| dc.description.abstract | This article explores the development strategy of Taiwan’s rural economy through cultural economic approaches, through content analysis and in-depth interview, to understand the meaning of ＂chrysanthemum＂ at different historical stages in Taiwan, and to explore how it is used in media discourse and local actors′ shaping, connected with the ＂Tongluo Township＂, gradually transformed into a tourist staring object, positioned as a local characteristic.
In order to realize Taiwan’s post-war period and the features of chrysanthemum that has undergone economic transformation so far, the time range for content analysis in this article is from 1951/01/01 to 2019/12/31. The study found that the period from 1953 to 1985 was when the market was dominated by imported chrysanthemum. During this period, chrysanthemum was positioned as a Chinese medicinal material imported from Hong Kong, emphasizing the fluctuation of market prices. From 1986 to 1996, reports of imported chrysanthemum had never appeared. The newspapers report the fluctuation of market prices decreased, the efficacy statement appeared, and the sporadic landscape descriptions were linked. The period from 1997 to 2019 is the dominant period of festivals and landscape features. In 1997, Tongluo Township started to host festivals for the first time. With the rise of tourism consumption, the gaze of the floral sea brings economic benefits, thus, chrysanthemum has gradually become a local feature of Tongluo.
The content analysis clarified the meaning of chrysanthemum in different time. This study was supplemented by semi-structured interviews to outline the development of production, intermediary and consumption under the operation of the cultural economy system. In order to clarify the development context of these three stages, researcher interviewed farmers on the production side. The intermediary side, interviewed peasant association personnel and cultural workers, and the consumer side, researcher analyzed the interview materials with participants and consumers of Chrysanthemum Festival. The study found that chrysanthemum industry in Tongluo in the 1980s, it had faced a crisis of labor shortage due to soaring wages. In 1997, local actors worked together to organize the Chrysanthemum Festival, which made chrysanthemum′s appreciation value catch much more attraction for the first time, catching up with the rise of domestic tourism. With the opportunity to develop into a key medium and gain support from consumer groups, not only did the output rebound, but also gradually entered the ranks of local characteristics, reaching the peak of the planting area in 2018. | en_US |