Book Review: Elegy of Sweet Potatoes

You can buy Elegy of Sweet Potatoes from Camphor Press, with an updated cover design.

Before I get started, I just wanted to let everyone know that our much bandied-about piece reviewing every general history of Taiwan is now up, and can be read over at Ketagalan Media. I'll save a link in the "Books About Taiwan" page pinned above. 

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Elegy of Sweet Potatoes (蕃薯哀歌) by Tehpen Tsai chronicles the author's experience being arrested, interrogated and eventually imprisoned by the KMT during the White Terror, despite having broken no actual laws of the incoming regime. The beating heart of the story revolves around the government's insistence that Tsai had a book about Chairman Mao. 

He had no such book, but a friend of his who had been arrested had given his name and said he did, in order to prolong his own life while the matter was investigated. In order to end his torturous interrogation in Chiayi, he admitted that he might have had the book without realizing it. This "confession" was used to imprison him for years, even as he recanted it later, refusing to validate that version of events. 

This caused him trouble -- the authorities were not interested in hearing that a forced confession had been false, as they'd already decided Tsai was guilty -- but is ultimately what might have saved him from execution. Possibly. 

While in prison, Tsai details how things worked, what his fellow inmates had been jailed for, and how the governance of Taiwan by the KMT turned him and many other Taiwanese from welcomers of a new leadership kicking out the Japanese colonizers to a citizenry who hated the brutal dictatorship that not only replaced Japan, but was arguably worse. 

Just telling it like this, apparently, pissed a lot of people off. 

There is something wonderful about that: a memoir that tells a truth so ruthlessly that it even angers who align with the writer politically. 

That's what Tsai does: no ideology-mongering, no re-jiggering history to fit his preferred analytical framework, no punch-pulling -- just the truth. And the complexity isn't limited to "good" and "bad", though there are a clear good and bad side in this story. 

Tsai refused to blame his friend, saying that if his stay in prison could save his friend's life, he was happy to bear it. The friend was executed anyway.

With this, Tsai managed to infuriate his friend's family, for telling the truth that their relative had lied in an attempt to save his own life. Tsai refused to criticize the family for this. 

That some names were extracted by torturing people who had been already arrested surely incensed yet more people: everybody wants to believe that their brave countrymen will refuse to give each other up to save their own skins, but the fact is, this is what a lot of people do when faced with excruciating brutality and execution.

Narrating his time in various prisons and re-education camps, Tsai dives deeper: pointing out both solidarity and undermining among the prisoners. He recounted how not all of the prisoners were Taiwanese -- plenty were accused Communists from China -- and mostly they managed to get along, sharing the extra, more edible food in their care packages with one another. He is absolutely clear that some (though not all) of the inmates are in fact Communists and revolutionaries, and some were in fact anti-KMT dissidents. 

However, he clarifies that neither of these things should, by any reasonable definition, be considered a crime. 

This infuriated many pro-Taiwan activists at the time, who wanted to sell only the narrative that the KMT unilaterally targeted Taiwanese, and that those imprisoned and executed had, in general, never been "Communists". The truth, of course, is far more complex. Most weren't, but some were. Most were Taiwanese, but some came from China.

And that's the point: the KMT was not just out to arrest dissidents and actual Communist infiltrators, as they claimed. Rather, their endgame was to terrify, punish or eliminate anyone who might oppose them, and the Taiwanese literati were certainly on that list, regardless of anything they might have actually done.

I love some of the details of this book: Tsai's charming "country boy made good" take on life, his obvious high regard for his wife in an ge when many marriages were still arranged, and the gentleness of his demeanor -- his unwillingness to hold even the most deserved of grudges -- which shines through in his narrative. When another inmate who gave friends' names to try and prolong his own life hears that Tsai isn't mad at the man who did the same to him and proclaims that he wishes he had such a friend, you don't get the feeling that the author is humble-bragging. When he arrives back on Chiayi and sees his family again it's genuinely moving. 

Although he recounts how prisoners would call the KMT diaspora "pigs", he eviscerates the Taiwanese officers in Chiayi who collaborated with him just as thoroughly. It's all the more devastating knowing this is coming from a man who would not naturally toss off such an insult. 

There's something very Taiwanese about the way the story is told that I can't quite put my finger on. The narration of shorter stories about his time in jail instead of regular chapter markers might be it, or referencing literature and things about life in Taiwan without explaining them too much, or just the way the prose flows. All while being completely forthright about how his own feelings regarding the KMT changed over time. 

This makes the story all the more touching if you are familiar with Taiwan and don't need literary tropes to guide you. Frankly, I like the narrative the way it is: a story about the sweet potato-shaped island by a self-professed sweet potato: a Taiwanese local literati caught up in horrific, unfair brutality meted out by an illegitimate squatter government.

I can't help but think, however, that there's a clear dramatic and emotional arc here that, if teased out correctly, could win over non-local audiences. With a cohesive storyline and compelling characters (whom, as far as I know, were all real people), I could even see it as an international award-winning film. 

And yet, perhaps in making such changes, something else vital would be lost. Indeed, it's hard to imagine such a beautifully devastating book being turned into anything other than exactly what it is.

Let's end with this: if you are one of my few readers who is (weirdly) pro-KMT, and have been inclined in the past to make arguments that they really weren't that bad, that Taiwan is better off with the party having set up shop here, that perhaps parts of the White Terror were justified...

...well, first, I'm going to emulate the monk-like patience of Tehpen Tsai and not tell you the four-letter word in my head. 

Secondly, don't. Just don't. Read this book, and consider that the protagonist is a man who was happy to see the Japanese go, only to realize that the regime that replaced them was so much worse that in fact, the Japanese era looked halcyon by comparison.

All the proof you need that the KMT's reign of terror was indefensible and they are arguably one of the worst things that has ever happened to this fine country can be found in these pages. So read them.

The ever-evolving propaganda vectors of education-adjacent "supplementary textbooks" in Taiwan

The cover of one of these horrid books

A few days ago, news broke that some "supplementary textbooks" available in many Taiwanese schools were full of racist depictions of Indigenous Taiwanese as well as pro-China, anti-sovereignty propaganda. The books themselves had been published in 2008, which feels like a lifetime ago in terms of evolving social consciousness in Taiwan. The problem was that these texts were still hanging around in classrooms, offering up all sorts of garbage to students. They're even touted, in some cases, as having "model essays" for young students to study and, I suppose, imitate. 

Here are the examples being shared on social media. I saw them from Saidai ／Reseres 伍麗華 (Saidai Tahovecahe), the first DPP legislator representing the Highland Indigenous Constituency in the legislature, and was elected in 2020, but she's not nearly the only person sharing them.

I am not a translator, so please don't take my translations as the final word. However, I think it's important to clarify exactly how awful these 'supplementary textbooks' are, and what one Indigenous reaction to them looks like.

The one with the racist cartoon of an Indigenous Taiwanese says something like: 

Hualien has many 'mountain compatriots' (an old-timey, racist and very ROC/China-centric way of describing Indigenous people who had not assimilated into Han society), their culture used to be very backward, but owing to the government's guidance, their lives and education have all developed very much. I hope that in the near future, they can be just like the 'plains people' (Han Chinese and Indigenous who have assimilated). 

