Research theme
My research has two dimensions, the theoretical exploration of the theoretic concept of shentigan (身體感, embodied feelings) and the history of Taiwan’s tea art culture. “Shentigan” is not a common Chinese or Taiwanese term. My choice of a term that has no ready English translation symbolizes a new intent: I hope to develop shentigan into a theoretical approach having paradigmatic meaning by which one can explore new topics and discover new perspectives for socio-cultural or historical research.
To develop this shentigan theory, I have engaged with a few research topics and types of fieldwork: “Qi and Meditation,” “The Sense of Comfort and Consumption of Antique Furniture in Modern Taiwan,” “The Taste of Aged Puer Tea and Its Globalization,” “Qingxiang (清香, fresh and fragrant) Taste and Taiwan’s High-Mountain Tea,” “Everyday Modernity among Yunnan Tibetans,” and “Sense-making in Taiwan’s Tea Art Culture”. I hope these projects will demonstrate the theoretical potential of the shentigan approach.
My Taiwan tea culture research focuses on the development of Taiwan’s tea art culture. I trace how Taiwan’s tea community has constructed the so-called “tea art,” based on the gongfu tea tradition of Southern China, and how a local practice and invented tradition strongly identified with Taiwan has been embraced as “traditional” cultural practice in contemporary China.
Future development
I will focus on two issues: “Rethinking Anthropological theories of Culture from Shentigan Approach and Neuroscience” as well as “Sense-making in Taiwan’s Tea Art Ritual”. Beginning from 2024, I also began an ethnographic research on “Japanese senchadao in Taiwan,” to reveal the nature of Taiwan’s tea art culture through comparison.
研究主軸:
我的研究主要分兩個面向:「身體感」與台灣茶文化的研究。「身體感」不是台灣社會常用的詞彙,選用「身體感」乃企圖將它發展成一個理論研究取向,讓研究者能夠據以探索新的研究題目,並提供探究社會、文化與歷史的新觀點。
我開啟了數個田野與研究議題──包括「氣、食物冷熱與禪坐」、「舒適感與古董家具的消費」、「普洱茶陳年風味的建構與全球化」、「台灣高山茶的清香風味」、「雲南藏族日常現代感」及「台灣茶藝的身體感建構」等題目──以發展身體感的研究取徑;筆者近年也開始探索「身體感的營造」的理論觀點。主要研究成果呈現於三本筆者主編之論文集:《體物入微:物與身體感研究》(2018)、《身體感的轉向》(2015)及Food Cultures and Technologies(2022)。
茶文化的研究則聚焦於台灣茶藝文化的歷史,並探討台灣近年對中國茶文化的影響,尤其是台灣的文化如何在中國社會亟需從台灣學習過去因為文化大革命而喪失的傳統文化之際,積極「輸出」,而成為全中國的「傳統文化」。同時,筆者也開始從「身體感營造」的角度探究台灣的茶會儀式。
研究展望
筆者計劃從身體感的理論出發,聚焦於「從身體感研究取徑重新思考人類學文化理論」、「腦神經科學與人類學文化理論」及「身體感營造與台灣茶會儀式」等課題。2024年也開啟日本煎茶道的民族誌研究,期望經由比較,能夠更深入呈現台灣茶藝文化的文化特色。