Another new(ish) book in the former native speaker's collection

I had a chance to got to Brattle Book Shop this afternoon, and after searching through their outside book racks finally came across something that interested me enough to want to buy it. 

According to several sources, The Silent Traveller in London was published in 1938, but this copy says "First published 1939." This copy wasn't in great shape, with some tears on the dust jacket that I'll have to fix, but it was only $5. The plates inside the book look good--nothing missing. (Someone else has helpfully posted scans of the plates.)

I found an interesting article about the author, Chiang Yee (蔣彞), that was published a few years back. There's another good article about Chiang here on the Victoria and Albert Museum's website.

Winter break begins

I have a few weeks off from teaching now that I've turned my grades in, and I have to make sure that I use that time wisely. (So far I've been spending a bit too much time catching up on crime movies from the 1940s that are on my DVR.) I have a small writing project--a book review--that will require me to reread a book that I finished over a year ago. I'm hoping to get that done during the vacation.

I'm looking forward to two other books that are coming out in the spring:

• Genre Networks and Empire: Rhetoric in Early Imperial China by Xiaoye You (SIUP)
• Resistance in the Era of Nationalisms: Performing Identities in Taiwan and Hong Kong edited by Hsin-I Cheng and Hsin-i Sydney Yueh (MSUP)

If you look up You's book on Amazon, you'll get an excerpt from the introduction of the book (underneath "About the author"). I'm very interested to read what he has to say about the concept of wenti jingwei (文體經緯), which he translates as "genre networks."

There isn't much information about Cheng and Yueh's book yet. Hopefully a table of contents will show up on the Michigan State UP website soon...

Dennis Kwok talk at Northeastern University

Dennis Kwok (郭榮鏗), who is a visiting scholar at Northeastern, participated in a conversation with Professor Mai'a Cross today entitled, "The Rise of China, the Fall of Hong Kong, and the Implications for the Taiwan Strait." In case you're not familiar with him (I wasn't), he was one of the founding members of the Civic Party in Hong Kong and was in HK's Legislative Council (LegCo, which I finally learned how to pronounce--with a soft "g") from 2012 to 2020. He was forced out of LegCo in 2020, after which he left Hong Kong. He is called a scholar in exile and says he currently has no plans to return to Hong Kong. 

He gave what I thought was a fairly modest/humble narrative of his own changing perspective on the fate of Hong Kong over the years, admitting that when he started out as a moderate democrat, he hoped, like many people, that "one country, two systems" would work for Hong Kong. Like many others, he said he didn't know quite what to make of Xi Jinping when Xi took over China--Xi's father was a reformer, so people were hopeful that he would be a reformer, too. The events of 2014-present changed Kwok's mind, and he doesn't have much optimism now for Hong Kong or for China. His only point of optimism: "I believe that authoritarianism simply doesn't work. ... Humans want to be free." 

About Taiwan, he warned, "You'd better take it seriously" when Xi indicates he won't leave the Taiwan issue to the next generation of Chinese rulers. Citing Kevin Rudd, Kwok called Taiwan "the holy grail" of CCP politics. It's Xi's political legacy. Kwok said that he has gone to many conferences and meetings where Taiwan is discussed, and the key question that no one asks is, "What do the Taiwanese people want?" They're the ones who are going to be doing the fighting. (I've seen this written a lot, like by writers like New Bloom founder Brian Hioe, but somehow hearing it said out loud 讓我紅了眼眶...) He said that the most painful lesson Hongkongers learned was through the events leading up to and including the National Security law. People should have protested 30 years ago, he said, when the British signed Hong Kong over to the PRC. You can't rely on outsiders to defend you. You have to defend yourself. This reminded me of the preface to Chen Rong-cheng's 1973 translation of Formosa Betrayed, where Chen wrote, ｢人不先自救，誰會救我？｣. The more things change, ...

Application for next summer's Rhetoric Society Institute accepted

I found out this week that I was fortunate to be accepted to participate remotely in a seminar for the Rhetoric Society of America's Rhetoric Society Summer Institute next May. I applied to a seminar entitled, "Decolonizing Comparative Global Rhetorics," run by Romeo García, LuMing Mao, and Hua Zhu, all from the University of Utah. In case the Summer Institute's website isn't archived, I'm going to copy the seminar description here:

The turn to non-Western rhetorics has been an exercise in confronting and unsettling a Western epistemology, perspective, and project that has long dominated rhetorical studies. Yet, such a turn risks reinforcing the dualism of the West and the rest and what all this entails. Today, a decolonial agenda and comparative rhetoric offers an-other option. Against the backdrop of the unavoidable modern/colonial world system, decolonial and comparative rhetoric can bring together the analytic of coloniality, the prospective task of epistemic delinking and epistemological decolonization, the rhetoric of in/commensurability, the fluidity of interdependence, and pluriversality, mobilizing a critique and possible transformation of rhetorical studies.

For decades, scholars such as Bagele Chilisa, Linda Smith, Shawn Wilson, and Walter Mignolo have advocated that our research and our scholarly ethos need to be decolonized in order to reimagine and practice the dissemination of knowledge and relational exchanges otherwise. Meanwhile, comparative rhetoric advances by extricating itself from ethnocentrism, essentialism, and dualism and by moving towards re/contextualization, plural local terms, and discursive third (or forth, etc.) (Lloyd; Lyon; Mao; You; Wang). Comparative thinking is resonant with decolonial epistemology, and particularly, the understanding of culture (as contact zone), local (as sociohistorical and networked), subjectivity (as living and co-growing), and hybridity (as unstable and happening). Together, decolonial studies and comparative rhetoric appeal to us to change the terms and contents of conversation. 

The seminar will: (1) Provide an interdisciplinary overview of comparative and decolonial studies; (2) Facilitate discussions on how we may form allyship among comparative and decolonial studies; and (3) Examine what makes comparative thinking and decolonial epistemology play their distinct roles in studying global rhetorics. Prospective participants will be asked to describe their current research and how it may relate to global rhetorics as well as identify two goals for the seminar. 

This was my proposal for participation in the seminar (thanks to Beth Britt for her help and feedback on this!):

I am applying to the seminar in “Decolonizing Comparative Global Rhetorics” to help further my current research on the rhetorical history of Taiwan. This project sees Taiwan as a contact zone among its Indigenous people, Han settlers, other migrant populations, and at least five historical colonial/semi-colonial forces (Dutch, Manchu/Han, Japanese, Nationalist Chinese, and American) that have created an unstable hybridity in Taiwanese subjectivity. Because Taiwan is typically viewed from the outside as a Chinese society, how historical experiences of migration, colonization, incomplete decolonization, and political marginalization have affected the rhetorical practices of this maritime country have been largely ignored in favor of an image of Taiwan as part of Greater China. I am seeking to learn more about comparative and decolonial rhetorical studies in order to challenge essentialist views of Taiwan and its rhetorical practices. As a white USAmerican male who lived and taught in Taiwan for 16 years, I also want to understand how to confront my own positionality ethically as I work on this project. My research and writing has mainly focused on American intercultural relations with and representations of Taiwan in the contexts of the Cold War (globally) and Martial Law (locally). Moving into work that engages Taiwan more directly, I seek to address the effects of multiple, layered, and conflicting colonialisms experienced in Taiwan, while avoiding adding another layer of colonialism through my own research.

I have some other writing projects to work on, but I want to do some reading about decolonial rhetorical studies. I noticed that Xiaoye You has a new book coming out next year called Genre Networks and Empire: Rhetoric in Early Imperial China. According to the description, the book "integrates a decolonial and transnational approach to construct a rhetorical history of early imperial China." Hopefully I'll be able to read that before the seminar.  

Homework for ... some point in the near future

I mentioned earlier that I had applied for a summer seminar on decolonizing comparative rhetoric. I want to read some articles that might be relevant to this topic before then, but I have also come across some talks on YouTube that might help fill me in on the conversation. This video, for instance, is a lecture by LuMing Mao, a famous scholar in comparative rhetoric:

I might not be able to watch it until Thanksgiving (!) or winter break (!!), but I'll try to fit it in. By the way, the Delhi Comparatists seem to have a lot of interesting lectures and discussions.

