PhD thesis final - Royal Holloway, University of London

Chapter 6 –Grounding belonging in leisure spacethat is familiar for them. In this respect, the sounds and music can be seen asplace-based resources that may help to shape Taiwanese expatriates‘ experiences of agiven place. What‘s more, practices of identity also help to generate a sense of place andbelonging (see also Duffy et al. 2007).In addition to the audio and visual landscape, the smell and taste of food are alsoimperative in fulfilling people‘s sensory experience of home (for example, see Law2001). To illustrate this point, when Alex was asked how he felt about the food served inthe Taiwanese restaurant, he said that ‗they [beef noodle and pearl milk tea] are quitegood and the taste is similar to that we have in Taiwan‘. Later, when we talked about theTaiwanese food he can consume in Suzhou, he told me that ‗not all food marked as―Taiwanese food‖ is good. You know, some restaurants are run by the locals. I doubtthat they know how to make authentic Taiwanese food.‘ Accordingly, the authenticity offood is often emphasised by my respondents as being strongly connected to the feelingof being at home. Being able to experience such authenticity, in addition to theexperience of visuals and soundscapes of home(land), is thus important in manyTaiwanese migrants‘ experience of belonging. As such, consuming food is as much apractice of belonging, as it is a domestic home-making practice (see Chapter four); itcan also be fulfilled in the public leisure space in areas where the hometown flavour isauthentically reproduced.Despite being considered as cultural spaces, Taiwanese restaurants are not onlyperceived by my respondents as a place to which they belong, but also consider them tobe something that belongs to them. To put it in another way, such places are oftenperceived by Taiwanese people as a representation of Taiwanese culture, such thatwithin these spaces the differences between Taiwanese and PRC Chinese are215