SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The chapter examines the construction of a national landscape and the invention of a mythical origin for the islanders. As part of Taiwan’s nation-building project, a campaign was launched in 2001 to popularise Yushan (the highest mountain in East Asia) as a “sacred mountain” and to construct the Taiwanese as “children of Yushan.” The repositioning of Yushan (and, by extension, Taiwan) serves to remove the island from a China-centric framework and locates it instead within an Asia-pacific context. Metaphorically, the mountain has become a “site of resistance,” and has been transformed from a simple geographical feature into a representation of Taiwanese origins, an ancestral home, and the wellspring of a long-forgotten identity. In doing so, this construction of a “sacred mountain” functions not only to nationalise landscape,but also to naturalise Taiwan independence.