Interview with Jonathan Lerner, author of Lily Narcissus, published

bookish.asia has published an interview I did with Jonathan Lerner about his new novel Lily Narcissus. I had fun talking with him about his writing process and how he does research for his writing. As someone who isn't a fiction writer, I'm fascinated by the differences in how their novels come together. Lerner used the word "unconscious" a few times, telling me, “I only found out what was going to happen to these characters as I unfurled the story.”

The interview is accompanied by some nice color slides of Taipei that Lerner's father took between 1957 and 1959, so check it out--and then buy his book!

Jhumpa Lahiri video about writing in Italian

This video about Jhumpa Lahiri gets into her experience of writing in Italian; I think I'll suggest it to my first-year writing students. One thing she says that I found interesting and might inspire some conversation is this:

I like being at the beginning again as a reader and as a writer. I like that I'm limited. I like that I only have a certain vocabulary and certain tools, and I can only go so far. That appeals to me.

I wonder what my students might think about that perspective... 

Reading for pleasure or reading "for pressure" in other languages?

In my first-year writing for multilingual students class today, we were talking about Jhumpa Lahiri's 2015 article, "Teach Yourself Italian," and about how her passion for Italian led her to decide to move to Italy and, in preparation, to "pledge to read only in Italian." The section of her article about that decision is called "The Renunciation." Lahiri writes, 

I consider it an official renunciation. I’m about to become a linguistic pilgrim to Rome. I believe I have to leave behind something familiar, essential.

We talked about the idea of renouncing our native language (in the students' case, to speak only in English). The students weren't very keen to renounce their native languages in order to speak only English. One mentioned that there is pressure from friends and classmates from their home country to speak their common language. Another suggested that because it's more difficult to speak English, to speak only English would result in a great loss of confidence. Also, their native languages are tied to their sense of who they are.

Lahiri's description of what it's like to read in Italian reminds me of what it's sometimes like when I read in Chinese:

I read slowly, painstakingly. With difficulty. Every page seems to have a light covering of mist. The obstacles stimulate me. Every new construction seems a marvel, every unknown word a jewel.

There's both pleasure and pressure in this depiction of reading in another language. You run into obstacles in the form of unfamiliar vocabulary or syntax, but getting past those obstacles seems to launch you forward (toward new obstacles!). If you take the time to work through those obstacles instead of bypassing them (as I admit I sometimes do), you have a feeling of accomplishment, and maybe you learn something new. As Lahiri puts it,

After I finish a book, I’m thrilled. It seems like a feat. I find the process demanding yet satisfying, almost miraculous. I can’t take for granted my ability to accomplish it. I read as I did when I was a girl. Thus, as an adult, as a writer, I rediscover the pleasure of reading.

As we were discussing Lahiri's experience, I asked the students if any of them read in English for pleasure. Some of them shook their heads, others laughed. My guess is that their reading in English is mostly (as a former Tunghai colleague put it) "for pressure" rather than for pleasure. I can understand this feeling. Most of the time when I read in Chinese, it's in order to write something (like that blog post on bookstores in colonial Taiwan), so there's some degree of pressure. 

But I wonder if we should (re)define the notion of "reading for pleasure"; after all, Lahiri's depiction of her experience reading in Italian shows that it's a lot of work to read in a language that you're not as strong in. Despite that, she treats the work of reading as pleasurable even if it is demanding (or perhaps because it is demanding).  

Some quick notes at the beginning of week 3 of the semester

I've gotten through two weeks of the semester already, and I'm not too far behind on my teaching-related work. Amazingly, I have been able to keep them in class and active for the whole 100 minutes so far. (I'm always afraid we will run out of things to do after about 15 minutes, and I'll have to let them go 85 minutes early...) So far we've had some interesting discussions about developing confidence writing in your L2/3/4/n (Maybe it should be called Ln writing...) Also the possible roles of translation in writing in English. For this, I was even able to talk a little about my 2013 (2014?) paper about Google Translate and EFL writing. 

I've also done most of the interviews of undergraduate Fulbright applicants whom I'm trying to help revise their applications. I have a meeting this week with the members of my subcommittee to go over the applications and share our suggestions about them. I hope these students will be able to get a chance to go abroad for a year and do some intercultural exchange. I know it changed my life.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to try to join my virtual writing group. We'll meet (virtually, of course) at 9:00 and share what we plan to work on for the next two hours, then go away and do it. Then come back at 10:55 and share what we did. My plan is to work on an application for the Rhetoric Society of American 2023 Summer Institute. I'm interested in a seminar on "Decolonizing Comparative Global Rhetorics." I think it could be very relevant to a paper I'm working on, but I'm not sure yet because I need to know more about what it means to decolonize comparative global rhetorics and how I might fit (if at all) into such an effort. (That's basically what my application narrative says so far...)

I'm also enjoying finally reading Ming-cheng M. Lo's Doctors Within Borders: Profession, Ethnicity, and Modernity in Colonial Taiwan (University of California Press, 2002). I've picked around in it before, but now I'm reading it from beginning to end. Lo had two recent interviews (part one, part two) related to this topic that reminded me that I hadn't actually read the book yet!

Some notes on bookstores in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period

In a previous post about Lien Heng's biography, I mentioned interest in the history of bookstores in Japanese-governed Taiwan. Here I want to get down some notes on the odds and ends I have come across in the process of trying to learn more about this fascinating topic. 

I mentioned in the previous post that according to a website about independent bookstores in Taiwan, in 1927 there were only about 30 bookstores in Taiwan. Central Bookstore (中央書局) opened in Taichung in 1927, Lien Heng's Yatang Bookstore (雅堂書局) in Taipei the same year. (Lien's bookstore only ran for two years before it had to close down.) Chiang Wei-shui's Culture Bookstore (文化書局) had opened a year before in Taipei. Huang Mao-sheng's Lan-chi Bookstore (蘭記書局) opened in Chia-I in 1917. These bookstores focused mainly on selling (and in some cases publishing) Chinese-language books. As Chen Hsiang-lan writes in an article about the 100th anniversary of the Lan-chi Bookstore, owner Huang Mao-sheng took considerable risks to publish and sell Chinese-language books during the Japanese period. As with the bookstores run by Lien Heng and Chiang Wei-shui, Huang's bookstore/publishing venture was primarily concerned with passing on knowledge of Chinese culture and language, as can be seen from the picture below of some of the  Chinese textbooks published by Lan-chi Bookstore. Another article published in 2017 recommends a book about the history of the store: 《記憶裡的幽香——嘉義蘭記書局史料文集百年紀念版》.

Source: 「百年蘭記書局 曾經是嘉義精神地標」

Somewhat confusingly, a 2020 Taiwan News article describes the reopening of "Taiwan's oldest bookstore," but that bookstore isn't Lan-chi or the Japanese bookstore I'll discuss below. It's the Regent Store (瑞成書局), which the authors say opened in 1912 and is the oldest bookstore in Taiwan that is still operating. The store's website has a video (in Taiwanese and Mandarin) telling the store's story.

This is what I've found (so far) about five of the Chinese language bookstores in colonial Taiwan. There were also of course Japanese bookstores. Hui-yu Caroline Ts'ai's 2013 article "Diaries and Everyday Life in Colonial Taiwan" in part describes colonial bureaucrat Utsumi Chūji's (內海忠司) preference for a bookstore in Taipei called Niitakadō Bookstore (新高堂), which she describes as "the largest bookstore in Taiwan" (p. 152). 

