Hsin-i Sydney Yueh, Identity Politics and Popular Culture in Taiwan: A Sajiao Generation. Lexington Books, 2017.
A while back (OK, it was over three years ago--how the time flies!), I was asking some questions about sajiao (撒嬌) and Taike (台客) in response to an article on Taiwanese communication modes by Todd Sandel. This book by Hsin-i Sydney Yueh goes a long way towards answering those questions (and questions I didn't even know I had) about the these two Taiwanese concepts. As usual, here I'm not so much giving a formal review of the book as I am noting down some thoughts and questions that I have after reading it. (I'll link to some reviews below.)
Here are the two questions I had:
Is sajiao, which Sandel characterizes as a practice "associated with 'Mainlanders,'" not practiced as much by non-Mainlander Taiwanese? Is it practiced much in China?
Have the concepts of hen Tai (很台) and Taike (台客) become points of pride for Taiwanese?
From what I got from Yueh's book, sajiao, which she describes as "embod[ying] a set of communicative acts that express the vulnerability and helplessness of the actor through imitating a child's immature behavior" (2), is not so much a Mainlander-vs.-Taiwanese (or waishengren vs. benshengren) phenomenon as it is a Northern Taiwan (specifically Taipei) vs. Southern Taiwan (south of Taipei, I guess) phenomenon. That is to say, sajiao seems to be most successfully performed by Taipei residents and appears to be connected to what Yueh characterizes as "Taipei Chic." Taipei Chic represents a form of cultural capital characteristic of how people in Taipei are represented in the media (especially talk shows)--as "urban, fashionable, and middle-class" people with "standard" Mandarin accents (144-145). This is placed in opposition to Taike and Taimei, which present a "local, rural, and working-class ... image" (144). Taike and Taimei (Yueh focuses on Taimei because she's interested in Taipei Chic vs. Taimei when it comes to women performing sajiao) appear to be from southern Taiwan and usually speak Mandarin with a Taiwanese accent. According to the media representations of Northerners and Southerners that Yueh cites, being able to sajiao is not part of Southern Taiwanese women's repertoire.
It should be noted, as Yueh points out, that not all people who embody "Taipei Chic" are originally from Taipei, but that it's more of a style of behavior and speaking that one has to learn in order to "pass" as a Taipei person. It should also be noted that not all Taipei people (women) can be "Taipei Chic." as Yueh puts it,
The Taipei Chic female's uniqueness lies in a constructed scarcity, in comparison to other Taiwanese (such as taike, and taimei). According to these talk shows, people who live in Taipei are not automatically Taipei Chic. In other words, the geographic location is not sufficient to fulfill the Taipei Chic image. The Taipei Chic identity is a collective standard, aiming to discern the non-Taipei Chic and expel any such people from the group. Many people who have not obtained the ticket ot enter the group strive to become more similar to Taipei Chic. (155)
In answer to my second question, Yueh's book suggests that while the idea of identifying as Taike can be a point of pride for men, women identified as Taimei--at least ones who show up on talk shows--don't necessarily appreciate that appellation, though this appears to be true mainly in contexts where the concept or term is used by Taipei people to judge people from the south.
Something that Yueh doesn't mention (at least not that I remember) is that, as I understand it, Taipei's population is more "mainlander-dense" than the southern parts of Taiwan. In that sense, it seems to me that the adulation of Taipei Chic and the deprecation of Taike and Taimei might have some of its roots in the historical waishengren perspective on benshengren that the martial law government encouraged (or perhaps instigated). Sandel suggests this in the article I mentioned above, when he associates sajiao with Mainlanders. (At some point I need to read this review of Yueh's book by 莊佳穎, who brings up the Taiwanese concept of sai-nai [司奶] and compares it to Yueh's discussion of sajiao--h/t to Shao-wei Huang for sending me a copy of that article!)
Another point that interested me about Yueh's book was her last chapter, which moves the discussion of sajiao, Taipei Chic, and Taimei from a more interpersonal and mediatized domestic context to the larger context of what these phenomena have to say about Taiwanese identity in relation to Asia. She extends the interpersonal to the political, arguing that elements of sajiao practice have become part of domestic democratic politics in Taiwan. For instance, "Taiwan's political campaigns are full of cute marketing" (173). We see examples of this now, with vice-presidential candidate Hsiao Bi-khim calling herself a "cat warrior" and arguably even former presidential candidate Terry Gou using a "cute" English slogan "Good Timeing," which sounds similar to his Chinese name, Guo Taiming 郭台銘, (not sure why he kept the "e" in "Timeing"--maybe that makes it cuter?).
Yueh also casts Taiwan's role in world politics in terms of a sajiao position, suggesting that Taiwan's relative weakness in comparison to China could lead to a a re-situating of Taiwan "as a small entity in terms of the global civic society" rather than a part of a "cultural China framework" (174). She suggests that Taiwan could be treated and studied in a transnational Asian context, which would remove the historical burden that Taiwan had during the Cold War to represent "Chinese culture" to the world.
There's a lot more going on in this book than my notes here might suggest, so I'd of course recommend reading it to see what I've missed!
I didn't find many reviews of the book, but here are a couple of links in addition to the review I mentioned above:
- Thoughts on Sajiao (by Kerim Friedman)
- A review in the International Journal of Taiwan Studies (by Amélie Keyser-Verreault) (will download directly)
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