When Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan in 1949, he still kept under occupation two archipelagos near China -- Kinmen and Matsu -- and transformed them into military islands (1949-92). When scholars study these islands, they mostly do so from the perspective of the Mao-Chiang conflict or global geopolitics. These islands are thus considered as the products of the Communist-Nationalist rivalry or confrontations of the Cold War. This talk, instead, aims to analyze this history from the perspective of the island society and culture, in particular, the islanders' gender relations and gambling habits. Dr. Lin will start with the period before the army arrived, discuss the population's experience of militarization during 1949-92, and indicate how gender and gambling culture can shed new light on our understanding of this history.

Wei-ping Lin received her PhD in Anthropology from Cambridge University. She joined the National Taiwan University in 1999, where she is a professor. She is affiliated with the Harvard-Yenching Institute during 2017-18. Her research concerns Chinese popular religion, including topics related to material culture, spirit mediums, and urban religious transformation. She is the author of "Materializing Magic Power: Chinese Popular Religion in Villages and Cities" (Harvard University Asia Center, 2015). During the year at Harvard, she will be writing a book manuscript about the role of imagination in the military outposts between China and Taiwan.