Every spring, his name sprouts up all over the island. Along the creeks, deep in forests, or high on mountains, at least 20 kinds of Taiwan's indigenous plants are named after Mori Ushinosuke (
However, in spite of the many species of oak, fern, azalea and lichen whose scientific names include the letters "morii," this frail adventurer, who once braved the island's most treacherous torrents and cliffs to collect the first specimens of those plants, seemed destined for oblivion. He was forgotten in both Taiwan and his native Japan for nearly three quarters of a century until another scholar-adventurer ferreted out his writings from various libraries and archives and translated them into Chinese. The result, sprinkled with numerous commentaries, is Wanderings Among Aborigines (
Through Yang Nanchun's (楊南郡) indefatigable research, we now know that Mori is the man behind the camera for many of the precious photos often seen in ethnological annals that record the customs of Taiwanese aborigines in the early colonial period. Of small stature and prone to sickness, he was nonetheless fueled by a strong desire to see distant lands and learn about far-off cultures.
He arrived in Taiwan at the age of 18 to work as a Chinese translator for the Japanese army at the end of the first Sino-Japanese War. He went on to spend the rest of his short yet extraordinarily fruitful life in his adopted land. Besides a rich trove of plant specimens and photographic records, he also compiled the first dictionaries for languages used by Taiwan's non-Chinese native tribes and penned two comprehensive studies and scores of newspaper articles on the aborigine cultures he encountered throughout his wanderings.
Mainichi Shinbun of Osaka provided funds for Mori to produce an encyclopedia of Taiwan's aborigine cultures. However, no longer content with being a mere observer of the people whom he dearly loved and whose culture was dying fast under colonial rule, he advocated for an aborigine reserve deep in the mountains of Nantou (
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s