February slowdown

As I sort of predicted in my last post, my book-reading has hit the wall. Part of it is that my workload has gone up now that we're into the semester. But I also caught a cold last week that knocked me out for a while, and now I'm feverishly working to catch up on my work (not literally feverish, fortunately). 

I haven't been closely following it, but the story of 大S's (徐熙媛) death from flu-related pneumonia was quite a shock to a lot of people. It appears that her death has a lot of Taiwanese inquiring about getting flu vaccines, which I guess is a good outcome from a tragic event. You can't be too careful. 

Anyway, back to work now...

One odd and one end

• I'm happy that I've managed to finish reading four books so far this year, but I think my reading pace is going to slow down now that we're into the semester. For number five, I'm working on Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang's book, The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan, but so far it's a little slower going, probably because when I get around to reading it on the commute home, I'm too tired to focus.  
• I deactivated my BlueSky account the other day--I did wonder when I set up my account how long it would last. I guess I know now. I haven't deleted it, but I needed to take a break from it, and this seemed the best way. It was getting too distracting and negative for me at the moment. I suppose my posts and replies have disappeared--my apologies for messing up the internet!

Thoughts on Taiwan Travelogue

I finished reading Lin King's translation of Yáng Shuāng-zǐ's Taiwan Travelogue this morning. I enjoyed the novel a lot, including its postmodern framing, where the English translation I read is supposed to be a translation of Yáng's Mandarin translation of Aoyama Chizuko's original novel, a novel that went through several Japanese, English, and Mandarin editions. (If memory serves me correctly!) 

I also enjoyed getting a picture of Taiwan--and particularly Taichung--during the period of Japanese colonialism. The descriptions of the Taichū Train Station and its environs, the markets, the streets and countryside were fascinating to me. King's translation also cleverly creates the point of view of the Japanese travel writer/novelist by using Japanese names for most of the cities and sites in Taiwan (which she often calls "the Southern Country" or "the Island" in contrast to "the Mainland," which refers to Japan). For example, Taichung's Lü Chuan River (or Lyu-Chuan Canal) is called the "Midori River." 

Lü Chuan River (Midori River) during the Japanese Period, from Wikimedia Commons

Much of the book is focused on discussions of food, particularly Taiwanese cuisine (Aoyama-san describes herself as having an always-hungry "monster" in her belly as the result of unfortunate events during her childhood). While there were a lot of dishes, snacks, beverages, etc., that I was familiar with, there were also quite a few that I don't recall ever trying or even hearing of, particularly because their names are written in romanized Taiwanese (though the Mandarin names are often added in footnotes). Reading this book made me hunger for Taiwanese food, both familiar and strange. 

Perhaps my unfamiliarity with the food mentioned in the book and with some of the places they visited should be a warning to me. Without giving away the plot of the novel, the ending made me question my own relationship to Taiwan and Taiwanese people, and what my role should be (if any) in representing Taiwan (and Taiwan's rhetoric) to others. Maybe it's not my place to speak but rather to continue to learn. 

Speaking of which, what should be my fifth book for 2025?

P.S. This interview with Lin King gives more information about the novel. And here is a more complete review of the book (spoilers!).

P.P.S. Next book on my reading list: Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang's The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan. 

P.P.P.S Here's another nice review of the book. I find myself hoping a movie version of this comes out one of these days...

Finished Revolutionary Taiwan; on to Taiwan Travelogue

Just finished my third book of the year--Catherine Lila Chou and Mark Harrison's Revolutionary Taiwan: Making Nationhood in a Changing World Order. I think it provides a good introduction to Taiwan's complicated place in the world today, including some historical background for that place--or its "out of place"-ness, as they describe it. 

