In his talk, Ian Rowen will highlight how Chinese tourism split Taiwan into “Two Taiwans”—one portrayed as part of China for Chinese tour groups, and the other experienced as the everyday reality of local residents and independent travelers. He will also examine how this dynamic intensified conflicts between business, civil society, and government entities with differing stakes in maintaining a PRC-focused tourism industry, ultimately contributing to a more diverse civic nationalism in Taiwan. Rowen's book ...

The defining tunes of the Sinophone community in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were those of the Cantonese opera performed in Chinese theaters. This history has been invisible due to the scarcity of materials about Sinophone community in archives. The sonic imageries were also imprisoned by the mounting derision in English newspapers and travelogues. Drawing from the diary of a Chinese laborer to piece together the history of vibrant Chinese theaters, this talk offers ...