Introduction to Postwar Taiwan Fiction

Unit Three

History and Traumatized Lives—

The Stories of Chen Ying-chen and Guo Song-fen

Lecturer:

Richard Rong-bin Chen,

PhD of Comparative Literature.

Unless noted, the course materials are licensed under Creative Commons Unless noted, the course materials are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Taiwan (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) 1

Chen Yi [陳儀 ] was receiving an instrument of surrender from Rikichi Ando [安藤利吉 ] (Left) in the Government Building of Taihoku Prefecture in 1945.

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Wikipedia Taiwan Junior

Rikichi Ando (1884-1946)

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Chen Yi (1883-1950)

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Chen Yi’s Domination• Takeover? [接收 ] Or robbery? [劫收 ]

• 28000 mainland officials arrived.

• More than 100 thousand Taiwanese soldiers back to Taiwan.

• High unemployment rate.

• State Monopolies in sugar, camphor, tobacco, mining, petroleum, and almost all important raw materials.

• The Chinese Civil War.

• Inflation and food shortages.6

The Tragic Beginning• The confiscation of contraband tobacco outside

Tien-ma Teas House [天馬茶房 , literally, Sky Horse Tea House] in Feb 27, 1947.

• A bystander killed, 6 bureau officers escaped.

• On the next day, an angry crowd of protesters went, first, to the bureau, and torched it, then, to Chen Yi’s office to petition.

• The military police on the balcony of the office shot recklessly at the crowd with machine guns, killing several dozens of people immediately.

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The approximate location of Tien-ma Tea House at the intersection of Yen-ping North

Road and Nanking West Road8

Wikipedia C君

Taipei Branch of Monopoly Bureau(專賣局台北分局 )

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Taiwan Provincial Administrative Executive Office(台灣行政長官公署 )

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Wikipedia Executive Yuan

The Riots around the Island• The words about the massacre got around, riots

spread around the island like wildfire.

• On Feb. 28, the martial law was declared.

• Before nationalist troops landed in Keelung on March 8, Chen Yi played tricks on Taiwanese people and promised to bring justice back to the dead and to improve their political and economic plight.

• Meanwhile, Taiwanese people armed and organized themselves everywhere on the island, and some even claimed the independence from China.

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The 27 Brigade [27部隊 ] in Taichung• Established on March 6.

• Hsieh Hsueh-hung [謝雪紅 ] (1901-1970).

• Joined the Communist Party of China in 1925, received education in both Shanghai and Soviet Russia.

• Imprisoned by Japanese government for 5 years.

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• After the reinforcement troops came, Chen Yi regained control in less than one week.

• On March 17th, a day after the 27 Brigade was dismissed, General Pai Ch’ung-hsi was sent to Taiwan to investigate the incident and to comfort the people of Taiwan.

• On March 20th, Chen Yi declared a campaign of Ching-hsiang (to clear up hometowns), ordering Taiwanese people to submit weapons and to turn in the “conspirators.”

• Chen declared a list of the wanted on April 18th, in less than a month, the martial law was lifted on May 16th.

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The Aftermath• The death toll of the incident has never been

determined, and it varies from several thousand to more than 100 thousand.

• According to an official report published in 1992, the estimated number is between 18000 to 28000.

• Three years after the Martial Law (1949-1987) had been lifted, the incident was for the first time recorded in senior high students’ textbook of history in 1990.

• In 1995, 228 became a memorial day. 14

Compensation: After a memorial foundation was established in 1995, the family or the victims themselves started to receive compensation payments from the government. The memorial park: In 1997, the Taipei New Park was renamed as 228 Peace Memorial Park [二二八和平紀念公園 ].

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Wikipedia Taiwan Junior

Books about the Incident

• Ramon H. Myers et al. A Tragic Beginning: The Taiwan Uprising of February 28, 1947. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991. [A detailed study on the incident.]

• “The February 28 Incident: The Climax of Taiwanese Political Demands.” in Steven E. Pillips. Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945-1950. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003.

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• Sylvia Li-chun Lin. Representing Atrocity in Taiwan: The 2/22 Incident and White Terror in Fiction and Film. New York: Columbia UP, 2007.

• “Taipei 1947.” in Michael Berry. A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film. New York: Columbia UP, 2008. [It examines fictions and films before and after 1987.]

