Search Amazon.com for “Taiwan” and you will find almost nothing other than guidebooks, academic histories and political studies.
“It’s a tragedy that so few books have been written about Taiwan,” says New Zealander expatriate John Ross, author of Formosan Odyssey (reviewed in the Taipei Times on July 7, 2002). “The country has such an interesting history, geography, political situation, and culture … You could spend a lifetime writing about Taiwan and not run out of material.”
To remedy what he sees a dearth of literature, Ross has organized an English-language book festival, which takes place this weekend at Alleycat’s Pizza in Taipei’s Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914).
Photo Courtesy Steven Crook
The aim is to “provide a place where authors and readers can sell and buy books and, hopefully, encourage more foreign residents to write about Taiwan,” Ross says.
Presentations and group discussions will be led by established authors in Taiwan, such as Jerome Keating (Islands in the Stream: A Quick Case Study of Taiwan’s Complex History and Taiwan: The Search for Identity), Syd Goldsmith (Jade Phoenix), and Steven Crook (Taiwan: The Bradt Travel Guide, Do’s and Don’ts in Taiwan and Keeping Up With the War God).
The focus of the presentations will not be on how to get work picked up by publishing houses, but on self-publishing. “Other than textbooks, the market for English-language books is very small,” Ross says. “Self-publishing, however, is becoming easier, and Taiwan is a great place to do it.”
Several of the festival’s featured authors have self-published books. Other speakers include prominent bloggers, such as Carrie Kellenberger (freelance writer and editor and owner of www.MySeveralWorlds.com, currently one of the most successful travel blogs in the world), Craig Ferguson (professional photographer and blogger at www.CraigFergusonImages.com), and David Reid (freelance writer and blogger at www.blog.taiwan-guide.org). There will be discussions on citizen journalism and how to make money by writing online.
Though this is the festival’s first edition, Ross has high hopes. In the future, he aims “to broaden the focus of the festival to include Taiwanese book lovers, get publishers involved, and invite some foreign guest authors to Taiwan for the event.”
Under pressure, President William Lai (賴清德) has enacted his first cabinet reshuffle. Whether it will be enough to staunch the bleeding remains to be seen. Cabinet members in the Executive Yuan almost always end up as sacrificial lambs, especially those appointed early in a president’s term. When presidents are under pressure, the cabinet is reshuffled. This is not unique to any party or president; this is the custom. This is the case in many democracies, especially parliamentary ones. In Taiwan, constitutionally the president presides over the heads of the five branches of government, each of which is confusingly translated as “president”
Sept. 1 to Sept. 7 In 1899, Kozaburo Hirai became the first documented Japanese to wed a Taiwanese under colonial rule. The soldier was partly motivated by the government’s policy of assimilating the Taiwanese population through intermarriage. While his friends and family disapproved and even mocked him, the marriage endured. By 1930, when his story appeared in Tales of Virtuous Deeds in Taiwan, Hirai had settled in his wife’s rural Changhua hometown, farming the land and integrating into local society. Similarly, Aiko Fujii, who married into the prominent Wufeng Lin Family (霧峰林家) in 1927, quickly learned Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and
The Venice Film Festival kicked off with the world premiere of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia Wednesday night on the Lido. The opening ceremony of the festival also saw Francis Ford Coppola presenting filmmaker Werner Herzog with a lifetime achievement prize. The 82nd edition of the glamorous international film festival is playing host to many Hollywood stars, including George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Dwayne Johnson, and famed auteurs, from Guillermo del Toro to Kathryn Bigelow, who all have films debuting over the next 10 days. The conflict in Gaza has also already been an everpresent topic both outside the festival’s walls, where
The low voter turnout for the referendum on Aug. 23 shows that many Taiwanese are apathetic about nuclear energy, but there are long-term energy stakes involved that the public needs to grasp Taiwan faces an energy trilemma: soaring AI-driven demand, pressure to cut carbon and reliance on fragile fuel imports. But the nuclear referendum on Aug. 23 showed how little this registered with voters, many of whom neither see the long game nor grasp the stakes. Volunteer referendum worker Vivian Chen (陳薇安) put it bluntly: “I’ve seen many people asking what they’re voting for when they arrive to vote. They cast their vote without even doing any research.” Imagine Taiwanese voters invited to a poker table. The bet looked simple — yes or no — yet most never showed. More than two-thirds of those
RSS