respect and not interfere with their use of folk remedies; 72% of parents stated that they would not tell healthcare providers about the use of folk remedies. The majority of the parents of hospitalised children in Taiwan can be expected to use folk remedies for the purpose of psychological and spiritual support during child hospitalised. Healthcare providers need to be aware of the folk remedies used within various cultural groups so that culturally appropriate and safe care can be provided for the child and family.

Engendering Victimhood: Women in Literature of Atrocity

This essay examines the current state of Taiwanese culture through the project of restoration of history, focusing on a corpus of literary works that represent Taiwan's 2/28 Incident and its aftermath, the White Terror. Post-martial law Taiwan witnessed the birthing of a new nation with burgeoning writings of a new historiography, particularly in the literary field. Writers have re-created scenes and the effects of atrocity in order to fill in the gaps in history as a new Taiwan is being written into existence. In this body of literature, women as victims have clearly been considered the most powerful trope to convey a sense of injustice. By situating my analysis in the larger context of third-world women and their changing roles vis-à-vis tradition during national crises, I argue that the definition of victimhood is, in fact, never readily transparent, and hence equivocal portrayals of women as victims not only constitute a sign of an evolving understanding of Taiwanese history but become a crucial narrative device that helps to avoid the pitfall of trivialization.

Surface and Deeper Meaning: Some Hermeneutic Questions in an Intercultural Perspective

The question of a deeper meaning of artworks is a hermeneutic question. If the artworks in question have been created by an artist of a different culture and artworld, the hermeneutic question becomes an intercultural question. And if the artworks have been created by an artist, whose education took place not only in his own country and culture, but also in foreign countries with their own cultural heritages, to which the artist feels a deep inclination, then the intercultural question becomes part of a globalized culture with its polymorphic structures and products. In my opinion, the work of Hsien-Yueh Lin is embedded in a globalized culture, centred in Taiwan. Therefore the question of a deeper meaning along the metaphorical question for the actual roots of his artworks leads to at least five sub-questions: Does the root of Lin's art lie in Taiwanese culture? Or in his genius? In his traumatic personal experiences? In the essence of the things painted? In art as such? Only two of these of course interrelated questions could be commented on. First, and in greater detail, the root in Taiwanese culture, second, and rather shortly, the root in art as such. Although hermeneutic questions transcend the sphere of what can be seen on the canvasses, they try to deepen the understanding of the visual surface of Lin's paintings.

Playing in Isolation: A History of Baseball in Taiwan (review)

