Book Review: Lost in Taiwan

First, a touch of random business: check out my interview with designer Johnny Chiu of Not Just Library and the east coast culinary train in Taiwan Everything, and my interview with the general secretary of the Taipei Zoo in Taipei Quarterly. Both interviews were fantastic, but in very different ways. Imagine talking design one day, and learning about various mating practices the next. 

And now, back to the show.  

More than once, I've been on the receiving end of some weird assumptions that as a childfree person, I must dislike children. That all of us who chose not to have kids get hives when they're around -- well, mental hives, at least. It's not really true though: I don't want to spend all day, every day with children which is why I neither teach nor spawn them, but I don't mind being the weird wine aunt who blows in from Asia once every few years, bearing gifts and stories. 

Not long ago, I happened to arrive for a visit with some friends on the birthday of their 8-year-old daughter. She's into graphic novels, and I wanted to bring her something specific to Taiwan. When it comes to English-language children's books with a Taiwan tie-in, there are...not a lot. There's Hey Taipei, which is for much younger children; this one reads at a junior high school level. There's The Astonishing Color of After, but that might be more appropriate for a tween or young teen. 

For an 8-year-old, even one who's a precocious reader? I mean, if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

After a long search, I finally came across Lost in Taiwan, a fairly new graphic novel by Mark Crilley. I'd never heard of it, and couldn't preview it as I wanted it sent directly to my brother-in-law in the US so I could pick it up from there and give it to her personally. I decided to take a chance, and am happy I did. 

As an adult, I read Lost in Taiwan in perhaps an hour, while flying from Albany, New York to northern Virginia. The main draw of graphic novels are the illustrations, and this book delivers. Obviously they're gorgeous, and Crilley is an accomplished graphic novelist. The real charmer is the way Crilley's art captures Taiwan's uniquely atmospheric urban and semi-urban spaces. Dare I say, he's nailed the Taiwancore aesthetic?

Even as an adult reader, panels depicting, say, a string of red lanterns in an urban cementscape, the dark entrance to a traditional market alley, and the random fields between clutches of buildings caught and kept my attention: this is a person who gets the feel of daily life in Taiwan. 

But what's the story? Well, young teenager Paul is visiting his older brother Theo, who's teaching English in Taiwan. The city is never specified and to be honest, it doesn't have to be. Theo is learning Mandarin, cooks homemade danbing, has a local girlfriend and in general seems genuinely interested in engaging with Taiwanese culture. Paul...isn't. For most of his visit, he's shown very little interest in leaving Theo's apartment. Overall he's a bit defensive and walled-off, as many young teenagers are.

Then he notices that there's a gaming console on sale in a nearby store, so with his trip almost over, he finally heads out on his own. 

Of course, Paul gets lost. But he meets some locals who help him out, makes new friends, learns something about himself, you know the drill. It's a little cliché, but for a young adult graphic novel that's absolutely fine. The moral lesson hits a bit too hard, but I probably only noticed because I'm approximately quadruple the age of the target reading demographic. 

In fact, if I had one criticism of Lost in Taiwan, it wouldn't be the moral theme -- it'd be the narrative taking for granted that white guys in Taiwan, whether they're adults or teens, will all easily and predictably meet the cute Taiwanese girls and women of their dreams. It's not that that's a bad thing per se, it's just that white-guy-Taiwanese-girl meet-cutes are perhaps a tad overdone? It's not the most interesting experience one can have in Taiwan. I say this with confidence, as I'm not a white guy who's met-cute a Taiwanese girl, and yet I've chosen to stay here for the better part of two decades and counting. 

But you know what? Whatever. The Maybe Romance? storyline never gets creepy, with Theo in a happy relationship and Paul seeming to be more friendly than romantic with his new local friend. That's a good thing -- it works better than an international teenage love story subplot ever could. 

Overall, Crilley is a talented artist and storyteller, and I'm both happy and grateful to have found a graphic novel targeting exactly the sort of reader I was buying for -- a near-tween who can read at a 7th grade level and has a Cool Wine Aunt who lives in Taiwan and brings her random gifts. 

Book Review: Voices from the Mountain

Voices from the Mountain (2014)

Husluman Vava, Auvina Kadresengan and Badai

Translated by Dr. Shu-hwa Wu

Edited by David R. Braden

Recently, I've taken a greater interest in Indigenous Taiwanese literature. One big difficulty is the dearth of such literature that's both available in English and actually in print. It's also crucial not to lump all "Taiwanese Indigenous literature" into one category, as though the writers are interchangeable. All in all, it can be hard to know where to start. 

This is where Voices from the Mountain comes in. Containing excerpts of longer works by three prominent Indigenous writers -- Badai, Husluman Vava and Auvini Kadresengan -- it's a fantastic introduction to Taiwanese Indigenous literature. Instead of committing to a whole novel, you're committing to some of the most interesting parts of that novel, to get a sense of that writer's storytelling style, wordsmithing and the topics they tend to write about.

The only real issue with this is that if you like what you read, the full novel is not necessarily available in translation. It's not really a chance to read more if your interest is piqued, unless you can read Mandarin. As for me, I can, but I find novels challenging and I'm probably not going to. If anyone knows where to get full translated versions of Husluman Vava's Tattooed Face, Auvini Kadresengan's Wild Lilies or Badai's Ginger Road in English, drop a comment below. 

The effort taken to translate these excerpts is commendable, and although I'd have recommended a bit more editing to smooth out some of the rough bits (for example, the odd clause and collocation in the second paragraph of page 64), all three authors were a joy to read. It's not a long volume, making it both a quick read and an excellent choice to throw in a carry-on when traveling. 

Because Voices from the Mountain is a book of excerpts, not a novel, it's hard to review it per se. Each excerpt and author is different. Instead, I'll offer some thoughts on the stories that have stuck with me. I remember Tattooed Face (the first excerpt from the longer book of the same name) most clearly: the characters learn that a person from a different tribe with different traditions is not someone to be feared but respected. We learn, however, that Indigenous communities are not a monolith. Each tribe and sub-communities within those tribes may have their own customs, history and culture. So often, Taiwan is divided into neat little groups: Hoklo, Hakka, the KMT diaspora, Indigenous. Perhaps some include foreigners, mostly Southeast Asian, Western or Chinese. (Yes, China is a foreign country and people from China are foreigners in Taiwan just as British people in the US are). 

