As a book of popular history, “Power Up Taiwan” indeed brought out the fun side of general history writing. The author uses a lot of phrases like “the first” and “the earliest.” For instance, the first person who uses electric light is Liu Ming-chuan, and the first water power station in Taiwan is Gueishan power station, etc. Such descriptions easily amaze the readers with the history of Taiwan's electricity development. For a long time, we were used to viewing the initial period of postwar industrial history—especially the development of government-owned enterprise such as Taiwan Power Company or Taiwan Sugar Corporation—from the “reconstruction” perspective. Here, the reconstruction means the reconstructing process for the damage caused by the second-world-war after the Japanese were sent back. But as a matter of fact, we knew nearly nothing about the origin of the industry's development. The book could exactly mend the discontinuity of this historical gap.
