Men in Double Marginality--Chinese Diaspora “at home”
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Ping Lin

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Men in Double Marginality--- Chinese Diaspora “at home” Ping Lin Abstract This paper uses data gathered from research project partially sponsored by Oriel College in Oxford and Academia Sinica in Taiwan to explore the adaptation of Mainlander Taiwanese in China. They moved from China to Taiwan in 1949 and back “home” with their descendents in 1990s. By examine the life of seventeen respondents in Dongguan/Shanghai in 2004-2005, we argue that they were in sense of double marginality despite the diversity of the sample. Whilst foreigners regarded China as a new territory to explore more economic benefits, these returnees were more likely to regarded China as a place with sense of belonging, not sense of colonising. However, they found that the real China was different from what they expected before return. They felt being excluded from Taiwan, but they also felt unwilling to participate in China due to this home disillusion. Further discussion on the adaptation of other type Taiwanese in China will be displayed in separated papers. Keyword: return migration, Taiwan, China! 1. Introduction Whilst most migration research focuses on why people move from poorer countries to richer countries and how they overcome the widely cultural gap in migration, there is little research stressing on migration either on the opposite direction or between countries with cultural proximity. The phenomenon of Taiwanese people in China1 provides us a good chance to fill in this gap. It is
Ping Lin is Assistant Professor of Political Science at National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan. Email address: polpl@ccu.edu.tw 1 The official title of Taiwan today is the Republic of China), which was established in 1911 in Nanjing (a city on the Chinese Mainland), following the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. The Constitution of the ROC was passed only in 1948 in Nanjing. Then it was brought to Taiwan by the Kuomintang (KMT) Government during the Chinese Civil War. In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party established the PRC People’s Republic of China in Beijing as the new Chinese Government. Although the Constitution of Republic of China has been revised seven times since 1993, its territorial claim still conflicts with that of the Constitution of People’s Republic of China (Chang MK 2005). However, neither of the Republic of China nor People’s Republic of China has been able to enforce its claim to the land of the other since 1949. To avoid misunderstanding in this paper, we do not refer these two countries as the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China, but as Taiwan and China. 1

estimated that 1,000,0002 foreigners live in China and 700,000 of them are from Taiwan. By examine Taiwanese people in China, we will have more idea about why people move into a less developed country, whether people survive easily if they move between countries with cultural proximity. The number of Taiwanese people in China was very limited because of the travel ban in 1949-87. The first research concerning Taiwanese in China was Chiu’s Influence of Visiting China ( ) in 1988 (Chiu, Ting, Lin and Tsai 1989), which suggested that Mainlander Taiwanese (the ones born in China before 1949) are the first group of Taiwanese people legally entering China after the lift of travel ban. Mainlander Taiwanese respondents regarded their visits as “hope in life to return home” (Chiu et al 1989: 71-79, 87-90). As Chiu’s study predicted, numerous of Taiwanese people have moved to China since the late 1980s (Chiu et al 1989: 118). Therefore, analysing the return of Mainlander Taiwanese is not only important to the studies on return migration, but also crucial to understand the population movement from Taiwan to China. In this paper, we just discuss the life of Mainlander Taiwanese in China. Perceptions by other types of Taiwanese (e.g. students and expatriates) will be addressed in separated papers. 2. Literature Review In this paper, we are going to explore why Mainlander Taiwanese return home and how their life after returning is. Their length of being away from home (more than forty years) and the change of political climate across the Strait made this study important in the field of migration studies and China studies. Although the return of Mainlander Taiwanese is the first group of Taiwanese legally entering China after 1949, it has rarely been discussed in academia. Before further analysing their returns, we review the findings of research on return migration and Mainlander Taiwanese in Taiwan. Both will bring the basic information for later analysis. Return Migration The process of globalisation encourages people to move abroad and back home. Although there are millions of people who have returned to their former homes in the past decade, the subject of return migration has been largely understudied by
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This number is obtained from the combination of Taiwanese in China and non-Chinese in China. The former is estimated as 700,000 by the Chinese government and the later is estimated as 300,000 by the media (Jenning 2006). Among the 700,000 Taiwanese, more than 120,000 and 300,000 were estimated to be living in Dongguan and Shanghai respectively in 2004-2005 (Lin 2007). 2

academics (Oxfeld and Long 2004). While the economic model functions as the mainstream explanation in predicting migration motivation (Portes and Böröcz 1989; Faist 2000; Castles and Miller 2003), this model also argues that migrants will return to their home country if they either fail in the receiving countries or expect to receive more benefits at home (Sjassted 1962: Borjas 1990; Cassarino 2004), such as the return of Irish from Britain after the 1970s, ethnic Chinese from Australia, and Japanese from Brazil (Kirwin and Nairn 1984; Duleep 1994; Malcolm 1996; Barrett and O’Connell 2000). Economic incentives are often regarded as more important than family ties to attract people to return home. However, some studies on intra-European migration, the return of Caribbean people from the US, and Russians from the former USSR emphasised the influence of family reunion at home. These studies basically state that most return migrants are married middle-aged and above, slightly better educated than the general population. A few studies on the return of ethnic Russians from the former USSR back to Russia display that their return is mainly due to discrimination and politically exclusion abroad (Pilkington and Flynn 1999; Kosmarskaya 1999). This type of return, return partially for political exclusion, is not unusual but much less discussed recent studies. No matter what their reason for returning, most returnees often have unrealistic expectations before returning and find their memories of their home society to be nostalgic and out-of-date upon their actual return (Gmelch 1980). The gap between memories and reality often causes returnees to meet unexpected psychological disillusions after returning. For example, compatriots who had never experienced emigration, including close kin, may envy and nurture exaggerated images of the living conditions that the returnees have enjoyed abroad (Gmelch 1980; Stefansson 2004). Hence, returnees are under pressure to display their “success” and make generous donations to community projects (Ghosh 2000). Returnees do not necessarily return to the same specific locale from which they left, and even if they do, that place may be changed so profoundly that there remains little relevance (Oxfeld and Long 2004; Markowitz and Stefansson 2004). Because of these “disillusions”, returnees may not live with members of their original family but with other returnees and form “returnee enclaves,” establishing a separate “returnee identity” (Byron 1999; Cornish et al 1999). Some returnees eventually give up their will to return and remain in the home country. They then re-emigrate to the country of initial immigration or engage in circular migration (King 1986; Gmelch 1992; Malcolm 1996; Guarnizo 1997; Pikington 1998; Lopez Zarzosa 1998; Thomas-Hope 2002).