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The 228 Literature• Two Earliest Short Stories:

• “Trauma” [創傷 ] by Meng-chou [夢周 ], published in Chung-hua Daily [中華日報 ] in April 20, 1947.

• The protesters in the story are depicted as mobsters.

• “Blood and Tears on Taiwan” [台灣島上血和淚 ] by Po-tzu [ 伯子 ], published in Literary Life [文藝生活 ] in May, 1947.

• The nationalist soldiers in the story are depicted as brutal butchers. 18

Wu Zhuo-liu [吳濁流 ] (1990-1976)• 1941-1943: a journalist in Nanking.

• After the war, he worked for newspapers and schools, and established Literary Taiwan [台灣文藝 ] in 1964.

• Stories depicting the struggle of Taiwanese between Japan and China.

• Wu, Zhuoliu. Orphan of Asia. [亞細亞的孤兒 ] Trans. Ioannis Mentzas. New York: Columbia UP, 2006. [First published in Japanese in 1946, in Chinese in 1959.]

• ---. The Fig Tree: Memoirs of a Taiwanese Patriot. [無花果 ] Trans. Duncan Hunter. Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2002. [First serialized in Chinese in 1968, and its full-length version was banned in 1970.]

• The last chapter of The Fig Tree: “Massacre.” 19

Taiwan Literature and February 28th Incident

• Published in 2008 by UC Santa Barbara as a part of Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series.

• “Intoxication” [沉醉 ] (1947) by Ou-tan Sheng [歐坦生 ]

• “A Taiwanese Girl” [台灣姑娘 ] (1957) by Lin Jinlan [林斤瀾 ]

• “The Huang Su Chronicle” [黃素小編年 ] (1983) by Lin Shuang-pu [林雙不 ]

• “Journey to Taimu Mountain” [泰姆山記 ] (1984) by Li Chiao [李喬 ]

• “The Last Spring of the Commander-in-chief” [總司令最後 e春天 ] (2005?) by Hu Chang-sung [胡長松 ]

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• “Intoxication” [沉醉 ]

• A mainlander saved by a Taiwanese young maid.

• In the end, the ungrateful mainlander broke up with the young maid after having sex with her.

• “A Taiwanese Girl” [台灣姑娘 ]

• A mainland teacher in Taiwan and a Taiwanese young maid.

• They were in love, joining the “revolution,” imprisoned together.

• The girl died in the end.

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• “The Huang Su Chronicle” [黃素小編年 ]

• The girl went to the street with her mother to buy a knife.

• Arrested in the uprising, having a breakdown before being executed.

• Parents died, abandoned by her fiancé, overrun by a train in the end.

• “Journey to Taimu Mountain” [泰姆山記 ]

• Based on the life of the communist writer, Lu Heruo.

• Together with the policeman pursuing him, the protagonist died from being bit by a poisonous snake.

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Films about the Incident• Hou Hsiao-hsien. [侯孝賢 ] A City of Sadness. [悲情城市 ] Released in 1989, received Leone d’Oro prize of the Venice Film Festival.

• The fate of the Lin brothers.

• A bar owner, an army doctor, a interpreter, and a deaf-mute photo studio owner.

• Lin Cheng-sheng. [林正盛 ] March of Happiness. [悲情城市 ] Released in 1989, received Leone d’Oro prize of the Venice Film Festival

• From happiness to sadness.

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【 Chen Ying-chen】

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1937: born in Miaoli, raised in Taipei.1960: graduated from Department of English,

Tamkang College of Arts.Arrested and imprisoned in 1968 for engaging in

“pro-communist activities.”1975: President Chiang Kai-shek died, Chen was

released from the prison due to an amnesty.Suffering from strokes after 2006, he is now

living in Beijing.1985: established Renjian zazhi [ 《人間雜誌》 ], a journal famous for its reportage which was closed in 1989 for financial reasons. 25

“The Country Village Teacher” (August, 1960, from Literary Review [《筆匯》 ])

• The Atmosphere after the Retrocession

• In the first section of this story, we are given an impression that the atmosphere in the village was quite ambivalent.

• On the one hand, in this mountain village, the villagers were quite excited about Taiwan’s “recovery” (the Retrocession in 1945), there were even community theatricals arranged to celebrate this historical occasion.

