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For the past few months, Taiwan’s domestic news cycle has been dominated by the upcoming January 2024 presidential election: a billionaire businessowner entered the race and (after failing to gain traction) dropped out; two of the opposition parties joined forces and (after confirming their incompatibility) broke up. But the campaign was far from the only story. This year has been marked by the delayed arrival of a #MeToo movement that is yet to fully settle, and the sudden and widespread adoption of AI-based writing tools has stimulated national debate and conversation on issues of plagiarism, authorship, the future of professional environments, and the need to reassess educational approaches.

Thinking more globally, we in Taiwan have watched with horror the emergence of two major wars in two years. Of course, international onlookers inevitably ask: “Will Taiwan be next?” And, while it would be an over-simplification to say that those of us on these islands do not feel a measure of unease, the threat of invasion has existed for decades, and Taiwanese lives are for the most part not as affected as those outside might think.

Cross-strait relations and associated tensions have, however, been felt in other ways, particularly in the increasing numbers of Hong Kong migrants settling in Taiwan, with yearly arrivals doubling over the past twenty-four months to over ten thousand people per year, amongst whom are new and welcome additions to our industry, most notably the 2046 imprint and the Causeway Bay Books bookstore.

 

Tang Siu Wa (middle), at the Taipei International Book Exhibition, 2023, launching the 2046 imprint.
Image source: https://p-articles.com/heteroglossia/3597.html

 

For many working in publishing, one of the most affecting pieces of news this year was Fucha’s arrest. Fucha, who moved to Taiwan over a decade ago, is a highly respected and influential figure, known for publishing critical deconstructions of the cultural and social ideals surrounding contemporary China; he was detained after returning to Shanghai for a family visit this past spring and has not yet returned.

In February this year, the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) resumed its regular annual schedule; the number of attendees exceeded 500,000 people, a doubling from the previous year and a figure which represents 87% of 2019’s pre-pandemic high. Over the past few years, there has been a steady rise in the popularity of author events at the fair, and 2023 saw TIBE hosting over 800 events, attended by over 470 publishing houses from 33 countries. In this way, Taipei might well be considered a hybrid fair, catering to both professionals and the general public alike, and, with the sheer number of events, it’s starting to resemble a literary festival.

 

View of the floor at the Taipei International Book Exhibition, 2023.
Image source: https://www.rti.org.tw/news/view/id/2158128

 

Transforming the fair such that it caters to all needs should indeed be praised, but some argue that the organisers have not yet clearly defined its purpose; this lack of clarity, they claim, undermines the many excellent events. (Noise interference — due to closely spaced, concurrent talks — and ticket prices that do not reflect the increased number of high-quality events are two commonly cited complaints.)

More broadly, the industry continues to tackle the worrying trend of year-on-year devaluation. In 2022, total revenue was estimated at around USD 575-600 million; this, combined with inflation, which has affected the price of paper, logistics, labour, and other areas of production, means margins are smaller than ever. Taiwan, like many countries in East Asia, does not operate a hardback-first-paperback-later print cycle (through which publishers might recuperate initial production costs). Historically, sales volumes were enough to make margins work with paperbacks alone, but that business model has struggled to adapt to modern consumer habits, where volumes have decreased and preferences are more widely spread.

Looking at the Taiwan Cultural Content Industry Research Report, which was commissioned by the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) and compiled with data from 2021, over 82% of publishers (including general, professional, and textbook publishers, but excluding those publishing comics and magazines) are based in the Greater Taipei metropolitan area. Over 75% of publishing houses are small and medium-sized enterprises, and just over 5% are large-scale publishing groups (with capitalisations in excess of USD 3.2 million). The rising cost of running a business in our nation’s capital, shrinking domestic sales, and a lack of investment by which to plan and execute digital transformations are just some of the key issues to address.

In numbers taken from the same report, 96% of the industry’s revenue comes from domestic sales, including those of books, audiobooks, multimedia licensing, and ebooks. (Note that overseas ebook sales cannot easily be separated from those within Taiwan.) Foreign rights sales make up less than 4% of total revenue and are heavily reliant on Sinosphere markets, such as China, Hong Kong, and Macau, which together comprise nearly 80% of all rights sales. (Of the remaining portion, South Korea accounts for around 5%.)

Whilst both the comic and magazine sectors likewise rely heavily on Taiwan’s domestic market, which supplies over 90% of total revenue, there are nevertheless some interesting deviations from the industry at large.

97% of all comics published in Taiwan are acquired through foreign rights (mostly from Japan), and only 3% are titles produced by local creators. The few local offerings, however, punch above their weight in terms of international rights sales, 55% of which are to Japan, 21% to France, 9% to China, and 4.5% to South Korea. This distribution pattern, so unlike that of the Sino-centric foreign rights sales for books, might well be attributed to the medium’s illustrated nature, which could allow for broader international appeal. (And, crucially, Japan and France are two of the world’s major markets for comics.) Moreover, there has been a boom in Western interest in East Asian pop- and sub-cultures, driven primarily by Manga and K-pop, and Taiwanese content might therefore be looked upon with renewed interest.   

Alongside the TAICCA report, it is useful to review the annual National Central Library Reading Report to gain further insight into Taiwanese reading habits. The latest edition, which uses statistics from 2022, shows that readers have returned to the library, with visitor numbers up 47% compared with 2021. Over 93 million books were on loan in 2022, with the most popular categories being literature, applied science, natural science, and social science, and the biggest borrowers being the 35-44 age group. An average of 4.5 books per capita were borrowed from libraries across the country; the top title was self-help bestseller Atomic Habits, by James Clear, followed by multiple self-help books from domestic authors. This matches the bestseller trends as per Eslite’s and Books.com’s annual end-of-year analyses.

 

Entrance to Taiwan’s National Central Library. 
Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Central_Library

 

Another area of growth was ebooks on loan, which increased by 257% compared with 2020. And, during the pandemic, we finally saw a significant upward shift in the sale of ebooks (as well as the attendant increase in the number of titles published), whilst the average retail prices of ebooks have risen by over 33% in the past two years.

Although it is true that business for publishers in Taiwan might be challenging, given the available statistics, I question the oft-repeated statement that people “don’t read anymore.” It is clear that the public does enjoy reading — their engagement just isn’t being effectively translated into revenue. So, what can be done to overcome these challenges?