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Apart from the studies on the first generation, some studies on Greeks from North America, Caribbean people from Britain, and Italians from Switzerland focus on how the second generation return to their parents’ homeland (Christou 2002; Potter 2005; Wessendorf 2005, 2006). Basically, their decision to “return” is also related to the economic and social context in their country of birth. For example, the political exclusion in the in their country of birth may encourage these second generation to move to their parents’ country of origin. They may be less motivated by nostalgia and suffer less “disillusions” than their parents would upon returning, but the transformation of the homeland from imagined to real is still shocking and uprooting (Wessendorf 2005, 2006). Among the limited studies on return migration, there is little on the voluntary return of refugees. Although a few studies focusing on the return of refugees to Africa (Cornish et al 1999), East Europe (Stefansson 2004) and Russia (Pilkington and Flynn 1999) suggest findings similar to research on general returnees (e.g. home desire before move and home disillusion after move), there is little research on the return of refugees who were forced to leave home more than a decade. This extremely large time scale in this study, forty years, encourages us to explore the life of Mainlander Taiwanese in China by addressing two main questions: why the respondents returned and how they regarded their return. These two questions will guide us in the later discussions. Mainlander Taiwanese In this research, we have seventeen respondents: seven from the first-generation and ten from the second-generation3. They are often referred to as Waishengren (Mainlander Taiwanese, ) in Taiwan because they moved from China to Taiwan due to the Chinese Civil War 4 . There is little research concerning Mainlander Taiwanese before the lift of martial law in 1987, because issues of ethnicity (discussion of the difference between Mainlander Taiwanese and Native Taiwanese)5 were closely intertwined with domestic political issues and regarded
Research in Taiwan often regards people whose parents (or one of the parents) were born in China as the offspring of Mainlander Taiwanese (Lin CC and Lin HL 1993). In this Chapter, we follow this tradition and recognise our eight respondents as the second generation of Mainlander Taiwanese. 4 The term “Waishengren ( )” literally means “people from other province” and implies “not native to Taiwan” (Chang MK 1993; Chai YZ 1997; Corcuff 2002; Wei 2005). The term “Waishengren” is often translated as “Mainlander” in English works concerning Taiwan. However, this translation may be misunderstood as those born and educated in China. In case of this misunderstanding, we refer Waishengren as “Mainlander Taiwanese” in this thesis. 5 The study of ethnicity in the cultural context in Taiwan was also problematic at its early stages due to 4
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as taboos in the public discourse (Wang FC 1993, 2003; Chai YZ 1997). Because of poor record, the accurate number of Mainlander Taiwanese in 1950s is still unknown6. We only know that this group of people had moved from China with the defeated KMT (Kuomintang, the ruling party in China before 1949) troops towards the end of the Chinese Civil War, which should be mainly in 1947-19497. In 1990, the number of Mainlander Taiwanese was estimated 2.7 million (12.4 per cent) according to the census (COEU 1992). Because most Mainlander Taiwanese moved as military officers or their family members8, they were often arranged to live in close units, Juan Cun (village of military dependent, )” 9 . This residential arrangement also causes the segregation between Mainlander Taiwanese and the Native Taiwanese (Hu 1993; Chai 1997; Wang FC 1998). It was estimated that there were more than 800 units of Juan Cun, consisting of approximately 100,000 households in early 1980s (Huang WF 1994)10. Most of these Juan Cun were located in northern Taiwan (Chai YZ 1997; Young 2002; Kuo GL 2005). Over the course of time, most Mainlander Taiwanese in the troops retired and they are often addressed as Rong Min 11 the problem of terminology and semantics. Earlier works on ethnicity were discussed in the terms of Tsu-chun ( ) or Sheng-ji ( ) (Huang, Chen, and Chuang 1994: 14; Chang MK 1994: 93). 6 The total volume of population from China in that period remains unknown for two reasons. Firstly, there was no population census in Taiwan in 1944-1946. Secondly, Taiwan’s population census before 1969 did not include soldiers in the troops (Chai YZ 1997; Corcuff 2004). Even the accurate number of the troops was also uncertain because the Taiwanese (KMT) government tended to exaggerate it in order to get more military aids from the US (Corcuff 2004). Although it was estimated that there were 928,000 of Mainlander Taiwanese according to the 1956 population census, the total number of Mainlander Taiwanese in 1950s has been suggested to be between 1.2 million to 2 million (Lee TM 1971; Chang MK 1993; Hu 1993) 7 Actually some fragmentary people fled to Taiwan after 1949 through a third country, such as Korea (1954), Thailand (1953/1961), and China’s offshore island Dachen (1955) (Ivanov 1990; Di 1990; Ko 2003; Ho 2005; Wu 1974). However, the number of these people was insignificant and was often overlooked. 8 The number of the Mainlander Taiwanese moving to Taiwan without any connection with the military troops is very small and often overlooked (Chao 2001) so we do not discuss them in this thesis 9 Concerning the residents of Jun Cun, there are three exceptions to be clarified here. First, some Mainlander Taiwanese are not eligible for Juan Cun. Juan Cun is only for those having family members in Taiwan. Single Mainlander Taiwanese may live in the army, live independently, or live in state nursing homes (such as Rong Min Zhi Jia and Ren Ai Zhi-Jia ) after retirement (Hu 1993). Second, some Native Taiwanese live in Juan Cun through marriage with Mainlander Taiwanese, but they are often regarded as “assimilated into becoming Mainlander Taiwanese” and are rarely discussed in most studies (Hu 1993; Kuo WP 2002). Third, a few Native Taiwanese live in Juan Cun via buying/renting the households of Juan Cun, but the number of this type of residents is insignificant and often overlooked. So, Jun Cun, in general, is regarded as the residence only for the Mainlander Taiwanese. 10 The accurate number of Juan Cun was not clear at earlier stages because most of them were established as squatters in the suburbs or near military camps without legal registration. They were (and most still are) administered by the Ministry of National Defence; therefore this information was regarded as secret military information. So the accurate number of Juan Cun was uncertain in early days (Luo YL 1991; Chen CH 2002; Kuo GL 2005). 11 Veterans are often referred to as Rongmin (honoured citizen, ) in Taiwan (Hu 1993). Although 5