But it's really so much more complicated than that. Sure, there are the Zhangzhou and Quanzhou Hoklo, and there are different groups of Hakka (I don't know much about this but I am told that the Hakka community in, say, Meinong is culturally a bit distinct from Hakka communities in Miaoli. But don't take my word for it, I'm hardly an expert). And, of course, Indigenous communities have distinctive cultural and linguistic traits beyond even the 16 recognized tribes. 

Think about it: when I moved to Taiwan in 2006, 12 tribes were recognized. By 2007, it was 13. Several tribes (including Makatao and Siraya) are locally recognized, and several more are unrecognized but claim distinct identity. How can we possibly say that "Indigenous Taiwanese" are one cultural unit when even official recognition is so often updated? 

Auvini Kadresengan's excerpts more obviously follow the same characters, though it was a bit hard to figure out what was happening when. I enjoyed learning about the intra-village dynamics that gave rise to Er-sai's family situation. If you ever had any notion that Indigenous villages were bastions of purity where everyone got along and nobody followed their individual impulses to community chagrin, then please read these stories and wash the eau de sauvage noble out of your perspective.

I've read Badai before, so I know I like his writing style. His plot arc in Sorceress Diguwan was a bit nebulous until the very end, but he's engaging and readable. More than the other authors, Badai's writing focuses on the magic or sorcery aspects of his community's beliefs -- and if I remember correctly, his mother was just such a sorceress. Of these excerpts, The Shaman has really stuck with me. In it, a sorceress's son is in an accident, and she attempts to use her powers to save him, as he is being airlifted to a hospital and attended to by medical personnel. I won't reveal the ending, but The Shaman is a riveting story. It explores how magic works in Puyuma culture, and what the requirements of limitations of practicing it are. By contrasting it with Western (or modern) medical interventions, Badai makes it clear that the ability to keep someone alive through magic is possible in that belief system, but leaves you wondering to what extent that belief is in the mother's head -- or to what extent it might be real, and potentially more powerful than a modern hospital.

I don't actually think this is intentional on Badai's part: we're not meant to wonder, necessarily, if the shaman's magic is real. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I got the distinct impression that this was simply my own interpretation, as an atheist who puts no stock in the supernatural. But you know what else? If I've learned anything about such things after 18 years in Taiwan, it's that you just have to accept there are unknowable things, and ways of looking at those unknowable things that deserve respect.

I recommend Voices from the Mountain, and not only because Taiwanese Indigenous literature in translation is rare enough to find. Even so, on its own it's a worthwhile read for anyone who wants to understand more about Taiwan's Indigenous communities -- their literatures, cultures and histories. 

Book review: "The Butcher's Wife" is a brutal read

Content note: this book is about sexual assault and domestic violence. I don't know what else to say. Don't read this book (or this post) if you aren't in a place where you can engage with such topics. 


* * * 


Years ago in a used bookstore in downtown Singapore, I came across a lonely copy of The Butcher's Wife, by Li Ang. 

Li cemented herself as one of my favorite Taiwanese authors with The Lost Garden, only recently available in English translation despite not being a new novel. The Butcher's Wife, however, is probably her most famous work. You're unlikely to find the translated edition in a library or bookshop, but Amazon seems to offer it. 

To be honest, it's barely a novel. I'd call it a novella. A very long short story. It's straightforward, and brutal. 

The brevity of the story renders it highly engaging. Longer works of Taiwanese fiction tend toward narrative structures that can be a little hard to follow. Stories branch out or coil around in a spiral, glancing at the main plot -- perhaps sideswiping it now and again -- until zeroing in at the last moment. (The Lost Garden certainly did this). The Butcher's Wife, in contrast, opens with an arresting scene. I mean that literally: Lin Shi spies her mother having sex with (or rather, being haved sex with) a soldier, whom we later learn has promised the malnourished woman two rice balls in exchange. 

It's not consensual, as even "willing" sex work in desperate circumstances -- when you wouldn't have agreed if you didn't need the money, food or housing -- generally isn't. But, according to the family members who hog-tie her to a pillar in the ancestral hall, that's not good enough: she didn't put up a fight, her dress was still intact and freshly pressed, so the act of a hungry woman is considered adultery, not desperation. 

This sets the story in motion, leading Lin Shi herself to be banished from her family and married off to a pig butcher. 

It's also the first time the story shows us that the status of women in Taiwanese society, or any patriarchal society (which is to say, just about all of them), isn't due to some sort of natural difference between the sexes or any notion of fairness. It's a horrific triad of economics, violent misogyny, and silence. 

Later on, Lin Shi herself remarks that she is not entirely unhappy married to "Pig Butcher Chen". She has food and shelter, which isn't exactly nothing in 1950s rural Taiwan, for a woman with a so-called questionable past. Chen Jiangshui, the butcher, spends his mornings slaughtering pigs, comes home and rapes Lin Shi almost daily, and then gambles and drinks for the rest of the day. Lin Shi almost begins to endure it, thinking her life isn't terrible. 

In short, she's starting to come around to the idea that men are terrible, but it's possible to grit your teeth through their abuse if the rest of your life is going well enough. 

But then we learn that Chen specifically enjoys the screaming of a trapped woman. Before marriage, he paid prostitutes generously to scream like a stuck pig; it's implied that he enjoys butchery for the same reason. His butcher's knife is implicitly compared to his penis, and the squeals of pigs trapped in the "V-shaped" butcher's table (hm) contrasted with the screams of his abused wife. 

This could be read narrowly as the story of one sadistic man who gets off on violence. But Lin Shi was put in this position because all of society seems to enjoy watching women suffer. If they didn't, why would they have created abusive structures like the ones Lin Shi and her mother are both forced to endure? 

I'm not an expert in the symbolism of nomenclature in Mandarin-language literature, but it seems significant to me that Lin Shi's name (林市) means "forest and city" -- so, everywhere, really. Chen Jiangshui's name (陳江水) means "river water", implying an ever-flowing river. Chen lives, of course, in Chencuo (陳厝), which is a village name for an ancestral clan who dominates the area. In other words, violence against women is everywhere. It never stops. It's not one shitty guy, it's every shitty person who lets it happen and patriarchy throughout history that has rendered it acceptable. 