Source:「〈臺北城中故事〉府前街與新高堂：村崎長昶的生意人生」

According to Ts'ai, 

Niitakadō was also well known for issuing textbooks, reference tools, photograph collections, postcards, maps, and many other items. His [Utsumi's] taste for books also reflected an aspect of the marketing strategy of books, which was developed to cater to the growing needs of Japanese communities in Taiwan. An expanding readership on the island - across race and generation - was constructing "Taiwan" as a subject of Japan's empire. (p. 152)

Ts'ai writes that Niitakadō was built in 1912, but this article claims it was founded in 1898 by Murasaki Chōei (村崎長昶). This article by Su Shuo-bin (蘇碩斌) and Lin Yueh-hsien (林月先) agrees, explaining that the original stationery store became a bookstore (renamed 新高堂書店) in 1900. According to Su and Lin, what instigated the explosive growth of Murasaki's business was the excitement in Taiwan (presumably among the Japanese residents, but possibly also among the Taiwanese) about the Russian-Japanese war. The sale of magazines about the war led to the sale of books, and Murasaki's bookstore grew more and more profitable. 

Su and Lin mention three other bookstores that opened around 1898 in the same area of Taipei: the Namiki Bookstore (並木書店), the Taiyōdō Bookstore (太陽堂書店), and the Shirotani Bookstore (城谷書店).* All three of these stores went out of business, though, for various reasons, though other stores moved in. Su and Lin note that Murasaki was fairly conservative in his selection of what kinds of books to sell; he didn't want to get on the bad side of the government. Niitakadō took over the business of supplying elementary school textbooks and also took over the book purchasing for Taipei Imperial University, Taipei University, and Medical College, and dominated the textbook market in Taiwan. (Su and Lin's article is an interesting read, and I highly recommend it. It's an excerpt from a history of Taipei: 《臺北城中故事：重慶南路街區歷史散步》.)

I also found pictures of the 太陽號書店 [Taiyōgo] bookstore, pictured below. According to an article from 2015, it later became the Taiwan Commercial Press (臺灣商務印書館), but that has moved away from its original location. 

Source: 臺灣舊照片資料庫

Here is a picture of the interior of the store:

Source: 臺灣舊照片資料庫

I'm going to end this here. I hope the links to the other sources are useful! My apologies if I didn't mention your favorite bookstore from the Japanese colonial era! Let me know about it in the comments!

*Please correct my romanization of the Japanese names of these stores if they're wrong. 

Links to sources on the history vs. social science debate of August 2022

I'm not going to comment on any of this because I'm not following it closely enough, but I wanted to list out some links to various texts in the debate about history and empiricism and social sciences (particularly economics) that have been going on. I'm not going to link to all the Twitter threads right now (this one was funny), though I'm trying to bookmark some of them, but I'll just list out some of the blog posts I've read or skimmed. 

The reason I'm doing this is mainly for ENGW 3315, the interdisciplinary writing course I teach fairly regularly. One of the things we get into is how different disciplines have different epistemological stances and "visions of reality," and some of what is going on in this discussion is about that.

Here are some of the articles:

• "On the Wisdom of Historians" by Noah Smith (8/26)
• "New Acquisitions: On the Wisdom of Noah Smith" by Bruce Devereaux (8/29)
• more to come...

This isn't exactly on topic, but I liked L. D. Burnett's 2019 post on "The First Week of Class," which touches on comparisons between disciplines as well.

Notes on Lien Heng (1878-1936): Taiwan's Search for Identity and Tradition

Wu, Shu-hui. Lien Heng (1878-1936): Taiwan's Search for Identity and Tradition. Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, Indiana University, 2005.

This isn't going to be a formal review of Wu's biography of Lien Heng. There are two published reviews that I have found:

• Harrison, Mark. Review of Lien Heng (1878-1836): Taiwan's Search for Identity and Tradition, by Shu-hui Wu. The China Quarterly, vol. 187, 2006, pp. 800-802.  https://doi.org/10.1017/S030574100639042X
• Salát, Gergely. Review of Lien Heng (1878-1836): Taiwan's Search for Identity and Tradition, by Shu-hui Wu. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 66, no. 3, 2013, pp. 488-489. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43282533

My own thoughts about the book are mixed but generally good. I appreciated how Wu put Lien's life in the context of his times in Taiwan and China. For instance, her discussion of Lien's attitude toward vernacularization of writing relates his perspectives toward both the issue as it was being debated in China (by such people as Hu Shih, Liu Shih-p'ei, and Huang K'an) and how it was being taken up in Taiwan, considering Taiwan's status as a Japanese colony at the time. Lien appears to have viewed pai-hua-wen (白話文, vernacular writing, or "Plain language," as Wu translates it) in Taiwan as combining with the Japanese Kokugo policy to cut off Taiwanese people from their roots. As Wu writes, "Lin Shu and others [in China] promoted classical Chinese to counter the New Culture Movement; Lien Heng called for its preservation to save the Chinese identity in Taiwan" (p. 198). 

Wu also gives a good sense of the social and intellectual circles in which Lien Heng moved. Having lived in Taichung for 16 years, I was particularly interested to read about Lien's trips there. He stayed at Lai Yuan (萊園), Lin Hsien-t'ang's (林獻堂) mansion in Wufeng, during treatment for a stomach problem. Lien and his family also stayed in Taichung for 4 years at Lin Tzu-piao's* mansion, Juei-hsüan (瑞軒), near/at Taichung Park. (The Lins eventually donated it to become Taichung Park, according to Wikipedia.) 

I was also interested in Wu's description of Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's (梁啟超)'s visit to Taiwan in 1911, particularly in how Liang and Lien communicated with each other. According to Wu, the two (and others who were present during Liang's visit) couldn't communicate with each other orally because they spoke different languages (she doesn't use the term "language" to describe Liang's Kwangtungese and Lien's Taiwanese). They didn't even try to use Japanese to communicate, even though Lien had taught himself the language (though I'm not sure if he taught himself spoken Japanese or just written Japanese). Wu writes, curiously, that "[o]bviously, Liang had not learned to speak Japanese, although he had lived in Japan for more than ten years" (p. 109). I'm not sure why that's "obvious," but maybe their lack of interest in speaking Japanese had something to do with nationalism--not wanting to communicate in the colonizer's language.** They communicated with each other by writing notes (and lots of poems!) in classical Chinese. I wonder what that might have looked like... 

The number and topics of poems that Wu mentions Lien and others writing was also interesting to me; it reminded me of something Ron Scollon wrote in a 1997 TESOL Quarterly article on contrastive rhetoric. Discussing the need for a "contrastive poetics" that would take into account genres and the history of genres, Scollon cited Jonathan Spence's comment that some poems from the Tang Dynasty might be comparable to British memos from the twentieth century 

as in each case the functional placement of the text is as an officially placed critique of the policies of authorities in higher positions. Such a comparison would depend on first making a linguistic, cultural, epoch-internal contrast among information, critical, and expressive genres in government and official social contexts. (p. 354)

While the poems of Lien Heng and others mentioned in Wu's book weren't necessarily comparable to governmental memos, they do arguably function in broader ways than people in the US might think of if we generally think of poems in terms of creative literary expression. 

Wu also discusses Lien's bookstore in Taipei in the context of bookstores in Taiwan during the Japanese period. I had not known about the challenges that Taiwanese had importing books from China during that period. To quote some detail from Wu:

The colonial administrators had an extensive network designed to control Taiwanese thought and they exercised this without consulting the constitution of their home government. Especially onerous was the rigid control of the sale of books. When books arrived from China, they were subjected to censorship at the customs house. Those books belonging to restricted categories (chin-shu) were removed from their packages and confiscated. Usually, the loss from each order was around thirty to sixty percent. Worse was that the restriction standards changed constantly. Very often books became illegal after the bookstores had sent in their orders and it was too late to inform the publishers in China because the goods had already been shipped. It took months for the books to travel to Taiwan. Sometimes customs would pull only one or two volumes from a multi-volume set and make the entire collection impossible to sell. The biggest threat to a bookstore owner was the unexpected inspections conducted by the police. The owner would be fined and imprisoned for several days or weeks if he violated the law, even if his store just held books in storage that were on the new banned list. Chiang Wei-shui's store was often monitored by the secret police because of his political and social activities. (pp. 254-255)

A webpage about bookstores in Taiwan mentions that during the Japanese period, there were only about 30 bookstores in colonial Taiwan. Taichung's Central Bookstore (中央書局) was one of those; the Wikipedia article about the store, which opened up in 1927 (around the same time Lien's store opened), says that at that time, it was the first bookstore in Central Taiwan specializing in importing Chinese and Japanese books and magazines and was also the largest Chinese bookstore in Taiwan. It ran into trouble after the Mukden Incident of 1931.

