Book Review: The Sea Breeze Club

Which giant do you prefer?

Are there any legends of giants in your culture? What do they look like? Do your people still know these legends well? 

In Taiwan, we are an island nation with a diverse population and multiple linguistic backgrounds. Therefore, we also have various creation myths about giants in different tribes. In Hualien, a county on eastern Taiwan wandering between the beautiful rocky seashore and steep mountains, there is an indigenous tribe called the Taroko (Truku) Tribe, which resides in the mountainous regions of the island. The giants of the Taroko (Truku) tribe are quite human-like; they deceive and play pranks on people, which terrifies and intimidates the tribe members. In Taiwan’s novelist Wu Ming-Yi’s latest work, The Sea Breeze Club (2023, Initial Publish), he tells a fantastic but sad story about a final giant of the tribe and his last moments with the environment, animals, and people who do not know him.

But it is not only a story about giants.

Actually, it is also about a fight, a protest against environmental development, and how people lost and found themselves in this prolonged struggle.

Cover of the book《The Sea Breeze Club》. Image sourced from kingstone.com.

The story has two narrative lines: one is about the final giant; the other is about the village where the Han people and the Truku people live together, facing the challenges of land expropriation.

In the beginning, readers could find two kids encountering each other in a deep hole underground. One girl, one boy: the girl ran away from her father’s abuse, and the boy descended into the hole to rescue a wounded dog. They are exhausted from lack of food and energy. The need to go back home. But the girl does not want to go home. She is afraid of her father. And her mother cannot protect her. 

Then there were sounds outside the hole: someone is calling out their names. The boy makes up his mind. He tells the girl that they can exchange directions: he will go the way the girl came from, and the girl will go his way. He could check if her home is safe for her to return to. The girl agrees. They exchange pledges: the girl gives a book that she cherishes, and the boy gives a small steel knife made by his father. 

In fact, the holes are underground bunkers left behind by the Japanese Empire during the Pacific War in Taiwan. The novelist has mentioned in his other works that Taiwan is dotted with such underground bunkers. Children are far from the War, and those bunkers become protective places for them, whether in a practical or symbolic sense.

Here, the novelist employs a dramatic technique: he allows the giant to perform a trick that breaks down the barriers between holes. That’s why the girl and the boy can meet each other down there, as their homes are hundreds of kilometers apart. One settlement is located on the east side of the island, the other is situated on the west side. When people find out where the kids came from, they do not understand how they could have traveled from the west to the east on foot in just a few hours.

The girl is of Hoklo origin, and the boy is Truku.

In the girl’s hometown, her family is quite typical of the lower class. They are poor, and all family members must make efforts to contribute to the family’s economic well-being. What the beautiful little girl could do to benefit the family is to be soldl to someone who is willing to pay a good price.

What Wu Ming-Yi attempted to depict outside the story is a very common situation in early society in Taiwan: girls were often sold to affluent families to serve as concubines, or forced into prostitution. In this story, readers are left uncertain about the girl’s fate. But we know she wants to fight this fate, so she ran.

But the girl did not stay in the tribe. Later in the story, we will find that she returns with a very different personality. She is no longer shy and silent. She becomes a firm, strong woman with her little girl, named ‘Xiǎo ōu’ (小鷗), which means ‘little gull’.

She returns to the tribe because she knows there will be a very good opportunity to earn money. An important environmental development project will be built here. Soon in the future, many workers and engineers will move into this small village. Apart from work, they will have nothing else to do. They will need comfort. The young woman convinced the women who had sheltered her years ago to transfer ownership of an old, run-down karaoke bar to her. She simply refurbished it, put in a new karaoke machine and neon lights, and named it ‘The Sea Breeze Club’.

“The Sea Breeze Club” is a modern legend in the village. At the same time, we do not forget the giant. A sorrowful giant, who had lived for a very, very long life, feared being harmed by humans again. Therefore, he lay down to become a mountain, with one eye overlooking the sea and the other watching over the village about to undergo a great change. But the giant is too old and too sad; he is concerned with nothing and has lost all his interests in people. People forget him; they have lost the ability to see him. But all the animals know of his existence. They live in him. One day, a small, wounded animal was occasionally saved by the final giant.

It is a crab-eating mongoose, known as the “Brown Sedge Cat” by the local people. The crab-eating mongoose is a protected species in Taiwan, relying on suitable and clean aquatic habitats to survive. Once endangered, successful environmental restoration in shallow mountain areas in recent years has led to the removal of the species from the endangered species list. 

In the story, a crab-eating mongoose is injured by a steel trap, resulting in the loss of one of its legs. The novelist is a renowned nature writer, and an advocate for environmental conservation movements. In the chapters featuring the crab-eating mongoose, we can see the author’s concern for long standing controversial issues such as the devastating effects of traditional traps on animals, conflicts between shallow mountain animals like black bears and human habitats, and the loss and preservation of indigenous cultures’ traditional hunting practices. These issues are not unique to Taiwan but are social concerns worldwide related to the environment and culture.

We may consider the crab-eating mongoose represents the animal system. It will be an important bridge between the giant and the little girl “Xiǎo ōu”. The former symbolizes nature, and the latter represents the human community. But that is just one way to analyze the story. In fact, readers could find more important themes in the novel. Especially at the core of the story stands the protest: cruelty, and heartbreak. The description in The Sea Breeze Club of this movement often reminds me of Richard Powers’ The Overstory– also a long and heartbreaking protest.

However, the novelist clarifies that this is not an “environmental” novel. Not only is it about the continuous environmental development and the conflicts between nature and people, but it is also about what Bruno Latour is concerned with: Can we live together? From the reader’s perspective, it is a forward-looking work: once we have exhausted every inch of land on the surface, what will we have left? In our lives, what are the truly important things, the things worth protecting? The author raises a question through the actions of one of the main characters, “Xiǎo ōu”.

In this novel, the author combines the fictional legends of the giants with real environmental protests, depicting a world that blends reality and fiction. Next time when you have a chance to visit Taiwan and take the train to the eastern part of the island, just before entering the magnificent and magical landscapes of Hualien, you will first see the massive steel structures of cement factories. 

On the cover of the novel, the author personally illustrated his modern version of Odilon Redon’s “Le Cyclope”: two “giants” facing each other, one nearing the end of its life due to land development, with its eyes fixed on the beautiful village at the foot of the mountain, where another even more enormous “contemporary giant” lurks there, looking back at him.

Which giant do you prefer?

(Featured photo by Angela Hsiao)