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Chan Wai, perhaps contemporary Hong Kong’s most talented storyteller and scriptwriter, first came into the public eye working on TV and film production teams during the colony’s “glory days” of film and television. She was a member of the writing team behind the fondly remembered Hong Kong film Comrades: Almost a Love Story and other projects as well as a firsthand witness to the “golden years” of Hong Kong cinema.

If Han Banqing’s The Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai and Jin Yucheng’s Blossoms can be said to capture the essence of Shanghai, then The Memory Keepers in Ashes surely encapsulates Hong Kong’s late-twentieth-century verve. The best years of Hong Kong are beautifully told through the lens of the lives of fortune led by Lin Shing, Song Wan, and their ten children. However, these halcyon days of spectacular growth and prosperity face an inevitable end, with a clock already winding down to zero.

The killer is revealed from the first page, but the author nevertheless keeps readers in constant suspense. The murders may be an established fact, but what was the motive? What kind of person is the killer? Is it even possible to have a glimpse into the inner workings of her mind? It’s a sumptuous read, packed with literary style that will have readers in mind of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

The author maintains clarity by distancing herself from the established narrative of the murders. As a work of non-fiction, it possesses two outstanding qualities. First is the author’s tenacious pursuit of the facts through exhaustive interviews with a broad range of subjects, including many individuals who were deemed “unimportant” by the media and court proceedings at the time. Second, the book addresses contested details, seeking out contradictory views and evidence. The diligently conducted interviews did not always yield the best results, but the author does fantastic work weaving the smallest gleanings into the bigger picture. In this sense, she is thorough beyond reproach, raising the ceiling for non-fiction writing in Taiwan.

A daughter’s tribute to her working-class father, a consummate tractor-trailer mechanic whose sincerest hope was that his children could study hard and escape the fate of a blue collar laborer. After earning a master’s degree in sociology from a university in northern Taiwan, the author turned her attention back to her father, analyzing his acquisition of technical skills and the influence of class structures on his parenting values.

One axis of the book views the development of the Taiwan tractor-trailer industry through the lens of the sociology of technology, exploring how the author’s father acquired the skills he needed to work as a fabrication and maintenance mechanic, his interactions with his coworkers and bosses, and how he defined his notion of a “good job”.

Another axis involves the inter-generational relationships and class divisions within the author’s family. How did the author’s father have such confidence in the value of his own labor and technical skill set, yet at the same time constantly praise the superior value of his daughter’s degrees? The result is an elaboration of an important site within the evolution of modern capitalist labor, which also touches on inequality in education, the culture of class structure, and other larger issues.

The “tender business” of the title addresses an unseen need of society: professionals who can see the deceased beyond that final mile on the road of life. The stories in this book are strung together out of grisly images of corpses, the laments of the author as he handles post-mortem cleaning, and his speculations about the lives of the deceased as he sorts through their material possessions.

The author has transmuted his criticisms and concerns for society into practical action. Through observations taken from his unique perspective working on behalf of those who die impoverished and lonely deaths, readers can feel the proximity of the bodies entrusted to the author’s care, and partake of his professional insights into the tribulations of those who pass their final years penniless and alone. The book is like a prism, reflecting a “connectionless” contemporary society in which we are gradually losing contact with family, the land, and community. At the same, light is shone on the areas of society to which the social safety net has not yet been extended.

In strikingly vivid prose, the author makes a strong case that the end of an individual existence, and the conditions under which it takes place, should be a concern for all of society.

Spanning many years, the foundational narrative of innocent love and unspoken affections in Lemongrass in Summer is fleshed out with convincing characters. Each stands apart as a complete existence. Even as they progress through various stages of life, their unique characters remain distinct.

The stage is constructed from elements of secondary school life in Taiwan: daily squabbles, student clubs, advancement exams, and anxieties over the future. The authenticity of the rhythms of student life – the ups and downs, the tightly wound bonds of friendship – all draw the reader’s admiring attention. The depictions of those beautiful moments of youth, so highly anticipated even if we believed they’d never come, capture an exquisite abandon that most adults no longer possess.

The author has inlaid this shimmering portrait of adolescence with the dilemmas of real life, setting up the misunderstandings, deceptions, and wasted words that always mar human relations, and bringing the story back down to earth, eliciting a call and response between youthful dreams and the possibilities afforded by reality.

It’s impossible not to admire the exhaustive field research that went into this novel, bringing readers into a world they would ordinarily never encounter: a police academy populated with characters and scenes so vivid they practically leap from the page. With this fictional narrative, the author questions the hard and fast rules of seniority that govern student life, the authoritarian style of education, and the faculty power struggles taking place within the academy. While the story is fictional, readers will feel compelled to take it seriously, as if the conflicts described in the novel were taking place in their own lives.

To put it succinctly, Number 70, Your Badge Is Crooked is a light read that deals with heavy issues – a book that, for all of its youthful brio, demands serious thought.