Oh Hell Yeah! New Book: From Province to Republic to Colony

I received this gloriously wonderful book in the mail last week (Books Tw). This post is not a review of the book because none is necessary: this book is fantastic. It covers the life and activities of James W. Davidson, the reporter who traveled with the Japanese invasion force in 1895 and wrote The Island of Formosa Past and Present, one of the foundational books of the literature on Taiwan. He also served as a US consul in Taiwan and elsewhere.

From Province to Republic to Colony contains, well, everything. It's a combination of scrapbook and scholarly commentary on the life of Davidson: newspaper clippings, letters to and from Davidson, lists in his own hand, photos of the period, period illustrations, writings of Davidson's and so on. Commentary is presented in Chinese and English. Go below for some random photos of the interior this amazing volume. Alas, all my cameras are broken, so photos not as good as they might be. But if you are at all interested in the history of Taiwan, you want this book.

Camphor Press releases Shackleton's "Formosa Calling"

My friends at Camphor Press have released Formosa Calling, a harrowing account of the 2-28 massacre by Allan Shackleton...

Allan J. Shackleton was a New Zealand officer with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration assigned to in Taiwan at the time. His eyewitness account of the massacre is an important piece in understanding modern Taiwan’s founding tragedy. Shackleton tried for years to get Formosa Calling published, but it was deemed too politically sensitive during the Cold War when “Free China” was an ally of the Western world. 

This first person account has the authentic voice of a witness who lards nothing with literary artifice or exaggeration, and hits hard. Of the massacre's final days, for example, he writes....

During all these days I had been visiting a Japanese-trained Formosan doctor who was treating my ankle, and this day he had several interesting visitors. There was a man staying in the house who was frightened to go out as the military police might pick him up. They told interesting stories of the looting that was carried on by the military. In general this was done, not only to make good deficiencies in food and equipment, but also with the idea of re-selling and making money. Therefore, nothing was really exempt from the attentions of the soldiers. But more serious was the fact that there were lying about the streets in the mornings, the dead bodies of important people who had been dragged from their houses at night and shot. The military police had been making inquiries for a certain Council member who was over at Taito. He had gone to Taipei via Karenko and Suo while the trouble in Takao was on. He had, therefore, no connection with the rioting in Takao at all. But what he had done frequently was to ask the Government to establish law and justice in place of the travesty that was now being foisted on the people. He was therefore a marked man.

"He was therefore a marked man". Readable and interesting, this book makes a good counterpoint to George Kerr's masterpiece.
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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!

Camphor Press Launches with John Ross' You Don't Know China

You Don't Know China: Twenty-Two Enduring Myths Debunked
John Ross
Camphor Press. $180 NT

This month I have the truly great pleasure to introduce to you a new Taiwan-centered publishing house, Camphor Press (Facebook, Camphorpress.com). The new publisher is run by a trio of well-known local expats, Michael Cannings, Mark Swofford, and John Ross, and will feature books about Taiwan and China. They sent me a copy of their first book, John Ross' You Don't Know China: Twenty-Two Enduring Myths Debunked. Readers may be familiar with Ross via his earlier and excellent book, Formosan Odyssey, which Camphor is selling at only 90 NT til the end of February. Books are available in .mobi and .epub format -- if you have some other device, the popular freeware Calibre easily converts between formats. Full disclosure: the copy was sent gratis and they want me to write a book with them.

Nevertheless, I can wholeheartedly say that You Don't Know China kicks ass. It is both extremely witty and extremely informative, a joy to experience. Ross savages some of the most popular claims about China, from the "5,000 years of history" to the "no dogs and Chinese" myth. He takes the media to task for credulous and incompetent reporting on China in chapters on ghost towns and megacities, and mops up the floor with "traditional" Chinese medicine. Ross' skeptical mind is like a blowtorch, illuminating before destroying. On the Great Wall:

"The most outlandish Great Wall myth is that is the only man-made object that can be seen from space or, even more farcically, from the Moon. Its width -- the famous sections you've seen are about 6 metres wide, 8 metres high -- makes this an absurd impossibility. The dimension the wall is renowned for, the great length, is irrelevant to its visibility. Seeing the wall from the Moon (384,400 kilometres away) would be a feat of vision equivalent to seeing a single strand of human hair from over three kilometres away. As if this were not enough, the wall is of a colour similar to the surrounding earth."

In addition to education, Ross also supplies chuckles. On Mandarin:

"As well as being hard for learners to distinguish, tones are hard for foreigners not to murder when they speak the language. So, what does mangled Mandarin sound like to the Chinese? A slow moronic monotone, something like a wasted California surfer dude would sound like to English speakers."

The chapter on acupuncture alone, which provides a concise and for me, totally unknown history of the practice, is worth the price of admission. No, I'm not spoiling it. Also especially enjoyable for me were the parts on Marco Polo, feng shui, and opium.

Accessible and entertaining, You Don't Know China will scrub your brain of Orientalist nonsense in a few hours of informative and pleasurable reading. Of interest to students of modern China, Chinese history, and skeptics alike, it is well worth the $180 NT.

I am looking forward to the next releases. If they are of the quality of this work, Camphor Press will have bright future!
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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!

