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Date(s)： 2025/06/03
Time： 14:00~16:00
Venue： Archives 3rd Conference Hall
Host： Prof. Fu Jia-Chen（Associate research fellow, IMH, AS）
Speaker：Dr. Lorenzo Andolfatto（Visiting researcher at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Modern History）
Organizer： Western Learning and China Research Group
Abstract: National parks are a modern institution whose history is deeply intertwined with the idea of nation-state. According to Taiwan’s National Park Law of 1972, national parks are “unique landscapes . . . that are representative of the country’s natural heritage,” “have a rich cultural or educational significance,” and “are important in terms of cultivating national identity, requiring long-term preservation efforts by the nation.” In other words, national parks are supposed to embody the “essence” of a nation and convey it to its citizens. At the same time, nature is nature: the natural spaces contained within a national park are not qualitatively different from what is left outside of them. In this perspective, what are national parks? If we agree with the National Park Law’s definition, how are parks bestowed and then in turn convey “cultural significance”? How do such spaces cultivate feelings of identity and belonging? Ultimately, national parks are political spaces, and the creation of national parks is a political gesture. In this sense, parks are not so much the natural landscapes, flora, and fauna that one can find within their borders, but rather all the different strategies that society and the government use to define the spaces of the parks and imbue them with cultural value. Relying on archival material collected at the National Archives Administration as well as Academia Sinica, this lecture will delve into the modern history of the national park institution in Taiwan and explore the role that parks played in the formation of Taiwanese identity. Introduction: Lorenzo Andolfatto is a senior researcher and translator currently based at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Modern History. His research interests include early-modern and contemporary Chinese fiction, translation, and intellectual history, with a focus on utopian writing and imaginary geographies. He is the author of several peer-reviewed articles as well as Hundred Days' Literature: Chinese Utopian Fiction at the End of Empire, 1902-1910 (Brill, 2019).