Reviewed by: Playing in Isolation: A History of Baseball in Taiwan Roberta Newman Junwei Yu. Playing in Isolation: A History of Baseball in Taiwan. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. 249 pp. Cloth, $26.95. In the past, little attention outside of Asia has been paid to Taiwanese baseball. Beyond awareness of the island’s dominance of the Little League Baseball [End Page 152] Tournament from 1969 to 1996 and the recognition that pitcher Chien-Ming Wang of the New York Yankees hails from Taipei, the story of the development of baseball in Taiwan has eluded the scrutiny of American scholars of the game. Junwei Yu has sought to remedy this situation with Playing in Isolation: A History of Baseball in Taiwan. An assistant professor of recreation and sports management at Taiwan’s Shu Tei University, Yu offers a fairly comprehensive picture of Taiwanese baseball, warts and all, based not just on field work and research but also on personal experience, having briefly played amateur baseball in high school and subsequently serving as official scorer for the under-sixteen International Baseball Federation competition in 1997. One of the most interesting chapters of Yu’s book is devoted to the introduction of baseball to Taiwan by the Japanese as one tool among many to eliminate Confucianism. As Yu notes, baseball wasn’t so much adopted by the Taiwanese as it was imposed upon them by Japanese expansionists, beginning in 1895. In fact, baseball did not come naturally to the Taiwanese. “Those who labor with their minds govern others, and those who labor with their strength are governed by others,” a central tenet of Confucianism, Yu observes, lead to the dominance of wen, which he defines as “sedentariness,” over wu, which he defines as “physicality or martial prowess” in Taiwanese culture prior to the Japanese invasion (10). Not without resistance from their elders, Taiwanese children, at whom this particular method of “Japanization” was aimed, embraced the sport. While Playing in Isolation presents this early history of the sport in Taiwan in a fairly clear manner, providing copious details about the early success of youth baseball on the island in bridging the cultural gap between the Han Chinese, indigenous Taiwanese (referred to here as aborigines), and their Japanese conquerors, the book is less successful in its presentation of the events precipitating Taiwan’s involuntary Japanization and Taiwanese history in general. The author assumes too much historical knowledge on the part of his Western readers, referring, for example, to Japan’s war against China following the “Marco Polo Bridge Incident,” without offering even a brief explanation of the event. This continues to be a problem throughout the work. Later, Yu refers to the “2/28 tragedy” of 1968, suggesting that it caused a generation of Taiwanese to lose faith in the government, without any discussion of the Kuomingtang (KMT) massacre of innocent Taiwanese citizens following an antigovernment protest. Certainly American readers are woefully uninformed about Asian history. But since Yu’s target readership is, in fact, comprised at least in part of Americans, he would have done well to offer a bit more explanation of these watershed events in Taiwan’s history, particularly as they relate to the game. [End Page 153] Also striking is Yu’s discussion of the way in which Taiwan’s aboriginal population adopted the game while under Japanese rule. Yu takes no pains to explain indigenous culture, noting only that headhunting was practiced by the aborigines. It is unclear, moreover, whether he laments or applauds the Japanization of the natives, writing, “After being incorporated into the same [Japanese] machine, the aborigines used their headhunting courage on the diamond and played an important role in the development of Taiwanese baseball” (18) He equates the athletic ability of the indigenous Taiwanese with “headhunting courage,” which is quite jarring and seems to border on the same type of ethnocentrism displayed by the Japanese, who assumed the aborigines would be natural baseball players since they were good at throwing rocks. As Yu notes, the Japanese were not the only ones to use youth baseball, by far the dominant form of the game in Taiwan, as a tool for propaganda and government control. Taking...

Hou Hsiao‐Hsien: a standard for evaluating Taiwan’s cinema

This paper traces the transformation of Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s creative approach through an investigation of the intimate relationship between Hou’s films and the development of Taiwanese film history by placing Hou’s films into the interlacing framework of the politics, economy, society and aesthetics of Taiwan. The paper approaches the films with regard to genre and author theory, the studio system, influence from predecessors, Taiwanese laws and regulations, censorship system, film festival and film awards, box office and critical reviews. The paper is structured chronologically, starting with an examination of Hou’s earlier films and experiences to provide a glimpse into Hou’s early approach which has often been overlooked. Later, the paper clarifies Hou’s role in and overall relation to Taiwan’s New Cinema. The paper describes how Hou successfully drew together two different forces in New Cinema, creating a pattern where directors actively participated in each other’s projects. These new culturally and socially conscious films, including Hou’s Sandwich Man, were rich in artistry, and quickly gained support from the newly risen middle class during the later period of martial law. Through a discussion of Hou’s The Boys from Fengkuei, A Summer at Grandpa’s, A Time to Live, A Time to Die and Dust in the Wind, this paper depicts New Cinema undergoing setbacks at the box‐office and confrontations with local media, which resulted in the issuance of a manifesto in 1987. While considering the significance of the renowned Taiwan Trilogy (A City of Sadness, The Puppetmaster and Good Men, Good Women) the importance of A City of Sadness, which had an enormous impact on Taiwanese politics, society, culture and economy, is emphasized. Finally the discussion focuses on Hou’s later films Goodbye South, Goodbye, Flowers of Shanghai and Millennium Mambo where Hou displayed an entirely different interest in shaping space and time in his narrative. In the process of this discussion, Hou’s interaction with the Taiwan social environment is repositioned in a review of his path as a commercial film director to auteur, from a concern with society to his involvement in politics. Hou’s work is seen as a historical milestone in the development of Taiwanese film.

