Although the last of the remaining Chinese court eunuchs died in the early 20th century, the world continues to be fascinated by them. Kyoto University scholar Taisuke Mitamura’s Chinese Eunuchs: The Structure of Intimate Politics (1963, 1970 English translation by Charles A. Pomeroy) is an informative, readable monograph on the history of the individuals and […]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Politics' Category
WoWasis book review: Frances FitzGerald’s ‘Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam’
What would Frances FitzGerald say today? Her Pulitzer Prize/National Book Award/Bancroft Prize for History-winning book Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (1972, ISBN 0-679-72394-3) was published in 1972. The U.S. still maintained a military presence there, and Nixon was still in power. Today’s visitors to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City are […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Big Business in Thailand’… unveiling the mystery of Thailand’s business families
So you’re a Westerner who wants to open a large business in Thailand. You don’t really know the lay of the land, but you find that things keep getting in the way. Could be bureaucratic red tape, “tea money,” or even worse, you’re stalled and you don’t know why. Could you have run afoul of […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Jay Taylor’s ‘The Generalissimo’s Son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan’
In this book, The Generalissimo’s Son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan (2000, ISBN 0-674-00287-3), Jay Taylor provides a fascinating history of the man who presided over much of the political modernization of Taiwan. Ching-kuo was, at one point, a communist student in the Soviet Union, and maintained ties there throughout his […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Jay Taylor’s ‘The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China’
As we here at WoWasis found when we visited Taiwan, English books on Chiang Kai-shek are damned hard to find. Chiang isn’t a very popular figure in many Taiwanese circles, which is why, as a bookstore clerk explained to us, books on Chiang would be found in the “China,” rather than the “Taiwan” section of […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Judith Heimann’s The Airmen and the Headhunters (Borneo)
Judith M. Heimann’s The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen, and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II (2007, ISBN 978-0-15-101434-7) is more than just an adventure story, encompassing many fascinating anthropological elements of the Dayak culture of Borneo. It starts off slowly, but becomes a real page-turner as […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘A New History of Taiwan’ by Hung Chien-Chau
Noted Taiwan newspaperman Hung Chien-Chau (also known by his English name, Joe Hung) has admirably faced up to the daunting task of writing a history of his country in A New History of Taiwan (2011, ISBN 978-986-86637-3-2), an updated edition of his 368 page book of 2000. Hung is a veteran journalist who serves as […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Formosa in Fiction,’ by Rolf-Peter Wille
Rolf-Peter Wille is a German writer that has lived in Taiwan since 1978, which makes 33 years as of this writing. He is also a pianist who has performed all over the world both as soloist as well as in a piano duo with his wife, Lina Yeh, who also serves as one of the […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Angelwings,’ queer fiction from Taiwan
Oh how we desperately wanted to like Angelwings: Contemporary Queer Fiction from Taiwan (2003, ISBN 0-8248-2661-2). It had all the markings of a winner, ten short fiction stories told from a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender perspective (referred to in Taiwan as the tonqzhi and ku’er wenxue movements). Here at WoWasis, our problem was that the […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Dragon Lady’ by Sterling Seagrave
China’s Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi (1835-1908) was truly the stuff of legend, but as veteran Asian historian Sterling Seagrave (along with co-researcher Peggy Seagrave) points out, most of the legend was false. In Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China (1992, ISBN 0-679-40230-6), the author debunks the myths that unfairly […]
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