(veteran,

). Although only one third of the Mainlander Taiwanese live in Juan

Cun (Wang YP 2002), there has been an obvious tendency to regard studies on Juan Cun (or Rong Min living at nursing homes) as proxy studies of the general Mainlander Taiwanese population since in the early 1990s (Ho SM 2001; Young 2002; Kuo GL 2005). After the lift of Martial Law in 1987, fragmentary studies and news in the Press suggested the influence of ethnicity in different fields. Compared with the Native Taiwanese, the Mainlander Taiwanese are more likely to be well-educated and tend to work as middle-and-above ranking managers in public sectors or servicing in the large private sectors (Ying 1987; Tsai SL 1988; Chen RJ 1990; Lin CC and Lin HL 1993; Wu NT 1997). Although Mainlander Taiwanese actually cover people from all walks of life who had moved from various places in China, they were often regarded as a homogeneous and privileged group in the 1990s. Recent studies display the diversity and the feature of unprivileged Mainlander Taiwanese. Most of them are single (or married at a late age), with low education, retired as low-ranking soldiers, and live alone (or with other single Mainlander Taiwanese) on limited pension at the bottom of the society (Hu 1993; Shang 1995; Liu YC 1996; Lu HL 1997; Chao 2002; Shi 2004). Mainlander Taiwanese and Politics in Taiwan Before the late 1980s, the KMT (mainly composed of the Mainlander Taiwanese) dominated Taiwan’s politics and the discourse of unification with China. The basic power structure of politics in Taiwan consisted of two tiers: the central government and the subordinate local tier. Native Taiwanese were only allowed limited room for political participation at the lower tier of government (Winkler 1984; Chang MK 2005). This domination and discourse were changed after the late 1980s. Intensive election campaigns caused researchers to pay more attention to the influence of ethnicity on politics (or the party preference in election). Whilst half of the Native Taiwanese may support the KMT in elections, more than eighty percent of the Mainlander Taiwanese are stable supporters of the KMT12 (Chang MK 1989, 1993; Wang FC 1998; Wu NT 2002).

145 out of 530 thousands veterans (27.3 per cent) are Native Taiwanese, Rongmin is often used to refer to the elderly Mainlander Taiwanese (Kao 2006). 12 Strictly speaking, there are several minor parties in election campaigns, such as New Party (NP), People First Party (PFP), and Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU). However, both NP/PFP and TSU originate from the KMT and the DPP, respectively and they seldom play important roles in elections so we only take the KMT and the DPP as the main targets for discussion. 6

This split between Mainlander Taiwanese and Native Taiwanese also exists in issues of political/national identity. Mainlander Taiwanese are more likely to identify themselves as being “Taiwanese and Chinese as well” or “Chinese only” than the Native Taiwanese in public polls13 (Shang 1995; Chai 1997; Wu NT 2002). The different self-identification makes the party preferences interwoven with ethnicity and national identity14, which all together affects people’s perception on China. Mainlander Taiwanese tend to regard China as a country (or “another place” of the same country) to explore and keep good relationship (Corcuff 2004). A Taiwanese survey conducted in 2005 displayed that the Mainlander Taiwanese have higher willingness than the others to work in China when opportunities are available (Tsai and Chang 2006). However, this “pro-China ideology” is not favoured in the election campaigns, especially when conflicts across the Strait rise up. The “China issue” has been the one of the major disputes in most election campaigns in the past decade. Although the KMT won the presidential election in 199615, it was defeated by the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) in the presidential election in 2000 and 2004. The defeats and disputes in the elections during the past decade have discouraged Mainlander Taiwanese and left them feeling politically excluded, distrusted, and regarded as “outsiders” in Taiwan (Fan and Hsu 1994; Chang MK and Wu 2001; Corcuff 2004; Tung 2005). Mainlander Taiwanese and their Home Desire After the travelling ban to China was lift in 1987, there have been several studies focusing on the home desire of Mainlander Taiwanese and their experience of return visits. In Chiu’s study on Taiwanese with the experience of return/visit China, the first generation of Mainlander Taiwanese regarded their return visits as the result of strong home desire in life and a practice of falling leaves returning to the
A study states also that there is regional disparity of party preferences in election. People in Northern Taiwan are more likely to support the KMT while people in the South tend to support the DPP in the elections (Hsu YM 2000). It is not difficult to sense the disparity but this regional disparity is still not widely accepted by studies on voting behaviour in Taiwan. 14 Of course, there must be some Mainlander Taiwanese identifying themselves as being Taiwanese only, supporting Taiwan independence movement and the DPP. However, there is little research concerning this small minority within the Mainlander Taiwanese. From news in the Press we know some Mainlander Taiwanese organise a “Goa-Seng-Lang Association For Taiwan Independence ( )” in 1992 to promote the ideology of Taiwan independence (Huang LF 2004). However, this association does not play an important role and it is often overlooked in most studies. For a general introduction to this association, please check http://www.gati.org.tw/ 15 It is the first time that the president is directly elected by citizens in Taiwan. Before that the president was elected by members of the National Assembly, who were mostly elected by people in China before 1949. 7
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roots. In his study, three types of Mainlander Taiwanese expressed less intention to return/visit China again than other Mainlander Taiwanese; those whose Chinese relatives had passed away, those who could not bear the under-development of China, and those who had stable careers and family in Taiwan (Chiu et al 1989: 73-85). These findings from Chiu’s study were partially confirmed by some case studies on Juan Cun in Taiwan in the past decade (Chu 1992; Li KC 1997; Shi 2004; Liao 2005). In short, Mainlander Taiwanese is a social-constructed group that includes migrants with various backgrounds from China. Although there is a definite degree of diversity among themselves, they are often regarded as a highly homogenous group when compared with the Native Taiwanese in terms of party preferences, self-identification, and attitudes towards China. However, all these findings are based on the perceptions of the Mainlander Taiwanese in Taiwan. There is no study that examines the perceptions of Mainlander Taiwanese in China. The findings from the previous research provide us good base for discussion in this paper. 3. Research Methods and Data Because of the difficulties in statistical sampling, most related research on Taiwanese in China is based on limited interviews with Taiwanese concerning their investment strategy, firm management, and adaptation of family members in certain Taiwanese firms (Chen 2002; Dong 2004; Wu 2000). Since it is impractical to do a statistical survey, the target of this research is to map the general course of different Mainlander Taiwanese, rather than providing a picture with clear proportions of types of Taiwanese. In order to achieve this goal, I took ethnography (mainly participant observation, and a few tape-recorded interviews) as the main research method and maximum variation as the sampling strategy, in order to access respondents who were as different as possible. Sampling and Data Maximum variation sampling strategy is adopted to obtain the largest range of information and perspectives available within the subject of study (Lincoln 1985; Maykut 1994; Patton 1990). I adopted this strategy to broaden my pre-fieldwork information and gain greater knowledge of Mainlander Taiwanese with different backgrounds. To practise this strategy, I joined activities conducted by different

