Taipei – City of Displacements

Whenever I’ve wanted to have some fun with Xinhua journalists doing profile pieces this is my little recipe – they always insist on asking your university (not too difficult) and your age (always provokes a slight reaction!!), and then what’s your favourite Chinese city? – my answer has always been Taipei – the number of times this answer has been printed? Zero. Anyway, I still maintain that Taipei is my favourite Chinese city for all the reasons you’d expect but the literature on the city is precious little as most, even quite seasoned China Hands, rarely if ever go there – which is a shame.

Anyway, perhaps Joseph Allen’s Taipei: City of Displacements resolves some of those errors by being an entire book about that great city. I hope so…and here’s the details…

This cultural study of public space examines the cityscape of Taipei, Taiwan, in rich descriptive prose. Contemplating a series of seemingly banal subjects – maps, public art, parks – Joseph Allen peels back layers of obscured history to reveal forces that caused cultural objects to be celebrated, despised, destroyed, or transformed as Taipei experienced successive regime changes and waves of displacement. In this thoughtful stroll through the city, we learn to look beyond surface ephemera, moving from the general to the particular, to see sociocultural phenomena in their historical and contemporary contexts.

Joseph R. Allen is professor of Chinese literature and cultural studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

“Through the prism of Taipei’s development, Allen masterfully covers many aspects of visual culture in Taiwan during the past century. The book details cultural debates with insight and draws on many visual forms. Taipei is bound to become a prime source on Taiwan culture.” – Yomi Braester, author of Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract