A Study on the Meaning of “Cultural Taiwan” in the Cultural Taiwan icture Book Series

• Main Authors: Chang,Pi Shan, 張碧珊
• Other Authors: Chien-hua Kuo
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/07146843819098852996

碩士 === 國立臺東大學 === 兒童文學研究所 === 96 === From the guidance of the Council for Cultural Affaire, and in cooperation with the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and the Tung-Wah Publisher Group, a book series of ten picture books, Cultural Taiwan Picturebook Series, was published in 2006. This book series was written, and illustrated by Taiwanese writers and illustrators. The purpose of this book series is to introduce Taiwan and its unique and diverse cultures to children, which include Taiwan's arts, literature, history, folklore, and cultures of different ethnic groups. This study investigates the embedded meaning with the series title "Cultural Taiwan;" in other words, this study is to decode its implied local spirit and implicit perspective of cultural identity. The method used in this study was textual analysis. The subject selection and the ways of presentation shown in the picturebooks were discussed. The local spirit embedded within the stories were classified as the categories of "Historical Story," "Geographic Story," and "Art Story.” Most stories in the series describe the "Han People," but stories about "Native Taiwanese" are also included. Furthermore, the series tells stories of different regions across the northern, central, eastern and southern. All these show that ethnic groups and regions are major elements to decide what stories were included in this series. This book series is trying to convey the cultural identity by different subjects. They include introducing the Taiwanese artists Lin Yu-shan and Ju Ming and local cultural industries to highlight Taiwan's culture; telling the story of the heroe Mona Rudao against the Japanese authority, the heroic deeds of power to arouse resistance to oppression; and through the artist Chen Cheng-po’s statue making process, which highlighted the families suffering, to recall the memory of the February 28 incident in order to strengthen the identity of the local community awareness. The meaning of the series title "Cultural Taiwan" can be summarized into five categories: (a) the "ordinary people life stories" as the axis of this book series to emphasize Taiwan as "multi-cultural" environment; (b) the stories showing the complexity and the purity of Taiwan’s culture; (c) using local landscape in the stories to present the local characteristics; (d) purposely useing different illustration styles to emphasize the characteristics of "cultural diversity"; and (e) intentionally using “local traditional culture” to present the characteristics of different ethnic group cultures.