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groups of people or organisations 16 . During these activities and gatherings, I acquired a general picture of local Taiwanese communities, as well as helpful personal connections in searching for potential respondents with different backgrounds. From among these diverse Taiwanese I met on different occasions, I selected Mainlander Taiwanese from various backgrounds to be the respondents for observation and interviews. Interviews were mainly conducted in Mandarin, and partially in Holo or Cantonese, but the working language of analysis is English. There was no formal questionnaire, and no attempt was made to quantify interviewee responses, other than to note how frequently a particular observation was recorded. Like most sampling processes in qualitative research, the sampling in this research started with snow-balling techniques in some easy cases, but ended with a large range of different respondents. In total, I obtained ten respondents in Dongguan and seven in Shanghai. The basic features of respondents can be summarised as following. Among these seventeen respondents, eleven were male. Their ages ranged from twenty-seven to eighty-six in 2004/05. Two of them have no school education, but all the others have more than fourteen years of school education. Their occupations range from self-employees, dependents, expatriates of Taiwanese firms, employees of Chinese firms, and the retired. When I met them in 2004/2005, respondents might have lived in China for only a few months, several years, or more than ten years. Limitation Information from these diverse resources helps us make our interpretation as representative as possible. Although I took the maximum strategy to access more Taiwanese with varied background, there are some limitations to this research. I did not get any respondents who were criminals or made redundant in China, although I am aware of the existence of these groups. Since the respondents in this research were not selected based on statistically representative sample, this research cannot present the responses of proportionate Mainlander Taiwanese in both cities, but display the same responses from people with different backgrounds. Despite these drawbacks, this research provides a wealth of new information and worthy of being
These organisations include TBDS (Taiwanese Businessmen’s Dongguan School), HDTS (Hua Dong Taiwanese School), DTBA (Dongguan Taiwanese Business Association), KTBA (Kunshan Taiwanese Business Association), STBS (Shijie Taiwanese Business Association), TAO (Taiwan Affair Office) in Dongguan City and Shanghai Metropolis, Tailian (affiliated association of TAO), Tzu-chi (one of the branches of Taiwanese Buddhists) in Shanghai, and NADT (Native Association of Dongguanese in Taipei). These institutions and organizations are very important in the fieldwork. Activities sponsored by them offered me good arenas in which to participate and observe respondents’ lives. 9
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noticed. 4. Results Because of the difficulty of reliable statistics, we have a vague idea of how many Mainlander Taiwanese are currently residing in China. However, data from Taiwan’s VAC (Veterans Affairs Commission, ) displays the general features of Taiwanese veterans in China. All these veterans are Mainlander Taiwanese so we take the data from VAC as proxy to define the features of elderly Mainlander Taiwanese in China. According to VAC, there were more than 533,000 of veterans and 4,931 of them had returned and settled down in China at the end of 2004. Among these 4,931 Taiwanese, 990 were officers (second lieutenant and above) and 3,941 were soldiers (sergeants and below) when retired. It shows that most veterans in China were low ranking when retired in Taiwan. Among these 4,931 veterans, 392 were in Guangdong and 60 were in Shanghai17. Although there is no further information from VAC that could help locate which county/city these veterans are living in, the information from VAC still provides a rough picture displaying the possible features of senior Mainlander Taiwanese in China18. 4.1 Motivations: Family reunion and Life Quality In this study, we have seventeen respondents who are Mainlander Taiwanese. Only three of these seventeen returned to their place of origin and merely two of them lived with their Chinese relatives (and both were in Dongguan). All the others lived either away from their hometowns or together with other Taiwanese. We will first discuss the two respondents who were actually “back home.” With the help of Tailian, I visited these two respondents (Lu Sr and Lee Sr19) to explore their motivations for returns. Lu Sr did not receive any school education. Lee Sr attended a “Si-shu” for just two years in childhood. Then they joined the KMT troops and came to Taiwan. In Taiwan, they received only some “Sui-ying-bu-xi” for

