SMC Publications' retail outlet, something over 35 square meters in size, displays books on Taiwan Aborigines, history and geography, anthropology, medicine and botany. For many years this has been the most important cultural gateway for Japanese, Dutch, Belgian, French, and Italian scholars trying to understand Taiwan history or who have come to Taiwan to conduct field investigations. Publisher Wei Te-wen has made the collection and publication of books on Taiwan his lifelong hobby. The Taiwan Studies General Bibliography that he edits and sends out gratis contains bibliographies of Chinese, Japanese and English works on Taiwan published in Taiwan. Because the materials are so comprehensive and complete, the US Library of Congress since 1999 has been budgeting some US$25,000 yearly with a request to Wen to purchase for them academic titles on Taiwan.

The new map of China produced by the Spanish royal cartographer's office in 1575 is currently considered the earliest European map using the word "China" in the title. The top portion of the map is oriented not to the north but rather to the west, giving a different angle of view whereby the ocean between China and Japan appears to be an inland sea. Taiwan appears off the coast of Fujian.

A portal for Taiwan studies

Sixty-two-year-old Wei Te-wen graduated from the school of pharmacy at Taipei Medical College (now Taipei Medical University) and his switch from science to the publishing world was owing to his work experience while at college. Because he was studying in the evening division, he was able to hold down a daytime job with the Association for Asian Studies, then located on Jen-ai Road.

The 1960s was the decade of the Cultural Revolution in China, when the country was cut off from the outside world. Taiwan became the portal for sinologists from around the world studying China and cross-strait relations. The founder of the Association for Asian Studies was the famous Harvard University sinologist John K. Fairbank. He often visited Taiwan to collect research materials, and the association published many photo-reproductions of old wood-block texts, like the Da Qing Yitongzhi and the Sibu Beiyao. The long periods Wei Te-wen spent perusing classical Chinese works on the job sparked his later enthusiasm and ideas for pursuing Asian, China and Taiwan studies.

After graduating from university, Wei worked for three years at a foreign-owned pharmaceutical factory. He felt very strongly that whether it was work at a pharmaceutical factory, work as a pharmaceutical sales rep or opening up his own pharmacy, there was no lifestyle as wide open as that offered by the publishing world, and so he decided to make the switch. In 1976, with his own money, he established SMC Publishing, Inc., and created a dual focus on China and Taiwan studies for the company.

SMC's inaugural publication was the 30-volume Survey of Taiwan Aborigines that had been put out by the publishing office of the Taiwan Governor-General during the Japanese colonial period. "In the early years the understanding of Aborigines and contact with them by the Han Chinese was limited. It was not until the arrival of the Japanese that comprehensive field surveys were conducted," says Wei Te-wen. One American graduate researcher at the time actually got his PhD on the basis of this Japanese report.

In its second decade, SMC began also to deal with books on Taiwan studies written by Taiwanese. These included Ethnological Researches Among the Thao of Sun-Moon Lake, Formosa and books on indigenous psychology, a tour of the Taiwan Museum, the beauty of Chiufen and the story of Taiwan's railways, books ranging over the natural, applied and social sciences.

SMC publisher Wei Te-wen received a Golden Tripod for Lifetime Achievement in the publishing industry. For 30 years he has been tending the garden of the publishing world and is the premier spokesman for Taiwan studies and old Taiwan maps.

A dream book

But the trailblazing work of creating a local Taiwan knowledge base was a long-drawn-out process fraught with many pitfalls along the way.

For a book on the dress of Han Chinese immigrants to Taiwan, the editorial board visited the ancestral home of the Lin family in Taichung's Wufeng to collect pictorial material, and learned how the Lin family spared no expense to invite a master craftsman from Fuzhou to live in the house for three months making new clothes for each member of the family in preparation for a family wedding.

Thus did immigrants to Taiwan carefully preserve the Minnan culture. But Wei Te-wen discovered that, in the evolution of the Central Plains culture of China, Fujian and Guangdong were regarded as border territories and their cultures as "unrefined." Planning for the publication of Traditional Dress in Taiwan got Wei to wondering--what is special about Taiwan culture?

"Although some studies have argued that Taiwan Aborigine traditions are close to those of the speakers of languages of the Austronesian language family scattered accross Southeast Asia and the Pacific, it is nonetheless the Aborigines that are most representative of Taiwan culture." Aboriginal cultural traditions were met with studied indifference at the time, so Wei Te-wen invited Lee Saa-lih, former director of the National Palace Museum's exhibitions department, to write something on the historical evolution of dress among Taiwan Aborigines, but this involved many difficulties because Aboriginal culture was not recorded or written down. Getting documentary material proved more difficult than expected, and pictorial material was even more elusive.