Public lending rights is a policy — already implemented in many countries — that compensates publishers and authors for potential losses of sales to public library lending. The first Taiwanese trial, however, wasn’t judged a success, due in part to the pilot’s limited scale and various bureaucratic complications. Nevertheless, public hearings were held to improve the process, and discussions are underway to renew the trial.

As e-commerce retail platforms continue to promote books with ever-increasing discounts, many publishers have begun calling for the implementation of a fixed-price policy; there are also, however, oppositional voices — mostly free-market advocates — who stand by the principle of economic self-regulation, and it must be said that, against rising discounts, average retail prices have increased.

These policy ideas and others in development have been shaped by repeated exchanges with experienced professionals, whose insights are already helping publishers cultivate large and diverse readerships and teaching them (whether they be independent or commercial) to create marketing strategies catering to divergent readerships and fast-changing consumer habits. So, while we navigate this long and sometimes painful transition, it is worth remembering that progress has been made and fresh developments are gaining momentum.

2023 has been an eventful year for international promotion. For many, it was the first real post-pandemic year, especially when it came to overseas author engagements. On top of its regular annual attendance at global book fairs, such as Angouleme, Bologna, Seoul, Frankfurt, Shanghai, and Guadalajara, Taiwan was selected as guest country of honour for Switzerland’s Festival de bande dessinée Lausanne (BDFIL), where six graphic novelists, among them Sean Chung (小莊), author of 80’s Diary in Taiwan, and Zhou JianXin (周見信), author of The Boy from Clearwater, and three film directors were invited to participate in roundtable discussions and other events. The two above-mentioned authors have each sold foreign rights in numerous territories, including France, Italy, and Germany, and being selected as the guest of honour nation surely speaks to the rising profile of Taiwan’s cultural output.

 

Inside pages of The Boy from Clearwater displayed at BDFIL.
Image source: Centre Culturel de Taïwan à Paris

 

Award-winning novelists Li Kotomi (李琴峰) and Kevin Chen (陳思宏) were both writers in residence at Iowa’s prestigious International Writing Program; while there, Kevin Chen attended the Toronto International Festival of Authors with children’s author and illustrator Bei Lynn (林小杯). Yang Shuang-Zi (楊双子), who writes queer stories set in the Japanese colonial period, visited Japan in late spring to promote the translated edition of Taiwan Travelogue, which was reprinted just seven weeks after its initial release. Pioneering feminist writer Li Ang (李昂) travelled this autumn to France for the launch of her novel Le Banquet aphrodisiaqu.

 

Interview with Yang Shuan-Zi, published in Japan’s leading newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun.
Image source: https://www.openbook.org.tw/article/p-67743

 

Historically, for Taiwan-based agents, selling rights into the English-language world has been challenging. When looking over the 2024-2025 list, however, one gets the distinct sense there is increasing attention being focused on Taiwan literature. We can expect to see English translations of Still Life in White, Lai Hsiang-Yin’s (賴香吟) award-winning novel set during the authoritarian White Terror period; the final volume of the critically praised graphic novel, The Boy from Clearwater; The Eyes of the Sky and Mata nu Wawa, two backlist classics from acclaimed Indigenous Tao writer Syaman Ranpongan (夏曼.藍波安); two of Yang Shuang-Zi’s novels; and poetry from both Ling Yu (零雨) and Cikada Prize winner Chen Yuhong (陳育虹).

One highlight from outside the Anglosphere is the crime novel Before We Were Monsters, by Katniss Hsiao (蕭瑋萱), which has sold rights in six countries and secured a film adaptation. Port of Lies, by Freddy Fu-Jui Tang (唐福睿) — already adapted into a Netflix-drama series here in Taiwan — addresses complex social issues, such as the death penalty, racial identity, and the exploitation of migrant workers; it has sold rights in three languages. Successful sales into the Spanish language world have primarily involved illustrated titles, and we look forward to the publications of Where Would I Be Tomorrow?, by author and illustrator Jimmy Liao (幾米); Practicing Goodbye, Bei Lynn's moving graphic novella about a missing beloved dog; the Bologna BRAW Amazing Bookshelf selected picture book Still Young Still New, by Higo Wu (海狗房東) and Chen Pei-Hsiu (陳沛珛); and The Fox and the Tree, a picture book by Chen Yan-Ling (陳彥伶).

Finally, if we return to ways that we might transform our industry, it is evident that investment in domestic talent is a driver of enduring change; it must, therefore, be financially viable for gifted young people to embark upon a writing career. And, in a small place like Taiwan, where access to the global market is key to the ongoing development of our industry, English sample translations are invaluable resources when promoting Taiwanese content abroad.

So, it was with great pleasure that many of us reacted to the recent decision, taken by the Ministry of Culture, to double the number of annually produced English translation samples (titles to be selected by panel judges led by the team at Books from Taiwan). More samples means more publicity and success in foreign sales; this generates important positive feedback, which in turn drives sales in our domestic market, sparking further worldwide interest.

As our authors are gaining popularity, both at home and internationally, and as the Eslite and Books.com bestseller charts list more local authors than ever, well-endowed literary prizes provide recognition and reward for established and emerging authors alike. Major prizes, such as the Golden Tripod, OpenBook, the Taipei International Book Exhibition Prize, and the Taiwan Literature Awards, draw great attention and increase sales of both winning and shortlisted books. And the Lin Rung San Prize (林榮三文學獎), the Indigenous Peoples’ Literature Award (原住民文學獎), and the Taiwan Literature Award for Migrants (移民工文學獎) give top prizes to unpublished authors that range from USD 3,000-19,000. It is this second category that is especially important to underprivileged and emerging writers, who might use the prize money to kick-start their dreams or capitalize on the increased publicity to find publishers and secure arts grants with which to complete their projects.

 

The 2023 Taiwan Literature Award for Migrants award ceremony.
Image source: https://www.mirrormedia.mg/story/20230312soc014

 

And even if some publications target a niche audience and have little commercial potential, it seems obvious to me that it is exactly this type of literature that, over the past two decades, has inspired many authors of a “mainstream” tilt to include more challenging topics in their own writing, which has in turn diversified the public’s reading habits and appetites. Gender expression, LGBTQIA+ identities, folk tales, Indigenous civilizations, environmental issues, social justice, and many other pieces of our world are present on pages in ways like never before; there is always more to be done, but the creation of a vibrant environment for writers and readers is an inspirational work in progress.