Book Review: A Foreigner's Travel Guide To Taiwan's Indigenous Areas: Central and Southern Taiwan, by Cheryl Robbins

A Foreigner's Travel Guide To Taiwan's Indigenous Areas: Central and Southern Taiwan
Cheryl Robbins
http://www.tipi.com.tw
211 pages

Cheryl Robbins gave me a copy of this volume, the latest in her series of books on travel in Taiwan's indigenous areas. It looks extremely useful. Written in clear, accessible English and chock full of maps, photos, and cultural and historical information, this book has a special bonus: it is a bilingual text, written in both Chinese and English.

Robbins is a longtime expatriate on the island. She has a passion for local indigenous culture and a deep knowledge and love of Taiwan's mountains and the peoples who call them home. For several years she has operated Tribe-Asia, a social business project specializing in local indigenous art and handicrafts. Using her extensive network of contacts within local indigenous communities, Robbins, a locally licensed guide, is currently putting together a set of travel packages for tours in indigenous communities in conjunction with a local travel agency. I look forward to traveling with her early next year when everything comes together. This book is an outgrowth of her rich experience of local indigenous communities.

The book presents specific locations and their interesting aspects, such as monuments, trails, foods, museums, artist workshops, and so forth. Navigation is presented in typical travel book style -- Getting There by bus or car, contact phone numbers and website links, clear maps, and similar. This book is focuses on supplying useful information in accessible formats. Local eateries are presenting in a friendly style:

This is a great place for a late, leisurely breakfast as it does not open until 9:30 a.m. Try a thick piece of toast with chocolate, ham and egg, tuna, butter, jam, or peanut butter (NT$20-55). There are also a range of coffees and teas available (NT.....

"Address boxes" set off addresses from the text making them easy to find. Text boxes present historical discussions or descriptions of things such as local artists or cultural artifacts.

A especially appealing aspect of this book is the photographs. Far from the usual useless manner of travel books that put 16 color plates in the center of the book which are gorgeous but unreal and nowhere near the pages that discuss them, most of the photos were taken by Robbins herself with a simple point-and-shoot camera. These photos present the experience as the traveler herself might encounter it, right where it is being discussed, a useful and practical perspective. They enhance the text by giving it an appealing reality.

This book will be an extremely useful introduction for travelers who are interested in a deeper experience of the island of Taiwan and its peoples. It lacks only one thing: bike routes! Next edition?
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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.

Book Review: Stranger in Taiwan

Stranger in Taiwan
Hartley Pool
Revenge Ink, 208 pp

Hartley Pool sent me a copy of his new, quasi-autobiographical book discussing his experiences as a language teacher in Taiwan. Below is my review.

The book opens in London where he meets an attractive Taiwanese girl, Anita, while teaching ESL classes. Soon they are involved in a long-distance relationship, and he decides to go out to Taiwan to pursue the relationship. The story then becomes a series of vignettes of his encounter with Taiwan, rich with wit and self-deprecating humor.

Told with a constant flow of jokes, wisecracks, and irony that often rises to real wit, Strangers in Taiwan can be quite entertaining. It will always make you smile, and sometimes it is laugh-out-loud funny. The book does a wonderful job of capturing how outre and disconnected the Taiwan experience is when you first get here, how disorienting and bewildering it can be. Anyone who has been here any length of time will have had the same experiences and will instantly be able to relate to them: the hospital. The Girl. The Family. The Job. Touring with The Girl.

Unfortunately the book never gets past that level. In Pool's hands Taiwan and his girl, Anita, are merely foils for displays of wit. It ends with his marriage to the girl he came for, but despite this apparent movement through two years of his life, the book lacks any definite story or even narrative flow. People and things flow into the book like crowds on a dark street briefly illuminated by a streetlamp before hurrying on their way past, having as little effect on either Pool or the reader. Events and issues are seldom introduced or explained at any length, meaning that the reader ends up as disoriented as Pool. Why did Pool stay for two years? Why did he marry his girlfriend? How does Taiwan cause him to reflect on his own life, his own culture, his own values? What can the reader learn from his experience?

As a set of disconnected tales, this is an excellent work, each chapter worth the time spent. But taken as a whole, it lacks the kind of depth and development that would have made it a truly memorable and illuminating work.
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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.

Taiwan: Lonely Planet Guide

Taiwan
Robert Kelly
Lonely Planet; 8th edition (April 1, 2011)
392 pages

Robert Kelly and Joshua Samuel Brown's redevelopment of the Lonely Planet Taiwan guide is 400 pages of excellence packed with beautiful maps, useful information, sidebars of historical and cultural information, and (not enough!) lovely pictures.

Kelly sent me the book for review as I was heading out the door for trips down south to Tainan and Pingtung. It proved a highly reliable and useful companion for the trip. The Tainan section alone is worth the price of the book. The detail map of the temple area has a very clear map with many major sites and a recommended walking route. Good thumbnails of history are provided for many of the city's innumerable temples. A sample:

Medicine God Temple
Just south of Anping Road on Gubao Street, this small temple boasts a lovely example of a swallowtail eave roof, and two small lion statues with an interesting tale (not tail) behind them. Long ago in the days of the Qing Dynasty, a young scholar prayed to the Medicine God to help him pass an imperial exam. Since Chinese religion is largely based on quid pro quo, he promised that if successful he would reward the god by paying for two stone temple lions to be carved and placed out front. Well, the scholar did pass the exam, but poor man that he was, could only afford the two diminutive felines you see outside the temple today.

