PhD thesis final - Royal Holloway, University of London

Chapter 4- Home, domesticity and belongingChinese celebrate traditional Chinese holidays, Taiwanese expatriates‘ practising whatthey were used to in Taiwan is still very useful in easing their homesickness.However, although the recreation of Taiwanese traditional and cultural practices arecommonly employed by my respondents as home-making practices, it seems that it isthe female expatriates who often take charge of preparatory work (e.g. preparing foodor home decoration) for the celebration and thereby reveals that the distributionof household labour is uneven. I experienced this in my host family's preparation for thecoming Dragon Boat Festival and in the process; I not only witnessed the laboriouswork, but also often heard complaining:They all like to have my hand made zong zi, so I have to do it [helplessly smile] ‗cos it ismore like Taiwanese style. What we buy in the market here doesnot really fit into ourtaste, they just have it for trying different food and don‘t like to have too much of that ‗costhe taste is a little different. That‘s why I have to this and what makes me so tired beforethe holiday…(Joyce, a housewife who has two little boys and lives in Shanghai, in her 40s)Despite attaching great importance to those Taiwanese rituals, they are never fullyrecreated and reproduced in China, but often, my respondents will just pick out whatthey feel like or perceive as the most important. In this sense, Taiwanese expatriates‘home-making practices in relation to practising Taiwanese cultural norms are often theresult of the selective reproducing and reworking of certain Taiwanese customs andtraditions. Also, the home at the domestic scale in China is thus both a space in whichTaiwanese expatriates‘ gender role is re-inscribed and where married female expatriatescan escape from practising ‗duties that they are expected to do by their parents or149