They begin with a description of what vote-counting is like in Taiwan--a description that was depressing to me when I think about how impossible such an open and peaceful vote-counting would be in the USA. (Although I was there in 2004 when the response to Chen Shui-bian's victory was not particularly peaceful. Who can forget Chiu Yi's attack on the Kaohsiung District Prosecutor's Office?) The vote-counting is symbol of Taiwan's maturing (mature?) democratic process, but as the authors demonstrate, this democratic process is happening in the context of a precarious state of existence. (I'm surprised there's not yet a book about Taiwan entitled Precarious State--get to work, people!)

One part of the book that I especially liked was their "close reading" of Taipei City's martial-law-era road-naming practices. Not that familiar with Taipei, I didn't realize that someone had actually laid a map of China over a map of the city to figure out what to rename Taipei's streets. (This part of the book reminded me of the article about TV cooking shows in Taiwan that I read a few years ago--particularly the part about Fu Pei Mei. I see there's a new book about her, too.) 

The book ends, interestingly, with an epilogue that introduces a critique of dominant--and parochial--Taiwanese attitudes toward Indigenous Taiwanese and "new Taiwanese" immigrants and foreign laborers, arguing that this parochialism needs to be overcome in order for Taiwan to really move beyond being seen as a "Chinese democracy." As they conclude, "the choice to cultivate a more diverse and eclectic national community today--one that will extend Taiwan's connections to communities and countries around the globe--lies with the people of Taiwan" (p. 159).

Around the same time that I finished Revolutionary Taiwan, I got my copy of Taiwan Travelogue in the mail. I decided to read this award-winning novel next. I have already finished the first chapter, and I'm loving it! (It makes me hungry, though--so much about Taiwanese food!)

Classes starting this week; interview assignment

I have two on-ground classes tomorrow--two sections of "Advanced Writing in the Business Administration Professions." I have been teaching this course on and off for over ten years now, but I'm trying a new/old thing this semester. New in that I haven't done it in this course--at least not in this way or for these reasons--before, but old in that I have done it before, both in this course (for different reasons) and in other previous courses. 

The assignment is an informational interview assignment with someone whose job aligns with the student's expected/hoped for/dreamed of career path. This being a writing course, I ask students to focus a good part of the interview on the writing expectations and practices of the job. I've done this assignment in some previous advanced writing courses (and it occurs to me that I did this assignment at least once in a composition class I taught at Tunghai, where I asked students to focus on how people in the job used English--or didn't!). 

The new thing this time is that we're going to throw GenAI into the mix--(how) are the interviewees using GenAI as part of their work? What are the implications, if any, for what students should be learning in an "Advanced Writing in the Business Administration Professions" course? This assignment occurred to me last semester after running into a previous student from ten years ago who was telling me about how the company she works for has its own proprietary ChatGPT-like system that employees are expected to use to write letters to clients. She hates it--it writes sentences that are too long. I want to get a sense of how widespread this is, and I want students to learn about it, too.

I attended an online discussion today on "Scaffolding GenAI Conversation in Your Courses," and one of the things that came out of it is that, perhaps not surprisingly, faculty are taking very different approaches to how or whether to allow students to use GenAI in their work. I got the sense from the discussion, for example, that while in my writing classes, learning how to synthesize sources is an important practice that I want students to work on without help from AI, in courses in some other disciplines/professions, it would be acceptable to have AI do the work of synthesis because the pedagogical focus of the assignment is not necessarily on synthesis. (In those cases, though, I'm sure the instructors would still want the students to tell them how they used AI to help them.) This reminds me again to make clear what I'm hoping students get out of assignments--what they should learn how to do, presumably unaided by AI. And maybe from this, what things might be OK to get help with from AI (for instance, APA citation, at least to a certain extent). 

Well, now to go back to my materials and see if I need to do any tweaks on the syllabus before tomorrow morning.

Finished reading Rebel Island

I enjoyed reading Rebel Island: The Incredible History of Taiwan, by Jonathan Clements. I realize it's a general history for people who don't know a lot about Taiwan, but I found myself learning from it even though I've read other histories of Taiwan. It's a good supplement and updating of books like Wan-yao Chou's A New Illustrated History of Taiwan and the Murray Rubinstein-edited Taiwan: A New History. 

