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Taiwan comparisons resonate among Ukrainian residents

The following piece appeared on Ketagalan Media’s website: In the build-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, parallels with Taiwan’s situation were frequently mentioned in international media. Following British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s comments at the Munich Security Conference on February 19 that the echo of an unchallenged invasion “will be heard in Taiwan,” Taipei was […]
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Amidst Ukraine’s broad steppes: three views from a warzone

The following piece appeared in today’s Taipei Times: It wasn’t until 7am that Masha Gorenkova realized something serious was up. The first explosion had woken her at 4:30am, and several more had occurred in the interim; but like most of the neighbors in her Kyiv apartment block, she hadn’t twigged. Given the tone of inevitability […]
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Tears, disbelief, and solidarity as Taiwan’s Ukrainians speak out

The following article appeared in today’s Taipei Times: Solidarity and steadfastness. These qualities were evident among Ukrainians long before missiles began pulverizing their cities early Thursday morning. They were on display again on Friday and Saturday in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), where hundreds of people gathered outside the building housing the Russian representative office. Ukrainians […]
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Globetrotting entrepreneur brings a taste of the Baltics to Taiwan

The following article appeared in today’s Taipei Times: Once Peter Young (楊良棟) gets going, you can’t be sure where he’ll end up. One minute, it’s eighteenth-century Baltic history, the next, the health benefits of chokeberry wine. A discussion of the current situation in his native Hong Kong kicks off a sweeping tour of Chinese history that […]
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Hidden in plain sight: the extradordinary work of Hsieh Tong-liang (Part 2)

Part 2 of a feature for Guan Xi Media: With tea and preliminary chit-chat done, Diane suggests we start our tour in the large exhibition space next door. Split into sections showcasing the various series of works that have occupied periods of Hsieh’s life spanning, in some cases, a single year, in others, decades, the […]
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Life on the lam: an undocumented migrant worker’s story

Although the exact figure is difficult to ascertain, Ministry of Labor figures suggest there are over 55,000 undocumented migrant workers in Taiwan. In 2017, the National Immigration Agency announced that it would stop referring to these workers as “runaways.” However, this remains the default description among media and public. The term is misleading. Most workers […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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In a league of their own

The following article appeared in today’s Taipei Times: Taiwan’s history is full of three-digit numbers indicating the month and day of major events: there’s 228 denoting the pivotal White Terror incident in 1947 and 921 for the devastating Jiji earthquake of 1999. Not quite as well remembered are 823, which represents the start of the […]
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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 […]
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