Still, transition is not easy, and it might not be healthy to dream big without first grasping the practical realities of our industry. That is why understanding the macroeconomic facts, using data such as those collected by TAICCA and the National Central Library, is so important, just as is collaboration — both internal and international — by which we can improve our offerings for a changing and widening readership.

Earlier this month, some of my colleagues attended the Guadalajara Book Fair in Mexico, where, aside from exhibiting books, concerted efforts were made to reach local media outlets, universities, and chain bookstores in the service of developing stronger collaborative ties. This October, at the Frankfurt fair, Books from Taiwan celebrated its tenth anniversary with an event that was attended by over 100 professionals from around the world. Cultural transformations and investments take time, but these initiatives are just two examples of the type of cooperation that could encourage our industry to move together into a new future.

 

The Taiwan Pavilion at the 2023 Guadalajara Book Fair.
Image source: https://reading.udn.com/read/story/7046/7604408

 

Next February, we look forward to the 2024 Taipei International Book Exhibition, at which we will host the Netherlands as our guest nation of honour. And TAICCA will be relaunching its international fellowship program at the same time, inviting 30 professionals from around the world to join us in Taipei to gain insight on our publishing industry, meet authors, publishers, and readers, and (of course) enjoy some of our city’s many beautiful sights.

And with that, I’ll end this article; I wish you all a happy holiday season, and I hope to see you in Taipei soon. 

GPT is set up by The Ministry of Culture to encourage the publication of Taiwanese works in translation overseas, to raise the international visibility of Taiwanese cultural content, and to help Taiwan's publishing industry expand into non-Chinese international markets.

Applicant Eligibility: Foreign publishing houses (legal entity) legally registered or incorporated in accordance with the laws and regulations of their respective countries.

Conditions:

1. The so-called Taiwanese works must meet the following requirements:

A. Use traditional characters
B. Written by a natural person holding an R.O.C. identity card
C. Has been assigned an ISBN in Taiwan
i.e., the author is a native of Taiwan, and the first 6 digits of the book's ISBN are 978-957-XXX-XXX-X, 978-986-XXX-XXX-X, or 978-626-XXX-XXX-X.

2. Applications must include documents certifying that the copyright holder of the Taiwanese works consents to its translation and foreign publication (no restriction on its format).

3. A translation sample of the Taiwanese work is required (no restriction on its format and length).

4. The translated work must be published within two years, after the first day of the relevant application period.

Grant Items:

1. The maximum grant available for each project is NT$600,000, which covers:

A. Licensing fees (going to the copyright holder of the Taiwanese works);
B. Translation fees;
C. Marketing and promotion fees (applicants for this funding must propose a specific marketing promotion plan and complete the implementation before submitting the grant project results; those whose plans include talks or book launching events attended by authors in person will be given priority for grants);
D. Book production-oriented fees;
E. Tax (20% of the total award amount);
F. Remittance-related handling fees.

2. Priority consideration is given to books that have received the Golden Tripod Award, the Golden Comic Award, the Taiwan Literature Award, books on Taiwan’s culture and history, or series of books.

3. The grant will be given all at once after the grant recipients submit the following written documents to the Ministry before the submission deadline in accordance with article III, paragraph 5 of this application guidelines:

A. Paper receipt with signature or stamp (format given along with the Ministry's formal announcement);
B. A detailed list of expenditures, sales volume (or expected sales volume) of translated books, and marketing promotion plan results;
C. 10 print copies of the final work published abroad (if the work is published in an e-book format, grant recipients shall instead provide purchase authorizations for 10 persons).

Application Period: Twice every year. The MOC reserves the right to change the application periods, and will announce said changes separately.

Announcement of successful applications: Winners will be announced within three months of the end of the application period.

Application Method: Please visit the Ministry’s official website (https://grants.moc.gov.tw/Web_ENG/), and use the online application system.

For full details of the GPT, please visit https://grants.moc.gov.tw/Web_ENG/PointDetail.jsp?__viewstate=pvWqz/p/nta24J579unZRwn9PKt77jmtn7aTE1VXtTw+KPMfSuwgOHJZcscjkMix7n5bknQ4C1jvfwxUC1ZSeBfK7nUo4Ss4 

Or contact: [email protected]

Read previous part: https://booksfromtaiwan.tw/latest_info.php?id=234

 

Beyond books that helped to identify the damage done, we have also seen a slew of titles focusing on the gradual process of recovery. Malaysian family therapy proponent Feng Yi-liang’s (馮以量) Allow Yourself to Choose Love (允許自己選擇愛) and With Whose Trauma are You Burdened? (你背負了誰的傷), for instance, guide readers through a process of reconciliation with life’s hardships and traumas. Counseling psychologist Chou Mu-Tzu’s (周慕姿) Trying Too Hard: Why We Can Never Do Enough (過度努力) exposes how seeking perfection is a behavior that derives from past trauma and argues that the path to self-acceptance begins by identifying the source of one’s trauma.

 

Trying Too Hard: Why We Can Never Do Enough 

 

Despite the diversity of subject matter represented by recently published works in the self-help book market, the many branches and schools of thought, and the divergence of focus on various kinds of relationships or age groups, the exploration of mental health cannot be divided by country or language because mental health issues are  ultimately a human subject that exists in all cultures. 

In these past few years, Aquarius Publishing has seen that in addition to Mainland China , Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian outfits have also showed heightened interest in securing publishing rights for self-help books. Thanks to Books from Taiwan, who promoted our books and served as our publishing liaison in negotiations, the publishing rights for the Aquarius titles mentioned above have all been sold abroad. Certain trends in global markets can be derived from the titles Aquarius has sold abroad: relationships, emotions, family and self-affirmation seem to be common areas of interests across international borders.

As someone with over 20 years of experience in publishing, I’ve noticed that dynamics in preferences for certain book topics seem to follow a cyclical flow not unlike fads in fashion, where preferences for skinny jeans seem to alternate with baggy jeans in a recurrent pattern. However, these so-called trends are never a sure bet. For instance, a trend may develop when a certain kind of book sells well, which then leads many other people in that field to release their own books. However, this can also lead to a fairly inconsistent standard of quality. Oftentimes, if one only realizes the market is saturated after blindly following a certain trend to the point that sales fall off, the realization will have come too late.

