On the bright side (for me, anyway)...

I feel like Mr. Scott. Getting some reading done. Currently reading through some articles from the International Journal of Taiwan Studies. (But now will probably end up binge-watching Star Trek...)

Three new books in the former native speaker's library

Since the Association of Asian Studies conference this year was cancelled, I took advantage of the University of Hawai'i Press Asian Studies online sale (you can still order by 3/31!) to buy a couple of books that I have been interested in for a while:

• Maritime Ryukyu, 1050-1650, by Gregory Smits (2019)--I got interested in this book after reading John Grant Ross' enthusiastic review on the bookish.asia blog. 
• Liminality of the Japanese Empire: Border Crossings from Okinawa to Colonial Taiwan, by Hiroko Matsuda (2019)--this book combines two of my favorite kinds of research methods--archival work and oral histories--to tell the story of Okinawans who immigrated to Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period there. Paul Barclay has a positive review of the book in Japanese Studies. 

The books showed up on my porch today, so I donned my hazmat suit and brought them in. Since we're all socially distancing ourselves right now, I might even get a chance to read them in the near future, especially if I don't read my books in the order that I buy them. 

I'm currently reading another book that I ordered earlier:

• Inconvenient Strangers: Transnational Subjects and the Politics of Citizenship, by Shui-yin Sharon Yam (2019). I haven't seen any reviews of this book yet, but I'm interested in Yam's discussion of storytelling as a way to promote what she calls "deliberative empathy" among different and differently-empowered groups in a society. I'm also interested in the book's focus on Hong Kong as a site of struggle among competing populations of Hongkongers, South Asians, Southeast Asian domestic workers, and mainland Chinese migrants.
  

Hopefully posting these books will force me to read them!

We still live in interesting times, but I'd like them to be more boring...

I started this blog 16 years ago tonight with the rather bland line, "We live in interesting times in Taiwan."

Sixteen years ago, we had just come out of the SARS scare; I remember lecturing about library research to classes of masked students. Now all the instructors at my current school are teaching online.

I'm teaching a travel writing course to students who are strongly advised, if not required, to stay inside. Luckily, one of the most recent readings for this class was the chapter, "On Habit," from Alain de Botton's book, The Art of Travel. In this chapter, de Botton relates the experience of trying to treat his familiar surroundings as new and strange. Drawing on the ideas of eighteenth-century Frenchman Xavier de Maistre, who wrote a book about traveling around his bedroom, de Botton suggests that we need to revisit the familiar; as he puts it, "Xavier de Maistre was gently nudging us to try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we have already seen" (249).

In response to this reading, I asked students to walk around their neighborhoods and try to treat them as strange new places. I didn't know when I set up the course that COVID-19 would confine us to our immediate surroundings, but as I say, we live in interesting times. Some students addressed the coronavirus directly in their writings, pointing out how it had changed their surroundings and the way they viewed them. One cited a line from Pascal that de Botton quotes toward the beginning of his chapter:

"The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room"--Pascal, Pensées, 136.

I guess we have a chance to train ourselves to stay quietly in our rooms.

Sent this to NPR about COVID-19 management in Taiwan

I've been getting frustrated with how the US media has been generally ignoring Taiwan's management of the coronavirus, especially in contrast to the mismanagement here at the federal level. The WHO is busy praising the PRC for its handling of the coronavirus, but the fact is that Taiwan was much more open, transparent, and effective in its response from the beginning.

An interview on Weekend Edition yesterday with Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the director general of the World Health Organization, was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. In response to that interview, and to the fact that as far as I've heard and seen, there hasn't been any coverage of Taiwan's response, I wrote the following short note (I edited the links for this blog, since I couldn't make active links on the contact form):

In response to the interview yesterday with Dr. Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organization and his portrayal of China's response to COVID-19, I wonder why there has been no coverage on NPR (as far as I can tell from searching the website) of Taiwan's successful response to the coronavirus. If you look at articles like this one from Al-Jazeera and from the JAMA Network, you can see that Taiwan is actually leading the world in managing the coronavirus crisis. This, in the context of the WHO's continued refusal to allow Taiwan even observer status. (See also this article from Foreign Policy.) Taiwan is even helping other countries like Palau with coronavirus management. American listeners would probably be very interested in hearing about a country where the government is proactively and effectively curbing the spread of COVID-19.

I also sent this to PRI's The World and CNN. I don't know this will have any effect on the lack of coverage of Taiwan, but I encourage anyone else who wants to spread the word to write to their favorite stations, local and national. I'm not on social media, so I don't know how much this is already going on, but we have to keep pushing Taiwan's story in various ways.

[Update, 3/14/20: NPR's website now features an article entitled, "With Odds Against It, Taiwan Keeps Coronavirus Corralled." I don't know if my email had any role in this, but it's good news.]