Enthnicity, statehood, belonging and race all constitute labyrinths that you can quickly get lost in, or halls of mirrors where it's all but impossible to tell the reality from the myth. Even so, Brown risks a strictly political last chapter. It doesn't have the convoluted nature of the earlier material. Instead, it looks at scenarios of how the future might unfold, scenarios that differ little from what you might find in editorial columns, and even rely on remarks of interviewees in China, a handful out of over a billion.
The sociological analysis that takes up most of the book doesn't admit to such simple summaries. Topics such as bound feet, family graves or a new wife's status in her husband's family are as complex as life itself -- and indeed in former times in essence were life itself. Melissa Brown has her specialism, but doesn't lead to any simple conclusions. As far as the problematic issue of the future is concerned, her opinion is neither more nor less valid than that of any ordinary Taiwanese. Simply put, it remains problematic.
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