Maintaining and Strengthening a Shaky Regime with Mnemonic Work: Inventing a Chinese National Day from 1949 Through 1987 in Taiwan

Abstract

This paper investigates the invention of a Chinese National

Telling a shared past, present, and future to invent nationality: The commemorative narrative of Chinese-ness from 1949 through 1987 in Taiwan

“… 6. In another article (Yeh, 2015), I took the (re)invention of National Day (Double Tenth Day) that official Chinese Nationalism conducted from 1949 through 1987 as an example to show how mnemonic work can maintain and even strengthen a shaky regime (Yeh, 2015). Emphasizing the aspect of embodied memory in nation-remembering, I point out that the official Chinese nationalism constructed its National Day as “inevitably” bustling, memorialized, accepted, heroic, familial-ized, blessed, and pivotal-ized to shape the impression of a sacred and memorable day.…”