A couple of critiques: Harrison and Salát fault Wu's book for not discussing some personal aspects of Lien's life in more detail--they both comment on his extramarital affairs that Wu only briefly mentions: Salát, to suggest that Wu could present a more well-rounded (and critical) perspective on Lien; Harrison, to suggest that Lien's relationship with a Taiwanese geisha would open more than "a glimpse into Taiwan's rich social world of the period" (p. 802). I agree with both of these points. 

The final section of the book, which summarizes and analyzes Lien's most famous work, The General History of Taiwan (台灣通史), is sometimes hard to follow. While Wu brings in other sources to supplement (and sometimes correct) the narrative that Lien wrote, I found it difficult sometimes to distinguish between Wu's summary of Lien and the additions/corrections she was providing. The section has extensive citations, but it was still not always clear. 

Finally, I have to mention that the book could have used some copyediting; the frequent grammatical issues generally don't cause confusion in terms of meaning, but combined with the many typographical issues  that a copy editor should have caught, they are very distracting. (In one instance, in what might have been an "autocorrect" error, the book mentions the Ch'ing government's "energetic policy of 'signification'" [p. 355], which should read "sinification"--quite a different meaning!) 

Overall, though, I am glad I read this book. Not only did I learn a lot from it, but it has given me some directions for future reading and investigation (such as the history of bookstores and publishing in Taiwan). 

*I admit I cannot find reference to Lin Tzu-piao online, so I'm not sure what character "piao" would be here.

** [Update, 11/4/22: Judging from Joshua Fogel's essay about Liang Qichao and Japan, Liang was able to read Japanese and translated Japanese works (themselves translations of works in Western languages) into Chinese. Fogel writes, intriguingly, that 

For Liang, the Japanese language was little different from Cantonese. Both were rooted, he believed, in an ancient literary language, wenyan, which had served both countries (and Korea and Vietnam, it should be added) for many centuries. The Hewen Han dufa (Reading Japanese the Chinese way), a contemporary work offering easy access to Japanese for readers of Chinese, was an all-important text for Liang. It not only enabled him to gain quick entry into contemporary Japanese writings and translations; it also substantiated the notion that Japanese could be read as if it were a topolect of Chinese. (249-250)

From Joshua A. Fogel, "Introduction: Liang Qichao and Japan." Between China and Japan: The Writings of Joshua Fogel, Brill, 2015. 242-252. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004285309_017 

Casting about for my next reading project

The fall semester is going to start soon, so I'm busy preparing my three classes (two sections of first-year writing for multilingual students and one section of business writing for multilingual students), but I'm also interested in getting into another book. I finally (FINALLY!) finished John Robert Shepherd's Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600-1800, which I see I mentioned starting in June of 2021(!). 

As you can imagine, I've forgotten a lot of the details in the book (of which there are many). As I wrote in a text back in May to someone more well-read in Taiwan history than I am, "My main takeaway so far is that it doesn't seem at all that the Qing were ignoring Taiwan the way the popular imagination seems to have it. (Not to say that their governing was super effective.)" That's still my main conclusion--obviously the Qing didn't control most of Taiwan; Paul Barclay's book Outcasts of Empire: Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border,” 1874–1945 explains Qing rule in terms of "multicentric legal pluralism" (p. 17), where "heterogeneous communities and ranked status groups stood in differentiated legal relationships to the apical center of authority in Beijing. Implicit in the notion of multicentric legal pluralism is the possibility that sovereignty can be graded, and even diminished, at the margins of a polity" (p. 17). This accounts for the Qing's initial response to, for instance, Japanese protests in the aftermath of the Mudan village incident of 1871 in which Paiwanese villagers killed 54 Okinawan survivors of a shipwreck in southern Taiwan. But, getting back to Shepherd, I think his book shows that the Qing did not "neglect" the parts of Taiwan over which they ruled. 

Shepherd's book is almost 30 years old, though, so I would like to read something more recent that might supplement my knowledge. I started to read Barclay's book a while back, so that's one possibility, though its focus is mostly on the Japanese period. University of Washington professor James Lin also asks students in his graduate survey of Taiwan studies to read Tonio Andrade's How Taiwan Became Chinese, though that seems to end with the fall of the Dutch colony. I could reread Emma Teng's Taiwan's Imagined Geography, though I think I'd rather spend my time reading something new. Any recommendations?

[Update, Aug. 19: I ended up choosing Lien Heng (1978-1936): Taiwan's Search for Identity and Tradition, by Shu-hui Wu (mainly because it was within reach...). So far it's interesting reading, though there are a couple of details that have puzzled me. Maybe I'll write more about that when I finish the book.]

Ti Wei & Fran Martin, "Pedagogies of food and ethical personhood: TV cooking shows in postwar Taiwan"

Number nine in an occasional series of summaries of articles related to communication practices in Taiwan.

Wei, T., & Martin, F. (2015). Pedagogies of food and ethical personhood: TV cooking shows in postwar Taiwan. Asian Journal of Communication, 25(6), 636-651, DOI: 10.1080/01292986.2015.1007333

This article uses representative cooking personalities on Taiwanese TV--Fu Pei Mei (傅培梅), Chen Hong (陳鴻), and Master Ah-Ji (阿基師), together with Chef James (詹姆士)--to analyze "the history and changing cultural meanings of the cooking show in the context of Taiwan’s postwar social history and TV industry" (p. 637). The authors trace the transformation of television programming in Taiwan from its start in the martial law period to the commercialization of the industry in the post-martial law years, including the rise of cable TV. They show how the representative cooking shows reflected both changing industry priorities and some consistency in cultural values. They also contrast the more paternalistic authoritative approach to imparting lessons in cooking and "life ethics" in Taiwan with an ethics based on more "plural, practice-based everyday knowledges" that researchers have found in Western cooking shows (p. 637). 

In the case of Fu Pei Mei, the authors observe that her shows, which started in the early 1960s, reflected the KMT's goals of teaching the audience to see themselves as part of the Chinese nation. Fu's emphasis on mainland Chinese cultural traditions in her shows and in interviews with domestic and international audiences made her a representative of the KMT government's "soft power" in the ideological battle with the CCP (p. 641). At the same time, the authors argue that she represented a kind of modernity through her own image as an "autonomous, modern woman," as well as through her introduction of "modern" (Western cooking). As they conclude, Fu's image "can be seen as a fusion of traditional and modern elements of femininity" (p. 641). 

In comparison to Fu Pei Mei, Chen Hong's image, according to Wei and Martin, models "cosmopolitan taste, high cultural capital, and refined masculinity[, which] bespeaks an implicit pedagogical project centered on the production of a clearly (middle-)class-inflected aspirational ideal of young, urban, educated personhood" (p. 642). In addition, Chen also "reinforces his own authority" through his lessons in cooking and references to classical Chinese works (p. 644). Chen's image as a 型男 (which the authors translate as metrosexual) coincided with a rise in consumerism in post-martial law Taiwan that commodified cultural knowledge as cultural capital; it also fit in with the rising competitive cable media landscape. 

The last cooking program that Wei and Martin examine reflects the consolidation of the cable industry in Taiwan and the increasing competition for viewers that resulted in an emphasis in lifestyle programming on entertainment over information. In this media landscape, cooking shows like Metrosexual Uber-Chef (型男大主廚) tended to stress entertaining audiences over teaching them about cooking or inculcating ethical values. While Master Ah-Ji, the older chef paired with the younger "metrosexual" James in the program, represents traditional values such as "frugality, endurance, obedience, and so on" (p. 647), in the context of a more postmodern and entertainment-oriented show, "[t]his older discourse of the ‘self-made man’ was thus unexpectedly effectively – or perhaps, absurdly – fused into a postmodern form of entertainment TV" (p. 647). Master Ah-Ji maintains, argue the authors, a different kind of cultural capital than the two previous chefs--one that reflects the values of an industrializing Taiwan of the 1970s.