A successful publisher doesn’t pick out the prettiest flower from their own garden, but rather branches out into far-flung fields to find exotic flowers not yet available back home. At the same time, they must also identify the dry patches in their own garden and fill in the empty spots where needed.

For instance, we are all concentrated on the lives we live, but we also have to learn how to accept death—this is the focus of Su Shun-Hui (蘇絢慧), an author that writes about recovering from grief and whose book And Then, I Was Finally Able to Say Goodbye (於是，我可以好好說再見) seeks to guide readers through the pain of losing a loved one. In a similar vein, Shang Pei-yu’s (商沛宇) A Cancer Clinical Psychologist’s Healing Bag of Tricks (癌症心理師的療心錦囊) is a monograph written in solicitude and care for cancer patients and their families.

In the verdant garden of Taiwan’s book market, a book that will someday become a bestseller is just one of many seeds with a bright future, while those topics that have not yet taken root in the market have unlimited potential for development.

“Emotional Blackmail is going to a second printing.” “Emotional Blackmail is now on its third printing!” “We can’t keep this book on the shelves, we’ll have to do a 5,000-copy run!” …

This was the book-buying frenzy that ensued just one month into the publication of psychologist Chou Mu-Tzu’s (周慕姿) first book, Emotional Blackmail (Aquarius Publishing) (情緒勒索). In an era when selling 5,000 copies qualifies as “best-selling”, Chou’s first volume not only sold over 10,000 copies in the first month, but it has also gone on to sell more than a total of 250,000 copies to date. Additionally, the rights for the book were also sold in Mainland China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

The book, which teaches people how to recognize emotional manipulation and set social boundaries, was published right before Taiwan’s traditional new year’s festival, a holiday that sees family members all reuniting under one roof to ring in the new year. Clearly, this unprecedent subject matter, combined with the author’s forceful and clear-cut elucidation, deeply resonated with the afflictions of a readership that had just been subject to the precipitous increase in stressful social relations that accompanies the extended holiday.

 

Emotional Blackmail

 

The book became a kind of cultural phenomenon and its effects continued to ripple out to readers young and old—spotting an elementary school-aged boy leafing through the book at a bookstore, a colleague couldn’t help but wonder how many times the boy had been emotionally blackmailed by adults with the line “I’m doing this for your own good”?

This bestselling tsunami inspired the publishing world to take the deep and expansive waters of the self-help book market more seriously and successive titles on a wide variety of related subjects helped improve the accessibility of the material. As more and more of these titles became available to readers, they began to realize they were not the only ones that felt the way they did, and gained new insight into previously unfathomable emotional worlds. This all helped to curtail some of the previous reluctance towards seeking out self-help books. Spurred on by these synergistic developments in the publishing world and readers’ predilections, self-help became a trending sector of the publishing market.

Indeed, the world we live in can be quite a depressing place and commensurate feelings of emptiness and anxiety no doubt leave people thirsting ever more for antidotes and escapes! Prior to the publication of Emotional Blackmail (情緒勒索), the non-fiction market was dominated by books on business and finance, parenting and health—by contrast, other than professional reference books, and titles released by publishers that specialized in the subject, books on self-help marketed to the general public were few and far between. Thus, for a veteran publisher like Aquarius, the sudden, dramatic increase in popularity of self-help books was observed even more readily at that time.

Starting with titles on the idea of “learning to love yourself” and expanding outwards, books by counselling/clinical psychologists became a mainstay of the Taiwanese book market. Soon, psychiatrists also entered the fray and a lively discourse unfolded between various schools of thought, each with their own strengths and specializations. This expansion and intensification of the conversation surrounding psychology in the book market led to an increasing specificity in the subcategories of subjects explored.

 

Smiling Depression

 

Subjects covered included setting social boundaries and understanding emotions (Particularly negative emotions, addressed in Don’t Let Negative Emotions Hold You Captive (別讓負面情緒綁架你) by the counseling psychologist Hu Chan-hao (胡展皓) and Smiling Depression (微笑憂鬱) by clinical psychologist Hung Pei-yun (洪培芸)), parenting, love, marriage and trauma from workplace relationships (See Cold Violence: The Pervasive Abuse in the Workplace (職場冷暴力) by psychiatrist Lin Yu-hsuan (林煜軒)), anxiety (Chronic Anxiety (慢性焦慮) by counseling psychologist Chuang Po-an (莊博安)), and even dealing with peers with personality disorders (See The Scumbag: A Personality Disorder (渣男：病態人格) by psychiatrist Wang Feng-kang (王俸鋼)) etc.

 

Cold Violence: The Pervasive Abuse in the Workplace

 

Read on: https://booksfromtaiwan.tw/latest_info.php?id=234

Designed by Yang Cho-cheng of Hemu Architects, the Yuanshan Grand Hotel is a classic example of postwar architecture in Taiwan that is often cited for its symbolism and historical significance in the annals of architectural discourse. Scholars including Fan Ming-ju and Joseph R. Allen have analyzed the hotel using political, cinematic, and other frameworks. Given that most academic texts focus on the yellow glazed tiles of the hotel’s roof, the title The Red Mansion feels like a rediscovery that compels the reader to consider the overwhelming presence of red in the building, rather than simply gaze at the rooftop, where one’s attention may naturally be drawn when beholding antique palaces. This title uncovers the stories that take place within the walls of the hotel, and that exist beneath the contours of the building’s silhouette that remains so dominant in architectural history. Through a cast of colorful characters, the reader gets to know the fascinating history that this edifice contains.

Why was the yellow roof such a striking feature during the era of authoritarian rule? To answer this question, we must return to Taiwan before World War II, when it was still a Japanese colony. By 1929, the 34th year of Japanese governance, Ide Kaoru had already long served as chief architect of the Taiwan Government-General’s Building and Repairs Section. In this capacity, he’d made many observations and formed insights into the architecture of the island. Ide believed that every metropolis had representative colors and palettes, such as the hazy hues of London, the vivid light of Paris, the earth tones of Rome, and so on. It was the task of the architectural designer to harmonize with the environment, rather than try to bend it to his will. In addition, the urban palette was created by not only static buildings, but the replaceable signage of shops and the dynamic movements of carriages and motor vehicles. Buses traveling back and forth on the streets were among the important elements that influenced one’s overall impression of a city, as well.

