Sex & Taipei City

"e;In these tales of love, lust and relationships gone awry, Yun-Han Chao portrays a city and culture of secret desires, hidden passions, and endless regret."e; -Home Planet NewsSex in Taipei City is not what one expects: it is repressed, traded for cash, vengeful, sometimes awkward and almost always secretive. In Sex & Taipei City, a diverse cast of characters finds relationships more trouble than they bargained for. Some are young and innocent: a teenager loses her virginity to a Ching Dynasty torture device in her family's Strange Objects Museum. Some are far from innocent: a schoolgirl sells her body as an odd form of revenge and a grandfather alienates his family by watching Japanese porn at too loud a volume. For others, sexuality is a battle: a wife leaves her husband over a sexist joke, a foreign nanny steals an American baby, a mail order bride runs away, and a "e;spinster"e; beats up a pervert in the MRT station. "e;From the fascinating quirks of food obsessions to the odd-but-seemingly-ordinary erotic moments of Taiwanese citizens, Yu-Han Chao's Sex & Taipei City's stories unfold a world of both the exotic and the familiar, captured in squirmy, disarming details . . . Funny, bold, and in moments, heartbreaking, these nineteen stories make up a stunning debut."e; William J. Cobb, author of The Bird Saviors"e;Contemporary Taiwan's contradictions come to life in Yu-Han Chao's wonderful and gossipy collection Sex and Taipei City . . . These are the stories shared between rounds of karaoke that are so juicy and awful, you don't realize it when your song comes on."e; Ed Lin, author of the Taipei Night Market novels