Also included is a chapter on Wang Li-ling, Miss China in 1961 when Taiwan was the only "China" the US recognized, and today running her Help-Save-a-Pet Fund in Neihu. She's famous in Taiwan for her campaigns against, among other things, dog-meat restaurants and Spanish bull-fighting, and is the only non-profit-oriented entrepreneur represented in the book. For more on her see her Web site http://www.hsapf.org.tw.
There's also a chapter on the culture of "flower drinking," after-hours socializing by businessmen in the company of girls who may also provide sexual services. The author points out that the possibility of adopting this way of life, if all else fails, forms the backdrop to almost all female economic activity in Taiwan. "Yet in no way does work in the various sex trades carry the same social stigma that prostitution does in the West," he interestingly adds.
For the rest there's a fashion designer, the proprietor of a lesbian bar, the Orchid Island-born owner of a breakfast cafe, and more. The prize for the most interesting lifestory, however, must go to the entrepreneur described in the chapter "A Global Cafe."
This stubbornly independent woman changed her business three times from clothing store to Middle Eastern music venue to a cafe specializing in Taiwanese Aboriginal music in almost as many years.
Social activists often talk about "empowerment," acquiring the power that's yours if only you'll seize it. Self-employment gives women power because it makes them independent of others, notably men, the author claims, surely rightly. Yet, of the women he interviewed, he says, none were part of the middle-class feminist movement, though they undoubtedly benefited from the legal changes such feminists had managed to bring about.
One of the nicest things about this book is the way it explained to me something I knew intuitively but couldn't quite put my finger on -- why I felt so comfortable living in Taiwan. I've often benefited from such businesses quick response to a customer's needs. You want it delivered? No problem! Our kid can bring it over on his bike. Imagine getting service like that from a bank.
It's significant, incidentally, that this is the fourth book about Taiwan that Taipei Times has reviewed in two months. Usually there aren't more than that published in English in an entire year. Do these books represent the beginning of an upsurge? Let's hope so. Even more extraordinary is that every one of them has been excellent.
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