Friday, July 31, 2026

Four new books in the former native speaker's library

I got a collection of four small illustrated books about old Taichung, 《臺中舊城》, which includes 

  • 「宮原武熊的一天」(about Miyahara Takekuma, a Japanese ophthalmologist who ran an eye clinic in Taichung),  
  • 「和平日報:二七部隊」(about the Taichung-based newspaper I've been combing through for my research on 蔡鐵城),
  • 「臺中公園-前世今生」(about Taichung Park), and 
  • 「1960's 綠川點點滴滴的日子」(about the cleaning up of the Lü Chuan [Green River] in downtown Taichung).
These books also have maps of old Taichung that I guess you can use to find the places discussed. Wish I had time this trip to visit Taichung and take a look at those historical sites.
 
From their website, 臺中舊城生活博物館, it appears that they've published other books about Taichung, too. 

Monday, July 20, 2026

Two new books in the former native speaker's library

Writing from Taipei now. It is miserably hot and humid, but I walked (walked!) the 1.1 km (OK, I'm a wimp to complain!) to 唐山書店 (and now I see that they have a website and I could have just ordered from it...). I bought one book I had planned to get and another that I discovered there.

呂東熹,《二二八記者劫》,玉山社,2016.

This book has a chapter about the Ho-p'ing Jih-pao (和平日報) newspaper that Ts'ai T'ieh-ch'eng wrote for before 228. Part of that chapter is about Ts'ai himself; I've already read it online, but I want to read the rest of the chapter (and the whole book) for context about journalists and newspapers during that period. 

徐秀慧,《戰後初期(1945-1949)台灣的文化場域與文學思潮》,稻鄉出版社,2007.

The title interested me, and I saw some footnotes mentioned the 和平日報, so I decided to buy it.

Still have some more books to buy in the coming weeks. Gotta pace myself... 

Thursday, July 16, 2026

New ebook in the former native speaker's library

Just downloaded Evan Dawley's new book Taiwan: A People's History to my phone (the print copy isn't available yet). Hopefully, I'll be able to read it on my flight to Taiwan (tomorrow!). I'm looking forward to it.

Here's an interview with Dawley about the book: