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Yao-Chang Chen¿s historical novel
Puppet Flower retells the story of the 1867 sinking of the American merchant ship the
Rover and its aftermath. He brings to light the pivotal role of this incident in Taiwanese history, merging documented events and literary imagination.
List 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.
Summary
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.
