It is interesting to note that while Ya Hsien envisaged “a Wade of grass” as a feeble carrier of truth, Li Chin-fa (1900? —) used it in 1922 as a means of communication with God; “By way of a blade of grass I communicate with God in the deserted vale.” See Hsü, Kai-yu, (tr. and ed.). Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry: An Anthology (New York: Anchor Books, 1904), pp. 177–178.Google Scholar

¹ For information about the Taiwan literary situations during and after the Japanese occupation, sec Chen, Lucy H. [Ch'en Hsiu-mci], “Literary Formosa,” in Formosa Today, Mancall, Mark, (ed.), (New York: Pracger, Frederick A., 1964). pp. 131–141.Google Scholar

One of the earliest indications of Taiwanese writers' desire to keep the torch of the May Fourth tradition burning was the establishment of “Hsicn-lai p'ai” (Modern Poetry Society) on January 20, 1956. Headed by Chi Hsien, the Society had a membership of more than eighty poets, including such notable names as Shang Ch'in. Cheng Ch'ou-yu. Fang Ssu, Pai Ch'iu, Hsin Yu, etc. See Lo Fu's “Hsü” (Preface) to the poetry section of Chung-kuo hsien-tai wen hsüch ta-hsi (A Comprehensive Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature) 1950–1970, 8 vols. (Taipei: Chü-jen ch'u pan-shê, 1972). pp. 1–25. Hereinafter, Comprehensive Anthology.Google Scholar

²Of the fifteen important novelists who have received critical attention in Hsia's, C. T., A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (2d ed.. rev., New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971.Google Scholar Hereinafter, History, 2d ed.), only Ling Shu-hua and Eileen Chang are available on Taiwan not so much because they arc considered politically innocuous as they are fortunate enough to be living outside mainland China. Though ideologically indifferent to the Communist cause from the start, such veteran writers as Shen Ts'ung-wcn and Ch';ien Chung-shu are proscribed simply because they happen to be on Communist soil.

The poets and the playwrights fare no better. Of the forty-four poets listed in Kai-yu Hsü's Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry, the only poet worthy of the name who can be read on Taiwan is Hsü Chih-mo, safely dead before the Communist takeover in 1949. All major playwrights such as T'icn Han, Hung Shen and Ts'ao Yü are unavailable.

³ If we follow Kai-yu Hsü's classification as a guide, then with the exception of Wen I-to and Hsü Chih-mo (the Crescent School), Feng Chih and Pien Chih-lin (Metaphysical), nearly all the major modern poets of China up to 1949 arc symbolists in a fashion: they include, of course, Li Chin-fa, Tai Wang-shu, Li Kuang-t'ien and Ho Ch'i-fang.

It is amazing that as early as the 1920's Li Chin-fa could have fashioned such lines as:

Insects and the dark night arrive hand in hand, Over the corner of this low wall To howl behind my cars that never have been soiled See “Woman Abandoned,” in Kai-yu Hsü, (trans.). Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry, p. 177. Had Taiwanese readers been given the opportunity to expose themselves to such lines, they would be psychologically more prepared for the advent of such a violently unconventional Chinese poem as Fu's, Lo “Death in the Stone Cell” (1964), in Modern Chinese Poetry: Twenty Poets from the Republic of China, Yip, Wai-lim (comp. and tr.), (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1970), p. 34: And morning is a beetle that walks on its back Chewing as it goes on. I am the leftover night Barely hearing stars crying among the joints of teeth.Google Scholar

⁴I have treated this aspect of the mainlanders' psychology at some length in my preface to Tai-wan pên-ti tsochia tuan-p'icn hsiao-shuo hsüan (Selected Short Stones by Native Taiwanese Writers), Shao-ming, Liu {Lau, Joseph S. M.}, (ed.) (Hong Kong: Hsiao-ts'ao ch'u-pan-shê, 1972).Google Scholar Hereinafter, Selected Short Stories. See also Wen-li, Mei, ‘The Intellectuals on Formosa,” in Formosa Today, pp. 121–130.Google Scholar

⁵ “Chih tu-chc (To the Readers), Wen-hsüeh tsa-Chih, I, No. 1, (Sept. 1956), p. 70.

⁶See the appendix on Taiwan, in Hsia, C. T., History of Modern Chinese Fiction: 1917–1057 (1st ed.. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), p. 512.Google Scholar

⁷ “Chih tu-che.”

⁸ Chen, “Literary Formosa,” p. 140.

⁹ Yu Kuang-chung, “Tsung Hsü” (General In-trotluction), Comprehensive Anthology, p. 3.