You'd think my least favorite character in The Butcher's Wife would be Chen, but it's actually elderly neighbor Auntie Ah-wang. She's the elderly archetype of every gossipy bint I've ever known or read about, and I've known a few real-life versions of her. She's endured violence at the hands of patriarchy as well; her feet had at one point been bound, which has disabled her for life. However, they were unbound early (we aren't told why, but my educated guess is that the family couldn't afford to keep her sedentary at home; perhaps they needed her to work). She gets into an argument with her daughter-in-law, who attempts to stand up to her. Through drastic means, she wins. 

Auntie Ah-wang hides behind a nearby wall listening to Chen rape and abuse Lin Shi. She knows it is rape, because at first she offers the young bride a soothing ointment. Later, she tells all the women of the village that Lin's cries are of sexual ecstasy and that the girl is a slut just like her mother. }

This is where society is complicit in Chen's treatment of Lin: he wouldn't be able to treat her as he does if her neighbors objected. Not only do they condone his behavior, but praise him -- and his upholding of patriarchal structures, which include some respect for much older women -- while victim-blaming Lin Shi. Even in attempting to create some small measure of economic freedom when her husband stops bringing her food, she's mocked by other women and further abused by him.

It's not just men. It's certainly not just a few violent men. It's all of society, women included, and the economic structures that uphold patriarchy. Which, to be clear, are just about all economic structures. (Yes, even communism. Sorry tankies.) 

This sets the characters on a path to annihilation. The Butcher's Wife was written in the 1980s so it's hardly a spoiler, but I won't divulge the ending here in case you're unaware. 

The Butcher's Wife was difficult and disturbing to read. The characters reminded me so much of patriarchal violence I've seen and heard about in real life, from shades of Auntie Ah-wang in the pink-vested women who would hand out anti-gay literature during the referendum to the stories of domestic abuse and societal complicity that I heard about living in China. One woman I know married the only make foreigner in town, even though he too was pretty awful, because the entire town blamed her for divorcing her husband. "A man never beats a good wife, so she must have done something to deserve it," they apparently said. 

I am sadly reminded of a friend who took her life. Her boyfriend was not abusive, but her father kicked her out of the family, her mental health problems prevented her from holding down a job, her former boss was petty and vindictive, suing her for something I am quite certain he knew she never did, and she didn't receive nearly enough social support. Her friends tried to help, but ultimately we failed. I'll never fully forgive myself for this, and I'll always struggle more than I otherwise would to read stories like this of society failing women. I suspect most women have experienced a trauma that affects them in some way, as well. 

Lin Shi doesn't even get that much acknowledgement. She takes her fate into her own hands, and for it, she is condemned by the village for being the only one at fault. Leading the pack, of course, is Auntie Ah-Wang. 

I have one final observation to make. It's a fairly obvious one. Sometimes I come across foreigners in Taiwan who think this is a gentle society of school-obsessed nerds who, I dunno, study engineering and drink tea in fine porcelain cups and never do crime. This is simply not true. Taiwan has higher domestic violence statistics than you might think, though they are lower than in Australia, which has a comparable population. Cases have been rising, not falling. Spousal abuse was only outlawed in 1998 (!), meaning it was still legal when The Butcher's Wife was written. Marital rape was outlawed at roughly the same time. There was no law against stalking until 2021, which is terrifying.

When I first moved here I felt like Taiwan was a crime-free society! Of course this is ridiculous, but just the ability to safely walk around alone at all hours of the night was astounding to me. I've been sexually harassed and assaulted in India, nearly mugged twice in Washington DC, followed and catcalled in countless other cities. 

But no, patriarchy is everywhere. Even seemingly 'safe' Taiwan. The Butcher's Wife may have been written in the 1980s, about what I presume was the 1950s (given the presence of the soldier in the beginning of the story). But it tells a tale as old as time: it's not just men who are beasts. It's all of us. 

As beautiful as the ringworm on her body: a review of Sorceress Diguwan

Sorceress Diguwan by Badai

I'm a blockhead.

I don't do stream of consciousness, and I'm not a fan of I like novels with intentionally beguiling names like Autumn of the Sixteenth Nephrologist. Novels that your white mom would read in her book club that the gals winkingly called "Prosé" because they meet to discuss books and drink rosé. I like novels that are creative, but also follow a novel structure predictable enough that when it's subverted, you go "oh so like Arundhati Roy did that one time." 

I'm also sucker for a surprising line. I don't mean those postmodern writerly affectations where being out of place or saying something shocking just makes you sound like all the other writers who've already done that. 

A novel doesn't actually have to be perfectly paced or structured or even particularly surprising, if it's different enough to keep my attention. Give me enough of an undercurrent and I'll happily float down even the longest roman fleuves.

So, did I like Badai's Sorceress Diguwan? I did. 

It was not a perfectly constructed novel. It begins with an intriguing premise; in 1917, the wife of the youngest son of a Hoklo family living on Puyuma Indigenous land commits suicide, and the sorceresses of Damalagaw springs into action to ensure her choice doesn't bring evil spirits to the tribe. The most powerful among these sorceresses is the playful Diguwan, who happens to be drunk on homemade wine when we first meet her.

As the villagers deal with the patriarch of the family, Japanese authorities in nearby Taitung grow suspicious and vow to keep an eye on their activities. 

Then there's a middle section describing a long training excursion for young Indigenous men. I didn't really see how this was connected to the previous plot: was it simply describing the events of one year without concern for whether they were connected or not? I never did figure this out. Many of the same characters are featured, but they're not doing anything that seems particularly related to everything that had just transpired.

The events from the beginning of the novel do come back around to affect the third act. By then, however, I was struggling to remember who some of the characters were. Certainly the Japanese officials had not been mentioned for so long that I couldn't really remember who was whom. When one of them appeared in the village, I had to flip back to the beginning to figure out why it was relevant. It didn't help that most of the characters were underdeveloped; I had nothing specific to remember them by.  All the middle section did (for me) was illustrate that Diguwan had powers most sorceresses did not. I don't know that this point required one-third of a novel to make.

The last part of the novel centered around Indigenous-Japanese and inter-tribal conflicts regarding homemade guns. Those final scenes were indeed riveting, and I was glad I pushed through the novel to get there. The Hoklo family showed up again too, but the suicide -- a key event in the beginning -- seemed to play no significant role. After some discussion in the beginning of how the women of Damalagaw were treated better by the men than Hoklo women were treated in their society, I still felt that sexism was an accepted norm. There was even a young, beautiful female character who was having trouble finding love because she was considered too 'smart, intelligent, capable and somehow powerful'! (I'm spoiling it a bit, but it was hinted that she did, in fact, find a mate, but at least for me, it's left unclear. The story simply moves on). 

