This chapter examines how the basic assumptions are enacted in the phenomenon of military dependents’ villages constructed on the island of Taiwan from the late 1940s, when Chinese Nationalist forces under the command of Chiang Kai-shek took over the island. It talks about the colorful and instructive story of the military dependents’ villages of Taiwan, first as narrative of historical events, then as narrative of cultural identities and relations involving the mainland inhabitants of the villages and the native Taiwanese citizens inhabiting the spaces surrounding the villages. The chapter analyzes the original military dependents’ villages as examples of what Foucault calls heterotopias or “other places”. It focuses on the gradual shift in cultural identity and spatial meanings implicit in the tradition of the bamboo walls constructed to enclose the military dependents’ villages of Taiwan in the late 1940s. Today the inhabitants of Taiwan appear to enjoy new hybridized identity.