Source from Tong Ji Yue Bao Monthly Statistics, (1996-2006), Veterans Affairs Commission. However, data from DAT (Dongguanese Association of Taipei, ) and Tailian (affiliated organisation TAO, ) in Dongguan suggest further details. They both suggest that there are seven Mainlander Taiwanese originating from Dongguan have returned and settled down. All these seven people are low-ranking veterans (Field note 03/10/04). 19 From this section onwards, pseudonyms are used throughout the thesis in order to preserve anonymity.
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education20 then retired as low-ranking military soldiers. Lu Sr married before leaving China in 1949 and has a son in Dongguan. He did not marry other women in Taiwan. Lee Sr did not marry either…… After retirement, they just received only limited pension, NT 13,500 per month from the government.” They lived in different “Ren-ai-zhi-jia” [nursing homes for single elderly, ] for decades. After decades, most of their friends in Ren-ai-zhi-jia are “dying or returning to their hometown”, Lee Sr said. “My son is here. So I returned here”, Lee Sr continued…… (Field note 13/11/04 and 19/01/05) The remarks from Lu Sr’s “they [friends in Taiwan] were dying or returning to their hometown” and Lee Sr’s “My son is here, so I returned here” mainly explain their returns. As Lu Sr and Lee Sr expressed, whilst most of their social connection (friends) in Taiwan was gone (dead or moving to China) and only connections (Lu Sr’s son and Lee Sr’s brother) in China remained, it is not surprising that they decided to return to China. To Lu Sr and Lee Sr, their return is according to the tradition of the Chinese proverb, “Falling leaves return to their roots”. However, background information from TAO and Tailian reveals the other dimension of this story. Apart from this emotional concern, Mr Chen (an official of TAO in Dongguan) said, “Those old people, “one of their legs is already in the coffin [dying soon]”, you know what I mean… Life in Taiwan is difficult with their limited pension, but it is still quite good here” (Field note 13/11/04). This comment illustrates the returnees’ practical concerns. Both Lu Sr and Lee Sr are old and low-educated, so it is difficult for them to have extra income to keep their quality of life. Although their pension (NT 13,500 per month, ¥ 40,200 per year) was quite low in Taiwan, it was good enough to provide them good quality of life whilst the residents’ average disposable income in Dongguan was only ¥ 20,526 per year21. Moving to China becomes one alternative for them to maintain their quality of life at a manageable cost. This concern is not directly expressed by the respondents themselves but explained
Si-shu ( )is a kind of old-style education, not the modern school education. In this old system, some intellectuals taught local children to recognise characters and memorize some classics. Sui-ying-bu-xi ( ) is education for illiterate armed forces which was carried out in camps. It began from 1953 and terminated in 2004. Neither Si-shu nor Sui-ying-bu-xi is part of the school educational system. 21 Source from Dongguan Year Book 2005. 11
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by the Chinese people around them. As Mr Chen explained, their “return and life” is not as easy as Lu Sr and Lee Sr expressed. Before their returns, TAO and Tailian checked the economic situation of their Chinese relatives to make sure “They [Chinese relatives] are wealthy enough to host them [Taiwanese returnees]”. After returning, Taiwanese returnees are provided with relevant social welfare as local senior citizens, such as the right to travel free of charge on the local buses. TAO and Tailain regularly visit these families (Taiwanese returnees and their Chinese relatives), invite them for Yam-cha (a kind of Cantonese brunch), and prepare gatherings during traditional festivals. All these arrangements are done to make sure these Taiwanese returnees are properly cared for22. Expressions from TAO and Tailian show that the return of Lu Sr/Lee Sr is not only for the emotional and family ties. It is also part of economic concern. However, this kind of economic concern is far from aiming for more material reward, but sustaining life quality with limited cost. This type of economic concern is partially similar to the migration of some elderly British to Southern Spain. They both move abroad (or return home) after retirement because their limited pension/savings are not sufficient to support their moderate lifestyle in Taiwan/Britain, but good enough to maintain good quality of material life in China/Spain (O’ Reilly 2000, 2002). This kind of ‘economic concern--- less cost rather than more benefit’ is less discussed in the conventional studies on (return) migration, but it is expected to be noticeable while the cross-border population movement is more convenient. Apart from the search for family reunion and better material life with lower living cost, one clear feature among these Mainlander Taiwanese respondents is their strong orientation towards China together with the dislike of the anti-China politics in Taiwan. We find all the seventeen Mainlander Taiwanese respondents were partially affected by these concerns. We take the case of Yang in Shanghai to illustrate the other dimension of their (return) motivations.

4.2 Motivations: Sense of Being Marginalized in Taiwan

When I was still in Dongguan in late 2004, I was encouraged by a Taiwanese PhD student in Shanghai to telephone a lady named Yang. Yang was in Shanghai in 2004,
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However, Mr Chen (official of TAO) and Mr Lee (President of Tailain) also admitted that the whole arrangement may vary from different city/county due to financial support from the local government. As they expressed, Dongguan is more prosperous than many cities/counties in inner China and, therefore, is able to provide these arrangements. 12

but she had been in Shenzhen (a city between Dongguan and Hong Kong) for eight years. Hence, she might be able to give me some advice. So I rang her on the 10th of November in 2004. The first sentence Yang spoke to me on the phone was,

“Are you a Mainlander Taiwanese?” Well…what a surprising phone greeting! I paused for a second and replied, “Yes!” Then she talked a lot about her current life and “the sadness of being a Mainlander Taiwanese in Taiwan”, because it was close to the Parliament election in December. She hoped “the KMT would gain more seats to give the DPP president a lesson”… I did not ask her any particular questions but just listened to her complaint about politics in Taiwan. (Field note 10/11/04) During the phone conversation in Dongguan and several subsequent face-to-face conversations in Shanghai, I knew she was born in a typical Mainlander Taiwanese family in Kaohsiung, a city located in southern Taiwan with the majority of Holo Taiwanese. Yang often talked about her unhappiness with Taiwan’s domestic politics, especially the localization movement (or the trend of anti-China). Her first greeting “Are you Mainlander Taiwanese?” and her frequent remarks concerning “the sadness of being Mainlander Taiwanese” expressed her disappointment with the KMT’s loss in the presidential election in 2000 and her anger towards being regarded as an “alien” in Kaohsiung. She thought her identity of “being second generation of Mainlander Taiwanese” was tagged as a sign of original sin, especially during the election campaigns. The response of Yang was quite similar to that of other Mainlander Taiwanese respondents, such as Mao’s “being Mainlander Taiwanese, [we are] excluded in Taiwan, especially in southern Taiwan23” (Field note 22/11/04) and Joy’s “the devil island” to express her anger on the political transition. Here I do not have any intention to make the claim that all Mainlander Taiwanese moved to China in order to get rid of the political disputes in Taiwan, but to state that being regarded as “outsiders” is one of the reasons pushing them to leave Taiwan24.