It's obvious why this is racist, and not up for debate. In the words of Sifo Lakaw (the 2nd link above): 

怎麼這麼不小心，就這樣洩漏了你們內心裡根深蒂固的種族優越感？你們說「壯志飢餐胡虜肉，笑談渴飲匈奴血」的是民族英雄；戍守傳統領域的原住民族是野蠻人，需要被教化的對象。當我進入到蔑視和否定其他文化的教育體系，我一度相信這是邁向成功的道路，認為自己的語言和文化是不符合時代潮流，沒有競爭力的。

一直到從長輩的口中，聽見他們使用優雅且善用隱喻風格的族語，時而幽默，時而歌唱地描述外來者的貪婪，以及彼此猜忌與嫉妒的性格時，也才真正的發現，那些自居高尚的人，其內心是多麼地醜陋而險惡。既然事實已澄清，那就好好開始學習自己的語言和文化，期許自己和下一代成為真正的人，不被種族主義者擊垮。

How can you be so careless as to show the world the deep sense of racial superiority you carry inside? You say that (reference to an ancient poem related to people who follow Confucian ideals -- honestly this is beyond my ability to translate, and the original is quite gory) are national heroes; the native peoples who adhere to tradition are barbarians and need to be guided. When I started school, which denigrated and rejected other cultures, I once believed that this was the path to success, thinking that my own language and culture were inconsistent with the times and adhering to them wouldn't lead to success.

It was not until I heard the language of the elders -- metaphorical, humorous, lyrical -- describing the greed of the outsiders and the suspicion and envy between them, that I saw they were only out for themselves. How greedy and sinister the hearts of these 'noblemen' were. Now that we know the truth, it's time to start learning your own language and culture and expect yourself and the next generation to become actualized, not beaten down by racists.

 

The second one, which has some confused white people cartoons (I don't know why either) is titled "Many people put forward that Taiwanese and Mainlanders are different" and says something like:

You can hear a lot about how "Taiwan is for Taiwanese, people from the Mainland should go back to the Mainland." I don't understand this kind of talk, why should Taiwan be for the Taiwanese? Taiwanese and Mainlanders have yellow skin and black hair, are they not all Chinese, why must they be divided up so clearly? If you say "Taiwan is Taiwanese", it will unavoidably stir up suspicion about what is called 'Taiwanese'. 

I suppose the confused white people were put there to imply that it's foreigners who are trying to 'divide' the Chinese by talking about Taiwaneseness as a distinct identity, not Taiwanese themselves. This is a racist lie. It's only believable if you think Taiwanese people are empty-headed enough to believe random foreigners telling them about their culture, which I certainly hope you do not. Taiwanese identity came from Taiwan, period.

However, I see an ironic truth in the cartoon: this flummoxing text caused me to sympathize with the dude in the center -- the one with all the question marks. 

If you think that these examples of "supplementary texts" are egregious but rare (both in how horrible and common they are), that is wrong. 

They are terrifyingly common: I don't think I have a single local friend or student whom I've asked who doesn't remember these sorts of books from school. They may be allowed into schools by the Ministry of Education, but they are developed and distributed by private entities, mostly special interest groups trying to influence what students learn in school. This article details "extra-curricular" lessons taught by both LGBTQ allies and anti-gay conservatives, and mentions the materials they use. Religious indoctrination happens, too. 

While I might personally support the use of LGBTQ-allied material to make up for any shortfalls in the official textbooks, if the other side of that is allowing anti-gay content into schools, it's probably better that no 'supplementary textbooks' by any special interest group be allowed in. Or if they are, there must be a more rigorous materials assessment process before approval. 

Although I'm having trouble finding the specific articles I read a few years ago that cited 'supplementary textbooks' and their role in the fight for LGBTQ and marriage equality, I have a more terrifying, more personal story which should illustrate how sure I am that 'supplementary' materials on all topics are not only common in Taiwanese schools, but the way they spread their message has become more sophisticated. 

For reasons I cannot disclose, I had the opportunity to look at one such book aimed at elementary school classrooms (I did not assist in any element of its conception or production). I cannot tell you who it was developed by, but I can say that the foundation funding it is politically neutral itself, but the titular head of that foundation is not. This person was convinced that Taiwanese children had 'forgotten' the importance of respect for one's elders and other traditional 'Chinese' ideals. To put it bluntly, I disagree not just on the opinion but the worldview underpinning it, but that's not the point. 

The content was fairly innocuous on the surface, although I'm not at liberty to go into too much detail. It included a few 'folk tales' meant to teach children the importance of filial piety through examples from 'their own' culture. One of these included a well-known story about a child who breaks through ice to catch fish to feed an ailing parent. 

Then it became clear: this book purporting to be about 'filial piety' was slipping in cultural references to China, as a way of normalizing the belief that Taiwanese culture is fundamentally Chinese. 

I commented, "how can this story be from Taiwanese kids' own culture? There aren't very many lakes that ice over in Taiwan! Any that may exist are way up in the mountains, and this is a Chinese story, not an Indigenous one."

The response: "Oh, it's a story from northern China."

"Well, then it's not really a story that resonates in Taiwanese culture, so...that's odd."

"Mmm. They think it's all Chinese culture." [This is Taiwanese for "I agree with you but I don't call the shots."]

"Hmph...okay, though there must also be a story about a child who helps their parents that's from Taiwan, yes?"

"Do you like the tea?" [This is Taiwanese for "I understand what you're saying but you're/we're not winning this."]

"Yes, it's very fragrant." ["As long as my objection has been noted, I will drop it."]

I don't know if that book ever made it into schools, but I can guarantee there are a hundred, or a thousand, just like it. They might not be as obliquely racist and politicized as the 2008 examples people are angry about today, but they are there and they're circulating similar ideas using more sophisticated methods. And they're not from 2008: they're being published right now.

It's the same old Han supremacy and centering of China, and marginalizing not just Indigenous Taiwanese but all Taiwanese identity, in barely perceptible ways unless you know what to look for.

If you have children in Taiwanese schools, know this.

Book Review: Taipei, City of Displacements

Taipei, City of Displacements

Joseph R. Allen

During Taiwan's Level 3 restrictions, I've been enjoying diving into books that have been around for awhile. Taipei, City of Displacements was the first book I grabbed, because it came so highly recommended and the premise intrigued me. A book all about the historic movements and displacements in the Taipei basin -- from the Ketagalan Indigenous through the Qing, Japanese and KMT colonial eras, which can help one understand why the city is the way it is? Sign me up! 

I'm not quite sure what to make of it, though. I was absolutely entranced by parts of this narrative of displacements throughout the history of Taipei, and found others a bit of a slog. The author is obviously passionate and deeply knowledgeable about his subject and the city, and anyone writing from a place of such dedication about a city I also hold dear is certainly going to engage me. 

A displacement within a displacement: the reason for my ambivalent review is that I'm not exactly sure what audience the book is aiming for. The first chapter, which is a quick history of Taiwan, can be skipped by anyone already knowledgeable about this topic. But soon, one gets to the real meat for a person like me: the little gibs and gobs of deep history that make the city tick. Curious about why Hsiaonanmen exists? Why the Taipei City walls seemed to go up and come down so quickly, and why they were built where they were? Why the city fans out from its riverside historical core into what is more or less a grid, and why many of the parks exist where they do? Then this is the book for you. 

