PhD thesis final - Royal Holloway, University of London

Chapter 6 –Grounding belonging in leisure spacethere.This excerpt of our conversation implies that these modern urban consumptionlandscapes allows Taiwanese expatriates to not only escape from what they see as thenegative aspects of Chinese city living, (e.g., dirty and messy environment and lowstandards of living), but also to feel relief from having to worry about personal safetyand security. This sentiment was echoed by Andrew, who has lived in suburbanShanghai with his family for 5 years: he told me that in order to ‗avoid getting in touchwith the bad sides of this country‘, his family ‗only go[es] to those posh areas ordepartment stores, like Xu jia hui, where we won‘t see many Chinese people‘s vulgarbehaviours.‖ Moreover, as these locations are similar to most of my respondents‘ livingexperiences, with special regard to living in the western-style housing and experiencingurban shopping landscape in Taiwan (Plate 6.5.), they also help them to foster a sense offamiliarity and comfort.Plate 6.5. Department store and shopping mall in Taiwan (Taipei and Kaohsiung)224