PhD thesis final - Royal Holloway, University of London

Chapter 6 –Grounding belonging in leisure spacestated that various communal activities also help my respondents to forge a sense ofbelonging through feelings of familiarity and comfort generated from both the occasionand the venue. I was able to experience such feeling when I was invited to join an eventorganised by a Taiwanese association (Plate 6.6.). The visit was recorded in the diaryentry below:It is a small garden party. In the entrance, we were handed a sheet of paper with theactivity schedule on it. Before the performances started, we just walked around in thegarden and visited stalls selling all kinds of products, such as snacks and foodstuff fromTaiwan. It seems that they are very attractive [to Taiwanese people]; there are alwayspeople getting together to look into a specific product. While we walked around,Taiwanese pop music was played out loud. People gathered into small groups talking andeating [Taiwanese food]. From the conversations I overheard, it seems that it is also a goodopportunity to meet [Taiwanese] people and make friends.(Fieldwork diary, 10/05/2007)Plate 6.6. A Taiwanese social organisation‘s annual party, Shanghai231