I was enthralled by the chapters on the history of statuary, including the fairly well-known Mystery Horse of 228 Park (I knew about the horse before I ever read the book, but the level of detail provided is astounding) as well as the aforementioned history of the roadways and parks. 

Less interesting was the story of 'displacement' through the National Palace Museum, mostly because the treatment of the subject is more surface-level and didn't cover much that was new. Hence the ambivalence: a reader for whom the history of the National Palace Museum is new information will probably be bored to tears hearing about statues in parks or random museum alcoves. But the person -- me! -- who wants to know about the statues probably doesn't need the Palace Museum chapter. The comparison to the historically neglected National Taiwan Museum is an interesting angle, however. (Even more out of the public eye? The Nylon Deng Memorial Museum). Why some old buildings in the historic center are two stories and some three? Why some of the land plots are so oddly shaped? Fascinating. A surface-level treatment of the general push eastward of the 'downtown' area? Perhaps useful for the newcomer, but again -- who is the book for, when it tries to be for everyone?

I was also a bit less interested in the discussions of film and photography: film is fine but I want to know about geography, and a lot of the photographs discussed were displayed in exhibitions long since closed. It's not clear how or if they are viewable now. More illustrations -- especially in the photography chapter but also locations of maps, roads, gates and walls -- would have also made the book come alive a bit more.

Throughout, I also wish proper names -- especially of books -- had come complete with their names in both Chinese characters and Romanization. Anyone wanting to dig a little deeper into any of the tempting rabbit holes this book offers has to go to extra effort because this information is not always included. For example, Allen mentions Greater Taipei: Investigations of an Old Map. No Chinese name -- Romanized or not -- is offered. It almost implies the monograph is available in English (as far as I can tell it isn't). I had to do some asking around, but apparently it's 大臺北古地圖考釋, with the full text available here. You would have a hard time finding it by the information offered in City of Displacements, however.

Because of this, while I want to rave about this book for its most entrancing content, I found it a bit too uneven to give it a perfect review. So instead I'll say this: do buy this book (in Taipei it's available at Southern Materials 南天書局 and possibly the Taiwan Store 台灣个店, as well as on Amazon). Overall, the parts I liked outweighed those that held less interest, and I suspect the chapters I was not as captivated by are also the ones which haven't aged as well, about photo exhibitions long closed or films I'll never see (is there any reason to try to watch Twenty Something Taipei? Doubt it.)

But, pick and choose what you read based on what you're interested in, and your own knowledge level. Don't feel like it's necessary to pick through every chapter. 

I will leave you with an interesting story, however. The book takes a cool detour of the displacement of the statue of General Claire Lee Chennault from central Taipei to the outskirts and finally Hualien.

Chennault, you say? 

I've heard of that guy before! From my post on Green Island: 

In 1937, the SS President Hoover was diverted from Hong Kong to Shanghai to evacuate US nationals living there during the Sino-Japanese war. Despite draping a massive US flag draped across the deck to identify to both sides that they were a neutral US ship (they were at war with neither side as of 1937), the ROC air force mistook them for a Japanese ship and bombed them, wounding 8 and killing 1. The ship aborted the mission and returned to San Francisco for repairs. The Americans were evacuated by other ships, as this Transatlantic Accent Guy will tell you.

Wondering who could be so stupid as to bomb the President Hoover, Chiang Kai-shek vowed to execute whomever had given the order. Apparently, this wasn't because it was a US ship so much as that it was owned by Dollar Lines, and Chiang had known Robert Dollar. This was strictly a "you hurt my dead rich friend's toy, and I am also rich!" sort of anger. 

Robert Dollar, by the way, not only seems like he looked and acted just like a robber baron, but here's a quote for you:

He travelled himself all over the Orient, seeking products to take back to the US in empty timber ships. In doing so, he made friends with all the key people in business and politics. One observer said that the ordinary people of China idolised him and that on one of his trips a three hour procession of thousands of men and women passed by his hotel to honour him! “A power in his own land, he was all but a god in the Orient”.

BARF. 

Anyway, it turned out that the person who gave the order was Claire Lee Chennault, who had been hired by Chiang's wife Soong Mei-ling just months prior. So, instead he paid him a bonus! My opinion of Soong is highly unfavorable, but instead of harping on how bad she was for Taiwan, let's take a look at how unqualified Chennault was instead:

Poor health (deafness and chronic bronchitis), disputes with superiors, and the fact that he was passed over as unqualified for promotion led Chennault to resign from the military on April 30, 1937; he separated from the service at the rank of major. As a civilian, he was recruited to go to China and join a small group of American civilians training Chinese airmen.

It seems he got a little better at his job later on, but at this point he was basically a dude who bumbled into his job and mucked it up. But "well, my wife hired you, so here's ten thousand dollars" was just how Chiang rolled. Seriously: instead of executing him, Chiang paid Chennault a $10,000 bonus. That was 10 months' worth of his regular salary!

Anyone who thinks a guy like Chiang was a brilliant military strategist against the Communists is sorely mistaken.

By all means, go read up on the fate of the Hoover in that post. Liquored seamen are involved. 

So it turns out the not-great military strategist Chiang's brutal dictatorship on Taiwan installed a statue of also-not-great General Claire Chennault in what is now 228 Park in 1960, in a ceremony presided over by Chiang's wife, who hired Chennault in the first place. Then it was moved to Xinsheng Park in 1995 for unknown reasons, and then to a Flying Tigers memorial in Hualien. And of course many of Chiang's own statues -- of himself, because he loved himself -- now reside at Cihu where their utter mediocrity (they all kind of look the same) is made more obvious by their proximity.

That's a hell of a lot of statues of crappy and kinda-crappy men being maneuvered around northern Taiwan's parks, I'll tell you that.

A Concise History of Taiwan (Bilingual Edition) Review, and more!

The Concise History of Taiwan: Chinese-English Bilingual Edition

By Tai Pao-tsun, translated by Ruby Lee

I know I haven't been blogging that much in the past week or so: in part I needed a break, but I've also been busy with other things. I did a podcast with Startup Taiwan on the Bilingual by 2030 initiative (similar to my other podcast with Taiwan Context on the same issue). And perhaps you've noticed an article in the Taipei Times about my debilitating insomnia-driven push to get Last Week Tonight to do an episode on Taiwan. While I'm not spending a huge amount of actual time on this, I did take the time to give the Taipei Times an interview. The petition is still going, so by all means please do sign. 

But mostly, it's that these days I live in front of the computer for work, so I just haven't wanted to spend more screen time blogging. But anyway, down to business. 

A year or so ago, I realized that Brendan and I had, combined, managed to read almost every general history book on Taiwan in existence in English, and that no direct comparison exists. So we made a final push. I'd been working through the politically subjective works (think Taiwan's 400 Year History) while Brendan read the drier tomes (such as Taiwan: A New History, which is more of a collection of articles than a true general history). We both read the works we consider to be most seminal (Forbidden Nation and A New Illustrated History of Taiwan). 

Then, just as we were about to write the piece together, another publication popped up on my radar: The Concise History of Taiwan: Chinese-English Bilingual Edition by Tai Pao-tsun, translated by Ruby Lee. As it is indeed concise, I thought I'd give it a review before including it in the longer article. 