¹⁰ C. T. Hsia considers him “one of the rare geniuses among contemporary short story writers” ranking with Lu Hsun and Eileen Chang. See lun, “Pai Hsien-yung” (On Pai Hsicn-yung), Hsien-tai wen-hsüch (Modern Literature), No. 30 (Taipei, 1969), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

¹¹ Literally, “Taipei residents.” Published in Taipei in 1971, it is a collection of fourteen of Pai Hsien-yung's stories with Taipei as an unifying theme. It has an appendix of four critical essays on the author by Ou-yang Tzu, C. T. Hsia, Yen Yuen-shu and Yü Li-hua.

¹²Quoted by Fiedler, Leslie in “No! in Thunder,” in The Novel: Modem Essays in Criticism, David, Robert M., (ed.). (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. 1969). p. 314.Google Scholar

¹³ A native of Kweilin, Kwangsi Province, Pai Hsicn-yung was born in 1937. After the war, he moved with his family to Shanghai, Nanking and Hong Kong. In 1952, he settled with his family in Taipei where he received both his high school and college education. In 1963. he came to the United States for graduate studies and is at present teaching Chinese at the University of California (Santa Barbara).

¹⁴ Their representative works are discussed in my preface to Selected Short Stories. See also, lau, Joseph S. M., “The Concepts of Time and Reality in Modern Chinese Fiction,” in Tamkang Review, IV. No. 1 (1973). PP. 1–16.Google Scholar

¹⁵ In 1965, Taipei's Wen-t'an ch'u-pan-shê published a ten-volume anthology entitled Pen-sheng-chi tso-chia tso-p'in hs'an-chi (Selected Works of Native Taiwanese Writers), Ch'ung Chao-cheng, (ed.). Mainly intended as a morale booster for Taiwanese writers, the anthology is of very uneven quality: almost anyone who has published anything is included as long as he is a native Taiwanese.

¹⁶ Chen, “Literary Formosa,” p. 140.

¹⁷ Ch'en Jo-hsi (Lucy H. Chen), “Tsui-hou ych-hsi” (The Last Night Show), in Hsien-tai wen-hsüch, No. to (Sept. 1961), p. 49. This story is now included in Selected Short Stories.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹“Êrh-tzu-ti ta wan-ou” (A Big Toy for My Son), in Wen-hsüeh chi-k'an (Literary Quarterly). No. 6 (Taipei, Feb. 1968), p. 41.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., p. 45.

²¹ Ibid., p. 48.

²² Ibid.

²³ Hsia, History (2d ed.), p. 201.

²⁴Brombert, Victor, The Intellectual Hero: Studies in the French Novel: 1880–1955 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 18.Google Scholar

²⁵ Quoted by Hsü Nan-ts'un (Ch'en Ying-chcn), “Hsin-ti chih-piao: Kuo-min-tang-ti wen-yi chêng-ts'c” (New Pointers in Kuomintang's Literary Policy), in Wen-hsüch chi-k'an, No. 6 (Feb. 1968), p. 87.

²⁶Conrad, Joseph, The Secret Agent (Hammonds-worth: Penguin Hooks, 1969), p. 147.Google Scholar

²⁷Hwai-min, Lin, Shan (Cicada) (Taipei: Hsien-jen-chang ch'u-pan-shê, 1909), p. 102. The quota-tion is in original English.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., p. 137.

²⁹Shê, Lao, Chao Tzu-yüch (Hong Kong: Chi Pen ch'u-pan-shê, 1964), pp. 205–206. I have used C. T. Hsia's translation, in History (2d ed.), p. 169.Google Scholar

³⁰ Because he was tried in a military court, no published account of Ch'en Ying-chen's alleged “subversive activities” has been made public by the government. The only evidence I can cite is from a secret source: a photostat copy of a classified report (dated October y, 1968) issued by the Taiwan Garrison General Headquarters. According to this document, Ch'en Ying-chen, together with six others, was found guilty of “intending to overthrow the government by violence in collusion with the Communist bandits” (i-t'u kou-chieh fei-kung, i pao-li tien-fu cheng-fu). He was sentenced to ten years imprisonment.

For a biographical account of Ch'en Ying-chen's student life and his literary activities, see Wei T'ien-ts'ung's “Mu Shan shu-chien” (Letter from Mu Shan) in Appendix II, Ch'en Ying-chen hsüan-chi (Selected Works of Ch'en Ying-ehcn). Shao-ming, Liu [Lau, Joseph S. M.], (ed.), (Hong Kong: Hsiao Ts'ao ch'u-pan-shê, 1972), pp. 421–430.Google Scholar

I am indebted to Professor Wei for the valuable information provided in this letter, which has enabled me to identify some of Ch'en Ying-chen's autobiographic heroes in his early storie's.