One thing that the article made me think about was the evolution of the pedagogical project of Chineseness that they suggest characterized Fu Pei Mei's shows. It's interesting that, according to the authors, an important part of Fu's cultural pedagogy connected her audience to the Chinese mainland (they quote her as frequently saying, "we northerners" when referring to her own background); being Chinese, in this sense, was concretely tied to the KMT project of "mainland-izing" Taiwan by emphasizing geographic relations as well as culinary connections.  I'm reminded, in fact, of PRC foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying's widely mocked tweet arguing for the PRC's sovereignty over Taiwan based on the large number of Shandong dumpling places and Shanxi noodle restaurants in Taipei. 

As Rachel Cheung observes, the tweet found a receptive domestic audience. Cheung quotes scholar Gina Anne Tam, who argues that domestic Twitter users were Hua's primary audience, and the tweet was calculated "to muddy a logically indefensible case with appeals to vague feelings." And, as Cheung notes, these emotional/culinary appeals were further supported by observations that many of Taipei's own streets have been named after Chinese locations (a project that was also part of the KMT's "mainland-ization" of Taiwan during the martial law period). It appears, then, that the culinary/geographic connections exemplified by Fu Pei Mei's cooking programs have come full circle.

In contrast to Fu's appeals to geography, in Chen Hong's work, Chineseness is represented by references to classical texts and sayings. As the Wei and Martin suggest, "the ethical dimension connects with the value of literary education" (p. 644). In a sense, then, Chinese identity as represented by Chen Hong is based on shared texts. Arguably--at least based on Wei and Martin's descriptions of the programs--Ah Ji's authority is the most rooted in the particularities of Taiwan's late martial law historical context, since it appears that he reflects the values that purportedly built Taiwan's "economic miracle." This appears to be less based on an appeal to a common Chinese (in terms of mainland-based) identity and more on an appeal to the common experiences of the people of Taiwan.

Another point to raise regarding Ah-Ji is his "fall from grace" subsequent to a 2014 scandal reported in Next Magazine. According to Wikipedia, there is some controversy over whether he intentionally stepped away from the media, but it appears he is no longer a television personality. He appears, however, to have a following on Facebook, which suggests how Wei and Martin's article might be followed up in the future, in regards to how social media might contribute to the further evolution of cooking shows in Taiwan. (In the TTV program linked to below, Chen Hong touches on social media and "self-media" [自媒體] and how it has changed the media landscape and how it affects self-promotion and interaction.) 

One final point: the authors describe Chen Hong as losing popularity in Taiwan after 2005. That might be the case, but more interesting are the recent developments in his professional life. Ah-Hong (陳鴻) has evidently expanded his audiences to Southeast Asia in addition to Taiwan, suggesting an appeal to "Greater China" and "Overseas Chinese." In this program about him from TTV, he talks about the challenges of life, arguing that they have taught him important life lessons that he is grateful for (and indirectly teaching viewers to consider the lessons he has learned). 

In addition, the reception in Taiwan of Ah-Hong's openness about his sexuality suggests a further development in the relationship of celebrity and "ethical personhood" in Taiwan. There are probably articles about this (guess I should look for them), but the general acceptance (with some vocal exceptions) of LGBTQ people in Taiwan is reflected in, and perhaps encouraged by, the visibility of public figures such as Ah-Hong and others who have been public about their sexuality. In addition to Ah-Hong, I think of Li Jing 利菁, for instance--"Taiwan's first mainstream transgender entertainer," and Audrey Tang 唐鳳, Taiwan's first transgender cabinet official. Their openness could be described as a kind of pedagogy of ethical personhood that has contributed to Taiwan's status as the most LGBTQ-friendly country in Asia.

Overall, it seems that Wei and Martin's article has given me a lot to think about!

Morgan Chih-tung Huang & Rong-xuan Chu, "A Political Linguistics Analysis of President Tsai Ing-wen’s Apology to Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples"

Number eight in an occasional series of summaries of articles related to communication practices in Taiwan.

黃之棟、朱容萱，2019，「總統道歉的語言學：【蔡英文總統代表政府向原住民族道歉文】的政治語言學分析」《政治科學論叢》，82，81-114。Morgan Chih-tung Huang & Rong-xuan Chu, "Zongtong daoqiande yuyanxue: 'Tsai Ing-wen daibiao zhengfu xiang Yuanzhuminzu daoqianwen' de zhengzhi yuyanxue fenxi" [A Political Linguistics Analysis of President Tsai Ing-wen’s Apology to Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples]. Taiwanese Journal of Political Science 82: 81-114.

This is the article by Huang and Chu that I mentioned in my last posting.  I'm going to summarize this generally, and then I'll comment on a few particularly interesting points that might be expanded on.

Huang and Chu take a political linguistics approach to analyzing Tsai Ing-wen's speech. They identify her speech as an example of a genre of political apologies, which includes historical apologies where the speaker is not the transgressor ("apologizer ≠ transgressor") and the group being apologized to is not necessarily the people who directly suffered the wrongs that are being apologized for (although I assume they would suffer the results of that historical wrongdoing). They contrast these political apologies with interpersonal apologies, in that political (or "national") apologies are not an "expression of remorse" or an "admission of guilt," but are more an assumption of responsibility for actions of the past.  

Because they're writing for a political science audience, Huang and Chu go to some length explaining the differences between a linguistic approach to studying apology speeches and a political science approach. Important to the distinction between a linguistic approach and a political science approach is the view in linguistics that the language used in the speech act reflects the way that the speech act is framed and the often unstated assumptions of the speaker. They systematically analyze what was said through the speech's use of illocutionary devices (such as the use of language showing that this was an apology and not just an expression of regret for the other's suffering), the use of pronouns to clarify the relationships between the part(ies) apologizing and those being apologized to, and the parties or points that are left out of the speech (importantly, they argue, Tsai focuses on speaking on behalf of the government rather than the [Han] people of Taiwan, so that the non-Indigenous society of Taiwan is absent from the speech). They also argue that Tsai's framing of the apology risks recolonizing Taiwan's history despite her attempt to decolonize it The speech, they argue, is based on a Han historical perspective that both generally ignores pre-Han Taiwan (here they allude to Lien Heng's famous dictum, 台灣固無史也) and because it relegates Indigenous peoples to a passive role in relation to the colonial governments that controlled Taiwan over the past 400 years.

The article analyzes the speech acts in Tsai's apology in depth, so if you read Chinese, I recommend reading this. For the rest of this post, I want to highlight a couple of points that Huang and Chu make. One is in response to a question I asked in my last posting, where I was wondering about the Mandarin words Tsai was using that Chu and Huang had translated as "will." In this paper, they point out that Tsai uses "會" several times in that "will" capacity, such as when she says,「我會以總統的身分，親自擔任召集人」(In my role as president, I will personally serve as convener [of the Indigenous Transitional Justice Committee].) So that answers that question.

The other point I want to mention is their discussion of Tsai's use of the Atayal (泰雅族) terms balay and sbalay, which she translates as "truth" (真相) and "reconciliation" (和解). Chu and Huang observe that after the apology section of her speech, Tsai raises the issue of truth and reconciliation by introducing these two Indigenous concepts. They argue that the effects of this are that it (re)frames the apology in terms of reconciliation. The problem here, they argue, is that reconciliation is then assumed to be the goal for the Indigenous audience as well as that of the non-Indigenous listeners, so that the apology itself becomes secondary to the (hope for) reconciliation. As Chu and Huang point out, "reconciliation" might not actually be the goal of the apology process for the Indigenous audience, but Tsai's redefinition of apology in terms of truth and reconciliation doesn't leave them much room for their own possible expectation for the fixing of responsibility and consideration of compensation. 

