ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses a nostalgia for hometown by descendants of people from China who came to Taiwan after the Second World War with the Kuomintang (waishengren) and to the Korean Peninsula before the Second World War. Both these groups had not visited their hometowns for a long time, because of the conflict of the Cold War period, between the communist and capitalist countries. However, their nostalgia for the hometown is significantly different from the nostalgia of the Japanese repatriates. For the Japanese, it is a historically, politically and physically lost home. For waishengren and overseas Chinese in South Korea their hometown is in the territory of their own country, because, according to the constitution, the entire territory of China is part of the Republic of China (ROC). However, this is nominal; in reality, the ROC governs only Taiwan and some surrounding islands. Those who live in Taiwan are strongly opposed to its independence. If Taiwan becomes independent, their hometowns in Mainland China would constitutionally no longer belong to the ROC; they would be ceded to the People’s Republic of China, which is a foreign country.