The rich detail of this book, as well as its great scope, means that it makes for great pleasure reading in addition to its effectiveness as a guidebook. This guide also features copious amounts of information on Taiwan's excellent cycling and hiking. There is also an extensive section on the offshore islands, and discussions of culture, history, and the future of the island at the end of the book. You'll find this blog there too. Thanks, guys.

The sole truly annoying feature of the book is its constant reference to the "Japanese Occupation Period", a time that exists solely in the minds of Chinese Nationalist propagandists. Japan did not "occupy" Taiwan -- the term is used in an attempt to create unbroken Chinese "sovereignty" over Taiwan. Japan had full and legitimate sovereignty over the island and the book should simply refer to the "Japanese colonial period" instead.

If you are traveling or moving to Taiwan, this book should be considered mandatory. It is the most comprehensive guidebook now available on Taiwan. A labor of love from an author who loves Taiwan and knows it intimately, it should be on every Taiwanophile's bookshelf.
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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.

Book Review: Why China Will Never Rule the World

Why China Will Never Rule the World: Travels in the Two Chinas
Troy Parfitt
Western Hemisphere Press 419 pp US$20.95

In Why China Will Never Rule the World, Troy Parfitt, who sent me a copy of the book to review, presents a journey of discovery through China to determine what China's rise really is, with Taiwan offered as a kind of commentary on China, but more importantly, as a place explored in its own right.

After a prologue in which he sets out the aims of his quest:

"I wanted to know what lay behind the headlines and images..... I needed to know the truth. More precisely, I needed to know my own truth."

....Parfitt travels all over China, engaging with all sorts of individuals. And indeed comes to his own truth.

Nietzsche once observed that people with character have their defining experience, which occurs repeatedly, and so it is with Parfitt. The stereotypical chapter opens with Parfitt visiting some location in China or Taiwan. A review of history, often quite informative, follows. Then Parfitt meets people -- boys, girls, tour groups, taxi drivers, book authors, other foreigners, fellow students, a cross-section of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives in China. These are presented in lively and economical language. Parfitt then usually asks those he meets what China has to offer the world, or what they know about the world around them, frequently eliciting various forms of error, apathy and ignorance.

As a travelogue this book is often quite enjoyable, with many pithy observations: "As a rule of thumb in the Chinese universe, the more something is said, the more you can assume it to be untrue." It gives an honest portrayal of how locals in China might interact with foreigners, and Parfitt usually reports interactions without open judgment. Speaking as someone who knows a lot about Taiwan but less about China, the section on China, which occupies about 90% of the book, was more useful and interesting than when he discusses Taiwan, writing which exhibits errors, misunderstandings and just plain strangenesses. There's plenty of history in the work, but it could have benefited from greater exploration of the anthropological and sociological literature that could have shed a deeper, brighter light on the behaviors that Parfitt was witnessing.

If you are looking for a tale of personal travel in China, Parfitt's book will definitely suit. How that will fit into the reader's understanding of what China is or will become, is up to the reader.
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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.

Book Review: The Politics of Locality: Making a Nation of Communities in Taiwan

My close friend Drew strikes a pose in front of the old market in Hsiluo.

The Politics of Locality: Making a Nation of Communities in Taiwan
Lu Hsin-yi
2002, Routledge,164pp

People often view Taiwan as a former colonized territory that must be fashioned into a nation, but it would be more accurate, as Lu Hsin-yi does in the excellent The Politics of Locality: Making a Nation of Communities in Taiwan, to say that Taiwan is a collection of localities in search of a nation. In this book Lu tells the story of the burgeoning of "the local" in the narrative of Taiwan nationalism since the end of martial law, and of how "the local" is constructed and constructs itself in the search for the authentic core of a sustainable Taiwan nationalist narrative.

A slim book at just 164 pages, it nevertheless contains a meaty and idea-dense explication of The Local in the context of Taiwan nationalism. There are six chapters, but the core is three studies of community projects and community in Tanshui, I-lan, and Baimi, a small town south of Suao on the east coast. Two chapters on nationalism, community, and local culture front the book, and the final chapter weaves the disparate threads of the local narratives into an insightful discussion of Taiwan, communities, and nationalism.

In Taiwan, Lu narrates, the growth of the local, and local communities, grew out of the democratization of the island after the lifting of martial law and the resultant explosion of interest in the local. Taiwan culture, long suppressed by the KMT, was deliberately opposed to the faux, idealized, Chinese culture brought from China by the retreating mainlanders. The KMT deployed that culture in an attempt to destroy the local, even changing the street names to reflect places in China, thus burying much local history. But the renaissance in things Taiwanese led to a massive shift in the cultural pattern, as Mandarin became devalued in favor of Taiwanese. Taiwanese folk art and artists were rediscovered and celebrated. Even in the antique market, Chinese high culture was superseded by a preference for local collectibles.

The Taiwanization movement of the 1990s owes much to the deliberate policy of Lee Teng-hui to build local culture as a way to encourage Taiwan nation building. In 1993 Lee Teng-hui began to promote the idea of Taiwan as a "living community" (shengming gongtongti) and the idea of communal sentiment (gongtongti yishi). In 1994 the Integrated Community-Making Program was begun by the Council on Cultural Affairs. This was followed by a proliferation of culture workers in the local communities, the development of Taiwan studies as a discipline, and textbook reform. Community organizations mushroomed.

