PhD thesis final - Royal Holloway, University of London

parents in law‘ (Joyce) and feel emancipated.Chapter 4- Home, domesticity and belongingThe discussion of Taiwanese expatriates‘ cultural practices also makes it clears thatsuch experience is often based on individual household context, but not collectiveactions of celebrations. In other words, there are still no public celebrations of Taiwanfestivals or holidays in the YRD which can draw the dispersed Taiwanese peopletogether and allow them to forge a sense of social or national belonging. This is partlybecause of the lack of Taiwanese official units in Mainland China to organise suchnational celebrations. Also, it is because the public celebration itself is also linked to thecomplicated political issues, as Jerry (GM living in Shanghai with his family for 9 years)elaborated:Since we are all Chinese, we share the same holidays or festivals [with the PRC Chinese].In addition to that, I don‘t think that we have traditional holidays or commemorativeholidays in Taiwan. You can say that we have religious celebrations and indigenousheritage festivals. But, since there is no Taiwanese temple here, how can we do publiccelebration? Besides, it is very unwise to celebrate our National Day here, it is toopolitical.Aside from that, the analysis of Taiwanese expatriates‘ cultural practices as a way toforge their belonging is also insightful in the way that it foregrounds such experiencenot only are common for migrants in the cross-cultural context, but also in countrysettings with shared culture and ethnicity.150