| Abstract: | This paper investigates the invention of a Chinese National Day from 1949 through 1987 in Taiwan to illuminate the significance of mnemonic work in nation‐building. The 1949 Retreat after the Chinese Civil War resulted in a serious legitimacy crisis for the government of the Republic of China; thus, (re)inventing the National Day became an important mission to maintain and even strengthen this shaky regime. While the role of the standardized commemorative narrative in influencing people's collective memory is granted, this article emphasizes the aspect of embodied memory in nation‐remembering. I point out that the official Chinese nationalism constructed its National Day as “inevitably” bustling, memorialized, accepted, heroic, familial‐ized, blessed, and pivotal‐ized to shape the impression of a sacred and memorable day. This paper—while essentially consistent with Billig's argument of banal nationalism—suggests that national identity is accumulated by many symbolically encoded elements found in daily life; it goes further to argue that banal nationalism needs the “hot” nationalism found in special occasions to encode, refresh, and redefine the symbolic meaning of entities. That is, the oscillations between sacred and profane are needed to guarantee that patriotic emotions can be continually created and maintained. |
