DESCRIPCIÓN GENERAL DE LAS CATEGORIAS EMERGENTES

Taking roots involves people’s ability to form relationships, and the nature of these relationships flow constantly between persons and things. For instance, the small acts of hospitality and sharing of living space create kinship that did not previously exist (Carsten 1997). Diasporic forms of relationships, in particular, are comprehensibly processual in the making and challenge the more static con- structs. In this subsection, relationships between persons, such as marriage, children, extended families, ‘sisterhood’ and even surrogates are outlined, and they form the basis for understanding the Chinese diaspora in Taiwan in sub- sequent chapters.

First, consider marriage, children and extended family in the diaspora community. According to Yang and Chang (2010: 120), the ratio of women to men in the 1950s was approximately 3:1 among the Chinese diaspora population in Taiwan (military personnel included),40 and more than 50 per cent of the male

Waishengren married native Taiwanese women, resulting in over half of the

second-generation Waishengren having native Taiwanese mothers.41 Those at the bottom of the social power hierarchy, many of whom were unmarried main- land Chinese foot soldiers, had to marry poor Taiwanese and mountain Aborigine women who were alienated from mainstream society; intermarriage increased with time since many second- and third-generation Waishengren, especially those who had learned to speak Taiwanese, married Taiwanese people (Brown 2004: 237; Yang and Chang 2010: 116). Stories of married life are told below by

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It is estimated that there were around 270,000 of the lowest military personnel (Li 1970: 66-67).

41

More recent surveys show that 88 per cent (7/8) of Waishengren married outside their own ethnic group (Wang 1993: 237).

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Mrs Tsai and Mrs Qian, both of Taiwanese Hakka origin, and Mrs Zheng and Mrs Pan who came to Taiwan from China with their husbands.42

I married my husband at the age of 18 in 1954. He was handsome and tall. We started our family with a humble condition of life: two pairs of trousers, two sets of clothes, two pillows, a worn-out table with two bowls and two dishes, two chairs, and a mosquito net. This was how my married life began. Initially, I didn’t know how to cook, so my hus- band cooked meals for me. He taught me Mandarin bit by bit via showing me how to buy eggs, to make dough and leaven it, and to prepare food: ‘This is a rolling pin; that is a dumpling.’ But he wouldn’t teach me how to read (Mrs Tsai, interview, 30 September, 2009). In the 1970s, I met Mrs Bian in the Christmas bulb factory where I had been working since 1967 in Hsinchu. After knowing the sad fact that my ex-husband abandoned me and my three kids, she played Cupid in in- troducing me to her neighbour, the widower Mr Qian with two sons. Within two years, Mr Qian and I got to know each other better and better; my children and I moved to Mr Qian’s house in LN Village after my second marriage in 1981. After Mr Qian’s death, his two sons de- cided to call me ‘godmother’ (乾媽) [ganma]. I invite his two sons and my own three children to my place for a family reunion during Chinese New Year’s Eve, Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, and

Mid-autumn Festival every year! I see them all as my posteriority (Mrs Qian, interview, 8 January, 2010).

Mr Zheng was born in 1921, in Zhejiang, east China. When he pro- posed in Yunnan Province, South-East China, where his troop was

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Most of the first-generation male Waishengren in LN Village died before my fieldwork started in 2009 because they were much older than the women interviewed.

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stationed during the civil war, I told him I would say yes only under the following conditions: a) approval from my parents, b) two rings, one gold bracelet, one watch, one necklace, six pieces of cloth for

cheongsam (a close-fitting dress with a high neck and a slit skirt, tradi- tionally worn by Chinese women) and a short overcoat. He replied that he would give me every item except the gold bracelet and the necklace, which he borrowed from his friends for me to wear on my wedding day (Mrs Zheng, interview, 17 December, 2009).

After my father’s death, I was a teenager and entrusted to my grand- uncle. However, I feared that my granduncle might betroth me to

someone I didn’t even know. So I decided to marry Mr Pan, who tried to woo me during that time; he was a colleague of my elementary school classmate’s husband (Mrs Pan, interview, 29 September, 2009).

Though the intimate relationship of each case in hardship is teeming with difficulty, fear, sincerity, suspicion and contingency, some juancun women highly value marriage. ‘Even during those days of bitterness, the idea of divorce never comes up in my mind,’ said Mrs Zheng (interview, 17 December, 2009). Nuclear families are more visible in this research. Blended and extended families, including peo- ple both inside and outside the village are not uncommon,43 but are less repre- sented here due to limited contact. However, the detailed accounts of children and extended family members that follow will complement the stories of mar- riages and the multivalence of the diaspora relationship.

