raised. Just as the ideas of Mr. Liao and the shopowners diverge about what it would take to make the shopping district a better place for business, different visions and practices converge, compete, and clash in New Kujiang. While the developers and planners constantly allude to the city’s history of colonial dependency and international trade to build for a future in the global consumer market, those who work and shop in the streets of New Kujiang may also make use of these same idioms to justify existing practices at odds with the official vision of modernization and prosperity. This chapter examines how the space and narrative of New Kujiang as an “internationalized” place has been produced and how this space provides the background against which official narratives and imaginaries of the global become reworked to tell different stories.
Blueprint on the Streets
In descriptions of New Kujiang appearing in promotional material and in the popular media,
global connectivity
and
youthfulness
are key words. The shopping street is a “young people’s paradise” where one can find “the latest fashion . . . from different countries” (Chung 2004: 75–77). It has become a “synonym for fashion in Southern Taiwan” where there is “zero time difference (
ling shicha
) with Hong Kong, Tokyo, and [South] Korea” (Liu and Ho 2004: 39). But its transnational claims go beyond contemporary commodities and fashion trends. The shopping district’s name came from an earlier marketplace first established by the Japanese colonizers in the 1930s that later became known for trade in imported goods during the Cold War period. In tracing New Kujiang’s history to a colonial marketplace and celebrating its present status as an internationalized space for consumption, this narrative articulates the city’s colonial legacy with the island’s global future. It is a reminder of Taiwan’s position as a “link and crossroads” where different geopolitical forces overlap (Manthorpe 2005, 23), and it provides an assurance that, despite the danger of getting swept over by these forces, Kaohsiung can build on this global connectivity to aspire to become a world-class city.
In 1864, the Tientsin Treaty designated the fishing port of Dagou in Southwest Taiwan as one of China’s “treaty ports” opened to foreign trade and residence. 4 While these treaty ports brought the island into more intense contact with foreign markets, it was not until Taiwan was ceded to Japan following the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 that the island was thoroughly made over for commercial purpose. A transportation network was constructed to link towns and cities and to allow access from trading ports to the hinterland (Knapp 2007). This provided the foundation for further economic development and integration into international markets. Taiwan became a provider of raw materials for Japan’s economy, a market for Japanese products, and a wartime industrial base for the empire (Lamley 2007). In the hands of the Japanese colonizer, Dagou began its transformation into the modern city of Kaohsiung. Its deepwater port made it a prime location to transport resources in and out of the island. Planning for the construction of a new downtown was sketched out in the 1920s, and subsequent projects to expand the city made it a model of Japanese urban planning and transportation development in Taiwan. 5 The outbreak of World War II further pressed the Japanese government to turn the city into a base for its advance to the south. As it became a gateway to the world in the Japanese empire’s economic and political geography, the foundation of today’s Kaohsiung was laid out. Wide roads set out on flat terrain in a geometric pattern characterized the city and granted it the kind of rational appearance and accessibility that define modern urban planning (Scott 1999). After its defeat in World War II, the Japanese left Taiwan and the Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang, or
Blueprint on the Streets
In descriptions of New Kujiang appearing in promotional material and in the popular media,
global connectivity
and
youthfulness
are key words. The shopping street is a “young people’s paradise” where one can find “the latest fashion . . . from different countries” (Chung 2004: 75–77). It has become a “synonym for fashion in Southern Taiwan” where there is “zero time difference (
ling shicha
) with Hong Kong, Tokyo, and [South] Korea” (Liu and Ho 2004: 39). But its transnational claims go beyond contemporary commodities and fashion trends. The shopping district’s name came from an earlier marketplace first established by the Japanese colonizers in the 1930s that later became known for trade in imported goods during the Cold War period. In tracing New Kujiang’s history to a colonial marketplace and celebrating its present status as an internationalized space for consumption, this narrative articulates the city’s colonial legacy with the island’s global future. It is a reminder of Taiwan’s position as a “link and crossroads” where different geopolitical forces overlap (Manthorpe 2005, 23), and it provides an assurance that, despite the danger of getting swept over by these forces, Kaohsiung can build on this global connectivity to aspire to become a world-class city.
In 1864, the Tientsin Treaty designated the fishing port of Dagou in Southwest Taiwan as one of China’s “treaty ports” opened to foreign trade and residence. 4 While these treaty ports brought the island into more intense contact with foreign markets, it was not until Taiwan was ceded to Japan following the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 that the island was thoroughly made over for commercial purpose. A transportation network was constructed to link towns and cities and to allow access from trading ports to the hinterland (Knapp 2007). This provided the foundation for further economic development and integration into international markets. Taiwan became a provider of raw materials for Japan’s economy, a market for Japanese products, and a wartime industrial base for the empire (Lamley 2007). In the hands of the Japanese colonizer, Dagou began its transformation into the modern city of Kaohsiung. Its deepwater port made it a prime location to transport resources in and out of the island. Planning for the construction of a new downtown was sketched out in the 1920s, and subsequent projects to expand the city made it a model of Japanese urban planning and transportation development in Taiwan. 5 The outbreak of World War II further pressed the Japanese government to turn the city into a base for its advance to the south. As it became a gateway to the world in the Japanese empire’s economic and political geography, the foundation of today’s Kaohsiung was laid out. Wide roads set out on flat terrain in a geometric pattern characterized the city and granted it the kind of rational appearance and accessibility that define modern urban planning (Scott 1999). After its defeat in World War II, the Japanese left Taiwan and the Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang, or
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