Rooted in Taiwan, Connected with the World

I just finished reading Sense and Sensibility ,  the first novel by the English author Jane Austen, published in 1811 anonymously   —with   By A Lady   appearing on the title page  where the author's name might have been.   This was the second of Austen's major works I have read after Persuasion , which I read three weeks ago. The novel is probably set between 1792 and 1797 and follows the three Dashwood sisters and their widowed mother as they are forced to leave the family estate in Sussex and move to a modest cottage on the property of a distant relative in Devon. There the two eldest girls, Elinor and Marianne, experience love and heartbreak that test their contrasting characters.   Interestingly, Austen wrote the first draft of the novel in epistolary form, perhaps as early as 1795 when she was about 19 years old (or 1797, at age 21). She is said to have given it the working title Elinor and Marianne . Later she changed the work's f...

I just completed my nineteenth trip under "A Day in Town," my multi-year backpacking plan of spending a day in each of the approximately 350 townships in Taiwan. This also marked the beginning of my new round of touring the country, having completed my first round two months ago, during which I visited 69 townships nationwide. My destination this time was Yilan County, consisting of 12 townships, of which I had visited four during my first round. So, this time I visited another four townships of the county: Yuanshan, Sanxing, Wujie, and Luodong.   As usual, I set off on Monday by a train and got off at Yilan Station. From there, I took a bus westward to the route's  final stop, Juntou, which was located in Huxi, the westernmost village of Yuanshan Township. Also known as the Hometown of Water, Yuanshan borders Wulai Township of New Taipei City to the west, Jiaoxi, Yilan (City), Wujie, Sanxing, and Datong to the north, east, southeast, south, and southwest respectively.  G...

I just finished studying my seventeenth Shakespeare play, Henry VI, Part 1 , a history play by William Shakespeare—possibly in collaboration with Thomas Nashe and others—believed to have been written in 1591. It is set during the lifetime of King Henry VI, and is the first work of the Henry VI trilogy, which, alongside Richard III , forms a tetralogy covering the entire Wars of the Roses saga, from the death of Henry V in 1422 to the rise to power of Henry VII in 1485. It was the success of this sequence of plays that firmly established Shakespeare's reputation as a playwright. Through the play, I gained insights into the complex English claims to the French throne: From 1340, English monarchs, beginning with the Plantagenet king Edward III, asserted that they were the rightful kings of France. They fought the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) in part to enforce this claim, though ultimately without success. Henry VI was crowned king of both countries, creating the so-called ...

I just finished reading Persuasion , the last novel completed by the English author Jane Austen that has been adapted for film numerous times, including Netflix's 2022 version of Persuasion . Interestingly, the novel was published on 20 December 1817, six months after Austen's death, although its title page was dated 1818.   This was a long-awaited read — my first of English literature classics by Austen, known for her six major novels: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Northanger Abbey (1817), and Persuasion (1817). Her works are renowned for their wit, social commentary on the landed gentry during the Regency Era, and exploration of various themes, including social class, love, family, and self-discovery. Along with Goethe, Austen was among the first novelists to use "free indirect speech", the literary technique of writing a character's first-person thoughts in the voice of the third-person narra...