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on the other, though there were five families in the village with young males who had been sent by Japanese to Bataan [ 巴丹 ] (one of the islands in the Philippines) without returning home, the village people were not sorrowful since “in wartime people get used to conscription and casualties” (39).

Also, since nobody knew “what year they [the five boys] had died,” they were quite indifferent to their deaths (39). For those who had not been a part of the war in the Southeast Asia, the remote tropical island was seen as a place filled with various elements of curiosity, such as “smoke from explosives, ocean beaches and the sun, jungles and malaria” (39).

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Source: Chen Ying-chen.(1986).  (Lucien Miller Trans.) . Exiles at home : short stories. Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

Veterans and the SocietyIn the past century, veterans have been treated

by their fellow countrymen with great indifference, and I think this is a very important question in the global trans-cultural historical reality.

For example, in the popular culture of the States, we can see that many veterans of the Vietnamese War, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War have been depicted as unable to rejoin the society due to a widely felt hostility in their original community or family.

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The Protagonist as an Intellectual

Wu the Protagonist. In the second section, the story’s main character, Wu

Chin-hsiang, a twenty-six-year-old Taiwanese veteran back from Borneo, is depicted as an ex-member of the Taiwanese Anti-Japanese Movement, a new elementary school teacher with only seventeen students to teach, and an intellectual (also a nationalist) with admirable ideals. After the war, “all of his pre-war fervor came back” (42).

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Source: Chen Ying-chen.(1986).  (Lucien Miller Trans.) . Exiles at home : short stories. Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

Wu and his students. as a son of an impoverished tenant farmer, he had “a

deep feeling and knowledgeable sympathy for laborers,” and he also yearned for a “hope for reform” his own country and people, to eradicate all the pre-war oppressions by the officials and military police.

He loved his students to the point of feeling a reverence for them because, though they were sons and daughters of farmers, according to Wu, with the help from their teacher, their generation can establish “self-awareness and social conscious,” as “just and stubbornly honest” people, they could “assume the responsibility for reforming their own rural community” (43).

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Source: Chen Ying-chen.(1986).  (Lucien Miller Trans.) . Exiles at home : short stories. Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

The 228 IncidentReading the story historically.The next year at the beginning of spring, the

upheaval within Taiwan and the turmoil on the mainland spread to Wu’s isolated mountain village. . . . At this point Teacher Wu became aware of a disturbance within himself, and also of other obscure emotions. (43)

“For the first time in his life, he began to look at his fatherland and disregard present social defects and problems.” (43)

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Source: Chen Ying-chen.(1986).  (Lucien Miller Trans.) . Exiles at home : short stories. Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

The reflection on China, the nature of Chineseness.

At this point, Wu started to reflect upon the “foolishness and instability” of China (43), and became disillusioned with his ideal of reforming China and concluded that China was a country “so old in years, so indolent, so haughty” and to reform it was “something incomparably difficult” (45).

The protagonist of this story reveals the desperation and disillusionment inside a great part of the first-generation postwar Taiwanese intellectuals.

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Source: Chen Ying-chen.(1986).  (Lucien Miller Trans.) . Exiles at home : short stories. Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

After fifty years of traumatic experience of Japanese colonization (from 1895 to 1945), they felt overwhelmingly happy and hopeful about being embraced again by their “fatherland.”

After seeing what China really was through the February 28 Incident and the Chinese Civil War, however, they became unbearably disappointed with not only the Nationalist government, but also with China.

Therefore, the theme of this story is more a historical collective consciousness than an individual tragedy.

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Wu’s Corruption The first line of the fourth section is painstakingly ironic:

“Gradually Wu Chin-hsiang, the reformer past thirty, deteriorated” (45). At best, Wu was only a “failed reformer” who committed suicide in the end.

His traumatic past, the fact he had eaten human heart, came back to haunt him. After he revealed inadvertently his cannibalism during a drinking party (a going-away banquet held for the first of his students to be drafted), strange glances and village gossips followed him around, and he could not get away from the terrifying memories of the south, so he committed suicide in less than three months.

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Source: Chen Ying-chen.(1986).  (Lucien Miller Trans.) . Exiles at home : short stories. Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

The Reason for Wu’s Death

One might ask: what caused his death? Is it his disillusionment, or his cannibalism?

