There's no big travel book in English on modern Taiwan. No Jan Morris or Paul Theroux has to date sung its praises, or for that matter catalogued its deficiencies. Instead, from time to time a resident expatriate attempts to wrest the island's unique ambiance from the contradictory impressions he has garnered over the years. These authors, often self-publishing, or with their books issued by a small-scale local press, together constitute a brave band of literary warriors successfully filling a niche in the travel writing market.
One question these books give rise to is "Who are they written for?" Given the restricted numbers of potential readers, the answer has to be "Just about everyone." And so the author often encounters a hurdle. Do you explain things Taiwan residents all know already, or do you omit them, and leave the newcomer without information he genuinely needs?
This new book doesn't attempt to solve the problem -- indeed, there probably isn't a solution easily available. Everything goes in. Its early promise is that it will be a journal of a hike though the island's central mountains in the months following the earthquake of Sept. 21, 1999. But the writer proves easily distracted, and there are digressions on every topic, it seems, that cares to raise its head.
This is perfectly reasonable. It's useful to have a book that contains mini-biographies of leading political figures, jostling alongside laments for beer-less days and encounters with foul-mouthed roughs in a remote corner of Kinmen. Taiwan, as just about every writer about it has testified, is nothing if not contradictory -- appalling pollution alongside stupendous mountain scenery, questionable aspects of public life cheek by jowl with extraordinary acts of kindness. Nobody thinks it's a paradise, but a large number of foreigners prove remarkably reluctant to leave the place John Ross rightly describes as being "friendly, generous and laid-back."
Ross himself has been here since 1994, living partly as a writer, partly as a language teacher. He's currently based in Changhua, and previously lived as the only foreigner in the small town of Tounan, between Tainan and Taichung.
He appears to take particular pleasure in considering no topic taboo. Thus there's a section on cannibalism, practiced in Taiwan a century ago, albeit on an occasional basis, by several social groups, he asserts. It was also extensively revived in China during the Cultural Revolution. In all these instances it owed its popularity to beliefs about the medicinal benefits of consuming specific body parts of individuals who had been in some way exceptional during their lives.
Foot-binding is another sensitive area on which Ross goes to town. He discovers a Taipei expert on the subject, Dr Ko Chi-sheng, and the result is a chapter that contains probably the fullest easily accessible survey available of possible motives for, and satisfactions provided by, the extraordinary practice.
Also given extensive treatment is the notorious Japanese POW camp of Kinkaseki, modern Chinguashi. Here Ross has particularly vivid detail resulting from phone conversations with a former British prisoner in the UK. The painful subject of the extent of Taiwanese complicity is frankly treated -- as elsewhere in the world, people tended to obey orders rather than question them.
A large number of other topics are touched on. There's Taipei's Snake Alley ("the worst of the old and the worst of the new"), Wulai, Chiufen, the cult of Matsu, sex life in ancient China, the Japanese occupation in general (Ross is remarkably even-handed here), Koxinga, martial arts, the 15th century Chinese admiral Zeng He, the 17th century Dutch missionary Reverend Georgius Candidius, the 18th century impostor George Psalmanazar, and the 19th century missionary George Mackay.
Invariably Ross's approach is that of the robustly skeptical plain man -- standing no nonsense, but on the other hand not spectacularly prejudiced in advance against anything. "Try it on me and let's see what happens," appears to be his typical open-minded reaction.
Ross has read a wide range of books on subjects bearing on Taiwanese history, and giving the reader the gist of what these contain in a couple of pages is one of his specialisms. He'd be a good teacher, you feel, able to point his students in a large number of different and intellectually profitable directions.
He recounts, for instance, Joseph Needham's belief that there was contact between Asia (probably China) and the Americas in ancient times, and re-tells the story of Tim Severin's aborted 1993 voyage which attempted to prove the theory's feasibility.
Indeed, there's a great deal of re-telling in this book, and as a result its final nature becomes that of a no-nonsense compilation. Just about everything that is touched on is explained and its background filled in. The whole thing is held together by the author's bluff good-humor and direct, occasionally even confrontational, approach.
Ross has published this book himself, seeing a gap in the market and fearing someone else will fill it before he does. His previous book, Kawthoolei Dreams, Malaria Nights, on Burma's war against its minorities, was published under a pseudonym in Thailand.
Because of this new book's hybrid nature, every reader will probably find some parts of it superfluous to their requirements.
Nevertheless, there will be other parts they will value for their informativeness, either on abstruse subjects, or on everyday ones in conveniently concise form. It's possible you might get a little weary of Ross' robust cheerfulness ("Okay John," I told myself, "go and explore") but this book will nevertheless prove much to some people's tastes. The author's own view, that it is a history of the island with travel episodes to sweeten the pill, is essentially correct. All you need to add is that he opts to write about where he happens to have been, and what happens to interest him, and leaves the rest well alone.
Formosan Odyssey provides information many a newly-arrived expatriate will want to know. It ought to sell well, and by and large it deserves to do so.
Thanks, John! And mine's a Taiwan beer, large and very cold.
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