Novelists usually pursue fame and book sales through publicists, book fairs and social media, but Wu Ming-yi’s (吳明益) approach has been far from typical. The novelist and academic spent the summer holiday riding an antique bicycle around Taiwan, meeting fans and giving lectures at small, independent bookstores to promote his book, The Stolen Bicycle (單車失竊記).
“People appreciate the opportunity to connect with me more intimately in these small spaces,” Wu told a standing-room-only audience at Tainan’s Lingo Bookstore (林檎二手書室). He added that he was a marketing major in college, and it was ironic that he chose to go against everything he learned about marketing and promotion.
Wu says he enjoys sharing the knowledge that he learned about Taiwan’s flora and fauna in his research papers, and started building a following that appreciated his message of ecological conservation. Eventually, he began toying with the introduction of creative fiction to enhance his message, and his career as a novelist developed.
Photo: Tony Coolidge
The novel, inspired by his love for bicycles and Taiwanese history, brings readers back to a simpler time when life moved more slowly and people spent more time face-to-face with friends and neighbors. Riding a bike allowed people to appreciate and digest the details of the world around them.
Wu said that success growing a fan base in Taiwan was not easy until he partnered with a talented literary agent and translator who helped him generate success overseas.
Although Wu shunned modern marketing and choose a grueling, sweaty book promotion schedule at small venues around the nation, the whole experience furthered his reputation as an approachable man who preferred to have a meaningful discussion over coffee rather than take a selfie with a fan. And Wu seems committed to enduring more heat and sweat to make sure more people get it.
Photo courtesy of Wu Ming-yi
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
Six weeks before I embarked on a research mission in Kyoto, I was sitting alone at a bar counter in Melbourne. Next to me, a woman was bragging loudly to a friend: She, too, was heading to Kyoto, I quickly discerned. Except her trip was in four months. And she’d just pulled an all-nighter booking restaurant reservations. As I snooped on the conversation, I broke out in a sweat, panicking because I’d yet to secure a single table. Then I remembered: Eating well in Japan is absolutely not something to lose sleep over. It’s true that the best-known institutions book up faster
RSS