Other plot threads are left hanging; the main inter-village conflict is settled, but another one looms with Naibeluk, which is deeper in the mountains. That never quite comes to fruition.

The translation is littered with mistakes and oddities; it was edited, but even accounting for the notion that an award-winning manuscript should retain as much of the author's voice as possible in translation, it needed another run-through. 

But then the titular sorceress is said to appreciate the marks on a tree that were "as beautiful as the ringworm on her body." 

That ringworm lives rent-free in my head...

...wait, that sounds wrong. Anyway. I love a great line. It was weird, it was unexpected, and -- I suppose rather like a parasitic worm -- I was hooked. 

So far, I've made it sound like I came to appreciate a deeply flawed novel. I suppose that's true. After all, it is flawed, and I appreciate it. Frankly, I appreciate that it's a novel at all. There is a fair amount of Indigenous Taiwanese writing available in English translation. Not enough, but perhaps more than you'd expect if you didn't go looking for it. Most of it is not in novel form. There are many short stories available, and at least one book that's purely stream-of-consciousness. I chose not to purchase that one at eslite when I read that it was praised for having essentially no punctuation. Like, two periods in the whole thing. 

Innovation is great and all, but I like punctuation, and I like novels. I'm a blockhead, remember? Perhaps that's a me problem, but it doesn't make it any less true. 

There's more to like about Sorceress Diguwan than some fun prose and the fact that it exists, though. If you want insight into what Taitung-area Indigenous life was like in the Japanese colonial era, you probably can't do better. Badai was born in the 1960s and so isn't writing an eyewitness account, but the story is drawn from interviews with tribal elders. 

Badai presents a world that is certainly culturally different to the West, but also quite different from Hoklo and Hakka settler society. It's not just that the story is about Puyuma people living in Puyuma villages. Everything from the treatment of women to the use of sorcery to methods of conflict resolution and pathways to adulthood are different. The ways in which Indigenous villages selectively adopted ideas from other groups -- from farming techniques to straw shoes -- was fascinating in its intentionality, at least as described in the novel. 

Some of it did challenge my Western sensibilities. There's a scene where Mawneb, the gun manufacturer, insists that the person suspected of stealing his favorite gun should prove their innocence, rather than insist Mawneb must prove them guilty (as the latter is impossible to do...or so it seems). I'm not sure if that's how society in those villages truly functioned, or just a conceit of Mawneb, but I'll admit I'm still a fan of innocent until proven guilty. 

The scene along the trail, however, was excellent reading. I might be annoyed that the initial catalyst -- the suicide of the abused Hoklo woman -- ceased to play an important role in the story so early on. But ringworm and all, Sorceress Diguwan is worth reading.

Book Review: Taiwan Studies Revisited

None of the online images were any good, so here's my own

In the past, I'd found it difficult to access the Routledge series on Taiwan research. The hardcovers are expensive (they're priced for university libraries) and it can take time for more affordable paperbacks to come out. There have been improvements in this situation, though. Paperbacks are coming out more frequently, making more titles available. I've thoroughly enjoyed reading Taiwan's Green Parties, Social Movements Under Ma Ying-jeou -- which I read years ago but didn't review -- and now Taiwan Studies Revisited. I'm currently working my way through The Spirit of 1895. If I can find a more affordable copy of Perverse Taiwan, it's next on my list. 

Today, I want to talk about Taiwan Studies Revisited. The central concept of the book revolves around authors of well-regarded books about Taiwan from decades past discussing the research and career trajectories that led to their publications, their arguments at the time, reviews and criticisms and how they feel their ideas have held up. There is another line of synergy running through each chapter, centering on the use of "China", as compared to Taiwan, as a conceptual touchstone, and how authors may have felt obligated or pressured to position their work as China-focused research.

Throughout, contributors also reflect on the evolution of Taiwan Studies over the last several decades, from the 'desert' of the 1990s to the relative prestige of today. Is Taiwan Studies still a marginalized area of inquiry, at best subsumed under China Studies, at worst seen as a career dead end? Taiwan Studies Revisited doesn't directly answer this question, but does reflect on it from multiple angles. Generally speaking, the outlook is positive. 

Featured academics include Simon Long, Melissa Brown, Anru Lee, Henning Klöter, Thomas Gold, Dafydd Fell and Michael Hsiao, among others, and was edited by Fell and Hsiao. It would take forever to recap each chapter; with regrets, I'll discuss only a selection of the ones I found particularly thought-provoking.

Overall, I enjoyed the 'recaps' of all of these fantastic works. Taiwan Studies Revisited can act as a sort of a collected Cliff's Notes of important research from decades past, either refreshing one's memory of books read long ago or giving you ideas about what to prioritize reading next. For example, Gold's chapter was a solid review of State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle, which I read ages ago, before I was doing book reviews. Brown's chapter focused on Is Taiwan Chinese? made me move that book -- sitting on my shelf but as-yet unread -- to the top of my list.  

While I was less interested in the conditions that precipitated the authors' specific research or their paths to becoming Taiwan-focused academics, it was notable to me how many started out interested in China but moved to Taiwan -- in Gold's case, finding the topic too interesting to abandon in favor of China. Yes, many encountered pressure to position their publications within a China framework as research on China tends to be higher-profile and get more attention than Taiwan, but those who actually began by wanting to focus on China and shifted toward Taiwan had the most interesting stories. 

I'm aware that Taiwan-based academics have held this debate among themselves: is Taiwan Studies part of a greater China-focused research area, what does it mean that to study Taiwan? Many must enter or work within the China Studies programs at their universities -- is this acceptable? 

Not that it matters, but I have my own opinion on this: if you are forced by circumstance to work within a China-focused framework but are aware of the inherent problem with that positioning, I have all the sympathy in the world. We do what we can in the circumstances we are handed, and not every university has a Taiwan Studies program. 

If, however, one actually sees oneself as ultimately within the China Studies paradigm, but studies Taiwan, then -- well, the kindest thing I can say is that I'm not impressed. I view all China-based observations, research, journalism and approaches with suspicion. If one actively positions Taiwan as part of some greater China-focused area of inquiry, to me that is a fundamental misunderstanding of Taiwan's uniqueness, even as I admit that China has greatly (but not entirely) influenced Taiwan. I will always take such work with an entire Tainan salt mountain of skepticism.

