Pat Frank's Review of A Pail of Oysters

The text of the review of A Pail of Oysters cited above. Many of you will know Pat Frank for his novel Alas, Babylon, the tale of a nuclear war between the USSR and the US, and its aftermath.

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Light on Formosa "A Pail of Oysters," by Vern Sneider (G. P. Putnam. 311 pp. $3.50), records the lije and aspirations of a simple Formosan peasant. Pal Frank, who reviews it here, is the author of "Hold Back the Night," a novel of the Korean War, and "The Long Way Round," the memoirs of a Far Eastern correspondent.


By Pat Frank

IT is not often that one is privileged to read a novel like the new one by the author of "The Teahouse of the August Moon." Vern Sneider's "A Pail of Oysters" combines beauty of expression, originality of thought, and contemporary historical importance; it is a bright light thrust into the infected peritonium of Formosa, into a region murky with propaganda. It is a true light, which shows nothing as sheer black or white, but in many shades of gray.

It is a novel that will infuriate some, and delight others. It may be denounced by the China Lobby's kept journalists and legislators, yet it may also be vilified by the Communists. Its theme is quite simple. The people of Formosa are Formosans, not Chinese Communists or Chinese Nationalists. Since about the last person a visiting American is likely to meet in Formosa is a true Formosan, Mr. Sneider presents an entirely new picture of the strategically and politically important island. Formosa is more than a pawn in the world struggle. It is at least a Castle, but within the Castle its rightful owners (if you believe in Woodrow Wilson's selfdetermination of peoples) are at best servants and at worst slaves. The Castle is presently the property of Chiang Kai-shek. If Chiang were not in occupancy, and protected by the American Navy, it would be subject to Mao Tse-tung. Mr. Sneider carefully points out the similarities between the two, as dictators, and operators of police states. Strangely, their methods stem from the same source—the Kremlin.

Among all Formosans Li Liu is the poorest and most humble. He is of a family of oyster growers who work in the tidal flats. In the beginning he saves a pail of oysters from scavenging Save-the-Country soldiers who guard the flats against invasion by the People's Liberation Army.

To understand this book it must be understood that this pail of oysters is as important to the family of Li Liu as a bank account, insurance, and credit, all combined, is to an American family. This pail of oysters can be traded for rice, millet, a new needle to replace the one that broke, and quinine to keep the father alive.

Li Liu is trusted with some of the oysters to trade for rice in the farmland that lies back of the tideland. So begins an adventure that takes him to the capital, Taipei, and companionship with two people his own age, a brother and sister owned by an entrepreneur of the city. In his skilful presentation of Formosans, the characters make statements shocking until examined, evaluated, and finally judged true. Like the Japanese occupation of Formosa. "The Japanese took," says a landowner, "yet they gave, too. They gave us electric lights; and the great irrigation ditches which bring water so we can grow rice . . . and the improved rice. They took, but they always left plenty for us . . . not like these swine."

Two Americans rise as strong characters. Both are correspondents. One is "an old China hand" who accepts corruption and prefers to look the other way while murder is done. The other is "a good man." We have "bad men" and "good men" in our ubiquitous Westerns, and so we might as well have them in our Easterns.

Mr. Sneider was a platoon commander in the Pacific, and a commander of regimental scouts during World War IL As a member of U. S. military government he bossed a city of 5,000 refugees on Okinawa. He went to Korea in 1945, and had charge of sheltering and feeding a million refugees fleeing from the Communists north of Parallel 38. His novel, I feel, should be especially recommended to Congressmen and statesmen who "made" Formosa for forty-eight hours on Far Eastern junkets, and who were most unlikely to meet, or talk to, anyone like Li Liu, or his friends, Precious Jade and Didi. If they read it they will comprehend why all our money and all our men can't put Chiang Kai-shek together again.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

1950s 1 min film from missionary group on aborigines

1950s Missionary film on bring Christianity to the aborigines
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Blast from the Past: Videos from '40s and '50s

Whenever I take my dog for a walk in the fields in the morning, I bring my macro lens.

This is less than a minute of elementary education in Taiwan from 1947.

This two and half minute video looks like someone's travel video of Taiwan from the 1950s, lots of old sights here.

