#Strangely Like War
2004/10/22

Dear Wild Friends,

Wild Publishing

Wild at Heart is happy and honored to present a few chapters from Strangely Like War (Download PDF here)by Derrick Jensen and George Draffan. This is part of a Wild publishing project to bring works of important authors to Taiwan, works that might not otherwise have an opportunity to be read in Taiwan, China or other Chinese-language countries.

Help us translate

As with John Zerzan's book, Elements of Refusal, we hope to elicit interest from readers who have a passion for things wild, a no-compromise heart that feels the rage with our dominant culture, Chinese writing skills that will do justice to these authors, and of course, some understanding of English. We can occasionally scrape up money for these projects, so if you are interested and whether or not you need to be compensated, send us a sample of your work–please base the sample on something from these works.

The trouble with distributors

Authors and publishers of the kind represented by Strangely and Elements have but a modest distribution in their home countries. They lack well-financed packaging and hype of their mainstream counterparts. How much more the case in foreign countries. Local book companies base their decision on the "market" which tells them to bring in Harry Porter (Petter, Potter?), biographies of GE's Jack Welch and so on. That leaves it to other "market forces" to bring attention to the works of Zerzan, Jenssen, Paul Shepard, and Bob Black.

We get 99 percent schlock from foreign media in Taiwan but the propaganda from various government (local and foreign) agencies is worse. For they, supported by the billions spent on marketing, have convinced people that we Taiwanese need the foreign films, foreign books and foreign television. Wild continues to hope and provide support for more local authors that are breaking out of the paradigm, and there are encouraging signs, but in the meantime we wish we had a million dollars to put behind foreign works such as Strangely Like War so that the Chinese-language readers would know that there is more out there in English than accolades for the American Way.

You can help by telling friends and sharing bits of the works with others—or donate some money and specify you want it used for Wild publications.

Some background on Taiwan’s experience with Western dominant culture

Taiwan has been plagued by Western mainstream culture since the missionaries and traders first started coming here in the 1600s. Some seeds of international cultural diversification were planted and cultivated in Taiwan during Japanese rule from 1895 to 1945, although the Japanese cultural model was and remains nearly identical to that of the U.S. and Europe (i.e., the "worst of the West"– dominate, destroy, assimilate, exploit) once the superficial characteristics of language, dress, and custom are trimmed away.

Dependence

After being ousted from China in 1949 and following the Japanese withdrawal from Taiwan, a group of Chinese brought their own version of the strange story of civilization, along with a backlog of "treaties" to Taiwan. Taiwan would for the next 50 years promote the myth of being the "last bastion of traditional Chinese (mainstream) culture" while falling into an ever-deepening pit of cultural (to say nothing of military and spiritual) dependence on the United States.

The Chinese/American legacy dominated Taiwan until the "alien rulers" were finally deposed in 2000 with Chen Shui-bian's election. However, while the Chinese components of the political, cultural and social landscape fade, the US influence lives on and is perhaps more prevalent than anything the Chinese could have dreamed of, even during the height of martial law (1950-1987). In fact one might argue that the lack of a strong local identity makes us all the more susceptible to influence from the cancerous "cultures" as the demise of the Chinese identity leaves a vacuum in Taiwan.

Promoting American values through treaties

An important part of the legacy of the Chinese included "U.S. culture for free", i.e., provisions of an early 20th century treaty between the United States and the Cing Dynasty. Like the pox-infected blankets given to indigenous peoples by the proponents of civilization around the world and through the ages, that treaty provided for free translation of United States' works of authorship.

Although Taiwan now recognizes the translation right as a part of copyright, we hope to be a force for turning the clock back to the treaty days when things were free! To participate in changing assumptions is one mission of Wild. Strangely Like War and Elements of Refusal are books that can help.

Taiwan’s war against the forests

Strangely Like War mentions Taiwan's forests only briefly and in passing. The best and most comprehensive accounts of the massacre and slaughter that began when the first contacts with the West and the Chinese took place 400 years ago are by Professor Chen Yu-fong of the Academy of Taiwan Ecology and Jing Yi University in Taijhong Taiwan. Professor Chen has spent 30 years cataloging and studying the trees and other vegetation throughout Taiwan and more than half of that time he has taken on government agencies and their cronies in business and academia to stop the war against Taiwan’s natural forests through direct exploitation (logging) and indirect attacks by highways, tourism promotion and agricultural programs.

Unfortunately for those who do not read the language, all of his books are in Chinese.

Here is a short intro inspired by Chen Yu-fong’s stories of the forests on Alishan in July 2004.

In the company of angels

For much of Taiwan’s past history, and until very, very recent times, we were graced with the presence of millions of Angels who protected the watersheds and mountains of this young island.

While having surfaced previously over 70 million years ago, with the earth's warming, Taiwan lay beneath the Pacific until being called forth again. We live on land that is a mere 2.5 million old. The collision of two great tectonic plates pushed up sediment that had accumulated in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of China for 250 million years. The result is this fragile and temperamental home of ours.

An unusually high number of mountains over 3,000 meters in elevation are within the confines of about 2/3 of the total 36,000 square kilometers that constitutes the main island of Taiwan. These high mountains and the winds and currents of the Pacific attract typhoons and rainstorms. The island is unstable, but those angels gradually negotiated a foundation with the accumulating soils and decomposing rocks: a stable base providing housing and food for all the other vegetation, animals and other beings of the island.

The angels, among them the endemic Taiwania or sometimes known as the Taiwan Cedar (Taiwania crytomeriodes Hay), Formosan Cypress (Chamaecyparis formosensis), the Luanta Fir (Cunninghamia konishii Hay.) and the Taiwan yellow cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa var. formosana) protected the island so well and for so long that it was aptly named Ilha Formosa, or beautiful island when the Portuguese showed up about 400 years ago.

Then, the foresters came. The camphor trees that grew throughout the island and who provided camouflage for the Cloud Leopards as they lie in wait for their prey of Formosan Sika Deer were wiped out for their oils and wood. The Chinese did some tree cutting throughout their early adventures in Taiwan, but the mountainous areas that are home to giants of the forests largely stayed hidden away in the territory of the indigenous people. Then, when the Japanese showed up with their technology, trains and growing appetite for the precious building materials, large scale logging began, first in the area around Alishan, spreading to other areas throughout Taiwan during Japan's 50 years of residence.

The decimation of our ancient trees really picked up momentum with the Chinese invasion following the end of World War II. Perhaps because Taiwan was viewed as a temporary point of regrouping for the assault on and "recovery" of China by Chiang Kai-shek and company, we spent nearly fifty years largely ignoring the incredible "others" of this island who have been holding things together for a million years. While most of the legal logging officially ended by 1990, the pillage continues in a number of forms even today. Unfortunately our new rulers haven't shown much interest in questioning fundamental assumptions that their predecessors held and which are responsible for the sorry state of our rivers, seashore, forests, air and soil.

Maybe this will change--action of all kinds is needed.

A wonderful translation of a wonderful article "The Giants of the Forest" appeared in Sinorama magazine and can be seen here.