In other words, it's understandable to do what one can within a non-ideal academic environment. Moving from China to Taiwan-focused inquiry and comprehending what that means is also not a problem. In fact, it should be welcomed. But to see Taiwan-based research as ultimately one aspect of China-focused research, if that research is not directly related to the influences China has had on Taiwan? I'm out. 

Another thread I noted that spanned several chapters centered on social welfare in Taiwan. This is a good example of what one can learn from Taiwan Studies Revisited as several books across multiple areas of research are brought together.

It comes up in Joseph Wong's chapter on Healthy Democracies and Welfare Politics in Taiwan, Dafydd Fell's reflection on Party Politics in Taiwan, and Mikael Mattlin's discussion of Politicized Society. The development of, say, National Health Insurance (NHI) was an interplay of political and social forces: while it was ultimately promulgated by the KMT, early proponents and activists pushing for a nationalized health insurance system actually stemmed from the Tangwai, which eventually coalesced into the DPP. It's too simplistic to say that the KMT merely stole the opposition's idea for their own electoral gain (though in a sense, they did) -- the "race to the top" of benefit offerings was the result of both parties trying to buff up their social welfare bona fides during elections.

That said, before universal programs were pushed, the KMT regularly enacted highly discretionary welfare programs. Many citizens received little or no benefit from these, and they effectively created support blocs for the KMT (the book doesn't say this outright, but it is a logical conclusion and was borne out by the fight over pension reform several years ago). Here's what it does say: in changing this, groups that received the most benefits did "lose out" as their extra privileges were eroded, but the outcome was more universal -- though imperfect -- access.  

Here's something I didn't know: Wong notes that at one point, the KMT attempted to offload NHI through privatization. I believe this would have been disastrous. Fortunately, it never happened: opposition parties and social groups kept NHI under government purview, which probably kept it affordable and accessible for citizens. 

With that, I want to make an appeal: let us never again declare that the KMT should get all the credit for programs like NHI. Certainly, they enacted it, but they were not the only player in that game. 

I also found Melissa Brown's chapter to be of specific interest, in terms of both pressure to orient Taiwan-focused research as being under a China umbrella, and the specific issues women face in academia. Brown was the only female contributor to talk about sexism, but when a woman says she's faced discrimination, I tend to believe her. To see her tackle this issue head-on and even name some names was phenomenal (though I am sure those named were less than enthused). It's difficult to do this: as a woman, I know what it's like to ask myself, "is it really just me? Am I simply wrong, or less capable as an individual? Or is this an issue of unexamined sexism in which my ideas are given less credence simply because I'm a woman?" It can be hard to tell, and when I face what I feel is systemic sexism (and I have), I still struggle with being sure. 

Even if one is sure, it's even more difficult to speak up. Women who do so are regularly called irrational, emotional, "just angry", troublesome. People do say it's just us -- this or that woman is simply jealous or bitter that her individual star doesn't shine as bright, and it has nothing to do with her sex -- even when it's not true. It's hard to fight. An individual woman is not necessarily as capable as any given man simply because she's a woman, just as an individual man is not necessarily better at academia than any given woman simply because he is a man. You might be sure, but good luck trying to convince others of that. 

To come out and say it takes courage, and willingness to throw entire jungles' worth of shade. I'm here for it. 

One can say that Brown has not experienced much sexism -- after all, she wrote and published a fairly well-known book in the field, which was considered worthy enough to be included in this volume. Here is why I think Brown might have a point, though: Is Taiwan Chinese? -- a title she herself takes some issue with -- was published in 2004. It makes a very clear case for Taiwanese identity and elucidates the dynamics underpinning it. It's 2023, and people are still debating these dynamics as though she hadn't said anything at all. As though Taiwanese people "don't know who they are" because of how they answer the status quo poll, while the Taiwanese identity poll, which shows a clear consensus, is so often ignored. I find it a bit weird, to be honest. 

I also enjoyed this chapter because, as a woman not in, but interested in, Taiwan Studies, it's great to see women like Melissa Brown and Anru Lee -- whose focus is more domestic, on women and labor in Taiwan -- in publications like these. Often, I have been disappointed by other prominent Taiwan-focused women who take weird KMT-ish stances and pretend they're objective, or propagate viewpoints I think are simply wrong -- i.e. that somehow Taiwan and the US are "provoking" China rather than the truth: it's other way around. China creates the tensions, China decides what the provocations are, China expects everyone to dance around their arbitrary red lines. I want female role models who don't buy into this trap. 

There are a few more observations from other chapters worth mentioning. Gold is quite correct that Taiwan's story is more sociopolitical than economic. I'm happy to see that he finds Taiwan interesting in its own right. The interplay of private grief with public issues was fascinating in Lee's chapter, which focused on the 25 Ladies' Tomb in Kaohsiung. Long's chapter was interesting, but I found some of the conclusions faintly ridiculous. He outlines possibilities for the future which include "reunification on Beijing's terms" (as though Taiwan will ever agree to peaceful annexation by the CCP) or "unification on a compromise" (as though the PRC is willing to compromise and it would actually allow Taiwan sufficient autonomy). Most of them are not possible, and that should be immediately apparent. 

Klöter's chapter was of specific interest to me, as I'm currently learning Taiwanese with a private tutor (my Taiwanese still sucks, but I am getting somewhere.) I had always assumed use of a Romanized writing system was simply an invention of missionaries and not ideal. To learn that many view it as superior because it doesn't use Chinese characters -- that it's preferred because it's not rooted in Chinese culture and renders Taiwanese as something more unique to Taiwan -- was both fascinating and, to be honest, kind of cool. 

Mattlin points out several things I already knew, but it's great to see them in publication: that the KMT party elite's self-conception of their 'right to rule' (and yes, the KMT does in fact feel that way, although I suppose you could argue the DPP does as well albeit for very different reasons) is rooted in the system and symbolism of the ROC, which is why they fight so hard to preserve it. Mattlin calls the ROC "the raison d'être" for the KMT, and I can't deny that he was spot on then as he is now. 

All in all, Taiwan Studies Revisited is absolutely worth reading, either to see where the contributors stand now vis-à-vis their past work and how it's held up over time, or to get a condensed version of a range of books to help you better understand the field, or simply pick which book to read next.