The book itself lives up to the name: it's not particularly thick, and with half the pages in Mandarin and a double-spaced font, it can be read in an easy day. It follows the same notion of how to cover history as many other 21st century publications (this was published in 2007): rather than a chronological telling of events, it covers areas of interest. Specifically, these are Indigenous Peoples, Immigrants, Colonization, Towards a National State and Taiwanese and World Citizens (which has the least clear title and is also the least clear chapter). Chapters 1-3 look at the whole of history, although only Chapter 1 goes into pre-written Indigenous history, and only at the very end does the narrative follow a clear chronology, from KMT authoritarianism to democratization.

I appreciated certain elements of this book: the clear case for Taiwanese sovereignty without fiery political soapboxing or outdated references to long-dead compradores. (I admire what it would have meant at the time for Su Beng to call them out by name, and the fact of their existence is worth including, but in 2021 I'm not sure we need a list.) I noted the attempt to discuss Indigenous affairs through the modern era, rather than relegating all discussion of Indigenous culture to "prehistory". And anyone could improve on Ong Iok-tek's (A History of Agonies) abject anti-Indigenous racism.

In some ways, Tai outdoes Chou Wan-yao: at no point does this book pretend that it is in any way acceptable for an occupying foreign government to force a "national language" on a people who've never spoken it before. (I've said it before and I'll say it again: this was the single worst line of reasoning in Chou's book, which was otherwise a delight to read. It brought the whole thing down.)

In others, however, the Concise History leaves a lot to be desired. The chapter on immigrants considers Taiwanese with Han ancestry to be immigrants, which is correct (or settlers, or colonizers: choose your discourse) and handles this well. It then covers "New Taiwanese" (the KMT diaspora that accompanied the 1940s occupation) and it handles the topic critically but fairly. It even covers immigration from Southeast Asia. But -- I dunno man, call me selfish -- a single sentence pointing out that there is a small community of long-term Westerners who also call Taiwan home would have been appreciated. Truly, just a sentence would have been enough. I don't want Westerners in Taiwan to take up too much space when we are a tiny minority of immigrants, but we do exist. 

In Colonization, Tai considers the Dutch and Japanese eras, but completely elides the Qing colonization and the ways that the ROC is itself a colonizer of Taiwan. Other historians have dealt with this in different ways: Su Beng was anti-Qing but pro-Han immigration. Manthorpe (Forbidden Nation) says obliquely that there is a case to be made for both the Qing and the ROC to be considered colonizers. Chou (A New Illustrated History of Taiwan) doesn't quite take that step, but she does offer up all the objective evidence for coming to that conclusion oneself. 

By not engaging with the issue at all, Tai is essentially saying that there is no need to question whether the Qing and the ROC acted as colonizers: it is assumed by their exclusion from this chapter that they did not. I disagree, strongly. What is the justification for this? How did they act meaningfully differently from any other foreign occupiers? Is it because some people still argue that the legal structures that kept (and keep) these governments in place are not generally considered "colonial", even if the actions of the government absolutely are? Is it because the colonizers came from China, so they aren't different enough to be "colonizers"? None of these options is convincing, so it doesn't really matter which assumption informed Tai's thinking. 

One final matter must be dealt with: the translation. I don't want to say too much about this, as I am not against a non-native speaker doing a translation, and don't want to come across otherwise. However, there are some real issues here. Some of these are mildly humorous rather than overtly confusing ("The Taiwanese are a generous and tolerable people" -- a stereotype, but I understood what was meant).  Other areas, however, simply don't cohere well, and small mistakes come across as unprofessional, such as calling the DPP the "DDP". 

Even native-speaker translations benefit from a good editor, and that's what this book needs, too. Translators are not editors and shouldn't be asked to do both jobs: in an ideal world, there's funding for both. It's a shame that dedicated and sincere Taiwanese voices are perhaps not being heard more widely because the funding just isn't there to hire a good editor. 

There are reasons to choose this particular book, however. Like every other general history we've read, it takes a pro-Taiwan stance. Honestly, I think this is because reality leans pro-Taiwan: the case for Taiwan is based on certain objective truths, such as the traumas of the authoritarian era or the simple fact that the Taiwan is not currently controlled by China, and does not wish to be a part of China, period. There's probably another reason at play, however: if you're so in love with the concept of Taiwan-as-China, why would you write a history book focusing on Taiwan? You'd probably just write a history of China and include Taiwan as a small part of it. 

(Which, incidentally, is exactly how China would treat a subjugated Taiwan: as an unimportant backwater, a footnote. That is, after the genocide.) 

And it is short: if you are a newcomer to Taiwan and don't even know things like the fact that the ROC is a decorative name underwriting a concept on life support, that Taiwan was once a colony of Japan, that the KMT have an awful history or that there even are Indigenous Taiwanese, this is a quick way to get up to speed on the basics. That said, Forbidden Nation covers most of that as well, and is only a little bit longer. 

Mostly, I'd recommend A Concise History of Taiwan: Chinese-English Bilingual Edition for one specific purpose. If you are looking to read about Taiwanese history and want to actually practice your foreign language skills, this could be a place to start. Say you studied Mandarin in college, maybe spent a year in China but also learned to read Traditional characters. Then you move to Taiwan because -- let's be real -- it's a better country to live in. You can read Chinese but aren't that well-versed in local history. Start here, and read in both languages. Or say you've lived here for awhile and your Chinese reading comprehension is okay. You already know the history, so you want to practice reading in Chinese on a topic you're already familiar with -- the way Taiwanese teens read Harry Potter in English after having seen the movies or read the books in Mandarin. Perhaps you need the English there to support you. 

In those circumstances, this would be a good book to pick up. A learner of English could do the same, although I'd warn them to be aware that the translation is not always polished and clear. However, if we're considering English as a lingua franca or an international language, it's good enough for that purpose. 

A Concise History of Taiwan: Chinese-English Bilingual Edition is available on books.com.tw, and the price is quite attractive.

Review: A New Illustrated History of Taiwan

A New Illustrated History of Taiwan, by Wan-yao Chou

Available online, but try 台灣个店 or 南天書局 first

On June 4th, I didn't want to release another current affairs-focused post. I also didn't want to talk about Tiananmen Square specifically, as I have nothing unique to say beyond a generalized feeling that the attempts of illiberal regimes such as the CCP continue to wage disinformation and forced amnesia, with the goal of disintegrating democracy as system seem as viable. In fact, a book about this 'amnesia' was recently restricted in Hong Kong libraries.

But this is a good day to remember history, so that's what we're going to do. Perhaps not Tiananmen specifically as this is a Taiwan-focused blog, but history all the same. You can't see the candle I'll burn at home, so consider this my public candle, with Taiwanese characteristics.

Wan-yao Chou's A New Illustrated History of Taiwan sets two ambitious goals for itself right in the preface: first, to look at history -- the good and the bad -- without getting enmeshed in political disputes partisan politics. Chou doesn't say this openly, but it would be difficult for any writer to treat Taiwanese history fairly without several chapters straight-up smashing the KMT the way Hulk smashed Loki. Chou walks a fine line here, but ultimately lets their own actions speak for themselves. The second goal is to tell a more pluralistic, localized history of diverse voices and trajectories. Chou explicitly states that she intends to interrogate this:

Isn't the so-called "400 years of Taiwanese history" just the view of male Han as they retrace their history?