Lu then moves on to discuss the individual cases. Tanshui, familiar to most every foreigner in Taiwan, underwent extensive urbanization in the late 1980s that did grave damage to the city's historical sites. In 1990 the Hobei Cultural and Historical Society was established in the city, becoming a model for other non-governmental historical societies around the island. Lu focuses on many of the debates, including the struggle over widening of a major artery along the river. She also gives background on the political factions that dominate the town, providing a glimpse into how Taiwan used to be run:

"There were two major pai (factions) in Tanshui -- Li pai and Chen pai, which have been archenemies ever since the first township election in 1951. Traditionally the KMT would alternate its nomination between the two factions in each township election. In 1981, however, the KMT decided to skip the nomination process and let the two factions compete against each again in KMT's nomination process. According to the old logic, Chen pai would get the nomination as Li pai had ruled the town for 8 years. The Li faction objected, however. Their reason was that they didn't get any help from the KMT in the past two elections as the elections were open and no one was nominated. Therefore the KMT owed them a nomination this time." (p70-1)

The article goes on to discuss how when a Chen pai member was picked because of his better education, the Li faction was enraged and township councilman from the Li faction boycotted many of his innovative projects. Eventually the opponents of his projects successfully sued him and got him suspended from the mayorship. Many of the projects petered out or were defeated by developmentalists who had far more political power than the preservationists, a common pattern in Taiwan.

I-lan, where community building began earlier under the brilliant administration of Chen Ding-nan, and Baimi are also discussed in minute detail.

This is an incredibly useful and insightful book that will repay close study, far too thick with ideas and observations to even begin to touch in a small review like this. I highly recommend it. Often gems are hidden in the footnotes, like the observation that college students in Taiwan join student associations from their hometowns when they travel to the university -- thus taking their locality with them wherever they go. Lu closes it with what is practically an epitaph for community development in Taiwan....

"Zhuang's remark characterized an ironic facet of Taiwan's contemporary community making program: that this supposedly grassroots-oriented project was initiated by the central government, directed by governmental workers and planners, and financed mostly by governmental subsidy. In Biami's case, for example,the community has received over ten million NT of subsidy (US$30,000) to development its unprofitable wooden clog industry. A major proportion of the funding, it should be noted, was used to support a unique profession of "community planners;" they were mostly young professionals who worked closely with certain communities. Although not residing in those neighborhoods, they often took charge of the community affairs (especially cultural events), wrote grant proposals, and occasionally made organizational decisions for the residents."(p165)

With the KMT in power everywhere, what will happen to attempts to build community-based nationalism in Taiwan?

[Taiwan]

A Borrowed Voice: Glimpses

Out of a past in which the little people shook the halls of another power favored by the Establishment, hot off the presses, is Linda Gail Arrigo and Lynn Miles' amazing A Borrowed Voice: Taiwan Human Rights through International Networks, 1960-1980. It's some 480 pages long, and every page on it is crammed with fascinating and informative stories of the foreigners who came to Taiwan and spoke for a people who have been silenced by decades of oppression and political killings of the worst kind. They were the borrowed voices of the people of Taiwan.

I've put a couple of shots of the text, which is arranged in a very unusual, and I think, unusually attractive way. On one side, in green, are longer narratives about a person's interaction with the island -- and in white, more detailed accounts of the events they are discussing. Like a fugue, the stories interweave, dipping in and out of each other as different participants give their accounts....

This book is a gold mine of information, with photos, newspaper clippings, press releases, government documents, and other items accompanying the texts. Everyone will recognize the names: Richard Kagan, Lynn Miles, James Seymour, Michael Fonte.... along with many other names, like the brave missionaries who helped Peng Ming-min escape and the Maryknollers who defied their leaders in the Church to help the people of Taiwan. In addition to names English readers will be familiar with, there are also texts from Japanese who helped Taiwan's people against oppression -- the story of Japan's involvement with Taiwan in the postwar era is one that cries out for telling. A good start is made here. The book also shows that Taiwan was an issue for so many people of so many different political and social backgrounds, all coming together to oppose a very great wrong. A non-partisan issue. A lesson for our time, eh?

Told largely in the first person, the narratives, often strings of anecdotes, or small, suddenly remembered details, recreate the atmosphere of the time.... Linda Arrigo writes:

"At first I did not realize why Taiwanese people were generally so fearful, including the intellectuals with respected positions' gradually I understood that there were spies and infiltrators and secret government reporters everywhere. Even the intellectuals at Academia Sinica walked a thin line, trying to be convincingly relevant without incurring the wrath of the authorities. There were even some spies recruited from among the teenage factory girls I spent time with...some untrustworthy letter carriers got cold feet and threw the letters in the mail box. When the security agencies intercepted them, they sometimes mailed you back a photocopy, for intimidation effect."

I can't praise this book enough, nor can a tiny discussion like this illuminate the many nooks and crannies of this incredible work. You can enjoy a copy for yourself at a substantial discount from the Taiwan Bookstore (http://www.taiouan.com.tw) across from NTU in Taipei. Be quick; it's sure to sell out fast.

