Book Review: 《風暴歷程: 文革中的人民解放軍》 (Through the storm: The PLA in the Cultural Revolution), Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 by Yu Ruxin 余汝信

Abstract

to follow. Somewhat countering the obsession with history and identity, Chapter 9 on ecomuseums sustains the criticism of ‘paying lip service to calls for policy change and [environmental] practices in the name of forging a happy relationship between the locality and the community’ (p. 205). The focus on the Museum of World Religions and the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum in the final chapter is for the reader to reflect on Taiwan’s desire to be integrated with the world and to matter to that world, even if Taiwan’s role can only assert itself on religious and cultural levels. The only weakness of this book is the lack of a more comprehensive discussion of ‘Taiwan’s historical relationship with Japanese imperialism’ (p. 118). The absence of war-related exhibits or a monument commemorating the War of Resistance against Japan (until 1999), given the centrality of military culture to nationalist rule, denies giving Taiwan its own character as a former Japanese colony that was fundamentally different from the years of Japanese occupation on the mainland. But it is precisely in being more concerned with demonstrating the blue camp’s struggle to inject memory into a to date still ‘painfully unsettled war’ (p. 115) that the parallel with the PRC makes for a holistic reading that takes the book beyond a Taiwan-only readership. Given its manifold strengths, I recommend it highly to all readers seriously interested in contemporary issues of war memory, with Asian societies as an entry point.