I have always felt bad about being Taiwanese and growing up in Taiwan but knowing very little about Taiwanese history. I know the really basic stuff, like there were always aboriginal people in Taiwan, Chinese people came in the 1600s, the Dutch & the Japanese were here, and KMT / CKS came after they lost the war, but I didn’t know any of the details or how they fit together. I tried looking for “the” authoritative book on Taiwan (something like Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States), but I think that’s a bad approach to studying history, plus the one I found was super long and dry, so this trip home I did some online research and found this book.
This book started from a guy who likes history and would answer history questions about Taiwan on PTT (sort of like a Taiwanese reddit). People really liked his posts and his writing style so he eventually started working on this book. 臺灣史上最有梗的臺灣史 is a chronological history of Taiwan, starting from the earliest records of Taiwanese history. That is an impossible subject to cover comprehensively in one short book, but I appreciated an overview nonetheless and I think it’s very good that he repeatedly emphasizes that this is not a complete history book. His focus is on telling stories that are interesting to him about characters that are fun to him, which really helps make the book digestible and memorable. That said, because of this approach, there are definitely big gaps, especially in Taiwan’s indigenous people. They are the focus of chapter 1 but later on are only mentioned in relation to the Chinese people that came to Taiwan.
Overall though it gave me a really good base to build on, I learned a lot about Taiwanese history, and I’m excited and feel ready to read more and learn more. You can’t really ask for more from a overview type history book. I also thought it was very funny, and very 台. I read some reviews that said they thought the density of jokes was too much and too goofy, but I consistently enjoyed them and the book never felt slow.
If you are Taiwanese or want to learn more about Taiwanese history read 臺灣史上最有梗的臺灣史.