The Redefinition of a Cold-War Outpost as a Cross-strait Bridge? The inter-regional flow of Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor

Kinmen has played a significant role in the development of cross-strait relations due to its complex political history and geo-spatiality. As a special field for cross-strait relations, this study uses Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor as an example to elaborate the flexible meanings Kinmen is endowed with in the context of the worldwide flow of goods and regionalization. A materiality and cultural discourse analysis approach will be adopted in this study, which aims to illustrate what social relations were changed, shaped or appropriated when Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor crossed the political and cultural boundary that is the Taiwan Strait. This will enable an examination of the range of meanings embodied by Kinmen with relation to Kaoliang liquor as a commodity, one being a rigid representative of a former battlefield, and the other a producer of a local cultural specialty. The construction of this dual identity helped to smoothly re-integrate the traditional Chinese spirits industry and the capital market, however, it can also act as a form of protection, in differentiating between “us” and “others” in terms of commodity governance. Therefore, the concept of ‘nation’ or ‘frontier’ is based on the constant negotiation between national role and capital expansion.