Karen Kao’s debut novel The Dancing Girl & the Turtle is an ambitious, striking addition to the novels showing the sleazy side of 1930s Shanghai. Impatient to get to the magical city of Shanghai, recently orphaned 18-year-old Anyi Song disregards instructions to wait for an escort, setting off from Soochow by herself. [...]
To what extent is the international flesh trade the result of nefarious criminals using deceit, threats, and violence to control women and how much of it involves women voluntarily choosing to join the profession and stay in it? Ko-lin Chin, a professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, decided to [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]