Taiwanese publisher Rye Field Publishing Co has pulled a book on the history of chili peppers in China and publicly apologized to its Chinese author after its editors incorrectly changed the word in the book for “continent” to “China” in Chinese.
The book’s author, Cao Yu (曹雨), wrote on Facebook late on Friday that he was “shocked” after receiving photographs showing pages from his book The History of Spicy Food in China published in Taiwan.
He posted a photo of a page that said chili peppers were introduced to China thanks to Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the new “China,” even though he wrote new “continent” in his original book.
Such errors were found throughout the book published in Taiwan, he wrote.
In Taiwan, the word dalu (大陸), which means “continent,” is also used to refer to “mainland” China.
The government agency that handles affairs related to China, Hong Kong and Macau, for example, is called the Mainland Affairs Council.
Some Taiwanese dislike the dalu or “mainland” designation for China, believing it infers that Taiwan is part of China, and tend to use the term for zhongguo (中國, “China”) instead.
Cao wrote that he was already angry about two chapters from his book being removed when it was published in China, and he could not believe that his book was butchered again in Taiwan.
Rye Field apologized on Facebook to Cao and his readers for the “serious errors” made by editors before the book’s publication in Taiwan last month.
It has notified book sellers to suspend sales of Cao’s book, Rye Field said, adding that it would announce further plans for people who bought the book, which is to be republished in its original form.
Following the apology, Cao wrote on Facebook that he was satisfied with Rye Field’s handling of the matter, while thanking his friends for highlighting the error.
Cao, born in 1984, is a research fellow at the Centre for Migration and Ethnic Studies of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, according to his LinkedIn page, where he goes by the name Rain Cao.
He received a joint doctorate degree in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara in the US and Jinan University in China in 2015.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS