Thanks for the post, I’m merging it into the ‘Books On Taiwan’ thread, where you’ll find many more books to interest you.
Deny Roy’s book:
That’s an understatement. Nowhere else will you find a thorough account of Taiwan’s recent history, period! 
It is a very good book. My one little quibble is some of the early history seems plain wrong. But that’s not his focus anyway - it’s just background.
Brian
Hsu, Mutsu, 1991, Culture, Self and Adaptation: The Psychological Anthropology of Two Malayo-Polynesian Groups in Taiwan. Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. ISBN 957-9046-78-6.
This is a very interesting sudy, which highlights the contrasts between a Seediq community and and Amis community in Hua Lien and how both communities deal with the Taiwanese mainstream culture based on a traditional understanding of community. Hsu’s study investigates the role traditional culture plays in social relations, crime, suicide, economy, education and adaptation.
ed. Harrell, Stevan & Huang Chun-chieh, 1994, Cultural Change in Postwar Taiwan. Westview Press Inc. ISBN 957-638-257-2
This is a groundbreaking compilation of essays regarding Taiwan’s cultural change following the end of the Japanese era. Many of the questions of “culture” or “Culture” that are addressed in this volume are still being discussed today as Taiwan forges a new cultural understanding of Taiwan and Taiwaneseness. This book takes a thoughtful read to understand the definitions of culture the authors use to frame their studies, but anyone who would like to discuss Taiwanese culture should read this book. Essays include: Feminism, Painting, eco/ethnic tourism, commercial and popular religeon, Confucianism and the New Life Movement, poetry, self-identification, nationalisation of culture and a move from radical coservatism to liberalism of culture. READ IT!!
Campbell, Rev. William. 1915. Sketches of Formosa. Marshall Brothers Ltd. London, Edinburgh, New York, reprinted by SMC Publishing Inc 1996. ISBN 957-638-377-3
Another one of Cambell’s books on Euro-American observations of Taiwan.
Norman, Jerry. 1988. Chinese. Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, Cambridge, Tenth Printing 2004. ISBN 0-521-29653-6
This is a fantastic book on the development of sinitic languages from ancient to classical to modern. Jerry Norman served as the head of the Asian Languages Dept. at the University of Washington until his retirement in 1998 and in this book he creates an image of sinitic languages that is both easy to understand and informative. I bought this book for the work on Min, Hakka and Taiwanese languages. One detail Norman adds is the disparity between Hakka scholasic tradition and linguistic studies on Taiwan. Norman declares that, despite many attempts by Hakka scholars in Taiwan to cast the Hakka as a northern ethnic group that migrated south, there is little evidence to support that theory and the Hakka, share a linguistic association to both the Min and Yue languages. The Hakka of Taiwan, though, may be ethnic Shi people, who adopted Hakka languages later.
Li, Paul Jen-Kuei & Tsuchida Shigeru. 2001. Pazih Dictionary. Academia Sinica Institute of Linguistics, Taipei, Taiwan. ISBN 957-671-790-6
For anyone interested in the Pazih language this dictionary is essential. There is only one fluent speaker left in Puli, but the language is being taught to some children in AiLan (Puli). This book is most valuable in desciphering place names in the Taichung area, but doing so takes an understanding of Taiwanese as well.
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]Thanks for the post, I’m merging it into the ‘Books On Taiwan’ thread, where you’ll find many more books to interest you.
[/quote]
Thanks. Not sure how I missed that thread. Should it be a sticky thread?
What strikes me is that only a couple few decades ago, many of the
Forumosa posters would have been executed or sentenced to hard labor
for our opinions. I’m not entirely sure what life on the mainland is like,
or how Hong Kong is being digested, but they may have a hard time
assimilating Taiwan. Anyway, maybe thats why the Taiwanese seem
so genuinely nice and helpful: they’re glad to finally be rid of martial law
and enjoying a time and place of relative prosperity and freedom.
There is a vast legacy of injustice here.
Good idea.
Done.
I thought the old thread had been merged into this one and this was the MASTER thread for Book on Taiwan. I believe that was the prior concensus…
Maowang, the Harrell and Hsu books sound interesting. Do you buy online, or are they available in bookstores?
Brian
Taipei, at the Taiwan Bookstore near NTU… If you go, bring your Visa Card.