Check the sidebar of Youtube, there's even more stuff there.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Dachen Island Evacuation Video

A friend passed me this link. From Wiki:

Until 1955, the Dachen (Tachen) Islands were part of the Republic of China (ROC), the government of which has been based in Taiwan since the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War. As the People's Liberation Army advanced through Fujian Province in the late 1940s, the U.S.-supported Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang, retreated to China's offshore Islands. On January 20, 1955, the PLA conquest of Yijiangshan led to the First Taiwan Strait Crisis. The Formosa Resolution of 1955 passed in Congress nine days later in the United States, leading to the orderly evacuation of the Dachen Islands by the United States Navy in February. At the time, they served as the capital of the Chekiang Province. The U.S. Seventh Fleet used 132 boats and 400 aircraft to move 14,500 civilians, 10,000 Republic of China servicemen and 4,000 guerrilla fighters, along with 40,000 tons of military equipment and supplies from the island. Three days after the evacuation, the islands were taken by the People's Liberation Army. Chiang Kai-shek grudgingly allowed the island to fall to the Communists so that the other offshore island groups, Kinmen and Matsu, could be successfully defended.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Cool Collection of Pics from 1957 and 1958

Former US serviceman Tom Jones sent these around and eventually they made their way to me. Here's his story in Chinese. Visions of a lost Taiwan, in color. The last dozen plates are from his round the island scooter trip. Enjoy by clicking on READ MORE below:

1957 Anti-American Riots

A friend of mine passed me these photos off of eBay from the Baltimore Sun (thanks, M). They are pictures of the US embassy in Taipei after the destructive 1957 riots. Others are here, here, and here. The riots were apparently stage-managed. This site has the story.
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Daily Links:

• Tour guides protest low pay for guiding Chinese tourists. This is a manifestation of one of the most problematic aspects of the Chinese tourism "boom" -- it exists largely on paper.
• Japanese scholars say they have detected high radiation on Orchid Islaimes
• Taipei Times argues Taiwan needs to take greater advantage of Japan's economy.
• Round the island bikeway planned

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Lukang of years gone by

Take a break from the Senkakus with some old pics. My mother in law sent my wife a book of photos taken in the 1950s by a resident of Lukang, my wife's hometown. A few selections..... my favorite is the last, where the Terrible Oxen of Death Lurks Beneath the Waters. The frequent use of children in his images is priceless. Each image has captions in Chinese, Japanese, and English. The name of the book is 街坊市井 -- Neighbourhood & Town Sight - Lu-Kang by 30 Years. Click on READ MORE to see more....

The Good Old Days

From about 1951 or thereabouts. My thanks to a dear friend and longtime reader for sending this around.

My father in law gave my wife a great old rain jacket made in the late 1960s which he had kept all these years. In a pocket she found an old NT$50 bill printed in 1972.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Paper on Parade: From 1953 -- The Tiger at Red China's Heels

Enjoy this Saturday Evening Post article on Taiwan from 1953, back when men were men, women were women, and Taiwan was Formosa, by the famous WWII correspondent and author Robert Sherrod. I especially love its exoticizing teaser....

Chiang Kai-shek, given up by almost everyone as a sure loser three years ago, now commands a well-fed, 400,000-man army -- the largest anti-Red force in the Orient. A Post correspondent here reports on his recent interview, on the strange island of Formosa.

...On the strange island of Formosa.

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I post another gem from 1950 here.

[Taiwan]

The Myth of Chinese Gold in the Economic Development of Taiwan

It's quite common for the ignorant, duped, and malicious to claim that Taiwan got rich because Chiang Kai-shek looted all the gold from China, and that gold then formed the financial foundation for Taiwan's development. Like most pro-KMT claims, only the looting part is true.

Our tale begins with a post at Forumosa by Feiren responding to one of these claims.

According to the memoirs of Zhou Hongtao, an aide to Chiang Kai-shek who served in the presidential office and was from Fenghua, about 3.75 million taels of gold reserves from the National Treasury were brought to Taiwan in 1949 and were exhausted by September of 1950. Much of this was spent on supporting 600,000-strong Nationalist Army, which cost 180,000 taels a month to feed. Most serious historical accounts of the period say the basically the same thing.

