De-Sinification is an ugly new term that critics use to describe the nationalist cultural policies of Taiwan's current government. The administration of President Chen Shui-bian, they charge, is trying to eradicate mainland Chinese culture in Taiwan - by removing Chinese history and geography from civil service exams, reducing the number of readings in literary Chinese in high school textbooks and opening museums dedicated to Taiwanese literature.
But mainland Chinese literature is flourishing in the Taipei Botanical Garden. While the garden is well worth a visit to get acquainted with Taiwan's thousands of native plant species, it also has an area dedicated to the plants and flowers of the Book of Songs, China's oldest book.
This anthology of some 300 poems mentions 135 plant species, and Pan Fu-chun, a horticulturalist and soil expert, has planted 91 of them - those that can survive in Taiwan's sub-tropical climate - in one patch.
Dr Pan is a serious student of redology, the special branch of literary scholarship dedicated to the classic 18th century novel Dream of the Red Chamber, and recently published his research on the plants and flowers cited in the novel.
Critics of de-Sinification sometimes make it sound as if a second Cultural Revolution is going on in Taiwan - a tearing up of traditional Chinese culture by the roots, being replaced with an artificial and second-rate culture based on narrow ethnic prejudice. Dr Pan and his pleasant garden of poetry show that this charge is largely baseless.
So does the widespread interest in traditional arts like calligraphy; as well as the healthy readership enjoyed by Yu Qiuyu, a globetrotting, best-selling mainland author who is something of an apostle of traditional literati culture.
