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The Lock of the Heart Controversy in Taiwan, 1962–63: A Question of Artistic Freedom and a Writer's Social Responsibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

The early 1960s marked a period of intellectual and literary ferment in Taiwan. The East-West Controversy, which had its roots in the debate that took place in the middle of the last century regarding the continued validity of the Chinese tradition in the face of western military and economic superiority and in the controversy regarding westernization as the road to modernization in the 1930s, had broken out afresh. Creative writers, musicians and painters were experimenting with new forms and new techniques. As early as 1954 the writers of modern Chinese poetry had started the search for a more contemporary expression of their art form; and modern poetry societies, each with its own philosophy on how modernization should take place, had come into being. Writers of fiction who up till then had been almost exclusively concerned with the Sino-Japanese War; the mainland before the communist takeover in 1949, or the various aspects of the struggle against communism, were moving away from this kind of “propaganda-motivated writing” towards the production of “pure literature.” However, there were few modern Chinese creative writers of stature on whom either the poet or fiction writer could model himself. This was because of the ban imposed by the government in Taiwan on the works of writers prior to 1949 due to the association of many of them with communism or with ideologies unacceptable to the authorities. This meant that they had to seek for inspiration in the works of western writers which could be found in translation or in pirated versions of the original texts in the major cities of Taiwan. The traditionalists viewed this growing trend with alarm as did those writers who were closely associated with the Kuomintang. The latter had formed themselves during the early 1950s into three writers' associations, the China Association of Literature and Art, the Chinese Youth Writers' Association, and the Taiwan Women Writers' Association.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1985

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21. The China Youth Corps was established by Jiang Jingguo in 1952 in order to train young people for the move back to the mainland.

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55. Jiang Shijiang, born in Chongqing in 1899, first made his name with a travelogue entitled, Yelang youcong (Traveller in Yelang), written in 1936 and published in Nanjing xin min bao. He has since written novels, short stories and essays.

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57. Zhang Shuhan, born in Beijing in 1930, has at least 11 novels and five collections of short stories to her credit. She is said to write in a refreshing style and with considerable insight. One of her novels, Feicui tianyuan (Kingfisher Pastures) describes the lives of the peasantry during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan and after the island's restoration to China.

58. Guo Sifen, born in Sichuan in 1919, joined the army during the Sino-Japanese War, but on coming to Taiwan he joined the navy and devoted himself to the culture movements in the armed forces. He was subsequently assigned to the Taiwan Provincial Government's Information Office.

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66. Ding Ling, novelist and short-story writer, was born in Changde, Hunan, in 1907. She gained fame in the 1920s for her vivid and frank description of the young bourgeois intellectual confronted with the proletarian experience. She joined the Communist Party after her husband, the writer, Hu Yepin, was executed by the Kuomintang in 1931. She became an important leader of and contributor to the Party-sponsored literary world. She received the Stalin Prize for literature in 1951 for her novel, Taiyang zhao zai Sangganhe shang (The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River). Ding Ling was accused in the mid 1950s of rejecting party guidance, of fostering cliquism and of promoting capitalist-individualist thought. She was sentenced to hard labour and served for some time as a cleaning woman in the headquarters of the Writers' Association in Beijing. She has been rehabilitated since the fall of “the gang of four.”

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70. Shi Lü states that this is Article 15 of the Constitution, whereas it is Article 23.

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79. Lin Shicun, also known as Nan Guo, was born in Hunan province in 1914. He joined the army and rose to be a Colonel. His first novel, Tuoniao (The Ostrich) was published by Asia Press in Hong Kong in 1953. Diyi lian qu (Song of First Love), published in Hong Kong in 1955, won the Literary Awards Committee's literature award; and his Qiao fu (The Resourceful Woman) won the 1959 Ministry of Education's literature award.

80. Wang Lan, novelist and painter, was born in Tianjin in 1922. He was educated at Qinghua Fine Arts College and National Yunnan University. In 1946 he became member of the City Council of Tianjin. In Taiwan he became a delegate to the National Assembly; executive director of the China Chapter, International P.E.N.; chairman of Chinese Watercolourists Association, and one of the directors of the China Association of Literature and Art. He has headed cultural missions; lectured in the University of Hawaii, and exhibited his watercolours in the United States. His novel, Lan yu hei (The Blue and the Black), became a bestseller and has been translated into Korean and German.

81. Hou Xikai was born in Yunnan in 1917, but spent many years in Malaya before going to Taiwan in 1959. He has written about the problems that attend mixed marriages between Chinese and Malayan, and about customs, religions, and the life of the Chinese in Malaya.

82. Shi Fan, woman novelist, has written many novels, the first being Meiyou zouwan de lu (The Never-ending Road) which examines the bewilderment of young people in a changing society.

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85. Ibid.

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87. Although, strictly speaking, “New Wave” was a term used to describe the films produced by the French during this period, in Taiwan it came to mean anything, in the arts, that was different in style and technique or which was more sexually outspoken than in the past.

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89. Ibid. p. 77.

90. Ibid.

91. Presumably in the manner of the poet-statesman, Qu Yuan (343–277 BC) who drowned himself when his warnings to his sovereign went unheeded.

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93. Jin Ping Mei, named after its three main female characters, is a 16th-century novel by an unknown author. It is famous for its erotic descriptions.

94. Liu Xinhuang, poet, novelist, essayist and literary theorist, was born in Henan province in 1916. His first work of fiction, Si di (The Execution Ground) was published in 1936. A collection of short stories came off the press in 1953, and yet another in 1956. He has at least six collections of modern poems to his credit as well as 12 collections of essays and eight works on literary theory and literary criticism.

95. Yu Dafu, novelist, essayist, poet and translator was born in Zhejiang province in 1896. He was one of the founder-members of the Creation Society in 1921. He was strongly influenced by the romantic movement and his work is highly subjective and autobiographical. He was killed by the Japanese in Sumatra in 1942.

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