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The lifting of Martial Law in 1987 opened the gate for Taiwanese mainlanders to visit family members who remained in the People's Republic of China. During these homecoming trips, many a "cared-for veteran" married a middle-aged Chinese woman and thus eventually could develop a legal intimate relationship in Taiwan. Paradoxically, however, quite a few veteran husbands regard their mainland spouses as "Communist spies" and discipline them as such. Situated in the contemporary discursive context of Taiwanese nationalism, at the same time, mechanisms of border control, the Veteran Affairs Commission, and mass media, as well as representatives of certain political parties, often equate those mainland spouses with "life-long Red Guards"-that is, "national others by nature" within Taiwan that accordingly should be denied full citizenship rights. Based on ethnographical research of domestic violence cases occurring in the above-mentioned cross-strait marriages, this paper aims to answer the following two sets of questions: First, did life experiences during the Cultural Revolution indeed construct those mainland spouses' national identities and everyday-life practices in Taiwan? If so, how does such a form of identity-construction progress and take effect? And, second, how and why does the veteran husband regard his mainland wife to be a "Communist spy"? In addition, how has such a (mis)understanding come into formation in the post-1949 politico-historical contexts; and, has this conception been reinforced by present conditions of social welfare, as well as individuals' life stages? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]