It covers a lot of territory in its 250-odd pages, so there are some stories or aspects from Taiwan's history don't get much or any coverage (the 921 earthquake of 1999 is only mentioned in relation to Morris Chang's insistence on getting the power back on to his TSMC plants). But I think Clements makes a good point early on in the preface about the history (and prehistory) of Taiwan. I'm going to quote this paragraph in full. I don't know if it's completely technically accurate, but it sounds plausible:

If we imagine the whole history of the human habitation of Taiwan, up to the present day, as a single calendar year, then humans first arrive on 1 January--although those ancient people have left behind none of their DNA, only fire sticks and stone axes. The Neolithic period, which saw settlement of the island by the ancestors of today's Formosan indigenous communities, begins around 1 November. The rise on the mainland of the First Emperor, Qin Shihuang, his Terracotta Army, and the very concept of there being a China that Taiwan could become a part of, happens sometime on 3 December. Prolonged and enduring ties with the Chinese on the mainland are initiated around Christmas. The Ming-dynasty loyalist Koxinga and his men arrive in the small hours of 28 December, and their regime is toppled with a Qing-dynasty retaliation by lunchtime. The Japanese annex Taiwan as a colony around midday on 30 December, and are themselves ousted shortly before dawn on New Year's Eve, making way for the mass arrival of Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT), the Chinese Nationalist Party, in retreat from Mao's Communists on the mainland. Martial law stays in force until just after breakfast, and the entire modern history of a democratic Republic of China on Taiwan occupies the next 18 hours until midnight, when I am telling you this. (xiii)

In other words, there's a lot of Taiwan's history to cover, even if your focus is mainly on "November" to "New Year's Eve." I think that despite any faults (including a few mistakes here and there), Clements very ably covers that history. 

Another new book in the former native speaker's library

Just received my copy of Revolutionary Taiwan: Making Nationhood in a Changing World Order, by Catherine Lila Chou and Mark Harrison. It's a relatively short book (about 161 pages + bibliography), so I think I can read it soon, after I finish Rebel Island, perhaps. (All these "revolutionary" and "rebel" books about Taiwan!) 

Finished reading John Brown, Abolitionist

I wanted to read a biography of John Brown for some reason, so I asked my brother and sister-in-law for one for Christmas. I finished reading it today. I thought John Brown, Abolitionist by David S. Reynolds was a good study of Brown, the historical context in which he grew up and became an anti-slavery and anti-racist advocate, his effect on the Civil War, and how he was remembered in both the North and the South. Reynolds clearly admires John Brown, and he suggests that had Brown not attacked Harpers Ferry, the Civil War might have taken place much later and been much bloodier. 

Here's a good interview with Reynolds about the book from 2005.

Review of Resistance in the Era of Nationalisms published

My review of Resistance in the Era of Nationalisms: Performing Identities in Taiwan and Hong Kong, edited by Hsin-I Cheng and Hsin-i Sydney Yueh is out. It was a pleasure to read this book, particularly realizing the risks some of the authors took in writing it.

"Midterm" reflections on August's "new year's resolutions"

Back in August, I wrote up a few new year's resolutions for the 2024-2025 academic year. In the past, I've usually written them up and then ignored them, but this time I'm going to take a look back at them and figure out what I did, what I didn't do, and what course corrections I might make.

• "Try to get up earlier in the morning"--the idea here was go get up early enough to do my Duolingo and a little writing. This didn't work at all as planned. I did manage to get up early some mornings and do a little journaling, but I didn't have enough time to do my Duolingo before I had to get the day started. And many days, I woke up just in time to jump in the shower before starting to get my son ready for school.
• "Use my commute time to read"--since I didn't have time to do my Duolingo in the morning, I usually did it on the trip into school. Sometimes I read on the way home from school, but a lot of times, I was using that time to catch up on work. 
• "Make time for writing"--I pretty much failed at this during the semester, unless you count my teaching-related writing and service-related writing. I had the usual amount of the former and, it seems, more than the usual amount for the latter. I did a few little revisions on a couple of book reviews that will be coming out soon, but besides that, I didn't work on any of the papers I have to revise.

