Tue, May 27, 2003 page3

• Taking the nation's literature to the nation

  While the country's literary figures have been grappling with the concept of `Taiwanese conciousness' for years, veteren writer Yeh Shih-tao has been busy working to define it

  • By Melody Chen / STAFF REPORTER
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  No country can stand without its own literature. Taiwan cannot be a country without Taiwanese literature. So says Yeh Shih-tao (葉石濤), the country's first writer to declare that all serious Taiwanese writers must have "Taiwanese consciousness."

  The term "Taiwanese literature" first appeared in 1920, when a group of Taiwanese intellectuals founded the magazine Taiwan Youth (台灣青年雜誌) in Tokyo, said Yang Shun-ming (楊順明), editor-in-chief of Avant-garde Publishing Company.

  

  Yeh Shih-tao, left, receives an honorary doctorate from then president of National Cheng Kung University Weng Cheng-i in 1999.

  TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO

  Yang, whose company's major publications are of Taiwanese literature, believes the literature is influenced by the abundant canon of Chinese literature.

  

  Yeh Shih-tao, right, sits with his wife of nearly 50 years. Yeh is one of Taiwan's foremost literary figures.

  TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO

  What is Taiwan literature? The question has echoed in the hearts of Yeh and his fellow writers for years.

  Yeh was born in Tainan in 1925, 30 years after the Ching government ceded the island to Japan after losing the 1895 Sino-Japanese War.

  Born to a family with a rich literary background, Yeh entered primary school at the age of eight but had begun reading Chinese classics when he was six. He received a Japanese education as a teenager, since Taiwan was part of the Japanese empire.

  He wrote his first novel, The Matsu Festival (媽祖祭), when he was 16, although it was not published. He wrote his first published novel, The Letter from Lin (林君寄來的信) -- in Japanese -- when he was 19.

  Since then, Yeh's work, mainly novels and literary criticism, has frequently graced the pages of the nation's newspapers and literary press.

  The prolific writer and avid reader's literary odyssey began at an early age. While attending Tainan's most prestigious junior-high school, he was introduced to a range of foreign literary works, much of it French, through Japanese translations.

  Youthful interest

  Yeh was 20 when Japanese rule in Taiwan ended with its defeat in World War II. Six years later, his interest in books by Chinese communists, including a work by Mao Zedong (毛澤東), led to his imprisonment by the KMT government in 1951 on treason charges.

  Yeh had been a prolific and passionate writer before his imprisonment. When he was released three years later, his creativity seemed to have been stifled by fear and the brutal treatment he had suffered in jail. He did not write again until 1965.

  The works of the 10 years before his imprisonment -- from age 16 to 26 -- are a rare source of images of the lives of the people during the 1930s and 1940s. Very little other high-quality literature emerged from those years.

  Yeh did not formally start writing again until 12 years after his release. But once he picked up his pen he seemed unable to put it down again. Between 1968 and 2001, he published 42 books, including fiction, prose, criticism and translations.

  He first introduced the term "Taiwanese consciousness" in his 1977 commentary An Introduction to the History of Native Taiwanese Literature (台灣鄉土文學史導論), published in a local magazine.

  In an interview with the Taipei Times, Yeh explained the concept and why it is so important to the country's writers.

  "We were born in Taiwan. We grew up on this land and eat the food produced here. Shouldn't we identify ourselves with this land and its people?" Yeh said.

  "To have Taiwanese consciousness is to regard Taiwan as our collective identity. A writer cannot write if he does not identify himself with his own people and land," he said.

  "An author's works exist only in the context of his identification with his own land and his own people," he said, referring to his pro-China compatriots who see Taiwan an integral part of China.

  He stressed that it is wrong to interpret Taiwanese consciousness as a part of an effort to promote Taiwan's independence. Such consciousness, he says "is by no means unique to Taiwan."

  The Japanese have Japanese consciousness. Americans have American consciousness. Consciousness of one's own country is natural to all peoples, he said.

  "All peoples are identified by their countries. For Taiwanese writers, to have Taiwanese consciousness is to recognize Taiwan as their country," Yeh said.

  Yang said he basically agreed with Yeh's declaration that writers of Taiwanese literature need to have Taiwanese consciousness.

  "But I believe adopting Taiwanese consciousness as the only standard to define whether a literary work belongs to Taiwanese literature is a narrow-minded approach," Yang said.

  According to Yang, literary consciousness is a very complex matter. In some cases, Taiwanese consciousness simply cannot be used as the single standard to determine whether a literary work belongs to Taiwanese literature.

  "Let me be clear on this issue. Literary works that exhibit Taiwanese consciousness are definitely Taiwanese literature. But literary works that fail to exhibit Taiwanese consciousness should not be necessarily ruled out as Taiwanese literature," Yang said.