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Yang lived in Zuoying of Kaohsiung City and Mao lived in Fengshan of Kaohsiung County. Both Zhoying and Fengshan are the districts with many sites of Juan Cun located in Kaohsiung. More than 37 per cent and 35 per cent of Juan Cun in Kaohsiung City/County are located in Zuoying and Fengshan, respectively (Chai 1997). 24 Of course, all the returnee respondents also moved to China for some other reasons, such as economic incentives for investment. We are not arguing this sense of political exclusion as the only pushing factor, but presenting it as a special factor only applying to respondents with various level of influence who were Mainlander Taiwanese. 13

Considering migrants’ level of integration in the host country, Park had described the position of the migrant as a “marginal man” (Park 1928). Migrants are at the marginal of the host society and unable to mixed with the local people. Later in 1993, Weisberger further developed this idea into the concept of “double ambivalence”. As Weisberger explains, the marginal person is “not only unable to serve ties with his or her own culture and to merge into the new one, but also is unable to return to the native culture or to shrug of the influence of the new one”(Weisberger 1992: 425). In this double ambivalence, a migrant is at the margin between his native culture and the host culture. In order to resolve the complexity in this structural marginality, a marginal person may adopt pure response (somewhat mixed empirically) as his/her strategy: assimilation, return, transcendence, and poise. Assimilation refers to the marginal person’s adoption of the host culture while sacrificing the practices and beliefs of his original culture. In return, the marginal person may be back to his original culture after confronting the host culture. The return actually results in a reconstruction (changed by his exposure to the host culture) to interpret the original culture in new terms. Transcendence constitutes the attempt to overcome the two cultures through creating a third way to surpass or reconcile. Poise represents abiding in the ambivalence and refusing to resolve it despite the cost in loneliness or anxiety (Weisberger 1992).

Readers may think the experience of these respondents is similar to Park’s “marginal man.” Nonetheless, we have found the situation is more complicated. The background information in section one and two and idea from these respondents reveal a different path of being marginalised. For certain length of time in Taiwan, they were educated to be “more Chinese than Chinese” in Taiwan. When most Native Taiwanese obtained their knowledge of China from the institutions outside (e.g. school education), these respondents obtained this knowledge through their family. To these respondents, their sense of “Chineseness” is part of their life, not something transplanted from outside. However, the political climate has changed since the early 1990s. When the new political climate puts more and more effort into strengthening Taiwan as a state separated from China, they feel like people in the margin of the newly constructed Taiwanese society. The more this new political climate is driven away from the Chinese culture, the more marginalized they feel in Taiwan. Their motivation for returning to China is similar to the return of Russians from the former USSR in the 1990s (Pilkington and Flynn 1999; Kosmarskaya 1999). Both partially contribute their motivation of returning home to the change of political climate of their host countries (Taiwan and
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members of the former USSR)25. This sense of being marginalised is the crucial to explain the return of Mainlander Taiwanese. 4.3 Life after Return: Return, but not Returning Home Although all the seventeen respondents had strong connections with China due to their origins, few of them actually returned to their “hometowns” in China. As the early discussion, only three respondents lived in the city/county where they (or their parents) originated. Even the senior Mainlander Taiwanese did not actually return home. Why didn’t they return their hometowns? This section explores how these respondents perceived the Chinese (especially their Chinese relatives), which helped us understand their behaviour of ‘not returning home’. Elderly Returnees (First Generation) First, we discuss why most elderly respondents did not actually return and live at home after suffering from the home desire for decades, by analysing the case of Kang Sr, Sun Sr, and Joy’s father. Kang Sr returned to his hometown Zhengzhou in 1988, but he did not settle down with his Chinese relatives over there. After moving back and forth for a few years, he finally settled with his Taiwanese friends in 1992 in Dongguan, which is thousands miles away far away from Zhengzhou. When I asked why he did not remain in Zhengzhou, he replied, “Why there? Almost all friends and relatives have died. Only one is still alive… People in that village are so poor. I told you, all the roads were muddy. Even the squat toilet at home I used fifty years ago is still used by others…” (Field note 28/12/04) As findings of the research on refugees’ return to East Europe and Africa, the dramatic change (almost all people they know have died) and economic gap (too poor over there) are the main reasons to explain why these people (both refugees in previous studies and elderly returnees in this study) did not actually return home.
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I am not justifying (or helping them to justify themselves) their reasons for leaving Taiwan for China. We simply point out that the change of political climate has stigmatised and tended to exclude the “Chinese culture.” As these respondents expressed, they felt like they were being criticised and marginalized because of their blood connection with China. When China is getting more liberal economically in the 1990s, “moving/returning to China” became a reasonable and practical solution to resolve this state of being marginalized in Taiwan. 15