Chu and Huang don't go into this much, but to me what's especially interesting about this whole issue is Tsai's use of Atayal concepts to introduce truth and reconciliation. One would assume that she could have just used the Chinese terms 真相 and 和解, since they've often been used in the contexts of transitional justice for 2-28 and the White Terror. In fact, as Chu and Huang suggest, Tsai goes out of her way to frame truth and reconciliation as an Indigenous practice in her speech. They quote the following (my translation):

In Indigenous culture, when one party offends another person in the tribe and there is a desire for reconciliation, the elders will bring the perpetrator and the victim together. Bringing them together isn't for a direct apology, but rather to enable the parties to honestly speak out their own mental journey (心路歷程). After this process of speaking the truth, the elders will ask everyone to drink together to let the past really be past. This is Sbalay. (p. 94) 

But is it? As Da-Wei Kuan and Guy C. Charlton (2020) argue in another context, 

If we perceive sbalay as a ritual process, then every action within the process could be viewed as “texts.” To interpret these texts, it is an [sic] important to fully grasp the meaning of sbalay. Yet “meaning” is not denoted by the ritual process itself but is given by the social and spatial “contexts” surrounding these actions that give these texts meanings. Were it not for these social and spatial contexts, the ritual itself becomes detached, meaningless, and decontextualized. (p. 232)

Tsai focuses on the process but ignores the social and spatial contexts that Kuan and Charlton emphasize. In fact, in their other article, Huang and Chu (2021) observe that the apology ceremony was held in the Presidential building, which used to be the offices of the Japanese Government-General during the Japanese colonial period. As one of their interviewees wonders about this context, "Why do you [President Tsai] ask the Taiwanese aborigines to go to the perpetrator’s home to accept your apology?" (p. 94). Even worse, Huang and Chu point out that some Indigenous attendees felt that they were being "summoned" to an audience with "the emperor," demonstrating that "the government doesn’t understand aboriginal ceremonies" (p. 95). Finally, they argue that Tsai simultaneously plays the roles of apologizer (perpetrator), elder/mediator, and (in her role as a descendent of a Paiwan grandmother) victim. I'm not sure about the last of these since they point out in both articles that she never referred to her own Indigenous heritage in the speech, but I agree that it was odd for the representative of the perpetrators to also play the role of the elder/mediator. As Huang and Chu (2021) note, "from the perspective of Taiwanese aborigines (Kisasa and Lo, 2016a, 2016b), such a suggestive priest/clergyperson image implied that Tsai was located at the top of the power structure, commanding forgiveness and reconciliation between the two parties" (p. 95).

All of the above suggests some of the dangers accompanying colonizers' adoption of the rhetoric or cultural practices of the colonized when attempting to apologize for past (or present) transgressions. That said, I would love to hear from people more knowledgeable about Indigenous rhetoric (particularly Taiwanese Indigenous rhetoric) about this topic. I am admittedly not anything near an expert on this, so I'm eager to get feedback on my summary/analysis/interpretation of these articles and topics!

Rong-Xuan Chu & Chih-Tung Huang, "The day after the apology: A critical discourse analysis of President Tsai’s national apology to Taiwan’s indigenous peoples"

Number seven in an occasional series of summaries of articles related to communication practices in Taiwan. 

Chu, R.-X., & Huang, C.-T. (2021). The day after the apology: A critical discourse analysis of President Tsai’s national apology to Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. Discourse Studies, 23(1), 84-101, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445620942875

I want to start this by saying that this post will primarily focus on the article--I'm not, at this point, going to get into a larger discussion of what the Tsai administration has done in terms of reconciliation with or reparations to the Indigenous people since the time of her apology. 

Rong-Xuan Chu, according to her bio at the bottom of the article, is an applied linguist; Chih-Tung Huang, according to his bio, is an Indigenous scholar who is interested in ethnic/indigenous policy. This article focuses on the August 1, 2016 official apology given by Taiwan's president on behalf of the R.O.C. government to the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan for the R.O.C.'s role in the oppression of the Indigenous people. It analyzes the language of Tsai's apology speech, including her uses of the verb "apologize," the modal verb "will," and pronouns "I," "we," and "they." They explain that she directly apologizes instead of expressing "regret" (a term that is usually seen as not being an apology, as they point out, and as Hang Zhang observed in an article on the Hainan Island plane incident of 2001). 

However, they also argue that her use of "will," a modal that can refer to both future and present actions, weakens the commitment to change because it "allow[s] for a certain degree of ambiguity and doubt regarding her determination to uphold the reconciliation" (p. 90). They also argue that "will" can in places denote "capacity or power," which suggests that "Tsai viewed her government as the power holder who could influence the success or failure of the reconciliation" (p. 91). 

It's at this point where I wish the authors had specified which Mandarin modal verb(s) Tsai was using that meant "will." Are all the wills in English translating the same word in Chinese? The authors published an article in Chinese in 2019 on Tsai's apology speech, which I guess I'll have to read at some point to answer this to my satisfaction.

They also look at the pronouns used in the speech, noting that Tsai seems to separate Indigenous people from the rest of Taiwan's society by using "they" to refer to them while using the second-person plural to refer to the government and (presumably non-Indigenous) Taiwanese citizens. 

In discussing the political context of the apology, they observe (among other things), the KMT response in the form of a Q&A with Hung Hsiu-chu, former KMT chairperson, who said, “I wonder whether she [President Tsai] deliberately wants to use the aboriginal conception of Taiwan’s history to exclude the Han/Chinese nationality from the history and even to achieve de-sinicisation” (p. 92, translated by the authors--in a video of her comments, Hung says, 「要懷疑她是不是想用這個，故意用這個所謂的原住民史觀來排斥這個漢民族的史觀，甚至去中國化的一個史觀，結果形成一個另外一個史觀？我覺得，不能講說我們懷疑她的這個動機跟用心，但是難免會讓人家打上問號」。 I'd add that her use of 所謂的--"so-called"--in describing the Indigenous historical perspective seems dismissive either of Tsai's conception of that perspective or of the perspective itself.)  

The authors go on to argue that the whole apology ceremony received mixed reviews from the public--and, especially important, from the Indigenous recipients of the apology. While some appreciated it, there were several complaints. The venue, which was the President's mansion, was criticized as requiring the victims "to go to the perpetrator's home to accept [the] apology" (p. 94), and the staging of the apology, the authors argue, resembled an emperor summoning Indigenous subjects to an audience. 

In the end, Chu and Huang argue that "the apology did not seem to bring comfort to the indigenous peoples, rather it reawakened the long-simmering conflict between the Taiwanese government and the indigenous population over historically unresolved disputes" (p. 96). They conclude, however, that it was an important first step. 

There are other points brought up in the article that make it worth a second reading. I'm not as familiar with CDA (critical discourse analysis) to evaluate the authors' success with this approach or whether the article is making a theoretical contribution to CDA. I'll leave that to others. (Feel free to comment!)

Hunter School, by Sakinu Ahronglong (tr. Darryl Sterk)

I started reading Sakinu Ahronglong's Hunter School (1998; tr. Darryl Sterk; Honford Star, 2020) on the train down to D.C., then finished it upon returning to Boston. I had ordered it after reading a review by Michael Cannings. Originally published in Chinese under the title 【山豬．飛鼠．撒可努】(Mountain Boar, Flying Squirrel, Sakinu) in 1998, the book is a series of vignettes based on Ahronglong's life as a member of the Indigenous Paiwan ethnic group in Taiwan. A movie was made in 2005 that is based on the book:

I haven't watched the movie yet--guess that's my next project. But the book, a relatively short 162 pages, is definitely worth reading if you are interested in getting a personal perspective on the relationship of traditional Indigenous culture under Han domination in contemporary Taiwan. In his review, Cannings writes that 

[a] sense of loss permeates the book – loss of culture, loss of habitat, loss of language. The writing itself feels like an act of defiance against an encroaching world that has already taken much of what Sakinu considers to be the essential nature of the Paiwan people.