Book Review: The Membranes

          

I cracked open the slim 2021 translation of Chi Ta-wei’s The Membranes on a transpacific flight, after a fairly rough but ultimately successful check-in experience. The flight itself was fine; other than the unuseable headphones, it was if anything an above-average experience. I was excited to see family and take a fun side-trip to Mexico. But, after two leg-aching hours of standing in various lines, some of which could have been avoided if Asiana Airlines had merely redeployed their human staff to check passengers in rather than forcing them through a robotic self check-in, I had to wonder — did I love travel, or hate it? 

There’s no actual duality here. The experiences, good and bad, don’t really matter. How I feel about them. Quite literally, what the experience ultimately means is all in my head.

Protected or trapped by a membrane of lightweight material as we arc across continents, I abandoned the movie and turned to the book. Originally written in the 1990s but only recently translated, The Membranes seemed like both a glimpse into the past — almost like historical science fiction — as well as a semi-dystopian glimpse into an imagined future for humanity.

The Membranes reads more like a novella than a novel, and takes just a few hours to read. It’s a very “quiet” novel: not much dialogue, mostly taking place inside the head of the main character, Momo. It uses the conflicted relationship between Momo and her mother on the even of Momo’s thirtieth birthday to explore an imagined society in the year 2100 in which climate change has ruined the surface and humans live under domes in the sea — one of many ‘membrane’ themes in the book, emphasizing its internality. 

How Momo, an introverted woman running a skincare salon (well, there’s more to that but I won’t spoil it) interacts with the world — or doesn’t — shows readers what life under the sea is like. Real animal pets are rare, as are plants and animals that humans didn’t deem useful. Skincare specialists are practically celebrities in an appearance-obsessed society and cyborgs who may or may not have human-like intelligence fight wars for humans on the surface. Mega-corporations with friendly faces but ultimately monopolistic goals matter more than people. The role of those corporations in perpetuating human-created “-isms” is explored as well. The ultimate membrane, in a move that surprised me, turns out not to be a hollow capitalist skincare thing, but something far more insidious. 

For a novel written in the 90s, The Membranes is visionary in its queer progressivism, as well. Beyond the usual critiques of unchecked capitalism, there isn’t a single straight couple among the handful of characters. Two women adopting a daughter is so normal that the narrative itself doesn’t remark on it. Rather like The Expanse, it shows a world where the petty shit we shouldn’t be fighting over now —  like who and how people choose to love — has mostly been resolved, but powerful government and corporate interests (with the corporate ones being ultimately more powerful). It turns racism on its head by showing a world where white people, seen as inferior as their melanin-reduced skin cannot afford sufficient protection against the sun, are excluded from major institutions. It includes technology that was rare or theoretical in the 90s, such as cloud computing, portable devices and micro-trackers, but which in 2023 are now seen as a normal part of life. 

Transgenderism is treated as normal and unremarkable as well; the novel lingers on it only slightly longer, ultimately deciding that gender goes beyond biology and gender binaries are restrictive rather than helpful.

Remember, again, that this was written in the 1990s. In 2023 it’s fairly normal to explore these topics. In the 90s, in Asia, this was radical stuff. If it reminds you of Chiu Miao-jin in length, style and referencing…it should. I suspect that’s intentional. Chi and Chiu were writing around the same time, and probably ran in many of the same circles. Unlike Chiu, Chi, fortunately, is still with us. 

And, of course, the novel is quietly, well, Taiwanese. Or rather, a dream of what Taiwan could be, or was hoped to be, by 2100 (if Taiwan existed in a dome under the sea, that is). In the early 1990s, just a few years out from the death of Nylon Deng, mentioning “huge” monuments such as plaques commemorating the 228 Incident was a bold, even radical statement. Showing Taiwan as the key financial hub of Southeast Asia while slyly referencing Taiwan’s complicated but ultimately special relationship with Japan, was an imaginative projection of hopes for the future. Some of these things came more or less true, some not — 228 Incident recognition is normalized now, but Taiwan never quite became a regional hub.

I’ve been avoiding the key point of The Membranes, because it’s so hard to talk about it without spoiling the big twist. The peaches Momo loves to eat, the method of Momo’s birth (referencing both Chinese and Japanese folk tales and idioms), the undersea domes — these are not the only membranes in the novel. Early in the narrative we learn that Momo had a devastating childhood illness that she barely survived. She had a custom-made android friend whose role is left obscure. Ultimately, we’re forced to ask ourselves first whether artificial intelligence should be considered human, and then whether a human brain in an android body is trapping the android in the human, or the human in the android.

Then, there’s a less predictable twist, which I won’t begin to spoil. I will say what it asks of you: to consider whether what your brain experiences is the real world, and whether it matters if it’s what you know. Are your emotions real and complex if they are in reaction to ultimately false events? Is it right to have your fate decided for you, and is it worth it to hand so much power to massive corporations in exchange for astounding technological advances? Do they make our lives better, or worse?

If there’s one criticism I have of the book, it’s that it was too short, and a little impersonal. Much of it read as a summary of a story, rather than a story itself. It could have been three times as long, or longer, as it explored Momo’s life and the lead-up to her thirtieth birthday in real time rather than a sort of gloss of what happened and is happening in the story. I understand why it was written this way — it all becomes clear when you hear the full story of what happened when Momo was ten, making a full, deep moment-by-moment story hard to tell from her perspective. But, hey, I just think it could have been longer and more richly developed: a novel, rather than a novella. 

That said, Taiwanese literature in general tends to be a little too meandering for me, more about scenes and impressions rather than a clear story or forward-moving plot. Chi avoids this, telling a quickly-driven narrative in a terse and succinct — perhaps overly succinct — way. 

Ultimately, however, you should read The Membranes. If you’re inclined to think that Taiwan is a wholly conservative culture, or that there’s not enough literary creativity or progressive politics, Chi Ta-wei’s novel should quickly disabuse you. It also tells us something else: we need more Taiwanese literature in translation — and to not call it Chinese, but Taiwanese — and not 30 years after it is originally published.

Book Review: Bestiary

I have a flaw: while I’m fine with innovative storylines and narrative choices, I prefer novels that follow a conventional plot structure. I don’t like meandering. I like strong characterization and clear narrative flow, choosing it every time over highly metaphorical or poetic prose. 