Although they have strong desire of returning home while being abroad, these two reasons discourage them to physically live at their hometowns. Are these the only reasons that could explain the phenomenon of “return, but not returning home”? The story of Joy’s father provides a clearer outlook. Joy and her father were from Beijing. They sometimes visited Beijing because some of their Chinese relatives there were still alive. In 2000, Joy worked in Dongguan, but her father lived Xiamen, a city in the Southern province of Fujian. It is reasonable that Joy lived in Dongguan because of work, but why did Joy’s father live in Xiamen instead of Beijing? As the capital of China, Beijing should be able to provide a better quality of material life than Xiamen. One day Joy expressed “he lives with his old friends [the other Mainlander Taiwanese] in Xiamen. They often gossip and play Majung [a kind of game for gambling] together” (Field notes 18/09/04 and 22/11/04). The stories from Kang Sr and Joy’s father illustrate the life of these old returnees. Although they returned to China, their returns actually result in a reconstruction of their life, changed by their exposure to life in Taiwan, and a reinterpretation of their journey home to China. To balance between their life experience from Taiwan and home desire towards China, they did not actually spend the rest of their life with Chinese relatives. Instead, they lived with other Taiwanese with similar background. But, the question is: why is it difficult for them to reintegrate with the Chinese people (even their close Chinese relatives)? One of the ordinary topics between the elderly respondents and me is talking about their experience of return visits. When I asked whether they did some contribution to their hometown or Chinese relative at the early stages of returning, such as the refurbishment of the ancestor hall and financial aids for young Chinese relatives, they replied with positive response. But they were reluctant to further talk about their interaction with their Chinese relatives after this “honeymoon” stage. Only Sun Sr added an additional remark, “they just want money” (Field note 26/12/04) to stop our discussion on his Chinese relatives. It seems a strong sense of gap between the elderly returnees and their Chinese relatives is formed due to the issue of money26.
26

I admit there is little “hard evidence” from the field to display their relationship with Chinese relatives because I purposely avoided intrusive enquiries. Being one of the so-called second generation of Mainlander Taiwanese in Taiwan, I often heard of unhappy stories concerning the interaction with Chinese relatives in my family or stories from friends of my parents/grand parents. Most of this unhappiness seemed to arise from financial issues. In these stories I heard, most Mainlander Taiwanese provided some financial aid for their Chinese relatives to express their happiness for the family reunion at the initial stages of their return. Mainlander Taiwanese regard their relative wealth as the fruits of hardworking and feel happy to provide necessary financial support to their Chinese relatives. However, their Chinese relatives often believe that wealth in Taiwan is the result of “good luck to escape from the 16

The cases of Kang Sr (living away from his home town and associating with other Taiwanese), Joy’s father (living away from his hometown and associating with other Mainlander Taiwanese), and Lee Sr and Lu Sr (living with their original families but often associating with each other) illustrate a “cold” phenomenon. It seems that these old people did not actually enjoying returning home. Although they got the chance to return home, they could not reintegrate with people in their hometowns successfully. This is similar to Hall’s (1997) description of migration as “a one-way trip, there is no home to go back to”. Although the information above cannot prove a “returnee enclave” or “returnee identity” among the returnee respondent, it shows the actual path to return is more complicated than the mere physical movement leading to a happy ending. The findings above are akin to the “return enclave” or “return identity” mentioned in section two. Although they return to their country of origin, few of the respondents successfully reintegrate into the original society. Returnee respondents sensed something different between their Chinese relatives and their Taiwanese friends (especially Taiwanese friends who were also returnees). Hence, most of them maintain the distance with their original society and associate with people who are also returnees. The combination of specific exile experience in Taiwan and social antagonism from the original society (e.g. being regarded as people from Taiwan) upon return laid the ground for the development of feelings of solidarity that came to form a “returnee identity”, or at least a private social circle of groups of returnees. Young Returnees (Second Generation) We now discuss how the young Mainlander Taiwanese regard their Chinese relatives and the Chinese people they met. As we discussed above, young Mainlander Taiwanese moved to China partially due to feeling marginalized in Taiwan. Did they feel as if they were “returning to the centre” after moving to China? All the young respondents of Mainlander Taiwanese expressed that they
Communist”. With this perception, the Chinese relatives often regard financial support from Mainlander Taiwanese as a kind of material compensation, not as emotional fulfilment following family reunion. This different perception often causes quarrels between the Mainlander Taiwanese and their Chinese relatives. Although I often heard of similar stories at home, I also know that Mainlander Taiwanese are reluctant to talk about these unhappy issues to “outsiders”. Talking about this unhappy experience implies that they have to admit the gap between their Chinese relatives and themselves and admit the disillusion of returning home. It is sad for them to take this burden so near the end of their life. So I tried not to make intrusive enquiries into these issues. In spite of the lack of hard facts for sociological analysis in this research, a few literary works based on the autobiography provide similar materials. Readers with the interest may read Chiang’s (2006) Memory of Diaspora, undelivered letters , ) and Chu’s (1992) In Remembrance of My Buddies in the to home ( Military Compound ( ). 17

joined their parents in some “home visits” before actually relocating to China. However, they “felt a little bit strange” during those visits (e.g. Interview with Chao on 21/05/05). They thought they knew a lot about their Chinese relatives (or Chinese people in general) through family stories before their “home visits”, but they often felt unfamiliar and weird during the visits. We take the remarks from Yu in Shanghai and Joy in Dongguan to illustrate these issues. “Are you used to the life in Shanghai?” I asked. Yu said, “yes, I am used to it. I am Shanghainese…My parents were born in Shanghai then they moved to Taiwan.” So I asked, “Do you speak Shanghainese?” She replied, “I don’t speak, but I can understand Shanghainese by listening…”Then I asked her whether she visited her Chinese relatives in Shanghai. She replied, “Oh…My aunt is still alive in Shanghai, but I have not visited her for long time. I don’t know what I can talk about with her…” Then we talked about why not visiting her aunt frequently and her interaction with the local Shanghainese. She said, “I think we are different. Even the jokes we talk about are different…” (Field note 20/05/05) Yu’s remark “I don’t know what I can talk about with her” explains the relationship between her aunt and her. It also explains the “strange feeling” other young respondents often talked about. Before visiting their Chinese relatives with parents, they were familiar with the stories (background information of their Chinese relatives) from their parents (or grand parents). However, most occasions they actually encountered were different from what they had heard. Although Yu identified herself as being “Shanghainese” in the beginning of our conversation, her final remark, “Even the joke we talk about are different” demonstrates the sense of gap between her and the real Shanghainese. A similar response is also obtained from Joy who described Taiwan as Devil Island. In the beginning of my association with Joy, she referred to herself as “Beijingnese” because her father was from Beijing. However, after associating for several weeks, she told me a different story when we talked about dating with the Chinese. After dating with a Chinese scholar for a period of time, she broke up and turned to keep distance from the male Chinese because she felt “we are different27.”