After conducting a few interviews it became apparent that, in LN Village, a woman’s life was marked and chronicled by her experience of motherhood.

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For example, Mr Lin is not a member of the Air Force Engineering Wing but he lives with the widowed Mrs Jiang, whose husband died following an accident; they cohabit without legally marrying (Mrs Qian, personal conversation, 21 January, 2010). An extreme case, which ended in a broken family, was that of the retired first-generation villager incestuously cohabiting with his daughter-in-law while his son was away from home in army service.

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Places and time were therefore remembered through the experiences of having and raising children. For some villagers, localisation in the spaces of intimacy was more significant than determination of dates. A few typical cases are listed below:

I have six kids. My first daughter was born in 1947, my first son in 1951, the second son in 1954, the second daughter in 1956, the third son in 1958, and the third daughter in 1960. After marriage in 1946, we trav- elled across provinces from Yunnan, to Guizhou, Hunan, Hubei, Shaanxi, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang. Finally we came to Taiwan in 1949. Apart from the first child, who was born in China, the rest of our five children were born in LN Village in Hsinchu, Taiwan (Mrs Zheng, inter- view, 17 December, 2009).

I gave birth to seven children and raised eight. The eighth is my

younger brother who came to Taiwan with me. My mother passed away when he was just three years old. I only remember details and birth- days of my first two kids: the eldest son was born on 1 January, 1948, in a civilian house near the Air Force Academy in Hangzhou, China, while the eldest daughter was born on 12th December, 1949, in a tent near Songshan Airport in Taipei, Taiwan. Six out of seven children were born at home rather than in the hospital. Finally I decided to give birth to the seventh child in the hospital in order to have myself sterilised (Mrs Pan, interview, 29 September, 2009).

In LN Village, differences of marriage between generations are understandable and obvious. From the narratives of Mrs Fang, Mrs Zheng, and Mrs Pan listed below, some new marriage patterns of the second generation which surmount obstacles of ethnicity and geography emerge:

I have three sons and two daughters: the first son born in Nanjing, China, the second son in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, the third son and two daughters in Hsinchu, Taiwan. My first daughter-in-law is a Taiwan-born Shandonese (whose parents are from Shandong Province, China),

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second daughter-in-law a Taiwanese from Chiayi, South Taiwan, and third daughter-in-law a Taiwanese from Kaohsiung, South Taiwan (Mrs Fang, interview, 23 April, 2010).

My first daughter met her husband at work in Taipei. My second daughter-in-law and neighbouring Mr and Mrs Han’s daughter-in-law are sisters from Yunlin, South Taiwan: my husband bumped into her when she visited her sister in the Han’s house. He then introduced my second son to her. They soon clicked with each other. My third daugh- ter-in-law and Mrs Wang’s daughter are friends. Mrs Wang introduced her to my third son when she visited her friend and my son fell in love with her right away. All of my three sons-in-law and three daugh- ters-in-law are Taiwanese Hoklo. We feel a real affinity to the Taiwan- ese (Mrs Zheng, interview, 17 December, 2009).

After a ten-year service my younger brother retired from the army, and married Mrs Jia’s daughter. Before long two boys were born, and they decided to emigrate to Texas, USA. He started working as a dish- washer in a Chinese diner and later a chef. Now he owns a Chinese restaurant (Mrs Pan, interview, 29 September, 2009).

Many middle-aged second-generation residents moved out of the village, some of them even emigrating to other countries. Mrs Tsai’s first daughter and her husband moved to San Diego, California; both Mrs Chen and Mrs Guo’s

daughters married Japanese men and moved to Tokyo. ‘I didn’t want her to live so far from us, but as her mom I still attended her wedding to show family support.’ Mrs Chen described the terrifying experience of flying to Tokyo alone (Mrs Chen, interview, 19 March, 2010). Not all of them have happy endings; there are sad- dening stories though. Mrs Guo’s daughter died young in Japan, leaving a teenage son who could speak Japanese but not Mandarin, his mother tongue. Mrs Lu was the primary caretaker for her grandchildren because her daughter and son-in-law were imprisoned due to drug abuse. When diaspora villagers

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faced the challenges of life, neighbours and surrogates were their essential support.

