During a recent visit to Taiwan, Christopher Lupke gave talks on translation of Taiwanese literary classics at events in Taipei and Tainan. These were hosted by National Taiwan Museum of Literature, which collaborated with Cambria Press on the publication of this book.
In a Facebook post, Lupke called Taiwan, where he lived in the 1980s, “an utterly welcoming community” where he felt “safer than anywhere else in the world.”
As Lupke’s landmark translation of this book shows, this wasn’t always so. By illuminating the links between Taiwan’s literati and the country’s tumultuous sociopolitical landscape, Yeh Shih-tao (葉石濤, also spelled Ye Shitao) indirectly illustrates this.
Under Qing rule, Taiwan famously experienced “every three years an uprising; every five years a rebellion (三年一反、五年一亂),” and major disturbances from this period feature in the opening chapter.
Among the first efforts to establish a literary culture in Taiwan was the Eastern Songs poetry society. One of the group’s cofounders, Shen Kuang-wen (沈光文), was an official of the Southern Ming, a holdout, rump state against the Qing Dynasty. While evading Qing forces, Shen’s ship was blown to Taiwan by a typhoon. It seems fitting that political turmoil and turbulent weather landed him here.
Heralding a new epoch, Shen’s Eastern Songs contemporary, Chi Chi-kuang (季麒光) wrote, “Taiwan didn’t begin to have a literature, but now it is beginning to.” As if foretelling the Taiwan New Literature Movement and the Nativist Literature Debate — turning-points in twentieth-century Taiwanese literature — these poet-scholars wrote verse “filled with nostalgia for the homeland and expressed passionate feelings of patriotic indignation.”
The official Lan Ting-yuan (藍鼎元) came to Taiwan to assist his cousin Lan Ting-chen (藍廷珍), a regional military commander, with the suppression of the Chu Yi-kuei (朱一貴) rebellion of 1721. Depicting Lan Ting-yuan, as “better versed in ancient stratagems for … bringing about social order than in the literary arts,” Yeh nonetheless credits him with providing an invaluable account of the rebellion in two posthumously published works.
Another literatus brought to Taiwan by the rebellion was Huang Shujin — appointed by imperial commission to conduct annual fact-finding visits. Huang’s observations on vendors who “blow their horns all day long, making a wretched noise” sounds like a contemporary Facebook gripe.
Civil strife also drew the poet Zhao Yi (趙翼) to these shores where he doubled as a Qing military advisor during the Lin Shuang-wen rebellion (林爽文) of 1787 to 1788. Two renowned bards were also involved in pacifying the Tai Chao-chun (戴潮春) rebellion of 1862 to 1865. While Lin Chan-mei’s (林占梅) contribution to social stability was more significant, Chen Chao-hsing’s (陳肇興) “straightforward and mellifluous” poems were superior. In depicting the uprising, they “possess significant historical value.”
JAPANESE COLONIAL ERA
With unrest quelled during the Japanese era, risks for literati changed. Figures such as Chiang Wei-shui (蔣渭水) and Tsai Pei-huo (蔡培火) were caught up in crackdowns like the Peace Order and Police Act (POPA, 治安警察法) incident — translated here as the Police Action Incident — of 1923.
Oddly, no mention is made of the arrest of Lai Ho (賴和) in the same raid, though the subsequent incarceration and torture that led to his premature death in 1943 are covered. As a figurehead of the Taiwan New Literature Movement, who pushed for the use of vernacular Chinese and even Taiwanese, Lai is considered the father of Taiwan New Literature.
Contemporaries such as Huang Shih-hui (黃石輝) and Kuo Chiu-shen (郭秋生), whose names disappeared before being rediscovered during the Nativist Literature Debate of the mid-1970s, are given due attention. Along with dozens of other writers, theorists and publishers, these trailblazers were instrumental in changing the form of writing from classical to vernacular Chinese, mirroring the May Fourth Movement in China. They also spurred changes in content.
Disagreements arose over the right direction as new literature entered “the mature stage.” For some, the goal was to refashion China’s cultural legacy “in concert with [the] unique nativist tendencies;” for others, such as Yang Kui (楊逵), who was deeply influenced by Russian realism, the focus was Taiwan’s soil and those who tilled it. Variations of this debate resurfaced in the Nativist Literature Debate.
WHITE TERROR
During the White Terror and Martial Law eras, the literati — including Yeh himself — were a beleaguered breed. Routinely imprisoned and worse, many practiced self-censorship or withdrew from literary activity.
Although the 1950s saw the New Literature Movement “nearly sinking into oblivion” leaving “a chasm in Taiwan’s literary tradition,” the chapter on this decade offers a fascinating perspective. A comparison with European works such as Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon “makes one gasp at the utter bankruptcy” of the government-sponsored anti-communist fiction in Taiwan.
Writers from the “mainland,” says Yeh, “were completely unfamiliar with this land and … almost completely ignorant of the history and people who inhabited it.” They did not try to understand the “thoughts and aspirations” of the Taiwanese “let alone even consider getting to know them.”
Given their usually privileged backgrounds, these authors seldom even offered insights into the lives of the lower classes in China. Still, says Yeh, at least they could make an educated guess. On the contrary, “with regard to the authentic experiences of the common people of Taiwan, they were utterly incapable of providing anything fulfilling.”
This is a superb resource for English speakers interested in Taiwan’s literary history. However, as Lupke concedes in his introduction, the text sometimes reads like a laundry list, making it something to dip into rather than a page-turner. Still, there is something exciting about having hundreds of names at one’s fingertips. Reams of footnotes expand on the lives of these individuals, and one is easily dragged into tangential Internet exploration.
While a growing number of works are available in English thanks to Columbia’s Modern Chinese Literature series from Taiwan and, more recently, independent publishers such as Camphor and Cambria, this book reveals the untapped potential. One must hope that more forgotten gems see the light of day.
In his acknowledgements, Lupke notes that “for a variety of reasons that can be subsumed under the general rubric of life intervening at every step, the publication of the translation has languished for more than 10 years.”
Given the service he has rendered in completing the task, it may seem churlish to focus on shortcomings, but — as has been the case with previous Cambria publications (all of which were reviewed as galley proofs) — typos and unwieldy constructions are found throughout.
Particularly jarring are translations of book titles that are already known by different names in English. Examples are Tehpen Tsai’s (蔡德本) Elegy of Sweet Potatoes (蕃薯哀歌), rendered as “The Elegy of a Yam Kid,” and Wang Wen-hsing’s (王文興) Family Catastrophe (家變), translated as “Family Metamorphosis.” While some of these are more literal, acknowledgment of prior publications seems a prerequisite for a project bringing Taiwanese literature to English-speaking audiences.
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