I agree that loss and the need to negotiate Paiwan identity with outside domination are important themes of Hunter School. This shows up in the chapter, "My Name is Paiwan," where Ahronglong struggles to arrange a traditional Paiwanese wedding in the face of his father's resistance (due to his Christian beliefs) and the challenges involved in restoring long-forgotten wedding customs. One thing that surprised me was how his community had adopted cultural practices from the Amis, another Indigenous group in Taiwan, causing them to lose their knowledge of some aspects of Paiwan culture. At one point during the wedding when everyone was dancing, he had to remind his guests that it was a Paiwan wedding, not an Amis wedding, because people were dancing in Amis style. 

But the book is also hopeful, particularly toward the end where Ahronglong writes about the restoration of his village's harvest festival, where he "sang with a voice like a mountain," and "we danced our way to the realization that what was lost can be found again, that it is an unchangeable fact that we are Paiwan."

There are some parts of this book that I think would work well in my courses. In my first-year writing course, in which we focus on literacy narratives, there are several places where Ahronglong writes of his acquisition of various types of literacy in the outdoors, learning from his father about how to read the forest and its animals, or learning from his grandfather about how to communicate with the birds in his millet field. The chapter about the frightening visit Ahronglong and his younger brother had in Taipei to find his father would work, perhaps, in my travel writing class (next time I get to teach it!). In both cases, I'd have to give students some background information to help them understand the texts, but that would be good for me, too--it would require me to learn more about Taiwan's Indigenous people and articulate that knowledge. This book is definitely a good place to start. 

A new collection in the former native speaker's collection

劉維瑛, 黃隆正, 六然居資料室, eds. 【現存臺灣民報復刻】. 國立台灣歷史博物館, 2018.

Ended up ordering these books myself because the library never got back to me about them.

The 8-volume set, published by the National Museum of Taiwan History, collects issues of the Taiwan Minbao (or Taiwan Minpao) from its first issue in 1923 to 1927. The paper itself was published under various titles (and in different languages) until 1947. The paper has been used in research on Taiwanese journalism, literature, and history over the years. I want to see what I can get out of it. See you in about 10 years!

[Update: Just took a second look at my title. Wish I could say that I wrote it that way on purpose!]

AAS CFP: Submit your Proposal for #AAS2023

by Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

The Association for Asian Studies program committee is pleased to invite proposals for the AAS 2023 Annual Conference program. 

We welcome organized panels, roundtables, workshops, and individual paper submissions across a range of topics that will advance knowledge about Asian regions and, by extension, will enrich teaching about Asia at all levels.

The AAS 2023 Annual Conference will be presented in two formats: In-Person and Virtual. Join us virtually, February 17-18, 2023, or in-person in Boston, MA, March 16-19, 2023.

As you work on your proposal, there are a few changes to the guidelines and format that we would like to share: 

• Two Appearances Allowed: The AAS has updated our long-standing one appearance rule! We will now allow an individual to participate in up to two (2) sessions. However, only one paper presentation appearance is allowed. See the full list of parameters as posted in the General Submission Guidelines.
• Two Formats, Two Sets of Dates: We will once again include virtual sessions on the Annual Conference program. All accepted virtual sessions will take place over the course of two days on February 17-18, 2023. All sessions accepted for in-person presentations will appear in Boston, March 16-19, 2023. Virtual sessions will not take place over the in-person dates.
• New Virtual Presentation Rules: Please make sure to review the guidelines set forth for virtual format before confirming your preference on the submission application, including:
  • We are unable to accommodate hybrid sessions. All sessions must be 100% virtual or 100% in-person.
  • Changing session formats is not allowed (i.e., in-person to virtual, or vice versa).
• Need Assistance? Are you planning to submit a proposal for #AAS2023 but need more presenters? Are you interested in presenting and want to join a submission? Use our CFP 2023 Community Forum to share information about you work and find collaborators with shared interests. (This community discussion is open to both AAS members and the public; non-members must create an account.)

The primary goal of #AAS2023 is to highlight the richness and breadth of research in the field of Asian studies. Please feel free to contact the AAS with any questions at AASConference@asianstudies.org. We look forward to receiving your submissions!

Submission deadline: August 9, 2022, 5:00pm Eastern Time

Please see the complete Call for Proposals at the AAS conference website for full details and instructions: https://www.asianstudies.org/conference/call-for-proposals/ 

George H. Kerr, Luis Kutner, and the Chiang Ching-kuo assassination attempt case

I've been reading through some of George Kerr's correspondence concerning the legal issues surrounding the defense of Peter Huang (黃文雄) and Cheng Tzu-tsai (鄭自才), who were arrested for the attempted assassination of Chiang Ching-kuo in New York in 1970. Taiwanese independence advocates in the US hired Luis Kutner, a famous Chicago human rights lawyer, to defend the two. 

When Kerr learned about how much the World United Formosans for Independence (WUFI) was paying Kutner (a $17,000 retainer fee and $3,000 per month plus travel), he was disturbed and wondered if Kutner was just trying to profit off of the situation. He also expressed concern that Kutner seemed to want to use the trial "as a platform for loud charges against the KMT and the Nationalist government and elite" (Kerr to Lung-chu Chen [陳隆志], Jun. 14, 1970). He felt that Kutner wanted to grandstand at WUFI's--and potentially Huang and Cheng's--expense. 

Lung-chu Chen tried to reassure Kerr about Kutner; in a June 30, 1970 letter, he praised Kutner as "a genius noted for successfully handling 'impossible' cases" and someone "who inspires confidence." Chen felt that Kutner's idea of a class action lawsuit against the KMT was novel and that Kutner was "courageous; he is probably the last person the Chinese Nationalists can bribe or intimidate." 

Kerr continued to express serious doubts, particularly on the two points mentioned above: the monetary cost (he felt that if Kutner was so passionate about taking on the KMT, he should do it pro bono) and the great risk that a legal fight against the KMT would do to Huang and Cheng's defense (July 1, 1970). 

By October, WUFI was struggling to continue payments to Kutner. In a letter sent Nov. 23, 1970, Ron Chen (陳榮成) told Kerr that WUFI had terminated their contract with him. 

All of the foregoing (except for the items hyperlinked) come from letters contained in Su, Yao-tsung (蘇瑤崇), et al., ed., Correspondence by and about George Kerr. 228 Peace Memorial Museum, 2000, vol. 2. In my searching for more information about Luis Kutner, I came across a lot, including a report on Kutner released by the FBI saying that 

on 11-3-70 Chinat [Nationalist Chinese/KMT] Ambassador to U.S. advised Bureau representative in strict confidence that Kutner has approached Chinat Embassy offering his services to the Chinats despite the fact that he is currently attorney for WUFI and is defending Peter Huang and CHENG Tzu-tsai, attempted assassins of Chinat Vice Premier CHIANG Ching-kuo, 4-24-70, New York City. Chinat Ambassador stated he is still uncertain of Kutner's motives in such an offer but believes Kutner is only opportunist interested in financial gain.

I'm not sure when WUFI terminated his contract, so I can't tell if Kutner's attempt to offer services to the KMT was revenge for that, or if (even worse) he just wanted to make money off of both sides. Either way, it sounds like Kerr was right to be wary about him.

[There's a lot more that could be said about the CCK assassination attempt and its aftermath, but my main focus here is on the Kerr/Kutner/WUFI connection.]

Heather Cox Richardson on the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade

Heather Cox Richardson is a history professor at Boston College.

Barbara Tuchman on politics

First 10 minutes, in particular:

"I have to confess that I am neither philosophically nor politically a Republican" got applause!