Taihoku, as Taipei was then known, needed a long-term plan in order to create its own urban palette. Situated at a relatively low latitude compared to the Japanese mainland, Taihoku was well-suited for brick buildings in colors that would be enlivened by the bright sun. These facades would convey a sense of modernity and create a unique style for the city; they would also be easy to clean and maintain in such a humid climate. The brick buildings that were planned and designed under Ide Kaoru’s guidance included the pale green Taihoku Civic Hall (today’s Zhongshan Hall) and the High Court of the Taiwan Government-General (today’s Judicial Building); the tawny-colored Taiwan Education Hall (today’s National 228 Memorial Hall) and Taihoku Imperial University campus (today’s National Taiwan University); and the red ochre of the Taihoku High School campus (today’s National Taiwan Normal University). These structures have a cohesive style when viewed together, while each building also boasts its own colorful details.

After World War II, Taipei’s landscape was shaped by architects who were well-versed in European and American modernism. They seemed to be on the verge of developing a unique urban palette for Taipei, but ultimately still fell short of Ide Kaoru’s ideal, which called for a blending of colors that could express calm and restraint while retaining a sense of vigor. Taipei’s postwar style instead deployed white tiles on building exteriors in order to convey a sense of spaciousness. The rapid economic development of this period produced mass quantities of buildings with uniform interiors and a limited range of exterior colors. The architects of the Republic of China were quite obsessed with white facades that emphasized volume, a modernist principle embodied most visibly by the New York Five in the 1980s. This group of star architects, also known as the Whites, was idolized and imitated around the world. We all know how the rest of the story went. In the rainy climes of Taipei, the white brick exteriors were not cleaned as regularly as the mighty building management committees had envisioned. They quickly became stained by exhaust and grime in the era of the automobile and no longer highlighted the spatial or structural features of the buildings as originally intended. The tiles were successively removed and restored, but no longer did they convey the modernist ideal of the city of white. In this city of pale hues filled with people of all social strata, how could the Republic of China’s blue bloods show off their elite status during an era of authoritarian rule? Landmarks with yellow glazed roof tiles thus became the symbol of a ruling class pining for their lost homeland.

According to Professor Yang Hongxun of the architecture department of Tsinghua University in Beijing, Confucian temples and the habitations of the highest classes of the imperial family were the only structures allowed to use yellow glazed tiles during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Even the households of other nobles, including princes and lords, were limited to green or black tiles. The Kuomintang government took credit for overthrowing the Manchu Qing empire and leading the Xinhai Revolution. After relocating to Taiwan, the KMT used public resources to successively construct places like the National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine, the National Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, and the National Theater and Concert Hall. In a twist of historical irony, these buildings all proudly make use of yellow glazed tiles, that most potent symbol of the imperial power toppled by the Xinhai Revolution. In the so-called Republic of China, the ruling party was essentially creating symbols to demonstrate they were the successors to the imperial palace. That the KMT inherited this mentality from dynastic times is absurd and paradoxical, a fact that has largely been overlooked beyond the communities of architectural researchers.

If you looked out over the cityscape of postwar Taipei, you’d see glimmers of golden roofs in the midst of endless rows of white buildings, a brazen imposition of the shadow of the ancient Chinese capitals of Luoyang, Chang’an, Nanjing, and Beiping upon the Taipei Basin. The tallest of these buildings with yellow rooftops was none other than the Yuanshan Grand Hotel, the protagonist of the book in question.

Ultimately, neither white nor yellow became a representative color of Taipei or the urban style of Taiwanese architecture. All that remains is the massive red mansion that still towers on Yuanshan, a location chosen for its excellent feng shui to house a shrine during the Japanese colonial era. The Yuanshan Grand Hotel has borne witness to tumultuous events like the establishment of the Democratic People’s Party, a great fire on its roof, the hiring of “lion-hearted” general manager Stanley Yen, and the controversy over the national flag during a Chinese delegation’s visit in 2008. The elite pretensions that the authoritarian government-in-exile vehemently maintained have faded away over time. A palace that once wielded immense power has ultimately reverted to the competition of the free market. Thanks to the stories recorded by T.H. Lee, we are able to glimpse Taiwanese history in the hotel. As for Taipei’s future and the question of how to create a national style, we’ll leave this in the hands of generations to come.

This is a superb and truly remarkable book. It offers a meticulous record of how the author and her family fulfilled a beloved mother’s wish to hasten her end, a request that stemmed from the impaired movement and inability to care for herself brought about by a progressive atrophy of the brain.

A specialist in rehabilitation medicine of many years’ standing, the author’s expertise in the field of life and death studies as well as in international laws and regulations on death have contributed to her wealth of writing experience in these areas. Only after looking through the entire text did I realize just how many aspects of life the book touches upon and thus come to understand the inner world of this mother. As fate would have it, she had a marvelous life in her later years despite the hardships of her youth. I applaud her from the bottom of my heart for the manner in which she voluntarily ended her eighty-three years of life.

The author opens with the chapter “Genetic Screening for Cerebellar Atrophy”. Several of the author’s maternal relatives developed impaired mobility in middle age as a symptom of this disease. A cousin died by suicide, unable to bear its torture. Eventually, her mother was diagnosed with spinocerebellar ataxia. The author then writes matter-of-factly about her own torment from the worry that she, too, had inherited the gene. To rid herself of this emotional and mental shroud, she finally resolved to undergo genetic screening to determine if she had in fact inherited the relevant gene mutation. As a result of her own experience, she could better understand her mother’s unwillingness to face the purgatory of the lingering death experienced by other family members, and could empathize with her wish to bring her life to a timelier close.

The next few chapters describe the ups and downs of the mother’s life, including her lack of opportunity to obtain higher education due to the family’s financial circumstances and the disrespect she suffered throughout her life because of an unfortunate marriage. Despite these difficulties, she demonstrated diligence and self-discipline, never forgetting the practice of generosity and always showing care for the environment. Although she later had many opportunities to visit and spend time with her children after her husband’s death, by her sixties the cerebellar atrophy that ran in the family had gradually begun to worsen, affecting her coordination. Unable to walk normally, she fell frequently and required supervised personal care. Ultimately, she chose the autonomy of “a good death”.

