ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Taiwanese Compatriot Permit and the embodied experiences of border-crossing, examined through the viewpoint of 'liminality'. It highlights how geopolitical encounters and bordering practices are furnished by, and performed through, the trading of things between Taiwanese tourists and Chinese locals at a ferry terminal in Xiamen, China. The chapter argues that people need to develop new critical perspectives to fully investigate the complexity of Chinese urbanism. It also highlights how '(im)mobilities', 'materialities', 'liminality' and 'play' allow timely and important theoretical and empirical reflections on Chinese cities in an increasingly interconnected urban world. The chapter offers a critical reflection on encountering the 'other'—a typical urban condition, as cross-strait interactions unfold. Relational perspectives in urban theory focus on 'flows, movements and connections' instead of 'territories, scales and boundedness', thereby regarding the city as constantly in the processes of becoming and reordering.
