The search took Colin into the island's darker corners—to lonely pubs where the 80s pop music sounded like a funeral dirge and to the isolated cottages of "brambles" who lived in harmony with a nature that didn't care for human laws. He felt the eyes of the community on him, a collective "turning a blind eye" that felt like a betrayal of the very air they breathed.
When Duncan didn't show up for class on Monday, Colin went to the headmaster. The response was a wall of polished granite. "Duncan is a high achiever, Colin. He’s likely just taking a breather. Don’t go tarnishing the school's reputation with mainland dramatics." The police were no better, their lack of interest as heavy as the autumn mist. mainlander
In its most basic form, a mainlander is simply someone who lives on a mainland rather than an island. The search took Colin into the island's darker
In modern Taiwan, when the term "Mainlander" is used in public discourse, it almost exclusively refers to citizens of the PRC ( Dàlù rén ). This represents a sociological rupture. Unlike the Waishengren of the 20th century, who saw the mainland as a lost homeland, the contemporary view of the Mainlander is often framed through the lens of economic competition and geopolitical threat. The response was a wall of polished granite
In the study of East Asian identity politics, few terms are as deceptively simple yet semantically complex as "Mainlander" (Chinese: Dàlù rén or Nèidì rén ). In a strictly demographic sense, the term refers to the populace of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) excluding the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, and the island of Taiwan. However, in sociological and political practice, the term is a relational construct, defined as much by what it excludes as by what it includes.