In doing so, Chou sets out to write a history that includes more people, with an emphasis on the women, Indigenous people and local activists generally left out of other general histories. 

If you didn't catch the reference, that was the writerly version of a subtweet pointing out the shortcomings of Su Beng's Taiwan's 400-Year History. Su Beng was a national treasure and he is deeply missed, but Chou is not wrong in this.

Although the value of early and imperfectly-narrated histories (such as Su Beng's work) played a vital role in pushing Taiwanese identity through the 20th century and into the 21st, she treats them as stepping stones, not final destinations in telling the story of Taiwan.

I'm pleased to say that she succeeds in her ambitions, and the book is -- not to let the cup overflow with too much praise -- masterful.

Chou doesn't take an exact linear timeline, although the book is roughly chronological. Space is reserved for a discussion of the arts and artists of Taiwan in the 19th century -- many people don't know that Taiwan boasted prominent composers and visual artists despite not having much in the way of local, formal education available to them. It reminded me of my last visit to the Tainan Fine Arts Museum, where the work of Taiwanese artists is showcased and its connection to Taiwan -- the culture, the land, the history, the people -- is highlighted.

Mid-century artist Chen Cheng-hsiung's "Old Friends" at the Tainan Fine Arts Museum (Exhibition Hall 1, in the old police station)

In the chapters of the Japanese era, she sinks into Japanese-style education more than any other writer. She is right to do so, as the education system the Japanese set up for their own benefit on Taiwan has been a quiet shaper -- a not-always-invisible hand -- of what Taiwan is today. After all, the ROC took one look at Japanese schools and thought great, we'll do that, but just change the Japanese identity indoctrination to Chinese. And so they did.

She also offers a great deal of space for Japanese-era rebellions, uprisings and political associations. I was aware of most of these, with the exception of the Chikei Incident, although I should have. That Taiwanese were talking about the preservation of their culture as a unique entity, not quite China and not quite Japan, as early as that -- and perhaps earlier -- is a point not remarked upon often enough. 

Those who insist that Taiwanese identity did not exist before the 228 Massacre are simply wrong. 228 was a match, but KMT abuse of power in Taiwan provided just some of the kindling for the more mainstream emergence of Taiwanese identity later. It was already in the country's DNA before the KMT ever even showed up. 

I appreciate deeply that Chou makes good on her promise not to simply re-tell history the way a Han male (or perhaps foreign reader) would want it told: all Great Men doing Great Deeds and their Accomplishments and So On [imagine me waving my hand very...Britishly]. These types of narratives tend to start with a short, dismissive chapter on pre-Dutch Taiwan that offers some basic information on Indigenous Taiwanese, but you'd be forgiven for thinking they simply ceased to exist at that point, they tend not to be mentioned much after that. But of course, they did not. Taiwan's 400 Year History and, to a lesser extent, Forbidden Nation, both fall into this trap, with Forbidden Nation hardly mentioning the accomplishments or contributions of Taiwanese at all, and certainly very few women. A History of Agonies is a work of its time -- more an object of inquiry than a source -- and is actively racist towards Indigenous, which the authors of the new edition acknowledge.

Women such as Taiwanese Communist Party co-founder Hong Hsueh-hung and Indigenous stories such as that of Mona Rudao (spelled Rudo in the book) feature more prominently in Chou's work, and the reader gets a much better sense of what life was actually like in Taiwan during these periods.

She even weaves the narratives of these stories into a discussion of what Japanese attempts at modern progress and education influenced the political discourse of Taiwanese intellectuals, without defending Japanese colonialism. This carries over into the most robust discussion of democratization-era and post-democratization social movements of any general history: the murders of activists and sympathizers, the courage of people like Deng Nan-jung and the White Lilies.

The illustrations in these final chapters of various social movements and people involved in them -- and the information contained in the captions that doesn't make it into the main text -- are especially interesting.

It's almost refreshing that the Great Men don't receive much mention at all. They are there, as side characters, far from the narrative Chou wants to center, just as they (and their machinations) would have been far from the daily life of your average Han settler or Indigenous resident. In other words, Koxinga comes up, and of course Chiang Kai-shek and Lee Teng-hui do too. More women and Indigenous Taiwanese appear in a single chapter of Chou's book than in all of Forbidden Nation and Taiwan's 400 Year History combined. 

The illustrations are fantastic as well. My husband offers a few as examples on his own review. Along with prose that is more engaging than the writers who came before her, these illustrations help to make a narrative with a very long timeline engaging and almost fun. It's not a novel, but you can read it at about the same pace. After all, dirge-like writing is what keeps most people away from those thick, long general histories, right? Much better to dispense with it and use imagery to drive the arc of history home, and Chou does this well.

I do have one fairly strong criticism of Chou's work, however. I don't feel she contends strongly enough with the colonization aspect of both the Qing and the KMT on Taiwan. It's mentioned, but she doesn't lean into this argument as strongly as Forbidden Nation does, and certainly not as strongly as Taiwan's Imagined Geography. That's a shame, as there is a solid case for both eras being essentially colonial ones. 

Other choices caught my eye as well: toward the end she stated both that instating a national language was a reasonable policy on the part of the KMT, with the only criticism being that they were too heavy-handed. Perhaps if they'd allowed more space for local languages, the pushback on their linguistic imperialism (which she does at least admit was the case) might not have been so strong. 

I disagree completely. It is never reasonable to force a national language on a people from the top down. It is essentially a colonial project. You can introduce a lingua franca so that everyone in your country can communicate, but you simply cannot decide it is the main and only language of a nation when you did not come from that nation. And frankly, even if the KMT were a Taiwanese party, this would still not be reasonable. It's not an understatement to say that her argument here jolted me like smashing a plate on the floor. No. It is neither reasonable nor acceptable.

Secondly, she gives "Chinese culture" the same treatment, saying that Taiwanese might have been more receptive to it if, essentially, the KMT had not been such horrible jerks. 

Perhaps. But I doubt it, because Taiwanese identity existed before the KMT ever arrived. Chou couches this in a hypothetically 'preferable' alternate timeline, but I simply do not see how that would be preferable. Of course, less White Terror is better for everyone (arguably even the KMT!), but more acceptance of Chinese cultural heritage in Taiwan is not necessarily a positive. It's morally neutral. From my side, I'm happy that Taiwanese culture is taking center stage and Taiwanese are mostly not banging on about being "Chinese" -- not that I'd have any say in the matter if they did! 

In trying to portray a centrist history that didn't lean too partisan in either direction, despite knowing that the KMT's time in Taiwan has brought more harm than good (and it has), I feel these incursions into questionable hypotheticals whose ethical fundamentals I don't even agree with are an attempt to reconcile what seems like an impossible position: tell the truth, but don't take sides. 

This is difficult to do when one side inflicted generations of suffering on Taiwan, and for all its imperfections, the other side resisted it and pushed for democracy. At that point, does neutrality offer an accurate approach? I happen to think not: these passages read like both-sidesism.