[Taiwan]

"A Borrowed Voice" Book launch Thursday

Press Conference and Book Launch
24 July 2008 (Thurs) 2:30 PM
Room 5117, Soochow Univ. Downtown Campus
No. 56 GuiYang Street Section 1, Taipei (near MRT XiMen Sta.)
貴陽街一段56號 東吳大學城中校區 5117會議室


Newly Published Book Gives Inside View of International Support Network for Human Rights in Taiwan during Martial Law Era

A Borrow Voice - cover
In the late 1960s, Li Ao 李敖, Peng Ming-min 彭明敏, and Roger Hsieh 謝聰敏 made the acquaintance of several foreign friends that had long-reaching international implications: Martin Ennals, Milo Thornberry 唐培禮, Robert Ricketts, Miyake Kiyoko 三宅清子 and Lynn Miles 梅心怡.

Visiting Taiwan twice in 1969-70, Amnesty International General-Secretary Ennals asked Li and Hsieh to help secret ROC political prisoner information to AI. Thornberry, Ricketts and Miles, all Americans, were deported from Taiwan in 1971 for acting to facilitate the plan, and for helping Peng to escape to Sweden the year before. A network was set up to run information to AI and other concerned groups abroad, with Miyake remaining in Taiwan as the main liaison with the political prisoners’ families. She escaped detection until 1976.

Presenting this and other details of the inner workings of an international information and rescue network spanning the globe is A Borrowed Voice: Taiwan Human Rights through International Networks. The 479-page compendium of personal accounts and documents was edited by two of the principals, Miles and Linda Gail Arrigo 艾琳達. Arrigo became involved in 1977, when she arrived to do field research for her thesis on women factory workers.

First-hand accounts by nearly forty participants tell what it was like to run great risks to expose how under martial law people were being routinely disappeared, tortured, executed, and driven insane from long years in prison. The story begins with the outwardly quiescent 1950s, when the martial law regime was able to pass itself off before the international community as free and democratic, and continues to 1980, when the Kaohsiung Incident forced the Taiwan Garrison Command and the Government Information Office to open its scourt proceedings to an indignant world audience.

Explaining the book’s title, the editors write this is “a story of borders challenged, crossed and erased. The boundaries to be broken were not limited to those defining the nation-state, but included the divisions of race, language, culture, and ideology…. [W]e lent our ease of passage and our voices to those who had neither. We provided a ‘borrowed voice’ that we could only hope would speak out against the tortured silence.” Transcending ideology meant joining together with pro-independence activists like Chen Chu 陳菊 and unificationists like Chen Ku-ying 陳鼓應.

Li, Hsieh, Shih Ming-teh 施明德 have been invited to the press conference, which will be moderated by Prof. Mab Huang 黃默, director of the Chang Fo-Chuan Center for the Study of Human Rights, Soochow University 東吳大學張佛泉人權研究中心主任.

[Taiwan]

Book Review: Selya, Development and Demograpic Change in Taiwan

Development and Demographic Change in Taiwan, 1945-1995.
Roger Mark Selya
Singapore: World Scientific. 457pp.

Roger Mark Selya's well written and excruciatingly detailed work Development and Demographic Change in Taiwan: 1945-1995 is a book no Taiwan bibliophile should be without. More than just a dry compendium of dull facts, Selya not only portrays and explains Taiwan's social change, but also provides a massive list of references, as well as exploring the arguments on the issues. The book is augmented by copious maps and tables. Selya is a geographer at the University of Cincinnati.

A typical Selya paragraph is a miniature encyclopedia. Consider, for example, the malaria programs:

Large-scale antimalarial chemotherapy programs were begun under the Japanese Administration, a practice that was continued after 1947 (Liang, 1991). Chemotherapy programs did keep malarial parasite infestation rates low, reduced the potential economic damage the disease could impose on families, and reduced the suffering of the individuals (Liang, 1991). However, one major drawback to this approach was that the transmission of malaria was not interrupted (Chuang, 1991). Thus, in 1952 some 1.2 million people, or 15.4% of the population, were infected with malaria; some 2196 people died of malaria that same year, making this disease the tenth leading cause of death....

The numerous references not only aid the reader in understanding the debates, but also encourage further exploration of the issues.

The book consists of seven major sections covering major demographic topics: Introduction; Growth, Distribution, Composition, and Structure; Fertility; Mortality, Morbidity, and Public Health; Migration; Population Policies; and Summary and Conclusion. Each section discusses major issues in that area. For example, under Mortality, Morbidity, and Public Health, there are discussions of major diseases, accidents, and suicides. Not only are the changes discussed, but the evolution of policy is presented, enabling the reader to understand how Taiwan came to be the way it is today. They also point out continuing problems any current resident of the island will be aware of....

...In this regard Lin (1992) has calculated that little would be gained in increased life expectancy at birth for women through the elimination of 50 percent of the mortality due to cardiovascular diseases and cancer. In contrast, men would gain some 1.27 years, if motor vehicle deaths were reduced by 50 percent.

Nor is Selya afraid to withhold judgment or praise when necessary. Speaking of Taiwan's motor vehicle accident rates, "the highest motor vehicle fatality rate of any industrialized country," Selya tartly observes:

"What is especially disturbing about accidents in Taiwan is that common sense policies and practices if but implemented could lead to a radical decrease in both the number of accidents and accident related mortality."

Something we foreigners here say every day, except we usually add a string of expletives after that sentence. But further on Selya gives credit where credit is due:

"In contrast to accidents, Taiwan has adopted or instituted simple and effective methods for preventing suicides. It is no longer possible to buy sleeping pills across the counter, for example."