After this warm-up to the book’s subject matter, the next chapter, “The Ultimate Love Is to Let Go”, details the mother’s understanding of the meaning of life and the fasting process. The information the author shares with her mother about Dr. Nakamura Jinichi’s views on “dying of natural causes” and his methods for accomplishing this are also shared with the reader. Both valuable and difficult to come by, this is knowledge that helps readers understand how to communicate with older members of their family about this inevitable and difficult final hurdle of life.

The last few chapters describe the family’s highly creative approach to bringing this woman’s life to a perfect, sorrow-free end with a “farewell ceremony” that gave the entire family an opportunity to bid her a warm farewell. Her grandson compiled the many stories his grandmother had told him about her life, then shared them with her and the rest of the family. The ceremony also gave her the opportunity to share with all of them her perspective on life. “The Fasting Process”, which includes the family’s observations and the mother’s reactions to this final step, provides a detailed record of her last few days of life. It also explains the possible side effects of fasting and the care required.

The book does more than share with us how the author’s family helped a beloved relative realize her desire to make an autonomous life decision with sincerity, courage, and wisdom. It also provides us with an introduction to several excellent books that assisted them in doing so. Among these is If You Want a Peaceful Death, Don’t Have Anything to Do with Medical Care: Recommendations for Dying of Natural Causes, by Dr. Nakamura Jinichi, the book that made them aware of “fasting to achieve a peaceful death”. In it, Doctor Nakamura explains how the peaceful death of an aged relative at home is far better and more humane than an urgent trip to the hospital for a “medically assisted death” involving defibrillation, emergency medical procedures, intubation, and long-term hospitalization after your loved one has become critically ill. The author also introduces Loving and Leaving the Good Life, by Helen Nearing. In this book, Nearing talks about her husband, Scout Nearing (1883–1983). She explains how shortly before his one-hundredth birthday, the retired professor and activist, who was a liberal and a naturalist thinker, announced at a meal with friends, “I think I won’t eat anymore.” From that point on, he no longer ate solid food, making a conscious choice regarding when and how he would depart this earth, using fasting to free himself from his body.

Thanks to the real-life examples in this book as well as the material taken from two of the books that inspired the author to help her mother die well, I realized that a good book is the result of an author’s ability to share what she has read and personally experienced with readers. In doing so, the writer helps the reader to gain richer life experiences and mature in their thinking about the future.

Imagine a role-playing game that uses weaponized Kantian metaphysics to tackle the legacy of Taiwan’s colonial past. Make the main character a gaming-obsessed student haunted by the death of a dear mentor, and you get a coming-of-age story told as a historically informed urban fantasy – where the stakes are terrifyingly real.

Cheng Yi-hao is a college student majoring in literature who spends his free time playing tabletop RPGs, attending kendo exercises with his best friend Hui, and hanging out at the local game shop. When he receives an invitation to be one of twenty trial users of the “Deity Series”, an intriguing new product from Kuang-Shih Technology offering supernatural powers via a god-like personal assistant, he only hesitates a moment before signing the NDA. The device turns out to establish a link between his mind and a keepsake of his choice (dubbed an “Offering” in the instructions) and projects an AI avatar – the god, whom he names Diaolong.

While Yi-hao is still familiarizing himself with Diaolong’s capabilities, he receives a warning that he’s in grave danger. Testers are being stalked, attacked, and kidnapped, and rumors of a beast man rampaging through Taipei may have something to do with it. At a hastily called meeting, he meets other testers whose gods have a wide range of capabilities, some more obviously useful than others, from invisibility, spatial duplication, and material fabrication to divination, spirit communication, and music. Although the testers don’t quite trust each other, they decide after a heated debate that cooperation is their only option – and that attack is the best form of defense.

When the meeting concludes, Kagami Shizuka, a student from Japan whose father is in Taiwan on business, pulls Yi-hao aside and informs him that the true power of her god isn’t music but teleportation, a revelation that proves valuable when one group member is abducted during the group botched attack on company HQ. Shizuka teleports Yi-hao into the copy world the enemy has created where, as telegraphed by the prologue and the unusual interactions between the two earlier in the book, he discovers that his friend Hui has been tracking down and defeating other testers with the aid of his god of fighting. The two duel in the copy world, a deserted downtown commercial center, in a sequence that involves gods stolen from other captured testers: powers of telekinesis, hallucination, and rampant plant growth. It’s a spectacular battle that Hui doesn’t want to win (he’s not fighting of his own free will), so he engineers a situation that allows Yi-hao and Shizuka to flee the copy world with his god’s Offering, his treasured kendo sword.

After this first battle, as the question of who is to blame – and who might be a mole – threatens to tear the group apart, the danger is no longer an abstract fear: their opponents have the ability to extract gods and render their former masters comatose. A second attempt fares no better than the first. Yi-hao falls into enemy hands and is rescued just in the nick of time by Shizuka and her bodyguard Mizukami Toyoya. Snippets of intel gained from these raids mean they haven’t been a total loss, but the contradictory information leaves the bigger picture frustratingly opaque. From Mizukami they learn that the technology, which enables thoughts to directly alter the fabric of reality via Kantian things-in-themselves, was stolen from JMM, a private mining company whose largest shareholder is Shizuka’s family. But info from Kuang-Shih tells a different story: an attempt two decades earlier to create an omniscient homunculus based on medieval alchemical principles left behind twenty fragments that can bestow supernatural powers on human subjects.

In a quiet moment, Yi-hao and Shizuka bond over loss. Shizuka grew up feeling like an outcast because her family hated her Taiwanese mother – whom she recently learned may have been murdered on her father’s orders when she was very young. Yi-hao’s mother died three years ago, robbing him not only of a beloved parent but of the person most instrumental in fostering his love of gaming. For Yi-hao, the prospect that he can’t trust Shizuka complicates his growing feelings for her, but aided by the patient counsel of his god Diaolong, he realizes that he doesn’t want to treat her merely as an asset in a game and resolves to protect her at any cost.