This makes it somewhat difficult to read Taiwanese literature, which is far more tolerant of that ‘meandering’ and heavily-applied metaphor, but I accept it, because I want to read Taiwanese literature. Perhaps one could say that this pushes a reader out of their West-centric literary comfort zone, opens the mind. And perhaps it does. Certainly, it’s offered more chances for surprise, revelation or unexpected fondness. Yet I still prefer the comfort food of a conventional page-turner. 

All this is to say, I ended up enjoying K-Ming Chang’s Bestiary — a modern, fabulist novel that features Taiwan but takes place mostly in the United States — more than I thought I would. 

Especially as it took me nearly three months to finish. 

I want to start with what I didn’t like about Bestiary, so I can end with what I absolutely did. 

Chang’s prose is distinctive and singular; these are reasons to love it, and also to struggle with it. It’s loaded with simile, to the point of overload until you realize the choice is conscious. Everything is like something else. Nothing is ever just what it is. Nothing is ever described in a straightforward way: you get the impression that the family, Taiwanese living in Arkansas, are very poor, and you get some idea of how they’re connected to missionaries. It’s unclear whose father is whose, which generation moved to the US, whether the mother or daughter is narrating or exactly where they are when things happen. 

There is a lot of effluent: snot, blood, sweat, urine, and other human juices practically soak the pages. This leads to an extended metaphor about holes: in the body, in the ground, things that birth and excrete, as well as ingest. It takes awhile to get to the central plot: the daughter in the story starts turning into a tiger, which is related to an old story from Taiwan (or is it China?). Aunts have snakes in their bellies, a brother tries to fly. It’s an extremely human-body centric series of fables set in something like the modern day. In fact, I wasn’t exactly sure when it was set, but my brain kept defaulting to the late 20th century. Why? No idea. 

The starting point of the novel is the fable or children’s tale of Hu Gu Po (虎姑婆), though the actual story is never told directly in Bestiary. According to the fable, Hu Gu Po eats children to become or stay human. The only way to avoid this is to lock the door and sleep when you should. A child who isn’t sleeping lets her into the house because she’s disguised as her aunt. Hu Gu Po then eats her brothers ears and toes, and is going to eat the girl until she’s tricked into boiling herself.

This is obviously a terrifying story to tell children (aren’t most fairy tales?) but aren't Western ones similarly horrid?

Other fables play out in Bestiary, exploring the difficult ties of family and history, tying in Taiwanese Indigenous fables with the 1949 diaspora and what the protagonist’s grandmother lived through, being fed stories (and more than stories) that didn’t come from her land or people.

Of course, something has to happen among all this simile-and-metaphor laden fabulism, and indeed, the protagonist has to use her powers as Hu Gu Po in a dramatic confrontation with her grandmother. I’ll leave the actual plot there partly to avoid spoilers, but partly because the plot arc, so intent on its similes and metaphors, was not entirely clear — at least to me. 

In other words, I felt character development and straightforward plot points were sacrificed for fabulism to the point that I’m not entirely clear on why the climactic moment played out exactly as it did, and it sure took awhile to get there. That is, it made sense within the story of Hu Gu Po but felt a little unearned in Bestiary.

Only in retrospect did I see the attempt to escalate the story’s tension to that moment, I didn’t feel very much for the characters as individuals: they felt more like stand-ins or human symbols. Nor did I feel much for the letters from Ama that kept popping out of the holes in the backyard (if this sentence is not clear, honestly, you have to read the book). They were clearly intended to be stream-of-consciousness, but that style often reads to me as simply not making a lot of sense. 

It’s probably me, though. I’m too bricklike. Square, literal. 

You might think from all this that I’m forcing myself to say I enjoyed Bestiary  — like a tasting menu at one of those fabulously expensive restaurants that turns steak into frozen bubbles or some such, when all I wanted was a bagel. That’s not the case! 

The prose also contained moments of pure beauty, both in terms of wordsmithing and cutting to the heart of history, society and family:

I told myself that it wasn’t stealing if the thing had only been stolen once. Two acts of thievery canceled out, became something more like salvaging. 

Her fist flying into the door like a dumb bird. 

It’s summer and the sky is vomiting.

We met inside our mouths. I found the seam under her tongue and undid it. 

We have no history, only stories. 

She asked if I knew the story of Hu Gu Po, a story about the cost of having a body. The cost was butchery. She said there were no tigers on her island and there had never been. The story had been born somewhere else, brought over by men and stuffed into the bellies of women who didn’t want it. The women gave birth anyway, to daughters that did not resemble them. 

It’s just gorgeous writing, isn’t it? I’d say good enough to struggle through a story that meanders a bit too much, plot points that don’t always feel earned, and a too-heavy dose of metaphor. Not every simile works as well as these; some gargle awkwardly. I got a little tired of all the bodily fluids. But the lines that sing are downright hypnotic. 

I’m not being quite fair when I say it took me three months to read Bestiary. It took me three months to get through the first half or so. I finished the second half in two days. After a certain point, it pulls you along, if you let it. 

I’m not sure how much a reader who hasn’t spent time in Taiwan would get from the layered meaning, but as someone who lives here, the story does speak volumes — again, if you let it. 

The iconic Taiwan Store (台灣ê店) has to move -- so let's support them!

I was gonna drop in and take my own picture but I ended up forgetting to actually do so, even when I stopped by. So, here's a screen grab from FTV.

FTV reported recently that the Taiwan Store (台灣ê店) on Xinsheng South Road was being forced to relocate. 

This brought up a lot of memories for me, though I'm hardly the only one and my memories are hardly the most important.

Sometime in my first few years in Taiwan, I heard about The Taiwan Store. Open since 1993, I started visiting regularly. It had an old-school vibe, run by an elderly couple. Although my Chinese wasn't great then (to be fair, I still think it isn't), there was a section with English books about Taiwan, and souvenirs and t-shirts on sale as well as books. Sometimes I'd just drop by on my way to a cafe to peruse what they had, and for awhile they were the only store in Taiwan that reliably had books about Taiwan in English. 

I finally wrote about it in 2011, though admittedly the post is quite mediocre. 

