John Grant Ross

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About John Grant Ross

John Grant Ross is the author of You Don't Know China, Formosan Odyssey, and Taiwan in 100 Books. He co-hosts Formosa Files, a podcast on the history of Taiwan.

A Far Corner: Life and Art with the Open Circle Tribe • Scott Ezell

Like many long-term expats in Taiwan, American Scott Ezell’s first encounter with the country was rather incidental. He came in 1992, on a friend’s recommendation, to study Chinese, an interest that sprang from his love of the Tang dynasty poets, polymath bohemians like Li Bai who celebrated and lived contemplative [...]

Formosa Moon • Joshua Samuel Brown and Stephanie Huffman

When writing a travel book, you ideally want some kind of framework; whether it's a river journey from source to mouth, the seasons of a year, retracing an explorer’s footsteps, or a pilgrimage to religious sites, you want something to hold the whole together. Formosa Moon has the brilliant setup [...]

Publisher Interview: Earnshaw Books

Hong Kong-based Earnshaw Books is one of the more notable independent publishers in East Asia. Founded in 2007 by English journalist, businessman, and musician, Graham Earnshaw, the company grew out of his Tales of Old China website. Most of the early titles were reprints of classics, but Earnshaw Books has since [...]

Author Interview: Cheryl Robbins

Cheryl Robbins, originally from California, has lived in Taiwan since 1989, working as a freelance translator and writer. As well as numerous articles for a wide range of publications, Robbins has written several travel guides focusing on Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. She is also the founder of Tribe-Asia Company, which works [...]

Author Interview: Stephen G. Craft

Stephen G. Craft is a social sciences professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and the author of three books: V. K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China, Embry-Riddle at War: Aviation Training during World War II, and American Justice in Taiwan: The 1957 Riots and Cold War Foreign Policy. American Justice in Taiwan [...]

The Food of Taiwan: Recipes from the Beautiful Island • Cathy Erway

The standout successful English-language book about Taiwan in recent years – well, other than the perennial chart-topping Lonely Planet travel guide – has been Cathy Erway’s The Food of Taiwan: Recipes from the Beautiful Island. Normally I would read such a bestseller right away, if not from interest, then at [...]

Ghost Month: A Taipei Night Market Novel • Ed Lin

  Ed Lin’s Ghost Month (2014) incorporates several quintessential Taiwanese elements – religious superstitions, gangsters, night markets, and betel-nut girls – into a murder mystery. It’s set during the seventh month of the Chinese calendar (typically falling in August), a time when the dead roam the world of the living. The [...]

Flight to Formosa • Frank Clune

In the years after China’s “Liberation” (as an aside, China's “liberation” should always be used with quotation marks) a steady stream of leftist visitors paid court to Mao Zedong’s PRC and came away enthusiastically repeating CCP propaganda. Likewise, there were many “useful idiots” on the right who returned from stage-managed [...]

Taiwan: A Travel Guide for Vegans • Jesse Duffield

Taiwanese Nazis? That’s sometimes the initial confused impression visitors get when seeing a shop sign swastika. The visitor soon reads or is told that it’s an ancient Buddhist symbol (which Hitler reversed) and it is associated with vegetarian restaurants: find a reversed swastika and you’ve found yourself vegetarian food. However, [...]

Author Interview: Menno Goedhart

Menno Goedhart was the Netherlands representative in Taiwan from 2002 to 2010. He is the main author of The Real Taiwan and the Dutch, a guidebook to people and places connected to the seventeenth-century period of Dutch occupation. * * * How do diplomatic postings work; were you assigned to [...]