A Year in Stories, Translations, Philosophy and Music

Happy New Year from Will Buckingham's Wayward Things

A week ago, I flew back from Taiwan to the UK, where I’ve been seeing family and taking a short break over Christmas and New Year. I’m heading back to Taiwan next month, ready for a move down to the southern city of Pingtung (屏東). Just before leaving, we signed a lease on our new home, bang in the centre of town and two minutes’ walk away from the morning vegetable market. It will be fun to be in a new place, making new connections.

But between the festivities here, I thought I’d squeeze in time to send a relatively short newsletter, to share some highlights from the past year.

My Favourite Project

It’s been a year of so many fun projects, it is difficult to choose a favourite. Early in the year, I was commissioned to write new, original fiction for an international research project on the impact of climate fiction from the University of Wrocław. I’ll post more about this in a future newsletter, but the stories I wrote went out to an audience of over 20,000 readers scattered across the world, to explore which is more effective in changing our attitudes to the future: stories of imagined dystopias, or stories of imagined utopias.

In January, I was with Hannah Stevens on a joint residency at the Taiwan Literature Base. We got a lot of writing done, and cooked up some new projects, both individually and together. Meanwhile, we were kept busy with our free public philosophy salon at the Wansha Performing Arts Centre in Tainan. Our topics this year ranged from the philosophy of ghosts, to the limits of philosophy.

I’ve also been translating, including comics from Mandarin, exhibition guides, and a new book about independent bookshops in Taiwan. And, of course, I’ve been busy working with students from Burma and beyond, on the faculty of Parami University.

But the thing that has probably been the most fun of all is the project I’ve been working on with Wind&Bones Books, bringing together the minoritised languages of Taiwan and Scotland, and translating between Gaelic and Taiwanese / Tâi-gí / 台語. Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese and Gaelic was published in June, with new, original fiction translated between Gaelic and Taiwanese, via English and Mandarin. It was a privilege to work with writers Kiú-kiong, Naomi Sím, Elissa Hunter-Dorans and Lisa MacDonald, alongside translator Shengchi Hsu.

The book was featured in a special issue of Taiwan Insight at the University of Nottingham, has been showcased at events in both Taiwan and Scotland, and has led to so many new and interesting connections. Oh, and the stories are brilliant as well. You can listen to them all on the companion website, in all four languages.

My Favourite Books

I always like to settle into big, fat philosophy books in the semester breaks, and give my mind the chance to grapple with something stretching, something that might open up new possibilities for how to think. So I’ve been spending the Christmas holidays reading Spinoza’s Ethics, which has been alternately illuminating and baffling. It’s one of those books that will repay repeated re-reading, and it will need to settle for a good while before I know what to do with it. I’d been intending to read Spinoza for a long time, and it’s good to have finally found the time.

In other books, I’ve particularly enjoyed Hunter School by Taiwanese indigenous writer Sakinu Ahronglong—a book that is both funny and wise, published in an exquisite edition by the brilliant Honford Star.

I’ve also been enjoying Return to the Motherland / 巴奈回家, by indigenous Taiwanese folk singer and activist Panai (who I’ve been lucky enough to see in two different, and equally exquisite, concerts). The book is only in Mandarin, but for those who can read the language, it has a lot to say about indigenous land rights in Taiwan, and the long struggle of Taiwan’s indigenous people for recognition and justice. Panai is a generally remarkable human being, and if you get a chance to see her perform live, you should. She’s funny, fierce and in every way a masterful performer.

More recently, like everyone else, I’ve been reading Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue. It is a fearsomely clever book, one that throws fascinating light on Taiwan’s colonial history. And although I didn’t love it as much as I’d hoped, it’s absolutely worth reading, and is a must for fans of Taiwanese literature, history and food.

My Favourite Music

I’ve shared this before, but really, I can’t recommend ‎Li-Sin Zeng 曾立馨 / Hug Muzik more highly. Based in Taiwan’s lovely city of Changhua (the kind of underdog city that I always like), genre-crossing Li-Sin Zeng mixes bossa, beiguan traditional Taiwanese music, elements of punk, and more, in intoxicatingly joyful bursts of sound. I went to Changhua to see the band play live at a Taiwanese language music festival, and it was the best gig of the year. Here they are performing Thiaⁿ-kóng 聽講 (“I’ve Heard it Said”), a tribute to the singer’s grandfather.

If you want to listen to the whole album, which came out a couple of years ago, you can find it on Apple Music and elsewhere.

My Favourite TV Show

Keeping on with the Taiwanese language theme, I’ve been binge-watching Taiwan’s PTS series Bô-sū chē bá-suh 無事坐巴士, or “If You’ve Got Nothing to Do, Catch the Bus”, a show in which the various hosts catch buses to obscure corners of Taiwan, to chat with boisterous aunties, hearty chicken farmers, grizzled artisans, artsy coffee-shop owners—in fact, to whomsoever they run into. It’s ridiculously wholesome, lots of fun, and great for learning spoken Taiwanese.

In Taiwan, you can watch whole episodes on the PTS public television website. If you are outside Taiwan, you can watch clips from the series on YouTube. The theme tune, incidentally, is by the band Tudi Voice (or 農村武裝青年: the name literally translates as “Armed Youth of the Countryside”). I’ve seen the band a couple of times this year, and they’re great performers. The song is very catchy too. You can listen here.

What’s Coming Up?

In the coming year, I’ve got a long list of fun things to write about here on Wayward Things. Next up—once 2026 is in full-swing—I’m going to be publishing the second post in my two-part series on divination and the art of choosing well. I’ve also got something brewing about Spinoza and Confucius, and philosophy’s fixation with death.

I have three books in the works, at various stages of proposal and or writing, and some more publishing projects in the works. There’s also a potential project on the cards with friends from the Tanimbar Islands of Indonesia, drawing together traditional philosophy, storytelling and weaving. I was back in Tanimbar three decades ago, so it has been incredibly exciting to reconnect.

Wishing everyone a happy new year! See you all in 2026.

All the best,

Will