Price: NT$350

The long-awaited memoirs of.James Lilley-former head of the American Institute in Taiwan and also former US ambassador to the Republic of Korea and People's Republic of China-are out in Chinese. Lilley, whose professional career started in the intelligence community, was literally born into a meeting place of the US and East Asia. He has for decades had a profound influence on the practice of US policy towards China and on the strategic thinking behind it.

These memoirs, published in Chinese in Taiwan though originally written in English, are of great significance to Chinese readers. Though the publicity campaign for the book was put off until the end of July 2003 because of the SARS outbreak in the spring, the publisher estimates that the book still sold nearly 20,000 copies in the three months of summer. The PRC accounts for a considerable number of these. Readers, especially non-professionals in foreign relations, will probably find most interesting those chapters on the "Wallabee" program, the August 17 Communique, the American six-point guarantee to Taiwan, and the granting of political asylum to mainland democracy activist Fang Lizhi and his wife.

But James Lilley's Memoirs does more than just provide an extraordinary perspective on the triangular relationship between China, Taiwan, and the US. Surprisingly, the book is also elegantly written, peppered with American-style humor, and filled with rich detail within the clearly presented general framework. Its high literary standard makes it a pleasure to read.

East and West are like two extremes that mutually repel one another, as all the while each side tries to find out what makes the other tick. Through centuries of exchange and conflict, the two sides have continually tried to understand one another, and since Marco Polo a series of Western "Asia hands" and "China watchers" have fed the Western appetite for the Orient of their imaginations through travel writings, novels, and memoirs. Even someone like James Lilley, who was born in China and has spent a lifetime as a front-line diplomat in US-China relations, feels the temptation-the provisional first title of his memoirs referred to his experiences in Asia as an "odyssey."

What is this book about really? The term "odyssey" evokes notions of danger and mystery. The Taiwanese publishing company, knowing what its readers are looking for, decided to give the Chinese edition the provocative subtitle, "The never-before-revealed inside story of US-China-Taiwan relations." Veteran ROC diplomat Frederick Chien, meanwhile, who knows Lilley well, describes the book as representing the political perspective of "America's second generation in China."

Indeed, Lilley is not shy about sharing his political opinions in these memoirs (which, by the way, were in fact penned by his son Jeffrey, who is the Moscow bureau chief for the Far Eastern Economic Review). He repeatedly expresses, for example, his view that Taiwan is not a "problem," but a "success story," and argues that seeing Taiwan in this way best serves American interests.