³¹ “Hsiang-ts'un chiao-shih” (The Country Teacher), in Ch'en Ying-chen hsüan-chi, p. 54. All subsequent page references to his stories and essays will appear in parenthesis after the quotations. For readers who want to identify his stories in Chinese cited in this essay, below is a glossary in romanization arranged in chronological order:

STORIES

Mien-t'an (The Noodle Stall)

Wo-ti ti-ti K'ang Hsinng (My Brother K'ang Hsiung)

Hsiang-ts'un chiao-shih (The Country Teacher)

Ku Hsiang (My Home Town)

Chiang-chün tsu (A Family of Generals)

Chi-ts'an-ti wu-yen-ti hsiao-tsui (Poor Poor Dumb Mouths)

I lu-sê-chih hou-niao (One Stray Green Bird)

Tsui-hou-ti hsia-jih (The Last Summer Day)

T'ang Ch'ien ti hsi chu (The Comedy of T'ang Ch'ien)

ESSAYS

Hsien-tai chu-i ti tsai-fa (Modernism Rediscovered)

Liu-fang-che chih-ko (The Song of the Exiled)

³² George H. Kerr has certainly given one of the most dramatic and sensational descriptions of this Incident in his Formosa Betrayed (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1966).Google Scholar Here is one example: “We saw students tied together, being driven to the execution grounds, usually along the river banks and ditches about Taipei, or at the waterfront in Keclung. One foreigner counted more than thirty young bodies—in student uniforms—lying along the roadside east of Taipei; they had their noses and ears slit or hacked off, and many had been castrated. Two students were beheaded near my front gate. Bodies lay unclaimed on the roadside embankment near the mission compound” (pp. 300–301).

The Chinese, however, while deploring the Kuomintang atrocity (as they would any warlord atrocities), take great exception to Kerr's “condescending” and “imperialistic” attitudes in asserting that the Taiwanese would have more welcomed the American occupation of “Formosa” than its restoration to China. See T'icn-ts'ai, Liu, “P'ing P'êng Ming-min hui-i-lu: Tzŭ-yu-ti tzu-wei” (A Taste of Freedom: A Review of P'êng Ming-min's Memoirs), in Ming Pao Yueh-k'an (Ming Pao Monthly), No. 83 (Hong Kong, Nov. 1972), pp. 56–66. P'eng's A Taste of freedom was published in 1972 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.Google Scholar

³³ The “unnamed hero” has been a frequent and favorite figure in the stories of the sentimental writers, such as Su Man-shu and Yü Ta-fu. In the case of Ch'en Ying-chen, however, it may not be so much a show of self-pity as it is a demonstration of personality: he might have intended his anonymous heroes to stand for the Everyman of Taiwanese hsiao-jen-wu (small people) whose lives would not be significant enough to deserve a full name. San-chüch-lien and the baton twirler girl in “A Family of Generals” are two good examples.

³⁴ See Wei, “Mu Shan shu-chien,” p. 424.

³⁵ Lin Hwai-min, Shan, p. 177. The quotation is in origial English.

³⁶Dostoevsky, , A Raw Youth, quoted by Olga Lang as an epigraph to her book Pa Chin and His Writings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

³⁷ “Formosa” is originally an innocuous Portuguese term for Taiwan. However, as it is used by the “Taiwan separatists” (Tai-tu fen-tzu), the term carries a political overtone. According to Liu T'ien-ts'ai, P'eng Ming-min is reported to have explained the special meaning of the term as follows: “Because Taiwan is originally a Chinese name, so we use the Portuguese term 'Formosa’ in order to express our anti-Chinese sentiments.” See “P'ing P'êng Ming-min hui-i-lu,” p. 56.

³⁸Abrams, M. H., A Glossary of Uterary Terms (New York: Holt, Rinchart and Winston, 1964), P. 85.Google Scholar

³⁹ Wei, “Mu Shan shu-chien,” p. 428.

⁴⁰“The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War,” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. 2 (New York: International Publishers, 1954), p. 260.Google Scholar

⁴¹See “Tui-yu chung-kuo hsien-tai-shih ti chi-tien ch'ien-chien” (A Few Personal Remarks on Modern Chinese Poetry), Hsien-tai wen-hsüeh, No. 46 (March 1972), pp. 36–43.Google Scholar