27

Readers may think Joy exaggerated her gap with the Chinese because of this fail relationship. However, similar responses also come from other respondents with experience of romance with Chinese people. They did not think they exaggerated the differences because of fail relationship, but actually encountered and accepted these differences through this experience. 18

To the respondents who are first generation of Mainlander Taiwanese, their motivation of moving to China mainly consisted of emotional concerns for family reunion and material concerns for maintaining a comfortable lifestyle at a manageable cost. Their social connections and relatively rich economic resources provided incentives for returning home, but could not secure a smooth social transition after returning. Although they moved to China, they selected a “balanced way” to reconstruct their sense of home. No matter where they were or with whom they lived, they maintained intense interaction with other Taiwanese (especially other Mainlander Taiwanese) in China as their strategy for re-integration. Stories of the respondents who are young Mainlander Taiwanese are more complicated. They moved to China partially due to their feeling of being politically marginalized in Taiwan. However, they were stuck in China. The real experience in China pushed them to recognise the difference between the Chinese and themselves. When they were stuck in this double ambivalence between Taiwan and China, most of them reacted according to the so-called “poise” strategy, being able to sort out this ambivalence. That is, they abided in the ambivalence, refusing to solve it, despite the loneliness or anxiety that came as a result. They all sensed this situation of double ambivalence, but only a few positively recognised it and tried to resolve it. 5. Conclusions In this paper, we discussed the return of Mainlander Taiwanese in China. Most of them were also in occupations similar to the other type of Taiwanese in China. However, the specific backgrounds of Mainlander Taiwanese provide us a way to understand not only the issues of migration, but also the influence of political contexts on migration. In the literature review on Mainlander Taiwanese and the politics in Taiwan, we presented the dominant political discourse of the “China Unification” in Taiwan before the early 1990s. In that political discourse, Taiwan represents the whole of China and Taiwanese culture is the “authentic version of Chinese culture”. This long-term socialisation in Taiwan and separation across the Strait meant that most Mainlander Taiwanese have little clear idea of what China really is, although they had much knowledge concerning China. Since the culture in Taiwan represents the authentic version of Chinese culture, it is no surprise that respondents expected their knowledge of Chinese culture to be the same as, or at least not much different from, the culture in China. This idea encouraged respondents to treat

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their migration as a less serious task, but it also made respondents overlook the possible gap and clash between their idea of Chinese people and the real Chinese people. This paper presents not only the return migration of Mainlander Taiwanese, but also the gap between the “Chinese people from Taiwan” and “Chinese people in China”. Considering the motivations of (return) migration, we find that all respondents had certain level of motivations due to feeling marginalized in Taiwan. Whilst Native Taiwanese tended to regard China as a new territory to explore for more economic benefits, Mainlander Taiwanese were more likely to regarded China as a place where they had a sense of belonging at the same time. To the respondents in this paper, their return to China is not merely the physical journey back to the familiar socio-cultural habit of the homeland, but also a mental journey in search of the peaceful mind after feeling marginalized in the host countries. Returnees’ life after living in China is more mentally complicated than the conventional migrants. They (especially the elderly ones) suffered from the gap between real China and the China they expected. They felt excluded from Taiwan, but were unwilling to participate in China due to the disillusion of imagined China. Whilst some Native Taiwanese respondents tended to locate themselves with the Chinese from “the same language and the same culture” to “the same language but different cultural context”, Mainlander Taiwanese felt they were “stranger in ethnic homeland” as the Japanese Brazilian back to Japan (Tsuda 2003). The discussions on Mainlander Taiwanese further confirm what we found in the previous chapters. While their rich knowledge of China and home desire helped them significantly at the initial stages of migration, their ‘out of date’ Chinese knowledge and the post-return feeling of ‘home disillusion’ also hindered the respondents’ ability to re-integrate into their original hometown surroundings. The discussions presented in this paper show that respondents’ altitudes towards China should be treated more complicated than that of, for example, British people of China. To most British people, China is a country far away. Although they may get an impression of China from greasy Chinese takeaways, obedient waitresses in the dining hall, the funny games of Chinese characters on Newspaper Times, or experience of climbing the Great Wall, their image of China is still very vague and undetailed. The distance in geography and culture helps British people to accept what they encounter in China (or what Chinese they encounter in Britain). It is like Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. No matter how strange the events Alice met in the kingdom of her dream, there

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was no need for Alice to deeply analyse these events upon waking. To most British people, there is little pressure for them to think of all the weird experiences encountered whilst travelling. No matter whether they like what they encountered in China or not, they can perceive China as a foreign country of little relevance to their daily lives. However, the respondents’ image of China is different from that of the British. With a rich knowledge of Chinese culture and history, they can easily accept much tradition and custom that British feel is strange. What the respondents actually get annoyed about is the subtle differences that British people could not recognise, especially when these differences occur unexpectedly, challenging their assumptions. Their knowledge before migration and the geographical closeness between Taiwan and China pushed most respondents to think about their Chinese experiences, both good side and bad. It is like Irving’s Rip Van Winkle. After waking up from his dream in Catskill for twenty years, Rip finds everything at home has been changed. All things become familiar, different, and absurd at the same time. However, there is no chance for Rip to have his dream again, but he must learn how to live with the changes. While all respondents had a relatively rich knowledge about China before moving, this knowledge made most respondents’ Chinese experience akin to Rip’s back home. They found the real China familiar and ridiculous at the same time; thus they could not easily accept what they encountered after migration. This is the main reason to explain why most respondents returned to China, but not actually returned home. They still prefer to live and mingle with the Taiwanese (especially the other Mainlander Taiwanese) in China.

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