In 1996 Wei Te-wen discovered in an old book store in Japan a copy of Atlas Chinensis written by a Dutchman in 1671. In this book were six copperplate engravings of Taiwan Aborigines, which absolutely floored him. This, he thought, had to be the earliest pictorial record ever made of Taiwan Aborigines.

Seeing he still had a few hours before his flight was due to leave, Wei Te-wen pulled out the remaining Yen he had on him, worth about NT$70-80,000. But it wasn't enough. He then had a personal talk with the owner of the bookshop, hoping he would be able to first take the book home with him and then send the remainder of the cost once he got home. The bookshop owner was moved by Wei's sincerity and generously agreed to his proposal.

In 1998 SMC published Culture of Clothing Among Taiwan Aborigines: Tradition-Meaning-Images. After 20 years of Herculean efforts and the participation of scores of people, this book had gone from original creative concept to final planning and completion. Depicted in the over-400-page book were 335 articles of Aboriginal dress and 460 old photographs, for a price of NT$3,000. It was the first large-format book published in Taiwan written in Chinese with full texts and images that recorded the culture of clothing among Taiwan Aborigines. Not only did it comprehensively depict the aesthetics of Aboriginal clothing, it delved deeply into the culture contained in the clothing itself as well as its social significance. In one fell swoop the book won three Golden Tripod awards in 1999--for best book, best fine arts publication and recommended book.

To finish the book Culture of Clothing Among Taiwan Aborigines: Tradition-Meaning-Images, the SMC editorial board "went up to the blue beyond and down to the Yellow Springs" collecting images. After 20 years the publication finally saw the light of day. It is the first book published in Taiwan, rich in both images and text, that records the aesthetics of clothing of the Aborigines.

Traces of Taiwan history

Wei Te-wen, with his particular interest in and feeling for images, modestly says he studied science and was therefore not required to study history and geography, so that he frequently has only a half-baked understanding of history. "Sometimes written history is too abstract. If it is accompanied by images, history can be made to seem more real, and historians do have the saying 'maps on the left, histories on the right,' where each reinforces the other," he notes.

In 1990 in a Hong Kong shop specializing in old maps Wei, who has always had a special affinity for pictorial material, saw a map on which on which was clearly marked the name "Tchou Tchan Che"--Zhuqian Village. Zhuqian is an old name for Hsinchu. For Wei, who was born in a Hakka village in Kuanhsi, Hsinchu County, "It was like seeing a close relative in a foreign land, and I couldn't wait to get it home." From that time on he launched himself into the world of collecting ancient Taiwan maps and today has over a thousand of them. The earliest is a map of East Asia dated 1554 made by a Portuguese.

Going from a collector of ancient maps to becoming a pioneer in the map publishing industry and then being invited to be an exhibition organizer of old maps is something Wei Te-wen had never imagined.

Seventeen years ago a Belgian book dealer by the name of Weiss who had a large number of old Taiwan maps in his possession sent his son to Taiwan to study Chinese and negotiate publishing opportunities, eventually finding his way to Wei Te-wen.

These old European maps made Wei Te-wen's eyes light up. "We always had looked at Taiwan from the point of view of the Central Plains culture, never thinking we could see it through historical book collections from the West," he says. In 16th-century Europe the age of great ocean voyages and the expansion of sea power began. The Portuguese sent out expeditions to East Africa, India, and the Southeast Asian spice islands, and described in words and pictures what they discovered along the new sea routes. They passed by Japan, Macao and eventually Taiwan, gradually revealing an image of the island. Although Song-dynasty historical records mention a land named Pisheye there is no agreement on whether or not this was actually Taiwan, but what is clear is that the pictorial information possessed by the Europeans of the time was much richer than that of the Ming dynasty and that this was a very feasible direction to take for a publishing venture.

Wei Te-wen, seized by his unwillingness to just let lie old Taiwan maps wherever they might be scattered throughout the globe, frequently spares no expense and brooks no difficulty to go out and collect them. The Authentic Story of Taiwan and Formosa, The NMTH Collection of Western Maps Relating to Taiwan, 1600-1900 are premier reference books for the study of old Taiwan maps.

An old map craze

In 1991 SMC jointly published with a Belgian publisher The Authentic Story of Taiwan. The book included 80 maps made by Europeans between the 16th and 18th centuries. Moving from a wide angle and narrowing in--from the world, to Asia and then the island of Formosa off the southeast coast of China, the outlines of the island are brought into sharp focus. The book is bilingual, in Chinese and English, and is accompanied by commentary and explanations by Taiwan historians Wu Mi-cha and Hsu Hsueh-chi.

