Youth and Political Music in Taiwan: Resignifying the Nation at Inland Rock and Tshingsan Fest

This article uses musical events in Taiwan to examine the changing contestation of Taiwanese politics. It shows how youth activists remake political practices by connecting people to constructions of local culture through musical performances. Whereas civil society and youth participation in Taiwan’s elections have attracted increased scholarly attention, this article focuses on politically charged activities outside election campaigns. The article sources politics in musical practices, highlighting localized reproductions of global genres of popular music and its significance for Taiwanese youth activism. Drawing on historical analyses of the development of Taiwanese music throughout the twentieth century as localizing global influences in the production of indigenized music, the author argues that music has been more than just a communicative medium for contesting establishment politics, because activists use it to resignify sociocultural symbols and practices in productions of Taiwanese identity. The author examines two 2016 music festivals, Inland Rock and Tshingsan Fest, to analyze active constructions of identity and political action through a framework of music as politics. It demonstrates how, by appropriating space and symbols of Nantou County and Monga district for new cultural festivities, activists reterritorialized physical and conceptual terrain to reconnect people to indigenized constructions of Taiwanese identities. Keywords: Taiwan, popular music, politics, youth, identity, activism, music festival, resignification, indigeneit

Buddhist Vegetarian Restaurants and the Changing Meanings of Meat in Urban China

This article charts the changing meanings of meat in contemporary urban China and explores the role played by Buddhist vegetarian restaurants in shaping these changes. In Kunming, meat has long been a sign of prosperity and status. Its accessibility marked the successes of the economic reforms. Yet Kunmingers were increasingly concerned about excessive meat consumption and about the safety and quality of the meat supply. Buddhist vegetarian restaurants provided spaces where people could share meat-free meals and discuss and develop their concerns about meat-eating. While similar to and influenced by secular, Western vegetarianisms, the central role of Buddhism was reflected in discourses on karmic retribution for taking life and in a non-confrontational approach that sought to accommodate these discourses with the importance of meat in Chinese social life. Finally, the vegetarian restaurants spoke to middle-class projects of self-cultivation, and by doing so potentially challenged associations between meat-eating and social status

Global Deluge, Theophany and the Ut-napištim-Noah-Oppehnaboon Connection

It is a long established fact that stories of a global flood permeate oral traditions and mythologies in every corner of the Earth. Of these global deluge epics, the most well-known are those of the biblical Noah and of Ut-napištim recorded in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, both of which were recorded in antiquity. As such, any comparisons of flood texts can reasonably begin with a consideration of the similarities and differences of a flood myth with those of Noah and of Ut-napištim, and they often are.Taiwan’s Saisiyat tribal myth of Oppehnaboon is remarkably similar to the accounts of both Ut-napištim and Noah. The current study examines correlations in character background, communication with and manifestation of transcendental messengers (theophany), stated causes for the deluge, post-flood commandments and other parallels which are featured in the accounts. This study sheds light on one of the lesser known Saisiyat tribe’s myths of Oppehnaboon and serves as a first step to a more in depth investigation of Formosan global deluge myths. Keywords: Formosan mythography; Saisiyat; Theophany; Flood myth; Oppehnaboon; Ut-napištim; Noah DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/83-01 Publication date: November 30th 202

Elder Gongga 貢噶老人 (1903-1997) between China, Tibet and Taiwan:Assessing Life, Mission and Mummification of a Buddhist Woman

Elder Gongga (1903-1997), a Chinese Buddhist woman native of Beiping, played a crucial role in the transmission of Tibetan Buddhism in China and Taiwan, bridged Dharma traditions, and merged Buddhist and cultural identities; she also became an eminent nun in the history of female Buddhism for life achievements and the worship of her mummified body after death. The analysis of Elder Gongga’s life and works contributes to better understand history, dynamics and networks of Buddhism in twentieth century China and Taiwan: Elder Gongga’s story is the story of a Chinese Buddhist woman who practiced and spread Tibetan Buddhism first in China and then in Taiwan, and therefore another portrayal of the conditions of women following Tibetan Buddhism in the Chinese region in the twentieth-century. The mummification of her body after death contributes to the debate on body and material culture in the Buddhist context

The Asian Difference in B2B E-Marketplace

This study contends that the low rate of e-marketplace acceptance by Asian firms cannot be fully understood without analyzing the context within which technology is exploited. Current IOS (Inter-Organizational Systems) studies emphasize the removal of barriers to e-marketplace acceptance in relation to technological, organizational, and inter-organizational factors. However, the contextual influences of IOS are largely ignored. We highlight three levels of contextual influences – structural, national/regional, and socio-cultural – that shape the adopters’ expectation of e-marketplace applications in three Asian regions (India, Taiwan, and China). Our study formulates arguments that attempt to flesh out the constraint of context as one of the most significant, but often neglected, dimensions of e-marketplace acceptance

The Surrealist and the Documentary in Chang Chao-tang’s Photography

This article examines Chang Chao-tang’s photography in its social and cultural contexts and reads his photographic images with a special focus on the temporal–spatial syntax at work: “superimpositions” between “the sculptural” and/over the natural, the still life and/over the transi- ent, and so on. Through this two-pronged analysis of both the social–historical and the formal, the article addresses questions regarding how Chang’s photographs manage to be both “Surrealist” and “real,” and how exactly Surrealist imagery and the social documentary work together in his art

Transcending Victimhood: Japan in the public historical museums of Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China

This article looks at how the major national (or pseudo-national) historical museums in China and Taiwan interpret and display very different “new rememberings” of Japan. The main focus is on the permanent exhibitions of the modern history wing of the National Museum of China (NMC; formerly the Museum of the Chinese Revolution), which finally reopened in 2011 after almost a decade of refurbishment, and of the National Museum of Taiwan History (NMTH), which opened in the same year. It discusses how museum portrayals of Japan reflect divergent public discourses on national identity. Through examining the relationship between museums and the apparatus of the Chinese state (ROC and PRC), the first section locates the NMC and NMTH in their bureaucratic and political contexts. A typology of approaches to the construction of national identity is then offered, considering the implications of different conceptions of identity for portrayals of Japan and its relationship with China or Taiwan. The remainder of the article looks in turn at the NMC and NMTH, outlining the history of each before examining how Japan is represented in their permanent exhibitions. It concludes by considering what can be learnt from this about the evolving relationship between official historical discourse and the broader political context on both sides of the Taiwan Strait