Keeping up with the War God - Taiwan, as it seemed to me 1996-2001

by Steven Crook

Steven Crook, an Englishman, has been writing about Taiwan for various newspapers and magazines since 1996. This book is for travelers who are interested in delving beneath the surface of Taiwan’s main attractions and flashy facade. Excellent storytelling and meticulous research went into a finely crafted collection of personal memoirs.

“This is the best account of life in Taiwan I know...”

- Bradley Winterton, Taipei Times

“...packed with interesting information about local culture...insights, which range from the humorous to the surprisingly profound...all of this is done in his well-written prose...”

- Helen Will, China Post

“Part travelogue, part history book, and part cultural expose, Keeping Up With the War God is an easy and entertaining read for anyone interested in piercing the veneer of modern-day Taiwan to delve a little deeper into its terrain, its traditions, and its inhabitants. ”

- Celeste Heiter, ThingsAsian.com

“While Crook is not always complimentary about Taiwanese culture, his passion and love for Taiwan always shines through.”

- David Reid, David on Formosa

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel

Paperback

First published March 1, 2001

About the author

Steven Crook, who grew up in England, first arrived in Taiwan in 1991. Since 1996, he’s been writing about Taiwan’s natural and cultural attractions for newspapers and magazines, including CNN Traveler Asia-Pacific, Christian Science Monitor, and various inflight magazines.

He’s the author of three books about the country: Keeping Up With The War God (2001), Dos And Don’ts In Taiwan (2010) and Taiwan: The Bradt Travel Guide (2010).

Many of his articles can be read at http://crooksteven.blogspot.com.

He blogs about travel in Taiwan at http://bradttaiwan.blogspot.com

Reviews

[Wade Kaardal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could say you should read this book, but I could not do so without caveats.

Though Keeping Up With The War God is presented as a travel narrative it's not really. The author had already been a long-term resident of Taiwan when this book was published and as far as I understand still resides in Taiwan. This book is more accurately described as an immigrant's tale, an expats journey, etc.

This book will be interesting to anyone who wants to learn about Taiwan in the early 2000s and 1990s. The stories and vignettes in the book paint a picture that is familiar and somewhat alien to long-term foreign residents of Taiwan. If you look seeing a street level view of Taiwan in life of the Taiwanese, then this book might be for you. Long-term residence may also stumble upon major events of Taiwan's yesteryear that have since been lost in the major news cycles and forgotten the history.

Still as I said, I do have some caveats. The book is short, and yet it is still that somewhat by it's writing style. The book is written in short vignettes, some only a paragraph or two long. In effect, every story feels like a bit of a setup for a punchline and reads like a collection of Facebook posts. The author also seems to have some tendencies; the expats need to show that he was here before things were (gestures vaguely) this easy, the academics need to footnote and contextualize, and the pontificators need to provide comment. I'll leave it to Future readers to decide how these tendencies work together. I'm left to wonder how I would have felt about this book had I read it as soon as I arrived in Taiwan, as opposed to a decade into my own long-term residency.

[Sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tradition of writing travelogues is an old one and many Western (and Japanese) visitors to Taiwan have recorded their observations in this way, the earliest works of which date back hundreds of years. This book is a nice addition to that tradition as it tries to capture the spirit of a particular place (Taiwan) at a particular period of time (1990s-2000), or at least as it presented itself to the writer (and as opposed to a big chunk of the much earlier literature it comes without the colonialist sense of mission obviously). A little more than a decade after its publication, a lot of things seem to have changed already, but quite a few, I would say, are still the same. Having spent my own share of time in Taiwan I can wholeheartedly agree with the author's "conclusion" at the end (maybe less the "freak show" part and more the "never gets boring" part).