Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates how third generation mainlanders in Taiwan 'regenerate' the contentious history of their grandparents, the refugees of the Chinese Civil War, as they preserve their military quarters. While creating new opportunities, they reconfigure contested histories in Taiwan.

Paper long abstract:

How do third generations of mainlander Chinese endeavour to preserve the history of their grandparents in today’s Taiwan? In 1949, the Nationalist Government of China led by the Kuomintang was exiled to Taiwan in the wake of the Chinese Civil War, bringing with it 1 million refugees, of which 600,000 were military personnel. Although KMT soldiers were promised they would soon return to mainland China, the Nationalist Government never brought them back and soldiers permanently settled in makeshift military quarters in Taiwan. The introduction of the martial law, which would last until 1987, thus followed this military occupation of the island.

Today, as military villages are vacated and the first generation of mainlander veterans is passing away, their children and grandchildren endeavour to preserve the contentious history of their parents and grandparents through the conservation of the military settlements. Yet, how do third generations reconcile their mainlander genealogy with their own socio-political identity, and the challenges they face, such as economic stagnation and rampant youth unemployment? How do they set out to reinterpret history through the lenses of their own epoch? By ethnographically documenting the preservation of military villages in Taiwan, I will show how the youth endeavours to ‘regenerate’ the history of their grandparents, in ways that not only aim to transmit their history intergenerationally, but also reconfigures the history of mainlanders in Taiwan, creating new opportunities for their own generation.