Despite these criticisms, A New Illustrated History of Taiwan, in fact, might just be the best general history of Taiwan currently available. Certainly, I haven't found any other to match it. 

My wholehearted recommendation comes with a caveat, however. Chou explores the metaphorical muscles and veins that make Taiwan what it is -- everyday life, high culture, education, rebellion, intellect, people. But in doing so, she leaves out the 'bones': the skeleton that holds it all together chronologically through a series of decisions that were, yes, made by (mostly) extremely annoying men who make it into every other book. This lack of a clear timeline will not be a problem for those who already know the chronology. 

For neophytes, however, I recommend A New Illustrated History of Taiwan with a companion volume, Forbidden Nation. Learn the whole anatomy. 

Book Review: Migrante

 Migrante by J.W. Henley

“Even if your case is closed and they say you can change your employer, it’s like there’s a black mark on you. You didn’t finish your contract, and the next man wants to know why. They think we’re troublemakers. Runaways. They actually think we’re out to cheat them, if you can believe it. Us cheating them,” he scoffed. “Not all of them, but enough.”

— Mak to Rizal, Migrante

Many keys have been pounded in the effort to bring attention to the working conditions of foreign blue-collar labor in Taiwan. At this point, I would find it highly suspicious if anyone in Taiwan was not aware of the way these workers are treated: fishermen worked to exhaustion in life-threatening conditions (in some cases even killed by the captains of their ships), wages withheld to the point that they are more enslaved than employed, rampant physical and sexual abuse. Domestic workers forced to work outside their contracts, seven days a week. Factory workers enduring constant safety violations, including dorms which are little more than fire traps. 

However, if you think that everyone is aware of these horrors, you would be wrong, as this jaw-droppingly obtuse letter to the Taipei Times illustrates. If you need another anecdote, consider my neighbor, who once insisted that the way Southeast Asians are treated in Taiwan is “not racist” because “they come from poor countries so they are more likely to be criminals”. 

Sometimes it takes a novelization — the closest one can often get to being transported into another’s shoes — to really bring home what a deep, black mark this paints on Taiwan’s human rights record. How utterly unacceptable it is, across several industries. 

Enter Joe Henley’s Migrante. Henley himself takes on an aura of Upton Sinclair in the story of Rizal, a fictional man from the Philippines who comes to Taiwan to work on a fishing boat. If the narrative reminds you a bit of The Jungle, that is clearly intentional. If you are asking yourself why working conditions in wealthy, democratic, 21st century Taiwan echo those of American meatpacking factories a century ago before the concept of labor protection was more common...well, yes, that’s a very good question indeed.

In Migrante, the various experiences of foreign blue-collar workers are teased out as Rizal interacts with his fellow fishermen, women who had been abused and raped as caregivers, staff at a cantina in Zhongli, fellow “runaways” at a shelter and finally a factory floor. (Henley addresses both the reasons behind the choice of protagonist, and why a comparatively well-off Westerner in Taiwan wrote Migrante rather than an actual migrante in the preface.)

Although a great deal of fiction weaves social issues into larger narratives, Migrante is more like The Jungle in that narrating social injustice is its main — perhaps only — goal. Don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s simplistic, however. Henley uses Rizal’s experiences to show that the story isn’t as simple as “Taiwanese employers bad”. Yes, the labor broker and boat captain are passively and actively cruel in their respective ways. However, Rizal is eventually offered shelter and a chance to change his job; people do show him genuine kindness. Contrast a Taiwanese government worker’s attempt to help Rizal with the way he’s treated by the Filipino broker in his hometown. Neither cruelty nor kindness know national borders.

Migrante also teases out issues that tend not to be sufficiently examined. For example, as bad as the situation is for blue-collar labor in Taiwan, in many cases the conditions they are trying to escape are as bad, or worse. Toward the end, Rizal starts talking like his employers: keep your head down, don’t complain, you’re lucky to have been offered a job. He knows as he says this that none of it is true, but the way he adopts the language of his abusers is chilling. 

I also noted that throughout much of the story, Rizal was showing classic symptoms of situational depression, an issue that affects every stratum of society but tends not to get much attention in the very poor, as issues of more immediate desperation take precedence. This may be why some people think of depression as a problem affecting the comparatively wealthy. Of course that’s not the case. It’s helpful, then, to see it portrayed here. 

I can only imagine that all of these details came out of the extensive research Henley did in order to write this book, including interviews with the workers whose experiences he is drawing upon. Oft-ignored issues like these are far more likely to be brought up when one actually talks to members of a community in order to tell a well-informed story.

If I have any criticism of Migrante at all, it’s that in some places the prose is laid on a bit thick. It mirrors The Jungle in this way, as well. It doesn’t do this in every way, however. There are clear differences in the personalities of Rizal and Jurgis Rudkus, and Migrante does not end with a discordant “happier ending” of an orator proclaiming that socialism is coming and will save us all. This is to the novel’s credit: Henley doesn’t treat us like dumb capitalist puppies who need a good lecturin’, and I appreciate that. 

It would be fantastic if the ignorant letter-writers and racist neighbors in Taiwan read Migrante, although I know they probably won’t. Those of us who are already aware of the situation should step up our agitation for change. Those who unequivocally tout Taiwan as a bastion of human rights are not entirely wrong, but would do well to reflect on areas where drastic improvement is needed. And we should all remember that when we talk about “foreigners in Taiwan”, the vast majority have experiences closer to Rizal’s than to, say, mine. 

Just as Henley did not write Migrante to bash Taiwan, I am not writing this to attack this country. Both of us call Taiwan home, and I assume both of us will continue to do so. There is so much good here, but human rights need to be taken seriously for all workers. Period. 

Review: The Lost Garden

As with the fictional garden in the title of this novel, it's hard to know where to begin with Li Ang's 1990 classic, not always clear which path you're on, nor where it will bring you, nor where or whether exactly it ends. If other writers use framing devices, spiraled time or narrative parallels in their work, Li Ang turns her story into a literal garden path. 

Li Ang 李昂, not to be confused with the famous film director, is the pen name of Taiwanese feminist writer Shih Shu-tuan 施淑端. Well-known in Taiwan, most notably for her 1983 novel The Butcher's Wife, very few of her works have been translated into English. She's known for her frank engagement with politics and criticism of the KMT, her feminist critiques of patriarchy in Taiwanese society, and her even more frank exploration of psychosexual themes and female desire. 

The two main stories -- the first of protagonist Chu Yinghong's childhood in the garden with her spendthrift father Chu Zuyan, worried mother and household staff, the second of Taiwan's booming real estate market and the seedy nightlife of the nouveau riche that boom created -- gracefully curve around toward each other, then away in a series of figure 8s, or infinity symbols, or two garden paths that intertwine in places but may or may not connect at the other end. 

Yinghong's childhood is partly the honey-hued memories of a child: the gossip of the staff, looking through carved windows shaped like vases, her father spending time in different parts of the garden, her mother's perfumed nightgowns. And it's partly the dark undercurrent of Taiwan's White Terror: her father had been sent to prison, only freed because it was thought he would die, and is still being watched. Smaller stories wend themselves away from this central path as well: how the garden came to be, the odd names of some of the pavilions, such as "Flowing Pillow", the flowers themselves, a teacher at school, a fire deliberately set, her father's purchases, something Yinghong once wrote in an essay which places her character as the inheritor of Taiwan's older and often crueler history. Some are dead ends, some meander back into the story. Some look as though they are going toward one pavilion but then turn abruptly toward another. 