One tael is 37.2 grams, so 3.75 million taels would have been about 139 million grams or 139,000 kilos of gold. That would have been about 4.9 million ounces of gold, which sold for an average price of US$34.72 an ounce in 1950. If Zhou is correct, that means the value of the gold from the treasury was about US$170,128,000, slightly less than what the US would loan the ROC biannually thereafter.

Interestingly, in its 2006 asset report, the KMT put gold reserves brought from China as 2.27 million taels and repeats the unfounded claim that these funds were "a stabilizing pillar of Taiwan's finances. That gold of course belonged to the national government not the KMT.

US aid to Taiwan in those days was about $100 million annually, so you can see that the value of the gold was less than two years of US aid. I then followed up:

To add to Feiren's numbers, what actually happened to the gold is even more interesting. To help industry after losing the war, the Nationalists followed an easy money policy. The money supply doubled and inflation boomed. Many a TIer got their start in the double whammy of Nationalist looting of the island in the '45-6 period and then losing their shirt in the inflationary period after that. At that point the military budget accounted for 90 percent of government expenditure.

To compound the problem, the brilliant Nationalists decided it would be a brilliant idea to make short-term deposits redeemable in gold. Given a choice between holding worthless Nationalist scrip or actual gold, what would you do? As a result, there was a massive outflow of gold into private hands, some $US50.8 million, according to Ho (1980). Even the KMT finally saw the unwisdom of this policy and it was halted in Dec of 1950.

How did the government halt inflation? Two ways. The minor effect was by raising interest rates to 9% -- a month! 180% annually, baby. But the real thing that stopped it and stabilized the currency was the resumption of US aid, which Ho refers to as "the main reason inflation was kept under control" and "the prime stabilizer of the economy." Because the KMT had no food reserves and no foreign exchange, only US aid kept the regime from going under. In the 1950s nearly 40% of Taiwan's gross domestic capital formation was aid financed, according to Ho -- aid financed 30% of imports from 1951-1968, and stuff brought in as "military assistance" was NOT counted in that figure. As I recall from my poor memory, US agricultural products were brought in under the PL 480 laws and then sold, and the accumulated funds deposited in the national treasury, stabilizing the currency. Not sure about the exact process.

Ho also says that a major source of destabilization was the military budget, which US aid officials attempted repeatedly to get the KMT to reduce. In brief, the KMT totally neglected the domestic economy to fund their military state, leaving US aid to make productive investments in infrastructure that made the private economy go.

What actually happened was that the KMT government budget went almost entirely to the military -- the development money was provided by US aid. During the period 1950-1965, according to Ho, Taiwan got $187 per capita in non-military aid. Not merely money, in-kind aid of food, fertilizers, equipment, raw materials and other items kept Taiwan from starving and kept its industries going.

Not only was military budget enormous but its demand drove nasty and unpredictable inflation. Taiwan also had an import surplus until late in the 1960s -- a surplus that did not include military imports, and a surplus financed by US aid. Finally, a key effect of US aid was the creation of a Taiwanese capitalist class. As Ho notes (p117):

Because it would have been consistent with government ideology and because it would have strengthened its control of the island, one suspects that the Nationalist government would have preferred the public sector to spearhead Taiwan's economic development.

Instead, the KMT confronted a US aid program strongly committed to private sector development, and strongly committed to the development of a Taiwanese entrepreneurial class. It was those small and medium Taiwanese firms who drove Taiwan's export boom in the 1970s and 1980s. Because US aid went primarily to investments in infrastructure and human resources, it facilitated the growth of private industry.

There was one other positive effect of US aid. Ho notes (p118):

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s AID brought intense pressure to bear upon the Nationalist government to exercise fiscal restraint and hold down its military spending. Despite these pressures the [KMT] government adhered to its preference for the military and continued to enlarge its military budget. But had AID not exerted pressure, the size of the military budge conceivably could have increased at a still more rapid rate.

The recovery and early stages of the export boom were a US project. At that time up to 90% of the budget went to the military (and we know whose pockets were being lined out of that!). Not until much later would KMT policy become more development oriented.

Interested readers should consult the Bible of Taiwan economic history, Samuel Ho's Economic Development of Taiwan 1860-1970 (I quoted from pages 110-120) and Jacoby's US Aid to Taiwan.

[Taiwan]