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Night was falling when sergeant Pa Wen-shan rode his motorcycle up the steep, narrow road that leads home. It had been a long journey. Four hours on the train from Chiayi, then another 45 minutes on the road from the station in Taitung, the only city on Taiwan s remote south-east coast. Once the Pacific fell back behind him and he entered the valley where Jialan, his village, is located, a rush of cool air dried the sweat on his face. The village sits on a slim, slanted plateau. Pa, then 25, passed the baseball field where he played as a boy. The cemetery where his father was buried a month earlier. On the final ascent to his family s home, he saw that the neighbours had started drinking. Sitting around wood fires in front of their one-storey cement houses, they called out to him: Galawas! ....