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Travel Literature: Travel Writing during Wartime (1938 - 1944)

Publication date: 27 Oct 2022
Author: Lee Yi-ling, Chu Feng-chung |Staff member of the Archives of Institute of Taiwan History

The Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, in the years past unearthed a precious collection of the published works in 1938 – 1944 of “Taiwan Shin Min Pao” and its successor “Shing Nan News”, the only newspapers launched by the Taiwanese during the colonial rule of Japan. This piece goes through a selection of the accounts of travel that are of interest and, with the descriptions given by travelers from Taiwan and Japan to be complemented by such colorful collections as photographs, travel tickets, old papers, postcards and others, it invites you to read through the tracks of the travelers in question over tens of thousands of miles across Beijing, Manchukuo, the United States, Germany, Burma and Vietnam and discover the landscapes around a turbulent world in the midst of war from nearly a hundred years ago and the heart-felt worldviews of the travelers.

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III. John Thomson’s footprints in Formosa

John Thomson published Through China: with a Camera in 1898. Through his words and photographs, we can feel a western traveler’s feelings of his first visit in Taiwan. The hearsay of the aboriginal people in Taiwan could not stop Thomson’s curiosity toward them. However, his voyage to Taiwan was not easy since passing through the Taiwan Strait has never been an easy thing. Even worse, a Malaysian sailor told him that their ship might hit a reef and there were headhunters living on the island. Even though the rumors sounded scary, John Thomson still wanted to see Formosa in person. In fact, these rumors were actually from the incidents and conflicts between Japan and China at that time. In the end, the rumors affected John Thomson, causing him to change his traveling plans in Taiwan. After John Thomson and Dr. Maxwell reached the Port of Takao (Kaohsiung) in the early April in 1871, they soon met a Scottish pastor, Hugh Ritchie, who had been doing his missionary work in Takao. Hugh Ritchie told them that it was not safe to stay in the southern Taiwan so that John Thomson gave up on the idea of visiting the aboriginal peoples living there. He followed Dr. Maxwell and went northbound to Taiwan Prefecture and the areas where Taiwanese plain aborigines lived. They ended up visiting Bama (Zuojhen), Muzha (Neimen), Ganzailin, Jiaxianpu, (Jiaxian), Paozailiao, Laonong, and Liuguili. John Thomson used his camera to capture the images of the Taiwanese plain aborigines and the natural landscapes in Taiwan within a week.(see Figure 1 & 2)

Figure 1:The image of Neimen District of Taiwan through John Thomson’s lens
(Source:Through China : with a camera, the digital archives of the Archives of Institution of Taiwan History)
Figure2: The image of Laonong District of Taiwan through John Thomson’s lens
(Source:Through China : with a camera, the digital archives of the Archives of Institution of Taiwan History)


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