Standing up to everyone

Yang devoted his youth to farmers' movements in the 1930s and took charge in the movements' organization, earning praise as a pioneer of so-called "committed literature" (參與的文學) in Taiwan, a genre which usually depicts the poverty and misery of the poor and disenfranchised. Yang's strong opposition to capitalism even led him to name his first son Yang Tzu-beng (楊資崩), the son's given name translating as "the collapse of capitalism."

"Yang was not all talk and no action. He used his novels to correct the erroneous history forced on people by their rulers, and, moreover, he exerted his leadership on farmers' organizations," said Lin Juei-min (林瑞明), professor of Taiwanese literature at National Cheng Kung University.

Yang's legacy is simultaneously one of a social activist and of a man of letters.

"Yang's importance in the social movement outweighed that of his literary achievement," said writer Tseng Ching-wen (鄭清文). The Hakka author Chung concurred that Yang brought glory to so-called opposition literature (反抗文學) through his activism, despite the fact his writing skills and story composition were not first-rate.

Other critics, however, see a literary giant in Yang's writings.

Chen of Chengchi University cites, for example, Yang's masterpiece In Bud (萌芽), which he said is full of brilliant literary metaphors. In Bud is written in an epistolary style with a female tone narrating the dialogue of a jailed couple who nurture their child and grow plants in jail.

Yang continued to be as outspoken and radical under KMT rule as he was under Japanese colonial rule, Chen said. He introduced works by China's leftist writer Lu Xun (魯迅) to Taiwan, was highly critical of the KMT's policy to promote Mandarin and even encouraged young people in Taiwan to organize self-defense corps to fight the KMT, all of which could have earned him a death sentence.

To silence him, the KMT tried locking him up. But even that did not work. During his 12-year imprisonment on Green Island (綠島), which began in 1949, Yang wrote letters home, literary works on the jail wall and critiques dubbed "roses that cannot be squelched" (壓不扁的玫瑰).

Yang finished his days at his own Tonghai Garden (東海花園), living a simple and reclusive life as a horticulturist. "His thatched cottage was so shabby that you could see giant mice run across it from time to time," Chung said.

"Yang was a very quiet person. He could read at his desk without uttering a word all day," said Lin, who spent a year with Yang.

Yang's granddaughter described the writer as a typical Taiwanese grandfather, who was at times childlike. "He was a very innocent, romantic and optimistic person, who insisted on distancing himself from power," she said, summing up the man's three driving motivations in life as knowledge, labor and social movements.