BOOK REVIEW: Taiwan, the White Terror and the Power of Literature

A Review of Shawna Yang Ryan’s ‘Green Island’ 

It wasn’t the dreaded knock on the door in the middle of the night. Instead, the undercover military police officers posed as clients wanting to buy tea from Mr. Wei. Their main objective was something of an entirely different nature, however: to recover incriminating documents from the White Terror era that Mr. Wei had in his possession and which he had advertised for sale on the Internet. In all, after luring him out of his residence, eight men accompanied Mr. Wei back to his home, where they made it clear that “bad things” could happen if he refused to let them search his house without a warrant and did not hand over the documents (which he kept hidden in a dehumidifier unit). To keep the matter quiet, the officers later allegedly offered Mr. Wei NT$15,000 (about US$500) in return for his silence. 

Mr. Wei did not take the money, nor did he remain silent. 

My book review, published today in Thinking Taiwan, continues here.