I thought the answer is more the former, rather than the later, because we know that at first he became disillusioned and corrupted, and then he became a drinker who “found himself inexplicably weeping like a child” (46).

As his ideals of reform crumbled down, his world of conscience and responsibility deteriorated, his tragic death was thus inevitable.

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Source: Chen Ying-chen.(1986).  (Lucien Miller Trans.) . Exiles at home : short stories. Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

【 Guo Song-fen】

Flicker pbear6150

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Guo Song-fen was born in Taipei in 1938, son of the famous Taiwanese painter Guo Shuei-hu (1908-). His wife Li Yu [李渝 ] (1944-) is also an important Taiwan novelist.

Graduating from Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, NTU in 1961, he took part in the editorial staff of Modern Literature [Hsientai Wenshuei].

In 1966, he went to UC Berkeley to study Comparative Literature, acquiring a master’s degree in 1969.

In 1971, like Liu Ta-jen [劉大任 ], he decided to drop his PhD career, participated wholeheartedly in the Protect Tiaoyutai Movement.

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In 1974, together with Liu Ta-jen, he went to Mainland China and was received by Chou En-lai [周恩來 ], the Prime Minister of the Chinese government. Therefore, both he and Liu were on KMT’s blacklist for almost a decade (the ban on their returning to Taiwan was lifted in 1983).

“Running Mother” [奔跑的母親 ] (1984) was published in The Seventies [ 《七十年代》 ], a famous Hong Kong political journal renamed The Nineties [ 《九十年代》 ] in 1984.

Guo suffered from his first stroke in 1997, and when the second came in 2005, he passed away in New York.

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“Moon Seal” (1984)• After the war, a woman helped his husband survive

tuberculosis.

• For her husband, she lead the family through the hardships of the 228 Incident.

• After her husband’s recovery, through the introduction of his doctor, he became involved with a group of leftists from the Mainland.

• Feeling lonely, angry, and jealous at the same time, the wife reported to the police that her husband had a whole case of banned books, ending many people’s lives, including the husbands.

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Not Only a Psychological Short StoryThis story is, first of all, a psychological story

which focus on how a middle-aged man face his complicated relationships with his mother.

The implication of the story, however, is nevertheless highly political and historical. For example, the psychiatrist, Dr. Liao, in the story was orphaned due to his father’s abrupt death two years after Taiwan Restoration (or Retrocession, 1945). The protagonist’s father had also joined the war for the Japanese and never come back.

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The Mother and the Son

”The war between mother and son to destroy each other never ends.” (p. 135)

”One moment she is running away from you; the next, she is running toward you.” (p. 135)

“Children, one day you will remember your mother.” (p. 137)

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Source: Guo Song-fen.(2009). John Balcom (Eds.) Running  mother  and other stories New York : Columbia University Press

From the two quotations above, I think, one of the main themes to be presented in this story is the ambiguous relationship between mother and son. The main character kept talking about how beautiful his mother had once been, but this figure withered away gradually because she had to become tough after his father’s death. (For example, she had to jump up and down from the truck like a grasshopper in order to buy some illegal rice during the war.)

The last sentence of this short story, is the final affirmation of a mother’s persistent calling.

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The MotherAlso, in the story we see a very distinctive

mother figure with both qualities of tenderness and toughness.

The mother was victimized both by the Pacific War (the father was dead due to the war) and the social convention (at one point she was forced by the grandfather to be re-married and to leave her children).

In works of war literature, women are usually more victimized than men.

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The Doctor The character of Dr. Liao also deserves some attention.

First of all, his mother, like the main character’s mother, was suppressed by the social convention of Taiwan in the old days. After the abrupt death of Liao’s father in the 228 Incident, his mother was evicted out of the family because she was consider to be an ominous woman who brought bad luck to the family.

Liao had lost contact with her since her leaving the family. For this reason, the fact that the main character’s mother was taken care of by Liao does not seem strange because it is quite natural that, with this action, Liao could compensate the loss of his childhood.

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Liao did not do it simply out of the duty of a good friend. Therefore, we might say that the contrast and relationship between the main character and Liao are quite interesting.

They were not only playmates and classmates in their childhood, but also patient and doctor.

