“I hated Mongolia!” a seasoned traveller and fellow long-time resident of Taiwan once admitted to me. A person not liking a particular country might seem unremarkable, but this was veteran Lonely Planet guidebook writer Robert Storey, the author of the first ever LP Mongolia guide. His controversial 1993 book was [...]
In this charming low-key romance between a young American woman archaeologist and a Japanese journalist, the Okinawan settings come to life as characters in their own right. There are the ruins of Katsuren Castle, giving the novel its title, and the remote island of Yonaguni, especially fascinating to a Taiwan [...]
My favourite book of the year, The Unquiet Daughter is a beautifully written, big-hearted memoir of a daughter’s search for her biological father. Danielle Flood was born in Saigon in 1951 but grew up in the United States, where her parents divorced when she was eight. Four years later her [...]
Generation HK is a fantastic read for anyone interested in contemporary Hong Kong or Taiwan. The former British colony is a weathervane – or supposed showcase – for Taiwan’s prospective future under the loving embrace of Motherland China’s “one country, two systems” principle. Unfortunate then that the PRC is like [...]
When did the Second World War begin? The conventional date is September 1, 1939, with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland and the subsequent declarations of war by France and the United Kingdom on the third of the month. However, with a growing appreciation for China’s important wartime role, historians are increasingly looking to the Second Sino-Japanese [...]
This small book – a Penguin Special weighing in at a hundred pages – packs a punch, and though no more than an afternoon’s easy reading, it may well alter the way you think about the history of China and globalization. The “Silver Way” in the title refers to [...]
Late at night and deep into research – i.e. drinking heavily while trawling the Internet – I was becoming increasingly convinced that my idea for a book was a brilliant one. Yes, I would retrace Peter Fleming’s journey from Peking to Kashmir described in his 1936 travel classic News From [...]
“Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?” We are all—even the best of us—quick to judge. The unfamiliar confuses, upsets, and undermines our conventions, forcing us to put aside what we’re accustomed to, including the distinct, learned ways in which we’ve [...]
Published in 1947 in the wake of a war that consumed the Pacific, American Agent is the uninspiring title of a remarkable true story. American involvement in the local Chinese resistance to the Japanese was little known at the time, even more rarely reported on, and barely acknowledged by the powers in Washington [...]
In the Land of Pagodas: A Classic Account of Travel in Hong Kong, Macao, Shanghai, Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou by Alfred Raquez (Edited and translated by William L. Gibson and Paul Bruthiaux) Long out of print in the original French, this travel account of China at the end of the [...]