  The good or bad of literature should not be determined by whether it possesses a certain consciousness, Yang said.

  "My definition of Taiwanese literature is that all writings about events taking place in Taiwan should be regarded as Taiwanese literature," Yang said.

  As the literary pioneer of Taiwan consciousness, Yeh has often been questioned about his early patriotism towards Japan and his alleged "Great China enthusiasm."

  A report in China's People's Daily on Jan. 3 called Yeh "a chameleon of literature." The article said Yeh was once an advocate of"Great China-ism," which views Taiwan as part of China.

  The report cited a 1982 book, in which Yeh stated, "Taiwan literature has always been a part of Chinese literature."

  The report said that Yeh had also written, "All Taiwanese writers feel proud of themselves because Taiwan literature is an important part of Chinese literature." It then accused Yeh of "opposing, attacking and smearing the former Yeh, who was an advocate of a Great China-ism."

  Japanese nationals

  "Yet it is also wrong to say that Yeh loves Taiwan. Yeh, like Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), regarded themselves as Japanese until they were 20," the report said.

  Yeh rejects the newspaper's charges.

  "Those who accused me of viewing myself as Japanese don't understand history," he said.

  "History made me Japanese. I didn't choose to be Japanese of my own volition. The Ching government ceded Taiwan to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895," he said.

  "Taiwan was a Japanese colony when I was born. I was born Japanese. I had no choice but to be governed by the Japanese," he said.

  At the beginning of its colonial rule, Japan gave Taiwanese two years to choose whether they wished to adopt Japanese citizenship. Those who did not were allowed to leave the island.

  Yeh's grandfather chose to stay because his family and land were in Taiwan.

  "When the KMT arrived in Taiwan, I realized they were only carrying out another form of colonization. Taiwanese did not enjoy democracy or liberty under their rule," Yeh said.

  "At that time, China was still dominated by backward customs developed over the 5,000 years. But Taiwan, following 50 years of Japanese colonization, had absorbed a considerable number of modern thoughts," Yeh said.

  When the KMT arrived, Taiwan already had a law-based, modern society, while China remained lawless and hierarchical, Yeh said.

  Under Japanese rule Taiwanese intellectuals were able to study contemporary thought from the US and Europe through Japanese translations of those works.

  In the early 1920s, a new strand of Taiwan literature emerged in the Taiwanese New Literature movement (台灣新文學運動).

  According to Yeh, the movement was partly inspired by contemporary American and European intellectual trends. The magazine Taiwan Youth was influenced by those trends, Yeh said.

  "Under the influence of US president Woodrow Wilson's ideal of national self-determination, the magazine proclaimed `Taiwan belongs to Taiwanese.' Newspapers in Taiwan immediately embraced the ideal," Yeh said.

  He says that despite the cultural gap between Taiwan and China, Taiwanese still had high expectations of the KMT government when it assumed control of the island.

  "We knew our ancestors came from China. That is undeniable. That's why we accepted the KMT government at first," Yeh said.

  Following the Republic of China's founding in 1911, a major literary development was set in motion by the 1919 May Fourth Movement. Reformers, considering classical Chinese incomprehensible to ordinary people at a time when illiteracy rates exceeded 90 percent, called for the formal adoption of vernacular Chinese as the written standard, so that people would write exactly as they spoke.

  Yeh said although he had started learning classical Chinese since he was six years old, he could not speak Chinese and therefore could not write in the vernacular. As a native Taiwanese, his mother tongue is Hoklo.

  He started learning vernacular Chinese after the KMT's arrival. He spent roughly three months transcribing every single word of The Dream of the Red Chamber, a classic of vernacular Chinese.

  While Yeh committed himself to the rigorous study of vernacular Chinese the KMT, banned Japanese in the first year of their rule.

  "The ban triggered widespread revolts," Yeh said.

  He believes the main cause of the 228 Incident in 1947 was not ethnic tension but the cultural gap between China and Taiwan.

  When the KMT government took over in 1945, Taiwanese intellectuals, worried about being perceived by their new masters to have become too assimilated to Japanese ways, agonized about how to be seen to be Chinese. At the same time, the Chinese Civil War raged in China.

  "Were we to appear to be pro-KMT, right-wing Chinese, or pro-communist left-wing Chinese?" Yeh said.

  "I tried to become Chinese but failed. My Taiwanese consciousness started to emerge around that time," Yeh said.

  Close to the heart

  The emergence of the sentiment among Taiwanese is one of the themes of Yeh's semi-autobiographical work, a collection of short stories, drawing its name from the title of one of the stories, The Red Shoes.

  In a reflection of Yeh's early life, Chien A-tao (簡阿淘), the chief protagonist in the work, is arrested by police for reading books about communism. His arrest follows his viewing of the British film The Red Shoes one night.