On the other path, an adult Yinghong resolves to win the affections -- marriage, though perhaps not love exactly -- of real estate tycoon Lin Xigeng, despite his known carousing and previous marriages. Metaphorically, the story works: Lin is the 1970s "Taiwanese Dream", the new real estate boom, the Asian Tiger moneymaker. One reviewer described him as seeming like a 'white phoenix' rising from the ashes of the old Taiwan Yinghong knew, as well as Gatsby-like in his chasing of his gold-plated dreams. I'm not so sure about that, as Lin doesn't appear to have any sort of inner life; if he does, from Yinghong's viewpoint we get no sense of it. The main thing she seems to want from him is the funding to renovate her family's garden.

That, and sex. Li Ang explores the different ways their sex life manifests, and the feelings it engenders: trepidation, titillation, desire, dissatisfaction. There is perhaps a sense that she ends up trading her sexuality for an unsatisfying marriage to a fundamentally unappealing man in order to get what she wants for her family's legacy, which is tied up in a curse handed down from one of her ancestors. At the end, Yinghong realizes exactly what it is the curse has taken from her. 

Before that, though? Reader, there is quite a bit of blowjob. It is...how do I say this -- very much a lot. These pages explore Yinghong's inexplicable combination of desire and reticence or even perhaps revulsion, and they are exceedingly graphic. To this reader, that much time spent with an unappealing man's penis also felt like the literary equivalent of an unsolicited dick pick. I suspect, subtextually, this might have been intentional. 

Everything about Lin and his 'set' is portrayed as crass: superficially glittering (in one venue the ceiling is literally spray--painted gold) but ultimately cheap. Where she begins to see a marriage with him -- the old and the new together -- as a path forward for a modern Taiwan, she ends by realizing that she alone is the true inheritor of Taiwan's past, and he is means to an end. Look for this in one of the final scenes: he may carry on affairs and act like he's king of the island, but in that garden he is lost without her. 

That Chu Yinghong is portrayed as more sympathetic than Lin Xigeng (who feels more like a cardboard cutout than a man -- that is, a cardboard cutout with an exceedingly annoying penis that just keeps popping out whether you want it to or not) is the inevitable result of a narrative that contains semi-autobiographical elements. Li Ang, after all, was born to a wealthy Taiwanese family in Lukang which stood against the KMT. 

The garden path I most enjoyed meandering down was the political one. Rather than explain in dull detail how Li Ang uses botanical metaphors to achieve this, I'll share a passage: 

Ignoring objections from elders in the clan, Father went ahead with his plan. He disagreed with their practice of imitating Mainland garden architecture, including planting similar trees; the saplings they had taken so much trouble to find on the Mainland would not necessarily thrive in Taiwan. 

‘Why plant trees that won’t do well in the local climate? It’s better to grow indigenous trees and flowers,’ Father continued in Taiwanese. ‘Your children may be born in the year of the dog or the pig, but they’re still your own flesh and blood.’

Pines from the frigid zones baked in the harsh sun of central Taiwan for nearly half the year and lost the resilience of evergreens in the snow, where deciduous trees wither till the spring. They manage to put forth anemic needles on shapeless branches. The pines were dug up and replaced by star fruit trees. 

The star fruit trees came in mature forms, though many leafy branches were trimmed for the transplanting process. When spring arrived, tender, green, delicate leaves sprouted with impressive vitality. With the autumn wind came blankets of red flowers, so tiny they weren’t particularly attractive by themselves, but the concentration of many shades of red presented an eye-catching yet sorrowful beauty, especially when blown off to the ground by strong winds. The ground was covered with small flowers, like blood-red tears. 

With the arrival of winter, the tears disappeared, as if they’d shed their last drops of blood, and were replaced by small star fruit hanging on the trees like tiny green stars....but soon afterward, the starlike fruit began to fall, until not a single one was left. This time Medan explained that the newly transplanted trees needed time to recover from the uprooting and branch trimming before they could properly nourish the fruit.

Oof, right?

Comparisons are drawn to many of the historical gardens and homes across Taiwan. You can see in the description of the garden and the family that inhabits it -- as well as its placement in the distant suburbs of Taichung -- something of the Wufeng Lin family mansion. In the 'old Taiwan' aesthetic and silted-up port, you see Li Ang's hometown, Lukang. In the meandering garden paths and pavilions, perhaps a shade of the Banchiao Lin family garden. 

These implicit comparisons invite the reader to consider the ways such old families have shaped Taiwan, especially when Yinghong is asked why she chose a private management trust for the Chu garden rather than donating it to the government. Notably, the Lin Family Garden in Banchiao chose to work with the government (which is why the entry fee is so low). The Lin Family Mansion in Wufeng chose to continue private management. 

Chu Yinghong explicitly addresses this, asking why she'd give her family's garden to the government that oppressed her father. 

It's a good question, and teases out the ways that politics, money, cultural heritage and love (or lust) can shape individuals, families and a nation.

Sovereignty is the Dream: A book review of “Forbidden Nation”

This is a good time to announce that Brendan and I have been slowly working through a project: we’ve each been reading a selection of the various history books on Taiwan with an eye to creating a collaborative post discussing all of them, both on their own merits and in relation to each other.  Look for that to be coming out sooner than you’d think. 

In the meantime, here’s a review of one of the seminal texts in general Taiwan history: Jonathan Manthorpe’s Forbidden Nation. 

When you open this book, two things are immediately apparent: first, that Forbidden Nation is not quite chronological. Rather, it frames the middle chapters with the saga of Chen Shui-bian’s re-election in 2004. It opens with Two Shots on Jinhua Road, which tells the story of Chen’s attempted assassination while campaigning with a flair that some might find overly dramatic, but which does engage the reader. The text then re-sets to pre-colonial Taiwan, working its way through the Dutch, Koxinga, the Qing, the Republic of Formosa, the Japanese, the KMT dictatorship and democratization, ending once again with Chen. 

Second, while parts of the narrative do a good job of looking at an issue from multiple perspectives, others read like a straight op-ed. Manthorpe is unapologetically pro-Taiwan and pro-independence, to the point that the very first sentence of the preface reads: "Taiwan is entering an era when the four-hundred-year-old dream of the islands 23 million people to be internationally recognized as sovereign masters of their own house will be won or lost."

I’m willing to accept this, but not because his editorial line reflects my own. Rather, after considering multiple factors, he comes to consistently pro-Taiwan conclusions that I agree are the most accurate depiction of reality. In what ways did the KMT screw up — you’ll be shocked to learn that it was most of them — and where were they successful? Was the Republic of Formosa an expression of Taiwanese identity or not? Did the Japanese treat Taiwan well or not? 

I don’t always agree with him; for example, I’m not sure that their land reform program was as unambiguously successful as he depicts it. But doesn’t give false neutrality or weak-kneed both-sidesism even a single second, and I appreciate that. 

Indeed, in the years since Forbidden Nation was published, Manthorpe was proven to be right. Sovereignty is indeed the greatest dream of Taiwan and now we have the numbers to prove it.

