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People Archive
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Taiwan’s ‘return-to-reality’ trailblazers (Taipei Times review of ‘Politics and Cultural Nativism in 1970s Taiwan’)
The following book review appeared in today’s Taipei Times: Discussions of identity in Taiwan are seldom clearcut. Viewed through the prism of the country’s democratization, things can be even more opaque. For those with rudimentary knowledge of these issues, this short book is no primer; indeed, even the initiated may find it challenging. But those […] -
Hidden in plain sight: The extraordinary work of Hsieh Tong-liang (Part 1)
The follow article appeared in Guanxi Magazine: For years I’d been intrigued by the peculiar house on Chang’an Rd in Taichung’s Taiping District. As with most of my best discoveries in Taiwan, I’d stumbled upon it – in this case almost literally, when a scuffed pass had sent a football trickling down a sloping, paved […] -
Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame (review for Global Asia)
The following book review was published in the December, 2022 issue of Global Asia: “To the statesmanship, vigor, and personality of this one man more than any other single factor must be the credit for having realized this ideal … of a free and democratic China,” wrote H.H. Chang in a 1944 biography of Chiang […] -
Ritual humiliation (review of ‘Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame’ for Taipei Times)
The following book review appeared in today’s Taipei Times: Few historical revisionists can have been as audacious as Grace C. Huang in comparing Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to Mahatma Gandhi. Yet, not only does Huang attempt the parallel, she makes rather a good case for it. Previous studies of leadership, Huang writes, have “tended to portray […] -
Hand in glove: Taiwan-born movie star branches out to chart his own course
The following article appeared in today’s Taipei Times: Ignacio Huang (黃勝煌) is a puppet master. But unlike Argentina’s political operators, he doesn’t pull strings. “It’s glove puppetry,” says Huang of budaixi (布袋戲, traditional Taiwanese puppetry), which in recent years has replaced the big screen as his bread and butter. Ahead of legislative elections in Argentina […] -
Fisherman’s friend? Film festival documentary fails to lift lid on industry abuses
The following article was published by the News Lens on November 11: The Taipei International Labor Film Festival (TILFF) wrapped up on October 15 with minimal fanfare. Thanks to Covid – which saw proceedings switched to an online format – and a rather underwhelming publicity drive, this 15th installment of the two-week event slipped under […] -
En route to a brighter tomorrow (Médecins Sans Frontières-Magnum exhibition at Art Taipei 2021)
The following article appeared in today’s Taipei Times: Assorted political bigwigs turned out for the VIP opening of Art Taipei on Thursday. With projected foot traffic of 100,000-plus and a 30 percent increase in exhibitor participation, the event — which runs until Monday at the Taipei World Trade Center — was another opportunity to showcase […] -
The complexities of two worlds colliding (review of Ken Chih-Yan Sun’s ‘Time and Migration’ for Global Asia)
The following review appeared in the June issue of Global Asia. Time has become such a preoccupation of migration studies in recent years that the “temporal turn” the field has taken has itself become a research topic. What makes Ken Chih-Yan Sun’s approach in Time and Migration conspicuously different is not so much the longitudinal […] -
Time to stop ducking uncomfortable truths
When it comes to social etiquette, Taiwanese society resembles the United Kingdom’s House of Commons in one key aspect: directly calling someone a liar is taboo. Since its introduction by a young Winston Churchill in 1906, the preferred euphemism for an untruth at Westminster has been “terminological inexactitude.” Churchill, who used the phrase to weasel […] -
The master of small things
The following feature appeared in today’s Taipei Times: But for a banana, I wouldn’t have met Chuang Hsin-li (莊新利). En route to the mountains of Yunlin County, I stop for sustenance at a fruit truck in Gukeng Township (古坑). It’s the second day of Lunar New Year; the vehicle is sparsely stocked: sprigs of lycees […]
