Last year, Chris Horton, an American writer based in Taipei, published his book Ghost Nation. It is a fascinating and startling text about what so many of us who have lived here a long time thought we already knew about the history of this wonderful nation and its endearing people. We were wrong. We knew nothing of the brutal, outright thuggery, theft, murder, slaughter and genocide that his interviews with so many of the real players and survivors uncovered.
An American married to a Taiwanese writer and professor, I am not political in nature, but strongly devoted to the survival of democracy, which is under attack here and back the US. What is unfolding in the US is something I thought could not happen. I was wrong.
I do not know how it will turn out back home — whether enough of a democracy will be left to bring back to life. Like so many of my countrymen, I am doubtful, worried and concerned. That is why Horton’s tale of the painful birth that Taiwan suffered to become what it now is gave me hope and faith in the power of what can be accomplished when motivated by truth, fairness and the desire for freedom.
Freedom is a strange creature. Those who have it take it for granted. Deprive us of it, and something awakens, even in the most ordinary of us, and we would claw it back with the power of a fierce and mighty dragon guarding its treasure.
I hope that this is what happens in the US and here in Taiwan. It is hard to overstate what makes Taiwan different from anywhere else in the world, though I have tried to do this in my writing.
After recently meeting Horton, I came away with the conviction that in him the dragon is awake. Hopefully, with Ghost Nation, he would awaken others in Taiwan and around the world, who together might just possibly have the power to prevent China from making Taiwan’s future look like its past.
William R. Stimson is a retired professor based in Taiwan.
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