So things didn't go quite as well as planned. I think one thing that cut down on my writing time was that I was teaching a new course, so that involved a lot of work to keep ahead of the students. This semester, I'll be teaching "old" courses (though of course I can't seem to stop myself from fiddling with the assignments), which might help. 

Another thing that might help in terms of the writing is that next semester, I'm rejoining a writing accountability group that has always forced me to spend at least an hour and a half a week on writing. I've always found that helpful. I need to finish that George Kerr paper first, then get started on the chapters I need to write for the collaborative biography. 

I think I need to add "going to bed earlier" to the list of resolutions because if I don't get to bed earlier, I can't wake up earlier. I'll try to work on that. I've been napping a lot recently because of some muscle relaxants I have had to take for a sciatica problem, but hopefully I'll get over that before vacation is over. Napping always throws off my evening sleep schedule. 

As for using commuting time for reading, I think I'll still end up doing Duolingo during the trip in. I'll try to do some reading on the way home. I'll have to decide what I want to read, though! Right now, I'm about a third of the way through David S. Reynolds' John Brown: Abolitionist, but I'm going to try to finish it before the semester starts. I have to think about what to read after that. Any ideas?

A few reflections on the "Rhetorics in Contact" course

Back in August, I wrote about my plans for the new course I was going to be teaching, "Rhetorics in Contact." Now that the course is over, I want to reflect on the course and think about what I might do better next time. In no particular order:

• I think the readings worked well. As we read and responded to them, we actually started finding connections that I hadn't noticed before. Shimabukuro's book was particularly good for bringing together a lot of points that we had discussed earlier, though often she would use different language for talking about similar kinds of concepts. I personally gained a lot from reading through her book again for the course.
• Here's something I posted on BlueSky about Shimabukuro's book and current events. (Hope you can read it!)
• We used Perusall for "socially annotating" the readings. It made things nice generally, but in the case of Shimabukuro, I was a little annoyed that the Perusall edition of the book didn't have any page numbers. It made it harder to cite the book when we were working on final papers. Haven't yet figured out a workaround for the next time, so any suggestions are welcome!
• Maybe because we were using Perusall and doing social annotation (and maybe for some other reasons, as well), class discussions weren't as active as I had hoped. I think I have to work harder next time on making sure class time is better used, and I'm not just doing most of the talking.
• We did a few informal writing assignments that I liked. I think I want to keep most of them and perhaps do a few more. After we read Garrett and Xiao's "The Rhetorical Situation Revisited," for instance, I asked students to write about any discourse traditions in their families or cultures. Their responses were interesting. (And I had fun writing my own response, too!) We also did some practice analysis of materials in NU's Digital Collections. I also had them write some reflections on their class trips to the archives. 
• I think I need to do a bit more with helping them on the archival projects. (One student suggested starting earlier, but I have to think about that. Maybe we could go to the archives earlier.) More class time devoted to them bringing in archival materials and challenges they were facing would be useful, perhaps. And more work with citing archival documents. 
• I also should do a bit more with helping them think about connections between the readings and the archival collections they were working on. One student in their final reflection pointed out how working on the archives helped them better understand the concepts from the readings, but I think I could do a bit more to help in that direction. 

Anyway, overall the course went well (aside from problems with class discussions or lack thereof), so I'm encouraged to try teaching this again if I get the chance!

Pulse Check on Taiwan’s Democratic Resilience

 I need to watch this at some point (when I have 3 hours to spare!):

Not sure what I'm getting myself into...

I just joined Bluesky for some reason. I'd like to find people who are interested in talking about comparative rhetoric and books about Taiwan. 

I'm not sure if I'll stay on; if it seems worth it, I'll stay, but right now I don't see much going on that I'm interested in. 

As I like to say to my mom, "We'll see what happens."  