You can search for books at…
bestwebbuys.com/
addall.com/ good for out of print books (used.addall.com)
amazon.co.uk/ has slightly different books than US site
One of the ISBN’s missing from above:
Formosa Betrayed
Author: George Kerr
Format: Hardcover (Reprint)
Publication Date: June 1976
Publisher: Da Capo Pr
ISBN: 0306707624
(I did find this on eMule)
This lets you search most govt/univ libraries on the island including the national library.
nbinet.ncl.edu.tw/search*cht/t
nbinet.ncl.edu.tw/search*cht/i
nbinet.ncl.edu.tw/screens/opacmenu.html in English
Has there been a discussion of how we expats can use libraries here?
Well written articles in both English and Chinese about the current economy and business environment.
Practically a book if you stack them all up.
Seems to work better on Internet Explorer, and takes a while to load.
amcham.com.tw/publication_ta.php
You can get some of the printed back issues for free at the Community Service Center.
As a victim family of KMT’s looting in Taiwan (Formosa) before 1947 “228 Massacre”, I think “Formosa Betrayed” has painted a very detailed historical background for the tradedies many Taiwanese families had experienced. Even though I knew the loss of my Grandfather’s jewelry store, I always thought it was only individual instead of large-scaled looting all over the island. I did not know those Chinese eyed on rich Formosan possessions long before they came. The KMT education had taught me to accept this event as inevitable power struggle and communists activities which were lies to cover up the true history. What saddened me the most was that I did not even know my father went to jail for years in my grandfather’s place until days after my father’s funeral. To many people, this part of history may seem old and too old to mention, but the pain remains in my heart each time Taiwan shows up in the TV news.
Forumosa.com has several library threads:
[url=http://tw.forumosa.com/t/public-library-privately-owned-book-shop/6609/1 Library / Privately Owned Book Shop
[url=Taipei Public Library, directions please Public Library, directions please…[/url]
A Thousand Moons on a Thousand Rivers
by Hsiao Li-hung (translated by Michelle Wu)
Columbia Unviersity Press, New York, 2000
ISBN: 0231117930
I picked this book up by chance in a second hand bookshop. On reading the synopsis on the back cover I didn’t hesitate to buy it. The book is beautifully written and works on many levels. It is a love story, a snapshot of life in a traditional Taiwanese family in the 1970s and finally it is about the spirit of Zen. I recommend this book both as a great piece of literature and for its insights into Taiwanese culture.
I am not sure if the English translation is readily available in Taiwan. However, if you can read Chinese you should have no difficulty finding the original Chinese edition of the book.
I have a book here called Books on Taiwan 2005 published by http://www.smcbook.com.tw. It’s free and I called them just now and they said you can pick up a copy if you like. There are hundreds of Chinese-language and a few English-language books listed. I am sure I can get a copy for you, or if you have a fax number, I’ll fax those pages to you. Just PM me
Brown, Melissa J., ed. Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan. The Regents of the University of California, Berkeley, CA, 1996. ISBN 1-55729-048-2
To understand the nature of identity change and the Han identity this is a great book. Two of the most interesting chapters Surnames and Han Chinese Identity, On Becoming Chinese and Taiwan and the Impossibility of the Chinese, specifically deal with the realities of identity change in Taiwan.
Teng, Emma Jinhuang. Taiwan’s Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01451-0
This book acts as a companion to John Shepherd’s Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier. Teng uses imperial edicts and maps to demonstrate how Taiwan’s temporal location in the Chinese mind has shifted from “beyond the pale” to “sacred territory”. Teng’s research is extremely important in understanding the importance of the imagination in nationalism.
Meskill, Johanna Menzel. A Chinese Pioneer Family: The Lins of Wu-Feng, Taiwan 1729-1895. Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, 1979.
This is one of the basic starting points for the study of anthropology in Taiwan. The book is slightly dated by newer research, but still introduces many insights on Taiwan’s frontier development and the narratives of power relations in Taiwan.
Shepherd, John Robert. Marriage and Mandatory Abortion among the 17th Century Siraya. The American Anthropological Association, Arlington VA, 1995.
This is a tremendous contribution to anthropological studies in Taiwan. John Shepherd makes a very strong case through deductive reasoning for understanding the effects of mandatory abortion in Sirayan society and lays the groundwork for the study of population growth in Qing era Taiwan.
I just finished a great chapter on Taiwan in an interesting book by one of my favorite writers about Asia, Ian Buruma’s Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing. The Taiwan chapter is entitled, “Not China” and here are a few excerpts:
[quote]Kaohsiung, a port city on the southern tip of Taiwan, is no more or less ugly than most East Asian cities; that is to say, it is for the most part hideous. . .