Summer work update

I'm still working on my paper for the North American Taiwan Studies Association conference in July. Here's the schedule for the conference--I'm part of Panel B. Here's the proposal that I submitted for my presentation:

Formosa Delayed: George H. Kerr's Struggles with Scholarship and Advocacy

An early International Journal of Taiwan Studies forum on “Linking Taiwan Studies with the World” discussed a position paper by Shu-mei Shih that argued Taiwan should be studied through “relational comparison” with other countries, notably, the US. In fact, Shih argues that “Taiwan should be included in all American studies disciplines” (215). Not all of her interlocutors agreed: Mark Harrison disagreed with Shih’s emphasis on the Taiwan-U.S. nexus but concluded that Taiwan Studies “continues to need method; but that scholarly requirement is nothing less than a representation of the creation of an identity as Taiwanese by all the people around the world who identify with Taiwan” (219). And Kuei-fen Chiu connected the history of Taiwan Studies to Taiwan’s post-martial law “nation-forming project. It sought to redefine the status of Taiwan and retell the story of the past and the future of Taiwan” (221). Both quotes suggest that the distinction between scholarship and advocacy in Taiwan Studies is blurred. Chiu makes the clearest connection between Taiwan’s political opening-up and the scholarly project of studying Taiwan as a way of helping form a distinctly Taiwanese national identity. In this paper, I will explore two threads from the above discussion—the Taiwan-U.S. nexus and the blurred distinction between scholarship and advocacy—through the writings and struggles of George H. Kerr in the early years of the Cold War. Kerr’s work at this time and his uneasy relationship with scholarly objectivity anticipate the complex relationship between scholarship and advocacy that characterize Taiwan studies as a field.

Speaking of struggles, I am struggling myself with getting from Point A to Point B in my paper. I tend to get stuck in the weeds and have to try to dig myself out of the details to make a broader point about what I'm supposed to be discussing. This will be especially important since I only have 12-14 minutes to talk this time! Guess this means taking out all the jokes about how to pronounce Kerr's last name and whether Kerr is the father of American Taiwan Studies, its godfather, or its curmudgeonly uncle... [Insert bad pun about GHK as "Kerrmudgeon..."]

The Economic Resources and Development of Formosa, by Norton S. Ginsburg

I came across a reference to this paper published by the IPR in 1953. Fortunately, someone posted a copy of it to the Internet Archive. 

Another new book in the former native speaker's library

陳翠蓮 (Chen Tsui-lien), 自治之夢：日治時期到二二八的臺灣民主運動 (The Dream of Autonomy: Taiwan's Democracy Movement from the Japanese Occupation to February 28). 春山出版, 2020.

I came across some excerpts from this book when Googling an article by Huang Chengcong (黃呈聰) in the 臺灣民報 (Taiwan Minbao):

• Excerpt from Chapter Two
• Excerpt from Chapter Four
• Excerpt from Chapter Five

The excerpts looked interesting, so I bought the book. I managed to get an ebook through Amazon for only $9, which wasn't too bad considering what postage would have been had I ordered it through Books.com.tw. (Another advantage of the ebook is that the text in it runs horizontally from left to right instead of vertically from right to left, which makes it a little easier for me to read.) 

I haven't found any reviews of the book, but just from starting to read it, I think it's written for a more general audience rather than being a "scholarly" book, but that's OK with me. Hopefully, that will make it easier for me to read and I'll actually get it done!

A bit of progress

Despite a splitting sinus headache and a feeling that working on a paper about George Kerr in the aftermath of yesterday's massacre at Robb Elementary School in Texas is rather pointless, I managed to get some writing done. I realized I have to keep the paper down to between 1500 and 2000 words (I've only got 15 minutes to speak), so I am trying to keep the long quotations down to a minimum and try to stay out of the weeds ("how many titles changes did Kerr's manuscript go through?"). 

Every once in a while I like to check out YouTube to see if there are any videos about Kerr. I found this "Wikipedia Reader" one yesterday, in which the speaker says, "George H. Kerr H. Kerr H. Kerr" about a million times. At least they pronounce his name correctly...

More (non)progress

Had a good talk with my brother last night about the conference paper I'm working on. Same old problem, trying to go from the trees to get the forest in perspective. Trying to figure out this time which forest it is that I'm looking at and how that forest can be the forest that I alluded to in my conference proposal. Anyway, worked out a lot of ideas on the phone, most of which I promptly forgot after hanging up. *sigh*

Writing (non)progress

So since I last wrote I've developed some sort of sinus infection, chronic cough, etc. I'm on some medications that are knocking me out. I've spent most of my waking hours sleeping...

The Peasant Movement and Land Reform in Taiwan, 1924-1951

I just finished reading Shih-shan Henry Tsai's The Peasant Movement and Land Reform in Taiwan, 1924-1951 (MerwinAsia, 2015). The main feeling I got from the book is reflected in Tsai's conclusion, where he writes about the Japanese-era peasant movement led by Chien Chi (Jian Ji 簡吉), 

Invariably, peasant movements and land reform, like war and politics, are a question of power. Without power, one can make fiery speeches, but they do not fundamentally change anything. Lacking real power, Chien Chi's tenant union could and did conduct an attention-getting social movement, even including a few petitions and bloody skirmishes, but it accomplished little. The Japan Peasants Union and other left-wing groups sent advisors, money, and Bolshevik know-how to assist the Taiwanese cause, but to no avail. In the end, it was the JCRR experts, power, money, and the New Deal know-how that finally lifted underprivileged Taiwanese peasants out of semi-serfdom and found a way to fully fulfill Chien Chi's vision and advance his cause.

That said, the details in Tsai's history tell a somewhat more nuanced story that makes it hard to compare the effectiveness of the Peasant Union with that of the JCRR. The main difference I saw between the two was that the Japanese colonial government did not seem at all interested in meeting the demands of the peasants because it wanted to Japan and its zaibatsu to profit off of the work of the Taiwanese. In the case of the KMT, on the other hand, despite the regime's use of terror, coercion, and propaganda to quiet the Taiwanese people, the government also grudgingly cooperated with US advisors to institute a land reform program that successfully allowed peasants to own the land that they tilled. Postwar Taiwan had no zaibatsu cartels to appease; instead, the government had to appease the Americans who were supporting the KMT rulers ideologically, militarily, and economically.

In terms of Tsai's narrative, I also noticed that the discussion of the Japanese era peasant movements focused a lot more on individuals than that did his story of postwar land reform. This makes sense, I suppose, since the peasant movement was more of a bottom-up attempt to confront the agricultural policies of their Japanese rulers. This necessarily involved various personalities such as Chien Chi, Fuse Tatsuji (布施辰治), Chang Yu-lan (Zhang Yulan 張玉蘭), Yeh Tao (Ye Tao 葉陶), and others.

At the same time that the movement was "bottom-up," its leaders relied a lot on their Japanese mentors in the Japanese peasant movement. According to Tsai, this also moved at least some members of the Taiwanese movement to the left and eventually to Communism. Here Hsieh Hsueh-hung (Xie Xuehong 謝雪紅) makes an appearance along with other Taiwanese Communists, and here Tsai ties the peasant movement in Taiwan to some other leftist movements in the world, although, as some reviewers have pointed out, he doesn't spend much time making comparisons to peasant movements in other countries. 

Tsai also ties the peasant movement of Chien Chi to the Taiwan Cultural Association and people like Chiang Wei-shui (Jiang Weishui 將渭水), whose worry about the increasing leftism of the peasant movement led him and other more moderate members to break away from the movement and the TCA. 

Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it as an introduction, particularly to some of the personalities involved in the peasant movements in Japanese-era Taiwan.

Here are a couple of reviews of the book:

• Alsford, Niki. “The Peasant Movement and Land Reform in Taiwan, 1924–1951. SHIH-SHAN HENRY TSAI . Portland, ME: Merwin Asia, 2015. Xx + 248 Pp. $55.00. ISBN 978-1-937385-80-4.” The China Quarterly, vol. 227, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 844–45, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741016000989. 
• You, Jong-sung. “The Peasant Movement and Land Reform in Taiwan, 1924–1951, by Shih-Shan Henry Tsai. Portland, ME: Merwin Asia, 2016. Xx+232 Pp. US$65.00 (cloth).” The China Journal (Canberra, A.C.T.), vol. 78, 2017, pp. 225–27, https://doi.org/10.1086/691706.