Dreaming in Chinese

Tsung’s debut memoir gives a firsthand account of an American-born Chinese man’s time in a Taiwanese prison.

In January 2016, customs officers stopped William Tsung at an airport in Taiwan, a country he had lived in for three years. After accepting a job while back at home in Los Angeles he’d returned to “tie up loose ends.” The medicinal edibles in his bag, legal in the United States, were contraband in Taiwan. He sat in a cell and awaited trial, eager to fight the coerced confession he had signed that implicated him as a smuggler and trafficker. In the meantime, Tsung braved the prison’s horrid conditions—inmates were packed into tiny cells and provided little daily water for cleaning. Every inmate suffered poor living conditions] and subpar healthcare. These men ranged from rapists to those like Tsung, who were serving time for drugs. Tsung bided his time until parole, determined to get back home and not look back. This revealing account blends pithy writing with a conversational tone: “And the snoring! Some of these mofos snored so loud it put me to shame.” It’s a blistering depiction of the Taiwan prison system; one gruesome aspect, the author writes, was the institution’s version of dental care, which mostly consisted of pulling teeth. Tsung himself developed rashes, blisters, and worse. The story doesn’t delve deeply into his mental state, only occasionally referencing his anxiety (the reason for his edibles). The author details the myriad inmates he encountered; some are characterized as despicable, but many others were good people stuck in unfortunate circumstances. The story has its share of welcome lighter moments, including the prison administration ironically screening pirated movies for the inmates. Tsung also praises his loving, supportive family, who often visited him and provided him with funds to purchase, among other things, his hygiene products behind bars.

A somber but enlightening and absorbing personal tale of incarceration.