Discuss the relationship between place, identity and displacement through the case of mainlander forced migrants of 1949 in Taiwan.

‘The embodiment of the homelessness refers to the circumstances of the refugees away from ‘home’”, Warner (1994, p.48) ever states. This was also the experience for ‘mainlander forced migrants’ in 1949. 1937 to 1960 was the most chaotic period in modern Chinese history. After the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Civil War and the Korean War, a large number of people were forced to migrate between China and Taiwan. After the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949) between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the government of the Republic of China (ROC) retreated to Taiwan in 1949. Since then, mainland China has been governed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). At the time, about 2 million ‘mainlander forced migrants’[1] migrated to Taiwan and became one of the ‘rootless groups’ in history. Using this case, this essay discusses the relationship between place, identity and displacement through analysing post-war literature. First, the essay will consider how migrants shape nostalgia and the ‘sense of places’ through ‘a taste of home’ or ‘ritual’ to establish their identity and sense of belonging to hometown. Second, it aims to discuss how mainlander forced migrants have confronted the double ambivalence and transformation of identity while/after ‘returning home’. Finally, this essay argues that the relationship between place, identity and displacement is a dynamic process. For mainlander forced migrants who moved to Taiwan after 1949, their identity is mainly influenced by the political situation between China and Taiwan and memory shaped by forced migrant communities.

The sustenance of displacement and nostalgia have been the collective experiences of mainlander migrants who left their hometown (mainland China) in 1949 but could never truly return to their hometown physically and psychologically. One of the reasons is the dilemma of the political situation between China and Taiwan. Because the new regime, the PRC, has governed mainland China since 1949, these displaced people from the mainland have experienced a kind of political displacement. Meanwhile, not only was the international refugee system still in the process of being established at that time, but the protection or settlement policies for these forced migrants was also incomplete (Nedostup, 2010). So far, the displacement from 1945 to 1949 caused by the Chinese Civil War is still a major talking point. Hence, the mainlander forced migrants, who have been difficult to catalogue in the relief system or following refugee conventions, have been put on hold by the international community and are framed up in the political conflicts between China and Taiwan (Ibid). Looking at history, Lary (2010) shows that, for many Chinese people, the wars meant endless separation, which was a sudden incidents without any signs, and it just happened naturally. In a documentary about the life of mainlander forced migrants in Taiwan, Hebei Taipei (2016), the protagonist, Li, mentions that all the roads he had travelled were not ones he would have chosen himself, but were forced on him by the external situation: ‘it was fate that chose me.’ This is indicative of the experience of mainlander forced migrants. For them, Taiwan is not their home: their real hometown is in mainland China (Taiwan People News, 2015). As Turton (1996) states, “one assumption of ‘displacement’ indicates ideally people ‘belong’ to a certain place and gain the identity from their association with a particular place fundamentally or naturally” (Cited in Kiberab, 1999, p.405). However, returning to the hometown has become a utopia for mainlander forced migrants. In turn, nostalgia and the cohesion of the forced migrant community can be observed in post-war literature, through which migrants attempted to reconstruct the memories of their hometown during their displacement. Yu (2011[1974]), part of the first generation of mainlander forced migrants, describes the attachment to hometown in his poem, Nostalgia:

When I was a child,

Nostalgia was a tiny postage stamp,

I, on this side,

My mother, on the other.

When I was older,

Nostalgia became a ship ticket,

I, on this side,

My bride, on the other.

Later,

Nostalgia was a squat tomb,

I, outside.

My mother, inside.

And now,

Nostalgia is a coastline, a shallow strait.

I, on this side,

The mainland, on the other.

