Global Futures in East Asia: Youth, Nation, and the New Economy in Uncertain Times (Contemporary Issues in Asia and Pacific) by Unknown Page A

take things into his own hands. He believes that there is a financial future in the land across the strait for Taiwanese dancers. In his view, although Taiwan lags behind America, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea in hip-hop dance, it is still one step ahead of China. This temporal difference and Taiwan’s strong presence in Chinese-language music industry would give Eddie the required cultural and symbolic capital to operate in China. With entrepreneurial initiative, he is determined to find his way into the world—with or without the government’s help.
    When Eddie began to teach dancing in New Kujiang, Ming was in his final year of high school and was more enthusiastic about making money than studying. Having sold products from snacks to accessories in night markets since he was seventeen, Ming was already an experienced vendor when he decided to try his fortune in New Kujiang in 2007. Wage labor never attracted Ming. He feels that factory jobs have no future and does not like the pay of office jobs. As for sales, he says, “You might as well be your own boss if you are going to sell things.” The lack of opportunities in Kaohsiung has led many of Ming’s friends to leave for Taipei, the high-tech industrial zones in Hsinchu and Tainan, and China. Ming does not want to leave his hometown, so he created a job for himself. Unlike older vendors such as Mr. Hong and Lian, he never saw street vending as the last resort. Instead, it was his choice from the very beginning and a basis on which he hopes to build his own enterprise one day.
    While Eddie sees his future in China, Ming feels that the only route out of Taiwan into the world is through local culture. Having spent years selling other people’s products, Ming has decided to develop his own T-shirt brand. Mixing Hoklo, Mandarin, Japanese, and English, Ming proclaims his love for Kaohsiung, criticizes the government, and makes fun of Taiwanese society through his designs. He also throws in what he considers to be “Aboriginal” symbols such as ocean waves, mountain lilies, and tropical flowers, which look suspiciously like the hibiscus patterns on Hawaiian shirts. The collage of cultural elements, Ming contends, tells the “peculiar history of Taiwan,” in which the island is constantly under foreign influences through colonial occupation, transnational consumption, and waves of migration from China and elsewhere. On his T-shirts is a multicultural Taiwan that is always already internationalized and ready to step into the world stage dressed as a colorful and trendy cosmopolitan person. Instead of seeking participation in the global market through brokering Japanese fashion or imitating Euro-American modernity, Ming and many of his peers now look to put Taiwan on the map through embracing a Taiwanese identity. This proliferation of a Taiwan consciousness and civic identity, as opposed to the old Chinese cultural identity, can be traced back to the nation-building project that produced the reconfigured space of New Kujiang and a Taiwanese identity through the production of locality. Moreover, this identity, as Scott Simon argues, is also a “result of globalization and transnationalism, as international Taiwanese individuals seek the same kind of social recognition enjoyed by citizens of other nation-states” (2003: 155).
    Once considered the stuff of night markets, “Made in Taiwan” is becoming a sign that is more and more sought after in New Kujiang, especially as China-made products have flooded Taiwanese marketplaces. Much like Eddie’s temporal ordering of Taiwan and China, the popular perception in New Kujiang is that Taiwanese products are more advanced than Chinese ones. They might not be as fashionable as Japanese or American products, but they are nonetheless a guarantee of a better quality than Chinese products.This distrust of Chinese products is built not only on the perceived temporal difference between Taiwan and China’s degrees of