The group’s third attack on the company is another failure: they arrive at the scene of a bloodbath and watch in horror as Shizuka’s father Kagami Masato execute the CEO. Now out of options, they’re relieved to make contact with the retired CEO of Kuang-Shih who vid-chats them from his home in England to lay out the back story:

What began as an occult Axis engineering project in the Kinkaseki mines near Ruifang to gain homunculus-assisted precognition continued after WWII as part of the ROC’s civil war effort and later as a bulwark against Communism. Waning NATO support forced the company to seek out other sources of funding, leading to an alliance with the mining company’s Japanese successor. The testers are descendants of the twenty people chosen to provide DNA blueprints for the human abstraction required to interface with the essence of the cosmos, and their presence is necessary to revive the homunculus.

Armed with this information, the group finally have a clear end goal: they must unite the homunculus fragments to revive the omniscient, omnipotent being – and prevent it from falling into Japanese hands. The lab, hidden deep within the mining facility now famous as the “Ruins of the 13 Levels”, has been sustained by the alchemical principles behind its construction and continues to be serviced by a phantom train running along the disused Shenao Line. Once again the Japanese are one step ahead of them, but Shizuka confronts her father and, having realized that she herself is her father’s Offering and the source of his power, shoots herself. Mizukami unexpectedly kills Masato, setting up a final, epic duel with Yi-hao in the bowels of the mining facility, while a healing god goes to work saving Shizuka.

Things wrap up quickly after that. After the group briefly revive the homunculus to put everything back to normal, they received the ominous news that Kuang-Shih’s new owners are demanding they hand over their gods.

Despite its door-stopper length, the novel moves along at a fast clip, alternating intense strategy sessions with gripping action scenes where new revelations topple seemingly sound constructions of logical inferences. A gamer’s outlook permeates the entire narrative: all choices are preceded by a thorough assessment of risks and have a distinct, quantifiable goal in mind; where information is incomplete, convincing arguments win the day; and characters explicitly name-check semi-cooperative deduction games like Shadows Over Camelot and Lupus in Tabula. In an afterword, author Xiao Xiang Shen reveals that he first ran the scenario as a role-playing game before revising it into a novel a decade later, by which point the resumption of service on the abandoned Shenao branch line of the title forced the book to be a period piece, with flip phones, BBSs, grainy video, and fax machines charmingly anchoring the narrative in 2009 Taipei.

The inclusion of a few “interludes” in other characters’ voices gives insight into the complicated back stories they keep hidden – whether by choice or coercion – from Yi-hao and the other testers: beast-man Su Yu-lung grew up during the mine’s golden age in the ’70s and wants to prove that his life was meaningful rather than just an embarrassing relic of Cold War thinking; Wei Chih-ching used her divining god to win the lottery and save her family from ruthless loan sharks but became disillusioned by the temptations of wealth; double-agent Yan Chung-shu, weighed down by guilt, entered into a bargain that could create a universe-destroying paradox if the homunculus were revived; Kagami Masato, unable to protect his beloved wife from the machinations of his ruthless family, felt the only way to protect his daughter was to feign not caring about her at all.

But ultimately it’s Yi-hao’s story, and as he navigates a shifting network of alliances and rivalries, he learns to appreciate people for more than just their strategic value. The evolution of his oft-stated “victory condition” to take into account the people he loves rather than simply the rules of the game subtly shifts the trajectory of the plot as well, leading to a climactic duel with a powerful rival, ostensibly for control of all of the gods, where his triumph hinges on the realization that they both share the same underlying goal – Shizuka’s safety and happiness rather than immense cosmic power.

The eventual revival of the homunculus is a more muted affair, little more than an opportunity to reverse all of the damage suffered during the entire ordeal and restore status quo – except for Yen Chung-shu, whose very real death robbed the homunculus of an essential means of anchoring it to the human universe for more than a few brief minutes. And then there’s scarcely time to breathe before hostile forces are agitating for control of the gods, an unsettling conclusion that invites parallels to Taiwan’s unresolved position on the geopolitical stage even as it leaves the door open for another campaign.

Things are going pretty well for 33-year-old Ho Ching-cheng: he lives in Taipei with the love of his life, Hsu Ching-chih, and together they support each other’s dreams of becoming a bestselling author (him) and a renowned actress (her). Then, just as Hsu’s acting career is finally coming together, disaster strikes. On their way home with his parents after one of her shows, their car is hit by a drunk driver, killing Hsu and Ho’s mother. The drunk driver only has minor injuries and flees before the police arrive which is a source of deep resentment for Ho. He starts to channel his anger into writing and publishes a series of stories online about a fictionalized version of Hsu and his mother who travel the world and have adventures. The stories gain a devoted following, then one day he receives a strange message from the director of an underground organization called Dark Fern: Come and help us rewrite people’s lives.

Based out of a small izakaya, Dark Fern operates at the shadowy perimeters of the law to help people replicate the lives of those they envy. In exchange for everything that they own, clients take a piece of paper outlining their new life to the attic where it is reset by the Director. Ho joins the team and begins to help people rewrite their lives, with the novel focusing on three main cases. The first is a young woman with a disability whose doctor husband is always too busy with work, but after she replicates the life of an able-bodied friend, she realizes the various ways she was actually fortunate before and returns to her original life. The second is a middle-aged teacher who envies someone that bullied him in school but doesn’t realize the other man’s wife has clinical depression, so the teacher vows to make the best of his own life instead. The last case is Hsu’s former best friend who’d always envied her and inadvertently caused the car accident. As the ultimate revenge, Ho offers her the chance to copy Hsu’s life even though she will die. However, when they come down from the attic and it’s revealed that Ho has been the Director all along, he realizes he doesn’t want to hurt her and instead helps her live the life she always wanted.  

This is a fast-paced novel with a lot of action and intrigue that keeps the reader emotionally invested all the way to the final page. It’s told from the perspective of Ho and you get a good sense of his emotions as the events of the novel unfold, especially the empathy he feels towards the characters in each of the cases that Dark Fern takes on. The parallel grief that he and his father go through from having both lost their partners but also having each lost another family member at the same time was well portrayed. It captured the similarities and differences between their experiences and the impact that their respective grief had on each other. The optimistic nature of the stories he writes about Hsu and his mother sets up a tonal balancing act where people are still able to find moments of hopefulness even in the hardest periods of life, and the author explores different variations of this as the story takes a series of interesting turns.