It can be observed from Yu’s text that displacement is a lack of existence, perhaps more fundamental than the lack of shelter (Cresswell, 2004). It means that mainland migrants were forced to leave their hometowns and lost the sustenance of their hometowns in the process. Also, through Yu’s expressions, ‘here’ and ‘there’, the hometown is depicted as far away. Moreover, through expressions of nostalgia, mainland China is undoubtedly a place of inner connection and a sense of belonging (Augé, 2017, p. 60). Yu’s poem also responds to Kibreab’s (1999) statement that “the propensity of many societies, including formerly ‘cohesive’ ones, to define themselves based on their ethnic, national or spatial origin, or religion”. This indicates that in Yu’s texts it can be seen that the description of his ethnic origin through the relationship between mother/ mainland China (on the other side) and him/ Taiwan (on this side). Also, Relph (1976) notes ‘ the roots are significant to provide people a point of prospect and the attachment of a particular place in terms of spiritual and psychological sides. For human beings, it is an essential need to be attached and have deep ties to places. Hence, in the nostalgia of mainlander forced migrants, spatial origin and the roots represent place attachment psychologically. Besides, ‘place attachment is often defined as ‘an affective bond or link between people and specific places’’ (Hidalgo & Hernández 2001; Cited in Windsong, 2010, p. 206). For instance, Tang (1979, p. 2), a food writer and first generation member of the mainland diaspora, describes how ‘the taste of food provokes my nostalgia of hometown. It would bewonderful if all mainlander forced migrants could return to the mainland and try a taste of hometown.’ This implies that a taste of home represents the place-based, physical attachment of hometown. Additionally, over time, for mainlander forced migrants who have not been able to return to their hometowns, it has been necessary to restore and re-establish a set of cultural customs belonging to their hometown to maintain their roots (where they are from) and release the nostalgia (Sun, 2010, p. 48). For them, nostalgia and the spiritual substance of hometown are pin on a particular object or practice, such as a taste of home and ritual. These objects/practices represent the reappearance of ‘place’, which can be imagined and even reconstruct the memory of hometown. As a consequence, these objects/practices encapsulate a sense of place and Les Lieux de Memoire (Nora). As Tuan (1975;1990) states, the place becomes a symbol of spirit to express emotions, not just to indicate location or function. The thought of home transcends the boundaries of residence and includes places that are often described as ‘sense of place’ with a sense of belonging (May, 2000, p. 748). As mentioned above, in a displacement context, the place provides spiritual and memorial sustenance and is not just a physical place but can also be a sense of place presented in any object.

The memories and identities of hometown formed by displaced mainlanders take shape through practices such as food literature or rituals in the alien land. In the process, a desire to return to their hometown is created. For instance, as Chung (1959) mentions in My Native Land, ‘the blood of the native villagers must be flown to the original hometown to be stopped.’ This means that the nostalgia of mainlander forced migrants will stop only when they make their return. Due to the political situation between China and Taiwan, mainlander forced migrants were not allowed to visit relatives in China and ‘return to their hometowns’ until 1987. Nevertheless, the experience of returning to their hometown has also become a critical point to deny the imagination of mainland China shaped in these four decades by mainlander forced migrants. During this time, the mainlander forced migrants became truly psychologically ‘rootless’ and lost their identity. Identity has the function of identification and connection for individuals. It distinguishes the difference between insider and outsider, and connection meets the sense of belonging between individuals and communities. In the case of mainlander forced migrants, when they returned to their hometowns they discovered that profound changes had occurred in the past few decades. This made their mental connections to the landscape disappear (Lin, 2010, p. 304). As Chu (1992) mentions in In Remembrance of My Buddies from the Military Compound, ‘the moment when I was able to return to my hometown, I found that for my relatives who remained I was a Taiwan compatriot and a Taiwanese; However, when going back to the Island (Taiwan), where I have lived for over four decades, people refer to me as a member of the mainlander forced migrants from the other province of mainland China… Thus, I have a deep feeling that I am like the displaced bat, which cannot be classified into bird or vertebrate’. Chu (2002[1997], p. 213) also states the mistake about her ancestral history in The Ancient Capital. For Chu, people blame forced migrants for retreating to Taiwan in 1949 and abandoning ancestral tombs and the reunion with family. Another example is the documentary, How High is the Mountain, which reveals the relationships within individual encounters of mainlander forced migrants and history after 1949. In one scene, a son asks, ‘How did you feel when you went back to your hometown yesterday?’. His father replies, ‘I do not know anyone … all have changed’. ‘Will you want to go back again?’, the son asks. Father shakes his head and says, ‘it is not like my hometown at all. My original house is gone.’ In the cases mentioned above, the disconnection from hometown is a response to the difference of sense of belonging, as well as the disparity between ‘self’ (forced migrant) and ‘others’ (hometown). Furthermore, mainland migrants sink into a dilemma because they belong to neither their original hometown nor Taiwan.