This volume is an absolute gold mine of information. For example, we learn on page 333 that back in 1991 then-premier Hau Pei-tsun directed the Council on Labor Affairs to study the idea of bringing workers over from China and legislation was actually initiated in the Legislative Yuan. Fortunately the idea was killed. Another fascinating topic is that of differential disease rates among spatially close populations. For example, thalassemia, a genetic blood disease, is quite prevalent in south China, but is not common at all among Taiwan Han populations, only 5% for the alpha and 1% for the beta -- but among the aborigines some groups are as high as 17% and as low as 1.2%. Another interesting moment occurs when Selya defines the four "ethnic" groups in Taiwan: foreigners, aborigines, Mainland Chinese, and Taiwanese. Of course foreigners do not form an ethnic group, he explains, but they can be treated as one for demographic purposes.

This is a thoroughly useful and practical book that surveys almost every aspect of Taiwan's demographic change in the postwar period. I highly recommend it to any student of Taiwan's history, and to anyone interested in comparative studies of demographic change.

[Taiwan]

Book Review: Humanity at Stake

Humanity at Stake
Abraham Young
2008. Published in the United States by CreateSpace and distributed by Amazon. 130 pp. Website: HumanityAtStake.com

A few weeks ago I was in class at NCKU when a young woman walked in. Although the room seats 40 there are only seven of us in the class, but after inspecting the roomful of empty seats she strolled over and took the seat next to me. Thinking she wanted to talk, I leaned over, and a moment's conversation led to the discovery that she was an exchange student from Shanghai. I immediately invited her to lunch. We spent the next couple of hours in a local lunch box joint, discussing Tibet and Taiwan in Mandarin at her insistence, with her raising the by-now drearily familiar arguments. The conversation was not quiet, though we did not raise our voices, and it was obvious to me that many of the locals were silently listening in. After we stepped out of the diner, the young woman ran off to buy a drink and an older Taiwanese woman who had been sitting at the table next to us walked over to me. "Thank you," she said, as she struggled to free her bicycle from the horde of bikes parked for the lunch rush. Looking down the road, where the Chinese woman was buying tea, she spat out: "Those Chinese are so arrogant!" All I could think was: well, maybe you should have told her that yourself.

Fortunately for Taiwan, Taiwanese-Americans have long been speakers on the island's behalf, and this new book is the latest offering in that five-decade long effort to give an international voice to the island. From its unusually long subtitle to its promise on the back cover to donate $1 to Human Rights Watch for every copy sold, Abraham Young's Humanity at Stake: On why the world should now end China’s military & political aggression, understand Taiwan’s democracy, and defend 23 million citizens’ human right to self-determination represents a unique approach to educating novice readers on the various points of view in the Taiwan issue, and on why supporting Taiwan is so important. Its appearance is all the more timely given the recent political developments in cross-strait issues.

Young's book is a description of a dialogue between a relatively educated young American who knows a smattering about Taiwan, a young Chinese man, and an American of Taiwanese descent, told from the point of view of the last. As he describes them:

Here’s the kid from Taiwan, here’s the kid from China, and on the third side of this square table there’s the Mr.-All-American pilot, who is intelligent, friendly, has real knowledge of the world, has visited and pondered the cities of China, and though never visited Taiwan, has engaged in U.S. military to deal with the important dilemmas of international relations, overseas.

We have everything we need here for a real simulation—a so-called Strait-talk —with the exclusion of military arms to play offense, defense, and deterrent.

The three then go on to discuss the various arguments. The book is divided into two basic parts -- one explaining the past, and one staking out options for the future. Readers who have been around pro-China trolls or been on discussion forums will recognize the arguments used by the Chinese and the disparaging commentary in the international media: that Taiwan is like a Hawaii, or that Taiwan's democracy is "corrupt" or that Taiwan's leaders "overreact." The reality, as Young shows in the second half of the book, is that there is no credible argument for annexing the island to China. There is nothing that China cannot get from Taiwan as a free and independent state, except, of course, the satisfaction of ownership.

In addition to the dialogue, Young presents his interior monologue, displaying many of the same reactions all of us go through when confronting the combination of ignorance and aggression that represents the PRC point of view. This helps draw the reader in to Young's point of view and make the work more interesting. An additional positive feature of the work is that Young does not turn his Chinese interlocutor into a caricature of the bombastic, violent Chinese trolls everyone on the net is familiar with, but presents him as a sympathetic and intelligent human being.

The book contains extensive, even elaborate footnotes that provide further background to the points Young makes in his responses. These usually have internet sources, enabling the reader to easily explore the issues in greater depth. Contemporary issues, such as the WHO exclusion, also make an appearance. A typical discussion reads:

However, this last point does not even need to be made to Wang and Chris, as their silence, their silence at the painful reality of 1,200-plus Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan shows that there is no single argument—moral, logical, or just—that validates China’s past and present military aggression and missile arsenal, much less the continued growth on both menacing counts, which has been clearly the case.

Not just in reference to the basement where Wang, Chris, and I now stand, the real elephant in the room is this: not a single person, up through the highest levels of government, within China, the US, or Taiwan is capable of providing a single validating argument for this.

For readers who are unfamiliar with the Taiwan issue Humanity at Stake is an extremely readable introduction to the issues, packed with useful information. I look forward to the next edition, when the whole work is translated into Chinese using simplified characters. If Taiwanese really want to preserve their freedom, they need to start talking to the Chinese.