However, it’s far from a perfect text. Brendan noted in his review that the narrative centers non-Taiwanese: you learn more about Robert Swinhoe than Nylon Deng, who doesn’t appear at all. More about Koxinga than Lee Teng-hui (although Lee does get fairly in-depth treatment). More about Soong Mei-ling than Annette Lu. Chen Chu, as far as I remember, is absent completely whereas KMTers, mostly from China, get plenty of attention. There is a lot of discussion of how rebellions were put down, but not much on why the rebellions happened or the internal mechanics of the more notable ones. 

All in all, the narrative is more about the colonizers than the colonized, as though Taiwan is a place that has things done to it (which is indeed part of the historical narrative) and far less a nation that Taiwanese themselves built. Some threads aren’t carried through clearly; your average neophyte reader would never make the connection that Chen Shui-bian had ties to the Kaohsiung Incident, for example. I haven’t done a deeper textual analysis to find actual numbers, but there also aren’t many women mentioned, despite the ways that the women’s rights movement in Taiwan has converged and diverged with the Tangwai and Taiwan independence activism. There’s discussion of how long Taiwanese identity and the home-rule, democracy and independence movements have existed, but nothing on their internal mechanics. The White Lilies are erased entirely. 

The narrative is also very much a “Great Men” view of history. You get a lot of movers, shakers and leaders — most of them not Taiwanese — but no clear sense of how all of this affected everyday people, or how they lived. Indigenous Taiwan is especially short-changed: Manthorpe spends roughly 20 pages on pre-colonial Taiwan, not entirely focused on Indigenous people. Some of the chapter titles are questionable (I think Barbarian Territory is meant to be ironic, and I'm not sure what I think of Pirate Haven), and much of this section focuses on how outsiders -- more Great Men -- viewed Taiwan rather than what life was like here centuries ago. Manthorpe doesn't meaningfully engage with Indigenous perspectives later in the narrative, either.

This is both more than a lot of writers do and less than is necessary. 400 Years of Taiwan History and Taiwan: A Political History gloss over this period as quickly as possible, with the former stating provably incorrect points, such as the idea that struggling Hoklo and Indigenous worked together to fight the elites (nope). A History of Agonies is openly offensive toward Indigenous Taiwanese. A New Illustrated History of Taiwan offers a bit more, covering pre-Dutch Taiwan in about 50 pages. And yet a huge chunk of Forbidden Nation (about 50 pages out of that 250) is dedicated to Koxinga and his descendants. While interesting, I don’t think it merits cutting more modern and possibly more relevant figures from the narrative.

Despite these imperfections, Forbidden Nation does get some things right. Unlike some of the aforementioned texts, which are interesting in situ for the insight they share on a certain kind of outdated pro-independence thought process, Forbidden Nation can be recommended as something closer to a straight history, if that can be said of any text. It’s fairly short — about 250 pages, a length that isn’t too intimidating for anyone first approaching Taiwanese history. Both Taiwan: A New History and A New Illustrated History of Taiwan is that it’s fairly long, and that can be intimidating. The writing style is reasonably engaging, which elevates it above A Political History and A New History, both of which are fairly dry. 

It also hits a lot of the right “beats” — the crucial turning points and notions from Taiwan’s history that underpin its identity. If you want a newcomer to understand a few basic things about Taiwanese history which explain why and how Taiwan became what it is today, this book will provide that. A lot of the arguments those who advocate for Taiwan keep rehashing to people who have opinions not in line with robust historical interpretation (that’s a fancy way to say “anti-Taiwan trolls whose opinions are wrong”) originate in Manthorpe’s text. 

Let’s take a look at some of those “beats”. If I could create a bullet list of things I want people beginning to learn about Taiwan to understand, it would look roughly like this:

1.) China’s claim to Taiwan as an inalienable part of its territory “since antiquity” is entirely false; they cared not at all for it and didn’t even want to keep it initially. 

2.) There is a strong argument for considering Qing control of Taiwan to be colonial. Labeling all rulers of Taiwan except those that come from China as “colonizers” but China as somehow not that plays into the ruse that Taiwan is essentially Chinese. 

3.) The Qing didn’t control all of Taiwan for most of their time here, and certainly didn’t do much to develop it.

4.) The 1895 Republic was a flawed endeavor at best, and not a clear expression of early pro-independence sentiment. However, the rebellions that took place throughout Qing rule indicate that Taiwanese identity and the desire for sovereignty had at least some pre-1947 roots. 

5.) The Japanese colonial era was not a halcyon era. It’s everything that came after it that causes older people to look back with nostalgia - how awful did the KMT have to be that Taiwanese would look back on the way Japan treated them and see that it was comparatively better?

6.) Taiwan was comparatively developed before the KMT showed up, and a lot of the “development” the KMT engaged in was really just cleaning up a mess they themselves made. 

7.) Chiang Kai-shek absolutely knew about 228 and was perfectly aware that his underlings were committing a massacre. He approved of it. 

8.) There were other post-war options for Taiwan; being absorbed by the ROC was rendered likely by the non-binding Cairo Declaration but not inevitable. 

9.) If you actually look at the series of treaties, communiques, assurances etc. both post-war and as the US was switching diplomatic recognition, you’ll see that there’s no basis to claim that Taiwan is legally a part of some inevitable “one China”.

10.) Taiwan was built by Taiwanese. However, if you want to credit outside assistance (the KMT counts as “outside”), then US protection (due to Korean War-related strategic interests) and US aid did more for Taiwan than anyone else.

11.) Taiwan’s path to democracy was painful. They’re not going to give it up and change such a fundamental aspect of their culture just because China wishes it so. It is quite simply never going to happen. (Manthorpe doesn’t say this explicitly but that’s what his narrative builds to). 

12.) And yes, the KMT can also be considered a colonial power in Taiwan. They have treated this country and its identity as just as disposable as the Qing.

...and that’s the thing. Forbidden Nation touches on all of this. It gives you what you need to understand that Taiwanese independence is not a radical notion, it’s a natural outgrowth of the country’s own history. It allows readers to realize that instead of asking how Taiwan could possibly avoid unification with China, we should be asking how it could ever possibly unify peacefully. It’s quite clear that it simply cannot, and will not. 

My final thought: Forbidden Nation is not for people who already have a deep knowledge of Taiwanese history. I learned a few new things, but generally speaking I knew all of the skeins of historical trends and events that, when uncoiled to their full length and woven together, create a picture of Taiwan which simply can’t be denied. If anything, I would have preferred if the parts covering modern Taiwanese history were fleshed out more, with notable local activists and marginalized groups (including women) given more space in the story. 

However, if a newcomer to Taiwan or someone interested in learning more about this country asks for a book recommendation, this will give them the fundamentals and will help defeat those “but isn’t the culture Chinese?” questions before they come up. Because I’m not a fan of the lens through which it tells Taiwan’s story — it can’t all be about Notable Men who usually aren’t Taiwanese! — I’d recommend that potential readers start with Forbidden Nation, but pick up A New Illustrated History of Taiwan afterwards. One for the historical “beats”, and the other to hear all the voices Manthorpe left out and get a clearer idea of what life was actually like in Taiwan throughout history.