Imaging National Landscape: Yushan, modern myth and identity in post-war Taiwan

Chang, Bi-Yu

Abstract

The chapter examines the construction of a national landscape and the invention of a mythical origin for the islanders. As part of Taiwan’s nation-building project, a campaign was launched in 2001 to popularise Yushan (the highest mountain in East Asia) as a “sacred mountain” and to construct the Taiwanese as “children of Yushan.” The repositioning of Yushan (and, by extension, Taiwan) serves to remove the island from a China-centric framework and locates it instead within an Asia-pacific context. Metaphorically, the mountain has become a “site of resistance,” and has been transformed from a simple geographical feature into a representation of Taiwanese
origins, an ancestral home, and the wellspring of a long-forgotten identity. In doing so, this construction of a “sacred mountain” functions not only to nationalise landscape,but also to naturalise Taiwan independence.

Citation

Chang, B.-Y. (2012). Imaging National Landscape: Yushan, modern myth and identity in post-war Taiwan. In B.-Y. Chang, & H. Klöter (Eds.), Imaging and Imagining Taiwan: Identity representation and cultural politics (149-169). Harrassowitz Verlag . Wiesbaden

• Publication Date: Aug 1, 2012
• Deposit Date: Oct 22, 2013
• Pages: 149-169
• Series Title: Studia Formosiana
• Series Number: 8
• Book Title: Imaging and Imagining Taiwan: Identity representation and cultural politics
• ISBN: 9783447066747
• Keywords: Nationalism, National Landscape, cultural geography, identity politics, Taiwan indepedence, nation-building.