One of the other highlights of the novel is the varied cast of characters. Aside from the Director, whose true identity is only revealed at the end of the novel, the team at Dark Fern is comprised of an interesting mix of personalities that makes them an easy team to root for. In a clever riff on the nature of their work, they’re each given a job title that corresponds with a role in a typical production crew. For example, Wu Ting-kang is the producer as he’s the one who secures the funds from the clients and is also in charge of managing the izakaya. You definitely wouldn’t want to double-cross him but most of the time you’ll find him cooking up a storm in the kitchen and making sure everything runs smoothly. There’s also the art director, Hui, a petite woman in her late twenties with a wicked sense of humor who looks like a university student. She designs the key scenes for the clients’ new lives and makes sure the changes go undetected by the police. Lastly, there’s Kevin, a freshman who dropped out of MIT and has his own complicated life choices to make as his father keeps trying to get him to move back to the US. He’s the cameraman who manages the logistics of the scenes that Hui designs. Some of the book’s most enjoyable moments happen when the team are just hanging out together at the izakaya during the downtime between cases.

The three main subplots all build on each other before eventually combining with the main plot. The young woman with the disability is forced to confront the reality of copying her able-bodied best friend’s life when she realizes that the friend’s fate was always to die young from cancer. This embodies one of the main messages of the novel: that in life you have to take the rough with the smooth and remember that you never truly know what’s around the corner. The author builds on this in the next story, where the middle-aged teacher has envied the colleague who bullied him when they were children without realizing that the former bully is going through his own emotional turmoil. This realization makes him shift his whole attitude towards life and finally start the career in videomaking that he’d always been too scared to pursue. It’s a reminder that sometimes the biggest thing holding us back is ourselves. As for Hsu’s former friend, she realizes the sheer damage that her envy has caused but she also helps Ho understand that he needs to let go of the resentment that’s fueled him and start forging a new path of his own.

It’s a satisfying ending with a Fight Club-style twist that maintains a high level of intrigue right to the end. Even though it deals with some heavy themes including grief, envy and discrimination, the narrative tone keeps the novel feeling relatively light. It doesn’t get caught up in the details of the speculative elements, with the sci-fi mostly there as a catalyst to ask broader questions about fate and the choices we make in life. The premise is reminiscent of Recursion by Blake Crouch but with an emphasis on the individual decisions themselves rather than their part in a huge macro conspiracy. Tonally, the novel has a lot in common with The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, albeit with more of a crime fiction bent. The Taiwan Ministry of Culture selected it as a recommended book for school students and I think the straight-forward language gives it a lot of crossover appeal for both YA and adult contemporary fiction. Overall, it’s an uplifting novel with a fast-paced plot, engaging characters and a gratifying conclusion that ties everything together.

Looking for the next office romance to sweep you off your feet? This book’s not that. But if scandal, smear campaigns, gossip, love affairs, cheating and lies are what you need, look no further than The Gap Year, the fifth novel from the historical and detective fiction writer, Lee Po-Ching. And, boy, does this story have them in the bucketloads.

Intrigue is the name of the game here, and this is where Lee excels. The question is: is Alan, the novel’s young lawyer protagonist, his pawn, or are we? From an impromptu proposal seeing the girlfriend off at the airport to the return of an ex asking for Alan to be her divorce lawyer; from the killer legs of an old schoolmate he can’t keep his eyes off to the unexplained insertions of conversations with an unknown woman, the reader is kept guessing right to the very end: will Alan keep his promises and the marriage go ahead, will Alan’s character arc lead to redemption, is fate just not that kind, or is Alan really just a scumbag after all? The answer might not surprise you, but the big reveal will.

You see, not everything’s as it seems – Alan tells us as much with his frequent references to Murphy’s Law. But Lee refuses to give too much away too soon and brilliantly leaves it up to the reader to find out on their own where they’ve been duped. This is the love story that tugs at the heartstrings for all the wrong reasons, and it hurts so good. It is also the detective story where nothing is too convenient – no tying up all the loose threads into a neat bow for the reader, happy ending or not, just more and more unspooling.

So what this depiction of a white-collar world does very well is capture the messiness of modern life. Especially of a life spent, as so many are, trying to climb the greased rungs of a professional ladder. Law, acquisitions and mergers – these are high pressure circles to operate in. There are expectations to be met, quotas to be filled, contracts signed, and so much opportunity for things to go awry: rumors about illegal materials in a client’s products, a senior colleague stepping in to take some of the load off Alan on his first lead case, the appearance of his ex’s soon-to-be-divorced husband as his professional counterpart – these are only some of the challenges that threaten to jeopardize Alan’s progress in the world of work, and also to rock his cool, unbothered exterior.

This is not to say that Alan doesn’t have his fair share of more ruffled moments, only it is hard to know whether in them he is wrestling with long suppressed feelings of being unworthy and unloved (see: absentee father and repeated failure to pass the National Judicial Exam) or simply worried that his conniving ways might finally get found out. Deciding which it is, is made all the more difficult by the welcome fact that Alan isn’t the only repeating car crash of a person in this brisk, riveting read of a novel. He’s just the one our lens is turned on. In Trick Mirror-esque fashion, The Gap Year shows how any of us can easily fall foul of the incentives that modern life thrusts upon us, and also how hard it can be to see ourselves clearly in our current, capitalist culture. Here are where comparisons to Netflix’s Love & Anarchy and BBC/HBO’s Industry also come into play. A cast of characters with no real idea where they are going or how to get here, making decisions left and right and center, seemingly with little concern for where they will end up. But how much of that is just the reality of life at times?

It is tempting here to suggest similarities with Unsworth’s Animals too, especially in the books’ clear reminder that the life pillars of Relationships, Work, and Fun are precariously balanced, but the book only spills into Animals­-level chaotic during the fumbled “kidnapping” which Alan orchestrates, with the help of the kid’s grandmother, to reunite a child with his dad when the boy starts to miss him. Surprisingly, this leads to one of only several more tender moments in the book that it feels safe to trust, so much of them elsewhere being built on omitted truths, outright lies and ulterior motives.

With a well-written and believable first-person voice and an endlessly engaging narrative, this book, for a time the best-selling work of “detective” fiction on Readmoo (the biggest ebook platform in Taiwan), sits right on the cusp of upmarket commercial and literary fiction. It has mass appeal thanks to the universal (morbid) curiosity for drama so many readers and consumers now share, and its TV rights are, it feels, as good as a sure thing – a twist as juicy and excruciating as this one practically demands to be played out onscreen.