Twenty-year-old thoughts on yesterday's election

They don't all apply, but they're food for thought:

"One thing a lot of Democrats are thinking about these days" (11/7/04)

"Faith and rhetoric in the U.S. election (and beyond)" (11/7/04)

"A note from an Ohio 'Blue'" (11/11/04)

Just in time for Hallowe'en...

For some reason, I didn't notice the overlap between the themes of the two books I wrote about--even though they're right in the titles! It wasn't until I went to hear Kim Liao talk about her book and answer a question about her choice of title that it clicked with me that both of the books are about hauntings. (Hence the title of my blogpost.) Anru Lee's book, Haunted Modernities, involves both the literal and figurative ghostly presence of the 25 "maiden ladies" who died in the 1973 ferry accident in decisions about how to honor them even as Kaohsiung's economy and culture shifted from industrial to post-industrial and to a tourist destination. Kim Liao's book, Where Every Ghost Has a Name, at times describes Thomas Liao's ghostly presence guiding Kim through her journey of learning about him. 

While the first book is an anthropological work and the second a memoir, they both take seriously Taiwanese beliefs about the afterlife. Lee in particular doesn't try to explain away the spiritual aspects but situates it among the cultural and economic changes in Kaohsiung (and at the same time situates the cultural and economic changes among the spiritual aspects of the lives and deaths of the 25 young women).  

One story in Lee's book that exemplifies this involves a Kaohsiung City employee, Mr. Lin, who around 2006 was tasked with the job of getting the family members of the deceased female workers to agree to renovate their tombs. The family members had to ask the deceased young women by casting divination blocks. They got agreement from most of them, but one deceased woman wouldn't respond to her surviving sister. Finally, Mr. Lin agreed to talk to the deceased sister himself.

However, he also did not get a good response, even after multiple attempts. "After a while, I had to consult a religious practitioner at a local temple and learn to phrase my plea in a hard-to-refuse way," Lin explained. ...

Even so, an unequivocal "yes" was still hard to come by. Mr. Lin begged and begged, and even promised to bring fruits as offerings to the deceased every month in the future. ... "In the end, I told them I was only a minor employee who took orders from some big boss [i.e., the mayor] and pleaded with them to understand my quandary. As soon as I said that, they granted me a divine answer. [These women] certainly know the difficulties of being someone's subordinate!" (138-9)

Anru Lee gave a talk today about her book at the University of Washington. In the Q&A period, there was a lot of talk about "haunting as method" in Lee's book:

Two finished books in the former native speaker's library!

I just finished reading Anru Lee's Haunted Modernities, which was a fascinating study of the intersections of memory, feminism, women's lives (and deaths), modernization, industrialization, post-industrialization, and local traditional religious beliefs and practices in Taiwan. I'd love to use it in a class, but I'm not sure that I'm ever going to teach a class in which I can teach it...

Here's a podcast interview with Anru Lee about her book.

I had put Lee's book aside briefly, partly due to work and partly because I wanted to finish Kim Liao's book Where Every Ghost Has a Name before she comes to Northeastern this coming Wednesday. I enjoyed this book, too. It gave me a new perspective on Thomas Liao, an historical figure I've read about mostly through the lens of his correspondence with George H. Kerr. It also ties in to my honors course text, Mira Shimabukuro's Relocating Authority, in interesting ways, particularly in terms of how they're both investigating histories that were suppressed both by unsympathetic governments and by the survivors of past trauma who sometimes just wanted to forget about the past. 

Here's an interview with Kim Liao about her book.

Rebecca Nedostup talk, “War Being” in Mid-Twentieth Century China and Taiwan

Need to watch this video sometime.

I don't know if it's my computer or their set-up, but the audio is terrible.

[Update 10/31/24: Uh oh...]

'Tis the season (evidently) to buy books, even if I don't have time to read them

Just picked up (well, was sent) a new book from the University of Washington Press on the CIA and the Asia Foundation, a Cold War-era nonprofit/CIA front (that is now evidently not funded by the CIA, I guess). The book is Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and the CIA, by David H. Price. 