Other little things drew me to the place. When they started making Taiwan passport covers (omitting the Republic of China words or symbol in favor of a more Taiwan-centric design), I was one of the first to get one, though I've never tried to travel abroad with it covering my blue passport. One year, Su Beng did a Lunar New Year calligraphy scroll: very simple, just 台灣獨立, his signature and an outline of the main island. The Taiwan Store gave those out for free: I took two, one for a good friend and one for myself. Although it's just a mass printed image on red paper, I eventually had mine framed. Su Beng has since passed away; there will never be another. 

We'd chat with Mr. Wu, the owner, who was delighted at any foreigner who spoke any amount of Taiwanese at all. My Taiwanese always failed after the first few sentences, and he seemed to prefer carrying on in English rather than Mandarin, some of the time at least. 

I'd bring friends in there and we'd find all sorts of items: a Taiwanese language-learning book created by my friend Ting (I immediately bought a copy), a CD full of the folk songs written by former President Chen Shui-bian from his prison cell, Chthonic t-shirts. It was one of the easiest places to get a Chthonic album, on old-school CD, if you wanted the Taiwanese version of the songs, not the English lyrics available on music-purchasing apps, back when those were a thing. The Taiwan Store has consistently been one o the only places to find a copy of A Borrowed Voice, detailing the support foreigners gave the Taiwan human rights movement under Martial Law. 

Even when Southern Materials re-opened nearby with an impressive selection of English-language books about Taiwan, I'd still pop by the Taiwan store. Their 'English corners' were a bit different, after all. One can reliably pick up a copy of Taiwan's Imagined Geography at Southern Materials, but the personal account of John Dodd, a tea merchant who witnessed the French blockade of Taiwan in the 1880s? That was Taiwan Store stuff. 

The rare titles on offer extend to their much larger Chinese-language selection. Anyone looking for something truly uncommon about Taiwan would find it here. It's one of the few bookshops that seriously attempts to incorporate books on Indigenous issues in Taiwan and promote Taiwanese language learning. 

Not long ago, hearing about their troubles, I started returning more frequently. I referenced a fellow foreigner whose Taiwanese is far better than mine -- "tall guy, blondish, actually speaks Taiwanese, always buying lots of books" -- and Mr. Wu knew him immediately. I've begun buying everything I'd eyed in the past but passed over: the John Dodd account, a book about Taiwanese decorative iron window grilles, a book that breaks down the architectural features of Taiwanese historic sites, well above my reading level but rendered comprehensible by the illustrations. A t-shirt, a keychain, a cupholder. I never did buy that CD of Chen Shui-bian folk songs.

It's not an exaggeration to say that while I don't know the owners well, they are some of my favorite acquaintances in Taipei.

So to hear the worst possible news: a drop in business from the pandemic, yes, but also the plain old capitalist calculus of landlords -- it cracked my heart a little. This is what happens when businesses rent their storefronts rather than owning them outright. The landlord wanted Mr. Wu and his bookstore out, and jacked up the rent accordingly. 

It's doubtful the landlord actually wants more rent. He probably wants to redevelop the property, and the rental fees from Mr. Wu could never possibly compare to the wealth he'd accrue simply by tearing the whole thing down and redeveloping. It's not evil, per se, but it is cold and calculating, perhaps if I'm feeling ungenerous it's avaricious, even. One of the deadly sins but not an unforgivable one. And yet, I don't like that landlord much at all.

According to the FTV piece, Mr. Wu doesn't intend to close permanently. He said his business is still the only Taiwan-themed bookshop in, well, Taiwan. And Taiwan does in fact need a bookshop dedicated to itself.

I agree. In any other country that the world recognizes as a country this idea -- we need our own bookshop with books about about our own country -- might seem annoyingly patriotic, perhaps even alarmingly nationalistic. You wouldn't catch me in The America Store. But for a country that has to fight for recognition internationally and whose voices, national identity and even right to self-determination and identification are so often erased or stomped on by others? Yes, you do need that. 

Mr. Wu is 79, though -- not an easy age to make such a big change -- and isn't quite sure where he will move. It won't be immediate: the current location will remain open through April, when the NT$5,000 government vouchers expire. In the meantime, he's been packing up books from shelves he installed himself.

In the FTV article, he spoke of times when taxi drivers would recognize him and say "you own a store dedicated to Taiwan -- I don't need money to drive you." He talked about the memories the store held for him, and the landlord's complaints about the "bad government" (which implies that perhaps Mr. Wu and the landlord have differing political views as well. I don't know if that contributed to the corresponding rent hike.) 

In a Humans of Taipei feature, he elaborated a bit more. After getting his PhD from Columbia, he was teaching at National Cheng-chi University when he was approached by strangers on a hike in the early 1980s, before the end of Martial Law. He was asked about a professor (Bruce Jacobs) considered a possible subversive -- do you know him? He said he did not, but felt an implicit warning: Taiwan is still not a safe place to be. He left Taiwan again and didn't return until 1987, after Martial Law had been lifted. At protests and events, he'd meet someone selling books about Taiwan in a sort of temporary set-up. He asked why they didn't open a bookshop, to which the man replied, "why don't you open one?"

Since trying to learn about Taiwan could be difficult -- books, when they existed, were hard to track down, and it was simply not easy to learn about Taiwan -- he did just that. Business started out strong, although some of his own writing (e.g. on the 228 Incident) was ignored by wider academic circles because he dared to simply call Taiwan an independent country. 

However, he lamented not long before the landlord came in for the kill, business hadn't been doing so well in recent years. People weren't buying or reading as much, he said, but it was still worth it to him to keep the store open.

Now, even that is ending, although an Indigenous friend of his is opening a branch in Taitung.

But Taiwan still needs, well...a Taiwan Store. 

So how can we support Mr. Wu as he looks for a way to relocate his business? Obviously, by stopping by and buying out some of his stock. Give him more liquidity and fewer goods to move. If you don't read Chinese, there are still all manner of t-shirts, banners and souvenirs you can pick up, even as he begins packing. 

I don't know if there's other help they need with moving or finding a new place, and assume they have friends and a support network for that. But every book or item you buy now makes it a little easier, and a little more certain, that after this April there will still be a Taiwan Store in Taiwan.

Here's the address: 

10673台北市新生南路三段76巷6號1F 

1st Floor #6, Lane 76 Xinsheng South Road Section 3

It's across the street from NTU, in the same lane as Guang Yi Cafe and very near the gray Lutheran Church that put up all those anti-gay posters in 2018.  The closest MRT is Gongguan.

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.