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Film Tourism (Not) in Taiwan: A Research Report on Film Tourism in Taiwan

Adam Lam

This is a report of findings during author’s six-month research conducted in Taiwan from December 2014, thanks to the generous support of the Taiwan Fellowship scheme. This report studies one specific aspect of the extended cultural products as a result of Taiwan film industry, namely film tourism. This research is to some extent a continuation of author’s previous international project “How we became Middle-earth: the cultural implications of the Lord of the Rings”. The project, which was launched in 2005 and concluded with the publication of a volume of essay collection in 2007 (same title as the project, Zollikofen: Walking Tree Publishers), attracted more than twenty international scholars as contributors. One of the key aspects of the project is the associated cultural tourism that the Lord of the Ring film trilogy brought to New Zealand the way New Zealand government and government agencies operated, the portrayal of New Zealand with its new and fictional identity “Middle-earth”, and more importantly the cultural background and cultural implication of such portrayal well beyond simply a promotion of tourist destination. Considering the great similarity between Taiwan and New Zealand geographically and historically yet without overlooking key political and cultural differences, the findings of this research highlights the bountiful resources of film tourism that Taiwan possesses and some fundamental reasons for the lack of success in utilising these resources.