[Taiwan]

Book Review: Taiwan: the Search for Identity

Taiwan: The Search for Identity
Jerome Keating
2008. Taipei: SMC Publishing, 118 pp.

Jerome Keating has finished another in his series of books on Taiwan's history and political culture. With Taiwan: The Search for Identity, Keating offers a work done in his usual hard-hitting style, but with the added advantage of text in both English and Chinese. Most of the material in this book is either taken from, or similar to, material on Keating's website.

The slim (118 pages) volume's theme is the construction of identity in Taiwan's history, and the recent changes in electoral politics. The style is brisk and informal, offering articles with titles like "Finding Identity and Purpose Amidst Bamboozle." In addition to history, several articles deal with the problems stemming from the legislative election defeat of the DPP, as well as the then-upcoming Presidential election.

One advantage of this work is its bilingual format, useful not just to local readers, but also to those from China, a population that Taiwan needs to begin talking to if it is ever to achieve its independence. The book may also serve as a useful introduction for English readers unfamiliar with Taiwan's modern political economy.

[Taiwan]

Review: Richard Kagan's New Book On Lee Teng-hui

The Taipei Times didn't want this, so here it is: my review of Richard Kagan's new book on Lee Teng-hui:

+++++++++++++

Taiwan's Statesman: Lee Teng-hui and Democracy in Asia
Richard C. Kagan
Naval Institute Press, 2007, 231p

In an oft-quoted passage, the ancient Roman biographer, Plutarch once explained his philosophy thus: "in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice, nay, a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of character than battles when thousands fall, or the greatest armaments, or sieges of cities." Richard Kagan's rich new work, Taiwan's Statesman: Lee Teng-hui and Democracy in Asia, which examines the life of one of the great statesmen of the 20th century, Taiwan's Lee Teng-hui, elevates Plutarch's approach to a entire framework for understanding the life and thought of Taiwan's first democratically elected President. Kagan illuminates Lee's often cryptic and elusive use of words, and supplies a robust account of the origins and development of his personal approach to life and politics.

Kagan opens with Lee's moment of triumph: the 1996 Presidential election, Taiwan's first direct presidential election. A native Taiwanese, Lee had successfully risen through the ranks of a Kuomingtang (KMT) party dominated by post-1949 exiles from China, out-maneuvered a rear-guard fight to preserve the authoritarian dominance of the KMT, and defeated the rising pro-democracy party at the polls. How did the son of a humble Taiwanese policeman accomplish these feats?

The answer, according to Kagan, lies in the experiences and values that have shaped Lee Teng-hui's personality: his sojourns in Japan and the US, his study of Zen, his conversion of Christianity in 1961, and his study of agricultural economics. These influences have created in Lee a character and understanding of great depth and flexibility. "If one painted Lee's idea of democracy, it would not hang in a picture frame," describes Kagan. "Rather, it would be splashed all over the neighborhood in expressions of creativity, chaos, and unpredictability with strings of entanglements and loose threads."

Kagan begins his discussion of Lee's education, dismissing the pro-China criticisms that Lee is half-Japanese for the far more elegant and fruitful exploration of what being Japanese means for Lee. This meant education in a Japanese high school at a time when few Taiwanese were permitted to enter Japanese educational institutions; then a year at Kyoto Technical School (later Kyoto University) before entering the Japanese Army in 1944. In Japan he was deeply influenced by the writings of Nitobe Inazo and Nishida Kitaro. Nitobe was a philosopher and statesman who was also an agricultural specialist – a career that "could be a template for Lee's own." Lee also found the Zen thinker D.T. Suzuki to be a refuge from the militarism that was then sweeping the empire. In addition to encountering Japanese thinkers, Lee read voluminously among western classics in translation, developing an especial fondness for Thomas Carlyle. According to Kagan, Carlyle put words to Lee's feeling that true heroism created a new world order, driven by the energetic, questing spirit. Finally, Lee's Christianity is also treated as an important shaper of Lee's social action (for years, whenever possible, he gave humble sermons in local churches on Sundays even as a high ranking politician). Kagan returns to these resources again and again in explaining Lee's cryptic, contradictory, utterances and his freewheeling, apparently aimless, yet purposeful behavior.

Thus, this is not a critical biography in the sense that it attempts to separate itself from the moral world of the subject it treats and to exhaustively examine what many might argue are key controversies or episodes in Lee's career. Kagan's reading of Lee's life is extremely sympathetic, and may be open to charges of hagiography. He is seldom directly critical of Lee's actions, often explaining what some might see mere political horse-trading as evidence of Lee's greatness. For example, Lee's support of mainlander Ma Ying-jeou for Taipei mayor in 1998 is presented as a demonstration of Lee's success in "breaking through the ethnic, geographical, and political division between mainlanders and Taiwanese" – yet Kagan never discusses Lee's controversial removal of that same Ma Ying-jeou from his post as Minister of Justice, a move that critics have slammed ever since as a sop to the political corruption on which they allege Lee depended (nor is the controversy over Lee's relationship to the KMT's alleged corruption treated at any great length). However, as Kagan points out, many of these controversies have been treated elsewhere in great detail.