  "In fact, he [Chien] is just a lamb who could be slaughtered at any time," Yeh writes at the end of the story, portraying the constant fear and feeling that there was nothing he could do to change his circumstances.

  He says that The Red Shoes investigates the conflicts experienced by Taiwanese intellectuals as they pondered how to become Chinese.

  Yu Chao-wen (余昭玟), a Tai-wanese literature academic, divides Yeh's literary output into four periods.

  The themes of the first two periods are "love" and "mercy." The third and fourth periods follow Yeh's imprisonment and Yu describes the themes as "cynicism" and "defiance."

  Yu regards many of Yeh's works of the latter two periods as picturing the dark side of society, full of black humor and displaying a defiant attitude toward the authorities.

  Peng Jui-chin (彭瑞金), editor-in-chief of the magazine Literature Taiwan, says Yeh's fiction and literary criticism are his primary literary achievements.

  "Yeh has never ceased writing over the past few decades. He has always been exploring new topics and experimenting with new styles," Peng said.

  According to Peng, in the 1970s, literature was contaminated by politics as the government sought to interfere with literary activity.

  "During that period, black humor frequently appeared in Yeh's fiction. Black humor was a way of protesting the government's intervention," Peng said.

  Yang said Taiwanese literature did not get rid of its colonial color until after 1977, when a fierce debate over native Taiwanese literature began. He believes the KMT, like the Japanese, was a colonial power.

  "The debate was sparked when a group of writers, led by Wu Chou-liou (吳濁流) and Chung Li-he (鍾理和), proclaimed the necessity of the existence of native Taiwan literature," Yang said.

  Their proclamation was viewed as a challenge to newspapers supporting Taiwan's unification with China. Yu Kuang-chung (余光中), a poet taking the pro-unification newspapers' side, even condemned the writers such as Wu and Chung as socialists, Yang said.

  "Nevertheless, many writers' Taiwanese consciousness was awakened during the debate," said Yang, noting the colonial color in literary works subsided considerably after the event.

  Yeh said his substantial contribution to Taiwanese literature, if any, is the establishment of a set of literary theories for it. He does not consider his achievements in fiction as remarkable.

  In establishing literary theories for Taiwan literature, Yeh was influenced by the 19th century French critic and historian Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, whose major work was The History of English Literature.

  "Yeh believes the three essential elements in a country's literature are ethnics, circumstance and history," Peng said.

  Apart from The Red Shoes, Yeh's best known works include Decapitation (馘首) and Descendents of the Siraya Tribe (西拉雅族的後裔), both of which are collections of short stories. He has written more than 100 short stories.

  His collections of criticism, No Land, No Literature (沒有土地, 哪有文學) and The Dilemmas of Taiwan Literature are considered masterpieces of Taiwanese literary criticism.

  Leading the way

  Yeh's most influential and significant work, however, is probably his History of Taiwanese Literature (台灣文學史綱), published in 1987. The book was the first of its kind. In it, Yeh divides Taiwan's literary history into three periods -- the classical period (influenced by Chinese classics), the Japanese occupation period and the postwar period.

  While talking about the dilemmas currently facing Taiwan literature, Yeh says the range of possible literary themes is limited in terms of space and time. He says most authors only write about life in modern Taipei.

  "Writers of the younger generation love topics such as travel and food. I don't think these are good themes. They are too trivial," he said.

  "Is Taipei Taiwan's only city? Why hasn't anyone tried to write about farmers' lives in rural areas? Do our writers care about farmers? Do they care about Aborigines' lives in the mountains?" Yeh asked. "Many fishermen shed blood and tears on the great ocean to earn their living. Does anyone care to write about their stories?"

  Yeh also encourages writers to broaden their vision and write stories taking place at any time in the island's 400-year history.

  "There is a tremendous amount of wonderful topics in the Dutch and Japanese occupations that is worth exploring. Koxinga's (國姓爺) reign also provides many interesting topics," Yeh said.

  Yeh, who now lives in Kaohsiung, still pursues his literary dreams. Rising at 3am every morning, he reads five newspapers daily.

  Although he was the winner of the 2001 National Award for Arts and literature, as well as of many of the country's other literary awards, Yeh said he regards novelist Chung Chau-cheng (鍾肇政) as the nation's greatest literary figure.

  "Look at his life. He has been writing so hard throughout his life without showing any signs of tiredness. His persistence is truly admirable," Yeh said. (They are the same age.)

  Asked what he thinks might be his greatest achievement, Yeh said: "For a long time the term `Taiwanese literature' didn't exist. But now most universities have courses on it."

  "What has been my biggest support," said Yeh, "is the dream that someday Taiwan may have its own literature." Now Yeh's dream has come true.
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