The “elevator girl” working the lifts in a new Japanese department store in the center of town wore a Japanese uniform of white lace gloves, beret, high heeled shoes, silk stockings, heavy white makeup. . . But where the actual Japanese elevator girl is drilled to be virtually indistinguishable from a mechanical doll. . . everything about the girl in Kaohsiung was slightly out of kilter: her skirt was stained, her hat askew; she lifted one foot to scratch the back of her other leg, twirled a chunky jade ring round and round her little finger, and grinned at me as though to show how ridiculous this prissy japanese charade really was. . .
Annette Lu’s office was of gigantic proportions, with an enormous desk at one end. On the wall, above the usual knickknacks of high office, including a large gold clock of truly extraordinary ugliness, hung a huge photograph of the beaming mayor herself [she was mayor of Taoyuan when the author visited her], framed in elaborately worked gold. Like many middle-aged ladies in Taiwan, she wore a great deal of makeup and jewelry. I hoped to break the ice by remarking on the size of the new government buildings. This was met with a look of undisguised disapproval. She tugged, a little impatiently, at the sleeves of her cream-colored jacket and looked at me severely through a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, waiting for me to begin. . .
Then suddenly she drew herself up and said: “Look, I’m a very busy woman, and I have no time for trivia. What is it you want to know?”
My mouth went dry. I realized I had badly misjudged the occasion. The interview had turned into an embarassment. I had no idea what else to ask her. . . A romantic, like Shih Ming-teh, might bask in past heroism and reflect on its meanings, but Annette Lu had no time for such things. After one or more two perfunctory questions, I decided I had better leave, whereupon her face lit up in the radiant smile of her official portrait. She asked me to repeat my name, took up a gold pen, and signed her book for me. . .
During the first presidential campaign in 1996, I had watched a rally in Taipei together with a group of Hong Kong democrats. Lawyers, legislators, and academics, articulate in English and Cantonese, smartly dressed, and mostly rich, they were amused by the rustic manners of the Taiwanese, their gaudy taste, their odd superstitions, their loudness, and their crass sense of style. But there was some discomfort, too, for when it came to politics, these same crass, vulgar, rustic people were clearly way ahead of Hong Kong. . . [/quote]
Anyway, that’s just a brief sample. It’s a great book and the chapter on Taiwan is fascinating. While I quoted random parts of the chapter that I liked, it deals mostly with Taiwan’s transformation to democracy: 2-28, the Kaohsiung Incident, dissidents who lived in exile in the US for decades, and the election of 1996.
Bradley Winterton of the Taipei Times has given a positive review of Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan, by Jonathan Manthorpe.
Here are the chapter headings:[ol]
[li]Two Shots on Chinhua Road [/li]
[li]A Leaf on the Waves [/li]
[li]Barbarian Territory [/li]
[li]Pirate Haven [/li]
[li]The House of Cheng [/li]
[li]The Siege of Fort Zeelandia [/li]
[li]The Prince who Became a God [/li]
[li]Deliverance and Defeat [/li]
[li]A State of Constant Rebellion [/li]
[li]The Wolves Circle [/li]
[li]A Modern Province [/li]
[li]The Taiwan Republic [/li]
[li]Becoming Japanese [/li]
[li]Missionaries and Filibusters [/li]
[li]New Beginning, New Betrayal [/li]
[li]The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier [/li]
[li]Reform and Terror [/li]
[li]Strategic Ambiguity [/li]
[li]The Perils of Democracy[/li][/ol]
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]
everything about the girl in Kaohsiung was slightly out of kilter: her skirt was stained, her hat askew; she lifted one foot to scratch the back of her other leg, twirled a chunky jade ring round and round her little finger, and grinned at me as though to show how …ridiculous… this prissy Japanese charade really was. . .
.[/quote]
I liked that quote. Nice.
The Maplethorpe book is a great pat on the back for those who oppose unification with China, but Maplethorpe’s sources are scarce and heavily reliant on a handful of 19th Century accounts esp. James Davidson. He fails to confront the problems of the historical narrative, or historical perspective. I suggest reading some Hayden White or Paul Cohen’s History in Three Parts: Event, Experience and Myth.
Don’t forget the new Taiwan book (well, the primary focus is on Taiwan) entitled Notes from the Other China - Adventures in Asia, by Troy Parfitt. For a preview of the book, Google the title and look at the top of the page in Book Search Results. Click the link and read away. Of course, if you should be so intriqued as to head over to Amazon.com and buy it, I doubt the author would object.
I just found this thread and now I’m determined to read any of these titles I can get my hands on!