The Taichung Civil Affairs Bureau on Monday opened a special exhibition of 300 best-sellers that were banned by the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
The exhibition at the Taichung Literature Museum is as part of the city’s human rights and culture festival, and features books from author Liao Wei-min’s (廖為民) private collection.
Visitors can see well-known works, such as Jin Yong’s (金庸) The Legend of Condor Heroes (射雕英雄傳), which is widely considered a classic of the martial arts genre and one of the greatest commercial successes in modern Chinese-language fiction. The book is displayed in “the ridiculously banned books” section.
Photo: Su Meng-chuan, Taipei Times
Exhibition organizer Chen Yan-pin (陳彥斌) said there is no agreed upon explanation for why Jin’s historical fantasy was banned.
One hypothesis is that the title contains the word diao (鵰), a bird that also appeared in a line of late Chinese leader Mao Tze-tung’s (毛澤東) poem about Genghis Khan; another is that because Jin’s Hong Kong-based newspaper Ming Pao expressed views that offended KMT leaders at the time, Chen said.
Many books that touched on the political climate of the time were banned by censors, such as Long Live the Election (選舉萬歲), a story about civil unrest in Taoyuan in 1977 that was sparked by allegations of ballot-fixing, Chen said.
However, books were also banned because of the author’s political engagements in person or by association, such as The History of Taiwanese Animals (台灣動物史話), which was banned because its author, Liu Feng-sung (劉峰松), was the husband of dissident-turned-politician Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠), Chen said.
“From a modern perspective, it might seem incredible that books like The Legend of Condor Heroes were banned, but the banning of Jin’s book shows the absurdity of the authoritarian period’s preoccupation with imprisoning the minds of Taiwanese,” he said.
Liao, who worked for the Taichung Books and Journals Publishing Co and Humanity Magazine (人間雜誌), said censorship of literature started in 1978, when censors seized copies of Long Live the Election before they could be bound.
About a dozen titles were banned from circulation annually until 1987, when censorship was eased with the lifting of martial law, but it did not end until August 1992, when the Taiwan Garrison Command was disbanded, he said.
Liao said he voraciously bought banned books during the Martial Law era because he felt obliged to “keep the fire of Taiwanese thought” alive, and he often received “invitations to chat over tea or coffee” by the Taiwan Garrison Command as a result.
“We should treasure the rights and freedoms that we now enjoy,” Liao said.
The exhibition is organized by subject, such as proscribed books or rare books, with a section dedicated to works edited or authored by democracy movement pioneer Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕), who died after setting himself on fire on April 7, 1989.
The exhibition runs until April 16, organizers said.
FATAL FIRE: The health department is trying to contact the inspector who visited the site of the illegal nursing home to ask why they did not advise follow-up checks The Taipei City Government yesterday said that a health department inspector last year had visited the site of a long-term care facility in Neihu District (內湖) after receiving a report questioning its status. A fire broke out at the facility on Tuesday afternoon, killing three people. The Taipei Fire Department said that it received a report about a fire on the first floor of a four-story residential building on Kangning Road Sec. 1 at 2:38pm on Tuesday, firefighters arrived at 2:43pm and the fire was put out by 3:07pm. The firefighters found three men in beds and rushed them to hospital for
Taipei City Councilor Wang Hao (王浩) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Monday called for security improvements to the MRT, as fare evasion has increased more than 13-fold on the metropolitan railway system over the past five years. Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has spoken out against fare evasion and other contraventions of MRT regulations, but since he took office in 2015 the number of contraventions has more than doubled, Wang said, adding that there were 537 cases in 2015 compared with 959 last year. A video was posted to YouTube in June showing people how to evade paying a fare,
THE CHINA CONNECTION: As Beijing’s aggression increases, so does Taiwanese consciousness, making a new constitution imperative, Hsu Wei-chun said If the nation is to ratify a new constitution, it must first end any illusions about the current document’s relevance to Taiwan, an academic told a forum in Taipei yesterday. For the constitutional revisionist movement to succeed, it needs public enthusiasm, the right timing and a clear plan of action, Chung Yuan Christian University associate professor Hsu Wei-chun (徐偉群) told attendees at the event titled “Imagining a New Constitution for a New Era,” which was organized by the National Taiwan University Graduate Student Association. The Constitution exists under the “one China” framework and has little relevance to Taiwan, Hsu said, adding that
Yuchi Township (魚池) fishers have appealed to the Nantou County Government for help in dealing with an invasive fish species in Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), where it has devastated the local ecosystem. Fishers at Sun Moon Lake have been using electrofishing in an attempt to eliminate the giant snakehead fish — found in Africa and Southeast Asia — but they have struggled to keep up with the growing population of the species, which breeds during September and October, the county government said on Monday. The county has contacted researchers at National Tsing Hua University, saying it hoped they could come up
RSS