This is a slightly better book than it seems at first sight, but is nonetheless far less good than some of its early sections might lead you to believe. \nWhen I began reading Touching Earth, I thought it was an oriental genre novel, full of luxuriant images of the gorgeous and exotic East. The scene was Bali and both human life and nature appeared to be characterized by abundance, a characteristic that was reflected in an opulent prose style. There were sorcerers, long fingernails, fruits of every description, jeweled combs, moonlit nights and an abundance of coconut oil. \nI know what this is all about, I thought. This writer, though no doubt well aware that in many literary circles irony, understatement and a critical stance are highly valued, believes that she, by contrast, will be lush, indulgent, and implicitly critical of the West for lacking these qualities. You may have lost the feeling for these things, I imagined she was saying, but Asians are happily still in touch with them. And by writing like this, I'll show you what you're missing. \nThen came the shock. The first chapter dealt with a Balinese girl called Nutan who, with her twin sister Zeenat, is put on a plane for London by their father. After leaving their exotic paradise island, they're launched into jobs waitressing in a bleak London restaurant run by a distant relation. \nFrom the descriptions of this grim capital city in winter -- its inhabitants visiting cold, gloomy temples to worship their god with guilty, downcast eyes, children as young as 13 roaming the streets and swearing as they drink cider from plastic bottles -- I should have known something slightly different from what I'd expected was in store. \nBut I continued assuming that the main angle was the decadent West contrasted with the vibrant East. The author, I took for granted, still valued, above all else, the sensibility of some happy-go-lucky Asian, awash in the pleasures of the senses while at the same time maintaining a natural dignity thanks to a morally responsible family life. \nMy eyes were opened, however, when I got to a chapter narrated by a girl, Elisabeth, from the west of Ireland. Earlier there had been chapters narrated by a couple of Sicilians, Riccardo (Ricky) and Francesca. These had certainly summoned up a different world from Bali, but even so, I remained unaware of what the author was up to. \nThe chapter on the Irish west took me aback more than a little -- it summoned up an Irish world I felt that, in a small way, I knew and understood. All these early narratives look back at their speakers' childhoods before following them to the UK and London. \nWhat I hadn't appreciated was the author's command of different casts of mind, and with them tones of voice. These chapters, I now saw, were strongly differentiated. And the Balinese exoticism was not Rani Manicka's own take on the world, but just one of many personas she felt able to inhabit. \nNext came the mini-story of an East African Indian youth, Anis, living with his family in London following their expulsion from Kenya in the 1960s. One day he cracks the secret code on his father's computer and reads his sex diary -- crammed full of gay encounters. Anis' homophobia at this point is extremely pronounced. Was this the author's attitude too? I read on, totally unsure now what to expect. \nThe final major character introduced, Bruce, is a denizen of London's deprived East End. His father had been a servant with some affluent families, and from this, his mother had acquired a subtle form of social snobbery. At the end of this section Bruce, who has set up as a hairdresser, meets Francesca, one of his customers. Now all the characters were ready to interact, painted puppets in the author's gaudy marionette box. \nThey all meet up in Ricky's "Spider's Den," an apartment where almost anything can, and usually does, happen. This turns out to be a world consisting largely of prostitution, cocaine-use and -- inevitably -- loss of illusions. (The book's subtitle is "A novel of Innocence Corrupted"). \nThe second half of the novel consists of fast-changes from one character to another, postcards to the reader from the edge of their experiences together. It's a lengthy sequence of nightclubs, drugs, sexual musical chairs and character vignettes. Some of these pasted-together fragments only consist of a single sentence. \nOthers arrive on the scene -- Maggie, Haylee, and towards the end, even the author herself shows up. Anis has an affair with Zeenat and gets hooked on heroin, while Ricky makes money buying and selling restaurants and, at least partly, avoiding the tax man. \nThis book, then, is essentially an attempted blockbuster and, as I've unfortunately come to expect from such productions, much of it is vivid but shallow, full of cliches about different national types, and, in the final analysis brash, like an over-colorful inflight magazine, and more than a touch predictable. \nThere's one more thing. I happen to know that twins in Bali are traditionally viewed as bringing extremely bad luck. The unfortunate parents who produce them have to go to excessive, and usually very expensive, lengths to mitigate their misfortune. Even their houses can be pulled down to dissipate the spirits who brought such a perceived disaster upon them. \nSuch a traditional belief doesn't appear to have any bearing on the Balinese twins who appear in this story. I should, perhaps, have taken more notice of this at the start. \nI know that this book is likely to find many readers. But reviewers, like other people, can't easily change their tastes. And so I must end by saying that I cannot, in all honesty, recommend it.
Some of Taiwan’s prehistoric peoples buried their dead facing the sea, while others had their heads orientated towards the mountains. Some lay the dead on their backs looking skywards, others on their fronts, presumably staring eternally into the dark earth. These different practices can no doubt tell us something about the views these ancient cultures held about life, death and the hereafter. “Yes,” says Kuo Su-chiu (郭素秋), associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology, who has participated in numerous archaeological digs over the last three decades, “but what that is, is far from clear. “What is clear, is that
“Stand up if you didn’t learn anything there,” said Michael Hurst, director of the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society. He was speaking at the conclusion of a talk by Chang Wei-bin (張維斌), an aviation historian and author of Formosa Air Raid (空襲福爾摩沙), a study of the allied bombardment of Taiwan during World War II. Had there been anyone churlish enough to take Hurst’s challenge literally, it is unlikely they would have risen from their seat. Chang’s 90-minute lecture as part of the society’s program to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Victory Over Japan Day, or V-J Day, was full of
Aug. 17 to Aug. 23 Ms Liu (劉) had a lot to be sorry about over the years. She was rude to her parents, feuded with coworkers and often succumbed to greed. So when Chiayi’s Cheng Huang Temple (城隍廟) started offering “cangue processions” (夯枷) in 2014 at end of Ghost Month, Liu immediately signed up, she told the Liberty Times (Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). A cangue is a large wooden board that was fitted around a criminal’s neck, a practise dating back to antiquity. Some included holes for arms. During the Qing Dynasty, a cangue could weight up to 40kg, and prisoners
Frank Chiu (趙思源) felt intimidated at first when facing off against his idol debate team. Unlike Team Taiwan, which was only established in 2014, Team Singapore has participated in the World Schools Debate Championships (WSDC) since 1995, claiming top honors in 2011, 2015 and 2017. After an intense debate over the topic of whether to distribute emergency and humanitarian aid through non-state groups linked to terrorism, Singapore still came out on top. “You feel that these teams are unbeatable,” Chiu says “Once we got into the quarterfinals, I figured [Singapore] would destroy us. But in the actual round, we kept it
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