| Teresa Teng was loved by millions of Chinese across the world, and after her death, the People's Republic of China expropriated her music to symbolically herald a united Chinese identity under the "One China" policy. Although Teresa had once protested against the PRC, the PRC strategically expropriated Teresa's mass appeal to millions of Chinese (in the Mainland and the Chinese Diaspora) to assert its centrality over Chinese culture. This myopic scope frames Teresa nostalgically so that alternative narratives are subsumed by PRC official histories. By controlling Teresa's image and the information concerning her, state-sponsored media grants leisure while distracting consumers from discovering the inconstancies between its rhetoric and policies. My research examines Teresa in relation with Taiwan's historic experiences outside the nostalgic narrative to reclaim her from the PRC's propaganda. Additionally, it offers opportunities for informed audiences to challenge modern technologies of governmentality perpetrated via state-imposed cultural identities and histories. |
