Leaving on a jet plane, a photo by Fields of View, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.
Greetings, dear readers! My apologies for the long delay in posting, but it’s because I was packing and leaving Taipei. (cue sad music, movie credits, etc) However! All is not lost! Chin up, disconsolate selves who wish the girl would stay in Formosa (including me!), and consider this: I have much more to write about and reflect upon from my last few months. And then, once I get back to the States, the blog has many possible future lives in its, well, future…
All of these things to be determined and executed, but for now, I am spending a transitional month traveling in Japan and in California, as I finish up research on my grandfather Liao Wen-Yi’s life (15 years of which was in Japan, SCORE! and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution has a whole Taiwan KMT/independence archive– double SCORE!) and wind my way back towards home.
So I will try to stay connected to all of you via the blog, and continue to consider the nature of travel and transience and research and writing, and TAIWAN (as I get nostalgic for foods and drinks and places I will wax even more poetically about them, right?)….. but in the meantime, I turn my eyes to you, dear readers.
What else do you want to hear about Formosa? Please weigh in NOW, in the comments section, so I can make sure in upcoming posts that I answer your questions, tell you no lies, and strive to entertain and inform on this topic in this format, for just a tiny (or very long) bit longer.
So please please please tell me: What else do you want to hear about? Give me some topics and I will write a post inspired by YOU!!!
Some possible topics include but are not limited to: more food and travel around Taiwan posts/advice, on the traveling life, on writing, on research, Taiwanese history findings, how to travel to Tokyo on a shoestring, top 5 (or 10 or 100) things you should do in Taipei while you’re there, the unbearable lightness of being… (the feeling, not the book, ha), cooking in Taiwan, beaches, hikes, and so forth.
Also to everyone in New York, Cali, England (and elsewhere) and in Taiwan: I miss you. My heart is now being pulled towards the east and the west and every which way, so I hope I will see you all soon. And to some of you in the SF area, that soon is going to be now…. before you know it! Now please, help me out and ask some questions!
Girl Meets Formosa 
Congratulations on a year well spent, Kim. You’ve done so much and come such a long way from the beginning of your project, when you wrote that first essay. So much research, so much writing, so much experience. And so many good things yet to come. This is an inspiring blog and I will show it to my students in the Fall 2011 grad nonfiction workshop. They are just beginning their MFA programs and looking for ways to make their ideas become more tangible creations. –Doug
My colleague, Kara Mae Brown, told me about your blog, Kim. Fascinating! I’d love to hear more about your research in Taiwan, Japan, Stanford… I’m currently doing some work on George Kerr’s Formosa Betrayed, by the way.