Despite its weaknesses and its resolutely pro-Lee point of view –unlike many commentators on Lee Kagan is commendably up front in staking out his position on the historical importance of Lee's life and career – this is a rich, entertaining, and educational work. The sections on Lee's upbringing and early life are absolutely fascinating – Lee's service in the Japanese army took him to both Taiwan, where he fired anti-aircraft guns against US attackers, and to Japan, where he helped clean up after the horrific Tokyo firebombing of March, 1945. Kagan hits his stride in his portrayal of Lee's foreign and domestic policy in the 1990s, a period offering many of the same themes that we see today: the President of Taiwan being labeled "provocative" and "a troublemaker" for attempting to break out of the constrictions placed on Taiwan by the US and China. It was Lee himself carried out the first phases of the removal of the Chiang family cult from public life, a fact often lost in the current debates. Kagan also faithfully reconstructs both the headiness of the post martial law period, with its future full of promise, and its fragility, under threat by hardliners in the KMT bent on suppressing the rising democratic feeling. Finally, Kagan sheds much light on the combination of relationships, luck, and achievement that brought Lee safely through the ranks of the KMT to deliver him to the Presidency at a critical moment in the nation's history, and on his relationship with President Chiang Ching-kuo, who in certain respects was much like Lee.

Looking back on Lee's career, it seems incredible that Lee, who hung with a cabal of independence firebrands at Cornell, including Peter Huang, would-be assassin of Chiang Ching-kuo during his 1970 visit to the US, escaped imprisonment and execution. It also seems incredible, at least to this reader, that anyone who bothered to look into Lee's background could ever imagine that Lee would be an obedient servant of the KMT fantasy that Taiwan belongs to China. Yet during the early 1990s rumors swirled at home and abroad on precisely these points, a major tribute to the master politician that is Lee Teng-hui: Lee had sold out to black gold, Lee was a secret independence supporter, Lee was a Machiavellian power-monger, Lee was a KMT spy. As Kagan's biography of one of the greatest statesmen of the twentieth century so firmly demonstrates, they were all true, and they were not true at all.

[Taiwan]

Book Review: Notes from the Other China: Adventures in Asia

Notes from the Other China: Adventures in Asia
By Troy Parfitt
Algora Publishing, 201 pages
(Amazon, $34.95)


Troy Parfitt sent me a copy of his new book Notes from the Other China: Adventures in Asia, a travel book that takes the reader with Troy on his experiences in Korea, Taiwan, Nepal, Vietnam, and elsewhere. The result is an extremely accessible, well-written, and generally lively account of that will no doubt make a major contribution to the GDPs of those countries through increased tourism.

Notes consists of 18 chapters. I thought the opening section of the book, on Parfitt's experiences in Korea, was by far the strongest, marked by experiences that are riveting and informed by an authentically rough narrative. After a short detour through the Philippines, Parfitt then takes us through several chapters on Taiwan, and from there, to Nepal and Vietnam.

Roughly a fourth of the book is devoted to Taiwan. These chapters consist of items that give a rather one-sided picture of the island, such as a chapter on Mormon missionaries, another on Nazi symbolism in Taiwan, and yet another that is largely a hack on Vice President Annette Lu (who is hardly representative of anything, let alone Taiwan politics). These topics appear to have been introduced largely as foils for Parfitt's considerable talent for snark. In fairness, this section of the book has probably the weakest fit for a travel tome, since it lacks the constant flow of change that makes a travel narrative so interesting.

The sections on Cambodia and Vietnam present a series of vignettes of life on the road, and a few meditations on the road's addicting habit of offering the traveler flickering imagery culled, barely-understood, from real life. The trip to Vietnam, which consumes most of the second half of the book, offers a stream of wacky, wonderful experiences of tourism in Vietnam, from the hassles to the highs. This section of the book is extremely engaging. Parfitt takes us through the major tourist sites, many of which are war-related, while at the same time issuing a running commentary on Kissinger's book on the war, which he carried with him for part of the journey. Some choice observations on Americans and Canadians are offered as well, including a shot at the Canadian habit of sewing the national flag onto one's backpack before heading off into the great unknown:

As for kidnappings, these happen to Canadians too, and I have never heard of an account where a Canadian was abducted only to be released upon the discovery that he wasn't American.

Much of strength of this section, which I enjoyed very much, comes from Parfitt's tone, which at last hits its stride, maturing from snark into a kind of matter-of-fact wryness that is gently enjoyable:

After 20 minutes the Australian still hadn't received his rice, and predictably, there was another eruption. At one point he actually went into the kitchen to yell at the proprietors. Incidentally, I waited 40 minutes for my own meal to make an appearance, but it didn't matter. The clam chowder was spot on; straight from the can, just like Mom used to open it.

From the Vietnamese guide with "serious issues" about history to the American he nicknamed Marijuana who videotaped a lunatic on a rampage at a bar, after reading Parfitt's account I was sorely tempted to hop on a plane to Hanoi, in the hope of meeting all the outlandish characters who apparently populate the tourist routes in Vietnam. And so will you be, too.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the launch of the book is this Saturday, the 15th, in Taipei, but fortunately islaformosa did in the comments below:

I'm the creator of Troy's website http//www.troyparfitt.com

Check it out for more, particularly the regularly updated blog excepts that are outtakes and b-sides.

Just wanted to add too that The Notes from the Other China book launch will occur on Saturday, Dec. 15 at Taipei's PS Cafe located just northwest of the Zhongxiao-Dunhua MRT/intersection. The address is 181 Dunhua S. Rd. Section 1. Their phone number is: 2776-0970.

Troy is going to do a brief reading, and we'll be all having some wine.

See you there and check out the site!

[Taiwan]