After delineating inner circle relationships to spouses, children and extended family, consider seemingly outer circle relationship of ‘sisterhood’ and that to kinship surrogates. Neighbours and friends are important in LN Village. Forced to leave their homes and family as teens, many Juancun Waishengren, or the Chinese diaspora in dependents’ villages, formed close relationships with their neighbours after half a century of local dwelling. ‘I was born in 1927. Mrs Bian and I are the same age. We’ve been in good company since coming to Taiwan from mainland China,’ said Mrs Fang (interview, 23 April, 2010). Mrs Lee and Mrs Pan took the same ship to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and their friendship lasted for over 60 years (Mrs Pan, interview, 29 September, 2009). They shared an intimate life of limited resources, sometimes even living space (see Subsection 4.1.7). Mrs Zheng and Mrs Pan were willing to switch their allotted houses so that Mrs Zhen could build an extension to the end terrace for her large family with six children (Mrs Zheng, personal communication, 29 September, 2009). ‘My father sold the small house next door to his fellow townsman at a low price,’ Ms Wang com- plained about her father being a yes man to neighbours and friends but family (Mr Yen, interview, 10 December, 2009).

In the 1950s, many women were pregnant and lived in the same village; they had their babies at approximately the same age, and later congregated with their toddlers in the neighbourhood. In the late 1980s, these mothers became

grandmothers, and some of them gathered again for the same reason, caring for the third generation. ‘Mrs Jiang and I became close friends during the time we were raising grandchildren respectively. We first met in the local market while we did grocery shopping with toddler grandchildren. Our grandchildren enjoyed playing together back then, but we no longer hung out after our grandchildren went to the elementary school’ (Mrs Qian, personal conversation, 21 January, 2010).

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Here in LN Village, ‘residents are always members of a big family full of human warmth, who share almost everything and care for one another; they are helpful to those who are sick, bereaved, or giving birth’ (李存治 2006: 37). Some of them know their neighbours’ everyday schedule very well. ‘Mrs Bian goes to bed at 8 pm, Mrs Chou at 7.30 pm. They both get up very early’ (Mrs Zheng, interview, 17 December, 2009). Female villagers constantly mentioned ‘sisterhood’ during in- terviews. ‘I helped Mrs Han’s unemployed son to get a job in the Hsinchu Science and Industrial Park where I used to work as a cleaning lady. I lied to them that he is the son of my younger sister’ (Mrs Chen, interview, 19 March, 2010). Mrs Tsai’s sentimental talk also confirmed the ‘sisterhood’ between women. ‘After the village was established, it has been a place like home for all. We, the civilian women, who came here through marriage, became bosom friends like sisters’ (interview, 30 September, 2009).

Though it seemed that men in LN Village did not form visible male bonding among themselves as much as their female counterparts, many of them, from disfranchised veterans living in abject poverty to the head of the village, devel- oped an emotional and ritualistic attachment to iconic symbols of the KMT (Na- tionalist Party), Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in particular, which is manifested below.

Mrs Chou explained to me that, together with Bodhisattva Guanyin (an East Asian goddess of mercy), photos of former President Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (also a former president) have been enshrined and wor- shipped since the day it was brought back home by Mr Chou (Mrs Chou, interview, 21 January, 2010). Mr Yang, who had so carefully displayed the portrait of his father next to that of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, gave me portraits of former political leaders (Dr Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, and Chiang Ching-kuo) as thank-you gifts for my listening to and caring for him (Figure 19). Similarly, Mr Chang, the head of the village, put his own picture and the image of Chiang in one photo frame. He once excitedly showed me the bust of Chiang Kai-shek and then gently touched the forehead of it while telling me stories of his family during an interview (cf. Subsection 4.2.2). In these cases, two pent-up veterans com-

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municated by means of the same symbol: since their teens they had served as loyal soldiers under Chiang’s command, who led them out of communist China after losing the civil war and promised to recover lost territory. They were also recipients of military pay and provisions which supported their family in an island initially foreign to them. There were times that Chiang (and his Nationalist Party, KMT) provided indispensable support that they could not live without.

Photos or icons of Chiang Kai-shek (sometimes with his wife Soong May-ling, known as Madame Chiang) are exhilarating and comforting, and possessors regularly caress and look at them, sometimes for a long time. Mere contact with these representations of the deceased military and political leader brings con- solation. The objects with which we surround ourselves in the home are partic- ularly salient expressions of self: the more we are able to touch those objects, the more we gain reassurance of their reality, a reassurance and a level of relating not gained from sight alone (Marcus 2006: 61). In light of Marilyn Strathern’s inspirational thought of borrowing persons (2011: 36), these veterans were once-young soldiers and recruits found by the wars of modernity, and their par- ents were displaced by the superiors, particularly Generalissimo Chiang and his wife. These male teens were loaned from their families, to guard their home and to defend their country. For the diaspora community created by war, their own land now unavailable to them, there are limited options of where to live, not only for a period of time, but likely for good. Their origins are elsewhere, in other words ‘their (kinship) origins are in other people’ (Strathern 2011: 36), but their neigh- bourship, and relationship between officers and soldiers are here and real.

Therefore, in this sense neighbours and superiors are not only kinship surrogates, but members of the kinship.