A Study of Ethnic Symbols Representation in Huaxin Street of Zhonghe, Taiwan: A Perspective of Tourist Gaze

• Main Authors: Meng-Hsuan Tsai, 蔡孟軒
• Other Authors: 李碧涵
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/3c8und

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 國家發展研究所 === 104 === Using Urry’s concept of "tourist gaze", we have represented ethnic symbols in Taiwan based on a case study in Huaxin Street of Zhonghe, also called Burmese Street, which has passed the symbolic imagination of Burmese Chinese into Taiwan’s society from the perspectives of representing authenticity, cultural performances and consumption. We have illustrated, in three chapters respectively, the space-time background of how Burmese street has been formed, the representation of authenticity, cultural performances and consumption. Viewed from the perspective of tourist gaze, the gazer interacts with the gazed and realizes how clearly the ethnic images can present connotations of culture and society. Thus, under "tourist gaze", "Street" and "Festivals" are important carriers of ethnic symbols of Burmese Chinese. The latter have been commoditized and consumed symbolically by tourists. On the one hand, the Burmese Chinese have accepted unavoidably this kind of authenticity representations; on the other hand, the tourists have authenticated the presumed heritages through symbolic consumption and realized the social experience of departure. Burmese Street has been constructed by the power relationship between the gazers and the gazed, based on the existence of the others and the others’ gazing, such that true meanings of symbols can practically be understood. The objects gazed by those tourists in Burmese Street are, therefore, the representation of ethnic symbols of Burmese Chinese.