Relationships between being Traditional and Sense of Gratitude among Taiwanese High School Athletes

This study examined the association of scores on measures of traditionality and gratitude. Briefly defined, traditionality refers to how strongly one endorses the traditional value of submission to authority for harmony and benefits in a collective group. Traditional Taiwanese culture is linked with collectivism, and the society tends to encourage members to respect authority and harmony. As people of a collectivistic view seek to maintain harmony within the group, gratitude and reciprocity of good is expected from members. Nevertheless, traditionality of values differs among group members, as is also true for gratitude. It is not known how scores on traditionality might relate to feelings of gratitude among athletes in the competitive sports setting. 289 Taiwanese high school athletes were administered the Sport-domain Gratitude Questionnaire by Chen and Kee and the Traditionality Scale by Kao and Lu. Data, subjected to structural equation modeling, show that traditionality scores were related to those on gratitude. Implications and limitations were discussed.

Trajectory and determinants of the quality of life of family caregivers of terminally ill cancer patients in Taiwan

Family caregiving is common and important in Taiwanese culture. However, the combination of anticipated loss, prolonged psychological distress, and the physical demands of caregiving can seriously compromise the quality of life (QOL) of a family caregiver (FC). The effect of caring for a dying cancer patient on a FC's QOL has been explored in western countries--primarily with small sample sizes or short-term follow-ups--but has not yet been investigated in Taiwan. Therefore, the purposes of this study were to: (1) identify the trajectory of the QOL of FCs of terminally ill cancer patients in Taiwan; and (2) investigate the determinants of the QOL of FCs, in a large sample and with longer follow-ups, until the patient dies. A prospective, longitudinal study was conducted among 167 FCs. Trajectory and determinants of FCs' QOL were identified by a generalized estimation equation (GEE). Caregiving for a terminally ill cancer patient extracts a toll from a FC's QOL and causes it to deteriorate significantly over time. The results from the multivariate GEE analysis indicated that this deterioration of a FC's QOL reflects the patient's increasing distress from symptoms, the gradual loss of confidence in caregiving and an increased subjective caregiving burden on the FC as the patient's death approaches, and a weaker psychological resource (i.e., sense of coherence) of the FC. Taiwanese FCs' QOL deteriorated significantly as the patient's death approached. This study contributes to the family caregiving literature by using longitudinal data to confirm that the available psychological resource of a FC and the 'appraisals of caregiving' are more salient in determining a FC's QOL than the patient's/FC's characteristics and the caregiving demands.

Equivalence of Chinese version of the Cohen‐Mansfield Agitation Inventory

This paper is a report of a study undertaken to translate the Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory from the original English into a Chinese language version and to establish the content, semantic and technical equivalence of the Chinese version. Ensuring the equivalence of a translated Chinese version of the Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory for patients with dementia is an essential requirement for identifying culturally specific expressions of agitated behaviours. In Phase I, five experts scrutinized the Inventory items to determine whether the behaviour described was relevant to the agitated behaviours present in the Taiwanese culture. In Phase II, experts did the initial translation into Chinese and then back-translated it into English. Four bilingual observers rated 31 residents with dementia to determine semantic equivalence across versions. In Phase III, the agitated behaviours of 32 residents were assessed by four observers using staff ratings and direct observation to determine the technical equivalence of the Chinese version. The study was carried out in Taiwan from August 2004 to April 2005. In Phase I, the rating of behaviours described on the Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory was relevant to the agitated behaviours based on Taiwanese culture with a content validity index (CVI) value of 0.993. In Phase II, intra-class coefficients for all items on the Chinese version and split-halves of Chinese and English versions ranged from 0.69 to 0.74. In Phase III, six possible results for estimation of reliability across methods and raters for the Chinese version ranged from 0.63 to 0.86. The Chinese Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory had modest psychometric properties. Further studies are needed to assess criterion and conceptual equivalence.

Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan (review)

Reviewed by: Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan Cecilia J. Pang Nancy Guy Peking Opera and Politics in TaiwanChampaignUniversity of Illinois Press2005Pp. 240$35.00. Historically, the polemics between Art and the State have been a preoccupation of philosophers and statesmen. From Louis XIV to Adolph Hitler to Mao Tse-Tung, the State has exercised considerable control over Art, except with regard to traditional art forms where aesthetics preside over politics and governments seldom interfere. As detailed by Nancy Guy in her perceptive new book, Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan, however, "The story of Peking Opera on Taiwan is that of an art caught up in a whirlwind of ideologies" (4–5). In seven clearly defined chapters, the book presents a historical and sociological time line for the development and dismantling of Peking opera in Taiwan. To begin with, Guy carefully chronicles the Taiwanese people's initial patronage of Peking opera as a quest for Chinese identity during the Japanese colonial subjugation, their subsequent passive resistance of the Chinese performance tradition used primarily as a propaganda for mainland recovery by their second colonial Nationalist ruler, and finally their outright rejection of the transplanted art form under the postcolonial rule of Taiwanization since 1988. The relation between Peking opera and the Taiwanese people is intricately complex as the rise and fall of Peking opera's popularity depends entirely on who sits on the ruling throne. Inherently enlightening and informative, Guy's book offers its readers an inspired understanding of how politics and the arts collide in the Republic of China. Her thesis provokes reflections on the parallels between the development of Peking opera in China versus its development in Taiwan. On the mainland, Peking opera evolved from a popular regional entertainment for the people to winning the imperial patronage of Emperor Qinlong during the Qing dynasty (1735–96). Likewise, as a result of the establishment of public theaters and touring troupes across the Taiwan strait, Peking opera rose to tremendous popularity in Taiwan during the Japanese colonization, becoming a state-supported art when the Nationalists ( kuomintang) came into power. Moreover, China's meticulous maneuver of Mei Lanfang's international tour success in the thirties revealed that Peking opera could be used as a cultural pawn to spread Chinese culture and identity. Not surprisingly, the Nationalist government took advantage of the Cultural Revolution when traditional Peking opera was supplanted by the model opera in mainland China; it used the opportunity to vie for international recognition by conducting extensive cultural exchange overseas of Peking opera tours so as to disseminate "the image of Taiwan as the bastion of 'authentic' Chinese culture" (57). According to Guy, the Nationalist government, in the name of preserving the "national essence," made a huge effort in Peking opera reform with increased [End Page 252]spending on sponsoring touring troupes, establishing Peking opera training schools, advocating school performances, and publishing Peking opera materials. Yet in their attempts to colonize the Taiwan natives with Chinese culture by preserving and promoting Peking opera, the Nationalist regime eradicated vestiges of the indigenous Taiwanese culture, just as the Communists did away with traditional Chinese cultural heritage. Curiously, while on the mainland, the Red Army was responsible for the disbandment of traditional culture; in Taiwan, the imported culture was financed and operated by the Department of Defense. Its main purpose was to entertain the military and the ruling class. Now it is a customary belief among observers of non-Western theater that globalization, with its implications of technological hegemony and commercialization over tradition, might have sounded the death knell for traditional art forms. Reforms have been underway by various governments including China and Japan to stop the cultural extinction. Therefore, Guy's notion that in Taiwan the government is responsible not only for a lack of interest in the perpetuation of Taiwanese opera but also for the downsizing of the traditional Peking opera is all the more ironic and tragic. In addition, as a reaction to counter the Cultural Revolution, the Nationalist government took an active role in regulating the Peking opera repertoire including banning any post-1949 operas from the mainland. The strict and arbitrary as well as unfairly censored rules...