We took a short trip to Taiwan during winter break, and though most of our time was spent visiting family and friends after not having been here in five years (!), I did manage to pop into a couple of bookstores. Unfortunately, I didn't really plan well for my book shopping--I went to Southern Materials Center (南天書局) when we were in Taipei, and I was overwhelmed! I spend a few hours just looking for books, but nothing was clicking for some reason (or perhaps everything was clicking). When they were nearing closing time, I finally chose five of the books that I had been looking at, almost at random:
- Taiwan's 400 Year History, anniversary edition, by Su Beng. I had seen this on the Amazon website, but it was about $90. This cost NT$544 after the discount (about US$18!). This is the condensed English translation of 《台灣人四百年史》 by 史明.
- 《簡吉獄中日記》Chien Chi's Prison Diaries. I had read about Chien Chi in Shih-shan Henry Tsai's The Peasant Movement and Land Reform in Taiwan, 1924-1951, and I'm also interested in reading diaries, letters, etc., so this seemed like a good choice. This book covers the period from Dec. 20, 1929-Dec. 24, 1930. It has the Japanese original, a Chinese translation (fortunately for me!), and a reading guide by Chen Tz'u-yu (陳慈玉).
- 《走出閨房上學校》Leaving the Boudoir and Going to School, by Ts'ai Yuen-lung and Huang Ya-fang (蔡元隆、黃雅芳). As the subtitle indicates, this book is about girls' education in the Yunlin-Chia-I area during the Japanese colonial period.
- 《三代臺灣人》Three Generations of Taiwanese People, ed. by the Taiwan Research Fund (台灣研究基金會). This is a collection of scholarly papers from three conferences sponsored by the Research Fund, covering what they call the Chiang Wei-shui period, the Lee Teng-hui period, and the Tang-wai (黨外) period of Taiwan's history.
- 《臺灣民眾黨特刊，第一冊》The Taiwan People's Party Special Issue, Volume One. I'm not sure why I bought this little (tiny!) boxed collection of two books (a facsimile of the first volume and an appendix explaining the history of the (ahem) *original* Taiwan People's Party.
In the end, I could have bought more books there, but the way I was feeling, I might have bought fewer as well. This trip has taught me to really think ahead about what I'm looking for when I am going to a bookstore.
I also bought two books at Eslite:
- 《看不見的文字：時代挑戰與一名布農祭司的回應》by Wang Wei-chih (王威智)
- 《臺灣民族性百談》by Yamane Yūzō (山根勇藏), trans. Liao I-cheng (廖怡錚). This is a 1930 Japanese book about Taiwan. There was a recent article about this book in the News Lens.
Have to pack my bags to go home now, though, so on that note, Happy New Year!