This magnificent pioneering publication, so long in preparation, completed in the face of many difficulties and the result of such highly focused effort was responsible for Wei Te-wen winning in 1999 the first Taiwan Archive Association Award for Outstanding Documentary Publication. He was also honored as a "Cultural volunteer who continues to devote his efforts to the collection of Taiwan documents, their editing, publishing and promotion." In 2004 Wei Te-wen also received a Golden Tripod for lifetime achievement.

In recent years Wei Te-wen has been invited to organize a variety of exhibitions. These have included the Taipei City Government's Urban Portraits and Through Space and Time--120th Anniversary of the City of Taipei, the Council for Cultural Affairs' exhibit Formose sous le regard des Europeens, held at a cultural center in Paris, France, and 400 Years of Yangmingshan, held in Yangmingshan National Park.

Many people are curious about just how many old maps of Asia or Taiwan there are in Western collections. According to Wei, more than a thousand years ago the Arabs introduced the spices of Southeast Asia to Europe and sold them at very high prices. It was even said that a grain of pepper was worth its weight in gold. Given this, the Europeans decided to go get the spices themselves. Subsequently, in the 13th century, came the visit to China of Marco Polo via the Silk Road. His travelogue talked about gold being used in the building of magnificent royal Chinese palaces and this filled Westerners with an insatiable yearning to travel to the East.

Wei Te-wen conservatively estimates that there are several thousand maps of Asia made by Europeans. About 40% of them were done in the 16th and 17th century in European countries for colonialism and trade. Maps from the 19th century done by zoologists, botanists and mining engineers surveying for resources account for another 40%. "The smallest number are from the 18th century because at that time China shut itself off from the outside. You can thus see that the making and existence of maps has always been intimately tied in with the international situation."

In March 2006 SMC and the planning bureau of the National Museum of Taiwan History published Formosa, The NMTH Collection of Western Maps Relating to Taiwan, 1600-1900. The book includes 207 old maps of Taiwan that will be the pride of the collection of the NMTH when it opens in Tainan in 2008.

The book analyzes the historical background, printing methods, and authentication techniques of the old maps as well as the NMTH's strategy for collecting maps. It leads us to understand how Western sailors first saw Taiwan from afar, depicted it as "a group of islands" and then accurately as "one island" as well as the process of expansion from the western shore to the eastern part of the island. It is a beginner's reference book to old maps.

Wei Te-wen, seized by his unwillingness to just let lie old Taiwan maps wherever they might be scattered throughout the globe, frequently spares no expense and brooks no difficulty to go out and collect them. The Authentic Story of Taiwan and Formosa, The NMTH Collection of Western Maps Relating to Taiwan, 1600-1900 are premier reference books for the study of old Taiwan maps.

That they exist...

SMC pioneered a new path for pictorial publishing, waiting for its efforts to bear fruit, and today Taiwan studies and graphic studies have become hot topics for publishing; but from a business point of view, Wei Te-wen has suffered. "In the last ten years there has been a downward trend for books on China studies in Taiwan. The number of books has greatly increased and all publishers have moved in this direction. There are a lot of people sharing the same rice bowl, and doing business is hard." Wei Te-wen even says, with a note of pessimism, that the future will be increasingly difficult. In the past, major publishers would do a first print run of 5-6,000 copies of a new book and be able to put out a second within a couple months. Today first printings have fallen to 2,000 copies because book buyers are becoming fewer and fewer.

Wei Te-wen says that over the last 20 years the most successful sellers for SMC have been those like herbal folk medicine books, which can sell in the several tens of thousands, while books that he considers of great value, and very challenging to do, like The Authentic Story of Taiwan, have a print run of 5,000 copies. After more than ten years on the market he still has copies of the book in inventory waiting to be sold.

"Taiwan does not have a map culture. Maps are alien and there is a kind of map illiteracy. In earlier years maps were strictly forbidden to people on national security grounds." But Wei Te-wen is not discouraged. If only he believes that a book can attract 100 influential readers, thus generating a multiplier effect, then no matter how out of vogue, how difficult the book, Wei will get it into print. Such books as a Hakka dictionary, an Amis picture dictionary and a book of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures are good examples. Because "their value is that they exist," cultural publications are both purveyors of knowledge and witnesses to history.

To finish the book Culture of Clothing Among Taiwan Aborigines: Tradition-Meaning-Images, the SMC editorial board "went up to the blue beyond and down to the Yellow Springs" collecting images. After 20 years the publication finally saw the light of day. It is the first book published in Taiwan, rich in both images and text, that records the aesthetics of clothing of the Aborigines.