Puppet Flower: A Novel of 1867 Formosa(Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan)

In 1867, an American merchant ship, the Rover, sank off the coast of southern Taiwan. Fourteen sailors reached the shore, where almost all were killed by indigenous people. In retaliation, the United States launched two disastrous military operations against local tribes. Eventually, the U.S. consul to Amoy, Charles Le Gendre, negotiated a treaty with Tauketok, the chief of the eighteen tribes of the area, that secured safe passage for shipwrecked sailors.

Yao-Chang Chen's historical novel Puppet Flower retells the story of the Rover incident, bringing to light its pivotal role in Taiwanese history. Merging documented events and literary imagination, the novel vividly depicts Tauketok, Le Gendre, and other historical figures alongside the story of Butterfly, a young woman of mixed ethnic heritage who serves as an interpreter and mediator during the crisis. Chen deftly reconstructs the multiethnic and multilingual society of southern Taiwan in the second half of the nineteenth century from multiple perspectives, portraying local people's daily struggles for survival and their interactions with Han Chinese settlers, Qing dynasty bureaucrats, and Western officials, tradesmen, and adventurers. The novel explores nineteenth-century Sino-American and Sino-indigenous relations and emphasizes the centrality of Taiwanese indigenous cultures to the island's history.

A gripping work of historical fiction, Puppet Flower is a powerful revisionist narrative of a formative moment in Taiwan's past. It was recently adapted into a popular Taiwanese TV miniseries, Seqalu: Formosa 1867.

Table of Contents:
Foreword, by Michael Berry
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Principal Characters
1. A Pyrrhic Victory
2. The Tragedy That Befell the Rover
3. Orphans of Mixed Blood
4. Identity Revealed
5. Repulse of the Foreign Forces
6. Serenity Lost and Found
7. Troops Marching
8. Puppet Mountains
9. Praying to Guanyin
10. Epilogue
Maps and Illustrations
Glossary
Notes

About the Author :
Yao-Chang Chen is professor emeritus of medicine at National Taiwan University and is a leading specialist in blood cell diseases. He began writing novels in his sixties, becoming a prolific and acclaimed author of historical fiction.

Pao-fang Hsu has translated works including Chung Wen-yin’s Decayed Land and The Anthology of Taiwan Indigenous Literature.

Ian Maxwell graduated from Lancaster University; he lives and works in Taipei.

Tung-jung Chen is a retired professor of English who taught American literature at Taiwanese universities.

Review :
This well-wrought book transports us to a complicated yet majestic period in Taiwan’s history. A significant novel, steeped in this unique place while echoing around the world. Was Formosa a place too treacherous to visit? The author of Puppet Flower boldly takes up this question and tries to answer it from various perspectives, most notably that of the island's indigenous peoples. Strongly recommended! This engaging historical novel shows how a small event on a remote island can make history. In the novel Puppet Flower, Chen explores the complex intersection of international politics and cross-cultural exchange in mid-nineteenth century Taiwan. By imagining the contributions of a mixed-race sibling pair, Chen brings to life the actions and complex societies of indigenous and plains peoples at the threshold of new forms of colonialism. [A] nuanced depiction of a formative Formosa. Chen’s novel successfully delivers an alternative history of Taiwan in which all the involved subjectivities, especially those that have traditionally been neglected by official narratives, are given a voice. The whole novel is fascinating in that it mixes in a fairly messy but also fairly conventional personal story with the complex manoeuvrings of the various powers seeking control of Taiwan. [A] unique reimagining of an obscure event in 'a turning point' year in Taiwanese history. Told from a multitude of perspectives, particularly of indigenous peoples, Chen’s story does not sacrifice history and complicated colonial relations for cute dramatic contrivances. This is historical fiction with an emphasis on the former. Chen’s fiction is important in that it not only tells a forgotten history but also gives voice to the complexity of Taiwanese identity and to those who are most forgotten: the many indigenous people who predate the colonial influences of the Han Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, and Americans. Puppet Flower is an absorbing tour through the multicultural hodgepodge that was Formosa in the mid-19th century