David on Formosa

In the introduction to Why China Will Never Rule the World author Troy Parfitt sets out his motivation for writing the book. Neither academic nor journalist, he simply wants to see things for himself. However, Parfitt does not arrive in China as a naive foreigner. Instead he has already spent more than a decade living on [...]

The Taiwan Book Fest will take place at Alleycat’s Pizza Restaurant at the Huashan Creative Park in Taipei City this weekend. The event is “a celebration of English-language fiction and non-fiction, with a focus on books about Taiwan.” It includes talks and discussions with Taiwan-based writers and a book exchange. There will also be new [...]

The Taipei International Book Exhibition opened yesterday. I visited the exhibition today at the Taipei World Trade Centre to see what was new this year. This year’s special guest exhibitor is France. Francophones will be sure to enjoy the large range of French literature on display. There is also a selection of French films screening [...]

I saw the short film Msgamil: Once Upon a Time (泰雅千年) while visiting Smangus in August last year. I then saw Through Thousands Years* (走過千年) at the Ethnographic Film Festival. Msgamil is a short film produced by Chen Wen-bin (陳文彬) about the historical migration of the Atayal. Through Thousands Years, by the Atayal director Pilin [...]

Austronesian Taiwan: Linguistics, History, Ethnology, Prehistory was first published in 2000 and has been out of print for past few years. A new edition of the book was published to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Shung Ye Museum and the exhibition of artifacts from Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology. The new edition was edited [...]

It might seem hard to imagine now but 20 years ago there were many similarities between the political situation in Taiwan and China. Both countries had an authoritarian polity with strict controls on freedom of speech. On university campuses the party-state (KMT or CCP) maintained tight control over student organisations and political activities. The situation [...]