Decadence Mandchoue is the most memorable book I read in 2013. It’s the memoir of Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, and it covers China’s last decade under the emperors. Backhouse was an English eccentric and talented linguist who gained access to the Forbidden City and became one of the Empress Dowager’s many lovers. His own predilection was unambiguously homosexual, however, and his reminiscences in this sphere are nothing if not outrageous. The book was long considered a pack of lies, but Earnshaw Books in Hong Kong has come up with this newly-edited edition that makes Backhouse’s revelations seem entirely credible, as well as irresistibly readable.
Of the other books reviewed this year,The World’s Rarest Birds is remarkable as a passionate plea for the world’s most endangered avian species. Notable is the plight of the albatross. With 100,000 being killed every year on the baited lines of modern industrial-scale fishing boats, this fabulous bird is facing certain extinction if nothing is done to help it. Simple procedures, such as weighting the lines, can reduce the carnage to zero. Altogether, this book is a full-color, information-packed catalog of some of the most spectacular inhabitants of our beleaguered planet.
Thai Stick is a vivid account of marijuana smuggling between Southeast Asia and the US during the 1960s and 1970s. It makes for compulsive reading, and was put together by an academic (Peter Maguire) in conjunction with a self-confessed former smuggler (Mike Ritter).
The First Bohemians is the second book by art historian Vic Gatrell to survey the riotous world of London’s 18th-century satiric cartoonists, following City of Laughter in 2007. It’s an account that manages to be both scurrilous and authoritative. Gatrell is an expert with the common touch, who gives special emphasis to the sexual exploits of the artists then living in London’s Covent Garden area.
The Last Train to Zona Verde is Paul Theroux’s dyspeptic account of an overland trip from Cape Town to Angola. He sees both sides of life in South Africa, is reasonably tolerant in Namibia, but finally blows his top when he reaches Angola. And as always, Theroux is best of all when he’s angry.
On Taiwan, The Third Son by Julie Wu (吳茗秀) is an excellent first novel that’s expertly constructed and lucidly written. Though mostly set in the US, its theme is the oppressiveness of the traditional Chinese family. “A wound that never healed. A promise never to be fulfilled. That was family.” But it’s an optimistic and buoyant book nonetheless.
Finally, Thunkbook 1 surfaced this year, as the incarnation of the former Taiwan-based English-language literary magazine Pressed. In August, I found that the best item it contained was by H.V. Chao, and I had announced an imminent first collection of his short stories. Unfortunately this arrangement fell through, so anyone in the book business wishing to publish real talent should contact him (he’s Edward Gauvin on LinkedIn) immediately.
As Taiwan’s second most populous city, Taichung looms large in the electoral map. Taiwanese political commentators describe it — along with neighboring Changhua County — as Taiwan’s “swing states” (搖擺州), which is a curious direct borrowing from American election terminology. In the early post-Martial Law era, Taichung was referred to as a “desert of democracy” because while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was winning elections in the north and south, Taichung remained staunchly loyal to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). That changed over time, but in both Changhua and Taichung, the DPP still suffers from a “one-term curse,” with the
Jan. 26 to Feb. 1 Nearly 90 years after it was last recorded, the Basay language was taught in a classroom for the first time in September last year. Over the following three months, students learned its sounds along with the customs and folktales of the Ketagalan people, who once spoke it across northern Taiwan. Although each Ketagalan settlement had its own language, Basay functioned as a common trade language. By the late 19th century, it had largely fallen out of daily use as speakers shifted to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), surviving only in fragments remembered by the elderly. In
William Liu (劉家君) moved to Kaohsiung from Nantou to live with his boyfriend Reg Hong (洪嘉佑). “In Nantou, people do not support gay rights at all and never even talk about it. Living here made me optimistic and made me realize how much I can express myself,” Liu tells the Taipei Times. Hong and his friend Cony Hsieh (謝昀希) are both active in several LGBT groups and organizations in Kaohsiung. They were among the people behind the city’s 16th Pride event in November last year, which gathered over 35,000 people. Along with others, they clearly see Kaohsiung as the nexus of LGBT rights.
In the American west, “it is said, water flows upwards towards money,” wrote Marc Reisner in one of the most compelling books on public policy ever written, Cadillac Desert. As Americans failed to overcome the West’s water scarcity with hard work and private capital, the Federal government came to the rescue. As Reisner describes: “the American West quietly became the first and most durable example of the modern welfare state.” In Taiwan, the money toward which water flows upwards is the high tech industry, particularly the chip powerhouse Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). Typically articles on TSMC’s water demand
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