Accordingly, whether the ‘identity’ would truly transform after a while when the original hometown is no longer how it appears in memory. For mainlander forced migrants, the identity of ‘outsider’ signifies that nowhere can be attached and status of displacement — not only outside Taiwan but also outside the hometown in mainland China (Mei, 2006, p. 12). Even though displacement is still constant, psychologically, these mainlander forced migrants have recognised they have lived for most of their lives in Taiwan and have recognised Taiwan. However, the identity of mainlander forced migrants has been continuously split by the political situation between China and Taiwan. The identity issue has continued to ferment (Yang, 2010, p. 64). The first reason for the identity issue is that the governments of ROC and PRC have emphasised the ‘homogeneity’ of identity in the post-war era in order to establish the coherence of opposite political ideology between China and Taiwan, respectively. Consequently, this long-term opposing position has created a difference in consciousness/ideology/memory between mainlander forced migrants and their families/hometowns. Secondly, because the Taiwanese political environment has changed drastically since 1949, mainlander forced migrants have been marginalised in Taiwanese society. The atmosphere of society had changed from Chinese consciousness to local Taiwanese consciousness (Lin, 2010, p. 313; Ko, 2010, p. 81). The reason was a series of political conflicts that took place in Taiwan after 1949, such as the 228 Incident, which accelerated the differentiation between mainlander forced migrants and local Taiwanese . Therefore, for mainlander forced migrants, they are neither Taiwanese nor Chinese because of the difficulties in the processes of assimilation and acculturation. ‘They are just a wandering soul that has no place to go/ belongs.’ (Lin 2019). The situation faced by mainlander forced migrants corresponds to the concept of ‘double ambivalence’ proposed by Weisberger (1992) in Marginality and Its Directions. This idea indicates the anxiety of migrants facing a marginal situation in an alien land. This anxiety stems from the difficulty striking a balance between the culture of the alien land/new nation-state and the hometown/native nation-state. Neither can migrants rule out the influences created by their native culture. Consequently, migrants are in a marginal position, not in-between, but unable to adapt to each side, resulting in the double-ambivalence. They can only return to their native hometown geographically but cannot truly go home psychologically. This indicates that mainlander forced migrants have confronted the dilemma in the sense of belonging/identification and might they retreat to the margins of society.

As mentioned above, mainlander forced migrants have faced the split between ‘hometown’ and ‘nation-state’ which has changed their own identities. According to Crowley (2003), who discusses the concept of narrative identity proposed by Paul Ricoeur, there are two types of ‘identity’: idem and ipse. Ipse identity corresponds to the relationship in the space-time context produced through the accumulation of cultural construction, narrative body and time. Often it must be reproduced through the subject’s narrative. Not only can it only be formed in the process of continuous construction, but also often generates various deformations under the cultural norms. For example, great differences in the identity consciousness of hometown can be observed between different generations. Due to social oppression, although new generations recognize Taiwan, they continue the consciousness of hometown and the sense of national identity from older generations (Ko, 2012, p. 41&146), resulting in a double identity of nation-states (Shen 2010: 128). There is such a difference of identity because, for the second generation, life in Taiwan is their first memory instead of in mainland China. Therefore, in response to Ricoeur’s statement, the identity of mainlander forced migrants in different generations is a continuous construction between self and history/environment. Therefore, identity is an invisible and dynamic process/concept.

Overall, according to the case of mainlander forced migrants living in Taiwan after 1949, it can be seen that the relationship between place, identity and displacement is a dynamic process, which is not only based on the changes of time and space but also reflected in the political context, the inner cohesion of displacement communities, the meanings of identity for different generations and more. Furthermore, for mainlander forced migrants in 1949, even ‘return’ cannot eliminate their psychological or physical displacement. Because of long-term displacement, the memories caused by nostalgia, rather than a visible place, become an ‘imaginary place’, the spiritual attachment onto which forced migrants hold. Consequently, the double ambivalence of place and identity presents the displacement situation in the context of forced migrants.

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[1] In her lecture, Nedostup (2010) discusses how government officials found it difficult to define the veterans and civilians who migrated to Taiwan after 1945, and especially in 1949. Political and cultural uncertainties are reflected in the terms used in documents and in secondary historical materials, including political categories (compatriots), geographic cultures (mainlander diasporas/forced migrants), and social categories (refugees).