Wu learned that the hard way after completing Getting to Know Taiwan, a series of new textbooks in the island's junior high school curriculum. Public hearings in June to review the books led to both television debates and egg-hurling protests. Critics, mainly champions of reunification with China, charge that the texts support Taiwan independence and paint an unrealistically rosy picture of Japan's occupation of the island from 1895 to 1945. The ruckus can be traced back to Taipei's protective attitudes toward education. Even during the liberalized political climate of the past decade, textbooks used from grades one through nine remained basically the same as those brought to the island by the Kuomintang in 1949.
China dominates the narrative, while Taiwan is portrayed as a small, unimportant province.
As a result, graduates learn precious little about the island they call home. While nearly everyone agrees on the need for updated history books, a compromise on the content's political bent has been elusive. More than 1,000 researchers, professors, teachers, students, politicians and journalists worked for seven years writing and editing the new series. The final version released in May prompted loud cries of political bias. After several editors received threatening telephone calls, the texts were sent back for more tweaking.