The Taiwan Strait and the Caribbean Sea appear at the same time as a new treasure island for the people of the mountains and seas!

This book was first seen in a bookstore. The title and cover design made me mistakenly think that it was a variety show orientation of "Ukiyo-e", so I didn't pay much attention to it. Later, I learned from this article that it turned out to be a novel with a very strong plot: Taiwan and Cuba have moved the world and exchanged, but only people can change places. No wonder the title of the book is called "The Formosa Exchange" in English. I came across this book in the library a few days ago. It was raining in the holiday town during the Mid-Autumn Festival. It was just right for Woju to read the book.

What I admire most from the bottom of my heart is the author's novelist Huang Chongkai's ability to methodically weave several events from different time and space into a vast story spanning more than seventy years (1953-2028) and spanning the edge of the eastern and western continental shelves. The main axis is the "great exchange" between Taiwan and Cuba in 2024, which will make Taiwan's newly inaugurated President Tsou face a critical moment when he has to deal with great changes. The author intends to explore the heavy and absurd reality shaped by the geopolitics and history of East Asia (Taiwan, China) and Latin America (Cuba, the United States), but presents it as a pseudo-reality text with a light-hearted absurdity. On top of this text, it is like PKD writing "The Man in the High Castle " to create "books in the book", so that the objects of exchange can be upgraded to China and the United States, which may have greater influence. On the contrary, Taiwan continues to maintain the reality of this moment in 2022, as stable as Mount Tai. Waiting for the change, unexpectedly happened the strange thing that Pooh who came to Taiwan for a meeting turned into a living corpse and was placed under house arrest... You are right, but the second half of this super-expanded plot is reminiscent of the movie "The Night of Pursuit" ", but it only appears in the scene of a book club in the novel, and it is not stated in the "book book", so the reader has to use the double illusion to unfold it by himself...

Huang Chongkai said: "When the beta test of "New Treasure Island", many readers thought it was a science fiction novel, and even expected the novel to explain the mechanism and reason of the big exchange... (omitted). But I don't think there is any need to answer, you just need to ask The initial setting, the use of imagination, and the presentation of problems are enough, and the next step is the problem of the reader's interpretation ability." This is also what I have learned from reading science fiction novels or watching science fiction movies for many years: all the great science fiction works are icebergs, and they are unrestrained in the sky. There is always a deep spiritual vortex or thinking energy under the surface of the surface.

In order to strengthen empathy and structure, and reinforce the recurring clues of the background setting, real people such as Che Guevara, the representative of the Cuban revolution, Tang Yingshen, the representative of Taiwan's aborigines, and Duvier , the contemporary representative of Cuban artist (Huang Chongkai knew him) ); fictional figures such as the aboriginal president Gao Zaisheng, a descendant of Gao Yisheng and Gao Juhua , a victim of the White Terror, and Ramon Benitez Fernandez, one of the many aliases of Che Guevara who was given the real body, all appear on the paper. In addition, NPC characters such as the anthropologist Malinowski, the pioneer of modern fieldwork, Salahi, the author of "My Days at Guantanamo", Hemingway, a great American writer who has a deep connection with Cuba, aboriginal singer Kimbo Hudev, Biden, Pooh, Castro, anthropologist Li Wei-Stuo and his Taiwanese translator Wang Zhiming of the famous book "Tropical Melancholy" - I only met this Paiwan name "Yashi/Yashi" by aboriginal friends. iyas", an anthropological genius who died at an early age, plus several famous baseball players who defected from Cuba and went to the major leagues to pursue their dreams... Now you understand, Taiwan, ancient, China, and the United States have gathered together, enough You have been wandering the present for quite some time.

But don't think that the story is complicated and difficult to read. In fact, Huang Chongkai has gathered a lot of skills, and he will cut where he needs to stop, and he will never be sloppy. The first time you read the new chapter, you will feel confused, but you know that there is a place for closing the Internet, so keep reading.

Huang Chongkai doesn't seem to have had enough fun yet. Before the end, he provides readers with a brain-opening example: Che Guevara's last footprint was not in the barren mountains of Bolivia, but hiding in the Alishan Mountains in Taiwan, with friends from the Tsou tribe in the mountains who resisted Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorship Fighting side by side, they finally reached the fate of Mona Ludao and Lu Heruo, and were buried in an ancient tomb near the runway of Chiayi Water Airport, which was one of the locations where the government forces trapped Taiwanese gentry in the historical facts of the 228 Incident. Do you want to follow the historical track and follow the road of "Formosa Diaries"?

Using double-fiction, negative and positive metamorphoses, just like Taiwan's antipodal point on the earth, which is coincidentally called "Formosa" (the name of the northeastern border province of Argentina), through the reverse side of things Only after "turning one hand" can you see the clear and original appearance, just like the principle of printing a negative film to a positive film, and like Duvier's mirrored media installation works, the holographic projection makes people unable to distinguish between reality and reality, magic and realism. This is a special style that is almost exclusive to Latin American land. Through this book, we also ask ourselves what it means to be Taiwanese, and we don’t need to “turn a hand” through the perspective of foreigners writing about Taiwan before we can introspect. Because Huang Chongkai has already helped your gods to function, not only one hand. In the end, I hope that "floating in the wind, neither life nor death, I don't know why I keep thinking about this, like a fictional place thrown at random" is just the description of the holographic projection in the book, not the future of us Taiwanese.