Nearly 1,000 of Taiwanese human rights activist and author Bo Yang's (
The Council for Cultural Affairs (
Bo signed an agreement with the Chinese museum at the beginning of this year agreeing to provide it with some of his manuscripts, letters, writing desks, chairs, pens and paper weights, as well as taped interviews from his time in prison on Green Island so that they could be stored in Beijing.
Because Bo's manuscripts are related to the history of modern Taiwanese literature and Taiwan's democratic development, they are important to researchers for their historic value. If these items are sent to China, Taiwanese researchers would have to travel thousands of kilometers to read them. This makes a mockery of Taiwan's efforts to preserve its cultural relics.
The manuscripts of Chen Ying-zhen (
The council, which is in charge of these matters, should think long and hard about this question.
Taiwan is overcrowded with independent organizations collecting and compiling literary works. Although the council has its National Museum of Taiwanese Literature (國家臺灣文學館), there are also other organizations actively gathering authors' manuscripts, such as the National Central Library (國家圖書館), the National Tsing Hua University Library (清華大學圖書館) and the National Taiwan University Library (臺灣大學圖書館).
Although the National Central Library and the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature fought to win Bo's manuscripts, both efforts ended in failure.
The National Museum of Taiwanese Literature was established in 2003, becoming the first national repository for literary works. It now holds more than 3,000 manuscripts and more than 7,000 audiovisual items.
The museum has research, development, preservation and administrative departments, but strangely lacks the most important division of all -- a collections department. Just imagine, the museum, which has the important mandate of gathering Taiwanese authors' original documents, hasn't established a department responsible for that mission. It's as if it is passively waiting for authors to bring their manuscripts right to its front door.
The museum should re-examine how its divisions are made up and establish that all-important collection department. Its members should get out of the museum and take the initiative to gather documents from authors both at home and abroad.
In addition, this museum should be the leader among Taiwanese institutions involved in preserving important literary materials.
It should actively seek to cooperate with the other Taiwanese organizations to prevent harmful competition that could end up scattering Taiwan's important documents to the winds.
Let us hope that Bo's manuscripts will be the last ones to leave Taiwan.
Hsueh Li-kui is a professor at the Graduate Institute of Library, Information and Archival Studies at National Chengchi University.
Translated by Marc Langer
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
RSS