In Search of the River God

谢海盟成都时代出版社 · ChinaFeb 2023

Rating 3.8
Word count
160K words
Chapters
23
ISBN
9787546431727

Tags

Travel Human GeographyCity WanderingWaterway ArchaeologyEnvironmental ChangeNature ObservationLocal AffectionHumanistic CareSlow ReadingDaily ReflectionsField Exploration

Summary

Taipei was once a lake, but today it has changed from a city of water into a city of land. In 2010, the writer Shu Kuo-chih published Water City Taipei. Hsieh Hai-meng was deeply inspired after reading it, and so, rain or shine, walked across Taipei for seven full years, on foot for at least five hours a day, surveying the surviving traces of Taipei's waterways and retrieving those buried, vanished rivers, telling them: what is your name?

This "river-finding journey," carried out through field surveys and rigorous textual research, not only records the "water city Taipei" buried beneath the modern metropolis but also revives the urban history and island memory once witnessed by the river gods and now forgotten: the fiery years of Wansheng Street, Sanmao's Shulan Street, Wang Wen-hsing's Kishu-an, Lane 95 of Guling Street, the floating lotuses of Shangpi, the East and West Shen Great Drain, Grandpa Shuchang's Ruyi New Village, the Wenzhou Street of Kuo Song-fen's writings, the golden years of the Daan Branch Line, and the Liugong Canal that carries the memories of countless Taipei residents...

The River God Hunt is a young person's deeply affectionate gaze at the city where they live: restrained yet solitary, cold in manner yet revealing deep feeling. It is at once a rich, detailed, and highly illuminating urban river chronicle that considers the relationship between people and land, people and architecture, and explores what an ideal city is and how to achieve it; and also a collection of reflective essays exploring the city's cultural memory. This is the dual significance—natural and humanistic—of The River God Hunt's writing.

Editor's review

The value of The River God Hunt lies not in its conclusions but in its method: a young person walks back, segment by segment, the buried waterways of Taipei over seven years and more than five hours of walking each day. Hsieh Hai-meng places field surveys alongside documentary research, so that place names such as Liugong Canal, the floating lotuses of Shangpi, Kishu-an, and Wenzhou Street are no longer symbols on a map but tangible urban memory. The book is cold and restrained throughout, yet reveals deep feeling in its details; it is both an urban river chronicle and a reflective essay on how people should live with land and architecture. It suits slow reading on a commute or before sleep, inviting readers to reexamine the roads and waterways of their own cities through the author's words; after finishing, one might follow the map and walk a stretch, experiencing "finding rivers" as a way of understanding a city.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read first the chapters on place names you know from the table of contents, then connect the whole book in spatial order.
  2. Prepare a Taipei map or digital map and mark the waterways mentioned in the book as you read.
  3. Read one or two chapters a day, leaving time to digest the passages where research and lyrical writing intertwine.
  4. After finishing, choose a route from the book and walk it in person, recording your own observations.

About the publisher

成都时代出版社 China · Founded in 1985

Chengdu Times Press is a comprehensive publishing house whose output spans popular science, modern romance, time-travel and alternate-history fiction, wuxia novels, and social fiction. Although the database contains only seven titles, they already show considerable breadth: popular-science works such as The First Fossil Hunters, involving authors including Adrienne Mayor, Xing Lida, and Ding Guozong, sit alongside novels such as Timing Love, Zhenxiang, Here: Lighting the Lotus, Yongfeng Inn, The Wind and Dust of a Medical Journey, and Roots, which range across romance, alternate worlds, wuxia, and realistic themes. Its authors include Shijin, Yanmao yu Jiu, Jiang Xueluo, Lü Jiafa, and Liu Wei. Because public information is limited, its publishing profile can currently be described only in terms of the diverse subjects reflected in these titles and a balance between popular science and genre fiction.

Contents

  1. 版权信息
  2. 瑠公圳与雾里薛圳
  3. 瑠公圳第一干线
  4. 蟾蜍山/芳兰山下
  5. 大巨蛋：“社运年”之我见我思
  6. 旧里族支线：小乖与小璇
  7. 刷一层灰的民生社区
  8. 雾里薛圳
  9. “安东街河”
  10. 舒兰河上
  11. 我们家在康乐里
  12. “三与三”
  13. 上埤
  14. 浮水莲花
  15. 一场华美大梦
  16. 安和路/顶好河
  17. 东西神大排
  18. 黄金岁月
  19. 大河
  20. 小河们
  21. 新店瑠公圳
  22. 在瑠公圳边抓宝可梦
  23. 后记

FAQ

Is this book a novel or documentary writing? It is documentary urban river chronicle and reflective essay, based on the author's field surveys and documentary research; it is not a fictional novel. What the book records are the surviving or vanished traces of Taipei's waterways and the memories of related people.
Can readers unfamiliar with Taipei read it? Yes. The book involves specific place names and history, but its core concern is the relationship between people and land, and between the city and water. Readers unfamiliar with Taipei can still draw methodological inspiration from it; they simply need maps to help understand the spaces.
Why did the author walk for seven years? Inspired by Shu Kuo-chih's Water City Taipei, the author chose to survey Taipei's surviving waterways on foot, at least five hours a day, using bodily experience to supplement the urban details that documents cannot present. Seven years is the time span of this sustained practice.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

谢海盟 Author

Xie Haimeng is a writer about whom limited public information is available. Their work spans film documentation, travel writing, and literary appreciation. Around the film The Assassin, Xie wrote Xingyun Ji: A Side Record of the Filming of The Assassin, an up-close account of the production process, while What Is the Ninety Percent of The Assassin That Was Never Filmed? presents, in the form of a humanities talk, ideas and choices left off the screen. Another work, Searching for the River God, turns to travel and local exploration, unfolding its narrative through walking and inquiry. These works suggest that Xie Haimeng's writing values process and detail, presenting the thinking, observations, and decisions behind creative work honestly to readers, combining documentary quality with literary sensibility for those interested in film production and humanistic travel.