ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses life stories of drug addiction and rehabilitation from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It provides a synopsis of the ‘common, shared experience’ of drug addiction and rehabilitation that characterises each narrative corpus. The life stories in Out from the Margins recount Chinese people’s experiences of opiate or opioid addiction and drug rehabilitation in the Daytop Drug Rehabilitation Village in mainland China. In the Taiwanese life stories of drug addiction and rehabilitation, the ultimate goal in recovery is not a return to society per se, but a return to and reconciliation with the family. The Hong Kong life stories of drug addiction and rehabilitation appear to maintain political affinity, but only partial cultural affinity, in distinction to their mainland Chinese and Taiwanese counterparts. The analysis of the mainland Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong life stories of drug addiction and rehabilitation has shown the differential interplay of cultural, political and institutional discourses in shaping temporality, subjectivity and language use.