Also, their mothers both suffered a lot from the historical and social reality of Taiwan in the 1940s.

In this sense, we can say that, as a character, Liao is not only functional (that is, not only a psychiatrist), but also a contrast to and comparison with the main character.

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The dream revealed his deep fear that his mother might leave them due to getting re-married, and this might be unbearable and a great blow for an orphaned child. Ironically, after he grew up, it was he who ran away from the family, rather than his mother. So the mother’s running toward the main character might represent the fact that he missed his mother a lot during his extended stay abroad.

Also, his mother said that she could not stand the noise of his children and that of washing dishes. Is it really so, or the mother simply did not want to be a burden to her son? The son’s and the mother’s attitudes toward the other were indeed quite ambiguous.

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3Wikipedia Taiwan Juniorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Control_Yuan.JPG2012/03/09 visited

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Wikipedia One of followings (Source specify photo contributers but does not specify who was the copyright holder)南支派遣軍各部隊将兵 軍報道部写真班 サウス・チヤイナ・フオト・サービス 同盟通信社 東京朝日新聞社大阪毎日・東京日々新聞社 読売新聞社http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ando_Rikichi.jpg2012/03/09 visited

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24Wikipedia C.I.K.http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chenyingzhen.jpg2012/03/06 visited

27 in wartime people get used to conscription and casualties

Chen Ying-chen.(1986) The Country Village TeacherLucien Miller(translated ) Exiles at home : short stories (pp.39)Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

27 what year they [the five boys] had died,

Chen Ying-chen.(1986) The Country Village TeacherLucien Miller(translated ) Exiles at home : short stories (pp.39)Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

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Copyright DeclarationPage Work Licensing Author/Source

27smoke from explosives, ocean beaches and the sun, jungles and malaria

Chen Ying-chen.(1986) The Country Village TeacherLucien Miller(translated ) Exiles at home : short stories (pp.39)Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

29 all of his pre-war fervor came back

Chen Ying-chen.(1986) The Country Village TeacherLucien Miller(translated ) Exiles at home : short stories (pp.42)Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

30

self-awareness and social conscious,” as “just and stubbornly honest” people, they could “assume the …own rural community

Chen Ying-chen.(1986) The Country Village TeacherLucien Miller(translated ) Exiles at home : short stories (pp.43)Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

31The next year at the beginning … and also of other obscure emotions

Chen Ying-chen.(1986) The Country Village TeacherLucien Miller(translated ) Exiles at home : short stories (pp.43)Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

31

For the first time in his life, he began to look at his fatherland and disregard present social defects and problems

Chen Ying-chen.(1986) The Country Village TeacherLucien Miller(translated ) Exiles at home : short stories (pp.43)Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

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so old in years, so indolent, so haughty” and to reform it was “something incomparably difficult

Chen Ying-chen.(1986) The Country Village TeacherLucien Miller(translated ) Exiles at home : short stories (pp.43)Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

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32 foolishness and instabilityChen Ying-chen.(1986) The Country Village Teacher(Lucien Miller, Trans.). Exiles at home : short stories (pp.45)Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

34Gradually Wu Chin-hsiang, the reformer past thirty, deteriorated

Chen Ying-chen.(1986) The Country Village Teacher(Lucien Miller, Trans.). Exiles at home : short stories (pp.45)Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

35 found himself inexplicably weeping like a child

Chen Ying-chen.(1986) The Country Village Teacher(Lucien Miller, Trans.). Exiles at home : short stories (pp.46)Ann Arbor : Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

36Flickr pbear6150http://www.flickr.com/photos/pbear6150/26499797/2012/03/06 visited

41The war between mother and son to destroy each other never ends.

Guo Song-fen.(2009). Running MotherJohn Balcom (Eds.) Running  mother  and other stories (pp.135)New York : Columbia University Press

41One moment she is running away from you; the next, she is running toward you.

Guo Song-fen.(2009). Running MotherJohn Balcom (Eds.) Running  mother  and other stories (pp.135)New York : Columbia University Press

50

Copyright DeclarationPage Work Licensing Author/Source

41 Children, one day you will remember your mother.

Guo Song-fen.(2009). Running MotherJohn Balcom (Eds.) Running  mother  and other stories (pp.137)New York : Columbia University Press

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