Taiwanese novelist Wu Ming-yi (吳明益), whose book The Stolen Bicycle (單車失竊記) was nominated for last year’s Man Booker International Prize, has said that China’s ignorance of Taiwanese culture raises cross-strait tensions, and that Chinese politicians are responsible for it.
Cross-strait tensions have increased because “China is ignorant about Taiwan’s culture,” which has been influenced by Aboriginal and world literature over the past few decades and undergone tremendous change, Wu said at a symposium on the myth of war in New York on Tuesday.
China’s politicians merely view war from a political perspective, seeing it as a means to achieve unification and create a great empire that is strong enough to challenge the Western powerhouses, Wu said
Photo: CNA
Unaware of the change in Taiwan’s culture and obsessed with uniting the nation and China, Beijing’s politicians are responsible for the rising tensions between Taiwan and China, he said.
“I don’t think the idea of unification can work out smoothly like a simple childhood game of war that focuses on the extermination of another country,” Wu said in an interview on Wednesday. “Forced unification is not that easy and will cause endless pain.”
Unlike Beijing’s stance on cross-strait issues, the Chinese intelligentsia is well aware of Taiwan’s situation and culture, he said.
In March last year, The Stolen Bicycle became the first work by a Taiwanese writer to be nominated for the Booker prize organized by the UK-based Man Booker Foundation.
It tells the story of a writer who embarks on an epic quest in search of his missing father’s stolen bicycle and soon finds himself caught up in the stories of Lin Wang (林旺), the oldest elephant that ever lived; the soldiers who fought in the jungles of South-East Asia during World War II; and the secret worlds of the butterfly handicraft makers and antique bicycle fanatics of Taiwan.
Last year’s Man Booker longlist caused a stir because Wu was originally listed as coming from “Taiwan,” but his nationality was changed to “Taiwan, China” on the international literary prize’s Web site.
The foundation first responded by saying that it had been advised to use the wording “Taiwan, China” as “the correct, politically neutral form,” but indicated it was asking the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office for advice.
“Since the publication of the longlist for this year’s Man Booker International Prize, my nationality on the Web page has been changed from Taiwan to ‘Taiwan, China,’ which is not my personal position on this issue,” Wu wrote on Facebook at the time.
His views were supported by his friends and fans online, who reacted strongly to the change.
The foundation eventually changed his nationality back to “Taiwan” on its Web site, saying that this was a result of “correspondence with stakeholders and additional guidance on the appropriate terminology from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.”
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