Can anyone advise me on books about Taiwan? I just got here. One friend told me to get the Lonely Planet and ‘From far formosa’. Another said ‘Catching up with the war gods’ was alright. Are these decent? Any others?
Interesting that you bring up this topic … It seems to me that Taiwan is woefully underreprented in print, at least as far as the UK/USA publishing houses are concerned. Compare how many travelogues/histories/profiles exist of Taiwan, compared to the PRC or Japan. The only Taiwan books I have been able to find (beside Lonely Planet and a few other guidebooks) are the occaisional collection of scholarly essays plus doubtful GIO tomes. Has anyone else seen anything good about Taiwan?
Bradley Winterton reviewed a book in Sunday’s Taipei Times called ‘A Hiking Guide to Taiwan’ by Lyndon Punt. Haven’t read it, but plan to pick it up soon. Winterton calls it a ‘brief introduction in view of the current absence of anything comparable’. I think there’s a mention of it somewhere else on this forum, don’t remember where.
Actually, if it’s important to you, you may want to contact Winterton through Taipei Times as he seems to have the foremost knowledge of what’s available regarding English books about Taiwan.
It depends on what you’re looking for, really.
As Alien said: It depends on what you’re looking for.
You can find selections from Keeping Up With the War God in the books section of my site. I recommend it. You might want to have a look at some of the other books there, too.
Punt’s book is a guidebook for hikes, nothing more. Good luck finding a copy, Alien. The earlier thread was about it being unavailable. Perhaps Buttercup made an extra copy of mine.
Smart Ass is right about Taiwan being under-represented in English. I’m not quite sure what’s meant by “doubtful GIO tomes,” though. Some of the GIO’s stuff isn’t bad, particularly that from Sinorama. (That publication doesn’t seem as good lately. Anyone know what’s up there?)
The GIO’s website is enormous (though most of its HTML is atrocious .) You might find many things there of interest.
For history, Hung Chien-chao’s History of Taiwan (NT$450 at Caves) is about the only general survey. I spoke with the author recently. He gave me permission to put “the whole thing” on my site. Since he didn’t have a computer file of it, however, don’t look for much of it to appear there anytime soon. (Actually, I haven’t done much of anything with the site for a while, other than add a translation of Confucious. Maybe I’ll get some work done on it during Chinese New Year.)
I wouldn’t recommend starting out a study of Taiwan with From Far Formosa, because it’s more than a century old. It’s published by SMC, which has issued many volumes (mainly reprints) about Taiwan. The books from this publisher all have an yin-yang circled S on their spines.
If you’re feeling the urge for something more scholarly and specialized, you’d be hard pressed to find anything better than John Robert Shepherd’s Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier: 1600-1800.
I could recommend other books, too, depending on what exactly you’re looking for. Questions on this, however, would probably be raised more suitably in the Culture and History forum, which I moderate.
Cranky has done his or her homework … but as I said, Cranky’s post suggests the majority of literary works about Taiwan are scholarly in nature … no memoirs of a bing lang xi shi here!
The doubtful GIO tomes I refer to are things like “The Republic of China Yearbook”. The 90s edition I have sports far too many pictures of guys in suits (and often uniforms) standing in front of microphones, lecturing rapt audiences. Do they even still print these things?
I saw the review in Sunday’s paper and from the illustration, it looks like a new edition, or at least a reprint. There’s also a mention of a corrections page dated 2000, so I think its probably available again.
Yes, they do, though not as many copies as before the budget cuts. But, as you might expect, the current government is not as interested as the previous one in showing endless shots of Lien Chan, etc., so the look has indeed changed. Not totally, but it has changed and is continuing to do so – kinda like Taiwan.
The entire book, a useful reference work, is available on the Web.
You might also want to look at the list of other GIO publications. Some are better than others.
But no memoirs of a la mei there. 
Thank you cranky for mentioning my book and including the link.
Southern Materials Center (Nan-tien), a local publisher, has put out several interesting tomes on culture, soceity and geography. The one by Jerome Keating and April Lin (I’ve forgotten the title) is a good introduction to the island’s status and politics if you’ve just arrived.
Richard Hartzell’s Harmony in Conflict is pretty interesting, too.
A word of warning about the Lonely Planet book. Some of the hiking info is - how should I put it - not as clear and accurate as it could be. Don’t depend on it when exploring the mountains.
Steven Crook
KEEPING UP WITH THE WAR GOD
http://www.romanization.com/books/crook/index.html
The US publishing house M.E. Sharpe has a series called “Taiwan in the Modern World” which has about a dozen titles. These are interesting and useful if you are seriously into the history and society of post-1949 Taiwan. But, be warned, most of the books are collections of papers by academics.
I read “A Pail of Oysters” by Vern Sneider. He also wrote “The Teahouse of the August Moon.”
“A Pail of Oysters” is about an Aboriginal Taiwanese boy’s adventures trying to get a Kitchen God back that was stolen by KMT soldiers. He goes to Taipei and meets a foreign journalist. In one passage, Caves Books is mentioned! 228 is discussed and it gives the perspective of a journalist trying to get through the government propaganda to the real truth of people’s lives on Taiwan. Sound familiar?
Has anyone here read…
Fires of the Dragon: Politics, Murder, and the Kuomintang by David E. Kaplan.
My brother just left me a copy of a book by the same author on the Yakuza that seems like it will be a good read, and I saw that the same dude wrote this title. From what I can gather, it’s about the murder in California of journalist Henry Liu and other nasty past undertakings of the KMT. Curious if anyone else has read it and would recommend it.
Haven’t read “Fires of the dragon” but it does sound interesting.
Actually, while I know it is on Cranky’s site I’d give a plug for John Ross’ Formosan Odyssey. Especially for someone straight of the boat. There’s a wealth of experience in those there pages.
http://www.romanization.com/books/formosan_odyssey/index.html
Gotta get around to buying my own copy. John?
HG
I read a decent survey a few years ago called “Taiwan: Nation State or Province,” by John Copper. John Copper is a U.S. academic who has written a few books about Taiwan. I can’t remember the publisher. It was available in Taiwan book stores. The author’s tone is pro-independence (I am not), but it was still an informative read.
what genre you looking for? history? today’s stuff? fiction?
back in uni we had to read crystal boys. pretty scary stuff about the down n out teens eking out a living at 228 park. fiction, or is it?
historically, owen rutter’s across formosa was an enjoyable read of a white guy came to taiwan during the japanese occupation.
the soong dynasy is a good read, as is another by the same author (seagrave?):lords of the rim. the latter tells of the connections of chinese across the pacific. lotsa juicy taiwan tidbits in that one.
caves bookstore is your best bet. a couple of caves have shelves of taiwan/chinese studies. whenever i am up in the big town i stock up.
what genre you looking for? history? today’s stuff? fiction?
back in uni we had to read crystal boys. pretty scary stuff about the down n out teens eking out a living at 228 park. fiction, or is it?
historically, owen rutter’s across formosa was an enjoyable read of a white guy came to taiwan during the japanese occupation.
the soong dynasy is a good read, as is another by the same author (seagrave?):lords of the rim. the latter tells of the connections of chinese across the pacific. lotsa juicy taiwan tidbits in that one.
caves bookstore is your best bet. a couple of caves have shelves of taiwan/chinese studies. whenever i am up in the big town i stock up.