One thing I'll be reading this book for is how it extends or differs from Emma North-Best's long article on the CIA and the Asia Foundation on the MuckRock website. I remember reading that article a few years ago after I came across a 1951 letter from Philip Horton, assistant editor of The Reporter, to Allen Dulles, who was "Deputy Director for Plans" at the CIA at the time (if Wikipedia is correct). 

In the letter, Horton quotes a letter he had received from Kerr (who was at the Hoover Library at the time), in which Kerr criticized the Committee for a Free Asia (the precursor to the Asia Foundation). Kerr reported on a visit to Hoover by CFA president George H. Greene, Jr.* (not sure what his first name was). Kerr continued, 

Either the management is extraordinarily naive, or they assume us to be so. The line will be almost unmodified extension of the Voice of America or U.S.I.S. propaganda. "Tell the Asians how wonderful life is in America, how good our institutions are, and how very very wicked and dangerous the Communists are." There is heavy emphasis on the latter approach, with  little ready response to our questions concerning positive content. It was freely admitted that China is the primary concern. Chiang is to be neither praised nor condemned. "Counterpart Committees" will be set up overseas, operating under guarantees that the local government will not influence nor affect the content of propaganda. It was asserted that such a condition was expected to obtain in Formosa, which is to be a principal base of operations. 

It has been pointed out to the representatives of the Committee that (1) most Asians are tired of hearing how good we are, and the history of our representative institutions has little bearing on their problems, for the conditions surrounding their evolution cannot be duplicated in Asia; (2) most non-Chinese Asians fear a strong China, whatever its political orientation, and will hardly respond with enthusiasm to a rally in support of "anti-Communist government" for China, especially if it means support for the Nationalists; (3) Formosa cited as an example of "Free Asia" would be damaging nonsense. 

Those of us who talked with Greene have a troubled sense that the Administration may have decided to switch to all-out support for the Nationalists, hopefully trusting that Chiang may be thrust aside, and that the Committee not only has the State Department's blessing in this attempt to sweeten the picture, but is most actively setting it up. Each of us asks the other if at any point the [China] Lobby may be putting up funds. Odd to conceive, but not impossible in Washington. 

Actually, if the thing were worked out on a realistic appraisal of the American position in Asian eyes, it could do an enormously important job, unhampered by red tape.

Wonder if this letter helped get Kerr in any trouble with the government... 

*All you had to do was look in the index of the book you just bought, Jon... 🙄

Another new (new new new!) book in the former native speaker's library

I just got my copy of Kim Liao's Where Every Ghost Has a Name: A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence, which came into print (or "dropped," as the youngsters say) a few days ago. I read a little of it on the Amazon website (as much as I could) while I waited for the hardback copy, and I can't wait to read it. I'm going to put it next on my list after finishing Anru Lee's Haunted Modernities. (Interestingly, Lee has a blurb on the back of Liao's book.) 

I'm especially interested in seeing how Kim Liao treats the relationship between Thomas Liao and his family and George H. Kerr. I realize that, as K. Liao says, this is a work of creative nonfiction, so some of the conversations between the characters are reimagined, but I want to see how her perspective on Kerr compares to my own perspective.

Kim Liao is coming to Northeastern in October, so I guess I'd better get going on reading her book!

Update on new (academic) year's resolutions

I'm happy to announce that I've chosen the first book that I'll be reading on the train to school, starting on Tuesday (I'm sure all of my reader was dying to know): Haunted Modernities: Gender, Memory, and Placemaking in Postindustrial Taiwan, by Anru Lee. 

I mentioned back in May that I had started to read the book shortly after I received it, but then, between teaching two summer courses and getting a book review and some other writing projects done during the summer, plus preparing for my honors course, I just didn't have time to get back to it. I really have enjoyed it so far, though, and I'm looking forward to getting back to it. Maybe I'll write a few notes about it once I finish.